Later, riding in tense silence, I curled on the passenger seat, eyes half closed, my brain a knot of yarn.
Jiang drove steadily, but the subtle tremor in his hands betrayed his turbulent heart.
I knew he wanted to speak, but I couldn’t. My thoughts spun.
Juno said he liked me. Said Jiang liked me. Said I liked Jiang.
Three bombs in one hour. My tiny feline skull felt ready to explode.
The only sound was the hum of tires along asphalt.
Finally, Jiang slowed, pulled the car to the roadside, engine rumbling low.
We sat wordless for long moments.
Then:
"I like you." His voice came low, even, but laced with tremor.
"I’ve liked you since school."
The world flipped.
I turned, neck creaking, to look at him. His face was pale as paper, a flush of red streaming across his ears. Still that poker mask, but crumbling now, filled with quiet, fierce vulnerability.
And in that crack, I found him unbearable to resist.
Heat surged up my cheeks beneath whiskers. I buried my eyes beneath my paws. "God damn it."
Jiang’s finger poked my hindquarters lightly, teasing.
In fury, I spun and flailed my fists. He let me pummel him, then with one sudden swoop, hugged me tight against his chest.
He trembled against me. His head buried itself into my fur. And then I felt it. Damp. Shaking. Jiang Yuyan was crying.
He whispered, shredded raw:
"I looked for you, everywhere, for so long.
But I was useless. No eight character birth, no proper medium. My clumsy rituals could never reach you.
When you entered my dream that night, I thought my heart stopped."
"Thank you. Thank you for coming back to me. For giving me that dream."
I sprawled helplessly against him, paws clutching his shirt, chest aching.
"You idiot," I whispered, voice breaking.
Then something snapped into clarity.
"I remembered something."
Jiang’s head shot up, tear-tracked eyes drilling into me.
I nudged his reddened nose softly with mine, whispering:
"Wang Quan once asked for my birthdate. He said mine was identical to his son’s."
Although I grew up an orphan, there was one thing I always remembered the piece of red paper that held my fate. My birthdate, written in eight characters, tossed down with me in my basket at the orphanage gates.
The only record tying me to this world. Burned into my memory.
Back then, when Wang Quan and I did business, he had asked my age casually. I told him my birthday. Out of nowhere, his eyes went wide. He asked for my full bazi, the time, day, month, and year of my birth. He claimed he dabbled in fortune-telling.
I didn’t take him seriously and gave it up without thought.
He clapped his hands, delighted, and laughed. "Good. Good. Good."
Later he told me it was the fate of wealth and power, a blessed destiny, riches awaiting.
But the way he eyed me hungry, unnatural sent a cold feeling down my back.
After that, I stopped going to business meetings. I handed them off to Lu Wei instead.
Now, recalling this from my cat body, my tail twitched with unease. I should have remembered sooner.
Because the moment I mentioned Wang Quan to Jiang Yuyan, Jiang froze. Then his face turned iron dark. His body stretched taut with suspicion. He immediately pulled out his phone and ordered his men to investigate Wang Quan’s background.
I pawed his cheek to calm him. "Feels like we’re close to finding the truth, doesn’t it?"
He forced a brittle smile, lips stiff.
"Yes. But the truth may not be kind."
The reports came swiftly. Jiang Yuyan’s family connections dug deeper than Wang Quan’s whitewashing could cover.
Wang Quan’s son, Wang Li, same age as me, was born frail. Always in and out of hospitals. Two years ago: skin cancer diagnosis.
And worse. Wang Li’s body matched mine. Exactly identical.
Jiang set his phone down, his eyes shadowed.
"I suspect Wang Quan wanted to replace him. A body switch ritual. Using your vessel so his son could walk again, wearing your flesh."
My fur jolted cold. "Replace? Using my body?"
Jiang’s voice hardened.
"Yes. To force your soul out. And insert Wang Li in. A swap."
It took his investigators less than a week to find Wang Quan’s hidden base an isolated villa on the eastern fringe of the city, only ten kilometers from the ring highway.
The night before we left, Jiang slipped into my room quietly. Wrapped me in his arms.
I feigned sleep, eyes closed, but the warmth pressed against my fur made me ache inside.
Strange sadness filled me.
If our guess was right, tomorrow I’d find my body. Restore the tether. Which meant the end game.
Back to the Underworld. Offerings would flow again. I could live my afterlife in wealth.
But it also meant leaving Jiang Yuyan forever.
And that thought pained me more than I could admit.
The next day, we set out.
As we neared the villa, I finally felt it: the pull. The subtle cord binding me to flesh. My soul trembled violently.
"That’s it," I rasped. "That’s my body. Below."
The villa was vast but empty, walls decayed. Half a ruin.
Jiang’s men swarmed like shadows, all armed, pistols at their sides. Black and white both the Jiang family’s reach was everywhere.
Within minutes, Wang Quan and his son were seized.
Only Wang Quan resisted, thrashing, screaming. Wang Li laid on a hospital bed, tubes threaded through him barely able to twitch a finger. Eyes closed, skin pale wax.
"Jiang Yuyan," Wang Quan bellowed, veins bulging. "We have no quarrel. What do you want?"
Jiang said nothing. His gaze pierced him like a blade, cold and unrelenting.
"Where is Lu Zhen?"
The man’s face blanched to ash. "You came for him?"
Then a soldier ran in. "President Jiang, we found him. In the basement."
Wang Quan broke then. Mask cracking wild, desperate. Snarling, he hurled himself against his captors.
"You can’t take him. I was so close. I was just about to succeed..."
The basement stank of blood and mildew.
At its center, a sprawling ritual circle smeared across stone.
And in the middle, a long industrial freezer.
One con man sorcerer flinched inside the circle, chanting like a fraud priest. Jiang’s eyes narrowed. "Half-trained trash. A distraction."
I darted forward, paws light across dusty sigils.
The pull was overwhelming. My body my vessel was in there.
I hopped up onto the icebox. A hiss of cold met my whiskers. Through the frost I saw it.
And my heart fell.
It was my body. The tie screamed as proof. Yet I did not recognize myself.
Jiang looked too. And his face broke.
Because in that freezer, the body bore my frame, my build, but the features were shaved, cut, reshaped surgically into Wang Li’s likeness.
A stranger carrying my soul’s weight.
Jiang’s fists shook. Knuckles white. Then he exploded, slamming the freezer so hard steel dented.
I jumped up on his shoulder, sorrow tightening my belly.
"I don’t want it anymore," I whispered. "That’s not me."
His whole body trembled. He stared hollow-eyed at the mockery, drenched in shadow.
Finally, he said hoarsely,
"It doesn’t matter. Someday, dust returns to dust. Ashes to ashes."
We walked out together, chest clenched in shared grief.
But just as we reached the air
A deafening blast shattered the walls.
Boom.
Heat swallowed us, ears screaming under shockwaves.
Jiang threw himself over me instantly, caging me. The ceiling collapsed. His body took the weight.
Smoke. Screams. My vision rattled and blurred.
He staggered back up, hauling me tight, charging into the flames.
"Jiang, what are you doing?" I clawed at him, heart in my throat.
His eyes, red and wild, said,
"I forgot there’s another dark art. Soul recall. He can still revive through it."
We burst into the basement again, breath seared.
The ritual chamber had changed. Symbols burned, walls scarred.
Chapter 06
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