Did you steal my money?

Kallen got out of bed and walked to the ward door.

Then he stopped, lowered his head, and looked at Puer, who was pawing at his trouser leg.

Puer said, "Are you sure you want to go check things out?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean, Dis isn't here. You don't need to rush off to show how kind you are."

"Me?"

"Yes. Besides, Dis isn't actually a very kind person either. He's only kind to his family. Just a friendly tip."

"I'll remember that."

"Good boy."

"But I never said I was going downstairs to check things out."

As he spoke,

Kallen shut the ward door, then dragged a nearby cabinet over and braced it against the door.

"I'm just worried that thing might go berserk after killing someone and charge in here."

Puer moved back a few steps,

and said,

"Just what I'd expect from a cold-blooded Otherworldly Demon."

"If I remember correctly, the stairs to the basement are two rooms down from mine. That's too close."

"Yes."

Kallen went back to the bed and sat down.

"Puer."

"I'm not very fond of the name you gave me. It sounds strange."

"I think it's a very poetic name."

"An artistic touch, then." Puer jumped back onto the bed. "By the way, there's something I've always been curious about: your language."

"My language?"

"Yes. For example, what does 'motherfucker' mean?"

"Something along the lines of locking you in a bathroom with a feral tomcat."

"I understand."

Puer lay down on her side and began grooming her fur.

"There's something I'm curious about too," Kallen said.

"Go ahead."

"Can you fight?"

"Fight?" Puer said helplessly. "I used to be very good at it."

"How long ago was that?"

"Over a hundred years ago."

"You can actually live that long?"

"If you turned into a cat and lived for two hundred years, you wouldn't envy me. When I first came to the Immerlis Family, Dis was just a child. Now his granddaughter Mina has started using sanitary pads.

"Oh, how the years fly."

"Could you not use Mina as an example?"

"Fine, I'll use someone else. Last month, Lunt learned to use his hand on himself."

"Why is it still so quiet outside?" Kallen asked, puzzled.

"Looks like she hasn't come charging upstairs in a frenzy?" Puer sounded puzzled too. "Or maybe you misheard?"

"It was too clear. I even heard their conversation."

"Hah, how extraordinary. Even a Divine Servant who has undergone full purification shouldn't have such absurdly sharp perception."

"Is Divine Servant a profession?"

"In the Order Church, yes. They're at the very bottom of the church hierarchy. Of course, they're not the same as priests in ordinary churches who enjoy listening to women confess their affairs."

"Which kind is Dis? What rank is an Inquisitor?"

Kallen remembered Alfred addressing Dis as "Lord Inquisitor."

"Purifier-Divine Servant;

"Inquirer-Divine Revelation;

"Reflector-Divine Shepherd.

"The fourth level is Inquisitor. He is the Order God Church's judge in Rojia City. Any Otherworldly Demon that violates the Order God Church's teachings is a target for him to eliminate.

"And Dis is no ordinary Inquisitor. I watched him grow up, and even I find his talent astonishing. Of course, he isn't without faults. For instance, he falls rather short when it comes to respecting his elders."

"Are Divine Servant, Divine Revelation, and Divine Shepherd official positions, or do they correspond to levels of power?"

"They correspond to degrees of mastery."

"Degrees of mastery?"

"Yes. Three different stages of mastery over divine aura."

"Divine aura?"

"There isn't really any such thing as divine aura. It's just another way of putting it. In essence, Alfred's aura, the aura Mrs. Hughes had when she was possessed, and Dis's aura are all the same."

"So..."

"So every last person in those orthodox churches who clamors to kill Otherworldly Demons is a damned Otherworldly Demon themselves. The difference is that they stand in the light and control the narrative.

"Also, some Otherworldly Demons tend to be mindless. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Mindless?"

"An Otherworldly Demon with a brain can gain a certain status if they're strong enough. They can even visit a church as a guest. Like me, a long time ago.

"And if members of an orthodox church lose themselves, they pass from light into darkness, turning from clergy everyone reveres into Otherworldly Demons everyone wants dead."

"I think... I understand."

"You really don't know any of this?" Puer asked curiously.

Kallen shook his head;

In his previous life, he had only visited temples as a tourist. He never even kowtowed. The only place he bowed was at a cemetery for fallen heroes.

"How fascinating." Puer licked the fur on her front paw. "But I saw you make Mr. Mossan 'awaken.'"

"I don't know how I did it."

"Do you know what sort of entity the Order God Church is?"

"It maintains order and protects the light of order."

"No, no, no. Those are slogans for outsiders. In reality, the God of Order himself very likely isn't alive."

"Not alive?"

"The doctrinal stories of the Order God Church describe him this way: the God of Order awakened and returned from the Netherworld. Another version says that the sovereign of light awakened the God of Order.

"Do you know what form the Order God Church's lowest-level organizations generally take in the eyes of the world?"

"Not churches?"

"Funeral societies."

At that, Kallen began to understand. "I thought the Funeral Society was an Immerlis Family business. So it's actually a church business."

"Because a large portion of the Order God Church's abilities work on corpses. Or rather, they can't do without corpses.

"To ordinary people, once someone dies and becomes a corpse, they're nothing but a dead object. But that isn't actually the case. Even a corpse-and not just human corpses, but those of pigs, dogs, chickens, ducks..."

Puer didn't mention cats;

"Corpses themselves possess spirituality stored within their bodies, but it's less active than when they were alive. By awakening that spirituality, you can bring a corpse 'back to life' to a certain extent.

"But the degree of 'revival' depends heavily on how intact the corpse is, how powerful it was in life, and its lingering obsessions, among other things.

"So even if an ordinary person's corpse can be revived, it can't stay lucid for long. It either collapses again or becomes a living corpse with nothing left but animal instincts."

"Is a revived corpse the same as it was in life?"

"Of course not. It's merely a shell that retains some of your memories. It isn't you anymore, though it might believe it still is."

Kallen tried to interpret and make sense of Puer's words;

The conventional understanding was that a person consisted of a soul and a body existing together. In reality, though, the body also stored part of the soul, something like cellular memory.

After someone died, awakening that cellular memory could make them "awaken" again.

"Kallen, do you know that bringing a dead body 'back to life' is an ability only Inquisitors possess? Without it, you aren't even qualified to be appointed an Inquisitor."

"Me...?"

"And you still say you aren't an Otherworldly Demon?" Puer got up and came closer to Kallen. "I suspect some of your soul's memories were lost when you were summoned, causing you to forget things. But your powerful instincts still reveal themselves inadvertently."

"You're overthinking it. My memories are perfectly intact."

"True. You even remember a whole unfamiliar language. There's no reason your memory should be damaged. That leaves only one other possibility."

"What possibility?"

"Could you be like the legendary God of Order, someone who has... returned from the dead?"

"I..."

Before Kallen could answer,

Puer herself burst into laughter that came out as meows;

"Because half of the Order Church's abilities involve corpses. Although other branches have been developed over the years, the oldest and most orthodox system has always dealt with corpses.

"If the God of Order returned from the dead, then wouldn't the system he passed down be best suited to people who had also returned from the dead?

"Take sensing the spirituality within corpses. Someone who returned from the dead might not even need purification to resonate with that spirituality, because they're both a living person and someone who belongs among the dead.

"Hahahaha, what am I thinking? How could anyone like that exist in this world? If you were such a person, wouldn't that mean you were the reincarnation of the God of Order?

"So,

"are you,

"Your great and supreme Highness Kallen?"

"I'm... not."

I'm just a psychologist with a private practice that earned a pretty decent income.

"Tsk, tsk. Then how are we supposed to explain that damned ability of yours? It's a prerequisite for an Inquisitor. You may not know how to control it yet, but the facts prove you have it.

"It's like Lunt being a virgin, but still having the ability to have sex."

"That comparison is really..."

"After living this long, what is there to be embarrassed about?"

"You were pretty embarrassed just now."

"I'm just not used to that position, damn it!"

After a period of silence,

Kallen asked,

"Puer."

"Hmm?"

"Do you think Dis would let me join the church too?"

If he really had a talent for this, wouldn't joining the Order God Church and gaining access to its system of advancement let him achieve twice as much with half the effort?

"Finally revealing your ambitions and intentions?" Puer laughed. "Still, I'd advise you to give up on that idea. Dis would never allow his descendants to join the church again, because your-yes, let's call them your parents-their deaths dealt him a tremendous blow.

"Besides, Dis has grown tired of the Immerlis Family's branch lineage within the Order Church. He intends to end it with his generation."

"I see."

"So forget about joining the church. It's simply impossible. Because even now, as I speak to you, I don't know whether I'm chatting with an evil god.

"Perhaps, in your eyes, I'm just a young, adorable, innocent little kitty."

"That part is true."

Kallen stood up and looked outside the ward. Everything was normal.

Then he went over to the door and peered through the glass. The doctors, nurses, and patients outside were all going about their business as usual.

"Did I mishear? Or was I hearing things?"

"Can you still hear anything?" Puer asked.

"No."

"Then maybe you misheard?"

Kallen looked at Puer and suggested, "How about you go take a look in the basement?"

Puer's ears pricked up, folded down, pricked up again, then folded down again,

and she said,

"Are you joking?"

"You're afraid?"

"I'm very weak right now. Oh, no, I've been weak for over a hundred years."

"Then why did Dis send you to protect me?" Kallen couldn't understand. "Are you saying you can't actually fight?"

"I can see Otherworldly Demons. If you'd taken me with you for barbecue that night, I could have spotted something wrong with her in advance. That's enough. Dis meant for me to warn you ahead of time so you could escape, not tell you to go while I held them off.

"Alfred and Miss Molly are better suited to that sort of thing.

"Of course, if an Otherworldly Demon's aura poses no danger to you, I can pretend I didn't see it."

"Then you're really more of a useless kitty."

"Although I don't understand that expression, I assume it isn't much different from calling me useless?"

"It sounds nicer."

Kallen pushed the cabinet back into place, then went to the bedside and pressed the call button.

A short while later, Mina came in:

"What's wrong, Kallen? Would you like to order lunch?"

"I thought I heard something downstairs just now." Kallen pointed at the floor beneath his feet.

Mina glanced at the floor tiles, immediately remembered what was beneath them, and said with a smile:

"How could that be?"

"It's true. And I heard screaming. It must have been a female doctor or nurse screaming. I'd like you to send someone down to the basement to check."

Mina nodded. "All right, I'll go take a look."

Kallen reached out, took Mina's hand, and cautioned her:

"It could be dangerous down there. You'd better ask a security guard or a male doctor to check. Don't go yourself. I'm worried you might get hurt."

If something happened to someone else, Kallen wouldn't care;

if something happened to Mina, Kallen would care;

not because he had any special feelings for her. If he had, he wouldn't have mentioned helping his aunt wipe down corpses when they were chatting in the garden earlier;

but at least Mina had spoken with him, and they had some connection. As for people he'd never interacted with, whose names he didn't even know... if something happened to them, so be it.

Although Mina thought Kallen was acting a little "jumpy," his concern still touched her. She nodded and said, "All right, I'll ask the security guard on duty to go down and check."

"All right."

Mina went out;

Kallen closed the ward door again, hesitated, and decided not to drag the cabinet back.

About twenty minutes later, Mina knocked and came back in.

"Did you find anything?" Kallen asked.

"No, everything in the basement is normal."

"No blood or bodies?" Kallen asked.

"There are bodies, since the morgue is down there, but no blood. The hospital director led the team down earlier, and they also accounted for all the medical staff on duty. No one was missing."

"Then... maybe I was having a nightmare."

"Yes, your body's still recovering. Sometimes you'll have nightmares. That's perfectly normal."

"All right, I understand."

"What about lunch? What would you like to eat?"

Kallen was staying in a VIP ward, so he could order meals specially prepared by the hospital kitchen. Of course, unusual dishes weren't available.

"Meow."

"Fried dried fish."

"Oh, all right."

"Meow."

"Pudding."

"Yes, all right."

"Meow."

"Sheep's milk."

"All right. Anything else?"

"Curry and rice. No fruit needed."

"You have to eat fruit," Mina said seriously.

"All right, all right."

"I'll bring it over once it's ready."

"Thanks for your hard work."

After Mina left, Puer lounged contentedly on the bed, swishing her tail as she said:

"Kallen, if you can order food for me every day from now on, instead of making me keep eating that damned cat food, I'll change my opinion of you just a tiny bit."

"Can't you talk yourself?"

"You're an exception. If I talk to anyone else in the family and Dis finds out, he'll definitely kill me."

"Heh, a little food is enough to buy you off?"

"Try eating nothing but cat food for a hundred years and see how it feels. Besides, as long as you stop making me eat cat food, even if you really are an evil god, you'll be a merciful evil god in my eyes."

Kallen rubbed his ears and said, "I really did hear talking and screaming."

"You'd better pray it was just an auditory hallucination. If it wasn't, it might be the prelude to losing yourself. For some clergy, that's how it starts."

"I'm not a clergyman."

"You're more sensitive than they are. Sometimes, there's only a sliver of dried fish between a genius and a madman."

An hour later, lunch arrived.

Puer thoroughly enjoyed her meal, and at Mina's insistence, Kallen ate the fruit too.

Noon passed without incident.

The afternoon passed without incident.

Dusk passed without incident.

Darkness fell, and still nothing happened.

"Aren't you going to sleep? Getting enough sleep will help your injuries heal," Puer said.

"I know."

"Any more sounds?"

"No. I haven't heard any since noon."

"That's good. Don't worry about it anymore. Go to sleep."

Kallen got out of bed and walked to the ward door.

Through the glass, he could see no signs of activity outside, apart from the lights still on in the nurses' station.

Even so, Kallen dragged the cabinet behind the door, then took a mop from the bathroom and braced it against the door handle.

Once he had finished, Kallen lay back down and closed his eyes.

He hadn't taken a nap that afternoon, and Puer had been right about sleep helping his body recover, so Kallen fell asleep soon after closing his eyes.

As he slept,

in his dreams,

he seemed to hear that rustling sound again;

Was I hearing things again?

Overwhelming drowsiness made Kallen resist the sound.

"My money... my money... my money..."

Damn it!

Kallen cursed inwardly and kept sleeping.

The voice disappeared.

But it was followed by a scraping sound, as though someone were digging at something with their fingers, along with the sound of dust and debris falling and scattering.

Kallen paid it no mind. As long as it wasn't someone talking, he could tolerate it. When he'd been starting his business in his previous life, he'd rented an apartment in a high-rise beside an elevated highway and fallen asleep every night to the roar of heavy trucks.

"Rustle, rustle..."

"Rustle, rustle..."

"Rustle, rustle..."

The sound seemed to be getting closer and clearer.

Somewhat reluctantly, Kallen opened his eyes.

First, he reached out and nudged Puer, who was lying beside his pillow with her backside facing him. To his surprise, no matter how much he pushed her, the black cat wouldn't wake up. She seemed less like a living creature than a stuffed cat he'd taken to bed.

"Puer, Puer, listen. What's that sound? It seems to be getting closer."

Puer still didn't react.

Do cats really sleep this deeply?

Kallen propped himself up and patted Puer's back, but she remained completely motionless and unresponsive.

"Rustle, rustle..."

The sound

was beneath the bed.

Kallen braced himself on his arms, leaned around Puer, and moved his upper body over the edge of the bed, but saw nothing unusual.

Then he turned his head and glanced at the ward door. The cabinet was still behind it, and the mop was securely braced. Everything was safe.

"Rustle, rustle..."

Yet the sound kept getting closer.

At that moment,

Kallen turned his attention back to the floor tiles beneath the bed. He leaned farther forward, supporting himself with one hand on the tiles to keep the bed from pressing against the wound on his chest.

By then, his face was actually very close to the floor tiles, only about four inches away.

Then,

"Clatter..."

It sounded as though something had come loose, or as though something had finally been dug through.

And in the floor tile directly in front of Kallen,

a hole suddenly broke open, with rebar and concrete visible along its sides.

For some inexplicable reason,

Kallen brought his face up to the hole, wanting to look down through it;

below, he saw rows of gurneys. People lay on some of them, covered with white sheets.

Suddenly,

an old woman's deeply furrowed, wrinkled face filled the hole,

and she asked Kallen:

"Oh? Were you the one who stole my money?"