To Be a Demon - Chapter 4

Law-abiding citizen that I was, I queued for ages. My turn was finally approaching.

Then several servants came barging through toward me.

“Make way! Make way! Our young master is here!”

A round body planted itself directly in front of me.

Seriously? Cutting in front of me?

I clicked my tongue in irritation. The fat young master turned, and a servant immediately demanded, “Got a problem? Do you know who our young master is?”

Without giving me time to answer, he went on, “The grandson of Changting Sect’s grand elder! His talent and spiritual power are among the best of his generation.”

Everyone around us hurried out of the way.

The fat boy lifted his chin at me smugly. Apparently not done showing off, he tossed me a piece of silver. “Here. A little reward for you.”

I caught it.

He sneered when he saw me take it and began to turn away.

I hurled the fucking silver at him.

It knocked him ten meters away. He rolled like a ball and took quite a while to stop.

Quite a racket too. Startled several birds out of the woods.

The servants shrieked and rushed to help their badly injured master. The laughing, chattering crowd fell silent and stared at me in astonishment.

“Think you can buy me off with that little?” I rolled my wrist. “Not enough.”

I started forward. He probably had plenty more silver on him.

Before I could take a step, wind stirred behind me. I sprang back five times, putting distance between us.

A middle-aged swordsman stood where I had been. When he saw I had dodged, his expression grew serious.

So the fat boy did have someone useful with him.

“You’ve hurt our young master, girl. Surely you owe us an explanation?” He struck again, every move vicious.

In the old days, he wouldn’t have lasted two exchanges against my sword.

But I really was weak now.

After I dodged a few attacks, his sword pierced straight through my right palm.

On purpose.

I was about to channel spiritual power through the wound and use Blood Sacrifice. That would leave him dead or crippled.

Before I could, a beam of light cleaved down from above, striking between us.

“Venerable Wujie!”

Someone shouted it.

I slowly looked up.

Fu Chen stood in the air. His infuriatingly handsome face remained unreadable, his gaze dark. There had once been points of light in those eyes. I couldn’t find them now.

He looked down on everything beneath him.

Someone had just said he was nearing ascension.

No.

A frightening thought screamed through my mind.

Fu Chen seemed to be on the verge of becoming a demon.

This was wrong.

Very wrong.

No one knew better than me how much Fu Chen loathed the demonic path.

Demonic cultivators had killed his parents. He was barely six when my family found him, white clothes soaked red with blood. Yet Dad searched him all over and couldn’t find a single wound. He kept calling it strange. My two brothers, my little sister, and I formed a circle around this new boy, deeply interested.

Mostly because my four-year-old twin brothers said, “This one’s pretty, Dad. Keep him as a little husband for Big Sis to raise!”

Well, well. How thoughtful of them.

Touched, I dug out the fruit sweets I had been hoarding for ages to give them.

“She’s so fierce, no one will marry her otherwise.”

I smiled kindly.

Put the sweets away and beat them both up.

“Big Sis.” My little sister tugged my sleeve. “What’s a husband you raise?”

I had only recently turned six myself. How was I supposed to know? But as the eldest, I had always specialized in pretending I knew things.

“Someone you sleep with,” I told her.

Prophetic words.

Dad decided to take Fu Chen in.

Our house had practically nothing in it, much less a spare room, so he arranged for Fu Chen to sleep with me.

We didn’t get along.

I talked a lot. He hardly talked at all. I thought he was ignoring me. Very rude.

He slept in the left corner of the bed, I slept in the right.

Back to back.

Ignoring each other.

Until one night, when I was sleeping soundly, he abruptly sat bolt upright. His movement threw most of the quilt off me. It was early spring; the cold made me shiver.

Furious, I sat up and clutched the quilt.

“What are you—”

The words caught in my mouth.

Cold moonlight slanted through the window and fell directly across his face. He was drenched in sweat, eyes wide, gasping like someone drowning.

My family was poor, but I had never suffered any great misfortune.

That was the first time I had seen such terror on anyone’s face.

“Are… are you all right?”

I asked it carefully.

He turned blankly toward my voice. There seemed to be tears still waiting to fall from his eyes.

Our gazes met. He hastily wiped his face on his sleeve.

“Sorry,” Fu Chen said.

Sorry for waking me? I forgave him on the spot. Clearly, I had misunderstood everything. He was a polite child after all.

I was about to tell him it was all right.

“I…” He paused for more than ten seconds, struggling to get it out. “Wet the bed.”

What?

I went blank. My body moved faster than my brain, and I scrambled off the bed like a monkey down a hill.

Fu Chen silently began gathering the sheet. I hadn’t wet the bed since I was four. On any other night I would certainly have made fun of a six-year-old doing it, but tonight he had cried. I knew I shouldn’t laugh.

I even wanted to help.

“I’ll wash it.” I reached for the sheet too. “Have a rest.”

“No need.” An immediate refusal.

“It’s fine. I wash my brothers’ and sister’s sheets all the time. Trust me. I’ll get it really clean.”

“…No need.”

“Why stand on ceremony with me? You live with us. We’re family.”

He stared for a moment, but still said the same thing. “No need.”

I had a short temper. I yanked the sheet toward me. “Why are you so stubborn?”

Riiip.

The sheet split straight down the middle.

We stared at each other, speechless.

After a long moment, the corners of Fu Chen’s mouth curved. “Pfft.” He actually laughed.

He thought this was funny? Dad was definitely going to chase me around and beat me tomorrow, and he thought it was funny?

“Pfft—”

But I couldn’t control my own mouth either.

In the end, we both dissolved into laughter.