The Great Cold has just passed about a week, and it has been less than ten days since the beginning of spring. The coldest days of the year are pretty much these days. However, due to the approach of the Spring Festival, the Yunhua community is immersed in an artificially created fiery atmosphere, which makes the evergreen shrubs and pines and cypresses in the community garden look much more verdant than usual.

At this moment, Zheng Qing is carrying out a ceremony to welcome the family hall with his family in a remote corner of the community.

From the open window of a residential building a little farther away, the music of the second half of the 'Spring Festival Overture' and the cheerful voice of the host can be heard - although it is the middle of winter, because the collective heating is very powerful, it is not unusual for residents to open the windows to ventilate during the day.

In general, everything is so normal that Zheng Qing has a vague illusion that life at home will always be so plain and stable.

"The paper money I bought this year is a bit trendy...... Did you bake it last night?" When Professor Zheng Lao lit the paper money, he asked Zheng Qing's father in a slightly unhappy tone: "Why is it so hard to light it?" ”

Zheng Qing's gaze fell on the string of paper money with his grandfather's questioning.

The orange flames of the lighters licked the colorful paper money, rolled up the pale blue flames, and the wisps of blue and white smoke. Indeed, the smoke from the burning of these paper coins seems to be a little more than usual.

"Roasted," Zheng Qing's father argued, and at the same time took out a wad of paper money, leaned over and tried to light it: "Together with those firecrackers, put them on the cabinet above the radiator, and bake them for a night......

The cabinet my father said was actually a wall skirt wrapped in radiators - in the decoration of old-style residential houses, this is a very popular style, with wooden wall skirts to protect the walls of the home, and at the radiators, there will also be some grilles to ventilate and dissipate heat.

"Is it the radiator by the window in the living room?" Professor Zheng's tone became more and more displeased: "I don't know if there is dew in the morning, it will be damp......?

Zheng Qing held back a smile as he watched his father eat in front of his grandfather, and quietly shrunk back, trying to reduce his sense of presence - this is very important, especially in this case, it is easy to be angry if you are reckless and lose your voice.

To do this, he tried to turn his attention elsewhere.

In the distant window, accompanied by the background music of the Spring Festival overture, the host reads the program strings of 'year after year' normally and skillfully; farther away, several stray cats seem to have been chased by dogs, like a gust of wind, running past the wall with their tails.

Zheng Qing stared at the distant backs of the cats, and couldn't help but think of the subordinates in the school grove - I don't know how they were doing this winter vacation, whether they were hanging hair balls on the trees as always.

When he came back to his senses, a thick layer of paper ash had accumulated in the copper basin, and more and more paper money was burning. There are also more and more of them, and the blue-white smoke gushes out violently from the copper basin, almost completely drowning the figures of grandfather and father.

Zheng Qing pressed his hand on the gray cloth bag around his waist, wondering if he could take out the law book and use a small spell to disperse the smoke. It was not that he was hesitant to do this, but it was not an easy thing to clean up in front of the two elders, and to be quiet and quiet.

The smell of burning paper became stronger and stronger, stimulating Zheng Qing's nasal cavity and making him feel slightly suffocated.

"Turn the paper money down and burn it more fully...... "In front of it, Professor Zheng's command to Zheng's father came out, and through the smoke of the smoke, it seemed a little vague and faintly distant. It was as if there was a layer of ground glass between them and Zheng Qing.

It's a very eerie feeling.

The gray-white sky grew grayer and darker, and the cold wind that had been howling quietly stopped—trembling branches, scattered dead leaves, clanging glass windows, and the whistling and honking of vehicles on the road outside the community—all disappeared without a trace as the wind passed.

For a moment, Zheng Qing thought he had used the wrong magic, misusing the spell to clear the smoke for a mute spell.

But soon, he realized that he hadn't pulled the magic book out of the gray cloth bag yet, and he hadn't started to perform any magic yet.

The feeling of a thorn in the back followed.

The young wizard turned his head back so quickly and vigorously that he felt a strong dizziness, and faintly heard the ominous creaking of his cervical spine rubbing against his skull.

But all of this, after Zheng Qing saw those bright red eyes, became irrelevant.

......

This is not the first time Zheng Qing has faced demons.

On the first day of knowing the first university, he encountered a pig demon in Damingfang, then a banshee on the admission plane, then a kappa demon on the shore of Linzhong Lake, and later, there were groups of wild demons fighting with hunters in the freshman competition of the school hunting party.

It can be said that in the face of demons, Zheng Qing can be regarded as a veteran.

But it was the first time for Zheng Qing to face a demon alone, especially in front of his family.

He stood silently, not daring to move. The biting chill of midwinter compared to the chill brought by the demon on the other side is like the difference between being bitten by a mosquito and being bitten.

Zheng Qing felt that his soul was soaked in ice water in an instant, and he was so desperate that he was suffocating.

This is impossible—he roared in his heart—how could they be here—the Wizarding Alliance has a strict and regulated protection system for any wizard from the White Ding World, including placing anti-demon and expulsion spells near the wizard's home of origin.

Because of this, Zheng Qing still had the confidence to walk out of that university and go home after knowing the demons and knowing the risks. Therefore, Zheng Qing can go to school with confidence, without worrying about the indescribable threats of his family.

The demon on the other side was not large, a meter tall, and looked like it had been infected by a stray dog – or a lone wolf, of course – with ridged ears and a grinning mouth, revealing two rows of white fangs and drooling, frightening gums.

Whoop, whoop, whoop.

The demon breathed greedily and rapidly.

Zheng Qing's fingers rested on the gray cloth bag, his mind was spinning wildly, and dozens of different plans flashed in his mind, as well as more follow-up treatment plans - after all, the demon on the other side didn't look particularly difficult to deal with, but Zheng Qing didn't know what kind of impact the 'observer effect' would have under the current situation, and after solving the demon, how to deal with his family and how to appeal to the wizarding alliance was a headache.

At this moment, a cat meow broke the almost frozen atmosphere in the room.

"Meow. ”