It turns out I'm a second-generation demon.

Li Xianyu's first reaction was not to turn around, but to jump behind his great-grandmother with the fastest speed he had ever made, seeking protection. After thinking for a moment, he felt it was not safe, so he jumped behind Sanwu.

Then he returned and saw a young man covered in blood standing where he had been. His throat had been cut, and thick blood stained his chest.

"Hiss!"

Li Xianyu gasped.

So, was Grandma talking to him just now?

"You can see me?" The young man wiped away the blood and examined the man and two women.

Li Xianyu was also examining him and noticed that the guy did not have cataracts. Apart from his bloodless, deathly pale face, his eyes were no different from those of an ordinary person.

She nudged Sanwu's waist, signaling her to hurry up and eliminate the demons, but Sanwu didn't move, maintaining her adorable and quiet demeanor.

The great-grandmother explained, "He is not a vengeful spirit."

Li Xianyu pointed at him: "Even in this state, he's still a vengeful spirit."

The great-grandmother said with exasperation, "The reason why spirits do not disperse after death is because of their obsessions, and obsessions come in many forms, not just resentment."

The young man looked around at himself and said, "Although my death was not very elegant, I have no resentment in my heart."

Li Xianyu felt reassured. He coughed and said, "Brother, I am Li Xianyu, the maintainer of order, specializing in cleaning up the wandering ghosts and spirits in the human world. Since you are already dead, why don't you leave quickly?"

The young man paused for a moment, then said, "We're all modern people, let's talk properly."

Li Xianyu: "Oh."

The young man said, "My name is Zhang Chen. Actually, I've been following you for a long time. I noticed you the moment you stepped into that house."

Li Xianyu exclaimed in surprise, "You're the one who got the Shaxian restaurant owner hooked up with?"

Zhang Chen nodded.

Upon hearing this, the great-grandmother suddenly realized, "No wonder I couldn't smell any resentment. It turns out it's not a vengeful spirit. If that's the case, why are you bothering it?"

Li Xianyu chimed in, "Why?"

"Creamy's leg was broken by the owner of the Shaxian restaurant," Zhang Chen said, his gaze falling on Samoyed. "It's my dog. You have to consider the owner before you beat a dog, right? He abused my dog, so I'll settle this score with him. I'll keep bothering him for a while, making him weak and plagued by nightmares, and then he'll naturally let him go."

Li Xianyu suddenly realized that all the problems were solved. No wonder the shop owner dreamed of a man, and no wonder he wanted to break his leg. The owner had returned to avenge his beloved dog.

"I should have acted sooner, but his mother came back to life on the seventh day after her death and wouldn't let me near her son." The guy said, "Even if she died with resentment, she still cared about her son. That's motherly love."

"You're not bad either. Even in death, you haven't forgotten to avenge your beloved dog." Li Xianyu thought to himself, what kind of nonsense is this? A bond between man and dog?

Zhang Chen said quietly, "It's called Cream. Actually, when I first saw it, it had already been abandoned."

Zhang Chen first met Cream under the bridge outside the residential area. He was taking a shortcut when he encountered Cream, who had just been born.

Zhang Chen is from Zibo, Shandong. He studied at East China Normal University and, like most of his classmates, stayed in Shanghai after graduation. Shanghai is a city with a huge wage gap; some people earn less than 3,000 yuan a month at the bottom, while high salaries can reach… well, I don’t know, since we’re all poor and don’t have that much imagination.

In short, in first-tier cities where college graduates are as common as dogs, it's difficult to find a decent job right after graduation. Rent is expensive, prices are high, and even if you save every penny, you might not live as well as the peasants back home. So, not long after, his girlfriend, who had entered the workforce, announced her breakup with him.

This guy, he's lonely and can't find a girlfriend, so he can only keep a dog to relieve his loneliness. Don't get me wrong, it's for spiritual comfort, and has absolutely nothing to do with the physical.

It was raining that day. Zhang Chen, who hadn't brought an umbrella, took a shortcut under the bridge outside the residential area. He saw a little puppy covered in mud, huddled alone under the bridge, its eyes filled with fear and wariness at the unexpected visitor.

It had a pair of dark, bright eyes that looked at you as if it were begging and pleading. But it was extremely wary of humans and dared not approach Zhang Chen at all. Zhang Chen also thought the puppy was dirty. The two of them waited silently until the rain stopped, and then Zhang Chen bought it a hot dog and left.

The next day, when Zhang Chen passed by the bridge, he found the puppy was still there, seemingly making it its home. That day, Zhang Chen gave it another hot dog and left. This went on for almost a week, until Zhang Chen's limited kindness wore off, and he stopped going.

A few days later, during the same light rain, he impulsively ran to the bottom of the bridge and was astonished to find that the puppy was still there.

It became thinner and dirtier. Its physical condition was very poor, and it curled up listlessly. When it heard a noise, its ears twitched alertly, but when it saw Zhang Chen, it became extremely excited, staggered a few steps, and let out a soft whimper.

Zhang Chen was very familiar with this look; the look a dog gives its owner. There were dogs in his hometown.

"It stayed under the bridge for several days. I guess it was waiting for me. This silly dog ​​thinks I'm its owner. I only fed it for a few days, and it's already attached to me." Zhang Chen gave a wry smile and sighed, "If I hadn't gone back, would it have died there?"

"And then?" Li Xianyu took the spicy strips handed to him by his great-grandmother. He stood in the middle, his great-grandmother on the left, and Sanwu on the right. They ate the spicy strips and listened to Zhang Chen's recollections.

Zhang Chen turned his head away, refusing to look at them, and continued, "I took it home. At first, I didn't want to keep a dog. I bought it a hot dog and turned around and left, but the little guy refused to eat and tried to follow me, even rolling and crawling. I kicked it a few times, but it still wanted to follow... I really felt sorry for it, so I took it home."

"Later I found that having a dog is actually quite nice. At least when you get home from get off work, the house isn't empty. There's a dog waiting for you at the door, wagging its tail and tugging at your pants the moment you open it. When it's time to eat dinner, I don't have to play games anymore. I can take it for a walk, and the house finally feels a bit more lively."

Drifting in the big city, alone and helpless, two single people find solace in each other. The dog survives, and the man gains companionship.

Dogs may treat people as their owners, and people may also have moments when they treat dogs as family.

Li Xianyu chewed on his mutton, listening with great interest: "But you still abandoned it, why?"

Zhang Chen remained silent for a long time before forcing out a bitter smile. "Because of my girlfriend, I later got a girlfriend who wasn't from the local area. It was really hard for me to pursue her. After we started dating, she moved in with me at my suggestion, which saved me some rent. But she also kept a dog, a dog named Sun Honglei."

Li Xianyu exclaimed in surprise, "Sun Honglei?! Are you sure?"

"...It's a bulldog," Zhang Chen said. "They're always fighting, and Cream gets bullied every day. My girlfriend doesn't like it either, and she thinks one dog is enough for the house, so she suggested I get rid of it. Of course, I disagreed, and we argued about it a lot. Until one day, I came home from get off work to find my girlfriend's new handbag chewed up..."

"And then you threw it away?"

"Yeah," Zhang Chen nodded, "I didn't have a choice. We had a really bad fight that day. She even said we should break up, that if I didn't throw the dog away, it was over. Between your girlfriend and your dog, which would you choose?"

"Wait a minute," the great-grandmother suddenly interrupted, indignantly saying, "What an unseemly shrew! To disobey her husband and even threaten him over such a trivial matter. In my time, a woman like that would be divorced. You, a grown man, are so henpecked, you have no manliness whatsoever, you've corrupted morality and are a disgrace to society."

Li Xianyu was moved to tears: "Grandma, times have changed. Now it's an era where women are in charge. You haven't been asleep for over a hundred years, can't you see the world clearly?"

Grandma retorted, "Nonsense, even during the years I followed your father, I never saw such a shrew."

The twenty years of China's rapid development were also twenty years of a dramatic decline in the status of men.

Li Xianyu sighed, "There's nothing we can do. You have to understand, there are still over 30 million self-reliant single people in China who can make a living by their own efforts."

He sat down, rubbing his groin, and sighed deeply, fearing that housing prices were unaffordable.

"That evening after dinner, I took it a very, very long way, and right here, I tied it to this tree. I don't feel like I owe it anything; I just think our fate has run its course. It's no longer the little puppy it used to be, and it can live without me. I should also go my own way. Let's just consider each other as passersby in each other's lives. When our fate is over, let's go our separate ways."

This is going too far. Although Li Xianyu is not a dog lover, he particularly hates those who abandon their pet dogs indiscriminately.

"When they're lonely, they call someone 'sweetie,' but later, when someone new comes along, they say the relationship is over. Ha, men." Li Xianyu muttered, then remembered that the other person was at least a ghost, and he shouldn't have been so cheeky, so he quickly straightened his attitude: "Please continue."