Gong Kai Actually Kept a Wild Animal

The young woman watched Wen Ning for a long while, then casually set the trash can beside her.

"My name is Hu Jiumei."

Her voice was still soft and gentle.

"I mean Gong Kai no harm."

Sitting in the chair across from her, Wen Ning blurted out without thinking,

"Then what do you want from Gong Kai? He's just a fat guy who weighs over two hundred pounds."

The corner of Hu Jiumei's mouth twitched, as though she wanted to laugh but was holding it back.

Then she raised her right hand, palm down. Under Wen Ning's gaze, a very faint layer of red fur slowly emerged on the back of her pale, slender hand.

"I knew Gong Kai before."

"What you felt just now was your Thunder Arts reacting to my demonic aura."

Wen Ning instinctively pressed a hand against his lower abdomen. The warm energy there had already settled down.

"More than ten years ago..."

Hu Jiumei began to speak, recounting the fateful connection between her and Gong Kai.

"I hadn't attained human form yet. Back then, I lived on a mountain. It wasn't very big, but the woods had everything. Every day, I searched for food in the woods and hid from eagles, snakes, and people."

As she spoke, her right hand unconsciously touched her left wrist. There was still a faint scar visible there, though the wound had long since healed.

"For us demons to cultivate, we have to survive three tribulations: the Heavenly Tribulation, the Earthly Tribulation, and the Human Tribulation."

Hu Jiumei gently tucked away her scarred left hand.

"Normally, as long as you aren't burdened with evil karma, you can survive the heavenly and earthly tribulations if you handle them properly, difficult as they are. But the human tribulation is different. If that good fortune isn't part of your fate, the human tribulation becomes a matter of life and death."

As Hu Jiumei spoke, her gaze slowly grew distant, and she sank into her memories.

"I'd already survived the heavenly and earthly tribulations. But during my human tribulation, I got caught in a hunter's trap."

An image surfaced in Wen Ning's mind: a little fox struggling desperately, her foreleg locked between iron teeth, her blood staining the muddy ground dark brown.

"I struggled for a long time. The more I struggled, the tighter the trap bit down. Eventually, I had no strength left, so I just lay there and waited to die. Maybe I simply didn't have that good fortune."

Hu Jiumei's voice was calm, so calm that it seemed she wasn't the one who had nearly died.

"But the hunter never came. A child came instead."

She turned to look at Wen Ning. For the first time, a trace of warmth entered her eyes, and her lips curved without her realizing it.

"That child crouched in front of me and watched me for a long time. He reached out to pet me, and I bit him."

Wen Ning nearly laughed at that.

That certainly sounded like something Gong Kai would do.

It was hardly surprising that a chubby seven- or eight-year-old who tried to pet a trapped fox would get bitten.

"But he didn't leave."

Hu Jiumei couldn't help letting out a soft laugh herself.

"He pulled his hand back and blew on the bite. Then he reached out again and pried open the trap. It took him a long time, and the trap cut his hands. While he worked, he kept telling me, 'Don't bite me. I'm saving you.'"

"He picked me up, tucked me inside his coat, and ran all the way down the mountain."

Hu Jiumei lowered her head to look at her fingers, her voice growing even gentler. "He put me in his backyard and secretly kept me for over two weeks. He didn't dare tell the adults. Every day, he saved half a bowl of rice from his own meal and brought it out to me. He even lined a cardboard box with his old, torn clothes for me to sleep in. He didn't call me Fox. He called me Little Red."

Wen Ning couldn't help laughing. This was absolutely something Gong Kai would do.

His naming skills were perfectly consistent with his college days, when he'd kept a hamster in their dorm room and named it Lucky.

"What happened afterward?"

"A neighbor found out and reported him for keeping a wild animal in his backyard. His dad was furious. He gave him a beating and released the fox."

Hu Jiumei's voice returned to its even tone, but Wen Ning noticed her interlaced fingers tightening, her knuckles turning white.

"I was released back onto the mountain. He chased us to the foot of it and stood at the crossroads calling for Little Red for ages. I stood in the woods watching him just as long. He didn't know I was watching, but he kept calling until his voice went hoarse. Only then did his dad drag him home."

Hu Jiumei loosened her fingers and raised her head to look at Wen Ning, a complicated light in her eyes.

"After I returned to the mountain, having survived all three tribulations, it took me twenty years to attain human form. But I couldn't quite forget that little boy."

"So after you attained human form, you came back to find him."

Wen Ning said.

Hu Jiumei nodded, then shook her head.

"I found him. But my cultivation wasn't strong enough."

She opened her hand, and a faint red glow rose from her palm.

"With my current cultivation, all I can do is take human form and do a few chores. I can't help him get rich, change his luck, or protect him from disasters. I can't do any of that."

She withdrew her hand, curled it into a fist again, and rested it on her knee. For the first time, a hint of frustration entered her voice.

"All through my cultivation, I kept thinking I could repay him once I attained human form. But when I finally did, I realized having a human form was useless. The place he rents doesn't even have air conditioning, and I can't conjure up an air conditioner. His salary is so low, and I can't help with that either. I can't even get through the front door of the company where he works. There's a security guard."

"So you clean his place for him."

Hu Jiumei lowered her head, the tips of her ears turning slightly red.

"That's all I know how to do. When I was cultivating on the mountain, I spent decades tidying my cave dwelling. I'm good at it."

She paused, then added quietly,

"Besides, he's pretty sloppy these days. You know that too."

Wen Ning remembered Gong Kai back in college, and that sock with mushrooms growing on it.

Suddenly, he understood why this fox spirit showed up at the same time every day.

It wasn't because cleaning was her way of maintaining her territory. All thirty-odd points in Lu Ming's analysis were nonsense. She simply couldn't stand the mess.

"He wasn't like this as a child."

Hu Jiumei raised her head to look at Wen Ning, her expression so earnest that she seemed to be defending Gong Kai.

"When he fed me as a child, he scrubbed my bowl spotless every day. I suppose society must have beaten him down since then."

Wen Ning nearly laughed again at that last line. Society had beaten him down—coming from a fox spirit who had lived for over a decade, that assessment sounded convincing no matter how he looked at it.

"Then why don't you just tell him?"

As soon as he said it, Wen Ning felt a little idiotic. If she could tell him, wouldn't she have done so already?

Hu Jiumei fell silent at his question.

"He's just an ordinary person. Knowing about this wouldn't be good for him."

She lowered her head and looked at her hands.

"Besides, I can't stay with him for long. My cultivation isn't strong enough. I can only remain in the human world for an hour each day. I arrive at four and leave at five. Once my cultivation deepens, I'll be able to stay longer, but that's for the future. Right now, I only have an hour. It's not even enough time to cook him a meal."

Though her tone was level, Wen Ning could feel her frustration.

Wen Ning leaned back in his chair, his fingers unconsciously tapping the armrest. A long while passed before he spoke.

"Hu Jiumei, do you have any idea how badly you've scared him by cleaning his place every day?"

Hu Jiumei froze for a moment.

"I know. I know he installed a camera too. It's not that I don't want him to see me. I'm afraid that once he sees me..."

"You're afraid he'll drive you away?"

Hu Jiumei said nothing, but the slight inward hunch of her shoulders answered everything.

Wen Ning leaned back in his chair. Suddenly, this whole situation felt rather troublesome.

He could tell that Hu Jiumei meant Gong Kai no harm.

She even seemed to like Gong Kai a little.

If Hu Jiumei had malicious intentions, this would have been easy. It was precisely because she didn't that it was difficult to handle. He didn't even know whether a human and a demon could be together.