Little Pink Starfish

After midnight, there were very few cars outside.
This was the north after all, and in winter, once it got dark, people rarely went out.

At this time of night, only groups of people—or monsters—dared to be outside.
Gao Ling looked at the comic’s cover and inexplicably felt a chill. She stood up, glanced out the window, caught a glimpse of one or two vague figures flying past, and quickly pulled the curtains shut without leaving even a crack.

Turning back, Gao Ling kept staring at the cover and took another careful look at its title:

“Return from Hell.”

From hell… returning?

Gao Ling shivered—not from the cold, but from something deeper.

She looked again at the figure on the cover.

The half-face of white bone didn’t look like real bone—it was more like a painting made of purple flowers.
Every detail of the bone was strangely beautiful.

Saying a pile of bones looked “beautiful” sounded weird, but that left side of the face truly was both eerie and breathtaking—chilling enough to make your scalp tingle, yet so stunning that you couldn’t look away.

Gao Ling touched her own face absent-mindedly.

Is this supposed to be human bone?

Why does it feel… so disturbingly beautiful?

[Is that Yuan?!!]

[What’s going on? “Return from Hell”? What’s up with Yuan’s face?!]

[Holy crap, this cover’s insane… It’s like the pinnacle of Demon Notes so far. I’ve got goosebumps—it’s so eerie!]

[The art is gorgeous… but there’s something evil about it. It feels like he’s the kind that needs a paladin to douse him in holy water immediately.]

[Why is it drawn so beautifully? It’s not fair! I’m terrified of bones and yet I can’t look away…]

Gao Ling opened the comic.
Today’s chapter was generating comments at an unprecedented speed.
Many people couldn’t even wait to finish reading before flooding the comment section with their reactions.
Only a few minutes past midnight, and the number of comments had already exploded past the thousands.

The site itself seemed overwhelmed by the sudden traffic.
Normally smooth, it was now showing signs of collapse.

By the end, only half the users could access the site—everyone else stared at 404 errors.
Desperate readers began asking on the official forum: “What the hell happened today? I can’t even get in!”

Someone uploaded screenshots to the forum—letting the ones locked out also see it—and that only made them even more frantic to get back in.

The site was jammed all night.
If you left the page, you couldn’t get back.
Most people had to wait until the next day to finally see the update.

…

“My god, after I exited, I couldn’t get back in! I tried for half an hour and failed—why did I even exit?!” someone complained on the phone.

“Well, maybe it was for the best,” Gao Ling yawned while replying.
“After seeing it, I couldn’t sleep half the night…”

“Scary?” the person on the other end asked.

“Not exactly scary…” Gao Ling sipped her coffee.

How to explain it…
Last night truly lived up to the title “Return from Hell.”
Both the artwork and the story were haunting enough to chill you if you thought too deeply.

Yawning again, Gao Ling planned to catch up on sleep…
Last night she had barely slept, tormented by all sorts of bizarre visions.

…

Meanwhile, Yuan Yuanyuan, cracking melon seeds, re-read the comic again.

Actually, she had also been kicked out halfway through last night.
But before getting booted, she had already read most of it and roughly understood the gist of the chapter.

This chapter was mainly about what happened during the New Year—when the head of the Li family visited her shop and had a conversation with her.

The comic even showed more details than Yuan Yuanyuan had known.
At least now she understood why the chapter was called “Return from Hell.”

At the start of the chapter, the Li family’s head sat in his ancient-style home, chatting with his subordinates, casually mentioning:

[“How do you think he survived?”
asked a handsome, delicate-looking man with red lips and white teeth.]

[His tone was full of amusement, like he was discussing something utterly trivial.]

This part made Yuan Yuanyuan grumble for a while…
Why the hell is this old guy drawn so handsome? And why does Jiuqiu always depict people’s younger selves?

Even though Yuan Yuanyuan knew this was Jiuqiu’s trick to hide identities.
He had used it for “Yuan” too—otherwise, Yuan would probably be one of the most rugged-looking characters in Demon Notes history.

Still, seeing this sugar-daddy looking Li family head pop onto the page, lounging in a traditional room, sipping tea while talking, really made the whole vibe shift.

Compared to the last few chapters about Fa Ning’s upgrades—with his modern lifestyle habits—this sudden shift to antique elegance was jarring.

In Yuan Yuanyuan’s mind, it even felt like she’d accidentally wandered into a historical slice-of-life manga.

But after all, Demon Notes still centered around demons and exorcists—mostly long-lived beings—so it made sense.

Yuan Yuanyuan even suspected that aside from this Li family old man, the rest of the scene was drawn completely unchanged from reality.
You couldn’t fake this ancient atmosphere.

In the comic, no one called the old man by name—only “Master.”

[“Subordinate… is unsure,” said the man standing beside the Master.]

[“Take a guess,” said the Master, not blaming him, but encouraging him with an amused smile.]

[“Maybe…”
the subordinate braced himself, “maybe he wasn’t pushed into the well back then? Maybe he somehow made someone else take his place?”]

[“Hahahahaha…”
The Master suddenly burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter.]

**[The subordinate quickly bowed his head lower, and after a moment, the Master abruptly stopped laughing.
When he looked up again, his face was completely cold.
*“I was the one who pushed him in. How could there be someone else in his place?”*]

Holy shit—
So back then, you were the one who pushed Yi Qi into the well!?

You schemed against him, pushed him, EVERYTHING was you!

Yuan Yuanyuan felt like she had a mouthful of blood she couldn’t spit out.

[“Master…”
The subordinate bowed even lower.]

[“Forget it. It’s not your fault,”
the Master waved his hand. “Back then, I pushed him into the well with my own hands. But now… even I’m beginning to doubt myself.”]

[“Master… why?”]

[“Do you know how many demon corpses have been buried in that well over the centuries?”
the Master asked.
“How did he climb back out of that well?”]

The subordinate stayed silent.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t know about that cursed well.

[“He climbed out of there…”
the Master muttered, “He’s a demon. A demon from hell itself. That’s why he survived the well.”]

A demon from hell.

Yuan Yuanyuan scratched her head, not knowing how to respond.

He wasn’t actually a demon, though.
If anything, Yi Qi should’ve been struggling down in hell—after paying for his sins, maybe he could eventually reach heaven.

That would’ve been the normal progression…

But Yi Qi survived.

In the eyes of others, this was utterly incomprehensible.

…
Maybe only someone who had returned from hell could pull this off.

Thus, the chapter’s name—“Return from Hell.”

Yuan Yuanyuan figured she understood now.

The Li family Master was telling his subordinates:
“Yuan is a demon from hell, an unkillable ghost that has returned to haunt us.”

In the eyes of those who wanted Yuan gone, he was exactly that—
a ghost that should’ve been wiped out but had returned loudly and proudly.

His traces, his existence—everything they thought erased—had suddenly reappeared.

For them, it was as if an unkillable demon had returned.

This conversation between the Master and his men was actually what triggered him to seek out “Yuan” later that evening.

And everything afterward, Yuan Yuanyuan already knew—their meeting, their talk.

She flipped her phone absentmindedly.
Yeah… I really am a ghost. A scapegoat ghost.

As for Jiuqiu… what character is he playing here? Yama, the King of Hell?

…

[You once said that my smile was always fake, insincere, that my eyes looked terrible even when I smiled,]
the Master said, his voice turning suddenly sinister.
[But now, you and I—our smiles are exactly the same.]

[He gazed toward Yuan with a hazy look in his eyes, sitting there in his chair as smoke drifted lazily upward, filling the room.]

Gao Ling read these lines and the illustration—feeling a jolt run from head to toe, like getting electrocuted.

She didn’t know what to say—finally squeezing out just two words:

“Holy crap…”