Yoseonbang Superstar
That's right. I, NewbornGyoDragon, have finally — after countless molts and layer upon layer of inner cores — ascended to the Demon Core realm and, at long last, achieved my human transformation.
Human transformation is the act by which a demon beast takes on a body much like a human's. If you asked me, "Why transform? The flood dragon look has way more swagger," I honestly couldn't tell you. I suppose it's that a body the size of a hill makes you an easy target — and a cumbersome one, besides.
"No? For something so inconvenient, you did risk your life braving heavenly tribulation to get it done."
Come to think of it, perhaps because my body's volume had shrunk, my strength felt compressed as well. My demon qi felt a whole notch denser too — a very feel-y kind of feeling. My hair was silver so pale it bordered on white, and a pair of long, elegant horns had sprouted from my forehead. Sharp fangs, too... and no tail, I notice. For some reason, my eyes, my horns, and the lower reaches of my hair had all come out violet. Maybe it's the lightning qi that crackled out of me during the transformation. Violet lightning qi had certainly been dancing around my body back then. I'd wondered if it was simply a flood-dragon thing, but that didn't seem to be the whole of it. There was even a chance the truth was: surprise, you were a thunder dragon all along.
"Surely I'm strong enough now to go wandering the outside world?"
My body had turned into a little girl's, but that was hardly worth fretting over. I'd been born a flood dragon, after all. In a world of immortals and cultivators, the difference between female and male is nothing to lose sleep over — this is a world of Three Thousand Great Daos, and somewhere among them, surely, is one for changing your sex. In a place where seizing bodies through possession is commonplace, of course there's a way to swap genders. If I lived like this a while and grew tired of it later, I would simply change then.
"I am rather cute, though. Almost like an oni princess out of some island nation."
I looked to be about ten, twelve at most. My skin was white as white jade, and my eyes glowed a luminous violet that set off the silver hair beautifully. And those cheeks — plump and springy as fresh rice cakes. I wanted to take a bite out of them myself.
"So... what now?"
I had raised my realm exactly as I'd intended. True, I'd climbed it for the sake of posting in the gallery, and I'd taken human form so I could go stroll around in it — but now that the moment came, actually stepping outside felt dicey.
"I look far too young... and one glance screams demon beast. If I so much as crossed paths with some passing Nascent Soul cultivator, I'd be a walking pill waiting to be swallowed..."
I'd assumed that once I transformed, I could fine-tune my appearance at will, but apparently I hadn't reached that stage yet. And I had no clothes, either...
"A silver-haired beauty with horns, roaming the mountains in her birthday suit? Th-that is... a thing that must never be allowed to happen."
Clothes first! And of course, my preparations for this were flawless. Because I have Yoseonbang!!
It was called the Bone-to-Garment Art — a Tier-2 demon art that reshaped parts of one's own body at will and draped them over oneself as clothing. For all that it was merely Tier-2, the resources it devoured were nearly Tier-4 in scale, yet its structure, examined closely, was a demon formula without a single flaw. The other demon beasts of Yoseonbang had vetted it for me, and from all the demon arts I'd quietly eyed and investigated over time, I'd concluded it carried no side effects — so I had learned it. I entered the art using a few fragments of molted skin, and within a few short years of training, the Bone-to-Garment Art rose to mastery.
If anything, a year was a long time. Demon beasts, I swear — their sense of time is warped beyond repair. Back then my realm had been too low and my divine sense too thin to post a verification thread. But now? Time to set the record straight. Conveniently, the molted skin from the shell I'd shed upon breaking through was still lying there, untouched.
I sank my divine sense into my demon core, chewed over the mantra in my mind, and a thick, syrupy demon qi welled up from my thrice-condensed inner core.
"Bone-to-Garment."
At the art's name, the molted fragments floated up into the empty air, shed their shape in an instant, and became the seamless heavenly raiment I had pictured.
In other words — demon garb made from a flood dragon's molt! Crafted from my own shed skin, its durability went without saying, and it was as soft as my own flesh. Naturally. It used to be my body!
"So soft. ManyTails really is full of tricks. How did they even invent this?"
Where a cultivator's spellcraft was built on rigorous theory, demon arts tended to be slapdash, make-it-up-as-you-go affairs — yet ManyTails looked genuinely gifted.
"I've reached Demon Core as well, so... shall I leave a verification post?"
It had been some four years since then, but four years to a demon beast was, what, three days or so.
The demon beasts hooked by the title came trickling in with replies.
"Hohoho!"
Yes — this was what I lived for! That's ManyTails for you. The only soul in all the realms who truly appreciated my artistic vision!
"Ah, that's the stuff!"
Yeesh... demon beasts, through and through. Not an ounce of restraint in their words. Out of nowhere, posts openly gunning for ManyTails began to multiply. This wasn't the sort of strife I'd wanted, but it was entertaining, so I resolved to watch from the sidelines.
ManyTails spewed fury alone against the mob, but... they didn't used to be like this, I think? Ever since they'd whiled away a century or so playing with me, all of their speech patterns had gone strange. Not that it was any of my concern. If it's fun, that's a jackpot, no?
"Anyway, that aside... what do I do? Should I go out? Can I even go out? How does one open this cave abode, exactly?"
In the cultivation world, a cave abode is a hollow dug into a mountain or the earth, sealed with barriers and formations to bar outside intrusion — a sanctum for training. For demon beasts, the practice was little different.
"Still, it's about time I poked my head out. I can't stay buried in here forever, scared of being hunted! More to the point, now that I've reached Demon Core, I can't exactly keep lazing around cultivating in my cave abode anyway."
From the Demon Core realm onward, with three inner cores condensed into one, a demon beast could be called reasonably well-balanced. From this stage on, one had to seek out a proper demon core suited to oneself and build one's training around it. That's right — the good old days when cultivation climbed just from breathing were gone for good!!
"I think I'm about to cry..." Boo-hoo.
The season had arrived where, befitting a proper world of immortals, I would have to learn alchemy and swallow my own refined pills, forge a dharma artifact, inscribe talismans, and struggle tooth and nail for every inch of my cultivation.
"Well, fair — I have been freeloading my way up the realms until now. Honestly, this is how it should be. Cultivation means groveling like a dog, choking down bitterness, grinding through training — and then the joy of pummeling every grudge-holder once you're strong."
I had become a demon beast rather than a human, but the difference was smaller than you'd think. The road to the summit was the Dao's road all the same. Demon beast or not, the Dao that strove toward immortality hardly changed. It was only down in the Lower Realm that demon beasts and humans butted heads; climb to the Spirit Realm or the Immortal Realm, and everyone was chasing the same Three Thousand Great Daos anyway.
"Right! Clothes made, belly full of spirit fruit — let's do this!"
But before that. Tap the stone bridge before you cross it, as the saying goes — and this was a xianxia world, no less. Best to ask my friends first, just in case.
I'd written it as a joke, but I was genuinely terrified. I loved the xianxia genre — I simply had no desire to experience its horrors firsthand.
Take an example. In one xianxia novel, a protagonist avenged an attack by a cultivator by exterminating the man's entire family — every last relative clear down to the eighth cousins by marriage. Madness by our standards, but in a xianxia world, it happens. Why? A single member of a cultivator clan can live a thousand years. Attain Golden Core or Nascent Soul and you live absurdly long; when an entire clan does, you must kill them all to leave no future trouble.
Avenge someone half-heartedly, and generations later his descendants' descendants' descendants will come screaming, "You slew my great-great-great-great-grandfather! Die!!" An extreme scenario, perhaps — but cultivator grudges last exactly that long. And I was a demon beast. A grudge the size of a dust mote might return one day as a mountain of karma.
Being a demon beast myself, a year registered as hardly a month. I'd think, has it been a year or so? — ask Yoseonbang, and be told ten years had passed. That's why demon immortals regard human cultivators, who spawn descendants in droves, with such a shuddering, bone-deep loathing. Exterminate a clan out of sheer annoyance, and three hundred years later it has revived and comes swarming back in force. Practically routine. Over the long years, I'd read plenty of stories on Yoseonbang from demon beasts who'd lived through exactly that.
Granted, the demon immortals of Yoseonbang spoke from the level of Demon Kings at the very least, or beings who had ascended to Demon Venerable. Anyway. Humans were terrifying. Was going out really the right call?
Right on cue, a reply arrived.
"Break the egg," it says. I already broke out of the egg!
Of the Yellow, Mystic, Earth, and Heaven grades, Heaven reigned supreme — which made an Earth-class secret art an extraordinarily high-grade technique. And yet that very treasure had, in the space of a breath, been marked down to thirty middle-grade stones. Isn't this a scam? I wondered. And yet, with a discount that steep dangled before my eyes, I found myself badly tempted.
No answer came — apparently not. Not that I could have bought it anyway. Spirit stones. I have never once laid eyes on a spirit stone in my life.
Sulking, I munched on spirit fruit and shitposted in the gallery until, all at once, an idea struck me. These spirit fruits... could I sell them? Now that I'd reached Demon Core, I could post verification threads with pictures, like snapping a photo. Whatever species of spirit fruit these were, if they were rare, selling them might just get me spirit stones? I took the picture on the spot and uploaded it.
And — unusually for the board — replies came pouring in at once.
I had no idea what it was, but it seemed precious.