Chapter 1 A Week of Peace

A week passed in the blink of an eye.

It was a week of calm seas, a rare and stable vacation in Hao Ren's recent years, which had been filled with constant commotion and accidents. Since Vivian had split off a palm-sized little evil spirit last time, nothing major had happened. Every day, he only needed to process the messages sent back from various monitoring outposts, formulate development plans for each pioneer point, and pay attention to the livelihood issues in several remnant districts. Besides that, he just had to deal with the occasional small troubles caused by a group of supernatural creatures at home. Such a pace of life could be described as relaxing for Hao Ren.

And that little evil spirit had been living at home for a whole week.

How should he put it… Although Hao Ren and Vivian had initially expressed great concern about having an evil thought-form living in their home, after the little one actually settled in, many of their worries became subtle. Everyone knew how low the threat level of a ridiculously weak evil spirit could be. Now, even Dou Dou no longer regarded the little one as a threat—because the little thing was really weak!

As for the little evil spirit herself? She was still as irritable and restless as ever, trying hard to challenge this world, which was almost a hellish dungeon for her.

After the first night of tossing and turning, Vivian released the little evil spirit from the cage. As she had guessed, the biggest reason for the little one's constant restlessness was her dissatisfaction with life in the cage: after leaving the iron cage, she immediately burrowed into the mouse hole and became much quieter… at least quieter than when she was in the cage.

Hao Ren sat on the sofa watching an ocean documentary with Dou Dou. Iza, holding a copy of *Shan Hai Jing*, was frowning as he tried to study it. A slight rustling sound came from the corner. Hao Ren glanced over there casually and didn't pay much attention to it, just saying casually, "It seems she really regards her first foothold after 'birth' as her home. Although I don't know if creatures like evil thought-forms even have the concept of 'home,' at least I'm sure she really likes that mouse hole."

"It feels subtle," the old demon raised his head from *Shan Hai Jing*, "I thought her harm could be greater."

As soon as Iza finished speaking, he saw a cardboard box in the corner being slowly pushed open. The little evil spirit struggled to squeeze out from between the cardboard box and the cabinet. She looked around and then ran towards Hao Ren and Dou Dou. She struggled to climb onto the sofa armrest, then panted and wheezed as she went around the fruit plate on the armrest, and finally wobbled and flew a short distance in the air before finally landing in front of Dou Dou on the coffee table—throughout this whole process, neither Hao Ren nor Iza reacted at all, and even Dou Dou just lazily watched the little evil spirit's clumsy actions, because they were already used to these routines.

After finally climbing to Dou Dou with great effort, the little evil spirit immediately bared her fangs and roared, then threw a large ball of dark red energy arrows at her, and then pounced on her. However, the little mermaid just blinked her bright eyes as she watched this scene. The energy arrows were burned clean by a ball of silver-white holy flames that appeared out of nowhere when they were still a dozen centimeters away from her. Then, the little mermaid turned over and did a koi tail swing, and the little evil spirit flew in a parabola to the other side of the living room.

Hao Ren continued to watch TV, Iza continued to study *Shan Hai Jing*, and Dou Dou patted the table with her tail, curled up, and started to sleep.

After flying out, the little evil spirit rolled on the ground several times before getting up, but she showed no remorse. After regrouping slightly, she began to attack the next target.

She was slapped back by Gun.

She was thrown from the room directly into the trash can at the kitchen door by Lily.

She was thrown down from the second floor by Nangong Wuyue.

Finally, when she made it to the kitchen, she was finally caught. Vivian ran to the living room, holding the little evil spirit by the scruff of her neck, and yelled at Hao Ren with one hand on her hip, "I said, can't you do something about this! I was cooking, and she jumped into the oil pan with a plop!"

"What can I do? Even you, the main body, can't control her," Hao Ren raised his eyelids and glanced at Vivian. "Let her toss around. Anyway, according to the schedule, she'll be hungry in another half an hour."

As Hao Ren spoke, he turned his gaze to the card hanging on the refrigerator in the distance. The card was written with a maddeningly awful scrawl that contained a schedule:

x:00-x:00, sleeping in the mouse hole;

x:00-x:00, come out to attack people;

x:00-x:00, hungry, start eating;

x:00-x:00, continue to attack people or bite electrical wires;

x:00-x:00, hungry, start eating;

x:00-x:00, start biting things randomly, and will try to use magic to destroy the west wall of the living room. Because the destruction point is fixed, a piece of scrap iron has been placed in the corner of the west wall for her to hit. Remember to check the degree of corrosion of the iron plate frequently to replace it at any time. Maybe she's exercising?

x:00-x:00, return to the mouse hole, usually can be quiet until the next day. Letting the super-cute Gun sleep at the entrance of the hole can make it even quieter.

The schedule was jointly compiled by Vivian and Hao Ren, and finally dictated by Hao Ren and handwritten by Gun.

Vivian covered her forehead and showed a helpless expression. Seeing Hao Ren's appearance of slouching on the sofa and planning to be decadent all day, she knew there was nothing she could do, so she simply threw the little evil spirit directly onto Hao Ren, "Let her toss you around, I have to go cook."

The first thing the little evil spirit did after gaining freedom was to howl and pounce on Hao Ren's fingers, but just as she pounced halfway, the experienced Hao Ren casually took out a small ball of paper from his pocket and smashed her down: according to past experience, this ball of paper was enough for the little one to tear for more than ten minutes.

This was the current situation of the little evil spirit "living" in Hao Ren's home.

Whether it was called a regular life or dominated by instinct, the little evil spirit's behavioral pattern was really simple and straightforward to the point where it didn't require any effort to deal with. As long as she was awake, she would attack family members everywhere, and her power was such that basically no one in this family could be attacked by her. After tossing around to a certain extent, she would run out of energy and seek the sacrifice of fresh flesh—Hao Ren went to the market and bought half a catty of bloody offal to freeze in the refrigerator. Now, although the little evil spirit still couldn't open the refrigerator, she already knew the location of the food, and would take the initiative to lie in front of the refrigerator and wait for someone to feed her every time she was hungry; other than messing around and eating, she spent all her remaining time in the mouse hole.

Without complex thinking, yet not a pure animal, without emotion, yet occasionally showing reactions similar to emotion, Hao Ren still couldn't understand what kind of creature an evil thought-form was, but he gradually felt that Watatsumi 12345's arrangement might be reasonable: the little evil spirit's behavior patterns were of great research value.

"Hiss… Haha…" The little evil spirit roared angrily as she tore at the paper ball with all her might. The trace amounts of animal blood soaked in the paper ball completely attracted her attention. Hao Ren watched this scene and said casually, "This behavior pattern is indeed different from ordinary evil thought-forms."

"Actually, it's the same," said the data terminal, which was lying on the coffee table in standby mode. "This is a very wonderful phenomenon: when the volume of a creature is reduced many times over, all its actions will appear harmless and interesting. She's tearing paper for fun now, but if she becomes the size of a real person, and the thing she's tearing in her hands is a living person, you definitely wouldn't think she's harmless to humans and animals with the same action and expression. And if she's magnified thousands or tens of thousands of times, becoming a demon god, her playing is a disaster."

Hao Ren nodded thoughtfully and glanced at the little evil spirit again, "To be honest, it would be nice if she could stop making trouble, so she wouldn't have to be so miserable all day long, as if someone was bullying her."

"Hmph, that's probably impossible," the data terminal hummed, "Unless she can develop a mind, or her weak emotional reactions can be enhanced enough to support the generation of feelings, otherwise evil thought-forms will never be quiet… Ah, phone call, someone is looking for you."

"Who?"

"The channel is the Earth communication network, a long-distance international call from Bai Huo," the data terminal opened the communication interface, "Connect?"

Hao Ren was stunned for a moment, and immediately remembered some things he had asked the demon hunters to investigate before, and quickly ordered the data terminal to connect the communication.

"Hao Ren," Bai Huo's voice came from the data terminal, "We have some clues about what you asked us to investigate. I found an investigation report about Olympus in the library."

"Investigation report? What's the general content?"

"Most of it is a record of the demon hunters' actions in the process of destroying Mount Olympus. You shouldn't be interested in this part. What's useful is some information attached to the report. If the information is correct, a Zeus attendant escaped after the destruction of the ancient Greek alien forces. This attendant took away a large number of scrolls and ancient artifacts. Those scrolls include Athena's research materials. What you're looking for might be among them."