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Translator: Tamon
Wang Qi rushed to the dorm with infinite sympathy for the poor and lonely Zhen Chanzi.
Divine Hexagram Computation offered him immense support. The amount and recovery speed of spiritual power it offered paled compared with the Grand Scripture of Primordial Chaos. From certain aspects, Divine Hexagram Computation offered no real advantage, but when it comes to calculations, it took the crown.
Earth’s scientists called mathematics the mother of all sciences. No research could be made possible without it.
With no Fourier series and no calculus, there would be no electromagnetic field.
With no Tailor series and no genetic algorithm, genetics would have always been out of reach.
With no mathematical model, no mechanical research could be conducted.
It made Wang Qi’s choice Divine Hexagram Computation, for it would never outlive its usefulness regardless of what method he’d be changing down the road.
His heart raced, his pace quickened, eager to get some sleep and train first thing in the morning.
In his eagerness to get in his room, he heard something from within. [Am I hearing things?]
Wang Qi stuck his ear on the door, the sounds were much clearer now, that of a girl’s humming. The voice was soft and warm, not just cloyingly sweet, but melodious too. Wang Qi took a couple of steps back, checking the room’s number, 414. He rubbed his eyes and double-checked.
“Elementary, my dear Watson.” Wang Qi spoke words only he understood. (Tamon: reference from Sherlock Holmes series and books)
After eliminating his misconceptions and ascertaining he didn’t order any special service, what remained were two possibilities.
One, the humming girl came to the wrong room.
Two, larceny in process.
Ignoring the first possibility, for now, the second sounded far more plausible. He had to give the thief credit for getting the courage to infiltrate the Immortal Alliance to steal, though he had to question her intellect for choosing now of all times to slink in a Qi Refining disciples dorm of all places—how unprofessional. [And let’s not forget the humming.]
Picturing a pretty little cat burglar only found in novels, Wang Qi’s smile turned evil, downright degenerate one might say.
He was wise not to share his thoughts with Zhen Chanzi, for the latter would’ve mocked him for having his mind in the gutter.
Nevertheless, he did sympathize with the great Great Ascension cultivator reduced to nothing more than throwing remarks.
After that pointless introspection, Wang Qi stepped in and lay his eyes on the humming girl. He blinked and muttered, “Heavenly Dao dude, I finally figured out your kinks…”
The girl had an odd hair color. The people of Divine Province all looked like Asians from Earth, while still having plenty of variety in terms of eye, skin, and hair color. However, this girl’s bright orange hair gave her an inhuman feel while it also felt incredibly natural, unlike the Chinese smart fad on Earth.
Also, instead of normal, human ears, she had a pair of pointy, triangular cat ears.
Slightly parted, like the corner of a mouth that wouldn’t close, and then there was that sweet, sweet voice. [Yep, a living and breathing kemonomimi, or beast ear girl.]
The doubt this was a legendary demon taking human form existed, although, such a feat was only possible at the ancient Spirit Severing Stage, or modern Emptiness Realm. No matter how he thought about it, no demon like that would be caught dead in a Qi Refining cultivator’s room.
Wang Qi’s questions regarding the girl’s identity were quelled as a purely academic curiosity overtook him. In manga vernacular, a flip had been switched.
“Can I touch your ears?”
“Yip~! The girl yelped, her professional smile frozen on her face at his question.
“I take it you agree from your smile?” Wang Qi was thrilled. An exotic creature’s biology filled him with a ravenous curiosity. As well as touching it first hand…
“Yip! Wait, nya! I-nya!” The girl had an understandable delayed reaction, but Wang Qi’s sly hand was faster, grabbing his prize.(Tamon: nya is what catgirls in anime sometimes use in their speech to make them cutter)
[It feels so nice.]
Wang Qi got his fix, able to fulfill the dreams of his past life’s youth.
The girl’s face went beet red from his dubious touching of her ears. She struggled for her dear life and modesty, to escape from the vile clutches of this, this creep. Wang Qi sensed no spiritual power coming from the girl, her strength only at the level of Education or Reaching Heaven, posing no challenge to him. Since the girl couldn’t shake him off, she called for help, “Help! Someone help me!”
Spurred on by classical scenes in dramas and movies, Wang Qi revealed a gentle ‘smile’, “Go ahead, scream. No one’s going to save you now.”
A sudden and unexplained pain came from his back, and he found himself flung towards the wall. With keen reactions and sharp eyes, Wang Qi put his hands up to break the imminent impact. His body seized up and mitigated the force throughout his body before he landed on the ground.
[Holy hell, someone actually came to help!]
Wang Qi groaned as he turned, finding Xiang Qi shielding the catgirl with a mask of rage, “Wang Qi, to think you’re such a creep.”
“A creep?”
Xiang Qi pointed at him, snapping, “Forcing yourself on little girls! Stooping to obscene assault in broad daylight now?”
Wang Qi quirked his mouth, “I just never saw a lady, uh, such exotic ears and wanted to feel them out, is all. How is that an assault?”
“Demonborn are people of the Immortal Alliance! Are you that much of a racist that you can’t see her as a human being?”
“Like I said, I just wanted to touch her ears. It’s not like I committed a crime…”
Su Junyu poked his head into the room, bearing a wry smile and a knowing expression, “Touching the ancestral traits is a no-go for demonborn.”
“What’s with that grin then?” Wang Qi had a stiff face, “What’s a demonborn anyway?”
“The offsprings of undying love between a transformed demon with a human.” Zhen Chanzi echoed in Wang Qi’s mind, “For thousands upon thousands of years, cultivators and demons were bitter enemies, and the demonborn took the hatred of both races. Things seem to have changed, I see.”
[It’s totally unscientific!] Wang Qi glanced at the girl with cat ears, making her flinch behind Xiang Qi, “You’re telling me a human and a demon’s love is able to break the boundaries of the genome? That’s madness.”
Xiang Qi said, “You’ve never seen a demonborn before?” Wang Qi shook his head and she looked at his ring, “Old man, you didn’t tell him about demonborn?”
Zhen Chanzi chuckled, “Cultivators beheaded demonborn on sight in my days.”
The catgirl shuddered at the word.
Xiang Qi rubbed her back, comforting her. Su Junyu gave Wang Qi a longer explanation.
Transformation was an ability the demons could attain once they reached a certain stage. It changed the way the bloodline defined its form without altering the bloodline itself. For the average earthling, it was changing the DNA’s expression without modifying the genes.
After DNA’s manifestation changed, demons themselves shifted into humans, removing any genetic blockage between proliferation among demons and humans, for the time being. Despite that, the birthrate of mingling species was very low. This was the beginning of demonborn history. And when demonborn and a human have a child, the odds of being a dragonborn as well were half.
Demonborn infants were indistinguishable from humans. Only around twelve years of age do they exhibit atavism with the onset of secondary sex characteristics—common traits were hair color, ears, and tail.
Of particular note was Daoist Heavenly Gu Fabre leading Spirit Beast Mountain’s cultivator in cracking this ability, expressing repeated requests to change its name. Demon transformation was once associated with a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. The only difference was demons using spiritual power while the caterpillar hormones.
The scientific and rigorous proposal faced strong opposition from other Unfettered. Even some Great Ascension demons that were on good terms with Spirit Beast Mountain declared they would turn hostile with the sect upon following through with this academic term for the demons.
In short, thanks to those seniors’ endless perseverance, modern-day cultivators did not call transformed demons freaks or abominations.
Wang Qi was quick to pick up on the main point, “Back up. By the onset of secondary sex characteristics, you mean…”
Su Junyu gave a thumbs up, “Right on! Demonborn’s ears and tails, are to them what to humans…” He glanced at Xiang Qi’s chest, “Ahem, a crying shame…”
Xiang Qi gave a thin smile as she deployed Celestial Blade Discs, “Moneybags, come here. I promise I won’t kill you.”
Wang Qi held his face, only one thing on his mind, [That was a close one…]
With that explanation over with, the fiasco calmed down.
Xiang Qi concluded, “In other words, Wang Qi, for the sake of sating your curiosity of not having seen a demonborn, you’ve committed obscene acts in the open against Junior Sister Mao Zimiao.”
Wang Qi’s mouth twitched, “I object to the obscene part…”
[It was just curiosity, purely academic! You call researching obscene?]
“Apologize.”
Wang Qi bent the knee and complied on the spot. The girl was flustered, “It’s fine, nya! Senior Brother didn’t do it… on purpose, nya.”
“Oh, I meant to ask… that unclear word, nya, is it specific to demonborn speech?”
Mao Zimiao tensed and hastily said, “No, nya! I-I just, nya… just…”
Xiang Qi supplied, “Dictated by demonborn physiology. A Golden Core demon gone through extensive tempering can change their throat, while demonborn can’t.”
The girl’s red cheeks were practically bleeding at this point, “I-I just can’t control it, nya!”
The demonborn girl was in Wang Qi’s room to earn merits, having taken a job from Immortal Alliance to clean up the empty dorm before the students arrived.
Immortal Alliance merits were akin to contribution points or a student’s credits. They made it possible to buy practically anything in the Immortal Alliance.
With the misunderstanding diffused, Xiang Qi instructed Mao Zimiao to leave while she talked to Wang Qi, “Are you feeling better? Did you decide on a cultivation method?”
