Talking with a Demon, Only Horseshoes Can Be Bullied

It was a very simple story.

Yet the protagonists in it seemed to have each reacted in an unusual way.

After hearing the Fox Demon's question, Chen Xu still did not answer directly, instead asking, "The fox fur Fellow Daoist Hu left behind back then—was it not taken away when the Lin Family's younger daughter married?"

The Fox Demon said, "She never had the chance to marry. That year, because she let me go, her father punished her by confining her in the ancestral hall for ten days. But she caught a chill from the cold and fell ill.

That chill came on with terrifying force, and in just a few days, it turned into an epidemic.

Her family isolated her in a remote little courtyard. I saw her from afar and slipped in to see her under cover of night.

My cultivation was shallow then, and I could not save her. So she took out the fox fur in her hand and made wishes to me.

Her first wish was that I would not harm her family. Her second was that, in the future, I would look after anyone holding the remaining fox fur.

She passed on the wishes she could have had to those who came after her, but she had already used two of the three wishes.

Even if the wishes could be passed down, the Lin Family could only have one strand of fox fur left."

As he spoke, the smile on the Fox Demon's face seemed both wistful and pleased.

Chen Xu said, "So Lin Yuan used this last strand of fox fur to wish for you to hide in Lin Qi's coffin tomorrow and question me?"

The Fox Demon said, "That's right. Though I am a demon, ever since I gained intelligence, I have always kept my promises. Anything I agree to, I will certainly do.

But... I only agreed to hide in the coffin tomorrow and question you. I never agreed to save him when he was in danger.

What does his death have to do with me? Fellow Daoist, would you not say that is reason enough?"

The Fox Demon asked Chen Xu, yet did not wait for an answer. A relieved smile had already appeared on his face.

He emphasized, "He wanted to die himself."

By this point, Chen Xu completely understood the Fox Demon's logic.

Was there anything wrong with the Fox Demon's logic?

At first listen, it seemed as though something was off. But on careful thought, it was actually perfectly reasonable.

So reasonable that Chen Xu could not help being dazed for a moment.

Since setting foot upon the path of cultivation, he had encountered ghosts and demons. Setting ghosts aside, the two kinds of demons he had met were Rat Demons and Fox Demons. Yet these few demons all understood sentiment and propriety. In some respects, they possessed more benevolence, righteousness, and morality than many people who kept the Sage's Teachings on their lips.

Though the Fox Demon's morality was slightly skewed.

But the Fox Demon had his own reasons. He continued, "Fellow Daoist, I actually do not like the Lin Family. Do you find that easy to understand?"

Chen Xu said, "You have reason not to like the Lin Family, from your perspective. They cannot catch you, then release you, and expect you to feel boundless gratitude toward a Lineage that intended to harm you from the start."

That left the Fox Demon stunned.

The hibiscus flower at his temple trembled. The Fox Demon hurriedly reached up to straighten it, delight blooming across his face as he said, "Ah, no wonder you are someone the Lin Family brat wanted to harm. What you said makes so much sense.

I had pondered for a long time without ever understanding my relationship with the Lin Family. I only knew that I felt terribly unhappy.

Though I promised the Lin Family young lady that I would fulfill my promise, every time I did so, my heart felt clogged and stifled.

I am not human. There are always things I cannot understand as clearly as clever humans like you.

Luckily, Fellow Daoist helped me sort it out... Eh, is this what you humans call having the clouds part and seeing the blue sky?"

The Fox Demon even knew how to use idioms.

By now, though Chen Xu still retained three parts vigilance toward this Fox Demon, his manner had relaxed considerably as they spoke.

Chen Xu said, "It was merely that a single leaf had blocked your eyes, and you could not see clearly for the moment."

"You speak so pleasantly." The Fox Demon beamed, then asked, "But there is still one matter I do not understand."

"Please speak, Fellow Daoist Hu. I may not necessarily be able to answer, but I will do my best to help."

The Fox Demon said faintly, "Back then, the Lin Family young lady clearly caught that chill because her father punished her. It later became an epidemic. Her death could be said to have been inseparable from her Lineage abandoning her.

But when I went to see her before she died, why was her heart still occupied by thoughts of her Lineage?

At the end, she lay all alone in that cold room. Not a single person from her Lineage came to see her.

Even the brothers and sisters who had always proclaimed how dearly they loved her, even her mother, did not come to see her off one last time.

Do you know that when she died, the servants buried her in a thin coffin?

She could not even enter the Lin Family ancestral graves. Had I not later saved up silver to invite a Daoist priest to perform rites for her at her grave, her corpse might have transformed after death.

Yet even so, before she died, she still thought of her family...

She even tucked the fox fur I gave her into a book, wrote her last words, and told those who came after that they could seek my aid with this fox fur.

Fellow Daoist, why was that?"

The Fox Demon asked Chen Xu this question, and for a moment, Chen Xu was stumped as well.

Seeing that he did not answer, the Fox Demon did not grow angry. He continued, "All these years, I have often wondered whether, among those who harmed her back then, there were her father and brothers... and me as well.

Was I also... one of those who harmed her?"

After asking this, the Fox Demon stared fixedly at Chen Xu.

Only at this moment did Chen Xu truly realize that perhaps the reason this Fox Demon had come here in the dead of night, insisting on meeting him, was to ask him this very question.

On the long street, the bustle of the human world still seemed hazy, as though it had been swept into another strange world.

And in the world before them, there was only one human and one demon.

Demons had many confusions about the human world. Yet humans—humans might not truly see the human world clearly either.

After pondering for a moment, Chen Xu said, "The causes and effects of this world are endless, link after link, as though formed from countless chains.

Has Fellow Daoist Hu ever heard of a nation perishing because of a horseshoe?"

The Fox Demon asked curiously, "What kind of nation could perish because of a horseshoe?"

"An ordinary horseshoe naturally could not. But if the border were in urgent danger, and secret military orders had to be rushed to the capital at great speed—

An imperial courier might race on horseback with this confidential report. Halfway there, the horse's shoe might come loose, and the courier would stop at a relay station to have it repaired.

The craftsman repairing the horseshoe might have poor skills and make an error.

Then, at some point in the latter half of the journey, the horse that had been reshod might suddenly lose its footing.

It would throw down the already exhausted courier, killing him in the fall.

That confidential report would then never have another chance to reach the capital... And half a year later, the enemy army would surge straight in, and that nation would perish.

Tell me, Fellow Daoist Hu, if people drew a conclusion from this and said that the nation perished because of a horseshoe—

Do you think this matter should be explained in such a way?"

The Fox Demon's pair of slender brows drew tightly together as he could not help saying, "How could one say it perished because of a horseshoe?

If a nation fell apart merely because it failed to receive one confidential message, then it could only mean that the nation itself had already rotted beyond recognition, could it not?

What powerful dynasty could be so fragile, so unable to withstand a single blow?

If one truly wished to speak of the reason for its downfall, was it not because the army was weak, the emperor foolish, and the officials incompetent?

Yet they blamed a single horseshoe. Truly, with nothing else to blame, only the horseshoe could be bullied!

I am a fox, not a human, and even I understand this principle."

Suddenly, a burst of applause rang out.

The Fox Demon looked up and saw the scholar opposite him clapping and laughing. "Precisely so. Therefore, if that family was vicious, how could the fox be blamed?"

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