I am NOT a Demon Queen!

Su Yao cut a direct path through the crowd, her movements unhurried. She stopped beside the white-haired woman. Both of them now faced the shimmering aquarium.

“The koi are garish,” Su Yao stated. Her voice was calm. “It’s an attempt to force nature into a corporate logo. It lacks subtlety.”

“Subtlety is a luxury of the secure,” the white-haired woman replied. Her voice was a low, smooth contralto. “Tezca is anything but secure.”

She finally tilted her head. Those gold eyes assessed Su Yao from inches away. “You, however, seem very secure in your assessment. And in your choice of attire.”

“It serves a function. Like your hair, a bold declaration that dares the observer to question its authenticity.”

A faint, cold smile touched the woman’s lips. “Perhaps it’s simply what it is. The modern world has made me weary of hiding in shades of brown and black.”

“Or perhaps you’re conducting a field test,” Su Yao countered, taking a sip of her wine. “Seeing how the cattle react to a wolf who no longer bothers with sheep’s clothing.”

The woman’s smile remained. “An interesting hypothesis. And what is your conclusion?”

“That the cattle are, as ever, oblivious. But the other wolves are taking note.” Su Yao let her gaze sweep over the woman, a clear, challenging inspection.

“I wasn’t aware there were other wolves here besides me,” the white-haired woman said. Her voice dripped with a silken condescension. “Most of what I see are merely dogs wearing expensive collars.”

Su Yao’s smile was a razor’s edge. “Then you haven’t been looking closely enough. Or perhaps you’ve been too focused on herding the sheep to notice the pack forming at your heels.”

She gestured slightly with her glass toward the crowd. “That’s always been the flaw in your approach, hasn’t it? You assume you’re the only one who knows how to hunt.”

The white-haired woman’s gold eyes glinted with a sharp, predatory light that was distinctly canine. “Herding sheep?” she repeated. A low growl underlined her words. “You presume to know my methods?”

Su Yao’s own senses, honed over millennia, finally pierced through the woman’s glamour. The spiritual signature was the raw, territorial pulse of a wolf. An ancient and powerful one, but unmistakably lupine.

The realization struck her with the force of a physical blow, followed by a wave of ironic amusement.

Of course. The magistrate’s folly repeats itself.

Before Su Yao could speak, the woman’s expression shifted from predatory to genuinely offended. Her brows knitted together. “Wait a minute. Is this about that time I missed your final Eternal Banquet? And then your, well, funeral?”

She threw her hands up in exasperation. “By the great plains, Su Yao, are you still holding a grudge over that? I had terrible indigestion! That fool magistrate was stringy and full of self-righteousness. It took me weeks to recover! I sent a condolence basket!”

Su Yao stared at her as the pieces snapped into place. Recognition followed swiftly, sparked by the hair, the eyes, and that familiar blunt irritation. She was Bai Lang, the ancient wolf spirit who had been an occasional drinking companion and a frequent nuisance since the Zhou Dynasty.

This was the same spirit who had missed Su Yao’s dramatic first death because a case of spiritual food poisoning had left her indisposed.

A laugh, sharp and unexpected, escaped Su Yao’s lips. “Bai Lang? You’re supposed to be hibernating in the Mongolian steppes.”

Bai Lang sniffed, crossing her arms. “I got bored. I heard the tech sector was interesting. But you! You ambush me with talk of herding sheep and wolves? What in the howling winds are you going on about?” She looked genuinely confused. Her wolfish pride bristled at the implication that she was involved in some petty scheme.

Su Yao felt a familiar mix of annoyance and affection. Bai Lang was just here for the free food and the spectacle. So much for my brilliant theory, Su Yao thought, with a mental eye-roll. I’ve been hunting a ghost while arguing with a wolf about party etiquette.

“Never mind,” Su Yao said, shaking her head. “It seems I mistook you for someone more ambitious. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an actual conspiracy to uncover.”

Bai Lang’s head tilted. “An actual conspiracy?” she repeated.

Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. She leaned in. Her gold eyes gleamed. “Is it the UFOs? I knew it. I’ve been telling everyone that the little green men are real. They’re definitely running a shadow government, probably from a base under the Bermuda Triangle. The water there tastes all wrong.”

Su Yao stared at her. The sheer, magnificent absurdity of the statement momentarily silenced her. She had been hunting a genocidal, hidden fox, and Bai Lang had jumped straight to extraterrestrial politics.

“No, Bai Lang,” Su Yao said. Her voice was flat. “It isn’t the UFOs.”

“Are you sure?” Bai Lang pressed, undeterred. “Because the energy readings from that Tezca phone of yours are weird.”

“The only ‘little green men’ here are the shareholders. The only shadow government is the one currently trying to overcharge us for this terrible wine.” Su Yao corrected. Bai Lang’s observation about the phone’s energy was noted.

Bai Lang looked genuinely disappointed. “Oh. Boring.” She took a disdainful sniff of her own glass of water. “So, no UFOs. Just more of your dull dramas.”

“Wait,” Su Yao said. The question escaped before she could stop it. Her own curiosity, that insatiable flaw, was piqued. “Why are you so fixated on UFOs? Little green men?”

Bai Lang turned back. Her expression turned serious, almost scholarly. “It’s the only logical explanation for the modern world,” she stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “The technological advancement is too fast for mere mortals. They must have had external help.”

She leaned in again. “The evidence is everywhere, Su Yao! Those ‘satellites’ they put in the sky? Surveillance devices. The internet? A hive mind they’re building to control us. It’s a slow invasion, a patient one.”

She pointed a finger at the Tezca phone in Su Yao’s hand. “That thing. Its energy signature isn’t of this earth.”

Su Yao looked down at the phone, then back at Bai Lang’s utterly sincere, deadly serious face. The ancient wolf spirit had spent centuries, perhaps millennia, observing humanity, and had arrived at the conclusion that their greatest achievements were the result of extraterrestrial intervention.

It was a theory so simplistically paranoid that it almost made a twisted kind of sense.

“It’s a battery, Bai Lang,” Su Yao said, though with less conviction than before. “Probably just a faulty indicator.”

“Or a power source from a star system we’ve never seen!” Bai Lang countered. Her eyes gleamed. “Don’t be so closed-minded. You foxes think you know everything because you’ve schemed in a few palaces. I’ve howled at stars you’ve never seen. Of course I know alien energy when I sense it.”

With a final, knowing nod, Bai Lang turned and melted into the crowd, likely heading to interrogate a passing waiter about the provenance of the shrimp.

Su Yao was left alone, holding the phone. Bai Lang was certifiably, magnificently insane.

But as her fingers curled around the device, feeling its unnatural warmth and the stubbornly full battery, a tiny, heretical thought whispered in her mind.

What if the wolf isn’t entirely wrong?

Su Yao watched with detached fascination as Bai Lang positioned herself by the towering ice sculpture featuring a pyramid of glistening shrimp. The wolf spirit wasn’t being subtle.

“Don’t eat those!” Bai Lang announced to a pair of approaching socialites. Her voice carried a note of grave authority. “I can smell it from here. Caesium-137. Faint, but it’s there. Probably from contaminated waters off the coast of Fukushima. You’ll glow brighter than your jewelry, and not in a good way.”

The socialites froze. Their faces were a mixture of horror and disbelief. One of them laughed nervously. “That’s absurd!”

Bai Lang simply plucked a shrimp from the pyramid, held it up, and closed her eyes, sniffing deeply. “Yep. Definitely radioactive with a real alpha-emitter. Shame, they looked plump.”

A Tezca staff member in a crisp uniform hurried over. “Madam, I assure you, all our seafood is sourced from the most pristine,”

“Pristinely contaminated,” Bai Lang interrupted, dropping the shrimp back onto the ice with a look of disgust. She then turned and caught Su Yao’s eye across the room, giving a single, triumphant nod.

Su Yao’s own senses, previously focused on the spiritual, now tuned to the physical. She filtered out the scent of perfume and champagne, reaching for the seafood platter. It was there. Faint, a metallic-like tang that had no place in fresh crustaceans.

Caesium-137. Bai Lang was right.

Of course she was, Su Yao thought. A slow, cold realization dawned. The wolf was right. Her senses were attuned to the fundamental physicality of the world in a way a fox’s, often focused on spirit and illusion were not.

Maybe Bai Lang can be useful, Su Yao thought, the idea settling with pragmatic clarity.

The wolf’s obsession with alien conspiracies was a distracting noise, but her senses were a precision instrument for the tangible world. While Su Yao parsed spiritual frequencies and political motives, Bai Lang could apparently sniff out radioactive isotopes in cocktail shrimp. It was a specialized skill set.

Su Yao moved away from the periphery. Her own focus shifted. She trusted the wolf’s nose. The contamination meant Tezca’s supply chain was either compromised, or their standards were dangerously lax.

What did that say about their other operations? About the power source in this phone?

She found Bai Lang again, this time near a digital art installation that was giving the wolf a suspicious side-eye.

“The shrimp,” Su Yao stated, coming to stand beside her.

Bai Lang looked at the pulsating lights. “What of it?”

“Your senses are acute,” Su Yao conceded. The compliment was delivered like a clinical observation.

Bai Lang finally turned. A smug smirk was on her face. “I know. It’s why I’m still here and not a rug in some hunter’s lodge. You foxes weave pretty illusions. I smell the rot in the foundation.”

She gestured with her chin toward the phone in Su Yao’s hand. “So? What’s the verdict on your little alien box? Has it tried to probe your mind yet?”

“Not yet,” Su Yao said, ignoring the jab. “But its power source remains anomalous. As does the company’s apparent disregard for public health.”

“See?” Bai Lang’s eyes lit up. “It’s all connected! Shoddy seafood and mysterious energy sources! The mark of a civilization in decline, or under external influence!” She leaned in. “So? What’s the plan? Do we storm the kitchen? Interrogate the caterers?”

Su Yao looked at the wolf’s eager, serious face. “The plan,” she said slowly, “is to observe. And for you, to keep sniffing. If you find anything else that ‘smells wrong,’ you will inform me discreetly.”

Bai Lang puffed out her chest. “I’m the soul of discretion.”

Su Yao highly doubted that. But a chaotic, blunt instrument with a supernatural sense of smell was better than no instrument at all. The master fox might be hiding in the spiritual shadows. And the physical world was clearly part of the game. For that, she now had a very strange, very useful wolf on her side.

Li Xue weaved through the crowd. His actor’s smile was firmly in place until his eyes landed on the two of them. The smile tightened. “Xiao Ling? And, you’ve met my wife.”

Su Yao’s gaze flickered from Li Xue’s strained expression to Bai Lang’s suddenly smug one. “Your wife?” she asked. The connections fell into place: the bar owner, the actor, and the ancient wolf.

“Who else?” Bai Lang said, looping her arm through Li Xue’s with a possessive gleam. “This magnificent specimen. I found him brooding behind a bar and decided to keep him.”

Su Yao’s mind flashed back to her first call to Li Xue. The heavy breathing, the abruptness, and now, the image of Bai Lang in the background. A rare, faint sense of social impropriety, something Xiao Ling would feel rather than Su Yao, brushed against her consciousness.

“So, the heavy breathing,” Su Yao said. Her voice was utterly dry. “That first time I called you at the Floating Lantern. I was interrupting your conjoining.”

Li Xue’s cheeks flushed a faint pink. Bai Lang, however, threw her head back and laughed. It was a short, sharp sound like cracking ice. “By the great plains, you finally figured it out! Yes, you miserable fox! We were in the middle of a very important negotiation.”

Li Xue looked pained. “Bai Lang, please.”

“Don’t ‘Bai Lang please’ me,” she retorted, pinching his cheek. “She should know the cost of her interruptions. It was a stellar negotiation. You were losing beautifully.”

Su Yao observed the dynamic. Her initial surprise was replaced by a wave of amusement. This was the great hidden variable? A lovesick wolf and her bartender husband? It was almost as absurd as the UFO theory.

“Noted,” Su Yao said. Her tone implied the exact opposite. “My apologies for the disruption to your marital diplomacy.” She held up the Tezca phone. “Perhaps you can make it up to me by explaining why your wife believes the power source in this device is of extraterrestrial origin.”

Li Xue sighed. The sound was of a man long-suffering. “She says that about the microwave, the electric kettle, and my electric shaver.”

“It’s because they are!” Bai Lang insisted, jabbing a finger at the phone. “That one is just the most obvious! Its energy is a closed system! That’s unnatural!”

“Or it’s just a very good battery,” Li Xue countered gently.

“Or a miniature alien reactor!” Bai Lang shot back. Her gold eyes blazed with conviction. She turned to Su Yao. “See? My husband refuses to see the truth. He’s been brainwashed by their satellite television.”

Su Yao looked at Li Xue. “The shrimp by the ice sculpture are contaminated with Caesium-137. Your wife detected it by scent.”

Li Xue’s patient expression froze. He looked at Bai Lang, then back at Su Yao. “She what?”

“She’s insane,” Su Yao stated clinically. “But her senses for the physical world are unparalleled. The shrimp are radioactive.”

The color drained from Li Xue’s face. He knew Su Yao wouldn’t lie about something like this. He looked at his wife, the UFO-obsessed wolf, with a dawning, horrified respect. “You’re sure?”

“I smell it in the air around them,” Bai Lang said. Her earlier manic energy was replaced by a simple, factual tone. “It’s faint. But it’s there.”

Li Xue’s composure finally cracked. “I need to tell the event coordinator.” He looked at Su Yao. A new wariness was in his eyes. “Thank you for this.” He hurried off, pulling out his own, normal-looking phone.

Bai Lang watched him go, then smirked at Su Yao. “See? Useful.”

“Perhaps,” Su Yao conceded. “Now, the phone. You said its energy is ‘not of this earth’. Describe it in terms a non-lunatic might understand.”

Bai Lang scowled. “The phone doesn’t smell like anything, it just is, like a rock that refuses to weather. It’s wrong.” She leaned closer. “And it’s watching.”

Su Yao’s fingers tightened around the device. “Watching?”

“It’s listening, I can feel it.” Bai Lang tapped her own ear. “The little green men are always listening.”

“The little green man?” Su Yao asked. Her voice dripped with skepticism. “You have tangible evidence of this, I assume? Beyond your olfactory senses detecting radiation in shrimp?”

Bai Lang’s grin was triumphant. “Tangible? I have a digital archive! My Douyin channel, TruthSeeker77. I’ve compiled all the evidence. Over fifty thousand subscribers are waking up to the truth every day.”

Su Yao’s mind instantly recalled the channel from her browsing rabbit hole. The memory was vivid: a video with a thumbnail of a blurry UFO and Bai Lang’s voiceover ranting about chemtrails.

“TruthSeeker77,” Su Yao repeated. Her tone was utterly deadpan. “The channel that claimed the moon was a hollow spaceship manned by reptilian shapeshifters.”

“Exactly!” Bai Lang said, missing the sarcasm entirely. “And the evidence doesn’t lie! The lunar seismic readings are conclusive! But the mainstream scientists are all in on it, paid off by the deep state. Or the deep sea, in the case of those shrimp.”

Before Su Yao could formulate a response that wouldn’t be wasted on the wolf’s fervor, the Tezca phone in her hand vibrated with a low, resonant hum that made the fine hairs on her arm stand up. The screen flickered, displaying a string of symbols she barely recognize before snapping back to the home screen.

Bai Lang’s eyes locked onto the device. “See? It’s reacting! It knows we’re talking about it. The AI is self-aware. It’s probably reporting back to the mothership right now.”

Su Yao’s grip tightened on the phone. “Or it’s a glitch in whatever proprietary operating system Tezca uses.”

“A glitch?” Bai Lang snorted. “That was a targeted frequency pulse! I felt it in my teeth. They’re probing us, Su Yao. Right here in the open.”