Chapter 11 We Last Met When I Was Still a Cat

"We last met when I was still a cat." The woman outside the door quickly answered Brother Jue's question.

"Uh…" Feng Bujue paused for a second, tentatively replying, "Asathoth?"

"Actually… my name is Gremory." Gremory replied, "Also… could you let me in before we continue?"

Feng Bujue hesitated for a few seconds, then opened the door.

"You've changed quite a bit…" Brother Jue said, looking at her as he opened the door.

"For me, turning into a cat is a 'big change'." Gremory didn't stand on ceremony with Brother Jue. Before she finished speaking, she stepped inside.

Having lived here as a cat for more than half a year, she knew the layout of the place very well and went straight to the living room.

"You really make yourself at home, huh?" By the time Brother Jue had closed the door and turned back, Gremory had already settled in, even crossing her legs.

Although her coat completely covered her upper body, her long legs in black stockings were still eye-catching, their slender and graceful curves stirring the imagination.

"Tsk…" Gremory's venomous tongue hadn't changed at all. She squinted and replied in a sarcastic tone, "If I didn't consider myself an outsider… I would have teleported in long ago. But I was also afraid of being 'beaten to death' by you."

Hearing this, Feng Bujue smiled slightly and sat down on another sofa, continuing, "Heh… So you were already outside the door when I was toying with Uriel?"

"Even earlier than that." Gremory replied, "I arrived almost at the same time as him, but… he was in the open, and I was in the shadows."

"Oh?" Feng Bujue heard something in her words. "You were tracking him?"

He asked this because Brother Jue had already settled his score with Uriel. He knew that Uriel's trip was definitely done in secret.

"I don't need to track him or anyone else…" Gremory said, "I just need to 'keep an eye' on you."

Based on this ambiguous sentence, Feng Bujue deduced something. "Hmm…" he pondered, immediately turning his face to a wall not far from him.

"You guessed it." Gremory followed up. "The claw marks I left on the wall weren't as simple as they seemed…"

"That's a detection-type barrier, right?" Feng Bujue asked, "The kind that… 'as long as a non-human creature enters the nearby area, you'll receive a signal'?"

"It's hard to explain in a few words, so just think of it that way," Gremory replied.

"Hmm…" Brother Jue then remembered something and asked, "By the way… when I was plastering the wall, I covered your barrier with a general-purpose suppression array. Did that have any effect?"

"You mean the array that once trapped Zachariah?" Gremory's face showed a hint of disdain. "Hmph… that thing's effect is actually dispensable…" she said weakly. "You weren't even using your spirit sense when you drew that array; you were basically an ordinary person. Did you really think… an ordinary person, relying on some superficial occult knowledge and casually drawing some graffiti on the wall… could suppress a being that's half a dimension higher than them?"

"You mean…" Feng Bujue prompted her to continue.

"You were just lucky." Gremory said, "That array originated from the Solomon King system, and… it just so happened to be drawn on top of my barrier." She shrugged. "You were able to suppress Zachariah because of my 'Seventy-Two Pillars of the Demon God' level of power."

"Oh!" Feng Bujue said, realizing, "I was wondering why your name sounded familiar. So you're one of the Seventy-Two Pillars of the Demon God." He paused for half a second and asked, "Then… how did you become one of Woody's subordinates? By seniority, you're considered royalty in Hell, right?"

"Heh…" Gremory chuckled dryly. "'Royalty'… that was a long, long time ago."

"Why don't you tell me about it?" Feng Bujue thought there was a story there, and he was quite interested.

Hearing this, Gremory pondered for a few seconds, then began to explain in detail: "Back then, in Hell… Satan's faction quickly rose to power and became unstoppable, while Berial's faction gradually declined. Seeing that the position of King of Hell was about to change hands, Berial came up with a terrible idea… He mortgaged his most elite seventy-two great demons to King Solomon and reached a deal with him to 'take away his soul after death'." At this point, she laughed sarcastically again, "Heh, Berial's plan was to engineer King Solomon's death within seventy-two days, so he could use this powerful soul to turn the tables… but he didn't expect that King Solomon had secret deals with many gods, evil gods, and demigods. It was almost impossible to take his life."

"Thus, Berial played out a textbook example of trying to steal a chicken only to lose the rice; already in a weak position, he also wasted his main combat force."

"The result was self-evident…"

"After Satan ascended to the throne, we 'old ministers' became dispensable; anyway, Hell didn't need us, and there were as many demons wandering in the human realm as there were grains of sand… Seventy-two more of us didn't matter."

"And so, from the year the Babylonians attacked Jerusalem, we became a group of wanderers in the human realm. It wasn't until the Crusades that Satan sent 'those four bastards' to the human realm to find our whereabouts in order to fight against the then-ascendant Heaven… That was when I rejoined the ranks of Hell."

After saying all this, Gremory breathed a sigh of relief and concluded, "That's why… my rank is below that 'hehehe'."

"Oh…" Feng Bujue nodded, then said, "Hey, why didn't you ever tell me about these things before? I'm only hearing the name 'Gremory' for the first time today."

"Times change…" Gremory replied, "The situation is constantly changing—a few months ago, it was best for you not to know anything; by the time I left without saying goodbye, you could already know some things; and now…"

As she spoke, she raised her right hand and began to unbutton her coat.

"Hey, hey… what are you doing…" Feng Bujue glanced at her and leaned back slightly. "It's a dark and windy night, and we're alone together. What you're doing isn't right…"

As he finished speaking, Gremory stopped unbuttoning her coat.

Actually… she had only unbuttoned two buttons, because she wanted to take something out of the inside pocket of her coat…

"I don't know what's wrong with me taking out a pen." Gremory said, placing a small glass box on the coffee table. Inside the box… was a black quill. "But I think there must be a very reasonable answer in your incredibly dirty mind… Of course, I'm not interested in the specific content."

"Heh… hehe…" Feng Bujue chuckled awkwardly and quickly changed the subject. "What's the story with this pen?"

"This is the pen Dante used to write the first draft of *The Divine Comedy*." As Gremory spoke, she turned her head to look at Brother Jue's bookshelf. "You can use it to write on 'that book'."

"What do you mean?" Feng Bujue's expression changed slightly, and he asked half-jokingly, "Could it be the kind of thing where… 'as long as you write the name and method of death, the person named will die'?"

"You're overthinking it." Gremory replied, "At this moment, that book is just a 'draft book', and when you fill it up, it will become a 'formula book'."

"Draft book… formula book…" Feng Bujue's mind raced, and he muttered to himself, "Hmm… should I be calculating something on it?"

"That's not something I can answer." Gremory spread her hands. "After all… I don't have the ability of 'Truth's Fallacy'; I just received a signal to come and ensure your safety and stance… and, by the way, bring you the pen. As for other things… you have to solve them yourself." She stood up. "Alright, let's just talk this much. I'm very busy these days, too. I hope you'll have made some progress by the next time I see you."