Hsi Wu dreamed of days gone by when the world was vast and lush with greenery, and the sky so blue and high where he could fly as he so wished.
Those were the days the people bowed under him, kneeled in fear and respect, always there to serve his every needs. Yet those were also the days boredom visited him often.
It had become a familiar sight that men and animals alike cowered in his presence. To alleviate his boredom, Hsi Wu directed his attention to the object of curiousity that was his subjects.
Humans were feeble creatures, insignificant upon his and his siblings' gaze. How ants were to them was how they were to the demon sorcerers.
They toiled day and night for scraps of food, and should death knock on their door come next sunrise, their short life would end as just that, a meaningless existence.
Except that was not what the humans themselves believed, for they scribed poems, tales, and proverbs describing their attainment of meaningful lives.
The dichotomy of their beliefs against Hsi Wu's own intrigued him, and so he observed, mingling among humans.
Nothing perplexed him greater than their concept of kindness.
"What is kindness?" he had asked a passing child while in a human form not much older in appearance.
"Well, my mom said it's about being nice and making others comfortable. If they need help, you give it to them."
"And you do this for?"
"Nothing? Kindness is its own rewards."
"That's just stupidity," Hsi Wu said and left without a word.
Giving without taking was foolish? The mere suggestion itself was the peak of absurdity. What use was giving advantage to others without advancing one own's gain? No way the human race would have survived this long with such primitive thinking.
Yet Hsi Wu continued to observe, unable to stop thinking about such a baffling concept.
"Do you really not gain anything from kindness?" he asked the same child again on another day.
"Well, if you're nice to people, they'll be nice to you back."
"..."
"Oh, not what you want to hear, huh. I guess you do get something if the other person is nice enough to repay you."
"Such as?"
"Small stuff like toys, sweets, and sometimes they might even promise to help you in the future."
"Intriguing," Hsi Wu said and left again, this time with something to ponder upon.
The next time they met, he tripped the child onto the ground with his foot. The grass padded the child's fall, but it wasn't painless. A few seconds later, he helped the child back up again.
"There, I helped you. Now give me something."
The child's confused face shifted into realization before he laughed. He struggled to form words in between his pants.
"That's not how kindness works, silly. If you just make troubles for others and then fix it, that's just apology."
"Then how does it work? If you don't gain anything from it, the way I see it, kindness is just an excuse for others to trample on you."
"I guess. But I like helping people. Remember how I said kindness is the reward itself? Well, when I'm nice to people, I feel happy, especially if they're happy as well."
Hsi Wu frowned. Perhaps kindness was just a value too human for a noble creature like him to understand.
"Don't think too hard on it. Lots of people aren't kind either. We call those people selfish. They only care about themselves."
Selfishness? Now that was a value Hsi Wu understood by heart. He looked at the child with a smirk as an idea popped into his head.
"Say, would you like to wager?"
"Like gambling?"
"In a way. If you're interested, meet me here tomorrow."
When Hsi Wu was safe in his abode in his demon form, he started to work.
The child was determined to only do good and didn't seem to have a shred of basic demon survival instinct inside him. A true goodie-two-shoe as what the humans would say.
Hsi Wu wanted to test that naivety. See how far it'd take the child to snap. And when that time arrived, Hsi Wu would be proven right that humans and demons were at the core very much the same.
"Here." Hsi Wu handed one pair of a handheld mirror to the child who curiously perused it.
"What's this for?"
Hsi Wu raised his own mirror.
"These are magic mirrors. We can communicate with it. See?"
He demonstrated by blocking his face from view with the tool. It took a few seconds before the child understood and had his face appear on the mirror in Hsi Wu's hand.
"This is so cool!"
"Remember the wager? What I want you to do is to keep doing good to people even if they're not nice to you. But there's a catch."
"What is it?"
"Win this wager, and I'll give you untold riches beyond your imagination. Lose and you must be my servant. Let's do this for, say, one month."
"Heh, I won't lose. Untold riches? Sounds like lots of sweets. I'm in."
"Good."
The child never questioned the second half of the wager, perhaps too enticed by promise of wealth.
He'd later learn how presumptuous he was of the child's true nature.
"Not good." Hsi Wu banged his head on his throne's arm.
It had been almost a month and the child had yet to falter. Every day, he'd contact Hsi Wu through the mirror and bragged about his good deeds.
"Today I helped this grumpy lady carry her stuff. She didn't say thank you, but I think she appreciated it."
"Okay, so I met this old man. Really rude. But he hurt his ankle so I gave him some ointment."
"Today..."
"You won't believe what happened..."
"Ooh, ooh, you have to listen to this. I..."
And so it went on.
Hsi Wu stopped banging his head and threw the mirror away. Being enchanted, it didn't break and only bounced across the walls like a loose cannonball. He laid back onto his throne, ignoring the chaos that was his magic mirror rickocheting all over his room.
It wasn't like he'd lose anything by having the child win that wager. Money and wealth were easy to come by when one was the country's ruler after all.
Sure, he'd love to wipe the smile off the child's face and have him cleaning off his palace clean. Then brag to the kid over and over about how right he was. Then watch as the child snap again from all of Hsi Wu's ridiculous demands...
Oh, who was he kidding? He definitely wanted to win this wager.
This was a test after all, so who could blame him for upping the difficulty a bit? Exactly, no one would complain. With a smirk, he called some of his minions and told them to disguise themselves and give the child some troubles.
Hsi Wu's smirk fell right off his face when the child contacted him again after the ordeal, all smiley and sunshiney.
"This one was a bit hard. I helped some bullies today. Didn't feel like it. But you know what? Forgiveness can take you far, so I let go of whatever feeling I had and helped them. Don't know where they are, but I feel so free right now hehe."
Hsi Wu banged his head in defeat and called another minion.
"Yes, my lord?"
"Call the wealth-keeper demon."
"And remember this face. He's the rightful owner of this fortune," Hsi Wu said, conjuring an image of the child to the tiny wealth-keeper demon in front of him. It was hard to think of the creature as anything other than a talking cat standing on two legs.
The demon took out a parchment and magically copied the image onto it.
"Got it. When will the owner claim the fortune if I may ask?"
"In one or two days, maybe more."
"Alright, lord Hsi Wu. Glad doing business with you. Just a reminder. If it's not claimed between this week, a small portion of the wealth will be taken as fee per year until the owner claims it. If there's nothing else, I'll take my leave now," the demon said and disappeared in a show of small firework.
Hsi Wu sighed.
In one more day, he'd officialy lose his wager. The child had proven himself quite the stubborn person and kept his resolution till the end.
Hsi Wu hoped the child would be kind enough to not humiliate him by spreading the news to his demon siblings. It'd be the topic of their conversation for centuries to come. But then again, it was that honorable child after all. Hsi Wu knew no kinder soul and doubted he'd have a change of heart just because of a large sum of fortune.
A sudden change in the air alerted Hsi Wu to something amiss. He approached a window and looked afar to see a part of his kingdom in fire and smoke.
"Invaders..."
His palace was situated up in the mountain instead of inside of it, making his kingdom an easy target for conquering.
But that was of no consequences. He could deal with that later.
Hsi Wu summoned his mirror into his hand and watched what appeared to be the child's house to be covered in flame.
"Child! Where are you?!"
A few seconds later, the child's face came into picture. He was coughing heavily. Soot colored his face, and his eyes were red, yet not from the smoke. It was from tears.
"Child, answer me! Tell me what happened!"
"You..." Shock and recognition flashed in his eyes, but Hsi Wu's demonic glare pushed him to speak. "Th-they killed mom and dad. They took everything..."
If not for the smoke suffocating him, the child was sure to have bawled his eyes from grief. But his consciousness was slowly fading. That much was obvious.
Hsi Wu stared at the dying child and strangely felt disgusted with himself for what he was about to say.
"Tell me, child. What do you want to do?"
The child looked at him blankly before rage slowly took over his small form. His body shook, anger and grief fuelling him.
"I want to kill them! I don't want to let a single one of them alive!"
"Then call my name, and I will grant your wish."
The child coughed smoke but never lost his resolution.
"Lord... Lord Hsi Wu, ruler of the sky. Help me... Help me destroy them all!"
"As you wish."
By the time Hsi Wu finished obliterating the invaders, the child's house had been all but rubbles and dust. He dug the child's corpse with his bloody claws and brought it to his palace, away from onlookers where he could be alone in his thoughts.
Hsi Wu settled the corpse on a table usually reserved for his board games with his visiting siblings.
For the first time in his life, he felt lost, and he couldn't discern why.
Hsi Wu caressed the face of the dead mortal whose name he'd never even learned.
This was the child who had almost proved him wrong, the one who would've won their little bet. He should be happy, but he wasn't. In fact, he was disappointed. Both in the child and in himself.
Did he expect all human to be kind? No, of course not. They were full of greed and lust, just like demonkind.
But the child had opened Hsi Wu's eyes to a side of humanity he never knew. A side so naive and primitive yet he couldn't help but want to see more of it.
But reality had ways to hit on those who were delusional. Kindness had no place in a world where men and demons both craved for power and glory. Or in this case, revenge...
When Hsi Wu woke up, it was a dark and cold room filled with human corpses that greeted him. And so, in the likeness of the nameless child of time long gone, Hsi Wu the demon was reborn as Hsi Wu the puppet human child.
His celebration was cut short by a scream of a man in white clothing.
"G-ghost!!"
Hsi Wu rolled his eyes when the man fumbled for the door and failed to open it.
"Tch. If you're done screaming your lungs out, go find me some clothes. Now!"