“Evil Cultivator!”

  The words burst from Timo Yang’s lips instinctively, though he had no idea what they meant. A sharp pain lanced through his skull, and he muttered to himself, “What does that even mean?”

  Fragments flickered across his mind: a black-robed figure chasing a boy, someone struck down by that same dark pursuer. “Him… who was he? Did he die trying to save me?”

  A sudden crash shattered the vision. Timo snapped his head up just as a net of barbed silk hurtled toward him.

  Wind surged beneath his feet; he twisted away in a blur. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he called. “Who are you?”

  The hidden figure, seeing his speed, seized the moment and plunged into the sea, vanishing beneath the waves.

  Timo realized at once this was no human. A humanoid sea demon.

  But why would a sea demon covet human relics? Curiosity drew him to the spot it had searched.

  There, half-buried in rust, lay a metal chest. Its lock had been smashed open by brute force. An open book inside exhaled a faint black aura.

  “Come, my friend,” a sibilant whisper curled from its pages. “I sense you. Our power is yours.”

  Timo leaned closer. The pages were covered in dark elemental runes that seemed to pulse. The voice tugged at him, seductive and insistent.

  His hand drifted nearer—then instinct recoiled. With his other hand he snapped the book shut. The metal cover gleamed, untouched by time or corrosion.

  Across the front, bold characters proclaimed: *The Sixth Element*. Black-gold filigree swirled around a central emblem—an enormous pupil enclosing five interconnected orbs.

  Timo forced down his curiosity. He cocked his ears. Only the wind and the distant creak of rusted metal answered.

  His master had warned him: where one sea demon appeared, others were never far. Quick as thought, he slipped the book into his leather pouch.

  He rifled through the waterlogged volumes beneath, salvaging several whose text remained legible, and added them to the pouch.

  At the very bottom he found a faded photograph in a yellowed frame. He studied it closely—a group portrait of the ship’s crew in life.

  In the center stood several noble figures. One of them was unmistakable: his master, younger, taller, impossibly dashing.

  “Master… you were so tall back then. So handsome. What uniform is that? I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere…”

  Lost in the image, Timo barely registered the violent shudder that ran through the wreck.

  This was no ordinary tremor—the force far exceeded the adult sea demon from before.

  Steel-hard tentacles punched through the hull. The entire wreck groaned as a colossal shadow engulfed it.

  Through rents in the metal, Timo glimpsed a cavernous maw lined with jagged fangs, gaping upward as if to swallow the ship whole.

  He tucked the photograph away and took cover. As he prepared to flee toward the stern, the hull listed violently, then buckled with a screech of tortured iron.

  With even a little wind essence he could maneuver freely. Sensing room to fight, Timo held his ground, probing the monster’s strength.

  As the ship splintered, debris rained onto the reefs below in a clattering storm.

  A heavy clang—something rolled toward him. He whirled to see an iron rod tumbling straight for his hooded head. The two shriveled eyeballs on his fish-scale cap nearly met it head-on.

  A massive hand snatched the rod mid-fall. Timo dodged instinctively, then seized it himself.

  In that split second of distraction, a tentacle lashed through a narrow gap. Timo planted the rod against the deck, vaulted, and shot forward on a gust of wind.

  As the fanged maw snapped shut where he had been, Timo finally saw the figure perched atop the sea demon’s head.

  So—the humanoid sea demon from earlier had brought reinforcements. Timo shook his head at the distant silhouette, lips curling in mockery, then vanished into the sea breeze with a whoosh.

  The man-eating beast, encountering such speed for the first time, mistook the fish-scale armor for the markings of some high-tier sea demon warrior and hesitated.

  The humanoid rider watched helplessly as its prize was stolen. Reluctant, yet resigned—this was the law of survival among sea demons.

  It could only stare as the long-legged “merman” streaked through the mist like a shooting star, leaping from wreck to wreck until he disappeared.

  Clear of the reef graveyard, Timo conjured a chain of ice platforms across the calm sea. He bounded lightly across them and reached the shore reefs.

  Two large fish still thrashed in the pits. He scooped them up without hesitation, glanced toward his master’s cliff, then sprang like a gibbon into the crevices.

  “You’ve got brains, talent—the makings of a true commander,” sand-script formed neatly before him, proof his master was in high spirits. “It seems everything I taught you about the Five Elements Game has sunk in.”

  “All thanks to your guidance, Master. Otherwise I’d have been sea demon food long ago.”

  “Not necessarily. With that holy relic in your possession, you might have become something far worse than any sea demon.” The sand shifted again. “I’m starting the fire. Eat those ice-crystal fruits slowly—plenty of time ahead. Greed will kill you.”

  Yan Tang gathered fire essence; flames danced from the torch to his palm, igniting the dry wood in the stove with perfect control.

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  “Master, your grilled fish smells better every time. I wish I could awaken fire essence—just think, hot meals anywhere I go.”

  “Less chatter. Those two fish—strip the skin and tendons for armor. If that scale covering hadn’t masked your human scent, you wouldn’t have escaped so easily.”

  Timo nodded. The idea had come from Ugly Monster—no, Feiyu now. The creature was growing more human by the day, and both master and disciple had grown fond of the little troublemaker.

  Knowing he had delayed training, Timo swiftly shed his battle suit and fish-scale armor, changing into the worn gray training garb.

  “Those muscles of yours… you’ve inherited my prime,” the sand wrote proudly. “I’ve trained you like a prince of the Fire Essence Empire. In Flareglory City, with your strength, looks, and gifts, you’d have won the most beautiful princess. Only…”

  The wistful words told Timo his master was homesick again. Quickly, he pulled the photograph and books from his pouch and laid them before the sand.

  “I didn’t go for nothing, Master. Look what I found.”

  Yan Tang froze. Fire and earth essence scattered from his grasp; flames flared high, sand spilled across the cave floor.

  Tears welled in his sightless eyes. These faces had haunted his dreams, his memories, for years.

  He tried to speak, but only garbled sounds emerged. With a heavy sigh he gathered earth essence again and wrote:

  “This was taken before we set sail… All of them now lie at the bottom of the abyss. It’s over. At least they died fighting for what they believed in. They were great warriors.”

  Seeing his master’s grief, Timo changed the subject at once.

  “You were right earlier. That figure was a humanoid sea demon. It was searching for something. When it attacked me, it hurled black flames.”

  Yan Tang’s expression darkened with worry. He stared at the circles and dots etched into the cave wall, lost in thought. Some things were mere legend; he had no wish to burden his disciple with needless fears.

  “These past few years, have you noticed how your fish-demon brother speaks more and more like a human—his words clearer, his manner almost… one of us?”

  “I have,” Timo replied, his face lighting up. “That’s why I renamed him Feiyu. It suits him better. Sometimes I swear he is human.”

  He had barely finished writing the sand-script when the words spilled out, accompanied by a bright, unguarded laugh.

  Over the years, Timo had mastered the sea demons’ tongue—a strange, melodic cadence that Yan Tang could never imitate. And Feiyu’s growing command of human speech, his increasingly human gestures… Yan Tang was certain now: the sea demon clans were far more complex than he had ever imagined.

  That realization, coupled with his own harrowing past, had convinced him they were intelligent beings—not mindless man-eaters. In their world, he sometimes thought, humans might be the true monsters.

  “If my suspicions are correct,” Yan Tang wrote, “these fish demons possess true intellect. They grow, they learn, they fight with strategy and coordination. If we’re facing an entire sophisticated clan, slipping away unnoticed may be impossible.”

  The sand-script grew hurried and uneven. Timo’s smile vanished. Even a single adult sea demon was a deadly risk; a direct confrontation would leave nothing but bones.

  “You may be right,” Timo admitted helplessly. “If every humanoid sea demon is as clever as Feiyu, escape feels out of reach.”

  “For me, perhaps,” the sand replied. “Not necessarily for you.”

  Timo frowned, puzzled.

  “No, Master. You said I need to push my wind essence to the twelfth tier—match my water essence at its peak—before I can break through. You said the higher you climb, the harder it becomes. If even you couldn’t escape, how could I?”

  Yan Tang slapped his thigh in frustration and sighed. The sand flowed on.

  “I lost my legs. No matter how high my cultivation once was, I’m crippled in combat against trained warriors. If these books hold no way to advance your wind essence…”

  He touched The Sixth Element, hesitated, then tossed it aside without opening it.

  “Then only two paths remain. First: devour a more powerful sea demon. But you risk mutation—becoming a bloodthirsty abomination, neither man nor monster.”

  Timo’s hand drifted to the gem in his pouch. Since learning its danger, he had both feared and clung to it.

  “And… the second path?”

  “Absorb my spiritual root.”

  Yan Tang pointed at himself as he wrote. Seeing Timo’s shock, he cut him off at once.

  “I’m already half a corpse. Becoming truly essenceless would change little. You could escape. Carry word of this place back to the Empire.”

  Timo clenched his fists at the sand-script. Such a betrayal of filial duty was unthinkable.

  “Master, it’s only been five years. In another five, there may be another way. Absorb your root? I would die first. I’d sooner devour the sea demons.”

  Yan Tang saw the refusal for what it was—pure-hearted loyalty ill-suited to the Empire’s cutthroat ways. Another man would have seized the offer. He admired his disciple all the more.

  “Very well. This Sixth Element… our crew took it from the lair of the Spirit Taming Cult’s leader. We meant to destroy it, but fire couldn’t burn it, acid couldn’t eat it.”

  Timo stared at the great eye on the cover, feeling again that insidious pull from within.

  As he gazed, transfixed, a burst of crimson flame engulfed the book.

  Timo’s heart leapt—Master’s fire essence had grown stronger. Yet when the flames died, the black-gold cover remained pristine.

  “You see?” Yan Tang wrote. “This is no work of human hands. It is born of evil spirits. The Spirit-Taming Cult earned the name ‘Evil Cultivators’ because they embraced that power.”

  The words Evil Cultivator struck like a spark. Timo’s fragmented memory flared.

  “Evil Cultivators… do they wear black robes?”

  “Yes. They always conceal themselves in black. Some among them are shapeshifters—water essence cultivators who reach the Envoy stage and gain the power to take human form. They infiltrate factions, sow discord.”

  Timo strained to remember, desperate to shatter the chains on his past. Only shards returned.

  “I… I think I was hunted by black-robed figures. Someone tried to save me. They were killed for it.”

  Yan Tang’s interest sharpened; this was the first Timo had spoken of his origins.

  “Do you remember where? Who it was?”

  Timo shook his head. “A forest—tall trees. They wanted to extract my spiritual root. Their faces… nothing. It’s like my memories are locked away.”

  Yan Tang noticed an unstable flicker from the gem in Timo’s pouch. He could only guess— he was no learned physician.

  “Perhaps the holy relic’s doing. Or damage to your mind. Without a healer above the Envoy stage, it may never heal.”

  Timo paused, then felt the familiar ache in his skull. He steadied his breathing, gathered essence, and traced wide arcs with his hands.

  “You said water essence makes natural healers. Why can’t I?”

  “This forgotten land teems with spiritual veins, but most resources are toxic or frigid. The sea demon warriors patrol regularly, seeking healing herbs. Herbs alone aren’t enough. True medicine requires dedicated study and guidance.”

  “It sounds… complicated. Is the Spirit Taming Cult still active? Why did they want me?”

  As the essence faded, Timo grew calm again.

  “Their leader is gone, but branches remain. They were hunted because they trafficked humans as slaves—harvesting children’s spiritual roots to fuel their own power.”

  “That’s monstrous.” Timo’s eyes widened. “Was that why they hunted me?”

  “Whatever happened, you turned calamity into fortune. Their creed was to tame spirits and ascend to godhood—immortal, omnipotent. They sought to become gods of the Spirit Sovereign Continent.”

  “Can a person truly become a god?”

  Yan Tang looked into Timo’s innocent eyes and remembered asking the same question long ago. He shook his head sadly, fingers moving swiftly.

  “My father once said: even if someone could, the rulers of nations would never allow it. No one surrenders power, resources, dominion. They might tolerate a god—but only a dead one.”

  The words were profound, beyond Timo’s full grasp, yet he sensed the man before him was no ordinary survivor.

  “This Imperial Wonders is readable enough,” Yan Tang continued, shifting the books to lighter topics. “It records strange peoples and events—tales of the Wind Spirit Snake King, legends of the sea demon clans… As for Diplomatic Etiquette of the Envoy, it’s mostly pomp, little use.”

  He flipped through the volumes, sand flowing beneath his fingers, occasionally mumbling garbled words.

  “Practical Body Techniques is aimed at low-tier cultivators and mortals—classic combat forms. I’ve trained you to the standard of an elite soldier already. Focus on essence cultivation; borrow from it, but don’t obsess.”

  Timo nodded, glancing back at the largest stone plinth. In five years he had cleared every round boulder, great and small. This five-hundred-pound plinth was the final challenge—crafted at his own insistent request. Now even three-hundred-pound stones felt light in his hands.

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