"I was once nothing more than an ordinary wild elephant... muddleheaded and ignorant of the seasons. With a bit of luck, perhaps I might have lived fifty or sixty years, then died of old age in some nameless mountain ravine. With no luck at all, I might have run into a slightly more powerful demon beast and become a mouthful of bloody meat."
At this, White Elephant paused, his gaze turning distant.
"That was my fate... and the fate of most living things in this world: lowly and unremarkable, insignificant as dust."
The man in white listened in silence and did not interrupt again.
It was said that the White Elephant Demon Emperor possessed terrifying talent, having reached the Tower-Ascending Realm in a mere tens of thousands of years... For humans, perhaps that was nothing special, but for demons and monsters, whose lifespans often stretched into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of years, it was truly monstrous.
Who would have thought... that this was where he came from?
"Until one day..."
A glimmer suddenly lit in White Elephant's eyes.
"While fleeing a demon beast that was chasing me, I panicked and ran headlong into a ruined temple."
"There was a young Daoist inside, boiling tea."
"I was terrified. I thought I'd angered one of those lofty cultivators, so I cowered on the ground, trembling and barely daring to breathe."
As he spoke, the corners of White Elephant's mouth lifted into an exceptionally gentle smile.
It was a smile born from the heart, as pure as a child's.
"But the Daoist didn't kill me."
"He merely glanced at me and smiled. 'What a huge, foolish creature. It'd be a shame to kill you for meat.'"
"Then he poured a bowl of tea and set it in front of me."