It was May 21st on Thursday in the fourth week of the semester. Wang Ling left for school as usual in the morning.
In the bedroom, Loopy Toad drowsily opened his eyes and took out his little diary from under Wang Ling's bed.
Loopy Toad learned quickly; in just three days, it had gone from drawing to reading to learning how to write. It didn't think this language was hard to learn and it was also far more talented than many of the demon kings at the same cultivation level. In contrast, the written script of the demon race's dark scriptures was really difficult to learn — whether it was character strokes or structure, it was far harder than human writing.
Before the demon rampage six years ago, the Gate Between Worlds had already descended upon earth a total of forty-eight times. Loopy Toad had been the forty-ninth demon king from the demon world to emerge from the Gate Between Worlds to wreak destruction on the human world.
It had also been the first demon king to be reduced to its primordial spirit with just one punch as soon as it had descended to earth and before it could cause much damage... it had been the first demon king to be abandoned by the demon kings of the demon world, its primordial spirit imprisoned in the human world... it had been the first demon king to break off a sliver of its primordial spirit with extreme difficulty, but then had been caught and forcibly merged with another spirit into the body of a dog.
Loopy Toad already had no words left to describe how miserable its life was. It had rebelled against staying in the human world at first, but as time went on, it had started to adapt to life here... it even felt that the human cultivators studying at No. 60 High School who were only at the Foundation Establishment stage were actually pretty cute.
So once it had learned to write human words, it decided to record what it had seen and learned in the human world in the form of a diary. If it had a chance to return to the demon world in the future, this diary would serve as a remembrance of its time on earth — and who knew, maybe this diary could one day help eliminate the years of misunderstanding between the demon world and the human world...
Title: After Becoming a Dog, Demon King Sky-Swallowing Toad's First Human Observation Diary Entry
Date: May 21st
Weather: Sunny
Mood: Complex
Current Wish: At the moment, I hope that if I cultivate hard enough, I'll be able to take on a human form. But if I do... I hope I'll have an oval face.
The following is the text of this diary entry...
Breakfast this morning was still the New Orleans fly-flavored dog food. After friendly negotiation with Little Master Wang (Wang Ling) last night, he finally decided to help me ask Dopey Guo for a spicy fly-flavored version. Since coming to the human world, I haven't had spicy food in a very long time. Unexpectedly, I feel a little moved just at the thought that I'll be able to eat spicy food soon...
After a preliminary observation of the human world, my opinion is as follows.
First: Except for a very few evildoers, most humans are normal cultivators and many are ordinary. Furthermore, they are very much in favor of peace. Unlike what the rumors say, they are no real threat to the demon race.
Second: Back then, there was a rumor that a human cultivation grandmaster called Hou Yi had shot dead the demon king Jinwu [1. Hou Yi was an archer in Chinese mythology. When ten suns rose and threatened to burn the world, he shot down nine of them. In olden Chinese, Jinwu translates to "sun."] , which had enraged the whole demon race... but in fact, this is only a myth in the human world and this person Hou Yi doesn't exist...
Third: There is a legend among the demon race about seven calabash knights storming the Gate Between Worlds and capturing the Demon Scorpion and Demon Snake 1 . In the human world, this is only a cartoon and doesn't exist in reality at all...
Conclusion: Because of people with malicious intentions who employ water armies as a misdirection strategy, the demon race has harbored a deep misunderstanding of the human world all these years... should all the tribal elders be able to access this diary, my hope is that you will ponder and reflect deeply on this, and then catch the keyboard demon hiding in our midst to prevent it from souring our relationship with humans even further.
It made sense that Loopy Toad's first diary entry would be the longest one since it covered the insights and experiences it had gained from the last six years in the human world.
It had always felt that there was a really big misunderstanding between the human race and the demon race. If they had sat down and talked about it back then, the relationship between the two races wouldn't be so strained now.
Of course, after years of conflict between the two worlds, it didn't expect to become an envoy for peace by depending on its diary alone. And while most people did favor peace, there were extremists, whether human or demon, that would act in the name of so-called righteousness for their own clans.
If the demon race wanted to get along well with the human race, Loopy Toad felt it was important that they dealt with these extremists first.
After completing this long first entry, it closed the diary and slipped it back under the bed.
Although it had always harbored a grudge against the demon race for leaving it behind, in the end, it still missed its homeland.
Maybe back then, they had had no other choice but to leave it behind...
Loopy Toad looked at the bright sun through Wang Ling's bedroom skylight. In the demon world, the sun was purplish-black in color. Gazing at the sun in the sky, Loopy Toad suddenly thought of its brother Little Chicken.
Little Chicken was the chicken king in the circle of demon kings, and had been given the nickname The First Chicken.
In those days, they would cultivate together through the night, and when the morning arrived, Little Chicken would always give a loud and clear roar.
If the Gate Between Worlds hadn't closed so soon, Little Chicken would definitely have rushed out to save it.
I wonder how The First Chicken is doing now...
Loopy Toad lay prone on the floor and flicked its green tail as it wondered in its heart.
Just as Loopy Toad finished writing in its observation diary, elsewhere, Director Song of Landscape Manor received an investigation report.
His two subordinates had delivered the information to him as soon as he had arrived at Landscape Manor's foreign languages research office early that morning. "Director Song, here are the results..."
"So fast?" He was a little surprised.
"We had a fairly clear image of his face and he didn't use a transfiguration skill to hide his identity at all... after our technicians hacked the cultivation police station's database, they found a match very quickly," replied the tall man in a suit.
"It seems that this man has a lot of self-confidence." Director Song raised an eyebrow.
The short man in a suit started to sweat. "Director, maybe you should take a look at this person's profile first... this is a well-known menace."
A well-known... menace?
Just listening to this description, Director Song's heart immediately sank and he had a bad feeling.
When he flipped through the investigation results and saw the man's Taoist name, his head felt like it was about to explode.
...F**k! Why was it that person?!
The old director couldn't help rubbing his temples; if the other party had just been at the general the Soul Formation stage, it would still have been fine... but this was not an ordinary person!
Grenade-Throwing Senior Immortal, the owner of the cultivation forum... the most well-known menace in the cultivation world nowadays and a prime example of someone who took pride in courting death. The legendary Great Death Courting Senior! The famous troublemaker!
This is adapted from the 1980s Chinese cartoon 'Calabash Brothers,' in which seven boys grown magically from calabash set out to defeat two demons, one a Scorpion spirit and the other a Snake spirit.