Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR AND I FIND THE ANSWER TO THE LAST MYSTERY

There's something almost poetic about Si Wang's plans being thwarted by the cruel unpredictability of war.

In any case, Yao Shen could see how he used memory as his weapon to try and wrest control of Yao Shen, until this current incarnation.

Until Yao Shen almost gave him his victory -- but in the end became his downfall.

He wipes the tears off his face and gets up to his feet, finally opening the bedroom door.

He finds Xin Hulei smoking by the open windows, a cigarette clutched tightly between his index and middle finger.

Yao Shen regrets worrying him, but he doesn't regret what he has found.

He has the solution to one last mystery on the tip of his fingers -- at least a partial solution, there's some of it he still doesn't understand.

"How are you?" Xin Hulei asks, his tone more casual than he feels.

"I'm fine." He nods towards the cigarette between his fingers. "Finish that, there's somewhere we need to go."

Xin Hulei nods, pulling hard on the cigarette's filter. He doesn't question Yao Shen, he's immediately ready to do as he says.

It sends a delicious thrill down Yao Shen's spine.

He's going to do something about all the ideas he's been getting when they return. When he has finally put this whole thing behind him.

---

He tells Xin Hulei where to take them. He's confused at first. Not understanding why Yao Shen wants him to bring them to the park just behind his apartment in Beijing. They're wearing hoodies over baseball hats, probably being too conspicuous about their desire to hide their identities, but at night, and in such a busy city as Beijing, no one spares them a second glance.

Yao Shen traces the steps he recalls from the dreams of that last reincarnation, the bullet riddled streets of his mind almost impossible to recognise, impossible to match to their modern day incarnations -- pristine and whole, absent the pockmarks of war.

Still, he recognises the building where the soldier Yao Shen bunked down with his comrades. He used to walk by it every day when he came back from the nearest grocery store.

Funny how that worked out in the end.

It's striking exactly because it's a low building of only five floors in a neighbourhood of towering skyscrapers.

He follows the steps he saw in his dreams, through the outside stairways and the communal verandas connecting all the apartment units and knocks on the door 1R.

He hears the sound of a child's excited "I'll get it!", and then a boy of around eleven opens the door.

He looks up at Yao Shen and Xin Hulei in confusion, not recognising them he screams loudly for his mother.

A woman in her late thirties comes to the door, but unlike her son, she recognises them immediately.

She's visibly taken aback by their presence at her door, but pulls herself together remarkably fast. "Is this about the drama?"

Xin Hulei, who still doesn't know what they're doing here -- but is about to find out -- goes very still.

Yao Shen has no idea who this woman is, but depending on how things go, he thinks they might just have found Shi Shi.

"Hi, yes, sorta," he clears his throat. "Are you the author of 'Shizun, this disciple will have to kill you?"

The woman laughs, and then rubs her temple with her thumbnail. She smiles sheepishly. "I guess you could say that."