The view stunned him.
The little demons weren't running toward the amethyst mountain and risking their lives for no reason—no one would willingly rush into danger if the crystal peak were truly lethal.
There was no way so many would sprint toward it now, even after being ambushed from all sides.
Based on what he knew of those crystals, he had assumed they were racing to claim newly drawn-in souls—or mining the mountain's minerals to forge crude weapons.
He took a deep breath, twisting his head toward the horizon.
A broader panorama unfolded: the other floating islands, both high and low, were tilting as well. Their Soul Anchors pulsed in unison, just like the island they were on.
Something massive was happening.
He grabbed his severed head by the hair and flung it upward. It spun through the air and landed in the brush beside his kneeling body. Through the hawk's eyes, he surveyed the forest.
His awareness extended through the bird's form, tethered by invisible strands of intent.
"Kraaa!"
He jerked aside just as a raven dove at him. "KRAAA!!" he cawed back, lunging with his beak.
The raven recoiled, talons scraping across his feathers. He retaliated—his beak punched through its artery, tearing downward and severing the vein.
"Kraa!!"
It flailed in panic, trying to flee. Qiren followed easily, slammed it into a tree, and cracked several branches on impact.
"KRAAA!!" With a final thrust, he snapped his beak into its nape, severing it cleanly.
He left the corpse dripping and plucked its soul free.
He didn't consume it. Instead, he took flight—soul in tow—gliding away from the chaos toward the summit.
"The life of a demon in this world is truly bizarre," he muttered.
Below, fledglings scrambled from danger—some limping, others darting away as if he were coming for them.
He sighed. "I still know nothing about this realm—its rules, its dangers… and even less about myself. If I want to live longer than a few years, I need to learn fast."
He slowed his flight and let the wind carry him.
When enough Qi returned, he wrapped his hair around his neck and pulled his head back into place.
The moment it clicked, his connection to the hawk dimmed—
Negative Karma: 0.4 ↑↓
Refinement Qi: 0.3 ↑↓
Both began draining the moment his inner Taijitu started to replenish. This didn't fuel his usual techniques, but flowed somewhere else to strengthen his dimming link.
"Hm?"
He closed his eyes and checked his balance.
Qiren stepped into the inner realm—dark as always—but something was different.
The status scroll still floated, but now it orbited a large berry he recognized immediately.
"The hawk's soul…" he whispered.
He didn't fully understand how it appeared here, but the ritual was the obvious culprit.
Negative Karma: 0.0Refinement Qi: 0.01
The numbers peeled off the scroll like dissolving ink and sank into the berry's skin.
"So that's how it is." He opened his eyes. "Maintaining this cursed physique I gained by merging my consciousness with the hawk and the spirit of misfortune drains a lot of negative karma—and a small amount of Qi."
He rose, dusting dirt from his knees, and admired the moonlit sky.
"I suspected some abilities ran on a different power source. This proves it."
Straightening, he let his long hair stream behind him like a banner as he glided through the night—like a fallen immortal drifting on the wind.
His gaze shifted between the hawk and his own flowing hair.
Two power sources: Qi and karma.
"Could it really be as simple as body and spirit?" he murmured. "Qi drains when I use my hair—to form demonic strands, when I severed my head, and when I shape the needles…"
"But karma drains when I use the cursed berry fragments—the Imparting Rite, and that improvised Bad Luck Vessel ritual I hacked together by tearing apart the old warding rite in the heat of the moment."
He rubbed his chin.
"One reshapes my body. The other reshapes the world around me."
It was only a theory, but it fit everything so far. His abilities were multiplying too quickly for certainty.
He chuckled softly.
From a depressed divorcee dabbling in occult rituals… to dying, waking here, and somehow thriving in a world where death lurked at every angle.
Qiren smiled and urged the Cursed Hawk of Misfortune onward.
Flying demons ahead panicked and accelerated, terrified he might attack.
Qiren simply rose higher and drifted past.
Their terror dissolved into relieved silence.
A harpy-like demon snarled at him, confused—then froze as it recognized the hawk beneath him. Its eyes widened; after two quick blinks, it began following him.
The others joined in.
None of them could believe a flightless creature had tamed such a beast. Curiosity slowly overtook fear, and soon a second migrating horde gathered around him—where the first migration had failed on the ground, this one succeeded in the sky.
He took the bizarre event in stride, making a mental note of every winged demon drifting alongside him.
Some resembled harpies, with feathers trailing down their arms to grant them lift. Others had humanoid proportions—two legs, two arms—but with massive bat-like wings jutting from their backs.
Then there were insect types as well.
At first, he wasn't sure if they were demons like him or demon beasts like the wolves and other hostile creatures that hunted them.
But having seen a beetle up close, he recognized the same strange "cute baby face" replacing where an insect head should have been.
That confirmed it: some of the insectoid forms were indeed demon-kind.
"If there are human-faced beetles… does that mean spiders, or even centipede-like demons exist too?"
He shuddered at the thought of falling asleep only to be awakened and chased by hellish swarms of human-faced bugs.
His gaze drifted to the beetle girl, and for a moment his imagination twisted her into a towering seven-foot figure—exoskeleton hardened with jagged edges, a maw splitting into a demonic grin, hundreds of teeth unfurling beneath.
Behind her, other demonesses formed: arachnids, centipedes, mantises, and even "normal-skinned" ones.
"How frightening…" he muttered. "How am I supposed to remarry in this world if demons can become this terrifying? Will I die alone?"