I Was Called A Demon

“That went better than expected. Shame none of this is edible.”

“You should probably answer some questions, regardless of… why did you even consider if this thing was edible?” Bianca looked at the monstrous pile of vines, wood and who knows what else, then back to the kitsune, “I don’t want to know. Why did we only try this now?”

“Because it took far too long, and if we had done this in front of the people at the logging camp, we would have exposed the fact that Song Ming had not just a simple physique – which is already somewhat uncommon – but the rather rare Crusader’s Runes. This would definitely have gotten certain… untoward people to come forth.”

“Can they even take a physique from someone?”

“Technically, no. However, it has been theorised that a physique is just a certain form of energy within the body. In theory, it is possible to extract it, and perhaps it is even being used to produce the runes in this case. In theory, it is also possible to induce an awakening of said physique by imbuing one’s body with it, either to the point that it becomes a part of the self, or by combining it with a physique awakening pill and hoping to employ that energy in the process.”

“And when you say untoward people… I’m guessing they wouldn’t just ask nicely. Fine, that seems to make enough sense…” Bianca thought, ‘I guess this would be like bringing out a diamond worth a million saryte and not expecting anyone to try and steal it… except, this is much worse.’

Bianca was still holding Song Ming in a warm embrace, so she could feel her shudder a little as she considered the implications. Without thinking too much about it, she decided to give Song Ming some pats on the head, whether to calm her down or to occupy her hands with something other than the temptation to grope Song Ming’s ass. The latter was far more of the reason, if she was to be honest with herself.

“Nope. You two don’t seem like you’d want the details, but I’ve heard of some terrible things being done for the sake of obtaining a physique. Though, at least if one looks at the consequences, attempts at obtaining a bloodline of some powerful ancient beast such as a dragon have been far, far worse.”

“Yeah, I think we ought not discuss that stuff. I’m perfectly happy not knowing any of this, at least,” Bianca said, “So, does this mean that Song Ming can use her physique so long as I’m helping?”

“U-Um… I’m not… sure about that,” the reply didn’t come from the kitsune, as Song Ming looked at the trembling hand that had unleashed the rune, “I feel… rather bad. It’s like every part of my body has been… I don’t even know. But it’s not anything good, I’m sure of that. If I was to do this too many times in a row, I might just explode.”

“Please don’t say that so casually.”

“She’s probably not wrong, though,” Xue Yaling briefly took Song Ming’s hand and shut her eyes, “It’s subtle, but her body has been slightly… torn apart. For lack of a better term, of course.”

“Uh…”

“Don’t look at me like that, Bianca. It’s nothing dangerous in the long term, and might even benefit her – I can see you attempting to interrupt me, but hush. I was just about to explain,” the kitsune put her finger on Bianca’s lips with a brief smirk, “Essentially, there is such a thing within the body as impurities. Flaws accumulated from just about anything, including the innate flaws of life to food and air that aren’t made of pure planar energy. This stuff can build up over the years, and makes it more challenging for older people to begin cultivating, hence why it is seen as ideal to start as early as the body is capable of. Incidentally, your body is relatively pure, which is… perhaps unsurprising, considering your potential origins.”

“… I guess that’s good. So, damaging the body is somehow good for you?”

“It’s not that simple, but yes, an opportunity to remove impurities is always a beneficial one – provided you endure it. Some can be rather violent and unpleasant, some are far less so, and breakthroughs can also help if your energy is sufficiently potent, but that’s of no significance for the moment.”

“B-Bianca, could you hold me a little tighter? It’s getting rather hard to keep standing…” Song Ming muttered, though her tone was a little stiff – much like Bianca’s cock.

In fact, as she leaned into Bianca more, she seemed to be actively grinding her ass against the hard dick throbbing inside her trousers, ending up sandwiched between Song Ming’s ass cheeks. Although the fabric of her pants didn’t leave much room for her cock, wrapping it painfully tight in a material that wasn’t exactly the most comfortable she’d experienced, but she couldn’t help but gasp when she felt it.

“You okay there, Bianca? I know that energy went into you as well, so you ought to have a rest after Song Ming recovers enough to stand,” Xue Yaling said with an odd degree of concern for someone that had an almost non-existent chance of knowing exactly what was happening before her.

Still, she was rather confused as to how to respond. Was it best to admit what she was doing at the risk of potentially upsetting the kitsune if she was truly unaware, or should she ignore what they discussed not long ago and pretend like this was nothing lewd whatsoever? Also, was Song Ming truly so exhausted that she can barely stand, or was she just pretending?

Whether or not she was, Bianca was just way too confused to sort through all of this nonsense, so she just nodded and allowed Song Ming to keep doing what she was doing.

Regardless, after the surprise wore off, it was far, far easier to keep her voice in check. The kitsune seemed to accept the explanation with no trademark smirk, which threw things off further, but at the very least it didn’t result in a lengthy, awkward silence, which would definitely result in Bianca attempting to put a stop to the current awkwardness in whatever way came to mind first – which would likely not work out in an ideal manner.

“Anyway, the physique energy should’ve boosted Song Ming’s potential in the long run. That should be simple enough to understand,” the kitsune continued, “It might have also boosted yours, though as I mentioned before, your body contains few to no impurities whatsoever. Therefore, the only benefit that you could experience is that your body will have the chance to regenerate with the empowerment of your planar energy, avoiding any weaknesses that your initial state might have had. Furthermore, any impurities that might have been present within your energy, though those too are few, should have been burned away in the process.”

“A-Alright…” Bianca nodded again, taking a moment to breathe and hold back the moan that wanted to emerge, “Let’s move on from that, since it’s something I don’t understand and Song Ming already knows. Will we be continuing on today, or would it be good to rest here?”

“Resting here would be… unwise. The hungry nests release certain gases that can range from mildly unpleasant to highly toxic in nature. In other words, remaining in their vicinity without resistance to poisons isn’t advisable,” Xue Yaling said, “Furthermore, remaining near the river makes it easy not to lose our way.”

“Are the forests that difficult to navigate?” Bianca asked again, letting anything that came to mind emerge provided it wasn’t the fact that Song Ming quietly reached back and moved Bianca’s pants down.

She managed to bring them just low enough that her cock had no choice but to be freed from its constraints, and suddenly it became a lot tougher to hold back her gasps, moans and grunts, along with whatever else her body desired to do. Song Ming might not have had the biggest ass out there, nor did she seem to have a good idea about what she was doing, but that didn’t stop her from trying her best… and moaning ever so slightly, shyly glancing back into Bianca’s eyes.

‘You’re not making it easy to keep this subtle, you know? Wait… I hope she isn’t trying to do this to show off to Xue Yaling, since… well, I don’t want to be dealing with this sort of thing…’

There was also the question of why she chose to do this now, when she should’ve been rather exhausted by the sensation of her body being torn apart. Bianca felt it even with the absurd durability she had somehow obtained, so there was no chance that Song Ming wouldn’t be feeling the pain much more intensely.

‘She is trying to grind on Bianca right in front of me, huh… That’s certainly something,’ Xue Yaling put a hand in front of her lips to hide the smirk quickly growing there, ‘It seems like this is a consequence of the continued influence from Bianca’s energy, and that sharing it in this manner is extremely effective at raising the degree of influence… Meaning I should never let myself be in a situation where I need to direct her energy through my body.’

The kitsune was trying to act as if she wasn’t aware of the pair’s activities, which would normally be incredibly difficult considering just how overt they were being, but the matter of Bianca’s demonic energy occupied most of her attention and let her maintain a relatively calm expression.

On the inside, however, she was rather concerned and excited at the same time, for the same reason. Considering that it was possible to accelerate the rate at which they were influenced by Bianca’s energy, she could easily observe the exact effects it had on Song Ming and control exactly when the process was moved forward. It wasn’t difficult to convince the two to try out her various ideas, so as long as she had a good enough reason for it, they wouldn’t hesitate to follow her instructions, trusting in her wisdom.

Having such an opportunity to play around and experiment with such a strange form of energy was the obvious positive, but the negative was that Bianca’s large pool of energy couldn’t be safely relied for to power artefacts, arrays, inscriptions, to amplify the effects of pills or to substitute her own energy if she was running low, as it would mean that she would fall to her influence in the same way that Song Ming already was. Before knowing the exact nature of said influence, this was akin to seeking death.

So far, it didn’t seem like Song Ming realised that she was behaving oddly, and she might never understand it, meaning that the influence of demonic energy was able to alter one’s perception and thoughts. If it was sufficiently powerful – and it likely was, seeing as the current degree of influence over Song Ming was minimal, and from energy of only the second realm – then it could easily remove any suspicion that Xue Yaling had towards it and leave her plummeting further into the metaphorical abyss, without even knowing that she was changing. It wasn’t the most pleasant of things to imagine, and she definitely didn’t want to find out what it felt like to go through this – not personally, anyway.

There were ways to store experiences and memories, like jade slips, which could allow her to simply observe these effects on another, which would be easy if she ever found a willing subject or another woman that Bianca was into, since she could, once again, come up with some reason for Bianca to flood the poor soul with her demonic energy.

Regardless, she had let the silence continue for a little longer than she should have, so she coughed and replied, “They’re not that difficult to navigate, but it is best not to risk it. Besides, the hungry nests tend to stay a certain distance away, as excess moisture is not something they enjoy… usually.”

“U-Usually?” Bianca repeated, her composure clearly suffering.

Without even needing to focus her spiritual perception, Xue Yaling knew that she had adjusted her position to better thrust her cock in between Song Ming’s butt cheeks, her throbbing cock already leaking precum all over the young woman’s clothes. It was something that would immediately be noticed if Xue Yaling didn’t already know, and if they kept going at this rate, Song Ming’s back would be completely covered in sticky white fluids, which… well, hiding those would require burning the clothes somewhere else, which certainly would be interesting to see.

‘I shouldn’t, but I do really want to see how these two handle it… Alright, I’ll give them the time they need, provided one of the two doesn’t realise this issue as well…’ she looked at the two for a moment, and internally shook her head, ‘Nah. That one is dripping way too much to think straight, and Bianca is much the same. Poor girl.’

“Um-”

“There are many types of hungry nests, the same way that there are many types of wolves. Vine wolves, wood wolves, frost and flame wolves, and so on.”

“… I see.”

‘No, you don’t…’ Xue Yaling saw the confusion in the woman’s eyes clearly, and managed to stop any more odd expressions from appearing upon her own face. It was beyond obvious that Bianca was unable to understand the concept, seeing it as foreign despite finding no oddities in the existence of wolves or certain other things.

Unless someone had made the very deliberate effort to manipulate her memories and remove just those that would come about as the consequence of planar energy, but the chances of this actually happening were immensely low.

Reasons for doing such a thing aside – there are plenty of odd cultivators out there that might choose to mess with someone’s mind, so motive was a pointless thing to guess about – there was a major issue when it came to the possibility of such a thing happening. Influencing memories and the mind was something that could be done from the second realm onwards, since it required being able to externalise energy, but the key word there was ‘influence’, not change or control or delete or alter or anything else of the sort.

At the second realm, all one could really do was amplify feelings and strengthen memories, or weaken them, to such a degree that it has little practical use. Anyone that would be swayed by such a thing would either be stuck at an incredibly thin line between two choices, or already prefer the option suggested to them via mental influence. Naturally, in the case of the latter, it would make no difference whether one used mental influencing methods or not.

It was in the fifth or sixth realm onwards that one gained the ability to truly change the mind, but even that wasn’t so powerful that it could outright eliminate someone’s memories of a very specific topic without leaving obvious inconsistencies, and without damaging the mind as a whole. Furthermore, even the kinds of mental manipulations that can be done at such a realm would require an extreme degree of skill. This wasn’t akin to energy externalisation, which anyone could do provided they reached the second realm – influencing the mind was a skill, and an impressive one, so those that could perform a perfect mental change were in the single digits.

To remove someone’s memory and cultivation and leave them in the middle of nowhere with no hints as to their origin, one would need to be in the eighth or ninth realm, and even then they’d need to be a master of the mental domain, as the limitless energy of those realms wouldn’t be enough on its own.

So, it was safe to conclude that Bianca wasn’t targeted by such a person, since those in the eighth realm were few and those in the ninth were, as far as the world knew, completely absent from this world for quite some time now. There were likely still a few of them out there, perhaps in some form of statis or temporal distortion, but the likelihood of them emerging and getting themselves involved was rather low, especially when it came to a random girl whose only good quality was a highly pure physical body.

The energy that Bianca possessed was an exception to the typical rule regarding mental manipulation, though even now it only seemed to be amplifying emotions, albeit rather strongly. It would warrant further research – which Xue Yaling was all too keen to do – but it was nothing ground-breaking just yet, as far as she understood.

Thus, Bianca’s memories were likely not taken away. If Xue Yaling had to guess, she would say that there were no memories to lose. Most likely, this person had never experienced the Planar Continents as most people did, so there were only a few possibilities. Either Bianca had managed to avoid all things related to planar energy for the twenty or so years of her life, or… well. The other possibility was a rather curious one, and required a little more observation prior to declaring it for sure.

‘I think she’s aware enough to realise that I’ve noticed something about her, though. Good for her. Her mind could do some challenge after whatever life she’d lived prior to this,’ the kitsune noted, glancing to the east, “Well, let us proceed. You two… never mind.”

She chose not to confirm her observation of their activities, as it amused her to watch the two squirm behind her as they scrambled to return to some form of normalcy.

Bianca had to put her cock away, Song Ming had to adjust her clothes, and both were clearly aroused and flustered, far more so than two adults should’ve been. Though, when considering the fact that both must’ve spent their lives away from the hardships that Xue Yaling and many like her, kitsune or not, had to deal with from the moment they became old enough to live apart from their parents, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, nor so terrible. Perhaps it was fine to give them just a little chance to be innocent for a while, until they inevitably had to throw it all away…

Or maybe not.