Renhu likes to think that the reason why his creator keeps pushing him in such difficult situations is that he just wants to see him suffer. He has long known that Zhang Xiyu is a complete sadistic bastard and sometimes his sadism effects the people near him.
Yes, he hates me. That must be it.
It's better than admitting that maybe he was created solely for this day and purpose. To understand what Renhu is, one must first know the story of his creation.
You see, Renhu is not a human. He is not a ghost neither is he a demon.
In a strict sense, he was never born. He was crystalised.
Decades ago, the Last Fortress was as grand as it is today. Except, the surroundings were akin to a cave underneath a river.
The reason behind such dampness lay approximately hundred feet below the "ground level." Deep down below this fortress a pot was brewing. This tightly sealed pot was as big as two floors in the modern-day apartment complex.
Several pipes extended from the pot, reaching towards the roof. This broiling pot resonated with the loud wailing of multiple souls, which would now resemble nothing but black tartar.
The pressure in the pot was comparable to the deepest level in oceans, where man could never reach.
A mystery liquid flowed down the pipes, further increasing this pressure by tenfold. The wailing screams turned louder, making the ground shake.
Unaffected by this, Yutao stood in a room located fifty feet above this pot smoking an opium pipe. He stood there waiting for Zhang Xiyu to finish pushing in the remaining thousand souls down the pipe. Zhang Xiyu coughed as he applied a considerable amount of spiritual pressure over it. Now, even the walls shook under the force, making the shelves around them collapse over each other.
This state, fortunately, lasted for only a few seconds before Zhang Xiyu heavily shut the hole. He hoarsely coughed while his hands move at a rapid speed, applying top grade seals over the cover. The process didn't end there. He immediately brought in multiple iron chains, their girth as thick as a person, and locked the hole behind it.
With the last chain locked in place, Zhang Xiyu took a few steps back and stood silently.
Yutao leisurely approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "So?"
Zhang Xiyu grinned at Yutao with his blood-stained teeth. "Your replacement will be here any time soon."
"Mr. Zhang, I asked for a subordinate, not my dismissal." A nerve twitches on his forehead.
Zhang Xiyu spits out a mouthful of blood and rearranges his robes, "Take care of this for a while. I will be back by tomorrow."
"You are going to tell the sisters now?"
"I must. I don't expect anything less of a catastrophe hitting hell when this guy comes around." He points at the tightly sealed gate.
Looking at his paling face, Zhang Xiyu stifled his laughter. "You are going to be alright."
"I hope she drops you down a cliff. Again."
Hours after Zhang Xiyu's departure, Yutao stood at the palace's ground floor and gazed down at the huge charred hole that went down to the lowest floor. His mind was hazy and blank while his tattered clothes swished around his ashy body.
I was meditating. Keeping that evil spawn's energy level stable. Then there was fire.
Yutao frowned incredulously. A fireball attacked me. From nowhere.
A shiver ran down his spine as he thanks his reflexes that had him break through the floors to dodge that miniature sun. Speaking of which, where did it go?
Yutao looked down in dread, slowly realizing that he would have to go down to find it. Fortunately, he had an inkling of where that brat could go.
Call it an instinct but before leaving, Zhang Xiyu prepared a room full of "food" before he left to deliver the fragment. When Zhang Xiyu was concerned about how hungry it could be after its birth, he had mocked him, calling him a mother hen. But when he saw what "food" Mother Hen Zhang was preparing he soon had to rescind that title.
Let's not ruin the concept of mothers.
Yutao has no habit of dawdling and so he resolutely jumped down the hole, spanning the depth in a few seconds. During his fall the stench was getting increasingly unbearable. If he were still a human let alone the fall, the stench would kill him first.
Yutao flashed through the places that had been significantly reduced to soot and soon the sounds of chewing reach him. He stopped in front of the room and kicked away the unhinged door, his breath hitching.
Yutao didn't know what he had expected this subordinate of his to be like but in front of him is a thin skinny figure which didn't match their height, hunching over a pile of corpses, gnawing on random limbs.
Over their growling which sounded like a rabid dog, Yutao's curiosity in this newcomer properly subsided. Let alone their face, even their gender was difficult to decipher through the countless bodies which were sucked dry by this demon.
That's right, Zhang Xiyu had gone for a little grave robbing in the mortal world to prepare this "food". He had strung them up from their ankles and hung them upside down to the ceiling as if he were sticking birthday balloons for his son, while the balloons were in all shapes and colours they just were not balloons.
Dazed, Yutao couldn't register when that demon burned a hole through the wall and escaped.
The wall was so thick that the hole turned out to be a tunnel towards light. Yutao hurriedly followed him only to catch the tall figure leaping towards the east. Its aim, easy to deduce.
That thing is going to the nearest town. It actually is hungry enough to eat a whole village.
Yutao had existed for an impressively long time now and his heart has only grown colder overtime. Let alone a massacre, he wouldn't blink an eye over a genocide if it were taking place right in his lawn.
Because souls die and souls come alive. Unlike him who had his reincarnation annulled on entering hell by the First Prince. And since he refused to become lunch for some festering twenty clawed resident monster, his life had stretched out uncontrollably.
Death itself is a respite for all mortals. When your psyche dulls down with your exterior shell, you abandon it and grasp a new start. But Yutao cannot be any more dead. Now that reincarnating is off the table, he can only give himself up to the void where he ceases to exist completely. Even after living in hell for many centuries, he was hesitant to erase himself forever from all realms.
That's why his sympathy towards anyone dying, had over the time, twisted into an awkward jealousy.
His sleeves fluttered with the dusty cold wind as he silently stares into the distance, at the bustling village of uninvolved rakshasas. With a heavy sigh, he flashed down the mountain and rushed towards the nearest village.
'No matter, I do have to drag back that little monster.'
A burning village, two burning villages. In his moment of hesitancy this disaster that was born today had cleared out two villages. When Yutao went through the destruction of the first village he made a disturbing discovery. Apart from the signs of chaos and blood, there were no dead bodies. As if that monster and inhaled them whole.
With that thin body? Or did he learn to change shape already?
With a busy mind he landed in the second village. If that thing is still hungry, it would have decimated this town too. He didn't know why but he just had to make sure that this newborn had the capability to eat an entire civilization.
Suddenly, he stopped near some rubble that was once a roof. He could hear a heart beating underneath the tall debris. As Yutao inched closer the heartbeat pulsed faster and faster and-
"Stay away you! Don't eat me! Please!" A child crawls out of the fallen roof and tries to run away but the shard of metal embedded in her foot tripped her down.
Uninterested in her struggle, he places his palm over her small head, keeping her from running away. The child stood limply with a blank look on her tear-stained face as if hypnotised.
"Describe the monster that was eating the village."
The childish voice monotonously narrates, "It was like a big wave of black slime, It had no limbs. Just a mouth. The mouth chomped down on my mother."
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Renhu was trapped in a very crowded place for a very long time. It didn't know what was to live without pain but it still struggled against it. Its oldest memory inside the eternal darkness was fearing its disappearance, it was a pure instinct to cling on to that sliver of intelligence that it had acquired or regained after losing it.
Soon it learned to consume others to make itself strong. Since its senses were dulled down it could only feel hunger and a shortage of space. No matter how many it ate, that place was still crowded. As if someone was making up for the losses.
That feeling of constant suffocation became its habitat. It never felt comfortable but it was its home.
Until that day, when it realized that its overwhelming environment had over time cleared out. It raised its skinny hand and felt its own existence.
So this is emptiness. Nothing's climbing upon me. Very silent.
It reached the boundary of that dark place and puts a hand over the cool wall that blocked its way.
Comfortable.
But once one problem is solved, every animal moves to another one. The young monster felt an intense hunger, the hunger of a thousand men.
The delectable smell of flesh seeping through the cool wall only unsettled it more. It didn't know how it made its way out of there nor could it wait in any place to look at so many new things clearly.
Its hunger drove it mad as the tempting smell of pumping blood surrounded it. It didn't quite understand what this delicious red chunk was, it just knew that the food can run away and it must break it to eat the filling inside.
Unbeknownst to him, dark clouds of retribution were gradually gathering over his head. More the beast showed its claws; the more thunder churned within. The murky sky rumbled, trying its best to not overspill the stirring catastrophe before crashing right onto his thin frame.
Soon, Yutao caught up with him. Seeing him writhing on the ground with thunder roaring above he is fast to understand. "His tribulation."
That was just the beginning. After that one bolt, the beast got electrocuted four more times by the Dao of hell. Each streak of lightning stronger than the previous one.
Unwilling to help the suffering beast, Yutao could only pray that after decades of brewing this monster, he doesn't die under the harsh tribulations. Thankfully for him, Renhu didn't die but his hunger did.
The tribulation had whipped the beast into a semi-intelligent creature with a fluid body.
The limits of this fluid body would now be put to its real test.
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The night in Chongqing shines in the brilliance of the city lights. The populace roams its streets with a unique vigor that belongs to the modern city. But an energy more intense rises higher than the sky-rise buildings and gets engulfed in the cloudy sky. This is Ren Jiang's demonic energy which he boldly unleashes for everyone to see.
"What's that?"
Fingers point upward as a crimson pillar erupts from Shuanggui Mountain, piercing the heavens like a wound that refuses to close.
"Are they rehearsing for the next Lantern Festival already?" someone laughs, squinting through their camera lens.
Jokes ripple through the crowd. A few people film it, go live, slap on filters. As with all novelties, curiosity fades quickly for many.
While the masses exhaust their imagination trying to explain the phenomenon, those who need to understand receive the message loud and clear.
From the city's forgotten corners, stray animals emerge. Cats, dogs, rats crawl into the open and kneel in unison, bowing toward the pillar with solemn reverence.
At the same time, masks begin to crack.
A man laughing over drinks freezes mid-toast. A saleswoman falters in her pitch. In shopping malls, offices, cockpits, and operating rooms, certain people feel it.
On television, politicians stumble over their words. Journalists break into cold sweat beneath studio lights. Pilots grip their controls too tightly. Surgeons pause, scalpel hovering above exposed flesh.
Across the country, certain individuals feel the familiar weight descend.
Their master has arrived, and his presence hangs over them like a blade ready to fall.
Soon, his commanding voice reaches them.
"My loyal subjects."
They straighten at the sound of it. Their true king has spoken.
"The days of clandestine feasts are now over."
Alarm runs through them. They struggle to process his words. Are their days of freedom finished?
They were once ruined by calamities in the underworld. Impoverished, they sought shelter under Ren Jiang and pledged their loyalty to him through a blood pact. After they surrendered themselves to him, he helped them enter the mortal realm and allowed them to live freely.
They no longer worried about food or shelter. They possessed humans across the country and fed on them without restraint. To avoid the Pànguāns, they remained discreet. In recent times, the surveillance had suddenly weakened, and their lives improved. Hence, the demons flourished under reduced pressure.
They felt gratitude toward the First Prince. In their hearts, he is their true king and not his father who had abandoned them.
Now, their king declares an end to those days.
Had Enma returned? Or had they caught them?
Thoughts clashed in the minds of the possessed humans as they stood in public. They controlled their expressions and remained still while they waited with bated breath for his next words.
"You have lived in fear your entire lives. You feared the Pànguāns, the army, and the calamities of the underworld. That fear ends tonight!"
His subjects shiver with anticipation.
"I, your true king, declare the end of this era of fright."
"My subjects, sharpen your claws and unsheathe your knives. Stand without fear, for your king is here."
A surgeon loses his practiced calm and plunges the scalpel into the patient's throat. Blood sprays across the operating table as the monitors scream. Nurses run as the surgeon tears into warm flesh, biting and chewing while the patient convulses.
"Lose all inhibitions and embrace your true nature. You are hungry, greedy, violent, and demonic!"
Ground crews stare in frozen horror as screams erupt from grounded planes. Passengers claw at the windows from the inside. Blood smears across the glass as bodies collapse in the aisles.
"Remember who you are, and remind the humans that they are nothing but fodder."
Office buildings fall silent. Desks are overturned and chairs lie broken. Corpses litter the floors with their throats torn open. The white lights hum above pools of blood that soak into the carpet.
"Tonight! Feast with honour, my subjects!"
Dining tables that once awaited warm family dinners now held decapitated heads. The 'mother' sits atop the table, dipping her children's severed limbs into the curry before chomping down on the flesh.
"Feast with honour!"
Screams spread across the country as demons fully reveal themselves. Chaos erupts as even police departments fall from within. No one understands where these monsters came from or whether the condition can spread.
Within moments, the devils tear into the innocent. They devour, decapitate, mutilate, and rape without hesitation. Streets choke with bodies and cities drown in terror.
The world descends into pandemonium.
Ren Jiang watches from Shuanggui Mountain with open delight. He keeps his demonic energy unleashed, maintaining his link to his subjects.
This causes the sky to churn above him, thunder cracks as rain pelts over the city of Chongqing.
"Will you just keep watching me?"
Ren Jiang smirks at the tall figure standing at the foot of the mountain. He sensed the presence long before. It watched him in silence and never dared to approach, which unsettled him. A strange thought pops in his head.
That thing is not a demon.
His brow tightens. Then why does it have the scent of hell.
Once discovered, Renhu scales the mountain in seconds. As the tall stranger draws closer, Ren Jiang frowns.
"Who are you?"