Chapter THREE: Evolution

"Hey, kid, wake up." a voice says. ZhongKui is sitting in a room full of delicates, chewing on a huge roasted chicken wing.

Suddenly pain on his face causes him to sit up, he wakes up to find that it was just a dream. "Why is my face swallowed?" he asks the man in front of him, he was the one with the weird looking chain last night! "Eh, I don't really know, I-I was wondering that too!"

ZhongKui sits up and finds several strangers in the room. They are all in a light grey uniform.

"Who are those people? Why are they in my room?" ZhongKui asks the chain guy.

"Not the best time for this." The guy frowns as he stands up to talk to one of the strangers.

ZhongKui checks his bed and finds out that the chest is gone, he looks under the bed. nope, not there. The strangers begin to leave, and that's when ZhongKui realises that they are all wearing the same hat. The chain guy stops at the door before leaving, out of nowhere he throws the chest at ZhongKui. "I believe that you were looking for th~" he pauses as ZhongKui's hand misses it. "Yeah yeah, thanks." ZhongKui says after he 'catches' the chest with his face, now he knows why his face was swallowed when he woke.

"Keep it, it will bring you fortune. Use it wisely and carefully, or it will bring you death!"

He walks out of the door, leaving ZhongKui lost in his words. He looks at the chest, "How am I supposed to use this?" ZhongKui is really confused. "I can't even open this thing!" He smashes the chest on the floor, but then remembers what the man had said. 'Use it carefully or it will bring death!' He shivers as he picks it up. 'Okay, I will use it carefully this time.' Then, he picks up the chest again with care and caution, oops, there it goes- flying out the window.

"Bam-Ah!"

'Oh shit.' Zhongkui runs towards the window, 'So that's what he meant! I killed someone!' He thinks as he peeks down the window.

"This thing flies from the sky and strikes me on the head!" He exhales in relief, at least the man is still alive. "Where did it come from?" ZhongKui's heart pounds as he 'prays' for forgiveness, 'He is blind, he is blind he didn't see where it came from, he got hit on the head and lost brain cells and lost memory...'

"From that window! Let's beat the guy up!" he hears the man shout, now he is actually starting to hope that he did kill the man. He hears the door open with a bang, and footsteps rushing in. 'Fuck!' he thinks, 'The freaking guy-with-chain didn't lock the door!' He bite his lip and stands up straight, 'Fine, I will use the trick that has been passed down my family for centuries!' He raises his hand, and there he is! Hands in the air, body very straight, he starts to shout.

"I'm a tree I'm a tree I'm a tree I'm a tree..."

He then hears the people on the first floor shout: "He's up there! Go!"

As the group of people gets closer and closer, ZhongKui completely loses control of his body.

"Oh how did you know I am up here?" ZhongKui shouts back and jumps out of the window. 'Why did I shout??? What am I doing?' WHY DID I JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW?'

He has this little mental issue, every time he gets extremely nervous or feels panic, he would do weird things that don't tend to fit his age and behaviour. It's like his body is out of control but his brain is still 'online'.

He lands on a big mat, 'great,' he thinks, they are selling mats- wait why is everyone staring at me? He then notices a big board behind him that says: Magic trick!

"Next trick! Fire hoop and underwater chain escape and knife in throat and- why is the magician running away?"

ZhongKui jumps off the mat, and runs toward the chest, he quickly picks it up and sprints into an alleyway. After a turn, he meets a dead end. 'Why the hell did I pick an alleyway to escape?' He starts to panic again, when he hears a voice calling him. He starts to slowly climb up the pipes on the nearby wall. 'Why am I moving so slow? Why am I even climbing the pipe?'

He reaches the top of the wall, and sees something shining on one of the roofs. The roof has a dip on it, and the shiny thing lays in the dip. It's like it is waiting for someone to pick it up.

Without any thinking he leaps towards the building. Almost there! He-slips and falls down...

"Ahhh What da-Poof!"

Luckily, he lands on a tent that someone set out. "Phew~" He is safe now.

He jumps off of the tent, and just then a man comes out of the tent, holding a sword. He is clearly drunk. "En garde!" the man shouts as he approaches, still holding a bottle in hand.

"Calm down, alright? I did not have any intention to disturb you, sir."

ZhongKui says he has to use the right way to solve things now. "I don't want no trouble, okay? Let's deal with this the gentleman way." He is trying to calm the man down, 'Lets not do anything that will cause problems this time' he is going to be a gentleman this time. ZhongKui walks towards the drunk man and-smacks the man right on the head with his chest and starts running. Gentleman

The man collapses as ZhongKui runs out of sight. He picks up pace and runs into a smithy. He trips on the footstep and runs into a wall.

"Hey! What's going on here?" A loud voice shouts, it's not a wall. It is a man, he is tall and sturdy, with a beard tied into a knot.

The man is holding a huge hammer in hand, he is the blacksmith here. The Furnace is on, melted iron and half-done weapons are all over the floor.

"I didn't mean to… I was running from a bunch of gangsters and a drunk man." ZhongKui tries to explain, but the man is impatient. "I don't need no explanation, look at what you did! Better pay me enough to get rid of this mess!"

The room is really hot, but that's not the only reason ZhongKui is sweating.

"Sorry, how much will you need?" ZhongKui is penniless, all he has is the chest and the cloth on his back.

"Huh, I say, about eight hundred silvies! This was supposed to be for the mayor's bodyguard, but since you messed everything up I will have to restart! I have three days until all these needs to be done." The blacksmith says, his angry expression disapears.

'A hundred and twenty silvies! Why don't you go and rob the bank?' ZhongKui thinks, in shock. 'That's enough to buy a house!'

Silvies is one of the money they use all around the continent. There are four levels of money, the first is coppie, five coppie is a bronzie, twenty bronzie is a silvie, and at the top is bullion, which is made of gold and costs two hundred fifty silvies.

"Well what do you say?" The blacksmith asks. ZhongKui hesitates, "To be honest sir I don't even have one silvie!"

The blacksmith's face darkens, "Well then, I will just report you and send you to jail!"

"Jail? Hell no! Please sir I don't have any money!" ZhongKui pleads the man. "I can work! I will work for you until I can pay back the money! I will work restlessly!"

The blacksmith thinks for a moment, he actually does need a assistant. He sighs and agrees. "Hm, fine, you will start tomorrow then, stay in the smithy and I will give a room to you. Don't break anything!"

His room is small, one bed, a desk with a clock, well no one knows if the thing still works. The bathroom is even smaller, with only a sink and a toilet.

He lies on the bed after 'shower', which he just used a bucket from the blacksmith. He put the chest under his bed. Just as he is about to fall asleep, he remembers the shiny thing on the roof. 'It must have been taken, or blown by the wind.' He thinks to himself, but his curiosity takes over. It is like there is a tiny voice telling him: 'Go check it out! Check it out! It could be something very interesting! Maybe it is worth a hundred silvies!'

He can't sleep, he keeps thinking about the shiny thing he saw. With a sigh, he gets out of bed.

The moon hides behind the clouds, only a little bit of light is on the street. ZhongKui sneaks out of the smithy, and walks toward the building where he saw the shiny thing. He climbs up the pipes again, and there it is! It is still on the roof of that building, waiting. He looks around, and finds some broken wood boards next to him. "How can I get there?" he asks himself, he failed the last time he tried. Then, he sees a balcony on the building he is on, and suddenly a light bulb lights up in his head.

He climbs down the building and hangs on one of the pipes, then, he throws the board to the balcony. He pushes himself off of the wall, and lands in the b-black fence on the balcony.

"Oof!" He hits his ribs, hanging on the balcony is no fun. The ground is very far from him, if he falls, he will end up breaking a few bones. If he is really that unlucky, he can die. So without hesitating, he pulls with all his strength. "Urgh~" At last, he lands on the balcony.

He turns around, and-"Shit!" The owner of the house has not slept yet, and he has successfully caught her attention. "No shit I am one dead man."

The owner is a girl about the age of eighteen, she has a scar that runs from the back of her neck to the lower spine. And of course I am not telling you, that the window on the balcony that ZhongKui is on leads to the bathroom, or that the girl is having a shower, nope, not telling you.

"What the fucking fuck?" The girl is just as shocked as ZhongKui, "When did stalkers become so brave?"

Poor ZhongKui, on the other hand, is like: 'Who the hell builds this big ass window on the bathroom wall with no curtain?'

They just stare at each other, until the girl runs out of the bathroom with a long knife. "I will rip off your balls! Dirty motherfucker!"

ZhongKui realises what's happening, he stands up and climbs up the roof, before the girl's knife flies into his back. Yes, into his back, literally like all the way through. "Aghh~" ZhongKui cries in pain, and collapses, he then notices the shiny thing is moving towards him 'Almost there!' he thinks. The girl is now thinking, 'almost dead!'

As soon as he touches the shiny thing, he feels a warmth spreading through his body. The knife shatters, as light shoots out of his eyes. He leaps off the building, and flies to the smithy, unconscious… leaving the girl feeling lost in the wind.

"Faster faster! Pull the bar down, no, no, the other way! Now go to the fan! Quick! Before it gets cold!" The blacksmith shouts as ZhongKui runs from one machine to the other.

After the fun adventure last night, ZhongKui changed. He is not just a boy anymore, he is now… a busy working boy.

He found something interesting last night, the shiny thing, turned out to be a soul fragment of the Power keeper. And that's when he unlocked his first power-hand beam! Which is just making his hand glow… not only useless, it's also exhausting, after he used it twice he fainted…

Now, he is working very hard in the smithy, he and the smith-whose name is called Anderson, have ten broadswords to make.

"There! Right on the table, yes that's right! Throw it to me!" Now he has to throw a freaking big ass hammer which weighs almost the same as him. "What are you waiting for?" ZhongKui clenches his teeth, and with all of his strength, he lifts up the hammer, but then trips over a bucket on the floor. "Oh shit!" The hammer flies out of his hands while his face contacts the solid floor.

He looks up, as the smith catches the hammer. "Huh, not bad! Nice technique too!" Anderson looks at him in surprise and says.

Just like that, he is off to work again…

At the start his arms were sore, then painful, and now he can't even feel them. "Nice job done, we've got all our ten swords done!" Anderson smiles at him, and hands him a cup of water, "Thank you." ZhongKui thanks him weakly.

Anderson stares at him for a moment, then asks ZhongKui. "Wanna do some more?" Anderson smiles evilly "We can do tomorrow's work too!"

ZhongKui chokes on the water…

In the meantime, in another galaxy…

"Seems like we've got a newcomer," an Orc says after visiting the oracle, "he's special."

"What dooo you mean ssspecialll?" A werewolf says, frowning. "I don't know, it feels like an interesting one to me!" The Orc says excitedly, "It must be a strong one then, the oracle looked very serious."

Back to ZhongKui…

He is now sitting on the bed, he just activated the most OP part of the soul fragment-it marks the other part of the fragment's location, and also places to get new powers.

"Oh this is great!" ZhongKui is eager to find another power. "Let's go right now!" He stands up and checks the map. "Ha! The nearest is only three hundred miles away! Let's go! It will only take me-about four days?" He sits down again.

Just then, the map flash. Now, the power source is three hundred metres away…