The Demon Lord of All Forms

Chapter 1 Su Qinghe, Smile

In March, a light rain fell on the ancient city, washing the bluestone pavement until it shone. Pedestrians strolled leisurely through the streets and alleys, their faces rosy, and their clothes, though not luxurious, were clean and tidy.

The city of Lin'an is not large, only about ten miles in circumference, and the city walls are also relics from a hundred years ago. However, the city is orderly, the market is lively but not noisy, and the clanging of blacksmith shops, the storytelling in teahouses, and the laughter of children chasing each other are intertwined, exuding a sense of peace and human warmth.

In the center of the city stands a newly built mansion. It is not very large, but it is exquisite. It has green tiles and white walls, flying eaves and upturned corners. In the courtyard, there are several banana trees brought from the south. The rain falls on the broad leaves and makes a crisp sound.

Passing through three courtyards, the deepest part is a grand hall paved with a single piece of green jade bricks. The furnishings in the hall are extremely simple. There are no incense burners, no screens, no calligraphy or paintings, only a large rosewood couch in the center, covered with a snow-white fox fur.

Su Qinghe sat on the couch, barefoot, with a plain white robe loosely draped over her body, her long hair unbound and falling over her shoulders.

Su Qinghe looked to be in his early twenties, with delicate features and a pale complexion due to years of lack of sunlight. At this moment, he was listlessly resting his chin on his hand, his fingertips tapping the edge of the couch, making a soft tapping sound.

The palace doors swung open, and three burly soldiers escorted in a thin boy who looked about fifteen or sixteen years old. He wore a coarse linen tunic covered in patches, his cheeks were sunken, and his cheekbones were high and prominent. Only his eyes shone brightly, like two embers burning out.

The soldier's hands gripped the boy's shoulders and arms like iron clamps, pressing him firmly to the ground. The boy's knees slammed against the jade bricks with a dull thud, but he didn't utter a sound. He just kept his head up, staring intently at the person on the bed with his eyes burning like embers.

Su Qinghe looked at the boy for a while, then stood up.

The hem of her white robe trailed on the jade bricks. She walked barefoot across the cold brick surface, step by step, to the boy, and squatted down.

The two were only an arm's length apart, and Su Qinghe could even see the tears welling up in the boy's eyes but refusing to fall.

"Why do you rebel against me?" Su Qinghe's voice was soft, somewhat nonchalant: "Didn't you get the life you have now because of me? You have enough to eat, you have warm clothes, no one bullies you, no one exploits you, and you have a stable job. Isn't this the life your ancestors longed for but could never have?"

Su Qinghe reached out and patted the boy's head, then ruffled it, the gesture very casual.

"What a bunch of ingrates."

The boy trembled violently, like a cornered cub, and forced a hoarse roar from his throat: "Bah! You killed my parents! You killed my little sister! Give me back my parents, give me back my little sister!"

The boy's voice eventually broke into a wailing cry. His forehead slammed against the jade brick, and his body twisted and struggled. It took three soldiers a lot of effort to hold him down.

The boy's cheeks were distorted from being pressed down, and his lips were scraped and bleeding, but his eyes were still fixed on Su Qinghe, filled with nothing but hatred.

Su Qinghe squatted down, tilted his head, and seemed to be seriously considering the boy's words.

"You should have said so earlier, it's such a simple request."

Su Qinghe stood up, clapped his hands, and the crisp applause echoed in the empty hall.

Footsteps echoed from the corridor outside the hall, and three figures walked in through the light from the doorway, one in front and two behind.

The man walking in front was a short, stocky middle-aged man wearing a coarse cloth shirt. He had a kind and honest face and rubbed his hands together nervously as he entered the palace.

Behind the middle-aged man was a woman dressed in simple clothes, her hair neatly combed, and her face somewhat resembling that of a young man.

Behind the woman was a small figure, a girl of eleven or twelve years old, with her hair in two buns and a face full of innocence. As soon as she entered the door, she looked around curiously.

The boy looked up and saw the three people. His struggle stopped in an instant, as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water over his head. He froze on the spot, forgetting even to breathe.

The middle-aged man spoke first, his voice rough and typical of a farmer, but his tone was earnest and earnest: "Zhuzi, how could you be so insensible? Mr. Su has done us so much kindness, how could you do such a thing?"

The woman took two steps forward, her eyes already red: "My son, I know you're suffering, but you can't be so foolish! Did your father and I have it so hard raising you? Your sister is so young, how can you bear to let her worry about you?"

The girl peeked out from behind her mother, looking timidly at her brother who was being held down on the ground. Her little face was full of anxiety. She ran a few steps to the boy's side, squatted down, and reached out her small hand to wipe the blood from his forehead. Her voice was clear and tearful: "Brother, please apologize to Mr. Su. He's a magnanimous man and won't blame you. Let's go home, okay? Mother made your favorite meat, and Father and I even pooled together two coins to buy sweet cakes. Isn't that your favorite?"

The boy trembled all over, his teeth clenched so tightly they made a grinding sound. He stared at his parents and younger sister, the fire in his eyes gradually dimming, replaced by a deeper, more intense darkness that seemed to engulf him completely.

"Get out." The boy's voice was so low it was almost inaudible.

"Get out of here, all of you!" the boy suddenly roared, like a wild beast gone completely mad, twisting his body desperately trying to break free of his restraints, veins bulging on his forehead. "You're not my parents! You're not my little sister! Get out! Get out!"

The middle-aged man sighed, but did not back away. Instead, he squatted down, looked into the boy's eyes, and his tone became calm, like a deep pool: "When you were little, you fell from a tree and had a scar on the back of your head, and you still haven't grown hair; when you were seven, you stole a steamed bun from the offering table and your mother chased you for three blocks; when you were ten, you had a high fever, and your mother and I carried you for twenty miles at night to find a doctor in town, and we almost broke our legs."

With each word the middle-aged man spoke, the boy's face paled a little more.

The girl tugged at the boy's sleeve, tears streaming down her face. "Brother, do you remember last year's Lantern Festival? We went to see the lanterns together, and you used your last two coins to buy me sweet cakes. We shared them, half for each of us. You said that when you earned money, you would buy me new clothes and a hairpin with flowers... Brother, I remember it all. Please don't abandon us, okay?"

The boy stopped struggling and collapsed to the ground like a fish whose spine had been removed. Tears silently streamed down his face, running over the scrapes and cuts and dripping onto the jade bricks.

His lips were trembling, his teeth were clenched so tightly that blood seeped from his gums, and a trace of scarlet blood spilled from the corner of the boy's mouth.

Then the boy began to struggle again.

Using his forehead to press against the ground, the boy shuffled forward little by little, crawling on the ground like a worm. The skin on his forehead was rubbed raw by the rough seams of the jade bricks, leaving a dark red wet mark. But he seemed to feel no pain at all, staring intently at his bare feet in front of him, crawling forward inch by inch.

"Monster." The boy's voice was squeezed out from between his teeth, so hoarse that it was almost inhuman.

"You monster."

"I will definitely kill you."

Su Qinghe looked down at the boy, the playful smile on his face gradually disappearing. Looking at the boy whose forehead was raw, whose mouth was bleeding, and whose whole body was trembling but who was still desperately crawling forward, there was no anger, no pity, and not even disgust in his eyes, only a faint sense of weariness.

"I'm getting a little bored."

Su Qinghe looked somewhat bored, as if he had just watched a rather uninteresting play.

Then Su Qinghe lifted his foot.

Bare feet, almost translucent white and never exposed to sunlight, gently landed on the back of the boy's head.

The boy's screams abruptly stopped.

It was like a string stretched to its limit being suddenly pressed down with a finger; all the boy's voice, all his struggles, all his hatred were pulled away in that instant.

The boy's body stiffened for a moment, then completely relaxed, his limbs limply pressed against the ground, and even his fingers stopped moving.

The three burly soldiers simultaneously released their grip, stood up, took a step back, and stood ramrod straight.

Two breaths later, the boy got up from the ground on his own. Blood was still seeping from the wound on his forehead. He wiped it casually with the sleeve of his tattered linen shirt, and the bloodstains on the rough fabric quickly turned into a dark brown stain.

The boy glanced at his wiped cuffs and frowned slightly, seemingly disgusted.

The middle-aged man and woman standing nearby smiled as they watched the boy. The woman reached out and patted the dust off the boy's clothes with practiced ease, muttering that they should wash his clothes when they got back. The girl had already buried her face in the boy's chest, her slender arms tightly wrapped around her brother's waist, her voice muffled but full of joy: "I knew my brother wouldn't want to leave us."

The boy looked down at the little sister in his arms, raised his hand and gently patted her head, the same gesture Su Qinghe had made when patting his head.

Then the boy raised his head and looked at Su Qinghe.

The moment their eyes met, the calm on the boy's face contrasted strangely with the indifference on Su Qinghe's face.

The boy touched the wound on his forehead that was still bleeding, wiped his blood-stained fingertips on his tattered clothes, and suddenly smiled.

"You're getting more and more perverted," the boy said casually, as if chatting with an old friend. "If you keep going like this, you won't turn into some weird thing, will you?"

Looking at the smile on the boy's face, Su Qinghe smiled too. It wasn't the listless smile from before, but a genuine joy from the bottom of his heart. His lips turned up, exactly like the smile on the boy's face.

"Haven't we already become weird a long time ago?"

The moment the words fell, an extremely bizarre scene unfolded in the hall.

Su Qinghe was laughing, the boy was laughing, the boy's father was laughing, his honest face bearing a shallow and joyful smile that was completely out of character for him. The woman was laughing, her rough hands covering her mouth, fine lines appearing at the corners of her eyes. The girl peeked out from her brother's arms, also laughing, her innocent eyebrows curving into the same arc as Su Qinghe's. Three burly soldiers stood by the door, their faces beneath bronze helmets displaying the same smiles.

Eight faces, eight identities, eight ages, eight completely different lives, but the same smile.

Outside the main hall, the drizzle had stopped sometime earlier, and sunlight filtered through the gaps in the clouds, shining on the banana leaves in the courtyard, where the water droplets refracted into tiny fragments of light.

Further away, flags on the city walls fluttered idly in the wind, storytellers in the market continued to tell old tales of talented scholars and beautiful women, the blacksmith's furnace burned brightly, and children chased after iron hoops rolling across the bluestone pavement, their laughter echoing in the alleyways.

The city originally housed 200,000 people, but now only 100,000 remain.

But everything is still the same as before, nothing has changed. Everyone is doing their own thing, having their own joys and sorrows, and living their own lives.

Farmers rest on the ridges of the fields, calculating this year's harvest; embroiderers thread needles by the window, wondering what to eat for dinner; old people lean against the wall in the sun, reminiscing about their youth; and young mothers hum lullabies to lull their babies to sleep.

The expressions on everyone's faces were vivid and genuine.

Only occasionally, in a moment when no one is paying attention, a farmer resting on the edge of a field, massaging his back, suddenly reveals a faint smile unrelated to his work; an embroiderer stops threading a needle, gazing out the window in a daze, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned, a shallow and indifferent curve; a child, chasing after something, accidentally falls, blood seeping from his knee, but in the instant before his mother arrives, a calm smile, completely incongruous with his age, flashes across his face.

These smiles were exactly the same as the smiles on Su Qinghe's face.