Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Green Tea Demon Took a Bath and Soaked Herself to Death

She took a bath and soaked herself to death.

“Save me… save me… please, I’m begging you—save me…” Jiang Tea Tea was a green tea tree spirit. She’d leapt into a river, planning to brew an entire river of green tea for the demon clan. Instead, she brewed herself to death.

And dying still wasn’t the worst part.

When she opened her eyes again, she had no idea what backwater wasteland she’d landed in. Most of her magic power was gone. Worse, a little girl who looked exactly like her was clutching her hand and sobbing for help.

Jiang Tea Tea grabbed the girl’s wrist. “Miss, it’s not that I don’t want to save you. It’s that you can’t be saved. Your body’s been cut in half.”

The girl had been severed at the waist. Her lower body was still trapped in the device that had flung her out, while her upper body lay in the dead grass and rotting brush nearby.

There was distance between them. Blood soaked the ground. The only reason the girl hadn’t died on the spot was because she’d burned every last scrap of her own power just to stay alive this long.

The girl froze, then turned to stare at her flyer. Monstrous hatred split her eyes. “Why? Why would they do this to me? Being switched at birth wasn’t my fault. Not awakening an ability wasn’t my fault either!”

“I didn’t fight for anything. I didn’t steal anything. They still wouldn’t let me go. They still wanted to kill me—why?!”

Jiang Tea Tea’s voice stayed eerily calm. “Why? What else could it be? You’re useless to them now, and you’re blocking someone else’s road. They can’t afford to leave you alive.”

That was how the demon clan worked. If you stood in someone’s way and had no value, a brutal great demon—or an immortal from the Immortal Realm—might kill you on a whim. Crack, pop, just like that. Then they’d eat you, or refine you into pills.

A little demon who’d only just taken human form, without a great demon to shelter it or a sturdy thigh to cling to, was pure cannon fodder. It could die and no one would even hear the sound.

The girl’s lips trembled. “Who are you?”

She stared hard at Jiang Tea Tea. “Why do you look exactly like me? Did they send you to kill me?”

Jiang Tea Tea lifted both hands at once, like she was swearing to the heavens. “I’m a random passerby. You getting cut in half has nothing to do with me. Don’t dump karma on my head. I don’t kill people.”

The demon clan had rules. You couldn’t just kill whenever you pleased.

She was a good demon—well-read, law-abiding, and strictly obedient.

The girl searched her face for a lie. She found none. Jiang Tea Tea looked harmless and sincere, so sincere it made the girl’s throat tighten.

The girl swallowed. “Do you have money?”

Jiang Tea Tea blinked, baffled, but answered honestly. “No.”

At her peak, a great demon like her could turn stone into gold with a flick of her fingers. Why would she ever save money? She’d just make it and spend it.

The girl asked again, “What’s your name?”

Jiang Tea Tea blinked once. “Jiang Tea Tea.”

The girl’s pupils shrank. Like she’d grabbed the last thread of a lifeline, she seized Jiang Tea Tea’s hand again. “Your name is Jiang Tea Tea?”

Jiang Tea Tea nodded. “Yeah. My grandmother named me.”

She was the only one in the green tea tree clan who’d cultivated into a spirit and successfully transformed into human form. Her race came with a built-in talent: sweet words, sweeter smiles—tea dripping from her lips.

She’d even acknowledged a ten-thousand-year great demon—born from a Xuan Yuan Cypress Tree—as her grandmother. That grandmother was devastatingly beautiful, curvy in all the right places, knowing ten thousand years above and ten thousand years below. Her lovers were scattered across the Three Realms. In the demon clan, she was the undisputed ceiling of ferocity and power.

The girl’s gaze slid to Jiang Tea Tea’s bare wrist. Then she smiled, sharp as a blade. “You appeared out of nowhere. No lightbrain, no identity. Right?”

Her eyes were terrifyingly keen. One look, and she’d clocked Jiang Tea Tea as a product with no label, no documentation, and no warranty.

Jiang Tea Tea didn’t bother hiding it from someone already dying. “Right. Not only do I have no identity and no lightbrain, I’m not even human. I’m a demon.”

“A demon?” The girl’s breath hitched, as if something clicked into place. “Like the ones in legends? The ones that can use magic and transform into anything?”

Jiang Tea Tea grimaced. “At my peak, sure, I could transform into someone else. But right now, all the magic power I have is being used to keep you hanging on. You understand, right?”

The girl’s eyes widened with sudden understanding. “No wonder… My body got cut in half and I didn’t feel any pain. So it was you.”

Jiang Tea Tea flashed a bright smile that somehow smelled faintly of tea. “It’s fine. Fate brought us together. Helping you is also helping me build merit.”

The girl stared at her smile. “We look the same, but you look prettier when you smile.”

Jiang Tea Tea dipped her head modestly. “Thanks.”

“No need to be polite. I’m telling the truth.” The girl’s tone shifted, like a knife sliding free of its sheath. “I remember hearing… demons like to eat humans. Especially humans who willingly sacrifice themselves. Is that true?”

Jiang Tea Tea’s smile vanished. “How do you know that?”

A human’s soul and merit were the best kind of tonic for cultivation. And to a tree demon, a human body was rich fertilizer—especially a body offered in a willing sacrifice.

The girl’s smile twisted into something ugly. “Don’t ask how I know. I, Jiang Tea Tea, am willing to offer everything I have to you—”

“Wait.” Jiang Tea Tea cut her off on instinct. “I’m not some cheap demon that takes whatever someone throws at me.”

The girl paused. “Then how do I make you cheap?”

Jiang Tea Tea bared her teeth in a grin. “First, I need to see whether you even have the capital to offer yourself.”

A willing sacrifice—body and soul—was temptation incarnate. She wasn’t an idiot, but you still had to follow procedure. Otherwise people would think demons were easy.

The girl rasped, “Look.”

Jiang Tea Tea pulled her hand free, pressed a fingertip to the girl’s forehead, and a halo flared around her.

Merit.

Merit light.

Jiang Tea Tea’s mind cracked like thunder. Grandmother. That girl had merit light.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.

Say it three times and you might actually manage it.

Her face stayed smooth, but her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. Casually, she asked, “You’ve got merit light. You’ve done a lot of good deeds?”

The girl didn’t answer. Instead, she asked quietly, “Do I have enough capital now?”

Jiang Tea Tea stopped pretending to hesitate. She pulled her hand away from the girl’s brow, sliced her own palm open, and held it out. “Yes. You have enough capital. State your conditions.”

They called it a willing sacrifice. In reality, it was an exchange.

If a demon accepted a human’s sacrifice, the demon also had to accept the human’s terms and fulfill her unfinished wishes.

The girl reached out her blood-slick hand and clasped Jiang Tea Tea’s.

Human and demon—blood mingling, contract forming.

Hatred churned in the girl’s eyes as she spoke each word slowly, like carving it into bone. “I, Jiang Tea Tea, willingly offer everything I have to the demon Jiang Tea Tea.”

“My condition is this: the demon Jiang Tea Tea will use my identity, become famous across the entire galaxy, and find my biological parents. Ask them whether they ever loved me. Ask them why they never came looking for me.”

“And you will avenge me. Crush everyone who bullied me under your feet. Make them unable to live and unable to die—make them spend every day drowning in regret and pain!”

Humans were bizarre creatures—twisted, stubborn, self-contradictory. The more they couldn’t have something, the more they obsessed over it. They especially loved imagining the people who wronged them suffering after they died.

Jiang Tea Tea watched a thread of red light—something the girl couldn’t see—coil around their joined hands and sink into the girl’s body. The merit light blazed brighter and brighter.

Jiang Tea Tea stared so hard she nearly drooled. She was hungry just looking at it.

Her voice turned crisp with excitement. “I, the demon clan’s tea tree spirit great demon Jiang Tea Tea, accept every condition of the human Jiang Tea Tea’s willing sacrifice.”

“Effective immediately, everything you are belongs to me. I will eat you—and make you my fertilizer!”