Chapter Text
“These minor demons had never dared to do more than snoop and thieve here and there. But if he could supply them with an honest channel for small goods, perhaps within this world that revolved around cultivation and monster-fighting, he could forge paths into a new frontier based on farming and amassing capital?” —pg. 180, Seven Seas English translation
Six Balls was having a rotten day. Most of his days were a fair bit rotten as a rule, ever since that very first day, fourteen years ago, when his pa scooped him up by the ankle and declared him the runt of the litter—not even seven balls heavy! The less said about his childhood after that unlucky start, the better.
Thing was, today had been looking up. Recently, his crew had been following the trail of an important human, who had been traveling the roads at night, spreading attendants ahead to scout, and leaving all sorts of rich pickings behind.
This morning’s scavenging alone turned up more human loot than his crew usually found in a week: half a dozen empty feed bags abandoned on the side of the road, just waiting to have a few arm holes poked into them and turned into shirts! An embossed leather water skin! And, Six Balls’ favorite find: one of those dangly bits cultivators dangled from their cultivator swords, with dainty, polished stones and fiddly braided ribbons.
The problem with having such good luck was that it was hard to know when to stop. Xiao Lizi had already been whining at them to start back to the nearest portal and see how much Auntie Snaggletooth would trade them for it, but it was Six Balls who insisted they push a little farther down the road, just over the next hill.
Maybe they’d even find the sword his new dangly tassel belonged to. These humans were tossing away all their other riches, so why not?
The only thing they had found over the next hill was a very loud, very angry crowd of humans rushing into them like a tidal wave.
In the scuffle that followed, they were all trussed up in rope and dragged up the road to the human village, kicking and screaming and cursing all the way. Xiao Lizi managed to squirm free long enough to take a chunk out of her captor’s ear off with her teeth, but then she got her head bashed open right there in the middle of the town square.
It was… a real rotten day.
He’d only been running with his new crew for a few months now, and he hadn’t even had to knock out anyone’s teeth yet to prove that a mere-six-ball-heavy baby really could grow up to be a capable scavenge leader. Usually that sort of thing came up right after the first, “So what are you called, then?”
He liked them, is the point.
He liked how Xiao Lizi’s sneaking could find them the best hiding spaces to spy on human travelers, how Cockeye’s sharp nose could sniff out all the best treasures, how Ax-Face’s broad shoulders could carry back all their loot.
Six Balls, obviously, was the thinker of the crew. The mastermind. Only, he’d gotten too greedy about his new fancy dangle and now Xiao Lizi was…
He snarled out another curse as a particularly ugly human patted him down, stealing not just his three favorite knives, but also his newly prized sword tassel.
The human mob was still loudly debating the best way to kill the rest of them when his luck started to change once again.
“What, exactly, do you intend to do with those children?” The clear voice cut through the crowd.
Slender as a ghost-bog reed, the—man? It was hard to tell if he was human or demon under all that mud—well, the stranger, anyway, shouldn’t have seemed like much of a threat, but some animal instinct in Six Balls cringed back from the weight of his presence.
Even the humans seemed to sense it, judging by how quickly they shuffled aside to let the stranger pass through the crowd. It may have also just been the smell.
Wearing half a mountain’s worth of dirt and a patchy beard, the stranger reminded Six Balls of the Undead Bearded Bandit from pa’s bedtime stories. His hair fell in tangles to his waist, and bare, blackened feet poked out under the dirt-crusted robes.
He looked… He looked like a real hero who’d just rolled out of a fresh grave. The coolest, scariest kind of hero was the fresh-out-of-a-grave kind, in Six Balls’s opinion; that was when they were about to wreck the bloodiest vengeance on anything standing in their path.
“Children?!” yelled one of the stupider humans, who clearly didn’t know the best way to talk to an undead hero. (Don’t, if you can help it.) “These demons slaughtered six good men! Our regiment came back from patrol to find a fucking massacre and this lot still skulking about just down the road, too shameless to even hide their stolen trophies.”
“I see.” The stranger turned to Six Balls and his crew. “Is that true?”
“I d-d-don’t, um… we didn’t…” He trailed off, the tongue that had just been spewing the filthiest swears he knew now felt heavy in his mouth. Cockeye and Ax-Face fidgeted next to him, equally speechless under the stranger’s intense gaze.
Six Balls steeled himself. This was the problem with being the leader: Everyone expected you to lead.
Haltingly, he did his best to recount their day. The highs of finding the feed bag haul, the lows of the angry humans. He couldn’t bring himself to explain what happened to Xiao Lizi, but with her blood still slowly seeping into the packed dirt, a gesture was explanation enough.
The possibly-undead bandit turned back to the stupid human who had challenged him, face unreadable. “Show me where you found the bodies.”
Flanked by the restless crowd, Six Balls’s crew and the human regiment all filed into the teahouse’s front room behind the strange hero. Six Balls was still trembling in fear, but not even the chaffing restraints could derail his curiosity at seeing the inside of a human building.
The humans seemed too stuck on all the streaks of guts and chunky bits to appreciate the wealth on display, but once you got past all the gore strewn across the room, it was a treasure trove.
Someone had already done a decent enough job cleaning up the body parts bigger than a mangled finger or two, but they’d left all sorts of shiny weapons just lying where they’d fallen. Ceramic cups, some of them hardly even chipped, were scattered across the floor. A heaping, uneaten bowl of lamb noodles beckoned from one of the few intact tables, its inviting smell vying for attention against the far stronger scent of blood.
The humans were so rich they even put dresses on their buildings. Long swaths of fabric fluttered from the top of each window to the floor.
Auntie Snagletooth would probably even pay extra for all the decorative blood splatters. Very artistic! He clenched both hands into fists to resist the urge to reach out and touch.
“Admiring your handiwork, I see,” the stupidest human sneered, once he’d recovered from emptying his stomach on his own shoes (stupid! Wasteful!). He grabbed Six Balls by the shoulder roughly and shook.
“His handiwork?” The bearded bandit’s voice was cold. “Surely you don’t still think these pathetic little creatures are responsible? Imagine living in the borderlands and not being able to recognize the work of a shivering mimic ghoul.”
At the humans’ blank expressions, he continued. “A shivering mimic ghoul? A low-level demonic shapeshifter that feeds on human fear?” He paused. “Well, human livers, to be more precise, but only after they’ve been properly seasoned with fear. They tend to disguise themselves in a crowd before picking off their victims one by one, to let the panic sweeten the meal.”
The guards all looked even greener at the explanation. This time it wasn’t the stupidest human to break the silence, but the bastard who’d stolen Six Balls’s treasured tassel. “And how the hell do you figure that? By my count, we’ve got six dead bodies, three guilty demons, and no shivering whatever whatever.”
“Shivering mimic ghoul. And you left out one important number: There were five guards when we walked in. How many do you count now?”
With a low snarl, one of the humans—no, the shivering mimic ghoul launched itself at the stranger. The other humans exploded into panicked shouts. Six Balls dropped to the ground and wriggled away, as the stupidest guard fumbled for a weapon.
There was a burst of light, the thick smell of char, and, then, quiet.
Peeking out from an overturned table, Six Balls saw what had silenced the guards: The stranger had blasted a hole clear through his attacker’s midsection—and half the wall behind it. What remained of the ghoul was smeared in a viscous trail across the floor. A swirl of ash fluttered down through the sunlight now streaming through the gaping wall before settling on the sticky ground.
The...cultivator, obviously. Undead cultivator? The hero was eying his own hand like it was a stray dog he’d met on the road, the sort that might leap up and bite you at the wrong move. At least, that’s what it looked like to Six Balls—honestly, it was still hard to tell what he was thinking under all that hair.
“Well!” the stranger said finally, wiping his dirty hands on his equally filthy robes, “I think you’d better let the demon children free, now that the true murderer has revealed itself.”
The humans didn’t think they’d better let the demons free, but they also didn’t think they wanted to be standing between the stranger’s exploding hand and the door. After a short discussion—the humans all smiled a lot, but only with their mouths—it was agreed: Six Balls and his remaining crew would be allowed to leave, as long as they took the cultivator-hero-undead-bandit with them.
The sun was dipping below the horizon by the time they made it to the nearest portal into the demon realm. Six Balls led the way across the scraggly borderland terrain, preening under the attention of his hero.
Peerless Cucumber—that was his name, Six Balls and his crew had learned. An auspicious name! Very impressive!—had all sorts of questions and seemed pleased with the answers. He wanted to know what sorts of human treasures they scavenged most and who they traded them with back home and for what and how long and, and, and…
He even wanted to meet Auntie Snaggletooth. That seemed like a not-great idea—nobody wanted to meet Auntie Snaggletooth—but Six Balls hadn’t been able to talk him out of it.
No, Peerless Cucumber insisted: A dependable supplier was a prerequisite for any new commercial venture. Whatever that meant.
Six Balls took one final look at the human realm as Ax-Face hoisted him and Cockeye through the portal before clamoring through after them. “I miss my dangle,” he mumbled.
The cultivator glided through the portal behind them, eyes drifting down to Six Balls’ waist. “Your… dangle.”
“My dangly bit! A fancy sword dangle! I found it fair and square and that bastard stole it.” He still wasn’t over it, either. Sword dangles don’t grow on trees!
(Do they grow on trees? He’d heard some pretty weird things grow on trees in the human realm—flowers that don’t try to bite your nose off even if you get close enough to sniff, fruits you can eat straight off the branch without having to dissolve the spiky shells in umber-fire-toad acid first, piles of leaves you walk right through without rousing any marrow-burrowing chits.)
“Ah, a sword tassel.” Peerless Cucumber sounded relieved. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully—a cloud of loose beard hairs flurried off as he did—and surveyed the rocky expanse of the demon realm.
The broken landscape gleamed a dull red in the dying light slanting through the portal. A pair of rat-nosed cliff swallows chased each other across the sky. Unseen in the distance, some larger bird let out a lonesome hunting screech. Something in the desolate view seemed to satisfy Peerless Cucumber.
“Well, little demons, how would you like to earn enough money to buy all the dangly bits you could ever want?”