The Demon King on the Toilet

The Demon King on the Toilet

Brutal delights would ultimately meet a brutal end.

Though those words came from a play written by Shakespeare, works of fiction needed logic; reality did not. Which was why reality was far more absurd, bizarre, and fantastical than any creation.

The Multiverse.

It was called that because it consisted of countless planes, great and small. While each plane retained the same fundamental laws, they all had their own differences—at most, a matter of degree. Some planes differed so vastly that arriving there felt like setting foot on another planet.

And among those countless bizarre planes was one utterly unremarkable place. It had no particularly unique laws, nor any irreplaceable resources. It was so ordinary that even planar travelers rarely visited.

The only setting worth mentioning was that this plane had "Demon Kings."

That was right—the Demon Kings remembered as villainous final bosses.

At first, it was merely a title, little more than a term used by rebels, no different from empty trash talk.

But as time passed, they came to call every existence capable of threatening the plane a Demon King. It changed from a simple title into something akin to an official post.

And the Demon Kings had not disgraced that name.

Throughout its long history, there had been Demon Kings who sought to unify the world, Demon Kings who led monsters to destroy civilization, and even Demon Kings who shattered the glory of the gods. The list went on and on.

There was never only one Demon King. Whenever the previous one vanished, a new Demon King would emerge before long. No one knew what sort of buff this plane had been given.

The last Demon King recorded in existing records was a fellow who called himself the Demon King of Tyranny. One could tell from the name alone that he was no decent sort.

Yet he vanished overnight, disappearing without a trace.

No one knew what had happened to him, nor where he had gone. But one thing was certain: in the full twenty years since the Demon King of Tyranny vanished, no true Demon King had appeared again.

Logically, that should have been a good thing. But after the Demon King of Tyranny disappeared, a prophecy began to spread.

"On a stormy night that seems capable of tearing the sky apart, a new Demon King shall descend from beyond the domain."

The prophecy's origin could not be traced, yet it spread far and wide. From south to north, from east to west, from nobles and high officials to ordinary commoners—even tribes scarcely more civilized than savages had heard the prophecy of the Demon King's descent.

Yet the most frustrating thing about a prophecy was not that it might be wrong, but that it was too vague.

It mentioned neither a time nor a location. There was only the phrase "a stormy night," making it impossible to determine where it would happen or when.

Thus, in the twenty years since the Demon King of Tyranny's disappearance, many people had declared themselves Demon Kings for all manner of reasons. Every last one of them had been hanging up a sheep's head while selling dog meat.

The Great Tree Sea was an immensely complex and vast primeval forest. Its sheer absurd size was clear from its name alone: not only was it called a "sea," it even had "Great" added before it.

Water vapor from the southern sea crashed against mountains towering into the clouds, piling up endlessly in the sky. Naturally, torrential rain poured down as though floodgates had been thrown open.

The rain hung like ropes, while the howling wind swept through gravel and hollows in the mountains, producing a deep, mournful moan like the roar of a giant.

It was another stormy night, something exceedingly common in the Great Tree Sea. It was precisely because of the frequent heavy rains that this forest known as the Great Tree Sea had come to be.

Yet the storm's majesty could not reach a cave deep within the tree sea, nestled beneath the mountains. It had once been the site of the Demon King of Tyranny's Demon King's Castle.

Within the dim room, candle flames swayed gently. No wind or rain could blow inside, for the place was protected by powerful spells.

Beside the candle stood a woman.

She was young and beautiful, the sort who ought to have been pursued by men wherever she went. Yet she stood alone, motionless as a statue, staring at a crystal ball resting on a padded cushion atop a nearby table.

Though "alone" was not quite accurate, for while she looked very much like a human, a pair of curved horns grew from her head.

BOOM!

Though wind and rain were kept outside by the spells, the thunder's booming crash could not be completely shut out.

Ever since the Demon King of Tyranny disappeared, she had waited here. Whenever a stormy night came, she would stare fixedly at the crystal ball. Even rolling thunder that made her ears go slightly numb could not make her blink.

The night had entered its latter half, and the storms that visited so frequently were gradually nearing their end. That piercing thunderclap just now was merely its final act of defiance.

As she stared at the crystal ball, a trace of disappointment rose within the woman whose face showed no change. But she was accustomed to it. Twenty full years had passed, and the Great Tree Sea was a place often favored by storms. After being disappointed so many times, she no longer held much hope.

But as the thunder slowly faded, the disappointed woman saw a fine layer of light suddenly illuminate the crystal ball before her. This abrupt, unprecedented change made her step forward in excitement, unable to hide the joy in her heart.

The fine light rapidly gathered and took shape before her eyes, as though some physical entity were slowly emerging from within it.

He was a young man, seated upon a throne like white jade. One hand held up some magical object of unknown use, while the other lightly covered the area beneath his nose. In the dim candlelight, only the faint curve traced by his tightly pressed lips could be seen.

His clothing was simple, yet its finely woven fabric was beyond replication even by the most skilled weavers. Even the seemingly ordinary dyeing technique completely surpassed this plane's technological level.

A Demon King—the new Demon King had descended from beyond the domain!

Her heartbeat suddenly accelerated. After waiting for this moment year after year, she felt faintly dizzy, and even her palms began to sweat.

She had imagined countless times how she ought to communicate with the new Demon King when he appeared. But when the moment truly came, her mind went blank, and she could not say a single word.

Only when the other party's calm, hollow gaze shifted toward her did she shudder and finally remember her duty.

With a thump, she hurriedly dropped to one knee before the new Demon King, bowed her head devoutly, and said in the most respectful tone:

"You have finally appeared!"

All the plans she had considered before were thrown completely out of her mind. When the new Demon King truly appeared in the form described by the prophecy, this was all she could say. Her voice was even somewhat distorted from excessive excitement.

The "Demon King," who seemed to have emerged from the crystal ball out of thin air, remained exceedingly calm. He withdrew one hand slightly and replied in a steady, low voice with great solemnity:

"Do you have any paper?"

"..."

Pei Renli was a very ordinary person.

His looks were ordinary, his family background was ordinary, and his grades in school had been ordinary too. At most, he had been a bit too lively, enough to give his teachers at school splitting headaches.

There was nothing particularly special about him after he grew up either. Whether it was friends close to him or people who had only just met him, their assessment of him was probably that he was a pretty optimistic young man. Like most young people of his generation, he enjoyed playing games when he had nothing to do. Even his hobbies were ordinary.

The one thing that set him apart from most people was that, aside from his biological father and mother, he also had a godfather and godmother. Since they did not have children of their own for the time being, they treated him like their own son. Pei Renli had grown up enjoying twice the motherly and fatherly love, and even received double the presents on his birthday.

Of course, whenever he got up to mischief, he got beaten twice as much too.

At first glance, Pei Renli seemed ordinary from head to toe. The Renli in his name represented benevolence and courtesy, and with his surname added, he became Pei Renli.

In reality, though, his name did not mean what it literally appeared to mean.

Naturally, a child needed a name after being born. Many parents came up with a whole pile of names before their child was even born, but Pei Renli's biological father was the typical sort with not a scrap of learning in his chest—the kind who had returned practically everything he had learned to his teachers after graduating from school, a fish that had slipped through the net of nine years of compulsory education.

That made naming the child extremely difficult, yet the family insisted that he come up with it himself and would not allow him to spend money hiring someone to name the child. Pei Renli's father was driven to the point of wanting to use a random name generator to muddle through.

And Pei Renli's father's closest friend—who was also Pei Renli's godfather—was no better. He racked his brains for ages and could not squeeze out a single fart. The two brothers fretted and fretted over the naming business; no sooner had the worry left their brows than their hands began fiercely scratching their heads again. Truly a crouching dragon and a fledgling phoenix, those two.

So even after the child had been brought home from the hospital, he still had no name, and Pei Renli's father suffered no end of criticism from the family.

For instance: as the child's father, how could he not even think of a name?

For a time, they had even considered naming him Pei Yuanqing outright, because Pei Renli's father only knew of one famous person with the surname Pei. But on second thought, Pei Yuanqing's ending had not been all that great, and it seemed rather inauspicious, so they gave up on it.

Fortunately, he had not gone through with it. Otherwise, once the child grew up, he would definitely have had to change his name again. If not, he would probably have been laughed into shutting himself away by his classmates once he started school.

But without a name, how could they register his household status? They could not keep dragging it out forever.

This went on until Pei Renli's father took the bus to buy baby supplies. Having been asked all day to name the child, his head was full of all sorts of unreliable ideas, and he did not even notice when the bus passed his stop.

It was then that he happened to hear the electronic announcement: "Peirenli has arrived. Passengers getting off, please exit through the rear door."

Pei Renli's father felt as though enlightenment had been poured over his head. His mind suddenly opened up; in that instant, inspiration struck—or perhaps his brain simply twitched—and he had an idea.

And so he was named Pei Renli. It was a homophone joke, after all. The two characters in "Renli" were a little unclear in meaning, so they changed them to "benevolence" and "courtesy," which made the name sound somewhat more respectable.

That flight of fancy was the everlasting regret of the modern naming world. Whenever anyone learned the origin of Pei Renli's name, they would always be left speechless, offering sympathy with the look in their eyes that said, This kid really has it rough...