High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 948: Chapter 10: Cat’s Meow

Great Cold had just passed about a week ago, and the start of spring was less than ten days away. These few days marked the coldest time of the year. However, due to the approaching Spring Festival, Yunhua Residential Complex was immersed in a man-made fervent atmosphere, making the evergreen shrubs and pine trees in the community garden look greener than usual.

At this moment, Zheng Qing was performing the family hall welcoming ceremony with his family in a secluded corner of the residential complex.

From an open window of a nearby residential building, the latter part of the ”Spring Festival Overture” and the cheerful voice of the host could be heard faintly—even though it was deep winter, because the collective heating was very effective, it wasn’t unusual for residents to open their windows during the day for ventilation.

Overall, everything was so normal that Zheng Qing almost had the illusion that life at home would always continue on so plainly and stably.

”The joss paper we bought this year is a bit damp... Did you bake it last night?” Professor Zheng asked Zheng Qing’s father with a slightly displeased tone as he was lighting the joss paper, ”Why is it so hard to light?”

Zheng Qing’s gaze followed his grandfather’s questioning to the bunch of joss papers.

The orange flame of the lighter licked the colorful joss paper, rolling up light blue flames and wisps of pale white smoke. Indeed, the smoke from the burning papers seemed to be more than usual.

”It was baked,” Zheng Qing’s father defended, while pulling out a stack of joss paper, trying to light it, ”alongside the firecrackers, placed on top of the cabinet above the heating panel, baked all night...”

The cabinet mentioned by his father was actually the decorative wall skirt wrapping the heating panel—in the decor of old residential complexes, it was a very popular style, using wooden wall skirts to protect the walls at home, and at the heating panel, there were grilles left for ventilation and heat dissipation.

”Was it the heating panel beside the living room window?” Professor Zheng’s tone grew more displeased, ”Don’t you know about the morning dew, which brings back moisture? How careless you are, no matter how old you become...”

Zheng Qing stifled a laugh, watching his father being rebuked in front of his grandfather and silently shrank his body, trying hard to reduce his presence—this was very important, especially in such situations, as speaking rashly could easily provoke anger.

For that, he tried to shift his focus elsewhere.

In the distance, from the window, with the background music of the Spring Festival Overture, the host adeptly recited the program lines of ’year after year’; farther away, a few stray cats, as if chased by dogs, scurried away with tails tucked over the wall.

Zheng Qing stared at the backs of the cats disappearing into the distance, and involuntarily thought of the underlings in the small woods at school—wondering how they were doing this winter vacation, whether they were still hanging pompoms on the trees as usual.

When he snapped back to reality, the copper basin had already accumulated a thick layer of paper ash, and the number of burning joss papers, as well as the increasingly plentiful pale white smoke, surged violently out of the basin, almost completely engulfing the figures of his grandfather and father.

Zheng Qing placed his hand on the grey cloth bag at his waist, pondering whether to pull out the spell book and use a small spell to disperse the smoke. It wasn’t that he was hesitant to do so, but doing a clean-up quietly and unnoticeably in front of the two elders was not an easy task.

The smell of burning paper grew stronger, irritating Zheng Qing’s nostrils, giving him a faint feeling of suffocation.

”Turn the joss papers at the bottom, that way they’ll burn more thoroughly...” ahead, Professor Zheng’s commanding voice came to Zheng Qing’s father, sounded somewhat vague and distant through the swirling smoke, as if they were separated from Zheng Qing by a frosted glass.

It was a very strange feeling.

The grey and increasingly dark sky, the originally howling cold wind also quietly ceased—trembling branches, fluttering dead leaves, clinking windows, and the traffic sounds and honking from the roads outside the residential area—all disappeared without a trace as the wind died away.

For a moment, Zheng Qing thought he had used the wrong magic, mistakenly casting a silence spell instead of one to clear the smoke.

But soon, he realized he hadn’t even pulled the Law Book out of the Grey Cloth Bag, nor had he begun to cast any magic.

A feeling of needles on his back followed one after another.

The young Warlock jerked his head back so forcefully and abruptly that he felt an intense dizziness and faintly heard an ominous creak between his cervical vertebra and skull.

However, all of that became trivial after Zheng Qing saw those bright red eyes.

...

This wasn’t the first time Zheng Qing had faced a demon.

On his first day at First University, he encountered a Pig Demon at Great Ming Pavilion; then a Female Demon on the school’s special flight plane; then a Kappa Monster by the Lakeside of Bell Lake; and later, the group of Wild Demons fighting with the Hunters at the school’s hunting party for freshmen.

It could be said that when it came to facing demons, Zheng Qing was quite experienced.

But to confront a demon alone as a wizard, especially in front of his family, was a first for Zheng Qing.

He stood still, too scared to move. Compared to the chill brought by the demon opposite him, the bone-piercing cold of deep winter felt like the difference between a mosquito bite and being crucified.

Zheng Qing felt his soul was instantly immersed in icy water, desperate to the point of suffocation.

It was impossible—he roared inwardly—how could they appear here—the Mage Alliance had a tight and standard protection system for any wizard from the Mortal World, which included setting up anti-demon, expelling spells near their original family homes.

Because of this, Zheng Qing had the confidence to leave the university and go home after knowing the risks posed by demons; it was why Zheng Qing could attend school without worrying about his family encountering those indescribable threats.

The demon opposite wasn’t very large, about one meter tall, looking possibly like a stray dog that had been infected—of course, it could also be a lone wolf—with perked ears, a sneering mouth displaying two rows of ghastly white sharp teeth, and drips of drool from its terrifying gums.

Huff, huff, huff.

The demon breathed greedily and rapidly.

Zheng Qing’s fingers rested on the Grey Cloth Bag, his mind spinning wildly, instantly flashing through dozens of different plans and even more subsequent actions—after all, the demon opposite didn’t seem particularly difficult to deal with, but Zheng Qing wasn’t sure what effect the ’Observer Effect’ might have in the current situation, and how to manage his family and how to appeal to the Mage Alliance afterward were all very headache-inducing issues.

Just then, a cat’s meow broke the nearly frozen atmosphere of the scene.

”Meow.”