Chapter 3: CH 3

The sound of water in the bathroom subsided, and You Ning stepped on the heated floor with his bare feet, making a slight sound.

The dazed Lu Anlan in the mirror heard the sound and snapped out of his memories, then subconsciously turned his face to the side to avoid looking at You Ning.

It was obviously the same face, but he didn’t dare look at this demon every after a bath. It was just too seductive.

The white bathrobe was draped loosely over You Ning’s body, barely covering the fatal areas. With his indifferent expression, his otherwise clean-cut teenage face was filled with blood-curdling temptation.

You Ning walked over to the mirror, pulled out a towel to wipe his damp hair, and hooked his little finger on the black jewelled ring that sat in front of the mirror.

He didn’t use pernicious methods like sealing the human’s soul in the mirror, the jewelled ring was where Lu Anlan lived, and it was invisible to ordinary people.

Except for sleeping and bathing, You Ning carried it with him to ensure that Lu Anlan could see the entire transaction process with his own eyes; it was an absolutely open and transparent deal, without perfunctory or swindling.

–This is also the rule for making a deal with the devil.

A long, long time ago, dealing with the devil was just a game.

Human beings lived in the world and inevitably had all kinds of desires. Demons heard their voices and began to trade with them, taking something that humans had, such as love, and trading it for something like money that humans could only dream of. Humans were naturally ecstatic when they could get their desires without much effort. However, demons were called “demons” because they were not good at making people whole.

The human who gets the money would slowly lose their health and take the money to exchange it for health. When his life is at stake, he starts to see the beauty of love again and tries to get it back, but by this time, the newly acquired health is no longer worth the trade, and there is nothing left that is worthy of the devil’s attention. He then had no choice but to sell his soul. In the end, he does get a beautiful and radiant love, but his poverty will make the beautiful love slowly deteriorate until there is nothing left.

At first, the demons enjoyed the stupidity of the humans, but over time, they got bored. The humans could not resist the second and third time whenever they took the first bait, and although the souls were different, the transactions always ended in a similar way.

But it didn’t matter, they soon opened up new ways of playing, which were later known as the “deal with the devil”: by using your soul as a price, you get the chance for the demon to take revenge on your behalf.

But demons have never been ones to keep their word.

When demons started getting human souls voluntarily, most of them would simply eat them! As for the deal, it didn’t matter to them! It was not like the humans knew whether the revenge was complete or not.

There were also some demons who, after eating the soul, gave it a little residual consciousness and gloated: “Ha, silly, I was just saying that, and you believed me! Hahaha, laughing my ass off.”

The demon’s servants were then assigned to complete the transaction after the soul was eaten, but they didn’t ask about the completion of the transaction. Moreover, which servant to a demon would be that kind? Most of them would take over the body of the human and have fun on earth, or they would pass on the treatment they have suffered under the demon to the innocent, and as for revenge, oh sorry, I got high and forgot.

The behavior was so heinous that Hell and Heaven later shook hands and made peace, and as a show of good faith, Hell directly banned these deals. It was only in recent years that this ancient activity was opened up after the rules of the trade were changed.

The new rules didn’t say you can’t eat human souls—after all, doing things for free is something only angels would do. But what made the demons so uninterested was that the demon who agreed to a human deal must complete the deal himself, and only after the deal is done will the human soul belong to that demon; otherwise, the deal is void.

They couldn’t play with the humans and see their struggling and pained expressions, and they had to work hard. The rules also said that they couldn’t use their powers to harm people in the process of revenge, so what kind of idiot with nothing better to do would take such a deal?

If they had the time, they might as well go to the door of the newly-emerged, alluring little incubus and ask for a nap.

The seductive little incubus wiped his hair until it was half dry, then he put on the ring and left the bathroom.

After leaving the bathroom, You Ning noticed that Lu Anlan’s mood was a little unstable. He came to this world last week, on Saturday night. The Lu couple had something to do and never came home, so he went to school the next day and never saw them.

Lu Anlan was afraid of seeing his parents; he had a deep sense of guilt towards them, and he felt ashamed to face them. On the day of his funeral, in the cold, rainy weather, his parents asked him over and over why he had to be taken away from them at the age of 24 and why he had suffered all that pain. They didn’t know who to ask, and no one had an answer for them. They knelt in front of his grave, sad and helpless.

Lu Anlan’s heart twisted every time he thought of their figures that day.

Little incubus, You Ning didn’t care about how this human was feeling, his slender fingers ran across the clothes in the wardrobe. “Which one should I wear ……”

Lu Anlan wasn’t sure if he was talking to him.

You Ning casually picked out a set of home clothes and said, “This one.”

“……” Sure enough, he wasn’t talking to him, but Lu Anlan didn’t continue to linger in sadness any longer.

When You Ning finished dressing and went downstairs, the Lu couple happened to have come back. You Ning raised a smile and called out, “Dad, Mom!”

Father Lu answered, bringing out the wrinkles on his face as he smiled, “Little An is back.”

Mother Lu looked at You Ning and frowned, “How come you’ve lost a little weight after not seeing you for a week?”

There is a kind of thinness called “your mother thinks you are thin,” and You Ning was helpless, “Mom-”

Before he could say anything, Mother Lu’s gaze went to his thin clothes and half-dry hair, and she started to nag: “Little An, why can’t you take care of yourself when you’re so old? It’s cold; don’t wear so little all the time, and blow dry your hair after showering, you don’t feel it now when you’re young, but you’ll understand when you’re older…”

You Ning looked to Father Lu for help.

Father Lu coughed and called out towards the kitchen, “Sister Fang, when will the meal be ready?”

The kitchen side replied, “Sir, it’s already done ……”

Mother Lu turned and glared at her husband, and Father Lu shrank his head, “…… eat first, eat first, the child is hungry.”

You Ning hurriedly went to his place at the dining table, sat down, and started flattering Mother Lu, “Mom, I will accompany you to go shopping tomorrow, let’s eat first.”

As expected, Mother Lu did not continue nagging, while Father Lu, who had just taken his seat, gave You Ning a look of praise for being a warrior.

What was a man who could offer to go shopping with a woman if not a warrior? Especially a rich woman, after all, when there is a lot of money, her interest in shopping will not be interrupted by a lack of funds.

After dinner, You Ning returned to his room and locked the door. Lu Anlan in the ring was still immersed in his reunion with his family, and by the time he came back to his senses, he realized that the demon seemed to be doing some kind of evil summoning technique as a large black hole that was glowing red suddenly appeared on the floor around him.

He didn’t know what You Ning was up to, and he didn’t dare ask questions to disturb him.

Within moments, the large hole disappeared, leaving a… cat on the floor? It was a particularly mellow black cat with smooth fur, and one could tell at a glance that it ate really well.

It twitched its ears and rubbed against You Ning’s ankle in a whiny way, “Master!”

Huh… this voice? Lu Anlan remembered it, wasn’t it the one that asked him if he wanted to make a deal and called him “dear”? It was actually a cat!

You Ning picked up the magical creature by his feet and stroked it, saying, “Find out where Shu Yu is working tomorrow.”

“Meow… yes, master!”

Soon, the black cat gave You Ning an accurate reply, including what time Shu Yu commuted to work.

Lu Anlan was a little confused, why didn’t You Ning just ask him? Was it because he didn’t care to ask him, a human? From what he had observed over the past few days, it didn’t seem like You Ning was a demon who felt that talking to humans was below his status.

So why? Could it be to show off his cat?

“Your cat is so cute; it looks really comfortable to touch.” Lu Anlan tentatively complimented.

The black cat half-squinted its eyes and “purred” in enjoyment.

You Ning stroked the fluffy magical creature under his palm, half-squinting his eyes in the same way, and the corners of his mouth curled but he gave a pretentious “mmm.”

Lu Anlan: “……”

The next day, Yuncheng Shopping Centre.

You Ning was sitting on a sofa in a shop, while Mother Lu was excitedly selecting clothes in the shop.

When You Ning saw that her attention was on the clothes, he began to look at the shop across the street. It wasn’t really across the street, but more like across the hall of the shopping center. With a distance of about a hundred meters plus the bright lights, it was not easy to see the faces of the people across.

You Ning was in a human body, but he was not one, so this distance amounted to nothing to him, and he could see the opposite side clearly.

The shop across the street was a luxury men’s clothing shop, and Shu Yu worked there as a temporary salesman, a situation that was relatively uncommon in such shops. The owner of the shop agreed to let him come in every weekend because he had a particularly good image and increased his sales.

By now, Shu Yu had become quite familiar with the shop, and all his performances have made the shop manager very happy. The other shop employees are all girls, and it goes without saying that they have a good opinion of Shu Yu. The shop manager even asked him if he would work during the winter holidays and could give him a pay rise.

But today, Shu Yu ran into trouble when the son of the boss of the head office of the brand came to the shopping center with his girlfriend and happened to wander into the front of his family’s shop. Coincidentally, the young master was Shu Yu’s classmate, and even more coincidentally, the goddess whom the young master liked had rejected him, saying that she only liked Shu Yu.

And so the drama began.

You Ning’s eyes curled up in crescent moons, and he changed his position on the sofa, watching the fire on the other side.