novelraw Chapter 126: Who Said We're the Same Kind of Demon?
Chapter 126: Who Said We're the Same Kind of Demon?
The ancient concept of demon clan was actually quite broad. Anything that didn't look like a human counted as a demon.
Within demon society itself, however, this kind of grouping didn't exist. It made no sense to say that anything unlike a human was a demon, and then expect things that were unlike you to be counted as the same clan, did it?
The Ritual Texts recorded that demons were divided into three, six, and nine grades.
Put simply, there was a three-tier system, a six-tier system, and a nine-tier system.
The three-tier system was the one most widely accepted by the general populace, since anything more complicated was difficult even for demons themselves to remember.
Those whose bloodlines had awakened but whose minds hadn't developed much were collectively called demon beasts.
Those who had developed minds and learned to cultivate but hadn't yet shed their bestial nature were collectively called demon spirits.
Those who had accepted human cultivation methods and ways of thought and taken on a human form were collectively called demon immortals.
In ancient times, a demon taking human form was a complicated affair. One had to reach a certain level of cultivation and survive the trial of a heavenly tribulation before a full transformation could be achieved.
Today things were considerably simpler.Once your cultivation reached the Foundation Establishment realm and you had received a proper education, you could take human form without any need for a heavenly tribulation.
The proper education was the key point.
The foundation of Great Chu's founding was precisely this educational system that the Dragon Emperor had established. It had not only brought about eight thousand years of peace and prosperity, but had also swept away the ignorance and brutality of the old era.
The great bear before him had clearly awakened its bloodline but had not yet developed any rational mind. A creature of this kind, pure in thought, could only be found in truly remote and untouched deep mountains these days.
Li Qiuchen dodged the sweeping paw, then drove his hand into the bear's soft belly in return. The wooden spike penetrated through the fur, and countless branching shoots burst open inside its flesh, growing wildly.
The bear let out a howl of pain and sat down heavily on the ground, blood and foul air pouring from its nose and mouth.
Only at this point did Hu Caiyi, who had been frozen in shock, remember to scream.
"Waaaah!"
"It's over, don't yell."
Li Qiuchen pressed a hand to the bleeding bear's head and turned around. "Do you want to let it live?"
Hu Caiyi shook her head frantically from behind Tang Xiaoxue.
Since the only person among the three with demon blood had no objections, Li Qiuchen saw no reason to hold back.
He drove his fingers into the bear's eyes, connected to the shoots growing inside its body, and drew in the scalding blood with full force.
In less than the time it took to burn an incense stick, the great bear, which must have weighed at least four or five thousand jin, was reduced to a shrunken sack of skin and bone.
Li Qiuchen let out a long breath, and a sense of satisfaction rose in him unlike anything he had felt in a very long time.
Like rain after a long drought.
The feeling of someone who had quit smoking for half a year suddenly lighting up and taking a deep lungful was something only certain people would understand.
Counting back to that winter in Blue Stone Platform when he had fought the bandits, it really had been about half a year.
In his effort to study quietly and avoid suspicion, he had been suppressing the side effects of the Medicine Master's Blessing the entire time, namely, the hunger for life.
The craving for blood was only the surface manifestation. Many Medicine Master followers who had never received proper guidance could never see past this surface, and ultimately fell into the demonic path.
What he truly needed was the life force contained within blood and flesh.
More than a thousand jin of demon blood surging with vitality poured into his body, and the Dragon Court, which had already reached its limit and needed only one last push, opened its fourth heaven in an instant.
The fourth heaven. The fourth blood exchange.
At this moment Li Qiuchen had no mental energy left to wonder whether this demon beast had been a cherished pet of some reclusive master, or whether there was a bear father, bear grandfather, or bear patriarch somewhere who would come looking.
You struck first.
Why should I show you any courtesy?
The blazing demon blood poured into the Dragon Court, filled the fourth heaven in an instant, and was refined through the Dragon Court, its contained life force extracted and converted into nourishment for his own growth.
A layer of blood-red light passed over Li Qiuchen's eyes. The hair and nails on his body began to grow rapidly. His bones and flesh underwent sweeping transformations in the course of the blood exchange.
Before his eyes, the bear's life from the moment of its birth drifted into view in a hazy outline. It had lived without a care in the mountain valley, had swallowed a strange fruit by chance, its bloodline had awakened and its strength had become enormous...
Beyond that, no information of any real value.
Pure, natural, free-range.
Nothing to worry about then.
Its life had now come to its end, and Li Qiuchen would continue forward in its place.
Whether it would have agreed to this arrangement was beside the point.
This was the way the world worked.
The upheaval inside his body was like a mountain collapsing. The nourishment of more than a thousand jin of demon blood nearly overwhelmed him entirely, leaving no attention to spare for anything else.
When the dust settled and he opened his eyes again, full daylight had arrived.
A faint glimmer of moonlight passed briefly through Li Qiuchen's eyes. He raised a hand and pressed it lightly against the open ground beside him. The earth three feet away suddenly dropped and caved inward.
This was a bloodline ability the bear itself had never managed to awaken, now manifesting through him.
The Moonwalking Force.
It allowed one to move through mountain forest at night using moonlight, and could also gather moonlight into a concentrated strike against an enemy.
No wonder such a massive creature had made almost no sound when it walked.
If Li Qiuchen hadn't caught the smell, he might not have noticed it approaching at all.
The question that remained was, what was it about Hu Caiyi that made every creature want to take a bite out of her?
Having entered the fourth heaven, with the bear's blood now integrated into his own, Li Qiuchen's perception was nearly equivalent to the bear's own senses. When he focused his gaze on Hu Caiyi, what he saw was a figure that appeared almost transparent.
Half-human, half-demon?
No, that wasn't quite it. From the perspective of a demon beast, Hu Caiyi looked like a perfectly prepared vessel.
A body that could perfectly contain demon power, ready to be overtaken.
A demon beast without a developed mind that wanted to take on human form had only one ancient path available, the heavenly tribulation.
But Hu Caiyi offered a different option entirely.
Put plainly, she was very easy to possess.
This was an exceptional natural talent for being a spirit medium.
A fox spirit personally entering a medium might sound improbable, but thinking it through carefully, spirit medium lineages had always emphasized family inheritance. One fox across three generations, the person comes and goes but the fox remains...
His godmother Liu Po back in Blue Stone Platform had been a spirit medium herself by family tradition. By the time it reached her generation most of the knowledge had been forgotten, but Elder Chang Ba still looked after her out of respect for her ancestors.
What if Boss Hu had taken Hu Caiyi's mother for similar reasons, and Hu Caiyi had been born of that union? Li Qiuchen genuinely couldn't think of another explanation for why Boss Hu would have chosen her mother.
She had inherited her father's demon bloodline and her mother's family gift for mediumship, and the combination had produced this particular small oddity.
That made sense.
Hu Caiyi had the talent for mediumship, but that talent wasn't suited to all kinds of demon.
The low intelligence of demon beasts was always a fundamental limitation.
To the great black fish spirit in the Dragon Scale River and the bear last night, this small creature looked extremely appealing, and their understanding of something appealing was simply that it looked good to eat. Bite first, ask questions never.
Hu Caiyi was curing a hide.
This was her family's trade.
Li Qiuchen had kindly asked the day before out of passing curiosity.
As for the bear that had tried to eat her, she felt no particular kinship with it, no sense of shared fate between fellow creatures.
Who said we're the same kind of demon?
The simplest method for curing leather in the wild was to skin the animal, scrape away the remaining fat from the hide, spread the creature's brains over the leather, and then beat it thoroughly.
The bear's hide, once stripped, measured a full zhang in length and width, a full size larger than the bear skin spread on Tang Xiaoxue's bed.
The fur was glossy and sleek, of excellent quality, which showed how comfortable and carefree this great bear's life had been.
Noticing Li Qiuchen's gaze, Hu Caiyi turned around and broke into a bright, sunny smile.
"Look, Steward Li! I'm not without my own skills!"
"Very good. That hide should fetch a strong price."
"I'm not selling it!"
The compliment made her happier still.
"I'll finish treating it when we get back. I'm going to use it as a floor rug!"
Then something seemed to occur to her, and she fixed Li Qiuchen with a look, asking quietly, "Have you already reached Foundation Establishment?"
"Not yet."
Li Qiuchen answered honestly. "Still at the Qi Refining realm."
"And you can already do things like this at Qi Refining, just casually killing a bear..."
Hu Caiyi said with a downcast expression, "I don't know when I'll ever formally start cultivating. I wonder if I'll fall further and further behind you two."
"You won't."
Tang Xiaoxue answered from the side. "I'll wait for you."
"You're clearly studying on the sly! You're not waiting for me at all!"
A child's worries arrived quickly and departed just as fast.
After a quick cleanup of what remained of the demon beast, the three of them continued on their way.
Honestly speaking, having encountered this demon beast at all made Li Qiuchen feel the trip had already been a complete success.
There was no need to rush the remaining time. A casual sweep through the valley would be enough before heading back.
Stepping into the valley, a dense, rich tide of spiritual energy met them immediately.
The natural energy here was excellent, well suited to someone who wished to settle in and cultivate in seclusion.
He had gone downstream during his earlier time in these mountains and never found this valley. It was just as well, because back then, stumbling into this place, he wasn't sure he could have defeated that bear.
With the bear hide already filling the storage bracelet to capacity, the herb baskets he had woven the previous evening proved their worth. Walking and gathering as they went, the three baskets were filled to the brim after no more than several dozen li.
Carrying capacity exhausted, nothing to be done about it.
Li Qiuchen was just preparing to turn back when he heard a faint, indistinct sound drifting from the distance.
Surely not. Surely he wasn't about to coincidentally stumble onto some fight between cultivators.
And then crouch nearby and watch, pick up some stray loot, scavenge a body or two...
There was never any luck that good.
After listening carefully for some time, Li Qiuchen's brow gradually smoothed out.
"Come on, let's go take a look over there."
He led the two young misses to the base of a cliff face, and looking up, found an enormous wild beehive hanging against the rock wall, easily the size of a house.
The sound he had heard was the drone of bees in flight.
"Oh!"
Hu Caiyi let out an involuntary exclamation. "Wild honey!"
Li Qiuchen looked at the three heavily loaded herb baskets behind them. "We really can't carry anything more. Let it go. We'll come back next year..."
Hu Caiyi swallowed hard with enormous effort.
"No! I don't want the bear skin anymore! I want to eat the honey!"
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