Chapter 5: - Ragtag Troupe

Time to eat.

It was still morning, a little early for a proper meal, but so what? They were celebrating Master’s awakening. Eating early was hardly a problem.

The meal was served in the rear courtyard, in the room next door to the one where Zheng Fan had awakened.

Seven people sat around a round table.

Zheng Fan occupied the seat of honor. Feng Siniang sat to his left, and the Blind Man to his right.

The Blind Man was the comic character A’Qiu had created. A’Qiu’s father had been a public servant who died in the line of duty. She had never told the rest of them exactly what happened; presumably only her boyfriend Liang Cheng knew some of the details.

But the character “Bei” she created in *The Blind Man* practiced an extraordinarily bloody form of law enforcement. He set up private tribunals, punished criminals without the slightest concern for humane treatment, and used methods as cruel as they came. Whatever let him vent, he did.

Bei himself, however, gave people a completely different impression in person. He seemed gentle and cheerful, always smiling, as though he had no temper at all.

The seating arrangement had naturally been chosen with care. Putting Feng Siniang and Bei on either side of Zheng Fan at least kept the atmosphere around the table from becoming too stiff.

The vampire A’Ming and the zombie Liang Cheng sat opposite them. According to Feng Siniang, the best arrangement would have been to give those two bowls and make them squat by the doorway to eat. Who were they trying to impress with those icy dead faces?

As for Xue San, he was hardly fit for presentation. Sitting too close to Master might ruin Master’s appetite.

Fan Li, meanwhile, was simply too dull. At the slightest opportunity he wanted to discuss the finer points of chopping people into human stumps. Until Feng Siniang knew whether Master had the stomach for that kind of thing, she did not dare seat him too close either.

“Come, raise your cups! To Master’s awakening. From today onward, we finally have someone at the center holding us together!”

Feng Siniang took the lead.

Everyone rose and lifted their wine cups.

After the toast, they began eating.

Zheng Fan was hungry. He was, after all, a man who had possessed the courage to choose his own ending. Once the first shock and confusion passed, he found he still had a healthy appetite for the food in front of him.

Fan Li held an enormous rice bowl. He barely touched the dishes, but shoveled rice into his mouth with tremendous enthusiasm.

Xue San happily gnawed on a chicken leg.

A’Ming concentrated entirely on the basin of lamb-blood stew in front of him, while Liang Cheng chewed on mutton bones.

Bei ate slowly and leisurely. Of everyone present, his table manners were the most refined.

Taking advantage of the meal, Feng Siniang began explaining their situation to Zheng Fan.

First, naturally, was how everyone had appeared here.

It had happened half a year ago.

One day, eight people had appeared together at the edge of a desert.

Zheng Fan had been among them.

The other seven had all awakened immediately. Only Zheng Fan remained unconscious.

So they carried the unconscious Zheng Fan with them while gradually feeling out the surrounding area. In the end, they chose this small city on the edge of the desert as a place to settle.

The place they occupied now was technically an inn, but the inn offered a fair number of entertainment services as well. It was somewhat like a modern entertainment club: food, drink, amusement, and beds were all available under one roof.

Feng Siniang had naturally returned to her old line of business. Among the group, she was really the only one with any head for running an establishment.

More than a dozen women worked for her at the inn, receiving customers.

The stage was used for performances. Xue San dressed as a clown, or did storytelling and told tales. Liang Cheng performed acrobatics: breaking stones on his chest, bracing spears against his throat, and similar tricks.

A’Ming brewed wine. His wine had already become quite famous in Tiger Head City.

Bei set up a fortune-telling stall outside the inn and swindled whoever he could.

Fan Li chopped firewood and handled the heavy labor.

Thanks to all that, the inn’s business had remained fairly good. Within Tiger Head City, it could already be considered prosperous.

Then Feng Siniang started complaining.

Fan Li did a great deal of work. One man could do the labor of three. Unfortunately, he could also eat enough food for five.

Hearing that, the honest, slow-witted Fan Li raised his head and gave an awkward, foolish smile, apparently a little embarrassed. Then he immediately lowered his head and went back to shoveling rice.

Next Feng Siniang turned on Bei.

At first, the Blind Man had been able to fleece plenty of fat sheep. In fact, the startup money they used to rent this place and begin business had come from people Bei swindled. But over the last few months, his customers had grown fewer and fewer.

Bei himself did not seem worried in the slightest. Every day he opened his stall exactly on time, never called out to customers, never considered changing his business model to attract new clients, and simply sat by the entrance basking in the sun until mealtime, when he would stroll inside with equal punctuality to eat.

Bei smiled helplessly.

“Tiger Head City is only this big and only has so many people. There were only two or three fat sheep to begin with. What do you expect me to do?”

Feng Siniang glared at him.

The others gave her less room to complain.

A’Ming’s wine had always sold extremely well. Some caravans passing through the city even made special trips here to buy it.

Xue San worked hard at both performing and storytelling.

Even Liang Cheng, reluctant though he might be, still went onstage and performed acrobatics whenever they needed him to draw customers.

As for Feng Siniang herself, she managed practically everything inside and outside the establishment. The women under her were an even more dependable source of revenue, rain or shine.

Of course, Feng Siniang was still unhappy.

This was probably the most shabby brothel she had ever run across any of her series.

None of the women under her were young and tender. None knew the zither, chess, calligraphy, or painting. Most were around Feng Siniang’s own age, and there were even a few she ought to have called elder sister.

There was no helping it.

Tiger Head City stood near the desert, a bitter and cold frontier place. The local level of consumption was limited. Many customers were simply men from passing caravans who came here deliberately. They had no need for the prostitutes to know music, dance, poetry, or any other refined entertainment.

For Feng Siniang, this was the equivalent of forcing a Michelin-starred chef to run a roadside barbecue stall.

Her professional satisfaction was catastrophically low.

By this point, Zheng Fan had eaten quite a bit and finally had to set down his chopsticks.

Something had been bothering him.

He looked around the table.

The vampire A’Ming, the Blind Man Bei, Fan Li, Xue San, Liang Cheng, and Feng Siniang.

By every right, all six should have been terrifying fiendish figures.

So why were they all huddled together in this tiny frontier city doing ordinary people’s work for a living?

It did not fit their character settings or their aesthetic in the slightest.

So Zheng Fan asked:

“For the past half year, have all of you just been living here and earning money?”

Fan Li stopped shoveling rice.

Xue San froze with the chicken leg between his teeth.

A’Ming set down his chopsticks.

Liang Cheng frowned at the bone in his hands.

Even Feng Siniang’s running stream of complaints abruptly stopped.

At last, Bei gave a bitter laugh.

“Master, from the very first day we woke up, we discovered something...”

“What?”

“We had all become ordinary people.”

“...” Zheng Fan.

Ordinary...

Ordinary people?

The answer, and the reality behind it, caught Zheng Fan completely off guard.

But once he calmed down and thought about it, it suddenly seemed perfectly reasonable.

The vampire A’Ming was eating blood stew.

The zombie Liang Cheng was gnawing bones.

A group of Demon Kings had somehow holed up together in a tiny frontier city to make money and support themselves.

If they had not lost their power, why would they ever accept this kind of life?

Even if they wanted to “experience ordinary life,” surely they would not spend half a year doing it.

There was, however, one piece of good news.

After hearing them say they had become ordinary people, the pressure in Zheng Fan’s heart actually eased considerably.

A tiger without teeth could still swat him dead with one paw, but at least it was less frightening than before.

And although he had no idea why they all called him “Master,” as though acknowledging him as their lord, asking Zheng Fan to control this pack of Demon Kings at the height of their power the instant he woke up might genuinely have been beyond his courage.

The subject seemed to have torn open an old wound. The mood around the table dropped noticeably.

Zheng Fan drew in a breath, then looked at Feng Siniang beside him.

There was one thing he had wanted to ask almost from the beginning, but he had held it back until now.

“Where is the Demon Pill?”

*Demon Pill* was Zheng Fan’s own comic protagonist: a male infant whose murderous aura reached the heavens, born carrying an overwhelmingly powerful resentment.

To put it impolitely, when it came to character creation, horror atmosphere, and sheer plot intensity, the others in the studio genuinely could not compare with Zheng Fan.

*Demon Pill* had been the most extreme comic their studio ever produced.

And the Demon Pill himself was also the most terrifying of the Seven Demon Kings.

No matter what, however, Zheng Fan had created the Demon Pill with his own hands.

He had spent those three years after the studio dissolved continuing a few chapters of everyone else’s stories as well, but those were still other people’s stories and other people’s characters.

Only the Demon Pill was his.

Creators often looked at their own works almost as though they were their children. Saying the Demon Pill was Zheng Fan’s son was not an exaggeration in the slightest.

If the Demon Pill was here, Zheng Fan would feel much more secure.

It was like an ancient general going to war.

How could you feel steady if you had none of your own direct-line troops beneath you?

Yet the question made Feng Siniang look awkward, as though she had no idea how to answer.

A’Ming, seated nearby, stood instead. He left the table and went into another room. Before long, he returned carrying a box.

He placed the box on the table in front of Zheng Fan and said coldly:

“He’s inside.”

“Hm?”

Surprised, Zheng Fan reached out and opened the box.

At first, he had assumed something might have happened to the Demon Pill and that the box contained his head. He was an infant, after all. Small though the box was, it still looked large enough to hold a baby’s head.

But when Zheng Fan opened it, there was only a black stone inside.

“This is... the Demon Pill?”

Feng Siniang cast the stone an unmistakably jealous glance.

“Master, he said he has no physical body. He doesn’t need to eat, and he doesn’t need to drink. Therefore, he doesn’t need to work. So he sealed himself inside this stone.”

[End of Chapter 5]