Back in Clearwater Village, the people began to organize. Cleaning up Shuan from the walls, literally, parts of him had somehow ended up fifteen feet high and checking on each other.
The village elder gathered everyone in the square as the last light faded from the sky.
"We survived," he said quietly. "That's what matters."
"But Shuan..." someone started.
"Shuan stood between a Foundation Realm cultivator and his path." The elder's voice was heavy. "There was nothing any of us mortals could have done. The moment he stepped forward, his fate was sealed."
Silence fell over the square. Fifty people, traumatized, processing what had just happened to their peaceful village.
"He danced," someone whispered. "The demon danced on the body."
"I saw him waving the... the pieces around," another voice added. "Like he was celebrating."
The elder didn't respond.
"What do we do if he comes back?" a mother asked, clutching her child.
"We give him whatever he wants," the elder said firmly. "We don't fight. We don't resist. We live."
And so the story began.
Three days later, fifty miles east in a trading post that served as the gossip hub for three villages, that same elder sat across from a traveling merchant, nursing a cup of terrible rice wine.
"You won't believe what happened," the elder said, voice still shaking. "A demon. An actual demon attacked our village."
The merchant leaned forward. Business had been slow. A good story was worth its weight in silver. "A demon? What kind?"
"Young man. Long hair. Foundation Realm at least." The elder took a shaky drink. "Killed our guard with a single blow. Just... exploded him. Pieces everywhere. Then he DANCED on the body parts."
The merchant's eyes widened. "He danced?"
"Like a puppet master! Waving the limbs around, laughing!" The elder's hands shook as he gestured wildly. "Blood everywhere. And his eyes... cold. Dead inside. No mercy. No humanity."
Hunter had not danced. Hunter had stumbled around crying, trying to put a man back together while having a complete mental breakdown. But stories grow in the telling.
"How many men did he have with him?" the merchant asked, already calculating how much he could sell this information for.
"Three. Maybe four. Hard to tell with how fast they moved." The elder drained his cup. "He quoted some kind of demonic scripture. Said he had a very particular set of skills. That he'd hunt us down and kill us all if we didn't comply."
The merchant nodded sagely, filing away every detail. This was good information. The kind people paid for.
"Foundation Realm, you said?"
"At least. Maybe higher. The power he radiated..." The elder shuddered. "I've never felt anything like it. Like standing next to the sun."
One week later, that same merchant told a farmer at a roadside inn, the story having already evolved in his mind.
"Demon cultivator in the Northern Wilderness," he said importantly, enjoying his captive audience. "Ten feet tall, they say. Killed fifty men at Clearwater Village."
The farmer's eyes went wide. "Fifty men? But Clearwater doesn't have fifty—"
"With his MIND," the merchant interrupted. "Just looked at them and they exploded. Blood everywhere. Then he danced in it." He leaned in conspiratorially. "Foundation Realm minimum. Possibly Core Formation. Uses forbidden shadow techniques."
"Shadow techniques?" The farmer's hand trembled around his drink.
"Death qi manipulation. Soul-stealing arts. He can kill you just by looking at you." The merchant tapped his temple knowingly. "Has a very particular set of skills, this one. Makes him a nightmare for villages."
The farmer paid for the merchant's drink and hurried home to tell his wife.
Two weeks later, the farmer's wife told the baker while buying bread, the story having grown in her retelling.
"There's a demon in the north," she whispered urgently, glancing around like he might appear at any moment. "Twenty feet tall. Killed a hundred men at Clearwater Village. Just by looking at them."
The baker nearly dropped her rolling pin. "A hundred men?"
"Massacred the entire village. Men, women, children." The wife's voice dropped lower. "They say he's not even human anymore. Uses forbidden techniques. Shadow manipulation. Death qi. Soul-stealing."
"But I heard Clearwater Village is still standing," the baker pointed out.
The wife waved this away. "He let them live to spread his legend. To make others fear him. That's how demons work. They feed on terror."
"What does he look like?"
"Pale as death. Long black hair. Eyes like ice. When he kills, he dances on the corpses and laughs." The wife shuddered. "They say arrows bounce off him. Swords shatter against his skin. He's unkillable."
The baker, naturally, told everyone who came into her shop that day. And they told others. And the story grew.
Three weeks after the raid, a cultivator from the Azure Cloud Sect stopped at that same baker's shop, drawn by reports of demonic activity in the region.
"Tell me about this demon," Liu Mei said, her voice calm but her eyes sharp as broken glass.
The baker told her everything she'd heard. The thirty-foot-tall monster. The thousand men slaughtered. The forbidden shadow techniques. The dancing on corpses. The unkillable demon who fed on terror.
Liu Mei listened, her cultivation allowing her to filter truth from exaggeration with practiced ease.
Foundation Realm cultivator, probably. Attacked Clearwater Village. Killed at least one person, possibly more. Shadow techniques, possibly. Cruel methods.
Thirty feet tall? Absurd. Thousand men? The village didn't have a thousand people. But enough truth existed in the core of the story to warrant investigation.
A rogue cultivator terrorizing mortals. Using forbidden techniques. Leaving survivors to spread fear.
That was her jurisdiction.
"Which direction?" Liu Mei asked.
The baker pointed north with a trembling hand. "The Northern Wilderness. They say he has a camp there. That he's gathering followers."
Liu Mei thanked the baker, left silver on the counter, and headed north.
Toward the Northern Wilderness.
Toward Hunter's camp.
Toward the "demon" who had no idea his legend had grown so far beyond reality.
Meanwhile, completely unaware that he was now a thirty-foot-tall unkillable demon who danced on corpses, Hunter sat by his campfire eating burnt rabbit and feeling sorry for himself.
"You think they'll forget about us?" he asked Luna.
[LUNA] OH DEFINITELY
[LUNA] HUMANS HAVE SHORT MEMORIES
[LUNA] ESPECIALLY ABOUT TRAUMATIC DEMON ATTACKS ¯_(ツ)_/¯
"I'm not a demon."
[LUNA] YOU DANCED WITH BODY PARTS
"I DID NOT DANCE."
[LUNA] THAT'S NOT WHAT THE RUMORS SAY (◕‿◕✿)
Hunter froze mid-bite. "What rumors?"
[LUNA] OH YOU KNOW
[LUNA] JUST THE ONES SPREADING ACROSS LIKE THREE PROVINCES
[LUNA] NO BIG DEAL
"Luna. What rumors."
[LUNA] APPARENTLY YOU'RE THIRTY FEET TALL NOW
[LUNA] CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GROWTH SPURT ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
[LUNA] ALSO YOU KILLED A THOUSAND PEOPLE
[LUNA] WITH YOUR MIND
[LUNA] WHILE DANCING
Hunter put down his rabbit. "I killed ONE person. Accidentally. And I cried about it."
[LUNA] YEAH BUT CRYING DOESN'T MAKE FOR GOOD LEGEND MATERIAL
[LUNA] DANCING THOUGH? VERY MEMORABLE (◠‿◠✿)
"I didn't dance!"
[LUNA] YOU KEEP SAYING THAT
[LUNA] BUT THE PEOPLE DISAGREE
Hunter put his head in his hands. "This is a nightmare."
[LUNA] COULD BE WORSE
"How?"
[LUNA] THEY COULD SEND SOMEONE TO INVESTIGATE
[LUNA] LIKE A POWERFUL CULTIVATOR
[LUNA] FROM A BIG SECT
[LUNA] TO HUNT DOWN THE DEMON
Hunter's blood went cold. "They wouldn't."
[LUNA] THEY ABSOLUTELY WOULD
[LUNA] THAT'S LIKE... STANDARD PROCEDURE
[LUNA] DEMON TERRORIZES VILLAGES?
[LUNA] SECT SENDS SOMEONE TO DEAL WITH IT
[LUNA] VERY NORMAL ♪(´▽｀)
"But I'm not a demon!"
[LUNA] AGAIN, THE RUMORS DISAGREE
[LUNA] ALSO YOU KIND OF ARE A BANDIT
[LUNA] WHO USES SHADOW TECHNIQUES
[LUNA] AND KILLS PEOPLE
[LUNA] SO LIKE... CLOSE ENOUGH? (◕‿◕✿)
Hunter stared at the fire, watching the flames dance, and wondered if his plant back in Boston was doing okay.
It was probably dead by now.
Just like he was going to be when some righteous cultivator showed up to "deal with the demon problem."
"This is fine," he muttered. "Everything's fine."
[LUNA] THAT'S THE SPIRIT!
[LUNA] POSITIVE THINKING ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Hunter didn't feel positive. He felt like a man who'd accidentally become the villain of someone else's story and was about to face the consequences.
The story from Clearwater Village, the one where he was the demon, was already spreading.
And somewhere out there, someone was coming to stop him.
He just didn't know it yet.