Moonlit Reunion

The bustling East and West Markets teemed with crowds by day and swarmed with demons by night. Yet even in such lively places that never slept, there were always a few secluded corners devoid of people.

Wu Zhen leaped across rooftops and traversed half the East Night Market before arriving at a high wall. Nearby was a narrow alley flanked by piled-up debris, forming a quiet, deserted nook. The person Wu Zhen sought now lay curled up in this very spot.

At first glance, he appeared to be a disheveled, down-and-out middle-aged man. He slept soundly against the wall, a ragged cloth covering his face that rose and fell with each breath. A closer look would reveal four characters written on the cloth: "Begging for a Coin." Beside his feet sat a bowl, completing the perfect image of a street beggar.

Wu Zhen jumped down from the wall, landing right in front of him without making a sound. She crouched and peered into the bowl—astonishingly, it contained seven coins. Clicking her tongue in amazement, she wondered how anyone could scrounge up seven coins in such a desolate spot where even ghosts were scarce. She gathered the coins into her purse, then nudged the sleeping man with her foot.

"Wake up, wake up."

The man shrank further into the corner, clearly unwilling to be disturbed. But Wu Zhen was nothing if not persistent. She yanked the cloth off his face and tossed it aside, giving him another kick. "Hurry up, Shengun. Got work for you."

At last, the man stirred. He sat up, yawned, and looked at Wu Zhen. His face was utterly ordinary—small eyes, a flat nose, and one cheek swollen from sleep. Wu Zhen pinched his face and examined it from side to side, sighing. "This face is especially ugly today. Do me a favor as your boss—put on a nicer one, will you?"

The man replied sluggishly, "Sure. Tomorrow I'll switch to a handsome young face. If you like it, Cat Official, toss me some meal money. You took all seven coins I earned today—I'll starve to death."

Leaning against the wall, Wu Zhen showed not a hint of guilt for her thievery. "You're one of Yan Tower's people, one of my two deputies. How can you be so lacking in ambition, begging all over the place every night? If word gets out, where would that leave Yan Tower's reputation? If you don't want to stay at Yan Tower, why not find work like Huzhu?"

The man's tone remained unhurried. "If work weren't so exhausting, I wouldn't beg."

Wu Zhen: "If you're going to beg, at least pick a spot with more demons. Hiding here where no demons pass by—what's the point?"

The man: "Places with lots of demons are noisy. I can't sleep well. At my age, sleep is especially important."

Wu Zhen finally burst out laughing. "Bullshit! You're not even human!"

This man was one of Wu Zhen's two deputies. His full name was Wu Zi Shu, a demon of unknown age whom everyone called Shengun (The Charlatan). By night, he loved finding a corner in the Demon Market to sleep and beg under a cloth, while by day, he set up a fortune-telling stall under a large locust tree at a street corner in the East Market for ordinary folk.

"Enough chitchat. Get up—I need a divination," Wu Zhen said.

Shengun shook his head drowsily. "No can do. I only tell fortunes during the day. No work at night, even if you're the Cat... Ow!"Before he could finish his words, Wu Zhen slammed him against the wall, forcing him to curl up in a ball, howling while clutching his head. Wu Zhen lowered her foot, slung an arm over his shoulder, and asked with a grin, "So you were saying 'no' just now?"

"No, no, no! Yes, yes, yes! I mean yes!" The Charlatan had no principles whatsoever. Seeing Wu Zhen's roguish smirk, he immediately raised his hands in surrender and changed his tune without hesitation.

Only then did Wu Zhen seem satisfied. She patted the footprints off his clothes and said, "Next time, just agree right away. Dragging it out like this only hurts our friendship."

The Charlatan wore a bitter expression, thinking to himself that the older the Cat Official got, the more shameless she became. He recalled the days when she was just a little brat... But then he reconsidered—whether big or small, she was always a little menace, bullying humans and spirits alike.

Sitting where he was, The Charlatan pulled out a wooden box from behind him. This unremarkable, shabby box was his livelihood. When unfolded, it transformed into a small table, complete with a divination tube, a turtle shell, and various other trinkets. After setting up the table, he pulled out a stick and shook out the tattered cloth that had been covering his face earlier, propping it up with the stick. Behind the cloth, which bore the words "Fortune for a Penny," were four more characters: "Half-Immortal Diviner."

Once his setup was complete, The Charlatan's demeanor abruptly shifted. Though his face remained as ugly as ever, he suddenly exuded an ethereal, transcendent aura that made his appearance irrelevant.

Wu Zhen plopped down in front of his little table, reached for the divination tube, and casually drew a stick before tossing it in front of him. "Tell me about my love life," she said offhandedly.

"Love life, huh..." The Charlatan picked up the stick, examined it, and put it back. "Draw again."

Wu Zhen didn't argue and pulled another stick, tossing it to him.

The Charlatan glanced at it and put it back again. "One more time."

Wu Zhen drew again.

After the third stick was returned, The Charlatan sighed and set the tube aside, pulling out a thin black-bound book from his robe. "The usual sticks and divination won't work this time. Let me try the Wordless Book."

Wu Zhen leaned in to watch him flip through the pages. The book was entirely blank, just like The Charlatan's alias, "Wordless Book"—a celestial tome without words. Wu Zhen had long suspected that The Charlatan was a book spirit and that this Wordless Book was his true form.

"I've always wondered—what's actually written in this book?" Wu Zhen peered closer, but as with every other time, she saw nothing.

The Charlatan shook his head, somewhat smug. "In this world, I might be the only one who can see it. And it's not ordinary text, nor is the content fixed."

Wu Zhen had become the Cat Official at a very young age, right around the time she was most mischievous. She had turned the entire Yan Tower upside down, secretly meddling with anything that piqued her curiosity—including Little White Snake's jade bracelet, Huzhu's treasures, and, of course, The Charlatan's Wordless Book. Since then, The Charlatan had never dared leave his book unattended, always carrying it with him.

Now older, Wu Zhen's curiosity about the Wordless Book wasn't as intense as before. She crossed her legs and urged, "Hurry up. It's just a love reading—why's it taking so long? You never needed this much trouble before."The Charlatan himself found it strange. He buried his head in his books, muttering, "Not simple, not simple at all."

Wu Zhen waited for a while, but seeing him still flipping through pages, she idly tossed a bamboo tube in the air and asked, "Done yet?"

"Almost, almost," the Charlatan replied without looking up.

Wu Zhen wasn't known for her patience. Just as she was about to get up and leave, the Charlatan finally raised his head. Closing the book, he studied her with a serious expression before suddenly breaking into a grin, exuding the proud, fatherly warmth of an elder. "Congratulations," he said. "Your destined marriage has arrived. It's time to wed."

Yet, Wu Zhen didn't show any sign of joy. She merely responded with a bland, indifferent "Oh."

The Charlatan couldn't quite grasp her thoughts. This child had always been like this—smiling didn't necessarily mean she was happy, and a blank face didn't always mean she was upset. She was simply hard to read.

"What happened? Why the sudden interest in divining your marriage?" the Charlatan asked earnestly.

Wu Zhen frowned slightly and said, "I should have died long ago. No—I did die back then. It was the previous Cat Official who revived me and turned me into this."

"Someone like me shouldn't be with an ordinary person. Marriage isn't something to force."

"Never mind, forget it. This is boring."

Wu Zhen stood up, shook her legs, and leaped onto a high wall. Glancing down, she pulled something from her sleeve and tossed it. "Here, buy yourself a new pair of shoes. Your toes are sticking out."

The Charlatan caught it—a lotus-shaped gold ingot, enough to buy two hundred pairs of new shoes. The Cat Official was clearly wealthy, yet she loved swindling him out of the few coins he earned, purely out of mischief and boredom.

Wu Zhen strolled along the rooftops. When she took nighttime walks, she never stuck to the usual paths, preferring to traverse roofs and eaves. Perhaps the longer she lived as a cat, the more feline she became.

She walked steadily along the ridge of a house, gazing down at the brightly lit streets below, feeling somewhat disinterested. Every corner here was familiar to her; there was nothing new to explore.

After wandering for a while, Wu Zhen left the Demon Market and decided to head to Pingkang Ward to find her other deputy, Huzhu. Her place was lively, filled with singing and dancing ladies. However, as she passed by a brothel in Pingkang Ward, she heard a familiar voice and paused.

Since she treated rooftops as her walkways, she could hear everything happening inside the houses clearly. At this moment, from the room beneath her feet came a series of moans that sounded like a cat's mewl.

Wu Zhen, of course, knew what those sounds meant. She crouched down, lifted a few tiles, and peeked inside. Below, a man and a woman were engaged in the pleasures of the flesh. The man happened to be that Lu fellow she had a feud with—the one who had nearly been betrothed to her, fought with her over Huzhu, and had been causing her trouble ever since.

This Lu was the type who treated brothels like his own home. Watching him huffing and puffing away, Wu Zhen wasn’t in a hurry to leave. She plopped down on the roof, twirling a tile between her fingers as she listened to the commotion below. When she judged the timing was right, she suddenly lowered her voice and shouted through the gap, "Fire! There's a fire!"

Panicked screams erupted from below, followed by the clatter of something falling over. Wu Zhen tossed the tile aside, ignoring the chaos unfolding in the room beneath her, and with a pat on her backside, she dashed off.So when Master Lü was startled by a thunderous shout, went limp, fell off the bed, and hurt his back—forcing him to pound the bed in fury—Wu Zhen was sitting among a group of familiar, beautiful ladies, playing drinking games with them.