To that sleazy guy’s antics, Qihe felt only scorn, like swatting a fly humming to itself; he knew his own weight like a mountain knows its slope. You think someone like him is pebbles on a riverbed, pick one and it’ll do? You think a few random bravos can school him like street dogs snapping at a tiger’s shadow?

The First Demon King is a freak, sure, a thunderhead on the horizon; but this sleazy guy trading a few blows with him was already rare, like two meteors crossing. Beyond that, comb this world’s annals like sifting deserts, and you won’t find a third at that height.

Very soon, Qihe learned he was wrong, like a wave breaking and realizing the cliff is higher.

“Give me a sec, I’ll set them a temporary world gate,” the sleazy guy said, back turned like a man warming his hands at a stove; he acted as if Qihe wouldn’t strike like lightning from a clear sky. Qihe’s thoughts snagged like silk on a thorn—what was he doing? Calling his brothers like wolves to a howl?

With that thought, Qihe stayed his hand, a blade sheathed under frost; he wanted to see what surprise this creep could pull from his sleeve. No way some smoke and mirrors could flip a mountain.

Back turned, the sleazy guy fiddled with who-knows-what, fingers quick like sparrows. A door of light bloomed, a white iris in Qihe’s vision. The breath from that gate pricked him like winter needles; an unease rolled in like fog. Wrong? Had he been wrong from the root? Would whatever stepped out of that door swat him like a leaf in a storm?

The light warped like heat over sand. Five people stepped through, grim as thunder gods. One carried a broad machete, a moon of steel; one hefted a spiked club, a bristling comet; one shouldered a sledgehammer, a falling star; one gripped giant shears, cold like twin moons; the last held a thin barrel-like thing, thumb-thick, tipped with a slender needle, like a wasp’s sting on a reed.

“That the kid?” said the one in a white lab coat, finger like an arrow leveled at Qihe; his weapon looked harmless as a teacup, yet his voice landed first, like a bell before a procession, marking his place.

“Yeah, that native,” the sleazy guy said, disdain sharp as vinegar. “He’s been a headache like grit in the eye.”

Then the five moved, clean as rain, hard as hail. Qihe prided himself not as the first under heaven, but as the second, a peak among peaks. Yet look at these five, he thought, and his heart sank like a stone in deep water.

“Ah—brother, stop—stop!” Qihe howled like a ghost in a gale; it wasn’t that he couldn’t take a hit, it was that their weapons were uncanny as dreams. The machete split him in two like a log under an axe; the pain was real as fire on flesh. But in a blink, his body knit like ice refreezing on a pond.

At first, swagger rose like steam—so he was immortal? He even smirked like a fox warming by the brazier.

The spiked club turned him into a sieve, holes whistling like a flute in wind; the giant shears snipped his inner field, his qi-web, into ragged ribbons like torn banners; the sledgehammer pulped his brain to paste, a melon under a mallet. He just wouldn’t die, like a candle that relights in a draft, yet every jolt of pain burned on, a brand that wouldn’t cool.

Half-mad, he bit his palm, teeth like knives; blood welled warm as a spring, and the wound did not heal, stark as ink on snow. He wasn’t immortal after all, not even a salamander in rain.

So the problem perched in their weapons like a hawk on a pine. When they hit, the damage was real as thunder, and then his body rewound like a tide, while the pain lingered like smoke after fire. The machete cut him in two; a heartbeat later he was whole, yet the ache clung like a shadow at noon.

“Stop, stop!” he shouted, voice cracking like dry bamboo. “I’m just—just following orders!” At that cliff’s edge, his mind grabbed a vine—dump the blame like tossing a hot coal.

He couldn’t match these people; that was cold iron. But the First Demon King? That was another cloud. He was here on the First Demon King’s command to haul that Realm Envoy over, like a courier in storm; if they had a gripe, they could take it to the First Demon King’s door.

Sure enough, at Qihe’s words, the sleazy guy lifted a hand, and the five drew back like wolves called off the kill.

“Following orders, huh? Whose orders?” His tone cut like a ledger knife. “Don’t think you can fog me with kindergarten tricks. If a merchant can still be fooled by that, he can fold his stall.”

Flat on his back, Qihe dragged air like a drowning man finding shore; he felt the world bloom, fresh as pine, wide as sky. The air was sweet as new rain. The sky was a deep-washed blue. The cloud above was clean as bleached silk.

“It was… a Demon King,” he stammered, words tumbling like stones. “He said… to bring you to him…”

“What? A Demon King?” The sleazy guy’s brow knotted like cord. “Since when did that pop up like a mushroom? I thought you were this world’s top dog.” His eyes narrowed, weighing sand and gold. “And you obey him. So you can’t beat him, right?”

Qihe bobbed his head like a drum under a stick, tears pricking like nettles. “Brothers, you don’t know,” he said, voice hoarse as wind. “That guy’s a monster. He stood there like a mountain and let me hit. I hit till my legs shook like reeds, till I couldn’t even walk, and he was fine. Not a scratch. Not a sigh.”

At that, not just Qihe but the five he’d called wore iron faces. They’d bullied Qihe like a cat toys with a cicada; but to stand still and let Qihe swing, and come away untouched? Not one of them would swear to that under the open sky. And Qihe had said he struck till he couldn’t walk, like a runner burning out his last breath.

“What’s with that guy?” the sleazy one muttered, mind combing the map like a fisherman dragging nets. “How’ve I never heard of him?” He knew this world’s chessboard like an old gambler knows his dice; he kept a ledger of names worth noting. No piece in memory fit this shape.

“That monster… fell from the sky,” Qihe said, eyes dark as a well. “A meteor came down, blazing like a torch, and he jumped out of the crater like a demon out of a bell.”

The sleazy guy’s face sank like dusk. Not a native, then; a visitor from beyond the blue, maybe from some unknown high civilization, a ship sailing past the sun. As his thought sparked, the man in the lab coat spoke, voice bright as a match: “Hey, what if he’s from an unknown high civilization? If it’s an undiscovered region, we’re gonna be famous like a new star named!”

At his words, the others rubbed their palms, heat rising like coal. If that place was uncharted sea, then as first discoverers, their names could paint that constellation like ink on a map.

Just the thought drummed hot blood, like war drums under a red sky. Most regions had been gnawed over by adventurers, bones picked clean; but the starry sea is vast, and there are always dark coves waiting like pearls in deep water.

They hauled Qihe along, a captive kite on a string, and under his lead they headed for Anyao’s capital, Whiteglow City, like a caravan rolling toward a lighthouse.

“Over there, that palace,” Qihe said, dangling from the sleazy guy’s grip like a chicken, pointing at Ouyang’s hall, eaves like wings. It had been his turf, his garden wall; now it was Ouyang’s. If these bosses crushed the First Demon King, his palace would return like a spring swallowing winter.

They prepped for a fight and burst into the palace like a storm breaking a gate.

“Hungry… so hungry… give me… food…” A weak voice seeped up from below like water through stone. They looked down. A man in black lay prone on the floor like a shadow, breath thin as smoke, life flickering like a spent wick.

On reflex, the sleazy guy whipped out a plate of roast goose, steam rising like incense. Before he could explain, the “dying” man sprang up like a spring snake, and with hand speed faster than a blink, the goose vanished like a fish into dark water.

One second later, only a few bones clinked on the plate, white as driftwood.

“Delicious,” the man said, eyes bright as stars. “Is that Pula swan? Any more? Any more? Any more?”

Pula swan—rare as moonlight in a bottle—was said to come only from the Aup World, feathers like frost. The sleazy guy’s guts twisted the moment he brought it out; he reached to swap it for something cheaper, but the “half-dead” fellow had already lifted it like a thief plucking a peach.

He mourned his wallet for a few breaths, like a widow at a cold grave; then worry crawled in like ants, because that hand speed was no small river—more like a riptide.

“Brother,” he said, voice tight as a purse string, “that roast is crazy expensive, blood-spattered expensive. I fought a war at the auction house, sky-spinning and earth-shaking, to win it. And you just ate it…”

He mourned again, eyes wet as dew. He might actually cry.

“Huh? How much? I’ll pay you!” the man in black said, head tilting like a curious crow.

The sleazy guy hadn’t expected decent manners, and a promise like a coin on the table. “The live swan at auction ate a hundred years of my savings like a river eats banks. Total, one thousand Demon King coins. And what you ate was processed by yours truly; with labor costs, it’s eleven hundred Demon King coins. If you don’t have Demon King coins…”

“One hundred years for only a thousand Demon King coins?” Ouyang blurted, eyebrows jumping like startled hares. “Are wages that low now? Or are you just that broke?” Then he settled, thoughts falling like leaves. His impression of currency was from long ago, the Source World era. After endless wars, by the time he left, the money system hadn’t been rebuilt; now it must have, and the scale had shifted like sandbars.

Back then, a hundred Demon King coins could buy a low-tier planet, a marble in the dark; now you could get one for fifty. So the sleazy guy’s pay looked thin as paper, but each coin bit harder, weighty as lead. His thousand today might match ten thousand in the old dawn, a shadow across eras.

Of course, that was only a lantern’s metaphor, not a ledger’s number; Ouyang didn’t know the exact exchange, not yet.

At Ouyang’s words, the sleazy guy looked ready to bawl, eyes glossy as fish. “Broke? Please. Even the Astral Envoy, that civil-servant gig, earns only a hundred Demon King coins per ten years, sand ticking slow. I saved a thousand—that’s their hundred-year wage. So my pay’s not that far off the Astral Envoys, give or take a hair.”

Ten years for a hundred coins; ten a year, like rain in a dry season. Ouyang pressed a hand to his forehead, headache spreading like ink. Times had shifted, like stars wheeling while you blink.

“What era is this now? Astral calendar, what year?” His voice wandered like a traveler looking for old roads.

“Age of Sailing, year 1732!” the sleazy guy said, crisp as a bell.

“Oh,” Ouyang murmured, blinking like a cat. “So not that long. About the time for a yawn…” He paused, then frowned like a cloud. “Wait. What’s this Age of Sailing?”