Cultivating immortality in the seas, I created an immortal island of eternal life.

Gao Yao's mind was in a mess.

Scarface Carp swam ahead, glancing back at Gao Yao every now and then, as if to make sure he was keeping up.

The surrounding boats remained, neither too close nor too far. The people on those boats were expressionless, their eyes vacant, like puppets on strings.

Old Ma followed beside Gao Yao, his face so gloomy it could drip water.

"Are you sure you want to go?" he asked in a low voice.

Gao Yao did not answer.

Do they have a choice?

After the fleet sailed north for about 15 minutes, an island appeared on the sea.

The island is small, with an old boat moored on the shallows and a shack built in a sheltered spot, looking no different from any other reef island.

The scarred carp swam to the edge of the shallows and stopped, swishing its tail as if to say something.

Gao wanted to bring the boat closer, and Old Man Ma wanted to follow, but they were blocked by several other boats.

"Only he can go up alone," the scarred man said stiffly.

Old Ma looked at Gao Yao, and Gao Yao nodded to him.

"It's okay, wait for me."

He jumped off the boat and stepped onto the soft, wet sand.

The scarred man led the way, heading towards the shack.

Gao Yao followed behind, his heart, which should have been tense, calmed down at this moment.

Thinking about it carefully, if the other party had any ill intentions towards me, they would have already taken action; why go through all this trouble?

The door to the shack was ajar. The scarred man stopped at the door and gestured for him to go in.

Gao Yao took a deep breath and pushed the door open to go inside.

The room was dark, with only a small window letting in a little moonlight.

A person sat with his back to him at a low table, wearing the gray robe of an outer disciple of the Yunxiang Sect, with his hair tied up, and looked very young from behind.

"Sit down." The person didn't turn around, their voice indifferent.

Gao Yao didn't sit down; he stood at the door.

The man seemed to smile and turned around.

The moonlight illuminated his young face; he looked to be in his early twenties, with regular features and somewhat pale skin.

At first glance, he looks no different from an ordinary person, but upon closer inspection, his eyes are strange; they have an indescribable emptiness, like a deep well from which you can't see the bottom.

"Don't be nervous." He smiled. "I'm not human."

Gao Yao's expression froze, but he didn't know how to answer.

"To be precise, it's what your sect calls inner demons," the young man said self-deprecatingly, standing up and walking to the window. The moonlight illuminated half of his face, while the other half remained hidden in shadow.

"But please rest assured, I mean you no harm. I just want to ask a few questions because you released that fish."

Gao Yao turned his head and glanced at the doorway. Scarface Carp was still on the shallows, his head turned towards them as if listening to them talk.

"It told me," the young man said, following Gao Yao's gaze to the scarred carp. "It said that you released it from the fishpond, giving it a chance to live. You don't often meet people like that in this place."

"There's no particular reason," Gao Yao said after a moment of silence, "I just feel like it reminds me of myself."

"Do you think it resembles you?"

"Yes."

The young man laughed, as if he had heard something interesting.

"Do you want to know what we are?" he suddenly asked, but without waiting for Gao Yao's answer, he began to speak on his own.

"My earliest memory is of a bird following its flock." The young man looked up at the roof, his gaze even more desolate. "Flying in the sky, the wind passing over my wings, the clouds beneath my feet, I could see the sea very, very far away."

"I don't know why I flew toward that person. I just felt that something in that body was attracting me, like the smell of food when I'm hungry."

Gao Yao's palms began to sweat. He recalled the dream he had during the autumn examination, the dream from which he almost never woke up.

The Whale King Festival, featuring flocks of birds that fly out from the bottom of the island.

"Are you wondering if something has been implanted in your body?" The young man seemed to see through Gao Yao's thoughts. "I don't know, but if you participated in that autumn exam, it's highly likely you have."

"That autumn examination was originally a ritual, a ceremony that Yunxiang Sect called 'borrowing the law.' When I woke up again, I was already in this body."

"Borrowing the law?" Gao Yao frowned, a flash of inspiration passing through his mind, but it vanished in an instant.

"I only learned this word before I reached the Foundation Establishment stage, and I don't know its specific meaning." The young man shook his head. "The owner of this body was an outer disciple like you."

"After borrowing the ritual, I did not have the ability to control the body. I was just a spectator until he failed to establish his foundation, his soul dissipated, but his body was still alive. Only then did I take over his body."

Gao Yao's expression changed several times.

The young man chuckled mischievously again: "What came to mind?"

Gao Yao didn't answer, but only asked, "What's your name?"

"Name?" The young man was taken aback, not expecting Gao Yao to ask this question. "The original owner of this body had a name, Ji Ping."

"But I am not him, what is my name?" He paused, as if pondering this question. "I have no name. Birds don't need names, and neither do inner demons."

The room quieted down, with only the sounds of the wind and waves outside the window.

Gao Yao stood at the door, looking at the man who called himself a demon, his mind churning with countless thoughts.

He recalled the fishermen who died in hallucinations during the autumn examinations, the sacrificial offerings that were snatched away by birds, and the fragments of memories that didn't belong to him during the Whale King Festival.

Is something planted inside my body?

Once the thought popped into my head, I couldn't suppress it.

"What exactly do you want to ask me?" Gao Yao suppressed the fear in his heart.

The young man glanced at him and asked yet another question that left him speechless.

"Tell me, am I even a human being?"

Gao Yao didn't respond.

"I have all of Ji Ping's memories: the seashells he collected as a child, what the girl he liked looked like, how scared he was before he died—I remember all of these."

"But I know I'm not him."

He looked at Gao Yao, whose empty pupils gleamed eerily in the moonlight.

"I have human features, human memories, and human emotions, but I am not human."

"Then tell me, what is a human being? Is it simply having the appearance of a human, or is it having human thoughts and emotions?"

Gao Yao didn't know how to answer.

In his past life, he played all sorts of people on film sets—good guys, bad guys, living people, and dead people. After playing so many roles, he sometimes wondered who he really was.

Is it the character or oneself? Is one in the play or one outside the play?

But that was just acting.

But he really couldn't tell what this thing in front of him was.

"You should know you're a parasite," Gao Yao finally spoke after much deliberation. "You know your true nature isn't human, so why get hung up on the so-called 'yes' or 'no'?"

"Parasite?" the young man repeated the word. "Interesting. I've never thought of it from this angle before."

He stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the inner demons lurking in his mind.

"But I want to know, what am I?" He turned to look at Gao Yao. "I want to know why I live, why I have these memories, and why I have these emotions."

"I want to know, am I still considered a true living being?"

Gao Yao didn't respond; he couldn't give an answer.

The young man didn't seem to expect an answer; he simply stood by the window, looking out at the sea.

"Why would an inner demon attack a fisherman?" Gao Yao gritted his teeth and asked the other person.

"I know what happened that night." The young man turned to look at him. "But those inner demons are different from me. They don't have a complete consciousness; they only have obsessions."

"Obsession?"

"When the foundation building fails, the soul dissipates, but the obsession remains," the young man explained. "Driven by the obsession of their predecessors, they want to complete themselves, so they attack fishermen to absorb the life force and soul of the living to fill their own gaps."

"They are not evil, but puppets driven by obsession."

Gao Yao listened, recalling the ghostly thing that came to the island that night.

It certainly doesn't seem to have a full consciousness; it's more like it's acting on instinct.

"And what about you?" Gao Yao asked, voicing his doubt. "Why don't you attack people?"

"Because I am whole," the young man said. "Ji Ping's memories, emotions, and consciousness are all here with me; I don't need to fill in anything."

"That fish," Gao Yao spoke again, remembering the scarred carp, "was it also a demon in its heart?"

The young man nodded.

"That night, some of the black energy that exploded on your island leaked into the fishpond, and one of it entered the body of that carp." He looked calmly at Gao Yao, "But that wisp of black energy was too weak to take over its mind; instead, it merged with its original consciousness."

"So it has both the cleverness of a fish and some characteristics of inner demons."

Gao Yao understood. No wonder that fish stirred up the spirit fish to fight in the fishpond, and no wonder it could find its way and lead the way.

It is neither an ordinary fish nor a pure inner demon.

It is a fusion of the two.

"You call him an outcast," Gao Yao said, looking at the young man. "And what about you?"

"I'm an outlier too." The young man smiled. "Most of those inner demons are incomplete, driven by obsessions. But I'm different from them. I have a complete consciousness, I can think and reason, and I can control myself from hurting others."

He paused, then said, "It's not just me, all of these things on the island now."

Gao Yao thought of the scarred man and the boats surrounding them.

Those people didn't look like living people, but they weren't aggressive either.

"Are they like you?"

"Similar." The young man nodded. "They all gained full sanity by chance."

"Some, like that fish, were invaded by a black aura that was too weak to completely take over the host's mind, and instead merged with it."

"Some of them are taken over by bodies that have just died and whose souls have not yet dissipated."

"There are more..."

"They were deliberately raised and cultivated by others."

Gao Yao's heart skipped a beat: "Deliberately raising them?"

The young man did not continue to explain.

The room fell silent again.

Gao Yao stood at the door, looking at the young man who called himself a demon, his mind racing with all sorts of thoughts.

What is the other person trying to achieve by telling him all this?

"You've asked me so many questions, what exactly do you want from me?"

"I want to know, what am I?" the young man looked at Gao Yao. "You just said I'm a parasite, but are parasites considered living beings?"

"Calculate."

Gao answered very quickly, so quickly that he was somewhat surprised himself.

"Why?" the young man pressed on.

"Because you're alive, you think, you fear, you're curious, you have desires," Gao Yao said. "If that's not a living being, then what is?"

The young man paused for a moment, then smiled.

This time, the laughter was different from before; it was genuine joy.

"Thank you," he said sincerely.

"I've asked everything I needed to ask, so I owe you a favor."

Gao Yao was taken aback: "What favor?"

"Whether it's a fish or today's Q&A session," the young man pointed to the scarred carp by the door, then to himself, "I'll help you if you need anything in the future."

Without waiting for Gao Yao's reply, he walked to the door and pushed it open.

Moonlight streamed in, illuminating the entire room.

"Let's go, it's almost dawn."

"Next time we meet, call me Ji Ping."

Gao Yao gave Ji Ping a deep look before walking out of the shack.

The scarred carp was still lying on the shore. When it saw him come out, it wagged its tail.

Gao Yao squatted down and looked at it for a while.

"Live well."

The scarred carp seemed to understand, and after wagging its tail, it swam back into the sea.

Gao Yao walked down the shallows and jumped onto his boat.

Old Ma was still waiting on the boat, and when he saw him return, he visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Are you alright?"

"fine."

Gao Yao glanced back at the island.

Ji Ping's figure leaned against the door of the shack, and under the moonlight, he suddenly seemed to come alive.

Gao Yao waved, turned back and rowed the oars, and the two boats sailed away from the reef island, one after the other.

The fog on the sea thickened again, obscuring the island behind us.

Gao Yao sat at the stern of the boat, watching the increasingly blurry outlines, when a thought suddenly popped into his mind.

How much of what that young man, that young man who called himself a demon, said was true and how much was false?

......