After transmigrating into the body of the Jade Rat Spirit, I became Nezha's adopted sister.

Bai Yeying: "!!!"

She subconsciously glanced at the memorial tablet in the direction of the spear tip, then quickly turned back, forcing a smile, trying to bluff her way out: "Ah? This...this is, this is an incense table. Third Prince, look how well this incense burns, the smoke rises straight up, showing how sincere the heart is..."

"I'm asking about the memorial tablet." Nezha interrupted her, his tone calm yet imposing. "What words are engraved on it?"

Bai Yeying choked, cold sweat trickling down her temples. Her eyes darted around frantically, catching sight of the small silver scissors she had just used to trim the incense sticks beside the incense burner. In a moment of quick thinking, or perhaps in a desperate struggle, she pointed at the scissors:

"Words? What words? Oh! Third Prince, are you mistaken? That's not a memorial tablet, that's...that's a paperweight I just made! Yes, a paperweight! Look at this ebony material, so thick and heavy, perfect for pressing down book pages! The words are engraved? Those are patterns! Yes, decorative cloud and thunder patterns!"

She spoke rapidly, almost without taking a breath, nodding vigorously as she spoke, trying to increase her persuasiveness. Her face tried hard to make a sincere expression that said, "I really didn't lie to you." However, her eyes, which were constantly glancing around and dared not look at Nezha, completely betrayed her.

As Nezha listened to her flawed and incoherent explanation, his expression became even stranger.

The initial anger seemed to have lessened, replaced by a sense of absurdity at being treated like an idiot.

He even let out a soft "heh," a smirk playing on his lips, as if mocking.

"Paperweight? Cloud and thunder pattern?" He repeated, the tip of his spear now pointing directly at the clearly visible characters "the position of the venerable elder brother, Nezha, the Third Prince." "This pattern is quite unique. I recognize it all."

Bai Yeying followed the tip of the gun and saw that the large characters, illuminated by the candlelight, seemed to glow, hurting her eyes.

She opened her mouth, wanting to make up more, but found herself at a loss for words.

Any defense is pale and laughable in the face of such irrefutable evidence.

She wilted, her shoulders slumped, her head drooping, like a small animal whose fur had been soaked by the rain. Her fingers unconsciously twisted the hem of her clothes, and her voice was so low it was almost inaudible:

"I was wrong......"

"Where did I go wrong?" Nezha asked leisurely, arms crossed, his Fire-Tipped Spear lightly touching the ground. He wanted to hear what other nonsense this rat demon could come up with.

"The mistake was in carving up the sign without permission," Bai Yeying whispered, glancing furtively at Nezha's expression before quickly adding, "And even more importantly, it was in falsely claiming kinship and impersonating your sister."

"Anything else?"

"There's...there's more?" Bai Yeying's face fell, her mind racing. "Shouldn't...shouldn't she have set up an incense table and made offerings so casually? To disturb your meditation?"

Nezha didn't speak, he just looked at her.

The gaze, though seemingly emanating from a shadowy figure, felt tangible, pressing down on Bai Yeying until she could hardly breathe. She steeled herself, closed her eyes, and confessed everything:

"I just... I felt that cultivating in these mountains without a powerful backer made me vulnerable to being bullied. Last time, that Black Wind Monster came knocking, and although I defeated him, what if an even more powerful one comes next? So I thought I'd use your and Li Tianwang's names to intimidate them a bit. I absolutely didn't mean any disrespect! Really! The incense is the best! The offerings are changed every day! I just... I just wanted to borrow your power a little..." His voice grew less and less confident as he spoke.

The clean room fell silent again.

A moment later, Nezha's voice rang out, revealing neither joy nor anger: "A fox borrowing the tiger's might? You certainly know how to pick a tiger."

Bai Yeying didn't dare to reply, and lowered her head even further.

"The Black Wind Monster?" Nezha seemed to have caught the information in her words. "You fought it?"

"Hmm..." Bai Yeying responded vaguely, not quite understanding why he asked this.

The phantom's gaze swept over her, as if it were reassessing her.

The last time I saw her, she was being chased around by a black dragon, but now she's able to drive away the Black Wind Monster who occupies a territory? She's made quite a bit of progress.

But that doesn't give her the right to act recklessly.

"The memorial tablets, remove them." Nezha finally delivered his verdict, his tone leaving no room for argument. "The incense offerings, stop."

Bai Yeying's shoulders trembled, and she nodded hurriedly, "Yes, yes, yes, retreat immediately! Stop right now!"

"As for you," Nezha paused, then took a half-step forward. Bai Yeying shrank back in fright, her back pressed against the door frame.

Nezha seemed quite satisfied with her reaction, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly, but his eyes still held a threatening look: "Establishing a divine position without permission and claiming a title without authorization will, according to the laws of heaven, result in the lightest punishment being the reduction of one's cultivation, and the heaviest punishment being being cast into reincarnation."

Bai Yeying's face turned pale instantly, and her legs felt weak.

"However..." Nezha changed the subject, raised the tip of his spear, and lightly tapped her forehead. The action contained no force, but it made Bai Yeying feel a burning sensation on her forehead. "Considering that this is your first offense and you have shown restraint, and have not used this name to commit evil before, I will give you a small punishment as a warning this time."

Bai Yeying had just breathed a sigh of relief.

"The spiritual energy of this mountain is still decent," Nezha's illusory figure glanced around the clean room and the vaguely discernible scale of the cave dwelling. "You should focus on your cultivation and stop having these wicked thoughts. If I find out you're using my name to do things..."

He didn't finish speaking, but the sudden chill that rose in his phoenix eyes said it all.

Bai Yeying swallowed the last bit of breath she had left and nodded like a chick pecking at rice: "I won't dare again! I promise I'll cultivate obediently in the mountains! I'll never go out and cause trouble again! And I'll never put up signs randomly again!"

Nezha stared at her for a few seconds, seemingly to confirm the sincerity in her words.

After a while, the light around the phantom began to fluctuate slightly and became somewhat unstable, clearly indicating that this wisp of divine thought was about to dissipate.

"Remember what you said." These were his last words, and his phantom began to fade and dissipate like smoke.

Just as the illusory image was about to completely disappear, Bai Yeying seemed to hear a faint, almost imperceptible, chuckle, carried on the wind into her ears:

"Brother? You wish!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the phantom image vanished completely.

In the clean room, the scorching heat quickly dissipated, leaving only wisps of smoke rising slowly.

Bai Yeying stood frozen in place for a long while before finally taking a deep breath. Her legs felt weak, and she leaned against the door frame.

She looked at the incense table with lingering fear. The two ebony tablets stood silently in the smoke, and at this moment, nothing seemed hotter than this.

"Cuiluo! Huang Wu!" she shouted outside, "Quick! Come quickly! Remove this incense table! Put away the memorial tablet... put the memorial tablet away! Find a box, seal it, and bury it in the most secluded place on the back mountain! Hurry!"

Soon, a chaotic commotion erupted inside the cave.

Inside the quiet room of Yunlou Palace, Nezha's true form slowly opened his eyes, a flash of fire appearing and disappearing in them.

He raised his hand, his fingertips unconsciously brushing across the smooth surface of the Qiankun Ring. He recalled how the rat demon had turned pale with fright and was incoherent, without even realizing it himself. The corners of his mouth curled up again.

"So audacious," he muttered to himself, then closed his eyes again and immersed himself in cultivation once more.

................

After the memorial tablet incident, Bai Yeying behaved herself for quite some time.

She wasn't completely terrified; she mainly felt guilty, and Nezha's last words before disappearing, "You wish!" weren't very offensive, but extremely insulting.

She occasionally looked at her reflection in the pond, and couldn't help but mutter to herself, "How could I be so delusional? Is being a nominal, adopted sister really that bad?"

Of course, he only dared to say this to himself in private.

After that, no incense table was ever set up in the cave again. Although Cuiluo and the others did not know what was going on, seeing that the lady was so secretive and still had lingering fears, they did not mention a single word about the Third Prince, and pretended that nothing had happened in the purification room that day.

Privately, however, the lesser demons' awe of Bai Yeying deepened. The fact that the Third Prince's divine sense had come to question her, even though he was there to punish her, suggested that the lady's background was probably more unfathomable than they had imagined, though perhaps a bit complicated.