That evening, Kaelan shrinks to the size of an ordinary crow and perches lightly atop Bai Yaoyue's head.
The girl laughs as if it is a game, skipping alongside Bai Huli while the three of them make their way toward the demon gathering.
The forest deepens around them, its canopy bleeding out the last streaks of sunset, shadows spilling over twisted roots and heavy branches.
A damp mist coils low to the ground, carrying the stench of rot and wild musk.
Strange cries echo between the trees—half beast, half man—and the air thrums faintly with demonic qi, restless and hungry.
Bai Yaoyue chatters without pause, her voice bright against the gloom.
She lists the things she looks forward to at the gathering: chopped fried liver of martial artists, thick medicinal blood distilled from warriors, and wine brewed from marrow and crushed bones.
Her tone is almost gleeful, like a child naming sweetmeats at a festival.
Kaelan listens, feathers bristling, his face twisting in unease.
Each delicacy she names is a human torn apart, cooked, or brewed for demons' delight.
And yet, in the whispers of his spirit, he already knows the truth.
Demons below the core formation realm cannot climb higher on cultivation alone.
Their spiritual roots are too shallow, their essence weaker than that of man.
Only by consuming human flesh and blood can they make up what they lack—stealing the spirituality they were never born with.
The realization turns his gaze cold as the mist, and for a long heartbeat Kaelan lets a darker thought unfurl — if he can find a way for demons to gain spirituality without devouring humans, fine, but in the end this world is only an ingredient for his growth; when he leaves, he will strip its value, have his fun, and then devour it.
Before he can sink into further calculation, his spirit prickles: a current of demonic aura flows in a single direction, a river of lesser demons — mostly below Core Formation — surging toward one point; he follows the tide and at last sees the gathering: a ragged city of tents and crude wooden buildings, beasts in full form and half-human horrors streaming between stalls, some slipping into shadowed booths while others swagger and trade in spoils and blood.
Kaelan flaps once and rises from Bai Yaoyue's head; she calls after him, "Are we going back together?" Bai Huli's voice is soft with an old smile, but Kaelan shakes his head and answers, "No," and cuts through the air toward the market, eyes cold for things that feed spirit and mind.
Books are his first hope, yet the market offers none—no scrolls, no tomes—only baubles, cooked human parts and potions; then a three-storey wooden hall catches his eye, a place called the Demon Palace where techniques and elemental magics are traded, but everything there is priced in demon stones, and he has none.
Calmly he folds his wings and flies back to the cliff, slips into his hidden hoard, and gathers everything taken from the humans that night—weapons, pills, jewels, trinkets, iron, jade—everything except the golden sword and papers with different symbols drawn on them, stuffing the loot into a rough sack before winging back to the gathering; he finds a buyer in a narrow lane, trades the sack in a single sharp exchange, and counts the coins: six hundred and fifty-four low-level demon stones.
Holding one cool stone in his beak, he lets its pulse touch his spirit and finds the energy within eerily like his mana — immediate, malleable, and absorbable; unlike the world's spiritual energy that must be refined through the body into mana, the stone's essence feeds mana directly, swift and potent — and with several clutched in his talons he slips through the Demon Palace doors, ready to see what demon stone can buy.
Inside the store, Kaelan studies the shelves, listening carefully to the demon attendants explain the classifications.
Demon cultivation techniques are split into two: lower rank and higher rank.
Lower rank techniques can only push a cultivator to the threshold of the Core Formation realm.
Higher rank techniques, scarce and heavily guarded, can be cultivated all the way to the peak of the Demon Spirit realm.
He browses with a calm but calculating eye, searching for anything that echoes the void or destruction laws pulsing in his blood.
Yet, none of the manuals or scrolls touch his path.
With a thin frown, he turns instead to what can tilt the advantage in his favour. His gaze settles on one — the Death Soul Technique.
Though this world is too low to allow the true law of death to take root, the method draws upon dead energy to fuel growth.
Within its fragments linger faint traces of death law, something he can refine, exploit, and perhaps twist toward his void and destruction affinity.
But its price is steep: 7500 demon stones for the full technique. Even its broken lower-rank version costs 2500 stones. Far more than he holds.
He moves on to the section for magic powers.
These are divided into three classes: minor, major, and divine.
Divine arts are absent; the attendants whisper they are not permitted for trade.
Major arts remain far out of reach, the cheapest marked at a thousand stones. He measures his pouch and, calculating, chooses three minor powers that will sharpen his edge:
— Transformation, 250 stones.
— Iron Body, 275 stones.
— Hide, 100 stones.
The trades leave his claws light, his pouch with only 29 demon stones clinking faintly.
Still, the three new arts weigh heavier than a coin.
He departs the Demon Palace, slipping through the market's dim glow, ignoring the smell of roasted flesh and blood brew, his mind already shaping plans for how to bend these powers.
When he returns to the cliff, twilight stretching into shadow, Bai Huli is already there.
Beside her stand four figures, their gazes sharp, wary, unreadable as they tilt their heads upward toward the crow gliding down from the darkening sky.
Kaelan hovers above them, wings spread, staying just out of reach. His voice cuts through the stillness, cold and direct. "What are you doing here? Who are they?"
His sharp eyes linger on each in turn.
A female fish demon, her human body shimmering faintly with scales, thin gills fluttering at her neck.
A male leopard demon, sleek and lean, his beast features smoothed into the form of a sharp-eyed man.
A female bear demon, broad-shouldered, with the heavy, steady presence of a brown bear shaped into a woman's frame.
And last, a snake demon: her body from the waist up that of a woman, but below, coils of scaled tail shift restlessly against the rock.
Bai Huli's hand gestures lightly as she introduces them. "We come to ask for help. And they are—" she points to the fish demon, "Yu Lian." Her hand turns to the leopard demon. "Huang Lang." Then to the bear demon. "Mei Rong." Finally, to the snake demon. "She is She Ling."
Kaelan dips his head once in acknowledgement, but his eyes stay narrowed and his voice is colder than before as he fixes Bai Huli with a hard stare: "I don't think we're close enough for you to ask me for help."
Huang Lang answers at once, blunt and sure, "This benefits you too."
Kaelan's gaze slides to the leopard demon. "I do not expect to benefit for free."
Bai Huli inclines her head. "Yu Lian will explain."
Yu Lian steps forward, scales glinting in the dusk. "Master Kaelan, I live on a tributary of the Dahe.
In the past few days human martial artists have scoured the area, searching—yesterday morning they found it: a ruined city from the Night Dynasty."
Kaelan murmurs the name—Night Dynasty—interest flaring for a heartbeat, but he keeps his tone level and asks nothing further. "So you want me to take the ruin back from the martial artists?"
They nod; Bai Huli's answer is plain, "Yes."
He frowns inwardly—mortals' highest realm, Supreme Master, corresponds to the peak of Demon Refining, while these five stand at half-step Core Formation, a half-realm above Supreme Master—yet he does not press the discrepancy for the sake of appearances. "When must we go?" he asks.
"As quickly as possible," Yu Lian says. "They've been searching the ruin all day; if we're late they'll strip it and return to the human side."
Kaelan would have refused yesterday, but he needs demon stones—at least 2,500 before the next gathering—and opportunity has teeth. "Wait a minute."
He flies to the cliff, scatters the crows, hides his sack, then shrinks the golden sword to pendant size and tucks it beneath his wing.
Returning, he looks down at the four demons, voice flat and decisive: "Let's go."
Together they move swiftly toward the Dahe, Kaelan gliding above while the others race below, paws pounding against the earth.
At the riverbank Yu Lian and She Ling dive without pause, water closing over them as Yu Lian's legs shimmer and fuse into a sleek silver tail.
On land Bai Huli sheds her human guise, a white fox streaking along the shore, while Huang Lang bursts into a spotted blur of muscle and fangs, and Mei Rong's body swells into a towering brown bear.
Kaelan circles overhead, wings cutting through the twilight air, while below Yu Lian guides them through the currents and the others thunder along the river's edge, their path bending toward her home.