As planned, Fiery Pepper went to Moon City and met with Moondemon, of course, bringing along many valuable gifts,
Moondemon didn't seem to become suspicious—or if she was, she didn't show it. She accepted the gifts and discussed business with Fiery Pepper in a friendly manner.
Fiery Pepper did exactly as instructed by the human civilization; it went around boasting about its great relationship with Moondemon and how it had been a close partner of hers.
Over time, it became common knowledge among demons that Fiery Pepper and Moondemon were allies. Some demons even speculated that they might be lovers.
Even demons fall in love with each other, though demonic love is usually unstable and chaotic. They might be in love now and kill each other the next moment.
Technically speaking, demons have no gender; most of them lack the body parts to give birth to babies. After all, demons are born from fertilized energy crystals.
Demons are born from energy crystals infused with a sufficient quantity of demonic bloodline. As long as enough bloodline is added to a crystal, it is considered fertilized and will give birth to a demon after a set amount of time. That said, the process of energy crystal fertilization can only be done naturally; it's not possible to artificially infuse a demonic bloodline into a crystal to make it fertilized—nobody has that technology.
Energy crystals with less than sufficient demonic bloodline are considered failed demon embryos and are usually used as energy stones. The power of energy stones largely depends on how much demonic bloodline is contained within. Nowadays, human civilization and major demonic forces split strong energy crystals into many pieces, making them roughly equal in value. After all, the energy crystals are used as currency, and for them to be used as such, each piece must have a similar worth.
The idea that Fiery Pepper was a lover of Moondemon was ridiculous. The most glaring reason is that Fiery Pepper is genderless, with no interest in love. It could use transfiguration spells to create the necessary organs, but it had never even thought about it.
The second glaring hint was their size. Fiery Pepper was small for a demon, while Mooddemon was one of the bigger demons. The difference was so great that it looked funny to even think about the two being love interests. Of course, size has never been an issue among demons, as they can change their size, but still, it's troublesome.
Demons have weird tastes; maybe they thought it would be romantic for the tiny Fiery Pepper to be in love with the massive Mooddemon.
...
Skyfire Demon King read the report and shook her head slowly; she didn't seem angry in the least bit.
But the demon who delivered the letter knew better and was praying to anyone who would listen.
Skyfire is usually very talkative and very moody; she can curse and scream at anyone at any time and is very unpleasant to work with.
The most terrifying scene is when she looks calm.
"In love? I didn't expect her to be so... thirsty!" Skyfire Demon King remarked.
She looked surprisingly human, with golden hair and green eyes. Aside from a pair of delicate golden horns, there was nothing else demon-like about her. She didn't look much different from an ordinary human magician.
All human magicians are demon-born, which means all have horns.
"This is just a rumor; our intelligence gatherers failed to confirm it!" said the demon assistant.
"I know it's true! I can feel it! It's exactly like her, a lowly demon who got lucky enough to inherit a full bloodline—the most undeserved demon king!"
"It's not her first time; she's the one who got lowly demons involved in the flesh business. I was the pioneer who modernized the flesh business; she did nothing to help"
"I have to end her once and for all!" Skyfire said with great anger, almost jumping out of her seat; her calm mood was nowhere to be seen.
Skyfire had long harbored grievances against Moondemon. The two were originally raised by the same demon king when they were young, but after reaching adulthood, they parted ways. They learned the secrets of creating flesh from their parent demon king and, after parting ways, created two competing big demonic cities.
"I can't take it any longer; we've been losing market share for years. The only way to stop it is to destroy the root of the problem—the demon who has been the dark hand manipulating everything secretly: Moondemon"
Skyfire didn't even think of humans as the possible dark hand behind the scenes. In her view, only a demon king dares to play with another demon king; humans are rats who are always hiding behind walls.
"Trace her location; I am going to personally pay her a visit!" Skyfire wasn't going to attack Moondemon while she was in Moon City; she planned to ambush her when she left the city.
"Yes, my lord!" said the demon assistant.
...
Moondemon identified herself as a female demon, but visually, she didn't match what the majority of people would expect a female demon to look like. She had a huge, 7-meter-tall body with unbelievable muscle mass, two enormous black horns on her head, a scaly body, and a terrifying face. She was not like Fiery Pepper and Skyfire, who, despite being demons, were quite small and human-like.
Her appearance often led those who met her to believe she was one of those muscleheads who rarely used their brains. But this was a grave miscalculation; in fact, she was one of the smartest demons out there.
What does being smart mean? This is a very old question that has no definitive answer. For example, does having a good memory, being good at math, and doing well at university define smartness? Are those who drop out of university dumb? That can't be right, as many who weren't good in university later became very successful.
There is no one way to describe being 'smart.' One way could be 'being smart means being able to see and take advantage of the environment for one's benefit.' That means if the university helps, one should remain there and study, and if it doesn't, one should drop out to pursue another path that leads to quicker success.
Smartness is a combination of sufficient intelligence, wisdom, foresight, and courage. It involves having the intelligence to understand the environment, the wisdom to know one's own abilities and limitations, the foresight to make the best choices, and the courage to make those hard choices.
By that definition, Moondemon is definitely very smart. She wasn't good at formation dao or any other magical art; she wasn't particularly knowledgeable and rarely opened a book. But she had a particular ability to take advantage of her surroundings to strengthen herself. Her moon prophecy was also very helpful, enabling her to know things others would never know.
When Wide Vision plotted against her, he greatly underestimated her prophecy. Moondemon easily noticed someone was plotting, and it didn't take long to find the culprit.
But even though she discovered the plot, she didn't mention it and let Fiery Pepper continue spreading false rumors. Moondemon had already decided to take a risk to get rid of Skyfire. She knew the death of a demon king was most beneficial to human civilization, but she didn't care. She wasn't afraid of humans; her most fierce rival was Skyfire.
...
"All is going well," Moondemon observed the moon's reflection on a river and smiled. Though with her terrifying face, this 'smile' was enough to scare anyone to death.
Her moon prophecy ability is her bloodline spell. Most people knew about it, but nobody knew how it worked.
The moon itself is very strange; it's there in the sky, but it doesn't actually exist—there is no planet up there in space. It shines with a magical light that illuminates the night, but few know its purpose or reason for existence.
Moondemon knows more about the moon than most. She knows that both the sun and the moon are actually the eyes of the world consciousness—the sun being the right eye and the moon the left.
Using the spell, Moondemon can momentarily take a glimpse using world consciousness's left eye.
What does the world consciousness see when it looks at the world? It seems far beyond what one can imagine. It sees the flow of energy, bloodlines, the changing shapes of the oceans, the edges of the land, various flows of luck, and far more.
The amount of information is so vast that Moondemon has no chance of interpreting it all; she just focuses on her own location and does her best to uncover as many secrets as possible.
Recently, she noticed the entanglement of her own luck with Skyfire's. An entanglement by itself is not strange; after all, the two share the flesh business. But this entanglement was not the usual one; it was very deep. The disturbing part was that the two merged into one, indicating that after the entanglement, only one of them would survive.
Destiny is fluid. Moondemon knew how to avoid the entanglement. Fiery Pepper's luck was the one pushing the two demon kings together. If she pushed Fiery Pepper away, she could avoid entanglement with Skyfire. But she didn't.
Even though the entanglement carried risks, after the merger, the surviving line of luck had much more vigor. Obviously, the winner would swallow the loser's assets and become much more powerful.
Calculating the distances and locations, Moondemon had an idea of where the entanglement would occur. She had time to prepare and, therefore, had a much higher chance of winning.
Looking behind her, Moondemon's smile intensified as she turned around and gazed at the beautiful demon who appeared before her.