"No! What proof do you have you’re the Demon King?!"

The old man clung to doubt like an old pine on a cliff, insisting Rafi was a fake.

Rafi didn’t bother with proof; whoosh—she folded space like a shadow and appeared before him.

Her whip-kick snapped like a reed in a storm and smacked his belly like a drum, flinging him and Wang Xiaoming like dry leaves.

As he sailed, he saw a figure in the sky waving, like a ghost on the moon calling him over; he reached out, and fire seared his back.

Rafi had slipped behind him like a cat; another whip-kick cracked him back the way he came, a pendulum made of pain.

He skidded to Ling’s side, momentum roaring like a river; a hand clamped his head like iron and killed the rush cold.

Before he could thank her, that hand gave a gentle push; he and Wang Xiaoming toppled in a compromising tangle, like fallen chopsticks.

Wang Xiaoming was the first to prop himself up, panic inked across his face like a spill. "What the hell, why?!"

"Eh?"

"Eh, my ass! What the hell—my first time!"

The old man blinked, then remembered his palm had gripped something square and solid, like a brick—no, like a pectoral.

"Could it be—?!"

"Exactly your ‘could it be’! How’re you gonna take responsibility? No woman outside my family’s touched there! Why can a man, decades older, touch it?!"

"N-no… I’ll take responsibility. Calm down first. This is a battlefield, with blades in the wind."

"Calm down, my ass! My boobs are precious, like jade! Mom said men can’t let people grope them there, or they’ll get pregnant!"

"Huh?!"

"The only fix is to kill you now! Otherwise I’ll get pregnant!"

Strength surged from nowhere, like a bonfire catching; maybe rage, maybe from the “child” in his gut, and his fist hammered toward the old man’s face.

To a mage whose body was paper and his spells were steel, that punch was a falling anvil; if it landed, he’d die on the spot.

Bang!

But with Ling there, fate bent like bamboo. Her small hand clamped his forearm mid-swing, a vise colder than winter iron.

"What the hell, why?!"

Smack!

The slap rang like spring thunder; his head snapped right, and a maple-red handprint bloomed on his cheek.

He grabbed his face and turned back, insisting the crack he heard was wind in reeds, not bones misaligned.

"What the hell, why!"

Ling’s brows drew like twin bows, and her face darkened like a raincloud over a lake.

"Your mouth can be foul, but the same line three times is lazy… Forget it. Listen closely to what I say next."

"Hmm?"

"If someone touches your belly, a man won’t get pregnant. Got it?"

"What? No way!"

"Facts are facts. Men don’t get pregnant from belly touching."

"Then… when do they get pregnant?"

"Obviously, from kissing. If a man gets kissed by a man, he gets pregnant. With good luck, both men get pregnant."

Wang Xiaoming’s worldview hard-reset like a manual F5; his brain blue-screened, his body a statue.

Only breath moving like a bellows and a faint rise of his chest said he was alive; in every other way, he was a corpse.

"Alright, enough. Time’s dripping away like spilled tea. Hey! You, the one calling yourself the Demon King! If I beat you, will you call back those Demon Elite?"

"How dull… utterly dull," Rafi’s voice fell like winter ash. "You beat a few—let’s be generous with ‘few’—Demon Elite and think you can beat me? You’re just human."

They’d rehearsed that exchange, a Script stitched in secret, but the old man didn’t know; he spread his arms like a hen shielding chicks.

"Child! No! Don’t fight the Demon King. His terror is an ocean you can’t imagine. Even hundreds more Demon Elite aren’t worth one of his hands. You’ll die!"

Ling, mid-line, felt that warning land like a warm coal in winter; only Alicia ever bothered to say such things to her.

She turned with a forty-five-degree glance, shy as a new bride, and an angel’s smile lit her face like dawn.

"Relax. I absolutely won’t die. Not a flag."