Little Pink Starfish

[Why… why did Ji Qiu draw it like this?]
[Not sure… but I feel so hyped right now. Like there’s an unexplainable surge of energy rising from my lower half…]
[…Upstairs, what the hell are you imagining?]
[Aaaaah Ji Qiu, damn it! What are you doing?! Are you messing with us readers?! Ran-mei is so pretty, don’t ruin her like this or I swear I’ll send razor blades to your house!]
[Are you trying to die, Ji Qiu?! What’s this sudden twist? You joking?!]
[Huh… looks like most of the guys in the comment section are losing it. But… why do I actually kinda like it?]
[Wait, you’re a guy or a girl?]
[Guy.]
[So what Ji Qiu is implying is…]
[DON’T SAY IT! Even if you guess it, don’t say it! Anyone who says it is dead meat!]

Yuan Yuanyuan stood beneath the plum blossom tree, looking up at the delicate flowers. They were absurdly beautiful—so perfect they looked fake. Not a single petal was out of place.

A burst of fragrance hit her nose. It was the first time she had smelled plum blossoms this fragrant. In C City, plum blossoms were rare unless you went to a flower shop or out into the wild.

It was also the first time she’d seen plum blossoms blooming like this.

Ah… demon magic was just so convenient. If you wanted flowers, you got flowers. Sure, it might be a useless kind of spell, but she really wanted to learn it. She was still used to human habits, and being able to make a winter blossom bloom out of nowhere just felt badass—even if among demons, it wasn’t a big deal at all.

Yuan Yuanyuan kept staring absentmindedly at the flowers. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure why she had come here. She only knew a few techniques.

Besides the “Tiangang Zizai Jue,” she only had a few minor spells like shooting fireballs or water jets. At best, she could pretend they were something fancier like “Great Fireball Technique” or “Waterfall Jutsu.” Not exactly useful.

So her one and only strategy was: burrow underground, wait for an opportunity, and chip away with surprise attacks.

Ah… couldn’t she get a more powerful technique? She wasn’t asking for something crazy like Susanoo, Amaterasu, or Rinnegan—just something like a Rasengan would do… Had she walked onto the wrong movie set or what?

“You’ve changed a lot,” said a voice behind her. “I remember you used to love wearing red. Before every battle, you’d always put on the brightest red lipstick.”

Yuan Yuanyuan kept watching the blossoms, didn’t move or look back. She didn’t know when this guy had arrived, but it wasn’t her first time being snuck up on—so she stayed calm.

She stayed silent for a few seconds for dramatic effect, then slowly turned her head.

She figured, just in case this ends up in the comic, she should control her expression and posture. No way was she going to get drawn looking dumb.

The man who spoke was dressed in black. His features were sharp, with deep-set eyes—almost not Asian-looking.

His eyebrows were so well-defined they looked inked in. He was the classic brooding type. Yuan Yuanyuan found this kind of guy quite attractive. His voice was just as sexy—deep, low, magnetic.

His nose was high-bridged, and his long, silky black hair flowed over his shoulders. She rarely saw guys with long hair in real life, so she stared at it a bit longer than usual.

This was Wu Jin, the one who had challenged her. His original form was a crow, and this look suited that.

Dressed all in black.

Coincidentally, so was she.

She turned around to face him, shoved her hands into her pockets, and met his gaze. “When do we start?”

Wu Jin looked up at the plum blossoms, closed his eyes like he was savoring the scent.

Yuan Yuanyuan watched as he slowly opened his eyes. They were pitch black.

“Now, please show me your strength, senior,” he said softly.

The moment he finished, Yuan Yuanyuan vanished. All that was left was a wisp of red smoke, which drifted like tree branches in the wind. Against the backdrop of the plum blossoms, it looked stunning.

…

“What… what the hell,” Gao Ling muttered to herself, staring at the latest comic update in complete shock.

She reread it several times, then finally closed her mouth.

Although Ji Qiu hadn’t explicitly said it, the implication was clear—Ran Niang and Yuan were the same person.

Gao Ling’s worldview was officially destroyed. Ran Niang and Yuan—the red-robed beauty and the black-clad man—were characters who couldn’t be more different. How the hell were they the same person?!

Oh, and this wasn’t even just some random twist by Ji Qiu. It was connected to real-life events. Yuan was a guy, and yet he used to cross-dress? What?!

Gao Ling glanced at the “Ran Niang’s Happy Life” doujinshi she was about to finish drawing. Without a word, she opened the file… and sent it to the recycling bin.

Officially canon BL… truly no room left for fangirls.

The official site was blowing up. That day, Demon Chronicles nearly took over the entire Dream Manga server. Even readers who didn’t follow the series had heard that a hugely popular female character had just been revealed to be male.

Everyone was marveling at how ballsy the author was. In a hot-blooded shounen manga, he’d dropped a twist like this. Some readers joked that if he made the two main heroines a yuri couple, maybe it would’ve gone down easier… But after reading the latest chapter, weirdly enough—some people were kinda into it?

Those readers weren’t brave enough to speak up yet. The angry male fans were too vocal. Anyone showing support now might get shredded.

Meanwhile, on faraway Sanquan Mountain, a group of demons had gathered to watch a real-life duel—completely unaware of the chaos on the internet.

A figure hidden in the shadows quietly chuckled. “He looked at the plum blossoms and didn’t react at all?”

“Someone asked that?”

“Just wait and see,” the person said. “The first test didn’t work, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Let’s observe more.”

Yuan Yuanyuan was hiding underground, quietly listening to the voices above.

Back when she was at the foot of the mountain, she used to run around like a headless chicken. But now she could clearly hear everything above her.

She remembered from middle school physics that sound travels faster through solids than through air.

Hiding underground, she could hear nearly every sound from the surface. She picked out distant footsteps—no way she would’ve heard those before.

She’d been wondering where all the spectators were. Turns out, they’d been there all along—she just didn’t notice.

She listened for Wu Jin’s footsteps in the noise and quickly locked onto one person. She closed her eyes and focused.

In a sudden burst, she shot up from underground, unleashing a “Demon Flame Technique.” Wu Jin saw a puff of red smoke forming in the air, and from it emerged a stunning face—half-revealed, half-hidden, like a beauty peeking through plum blossoms, smiling ever so faintly.

A stream of flame blasted toward him. He was shocked, immediately dodged back, and narrowly escaped being burned. The fire scorched the ground, leaving a charred black trail.

The red smoke vanished into the air, swirling gracefully like no one had ever been there.

“Whoa, amazing!” the demons hiding nearby couldn’t help but exclaim.

“What spell is that? That flame left a burn mark—must’ve been insanely hot.”

“Wait… was that the Demon Flame Technique?” said one sharp-eyed demon, frowning as he stared.

As soon as the words came out, everyone went silent. They inspected the scorched ground.

“No way… how could the Demon Flame Technique be that strong?”

“Maybe I was wrong… It’s an ancient spell, long lost. We wouldn’t recognize it even if we saw it. Maybe it just looked similar.”

“You idiot, that was the Demon Flame Technique,” muttered Jixiangyu, crouching in the back with his camera. He kept his voice low to avoid getting beaten up.

He coughed, sitting there in his modern clothes holding a video camera. In a crowd of demons, he looked totally out of place—like a crazy tourist. No one dared go near him.

“Really… he’s changed so much. But I’m 80% sure that’s him,” he said quietly, watching the “Yuan” in his viewfinder.

He thought for a moment, then pulled out his phone. Miraculously, he still had two bars of signal. It was like the surrounding demon energy hadn’t affected it at all. He typed a few messages into the group chat:

[Group Admin: Yo, I’m gonna live-report this for you guys.]
[Group Admin: 1. He’s not wearing red—he’s in black. Interesting. Not sure why he changed his look so suddenly.]
[Group Admin: 2. He’s not fighting seriously. He just used a basic Demon Flame Technique. Didn’t even use advanced spells. I just learned today—ancient demons really are something else. One basic spell and we can’t even handle it. Watch the footage later.]
[Group Admin: 3. He didn’t wear makeup this time.]
[Heihongse: Wait, wait, no makeup?! Then he’s definitely not fighting seriously. But I always wondered—why did he insist on putting on makeup before every battle?]
[Group Admin: Rumor has it… he wore makeup before every battle because he was afraid he wouldn’t come back alive. He wanted to die looking beautiful… But hey, just a rumor. Don’t take it too seriously.]

Yuan Yuanyuan found another opportunity and launched another attack—this time, a “Demon Water Technique.” The onlookers saw it clearly this time—it was a basic spell.

“My god… even basic spells are this powerful?” one of the demons went pale.

The area that had just been scorched was now a small pond.

“We might’ve… really underestimated him,” someone muttered. “Ancient demons… really are on a different level. Thank goodness it looks like he’s holding back.”

On the battlefield, Wu Jin didn’t look too great. After dodging two attacks, he glanced around—he was completely surrounded.

He had miscalculated.