In the forest, a small boy swung an axe, chips flying like pale moths under a sift of sun. Near him crouched a white, fluffy creature, cat-shaped and cloud-soft, the kind little girls would rush to hug.

His name was Suo-Lu Baiyat, but everyone in the town called him Little Baiyat. He came to the woods like clockwork to cut firewood, his breath fogging like a kettle in the morning cool. School started in a few days. Tuition hung over him like a storm cloud that wouldn’t break.

“Kid, you look troubled.” The voice drifted over like wind through reeds.

Little Baiyat looked around, heart thudding like a rabbit. No one stood behind the trees.

“Stop looking. It’s me.”

He finally saw it: the voice came from the white, fluffy creature. He knew the little thing. Three years ago, when he’d been playing in the woods, he found it dying, breath thin as a thread. He’d used what herb lore he’d picked up from adults, crushed leaves like green fire in his palms, and fed the creature a share of his own dry rations.

After that, every time he came, the white fluff appeared. It never came close. Most days it perched on a branch like snow stuck on bark, watching him from afar as if taking notes.

Three years flew like migrating swallows, and only today did he learn the creature could speak human words. Was he dreaming under the trees?

“You… you can talk?”

“No kidding. I’ve watched your kind for three years. Is learning your language so hard?” The white creature flicked its tail like a brush stroke and stood on the treetop, aloof as a moon on a spear tip.

Little Baiyat stared. No one had ever told him animals could talk. It felt like the sky had cracked and showed a second sun.

The creature swished its tail. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Qiubi 250.”

“Qiubi… 250?”

“That’s right.”

Qiubi 250’s tail waved like a metronome, smug and rhythmic. “Kid, you’ve run into something you can’t fix. I owe you for saving me three years ago, so I’ll give you two choices.” Its tiny paw lifted like a solemn oath. “First, I can make you the master of the strongest nation in this world.”

“The master of the strongest nation…?” The words rang like a bell too big for his hands.

He was thirteen. He had a childhood friend he’d grown up with, like two seedlings under the same eave. And thirteen is when the heart wakes like a spring thaw. A town noble had chosen his childhood friend to serve as a maid in his castle. The man’s reputation was mud. Little Baiyat feared she would go and never return, her name dissolving like salt in water.

He had no way to fight a noble. So he’d dreamed of studying at the town’s academy, building knowledge like stone on stone, becoming someone whose name weighed something in the kingdom. With weight, even petty nobles step carefully. But he knew weight takes years to forge. By the time he became important, it might be too late. So he aimed higher: become the student of a famed instructor in the local academy, and borrow that name like a thunderclap to scare the bugs.

A friend had whispered that plan to him, like a torch in a cave. That’s why he cut wood, day after day, stacking coins like rings in a stump.

“So, kid, your choice?” Qiubi’s voice was a pebble dropped in a still pond.

“Huh? There’s a second one, right… Let me hear that first. Even if I became a king, I couldn’t run a country. I’d be a dim torch in a storm.”

He scratched his head, cheeks hot as coals. He was still a kid. And if a small animal could speak, then stranger things could be true. Why doubt a promise that smelled like starlight?

Talking with a child was easy. Adults wrapped themselves in caution like winter coats.

“Second choice. I take you to an academy to study. Become a student there, and those small-town nobles won’t touch you.”

“To an academy…” He scratched his head again, voice thin as smoke. “But… I don’t have money.”

Qiubi 250 made a face like a doctor staring at a hopeless case.

“Kid, you can study and work. Besides, your coin doesn’t spend over there.”

It explained and explained, words clicking like beads. The academy would let poor students delay tuition. Students could attend classes and take jobs, pay as they earned, and settle the bill later.

“And there are missions,” Qiubi added, eyes bright as frost. “Some pay so much, your reward could cover centuries of tuition.”

Little Baiyat listened as if the canopy split to show sky. He decided. “I… I can really go to school?”

School felt as distant as the moon. Everything he heard now was a lantern in fog, and the unknown academy glowed like a hidden city.

Qiubi 250 nodded. A crystal flashed into its paw like ice born from air.

“Hey… Qiubi 38? It’s Qiubi 250. My student pick is decided. Tell Qiubi 222 to deliver the admission notice.”

Little Baiyat didn’t understand a word through the crystal. The language flowed like a river he’d never crossed. The world was wide; tongues changed like soil, so he didn’t fret.

A few seconds later, the air split with a soft rip. A seam opened like an eyelid, and a rainbow corridor shimmered beyond, a tunnel of color like spilled paint. From the corridor stepped… a Qiubi. Another white fluff, identical to Qiubi 250, a snowflake copy.

“Kid, meet Qiubi 222. It’s here to deliver your admission notice. Thank it already.”

Little Baiyat stared at the twin and couldn’t make sense of it. Still, he bowed and thanked Qiubi 222 in his hometown tongue, the only net his words knew.

Qiubi 222 nodded, solemn as a judge, and handed something envelope-like to Qiubi 250. Then it produced a glass vial and a small knife as if from mist. Before Little Baiyat could flinch, the blade kissed his fingertip. Blood beaded and fell into the vial like red pearls.

When it had enough, Qiubi 222 stroked his finger. The wound sealed as if stitched by air. Then it slipped back into the rainbow corridor, which closed with a hush like a shut fan.

“Confused?” Qiubi 250’s ears twitched like leaves. “We were created by His Majesty the Void Messenger. There are many, many of us named Qiubi. To tell us apart, we got numbers, from Qiubi 1 to Qiubi 9999.”

It passed the envelope-like item to Little Baiyat. In his palm, it wasn’t an envelope at all, but a card. He stared until his eyes watered like a spring. And then he realized he couldn’t read a single symbol.

Qiubi 250 finally noticed the snag. It pulled out a glass vial filled with tiny blue beads, the liquid inside glinting like sky.

“Don’t panic, kid. Time to pop a pill.” It shoved a blue tablet into his mouth with a paw soft as cotton.

A few seconds passed.

“So? Can you read it now?”

Little Baiyat didn’t answer. He swayed like grass in wind, head buzzing like a hive.

“The sky… is… full of… little stars…” He tottered, ready to fold like a tent. Then his head started whipping side to side like a broken rattle.

Qiubi 250 yanked the vial back out. “Huh… what the—? Wrong one!”

Half an hour later, Qiubi finally found an antidote. After that, Little Baiyat refused to swallow anything it offered, no matter how honey-sweet the promises sounded.

“If I take your pills again, I’m a goner!”

Helpless, Qiubi 250 clubbed him from behind with a gentle thud and stuffed a different pill between his lips. When Little Baiyat woke, foggy as a morning lake, Qiubi smoothed it over with big words like clouds: blood pressure, blood sugar, this and that. He stopped asking why he’d fainted.

After waking, he could read the card. Qiubi 250 said it had used another method to teach him the language. What method, it wouldn’t say. Its mouth shut like a clam.

That night, back home, Little Baiyat held the card and drifted. On it stood fifteen figures, shadow-dark and faceless, like silhouettes against a sunset. Above them, four characters burned like embers: Demon King Academy.

Student Suo-Lu Baiyat, congratulations on your admission to the Demon King Academy. Please report in the ninth month of the Demon King Era, Year 372, to the Demon King Academy in Miracle City…

Demon King Academy? Miracle City? He asked everyone in town. No one had heard those names. And Demon King Era, Year 372?

When he said Demon King Academy and Miracle City, he used the Yuan-world pronunciation he’d learned. Folks just blinked. Strange sounds are slippery. The names fell like pebbles that found no water.

Even so, the card’s gold trim and diamond sparkle shone like frost at dawn.

“Little Baiyat,” said the head of the only academy in town, voice heavy as a bell. “We’ve never heard of that school, but look at this. An admission card made of gold and diamonds—must be remarkable.”

By the next day, the whole town knew he’d been accepted by a big-shot academy that walked like thunder. The local noble, unsure of the Demon King Academy’s background, didn’t dare move. Qiubi 250 had promised: after one year of study at the Demon King Academy, when Little Baiyat returned for break, he wouldn’t need to fear that petty noble.

Three days later, under his family’s tear-bright eyes, Little Baiyat stepped into a rainbow corridor. The air whooshed. His figure thinned like mist. Then he was gone.