Ying An did not cry or make a fuss.
Perhaps he had grown used to following Sister’s arrangements, or perhaps he knew he could not change Li Jue’s decision.
In any case, the moving date was set for half a month later.
He still had a chance to properly say goodbye to this city he had lived in for nearly ten years.
In Ying An’s memory, he had never had parents since he was little.
Li Jue was his only relative.
He had been raised by Sister.
Li Jue said she had picked him up.
On a cold, snowy day, under a withered old tree, she had found him.
Inside the swaddling clothes there was still a jade pendant, and his name was carved on the jade pendant.
Ying An believed her.
Sister would never lie to him.
Just as he believed Sister’s choices were always correct.
She said they were moving to another city a thousand miles away, so he followed along and packed his luggage.
He had many things, but most of them were useless items that could be thrown away.
That small suitcase could not hold too many memories.
Just like the mecha model he had loved most as a child, the signed basketball the neighbor older brother had left him when he moved away, and the large puzzle he and Li Jue had spent several days completing together.
Ying An sat on a chair and thought for a long time, feeling it hard to let go in his heart.
In his hands he still held the graduation gift Fu Yu had given him, a ceramic cup printed with a rabbit and radish pattern.
He knew he should not cause Sister any trouble.
Just as he was about to make up his mind, he saw a large empty cardboard box placed in front of him.
He looked up.
Li Jue affectionately stroked his head.
The snow-white fox tail growing from her back curled up item after item and placed them into the box.
Ying An froze for a moment, then urgently stood up and blocked the window, anxiously shouting,
“Sister! Put the tail away quickly. Someone will see it.”
“Sister isn’t even afraid. What is Xiao An so nervous about?”
She smiled dotingly and gently, yet still reached out and drew the curtains on both sides closed, letting the boy feel a little more at ease.
“If they find out, bad people will come to catch you. That’s what you said yourself.”
Li Jue had said those words.
She had mainly done so to scare Ying An a little and prevent her identity from being exposed, which would invite unnecessary trouble.
It was hard for a child’s mouth to keep secrets.
Although even if Ying An leaked it, it would not stir up any real waves, he had rarely managed to keep this matter hidden in his heart all this time.
Perhaps it was precisely the effect of that threat.
In Ying An’s eyes, if she were caught by bad people, it would mean separating from the Sister he loved most.
Such a consequence had made him keep his mouth tightly shut over these years, not daring to reveal even the slightest bit.
What she had not told Ying An was that in her lifespan of several thousand years, only two people had ever truly posed a threat to her.
One of them was already dead.
“Are you that afraid of Sister being taken away?”
“Of course… I don’t want to be separated from Sister.”
“Then between Sister and that friend of yours at school, who do you like more?”
One of Li Jue’s fox tails coiled around behind Ying An, the tip lightly brushing the boy’s tender little face, making him feel itchy.
“I like Sister more.”
He answered quickly and decisively.
A child’s mind still did not understand the true meaning of her question, but she liked hearing Ying An say it this way.
“Little dummy. You haven’t been spoiled for nothing.”
They spent half a day packing away the precious items.
The remaining large furniture and appliances would be handled by the moving company.
By sunset, the last of the things had finally been put away.
The afterglow of the setting sun and the cool evening breeze drifted into the room together.
Tonight was the last night they would spend here.
After finishing dinner, Ying An used Li Jue’s computer inside the room to watch anime.
Li Jue went up to the rooftop of the old building.
Beside her hand sat a bottle of Burgundy Pinot Noir red wine.
Before she had picked up Ying An, she would sit here every night, drinking wine while using her demon pupils to watch the various scenes of the human world.
From fuel-burning candles to flickering neon lights, the night flowed with the passage of hundreds and thousands of years.
There had once been people who worshipped her as a god, and there had also been people who cursed her as a devil.
She had spent several years learning human emotions, yet for over a thousand years she had never possessed true humanity.
She clearly remembered one scene.
That was in the year 1401 AD, when the iron hooves of the Yan King Zhu Di stepped onto the path of usurping the throne in the Jingnan Campaign.
Li Jue had once seen a ruined family in an ancient town that had just been ravaged by the flames of war.
The man’s corpse still gripped a blade, the blood not yet dry.
A severely wounded blind woman knelt to the side, holding an infant in swaddling clothes and softly sobbing.
When she heard the sound of footsteps approaching, the woman first panicked and asked for her identity, then almost knelt as she humbly begged her to adopt the child in her arms.
The second after she took the swaddling clothes, the woman stopped breathing.
Then… Li Jue placed the dead infant back into her arms.
At that moment, she suddenly became very curious about what human love truly was, something that even demons, who valued life and death the most, could set aside.
This journey of seeking knowledge had cost her several hundred years of time.
She had even inquired of sages from foreign lands a thousand miles away for this.
She had received countless answers, until someone told her, “You can try to love a person. Once you have felt love and being loved, perhaps you will find the true answer.”
In the years since obtaining Ying An, although she still did not understand the true meaning of this word, something had quietly awakened in her heart without her noticing.
A strong desire centered on possession and deprivation.
She could enjoy it as she pleased, and others were absolutely forbidden from touching it.
He was the one she had raised.
The hard work of these few years was no less than any period in those thousand years.
She remembered that when the little one first learned to walk, he had been lively and active, very mischievous.
Every day she had to feed him, change his diapers, teach him to speak, and from time to time clean up the messes he made all over the floor.
The thousand-year great demon who had once made countless people change color at the mere mention of her name had suddenly become a hard-working “single mother” raising a child.
It was precisely at that time that she felt something inadvertently awaken in her heart.
Li Jue raised the wine bottle and poured another mouthful for herself.
The evening wind brushed her long, jet-black hair.
The phone screen she had placed on the wall lit up, accompanied by a light and pleasant ringtone.
“Hello, has the Young Miss finally found time to look at my messages?” She laughed teasingly.
“Aiya, my phone ran out of battery. Isn’t this me calling you now?”
The girl’s voice was lively and sweet, sounding like a girl of fifteen or sixteen.
“You finally decided to move over. I’ve wanted to see Xiao An for so long. When you arrive, can you lend him to me for two days?”
“Don’t get any ideas about him. How is the matter I entrusted to you?”
“It’s already been taken care of long ago. As payment, just let me play with Xiao An for two days, okay? Please, please, Sister Li Jue~” The other party deliberately put on a coquettish tone for these two sentences, sounding overly delicate.
“If you want one that badly, go claim one from an orphanage yourself. As for payment… say something else.”
“Just kidding. Doing work for Lord ‘Shuangxi’, how could I have the face to ask for payment? But I have to remind you, there have been demons causing trouble around here recently. Make sure to keep a close watch on your little one.”