I am NOT a Demon Queen!

Xie Jing disappeared into the studio, leaving Su Yao alone in the hallway. She remained still for a moment, staring at the closed door.

“So you know her too?” Jian Feng asked from the doorframe, arms crossed.

The sudden question snapped Su Yao out of her thoughts. She turned. “Unfortunately.”

Jian Feng snorted. “Be careful around her. Don’t let her use your credit card to order a pizza.”

Su Yao raised an eyebrow. “Why? Is she a glutton?”

“Worse,” Jian Feng said. “She’ll order ten with every topping imaginable and then forget she did it. Last time, she used my card and I ended up with thirty pizzas delivered to the set. It was a mess, and I had to explain it to the producers.” He shook his head. “She’s chaos in a pretty package. Consider yourself warned.”

Su Yao eyed Jian Feng. “What are you doing here?”

He gestured toward a soundstage down the hall. “Shooting a commercial for some new energy drink. It’s supposed to give you the ‘power to fight monsters’ or some nonsense.” Jian Feng rolled his eyes.

“There is no such thing,” Su Yao said.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Jian Feng said. “I’m just reading the lines they give me. I hope no one is gullible enough to actually buy it thinking it’ll let them throw punches at ghosts.”

Su Yao nodded. “Speaking of ghosts, how is your mother?”

“She’s doing fine. Adjusting to the new job. Honestly, she’s a bit confused about what to do with her salary from the government. I mean, she’s a spirit. What does she need money for? But she’s happy to have a purpose.”

Su Yao’s eyes narrowed. “How wealthy is this government that they can afford to pay people who pretend to work for them and even ghosts? Where do they get the money for this?”

Jian Feng looked at her. “Taxes, of course. Where else?”

“Taxes,” Su Yao repeated. “So mortals willingly hand over their earnings to fund an agency that employs spirits to manage other spirits. The circularity is almost elegant in its insanity.”

Jian Feng shrugged. “Welcome to the modern world. It runs on paperwork and other people’s money.”

“I see,” Su Yao said. She made a mental note to look into the concept of tax evasion.

Jian Feng pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re thinking of doing something stupid, aren’t you? I can see it on your face. That’s your ‘I’ve discovered a fascinating new loophole in reality’ face.”

“Tax evasion is is a logical response to an illogical system,” Su Yao replied. “If the government wishes to fund its spectral payroll, it should find a more efficient method than siphoning resources from those actually producing them.”

“It’s a felony! And you don’t even have a taxable income!”

“I’m considering acquiring one for the sole purpose of evading it. It would be an interesting intellectual exercise.”

“An intellectual exercise that ends with you getting audited and probably blowing up a government building out of spite,” Jian Feng retorted. “Don’t even think of it, please. For the sake of my blood pressure.”

Su Yao hummed. “We shall see. Now, go back to your fraudulent energy drink. I’ve financial systems to contemplate dismantling.”

Jian Feng muttered something about ‘ancient, world-ending menaces’ and ‘modern bureaucracy’ being a match made in hell as he walked away. Su Yao was already mentally calculating how one might hide celestial vintage as a business expense.

She phased from the studio hallway into the interior of a local tax bureau and stood before a worn counter. Behind her, a middle-aged clerk was staring at a computer screen.

The clerk jumped. “Ma’am, the queue starts outside.”

“I’m a spiritual consultant,” Su Yao said, placing her palms on the counter. “I wish to declare my non-taxable status and concurrently investigate the legal avenues for claiming deductions on intangible assets, specifically primordial essence and the metaphysical wear-and-tear on my soul from dealing with idiots.”

The clerk blinked. He adjusted his glasses. “Do you have a business license? A tax ID number?”

“I’ve existed since before the concept of numbers. Is that not sufficient?”

“I’m going to need a form 12-B.” The clerk slid a thick multi-page document across the counter.

Su Yao stared at the form, then back at the clerk. She leaned forward. “Would it be simpler for your continued well-being to simply approve my permanent non-taxable status?”

The clerk sighed. “Ma’am, everyone tries that. Even the guy who claimed to be the reincarnated Yellow Emperor. I still had to make him fill out the form. It’s Section B, subsection 4, for ‘non-corporeal income.’”

Su Yao looked down at the impenetrable form, then back at the clerk. This mortal was a more formidable foe than any war god.

“Fine,” she said out, snatching the form and a pen. “But if I’m audited, the auditor will be returned to you in several small labeled boxes.”

“Noted,” the clerk said, already turning back to his screen. “Next!”

The tax form vanished into the submission slot. The moment it was gone, her phone buzzed. Kayo’s name flashed on the screen.

Su Yao phased to a rooftop overlooking the city before answering. “What?”

“Any progress on the black robes?” Kayo asked.

“No,” Su Yao replied. “But I’ve discovered something more interesting. Xie Jing is in this city. She is enrolled in the same class as I’m.”

The line went silent for a beat. “Xie Jing? Stay away from her.”

“I’m aware she is an idiot.”

“It’s the curse,” Kayo said. “She’s bad news. Wherever she goes, things, break. Systems fail. People around her make catastrophically bad decisions. It’s the echo of the Abyss, rotting logic from the inside out. If she’s near you, your investigation will hit dead ends. Your leads will turn to dust. Stay away.”

Su Yao considered this. “Her influence may already be in effect.”

“Probably! Hang up and avoid her. She’s a walking entropy field.”

Looking toward the university, Su Yao ended the call. A walking entropy field introduced a new problem. How do you hunt a hidden enemy inside a space where probability itself was breaking?

The pieces clicked into place. Yuzuriha had sent a binbougami. By itself, it would only have made Ma Guo lose his wallet or spill coffee down his shirt.

But Xie Jing’s passive entropy field was a force multiplier.

Her presence bent probability itself. Small bits of bad luck spiraled into disaster. It began with Cheng Lian’s crushing humiliation and ended with one misplaced step straight into the path of an emergency vehicle.

Su Yao phased back to the government headquarters. She found Zhang Wei reviewing security feeds.

“The Ma Guo case is closed,” she stated.

Zhang Wei looked up. “You found the black robe’s hand in it?”

“No. It was a cosmological accident, a poverty spirit amplified by a localized entropy field. His death was statistically inevitable the moment he entered Xie Jing’s orbit.”

She waved a hand. “He was a waste of a cell while alive and a waste of our time in death. Focus on monitoring the student body for active malice.”

Zhang Wei’s head snapped up from his screen. “Xie Jing? The Xie Jing? The ancient chronicles describe her as the ‘Bringer of Plague and Pestilence,’ who bore hatred for humanity. She’s here?”

“The chronicles are outdated,” Su Yao said. “She bears no special hatred for humanity. Xie Jing hates herself more than she could ever hate them. Her entropy field is the external manifestation of internal decay. She is a black hole of self-loathing, and reality warps in sympathy. The plagues were merely a side effect.”

Su Yao turned to leave, then paused at the door. “Don’t engage or even look at her for too long. Your pension plan could spontaneously combust. Just track her general location so I know when to increase my operational buffers.”

“A walking bad luck magnet who doesn’t even mean it.” Zhang Wei sighed. “Great, just another Tuesday.”

“Indeed,” Su Yao said, stepping through the doorway. “Now you understand why the Celestial Court preferred me as an alcoholic. I was merely self-destructive. She destroys the very concept of cause and effect around her. It’s untidy.”

Su Yao phased to a secluded spot on the university grounds. The memory of her last era with Xie Jing surfaced. Their interactions had never been marked by this ambient decay of fortune. The Witch of the Abyss had been a contained presence.

Xie Jing could control it.

Her entropy field was a power she now chose to let run rampant. In the past, she had exercised discipline. Either she no longer cared to do so or containing it required more effort than she was willing to expend.

Su Yao’s phone buzzed. She picked it up and saw Zhang Wei’s name.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t just ask her to leave the city?” he asked.

“Negative,” she replied. “Don’t interact. Her presence is a variable. All variables can be exploited. I simply need to calculate how to aim the fallout.”

Su Yao had overlooked a fundamental law of reality. Xie Jing’s entropy field operated on conditions, reacting to its environment rather than spreading through space. It functioned like a metaphysical law of karma.

The more you pursue her, the worse the effect becomes.

Her own initial surveillance had only resulted in minor frustrations and dead ends, but Ma Guo had been destroyed.

As if to demonstrate the principle, Su Yao spotted a student journalist hurrying after Xie Jing across the campus lawn with a recorder in his hand.

“Miss Xue! A moment for the campus paper!”

Xie Jing maintained her pace. The journalist sped up to intercept her and tripped over a perfectly flat patch of grass. His recorder flew from his hand and shattered against a tree root. A sprinkler system burst to life in his path as he scrambled up, drenching him and short-circuiting his backup phone.

He wiped water from his eyes and took another step forward only for a branch from the ancient tree above to choose that exact moment to fall, striking him squarely on the head and knocking him unconscious.

Xie Jing continued walking.

Su Yao watched the escalating chain of events. The journalist’s direct pursuit had triggered a response that was disproportionate.

To hunt the black robes, she needed to operate near Xie Jing. But any direct focus on Xie Jing would be met with escalating resistance from reality itself.

How do you use a weapon that shoots backwards?You point it at your enemy and make them pursue it.

She only had to set the bait.

Su Yao phased into the operations center. “The mechanism is clear. Xie Jing’s entropy field escalates based on pursuit. The more direct the focus on her, the greater the metaphysical backlash.”

Zhang Wei spun in his chair. His eyes were wide. “I was just about to call you. I reviewed the campus security footage from the day Ma Guo died. Before he sent that confession to Cheng Lian, he was following Xie Jing.”

He pulled up grainy footage on the main screen. It showed Ma Guo skulking near the film studies building, his eyes fixed on Xie Jing as she exited.

“He was tailing her for nearly twenty minutes. Look.” Zhang Wei zoomed in. “He’s even using his phone to take surreptitious photos. He must have confused them from a distance. Xie Jing and Cheng Lian have a similar build and hair color.”

“The fool was pursuing the epicenter of the entropy field under the mistaken belief it was his crush,” Su Yao said. “His stalkerish intent is what primed the catastrophe. The binbougami and Cheng Lian’s cruelty were merely secondary triggers. The primary cause was his own focused attention on Xie Jing.”

She crossed her arms. “This confirms the field’s reactive nature. We can’t investigate her directly. But we can use this. If the black robes were to become similarly interested in her...” she trailed off.

Zhang Wei paled. “You want to use a walking catastrophe as bait?”

“Let them chase her,” Su Yao said. “Their own malice will do the rest. Monitor all communications. The moment anyone shows undue interest in Xie Jing, flag it. They may have already chosen their next target without realizing it.”

“Then we’ve a problem,” Zhang Wei said, pulling up a new data stream. “Our current intelligence indicates the black robes’ primary target on campus is Su Yao. Their cell is hunting for the ‘ancient fox hiding in a student’s body.’”

His eyes darted between a headshot of the actress Xue Qing and Su Yao’s true features from an ancient scroll. “Wait a minute. The resemblance is uncanny. In her current mortal guise, Xie Jing looks strikingly similar to you.”

“Of course she does. Her true form rotted away millennia ago from a side effect of her descent into abyssal decay. She molded this ‘Xue Qing’ vessel to resemble me because I was the one closest to Li Xuan.”

Zhang Wei straightened. “Then we use that. We help the black robes stumble into her. Let’s leak intelligence through backchannels they trust that the actress Xue Qing is the real Su Yao using the film industry as the perfect cover to hide in plain sight. We make her the more tempting and accessible target.”

Su Yao smiled. “Do it. Let them believe the copy is the original. They will pour all their focus and malicious intent onto her.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Make sure Xie Jing finds out they’re coming for her. The moment she feels pursued, her entropy field will activate. They will be hunting a shadow, and the shadow will break them.”