Demons Beside You

“What is this place?”

“An ancient passageway.”

“What kind of passageway?”

“It leads to the gates of Hell.”

“Huh?”

“Someone had once created a gate to Hell nearby but failed.”

“Where? Is it far?”

“It’ll take around an hour by foot.”

“That far?” Chen Zhao hesitated.

“Should we go tomorrow?”

“Let’s see when we have time. Walking for one hour is too far.”

“You can only see that place during a full moon. We’ll have a chance in the next three days, but after that, we’ll have to wait until next month.”

“What’s so interesting about a failed door?” Chen Zhao asked, confused.

“It’s a door that you can go through, but you can’t go out. The person who made it probably wanted to create a two-way door so he could go in and out of Hell.”

“Is that useful?”

“It’s not useful to you, since you can go in and out of Hell without a gate. But it’s very meaningful to regular humans.”

“I haven’t thought of a use for the gate.”

“Think about it. Your family member died and you want to see him. You can use this gate to see the family member who’d fallen into Hell.”

“That’s crazy. Even if a soul fell into Hell, how do you find it? Hell is so big.”

“You don’t have to look around. If that soul hasn’t been captured by a demon, you only need to use a magic spell to send a soul in and then the gate can send the relative’s soul out. If a demon has captured the soul, you’ll need to exchange more souls.”

“But even if you can summon back your relative’s soul, it’ll be incomplete, right?”

“Yes. This is what you humans are obsessed with. Not everyone is so logical.”

“Go to sleep. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

…

Chen Zhao kept thinking about Blackie’s words and couldn’t fall asleep. He didn’t have a good night’s sleep and was still listless the next day.

He couldn’t recover from the fire yesterday. His neck was sore and his limbs felt weak.

Chen Zhao was a doctor, so he knew that these conditions were because sudden high exertion resulted in muscle fatigue.

He dredged his meridians and the conditions were slightly relieved.

Beelzebub, Raymond, and Carrie had fought the entire night and had just started sleeping.

Knock, knock.

Chen Zhao opened the door. It was Gerlyn.

“Gerlyn, how come you’re here?”

“What, you don’t welcome me? Are you hiding another woman in your home?”

Chen Zhao moved aside, letting Gerlyn in. “You don’t have work today?”

Gerlyn walked in and grabbed the milk Chen Zhao had drunk.

“I just solved a major case. Melson gave me two days break.”

Chen Zhao poured another glass of milk. “So you can accompany me for the next two days?”

“So you miss me?”

“Of course.” Chen Zhao pulled Gerlyn directly into the bedroom.

After their morning exercise, they went back downstairs.

“Do you have work today?”

“No. My time is all yours.”

“Let’s go camping.”

“Sure.”

Gerlyn indeed wanted to relax. Otherwise, she wouldn’t drag Chen Zhao to go camping.

“Bring the kids.”

Gerlyn really liked these little demons. She was even jealous of Chen Zhao for being able to train them so well.

The town that Chen Zhao lived in was called Mountain Town. This was obviously because there were a few big mountains beside it.

Chen Zhao and Gerlyn were entangled the entire morning. After lunch, they began packing the stuff for camping and got into Gerlyn’s car.

Twenty minutes later, they reached the foot of the mountain. Chen Zhao picked up the biggest bag while giving the other one to Walter, the biggest animal.

“Gerlyn, have you camped here before?”

“I’ve come here before but not for camping. A corpse was discovered nearby half a year ago.”

“Okay… Change the topic.”

“There’s a lake over there. Let’s put the tent up there.”

Gerlyn didn’t know that their group had an extra person…or rather, demon—Blackie.

“The gate of Hell I mentioned is upstream of the lake. Want to go look?”

“Another time. Gerlyn’s here right now.”

Chen Zhao didn’t want to ruin the camping mood. When he reached the lakeside, a fresh feeling instantly entered his heart.

The water glittered and a slight breeze blew past. Dense forests were on either side of the clear water.

“If I had the money, I would definitely buy this place and then build a mansion,” Gerlyn said emotionally.

Indeed, the view was amazing and the air was clean and fresh. Nature was well preserved here. Anyone who came here would fall in love with it.

“You won’t be able to get this place without a dozen million dollars, right?”

“Chen, you’re too much. This place won’t be more than $500,000.”

“How is that possible? How can such a great environment only be $500,000?”

“You’re not going to grow a farm here and there’s no value in developing it. Traffic is inconvenient and there aren’t any homes nearby. How much value do you think it has?”

In Chen Zhao’s opinion, $500,000 was definitely worth it for a place like this. However, it wasn’t a small number to him either.

“Human,” Blackie said. “If you can buy this place, the three Hellhounds will have enough space to exercise. They won’t be cooped up in the space crevice all day.”

“But didn’t you just settle into the crevice?”

“I can move the crevice to this place or move all the stuff here.”

“You can move crevices?”

“It’s kind of annoying, but it’s still possible.”

“But I don’t have money.”

It wasn’t that Chen Zhao had no money. He’d indeed made a lot of money during this period, but it was only about $500,000. He could put in all his savings to buy this land, but he had to pay to build a house too.

He also had to construct a road to the highway. This would be a great sum too.

“I’m not in a hurry. It’s not that easy to move a crevice either.”

“You’re tempting me to buy this land just so the three can have space to move around?”

“More importantly, it’s really close to the gates of Hell.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

“This gate was most likely created by the previous owner of the spatial crevice. I want to study the crevice. If you live here, I can go in and out of the gate more easily.”