Little Pink Starfish

Outside the window, demons were still fleeing in chaos, shrill howls echoing in the air—but most people’s minds weren’t on the pandemonium. Instead, they were still stuck on that stunning scene from the night before.

Yuan didn’t return that night.

No one in the room knew where he’d gone or even saw a shadow of him again. But the vines along the walls stayed, glowing faintly through the night.

It wasn’t until dawn, when the sky began to brighten and the dark clouds slowly receded, that the horde of lesser demons finally began to withdraw. Under the relentless defense of the Security Squad, most of them were either repelled or captured. Gradually, things stabilized.

Knock, knock.

A voice sounded from the door. Gao Ling and the others looked over. A small demon called from outside, “The riot outside has been contained. You’ll be free to leave in about an hour.”

He left without waiting for a reply.

Cheers erupted inside. No one had really slept last night. Everyone had been pushing through to this moment.

Yuan Yuanyuan, meanwhile, was holed up alone in a small classroom, silently applying burn ointment to a few scorched spots on her arms and legs. There were two or three burns. Once she finished, she sat still, waiting quietly for the sun to rise.

After killing that demon last night, she’d simply gone and slumped down in that classroom, drained.

What she did the previous night was… well, pretty wild. Even thinking back on it now, she wasn’t afraid—because she didn’t know where that fierce, reckless instinct came from.

All she knew was that at that moment, she knew she could pull it off.

Even now, just recalling it made her tremble—not from fear, but from excitement. It was a moment of pure, personal thrill. Something only she had experienced. And when it succeeded… the way everyone had looked at her—those eyes had sent a shiver through her.

She sat for a long time. Outside, the scattered demons began to retreat. Aside from the major one she’d taken out, the others had clearly just been a ragtag bunch. Without someone giving orders, they fell into disarray and gradually scattered.

Where the hell did they find so many small demons? Yuan thought, baffled. What even was the point?

An hour passed.

The mess outside had finally been cleaned up. Once Yuan was sure there weren’t any more unknown demons left roaming the schoolyard, she quietly retracted her vines and limped back home to sleep.

Inside the building, the others noticed the vines fading away from the walls and paused. After a few seconds, they hesitantly opened the door. To their shock, the hallway outside was packed wall-to-wall with people sitting in silence. Every head turned to stare as the door opened.

It startled the people inside.

One by one, they awkwardly filed out, under the wordless stares of those outside. No one said anything. They all just quietly watched as the group headed down the stairs and out of the building.

Outside was still a mess.

As Gao Ling and the others descended, a demon stopped them. “Did the big demon in your room come back?”

“No… he never came back,” someone muttered. “He disappeared around three in the morning…”

“Oh, okay, thanks.” The demon in a brown robe turned around and shouted, “Where the hell did he go? The report’s still not turned in. We’ve all been waiting—he ran off?!”

Gao Ling muttered, “What damn report…” and quickly slipped into the Security Office to confirm her identity and get cleared to leave.

Out on the street, demons in brown uniforms were already working hard to clean up the damage. There were tiny green demons fluttering about with translucent wings, sprinkling golden powder onto the scorched earth to lower the temperature—dragonfly demons, using flower pollen to help the soil heal.

Security demons were replanting the trees that had burned, even though everyone knew they wouldn’t survive long. The ground had been blasted by high-grade demon fire; it would be barren for quite a while. But suddenly replacing everything with nothing would look suspicious, so they planted temporary trees to replace as needed.

Gao Ling avoided the still-smoking areas, grimacing, then passed by the field and quickly got out of the school.

It had been terrifying. Truly surreal.

And yet—what stuck with her the most from last night wasn’t the demons, but Yuan.

Even after an entire sleepless night, that scene still felt unreal, like something out of a dream…

Yuan didn’t go back to turn in any report. She just went home to sleep.

When she returned, the kids and Liu An were still asleep. She found a quiet corner and passed out.

But while she could relax, the others couldn’t—especially the commander, who was furious.

Not just mad—panicking.

He searched every corner of the school and came up empty-handed.

“No one knows, sir,” a subordinate replied nervously. “They said he was last seen around 3 a.m.…”

“Bullshit!” the commander slammed the table. “Go find him! He makes this huge mess and just bails?! Get him back here!”

“Uh… but sir, that’s…”

“I know he’s Yuan! You think I don’t know?!” the commander barked. “Find him. If you can’t, neither of us are getting off work today.”

After shouting the subordinate away, the commander sighed and took a long drag from his cigarette, staring up at the sky.

Why the hell did he have to pull something like that…

To be honest, if only the security squad had been there, things might’ve been contained.

The problem was that many of the demons inside the school had been volunteer students. No one expected Yuan to go off like that and scare the hell out of them all.

It was way beyond what anyone could’ve predicted.

In the chaos of last night, the commander hadn’t even realized it—but when daylight came, it hit him like a truck. He needed to suppress this story—and fast.

But what he underestimated was the speed of information among students. Especially since last night, all the school’s emergency systems had been activated. The city’s human shelters had long been planned in case of a demon rebellion. C City didn’t have many yet—only about five—but they were well equipped. Like the one at Experimental High, which even had a massive spell formation to block demonic interference with electronics.

That formation was rarely activated, since it was resource-intensive, but last night’s danger level had justified it.

Which was why all the school buildings still had power.

Around 3 a.m., someone had posted a thread on the school forum. It didn’t gain traction at first, but as students woke up, it exploded.

“That—was that seriously a trickster demon?! Since when are trickster demons like that?!”

“What the hell, this one’s completely insane!”

“That’s gotta be one of the top old-guard security demons, right? That was textbook perfect.”

The student who posted the footage obviously knew who that demon was—but smartly didn’t name him. The one who did out him was another student, also present at the scene.

The climax of the clip was unforgettable: the trickster demon standing alone while the horde of monsters filled the screen. The sky was blood-red with fire, and that figure in brown robes, holding a gleaming silver blade, burned into everyone’s mind.

None of the viewers could forget the way he sliced through the swarm—a ghostly blade in the night.

Something fundamental had been overturned.

And once that happened… the internet exploded. Everyone was asking the same question:

“Wait—trickster demons can fight like that?!”

Everything people thought they knew had just shattered. Heated debate, frenzied speculation, utter chaos.

And then… it spread to another circle entirely.

Although demons and humans didn’t get along, the internet was a human invention—and humans had always lurked in demon forums. Within a day, the footage hit the Taoist networks.

Overnight, Yuan became legendary.

Before, he’d been well-known. But now?

Everyone was talking about him.

That moment—when he stood facing down a swarm of monsters with that faint, terrifying smile—etched itself into every viewer’s heart.

And interestingly enough, an old joke resurfaced.

Once upon a time, students had jokingly dubbed him the “Trickster Demon”—Gui Yao. Even built little shrines to him for luck during tests.

When the Taoist forums got wind of this? They ran with it.

And strangely… the name stuck.

Gui Yao — The Trickster Demon.

What started as a student joke became a title that shook both realms.

Humans feared the name.

Demons took pride in it.