"She went back to her room?" I asked.
"Mm-hmm, Chengfeng, remember this, all demons have extremely sensitive hearing, the higher their quality, the more so. You have to be careful from now on. Luckily, you didn't say anything too outrageous!" Lin Xi imparted knowledge to me, and I nodded repeatedly.
"Let's go. Since we've been discovered, we should head back too," Lin Xi got up.
I quickly scanned my WeChat to pay the bill, then followed Lin Xi out of the coffee shop, crossed the road, and entered the hotel.
The elevator doors faced the hotel entrance. I saw the elevator doors just closing and caught a glimpse of the Beihai Whale Demon's full face. It was as beautiful as her profile, dignified. But the pair of large eyes beneath the fur hat lacked a lively aura. In the last moment before the elevator doors completely obscured her face, she winked at me and gave a charming smile.
If I hadn't known her background, a foreign beauty flirting with me like that might have made me rush to ask for her WeChat!
But she was an ancient great demon. The last time she appeared at Changbai Mountain's Tianchi, I saw her "whale-human body" through Ya Nan's phone. It was larger than the biggest blue whale in the sea, like a small mountain, terrifying!
After the elevator went up, I took the opportunity to ask Lin Xi, "Is she from the Shanhai demon clan?"
"You mean the Whale Demon? No, she isn't. She doesn't belong to any demon clan; she's in a class of her own."
I pretended to understand and nodded, "That's good, that's good."
The elevator ascended directly to the seventh floor before stopping. She was the only one in the elevator just now, meaning she also stayed on the seventh floor.
Or perhaps, Lin Xi lived on the seventh floor because of the Whale God, and she lived in 705 – next to me.
"Which room does she live in?" I asked Lin Xi.
"709," Lin Xi said with a mischievous grin.
"Damn it! You put me between you two!" I frowned, separated from the Whale God by just a wall! What if she accidentally transformed and the wall collapsed, I'd probably be crushed to death in the concrete!
"It's okay, maybe you two can become good friends," Lin Xi laughed. "Look at you, you're so popular with girls!"
"Girls… she's so old…" I didn't dare continue calling her an "old lady," fearing the Whale God might hear and come down to beat me.
I tried the Qi-observing technique again. As expected, through the thick floors, I couldn't see clearly. I could only vaguely sense a faint shadow on the seventh floor.
Guessing the Whale God had returned to her room, Lin Xi finally pressed the elevator button to call it down.
Just as we were about to get into the elevator, a crisp wind chime sounded from the hotel entrance. I turned around and saw a girl in a middle school uniform, with pigtails and a backpack. She entered the hotel, looked around, saw me, and ran over with bouncy steps. She skidded to a halt in front of Lin Xi and me, looking at me, then at Lin Xi. She opened her mouth excitedly but couldn't speak!
"You're Xiaomei, right?" I asked kindly.
The little wild chicken demon nodded vigorously, like a chicken pecking at rice, then pointed at Lin Xi and stammered, "I, I, I know you too!"
Lin Xi frowned, "But I don't know you."
"Fourteen years ago, I, I saw you! Changbai Mountain! You, you forgot?"
She might really have a stutter, a trait that couldn't be conveyed through WeChat because she didn't use voice messages.
Lin Xi pondered for a moment, her eyes lit up, "Ah! I remember now! It's you!"
Then, Lin Xi turned to me, "This little girl was even my savior!"
I wasn't interested in their story, but it at least indicated that this little wild chicken had "grown up" a long time ago.
The elevator doors opened again.
"Let's go, we'll talk upstairs."
Just then, Lin Xi's phone rang. Fearing no signal in the elevator, she held the elevator door open to answer it. She said "mm-hmm" twice, hung up, and said seriously, "You two go up first. Something's happened in this city, with the 'Shabiah.' I need to go check it out."
With that, Lin Xi quickly left.
Ni Tai Mei and I entered the elevator and looked at each other. She was very shy and didn't dare to look me in the eye. I also felt a little awkward. This little wild chicken was quite attractive; she would definitely be a campus beauty at their "Meihekou Second High School."
When we reached the fifth floor, she finally looked at the room card in my hand and said softly, "We, we just met and are going to, to book a room, Mr. Wu, I, I feel a bit… embarrassed!"