Kai woke the next morning to a body that didn't feel like his own.
He lay still in his bed, eyes fixed on the wooden ceiling beams, aware of every breath flowing through his lungs with crystalline clarity. His senses had sharpened overnight—he could hear his mother's footsteps in the kitchen below, could distinguish the individual chirps of three different birds outside his window, could feel the morning air moving across his skin like silk.
But it was his chest that demanded attention.
Slowly, Kai sat up and pulled open his sleeping robe. The mark had changed. Where once there had been a lotus with a vertical eye, now intricate scales spread across his left pectoral, flowing down toward his ribs. The pattern resembled a dragon—coiled, serpentine, with horns that curved back toward his shoulder and claws that seemed to grip his flesh from within. It was still dark as ink, but now it shimmered with the faintest purple sheen when the light caught it right.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" the demon's voice murmured in his mind, no longer pressing and overwhelming, but settled somewhere deep in his consciousness like a second heartbeat. "The mark adapts. Shows the world what it expects to see."
"A dragon," Kai breathed, touching the scales. They felt warm beneath his fingertips, almost alive. "Why a dragon?"
"Because demons are heresy. Dragons are legend. Which would you rather be—an abomination to be purged, or a prodigy to be cultivated?"
Kai understood immediately. Dragon lineage was rare but not unheard of. Ancient bloodlines sometimes produced descendants with draconic heritage, blessed with superior cultivation potential and coveted by sects across the realm. A dragon mark would open doors. A demon mark would open graves.
"Clever," Kai admitted.
"I am ten thousand years old, little mortal. I did not survive the sealing by being stupid." The demon's presence shifted, almost playful. "Now, shall we see what your new body can do? Circulate your qi. Feel the difference."
Kai settled into meditation posture, closed his eyes, and reached for his qi.
The response was immediate and staggering.
Before, gathering qi had been like trying to collect morning mist with his bare hands—slow, frustrating, most of it slipping away before he could condense it into usable energy. Now, it was like opening a floodgate. Qi poured into his dantian from the air around him, from the earth beneath him, even from the faint warmth of sunlight beginning to stream through his window.
His meridians—previously narrow, sluggish channels—now felt like rivers. Eight extraordinary meridians, twelve standard meridians, all of them opened, cleared, widened beyond what should have been possible for someone at his cultivation level. The qi flowed through them with almost no resistance, cycling through his body in the pattern of the basic cultivation technique his father had taught him.
But even that basic technique felt different now. Where before he'd struggled to complete a single circulation in an hour, now he completed one in minutes. Each cycle refined the qi further, compressed it, made it denser and more potent within his dantian.
Kai could feel himself advancing. Not in days or weeks—in hours.
The sixth stage of Qi Condensation Realm solidified, then began pushing toward the seventh. His dantian expanded to accommodate the increasing energy, the qi within it growing from a small pool to a swirling vortex.
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" the demon purred. "What took others years, you will accomplish in months. What took them months, you will accomplish in weeks. This is the power of fully opened meridians, boy. This is what the heavens denied you, and what I have given you."
Kai opened his eyes, his heart pounding—not from exertion, but from exhilaration. For the first time in his life, cultivation didn't feel like pushing a boulder uphill. It felt like flying.
"How long until I reach Meridian Opening Realm?" Kai asked.
"At this rate? Two months, perhaps three. You're at sixth stage Qi Condensation now. Nine stages total before you begin opening your twelve standard meridians properly. After that comes Foundation Establishment, then Core Formation, then Nascent Soul..." The demon rattled off the realms with casual familiarity. "Twenty-five realms to true immortality, little mortal. We have a long road ahead."
Twenty-five realms. Most cultivators never made it past the tenth. The sect leader of Verdant Peak was rumored to be at the thirteenth realm—Soul Integration. And yet, for the first time, Kai felt like immortality wasn't just a dream for other people.
It could be his.
A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.
"Kai? Are you awake?" His mother's voice, warm with concern. "You missed breakfast. Are you feeling alright?"
Kai quickly closed his robe, covering the mark. "I'm fine, Mother. Just... slept poorly. I'll be down in a moment."
He heard her footsteps retreat, and something in his chest twisted. He waited for the familiar warmth of affection, the love he'd always felt for his mother. It came, but it was muted, as if wrapped in cotton. He could recognize the emotion, could remember what it felt like, but couldn't quite feel it fully.
"The price," the demon reminded him softly. "I feed on your positive emotions. Each day, they will fade a little more. Eventually, you will remember love the way you remember a dream—knowing you had it, but unable to recreate the sensation."
Kai touched his chest, feeling the dragon mark pulse beneath his palm. "And negative emotions?"
"Those remain yours. Fear, anger, hatred, pain—I have no use for them. You may keep those in abundance."
A fair trade, Kai told himself. What use was love if you were dead? What use was joy if you were powerless?
He dressed quickly and went downstairs.
His parents were in the main hall, his father reviewing village accounts while his mother mended clothes. They both looked up as Kai entered, and he saw his father's eyes narrow slightly.
"You look different," Chen Wei said carefully.
Kai froze. Could he see the change? Sense the power now flowing through his son's body?
"You look taller," his mother added with a smile. "I swear you've grown an inch overnight. Soon you'll be taller than your father."
Kai relaxed slightly. Physical changes from cultivation breakthroughs were normal enough. "I had a breakthrough last night. In my meditation. I reached sixth stage Qi Condensation."
The account book slipped from his father's hands.
"Sixth stage?" Chen Wei stood abruptly, crossing the room to grip Kai's shoulders. "You were at first stage last week! How is this possible?"
Kai had prepared for this. "I don't know. Something just... clicked. The qi suddenly flowed easier, and I couldn't stop it. It kept circulating, kept refining. I thought I was dreaming."
His mother's hand flew to her mouth. "A sudden enlightenment? Kai, that's—that's rare! Some cultivators wait their entire lives for even one moment of enlightenment!"
"They're buying it," the demon observed with amusement. "Humans always prefer comfortable lies to uncomfortable truths."
Chen Wei's grip tightened, his eyes shining with something Kai distantly recognized as pride. "We need to test this. If you've truly reached sixth stage, and if your cultivation has genuinely accelerated... Kai, the sect needs to know about this."
"The sect?" Kai frowned. "Father, they didn't help us during the plague. Why would I want their attention now?"
"Because they'll give it whether we want it or not," Chen Wei said grimly. "A cultivation prodigy in a minor village? They'll find out eventually, and if we try to hide it, they'll wonder why. Better to approach them ourselves, show we have nothing to conceal."
Kai wanted to argue, but his father was right. The Verdant Peak Sect monitored all villages under their protection. Suspicious behavior would only invite investigation.
"When?" Kai asked.
"Today. The sect has a branch office in Clearwater Town, half a day's journey. I'll take you there myself."
His mother looked worried. "Chen Wei, if they take him as a disciple—"
"Then our son will have opportunities we could never give him," his father said firmly, though Kai could hear the pain beneath the words. "This is what we wanted for him, isn't it? A chance to rise above his station?"
Kai watched his parents, observed their concern and hope and fear, and felt that strange disconnect again. He knew they loved him. He knew he should feel something in return. But it was like watching actors in a play—convincing, but not quite real.
"It's already begun," the demon whispered. "The transformation. Don't fight it, boy. Accept what you're becoming."
"I'll go," Kai said aloud. "We'll leave within the hour."
As his mother hurried to pack supplies for the journey, Kai returned to his room to prepare. He stood before the small bronze mirror on his wall, studying his reflection.
He looked the same—dark hair, average features, the lean build of a farm youth. But his eyes had changed. They were harder now. Older.
Kai unbuttoned his robe one last time, looking at the dragon mark that coiled across his chest. Purple-black scales, elegant and dangerous. A perfect lie.
"Are you ready?" the demon asked. "To walk among them? To pretend to be their prodigy while carrying me inside you?"
"Yes," Kai said softly.
He'd made his choice under the blood moon. There was no going back now.
Only forward—toward power, toward immortality, toward whatever price the heavens would demand.
The dragon on his chest seemed to shift, its scales catching the light. To anyone who saw it, he would be blessed. Special. Chosen by ancient bloodlines.
Only Kai would know the truth.
And in the darkness of his soul, the demon smiled, feeding on the last dregs of his innocence, already hungry for more.