"Shadow, when exactly are you going to decide? We've been sitting here for three months now." Huo'er had just flown out on its own for a circuit but returned yawning in disappointment, having found no tasty monsters.

Shadow sat on a branch by the busy road—invisible to the passing humans, of course—his knees drawn to his chest. He watched the flow of people below with intense focus, replying to Huo'er, "I still don't know what I should do."

"Waa waaa waaa..." Huo'er let out a string of strange cries. Since leaving the forest, they had been perched here watching people. Huo'er was eager to roam about, but because Shadow claimed he didn't know where to even begin learning how to be human, they had to observe. Who knew this observation would stretch into three or four months!

"I can't take it anymore! Shadow, how much longer are you going to think? Just transform into one already. Is becoming human that hard? Has your magic regressed?" Huo'er started to shout.

"Just having the outward appearance of a human doesn't make one human," Shadow repeated the words Zhou Ju had once told him.

"Do we also have to become human 'on the inside'?" Huo'er asked, beginning to scan the people in sight, calculating which one to dissect to bring Shadow a physical specimen to model after.

"I think I might finally understand something..." Shadow’s timely words rescued the innocent humans passing by, saving one of them from the fate of becoming Huo’er's tangible proof of human interiority, allowing them to continue their journey peacefully.

Shadow spoke thoughtfully, "I feel that to be human, one must first have a job." Among the people passing by were hawkers pushing carts, carriage drivers, hurried clerks, tailors clutching bundles, merchants with gold-rimmed glasses perched on their noses, and teachers cradling stacks of books, as well as women crying out their tea for sale...

"To be human, you must first find something to do!" Shadow declared with certainty, summarizing the insight he had gained over three months of observation.

"Oh," Huo'er nodded, appearing to understand only partially, then asked, "So what are you planning to do?"

"What should I do?" Shadow fell back into contemplation.

※※※※※

Another three months passed; spring had arrived in the mortal world, and the tree where Shadow sat was beginning to sprout new leaves.

Huo'er had eaten a chicken and two baked sweet potatoes that day, then nestled contentedly into Shadow’s embrace to nap for the morning. Being naturally carefree, even though it was stuck in the same spot day after day—having eaten all the surrounding monsters and having to resort to eating things like cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks, potatoes, and yams—it wasn't as impatient as it had been six months prior. It spent its days teasing the neighborhood dogs, playing tricks on the cows, and even sneaking into the local schoolhouse to memorize a few lines from the books to show off to Shadow. It was living quite contentedly.

So, when Shadow suddenly asked it, "Huo'er, what should I do?" it had almost forgotten the whole endeavor. It had initially thought Shadow had come among humans simply to become part of the tree.

"You're asking me what to do?" Huo'er mumbled sleepily. "Then go roast sweet potatoes. I want another one. Smack smack..." With that, it drifted off to sleep.

"Roast sweet potatoes..." Shadow looked down at the smoking stall beneath the tree, watching the vendor pull out dark, charcoal-like lumps. The vendor handed the cooked sweet potatoes to customers and took the money offered in return.

"Something roasted by fire, something related to fire..." He felt that a task like this, given how long he had lived with Huo'er, might be something he could manage.

※※※※※

"Sweet potatoes... roasted sweet potatoes... fragrant and delicious... cheap..." Half a day later, Shadow began hawking his roasted sweet potatoes, mimicking the human style.

Days turned into weeks, and Shadow felt he was getting used to the life of a street vendor. Yet, for some reason, he hadn't sold a single roasted sweet potato in days, and as humans passed by him, they would clamp their noses and rush past at top speed—even the beggar soliciting alms not far away.

Huo'er lay in the center of the stove—which was actually just Huo'er itself, as Shadow didn't know where to procure charcoal, so he used Huo'er as fuel—popping one roasted sweet potato after another into its mouth, nodding with muffled approval: "Tastes good. Since no one is buying them anyway, I'll have another one." Finding an excuse, it tossed another into its mouth.

"Is mine perhaps not tasty?" After so many days, Shadow started to realize, "But Huo'er eats them very happily. There must be some other problem..." (Whether Shadow had cultivated Huo'er's peculiar palate or Huo'er's palate had shaped Shadow's strange cooking methods was truly an eternal mystery.) Shadow had always been steadfast and unwilling to quit, but by the time summer arrived and he could no longer find sweet potatoes to roast, he had to consider changing professions (this was also because he noticed that human sweet potato vendors switched tasks after the season, otherwise, he might have kept roasting them there for a hundred or two hundred years).

His six-month career as a sweet potato vendor concluded, and Shadow returned to sitting in the tree, beginning to search for his next endeavor below.

"Shadow, go slaughter pigs," came Huo'er's suggestion, and Shadow began his career as a butcher.

Then, his butchering career ended when Huo'er ate every pig in the vicinity.

"Shadow, go fry something."

"Shadow, go sell mutton."

"Shadow, go tell stories."

"Shadow, ..."

Five years later, Shadow sat gloomily back in the tree.

Perhaps he was capable of nothing, perhaps he simply wasn't talented enough to achieve enlightenment, was the thought that arose in his mind. Yet, he had no intention of giving up or returning to the forest, perhaps because he hadn't yet learned the meaning of "giving up." He pondered: there were so many humans and so many bizarre professions; surely there was a job even he could do.

"Shadow, what are you planning to do now?" Huo'er, having run out of things to direct Shadow towards, generously allowed him to decide for himself.

Shadow stared blankly at the few figures walking below.

Shadow now owned two acres of land. Though pitifully small compared to the continuous fields stretching to the distant foothills, it was more than enough for Shadow.

After experimenting for several years, he had planted one acre of wheat, half an acre of corn, and the remaining half acre with over a dozen types of vegetables. He had finally begun to understand some things about these crops. Today marked his first substantial harvest of wheat and various vegetables, and now he was contemplating what to do with the yield.

He divided the harvest, taking the larger pile to sell in the human town. Upon returning, he called out to Huo'er, "Huo'er, let's eat the rest."

Huo'er wrinkled its brow at the vegetables, which it disliked the most.

Where had Huo’er flown off to?

Shadow poked at a clod of dirt with his tobacco pipe, exposing a tender sprout. The sun was bright today. Shadow half-closed his eyes and decided to cultivate for a while. A group of people approached from the distant fields. Shadow remained motionless initially, but they walked right into his land, stepping on the newly greened soil.

There were over twenty people in total. The one leading rode a horse; they all wore uniforms called 'military attire' and carried things called 'guns,' either long or short.

Shadow watched the horse hooves and the human leather boots trample his crops. He remembered that the humans who occasionally passed by before had always tried to stick to the field ridges.

"Jililala... guaguala jiji..." The man on the horse stopped before him and spoke a torrent of words, but Shadow frowned—he could not understand this human’s speech at all.

"Jililala... jililala..." The man continued speaking.

Shadow decided to loosen the soil and ignored the man.

"Hey, the 'Tai-kun' is asking if you saw anyone pass through here?" Finally, one person spoke in a tongue Shadow could comprehend.

"Yes," Shadow thought for a moment and replied seriously.

"Where did he go?"

Shadow pointed in a direction.

"How long ago?"

"Slap!" The horseman's whip landed on Shadow's head, and he began shouting "Jililala" again.

"I think you are colluding with them! What are you doing here?" The person who spoke Shadow's language asked again, but his tone made Shadow uncomfortable.

"Bang!" This time, a man struck Shadow’s head with the butt of his rifle and yelled at him.

Shadow became angry.

When he was in the forest, if he received an answer from another monster he questioned, he would stop Huo'er even if it wanted to eat the source, because he believed that anyone who answered his questions deserved gratitude. But these humans attacked him after he gave them his answer.

Thus, when the humans near him tried to grab his hair and drag him away, he employed the standard response used when attacked by monsters in the forest. Only after he dissolved the Shadow Blade back into his own shadow did he look down at the human corpses and frown: Perhaps I was too rash. Perhaps this is how humans deal with things? Perhaps...

The warhorse seemed to know this monster posed no threat and was already busily munching on the crops in the field. Shadow pushed it toward someone else’s field (Despicable, Shadow! You are not Liu Di, how could you do such a thing!), while constantly reflecting on whether his actions were correct, whether they resembled human behavior.

Huo'er flew back slowly from a distance, its mood clearly soured. Its flames burned fiercely, painting half the sky a brilliant red. Before even reaching Shadow, it wailed, "I'm furious! I flew all over, and couldn't find anything to eat! They say those chickens, pigs, cows... were all taken by someone called the 'Japanese'!" It prepared to next inquire about what this 'Japanese' human looked like, then use violence to teach him the fundamental law of existence: never snatch food from Huo'er.

"Wow, you got me a horse," Huo'er exclaimed, noticing the horse happily grazing. The horse, sensing the situation, smartly bolted into the distance, but Huo'er didn't give chase. Its gaze was captured by the human corpses. It murmured thoughtfully, "Come to think of it, after all these years, I haven't tasted human meat. Here are some ready-made ones."

Two hours later, Huo'er lay flat on its back on the field ridge, groaning while clutching its belly. Its stomach was so distended from eating that it couldn't even fly. Shadow watched it worriedly. He had forgotten when Huo'er developed the habit of devouring everything edible in sight, but this time, it had truly eaten too much.

"The taste of human..." Huo'er patted its belly, which made dull thudding sounds, and evaluated, "Worth eating again."

Section Three: Shadow finally understood that the humans walking around in matching clothes carrying guns were called the army.

He disliked this type of human.

They never paid the slightest attention, always walking right over his land. Sometimes, after being trampled front and back, land cultivated for half a year would be ruined. However, this army wasn't enough to make him hate them, because the arrival of these humans often meant Huo'er had a selective feast.

"Slap!" This time, a bullet struck his shoulder. Shadow plucked the bullet from his flesh, examined it briefly, and tossed it to the ground.

Two armies locked in fierce combat and an old farmer sitting on the field ridge tapping his pipe created a bizarre tableau.

A shadow fell across Shadow’s view. When he looked up, the other party instantly tumbled to the ground, blood rapidly spreading at Shadow's feet.

"Another one, another two... another three..." Huo'er darted around, calculating, "I'm going to be stuffed again today, sigh..." Although it sighed, the smile at the corners of its mouth betrayed its joy. It loved it when food appeared in droves without any effort required on its part.

One of the armies began to retreat. Shadow knew it was time. He stood up, leaning on his hoe. The trampled crops needed righting, the damaged ridges needed repair, the scattered corpses needed collecting—Huo'er would eat what it could, and the rest would be buried as fertilizer. Areas too damaged to recover needed replanting. Almost every war was about the same for Shadow, and this had become part of his routine.

※※※※※

However, there were always events that interrupted his orderly life.

"Fellow villager, what are you still doing here!?"

The officer didn't wait for him to finish speaking before waving two soldiers over. They unceremoniously grabbed Shadow and ran, not releasing him until they reached the hills far from the battlefield, then rushing back to the fight.

When Shadow looked back at the battlefield, he saw an artillery shell land in his field, erupting in a huge flash of fire and kicking up a massive column of earth.

"This year's wheat is ruined," Shadow thought. He also had a strange feeling: he hoped the officer and those two soldiers would survive the fighting that day. After all, they had spoken to him, and one of the soldiers escorting him had mentioned that based on his farming experience, this year's harvest would be excellent. Therefore, to Shadow, they were different from the soldiers who treated him like a stone or a stalk of wheat.

The war ended again. When Shadow saw the three of them lying dead on the ground, he didn't let Huo'er touch them, nor did he bury them in the soil for fertilizer. Instead, he built grave mounds for them, mimicking the humans. Due to continuous warfare, the surrounding fields were dotted with many uneven mounds, but Shadow's land remained perfectly flat. In this way, his land became more like the humans' land.

※※※※※

When that soldier collapsed near Shadow, Shadow shifted aside. Huo'er flew over excitedly to count the casualties but flew away disappointed when it realized the soldier was still alive.

"Jiji... guli..." The soldier groaned, speaking words Shadow couldn't understand.

Looking at him, Shadow realized the soldier was very young for a human, "Twenty? Nineteen... maybe only sixteen or seventeen?" Shadow guessed his age.

"Mama..." A word Shadow could barely decipher escaped the soldier's lips, "Ma..." Shadow watched him clutch an embroidered item pulled from his pocket, calling out until his voice grew faint and finally ceased.

Shadow built his grave next to the soldier who had told him the wheat would be abundant.

Some things, once started, continue indefinitely. Now, Shadow had to carefully walk around the grave mounds every day while hoeing, weeding, and watering. Graves of soldiers killed by friendly fire while trying to protect comrades; those who shot themselves rather than become prisoners; those shot by their own side while trying to flee the battlefield; and those who died of starvation and cold while seeking a peaceful place to escape to. Shadow didn't know if his land would eventually be entirely covered in graves.

※※※※※

"Grab one."

"An older one will do well enough."

"Let's go, let's go report back."

Several suddenly appearing people grabbed Shadow and dragged him away.

"What are you doing?" Shadow asked, confused.

"Just come when told, stop all the nonsense."

"Ping-pong."

Shadow knocked them all unconscious with one punch each.

"Shadow, what do they want?"

"It seems to be something called 'forcible conscription'."

"What is 'forcible conscription'?"

"...I'm not exactly clear either. It seems humans need more people for fighting, so they drag non-soldiers onto the battlefield..."

"So, it's for creating food. But I’m already getting sick of it," Huo’er wiped its mouth and flew off to find something it hadn't tired of yet.

Shadow remained seated. Why did humans fight wars? Wars killed many people, yet they threw even more people into them—why? In the forest, even the strong knew to avoid fighting; it was essential for survival. Humans didn't seem to think so. Humans—it was so difficult to decipher their thoughts. Could he ever become more like a human?

Section Four

"This is for selling, and this is for eating," Shadow said after dividing this year's harvest, suddenly falling into a daze. "Huo'er, do you think I look any more like a human now?"

Huo'er, which had been trying to sneak away upon seeing Shadow dividing the vegetables again—knowing it was time to eat those things—flew back when it heard the question. It examined Shadow from head to toe and decisively shook its head, "No."

"Down with the landlord oppressors! Down with the landlord oppressors!" A group shouted as they passed the edge of the field.

"Chop off the tail of capitalism! Chop off the tail of capitalism!" Another group shouted as they passed.

"Great Leap Forward in steel production, Great Leap Forward in steel production..."

"..."

A young man sat at the edge of Shadow’s land. He was a student from the city, supposedly sent down for "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside" to "receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants," and was lodged in Shadow's home. Shadow heard him constantly muttering, "Where to go? Where to go?"

Shadow didn't understand what he was saying, nor did he understand what the surrounding humans were doing.

That evening, the young student threw himself into the river. When people pulled him out, he lay by the bank with his eyes wide open and his mouth slightly ajar. After a long time, his family hadn't come to handle the funeral rites, so Shadow buried him in his land too.

That night, Shadow stared at the grave mounds in his field under the moonlight for a long time before asking, "Huo'er, what do you think of humans?"

"Average. Not very tasty," Huo'er said, smacking its lips after finishing its meal.

"I think humans are very hard to figure out," Shadow frowned, recalling every human he had met one by one. "Maybe I will never become human..." Perhaps in his heart, he was beginning to feel that he didn't want to become like them.

"No, you are more like a human than before," Huo'er murmured sleepily.

"How? How?" Shadow perked up.

"I don't know, you just are," Huo'er rolled over and soon began snoring.

Is that so? He already resembled humans somewhat. Shadow continued to gaze at the graves, and this time, he wondered: What exactly is a human? Do I really want to become such a creature?

※※※※※

"Brother, just listen to me. If you stay and guard this acre of land, you can earn some money in a year. Everyone is heading to the city now to earn big money. Go for a year or so, and I guarantee you’ll have a house and a wife, and you won’t regret it."

"It’s easy for you to say. City folks are cunning; can they really let us earn money?"

Shadow had been listening to their conversation, letting it pass in one ear and out the other as usual, but the last sentence struck him hard.

"Humans, they are all busy earning 'money'," Huo'er showed off its knowledge.

"Money?" Shadow had some money, earned from selling what he grew. He didn't know what money was for; it was all piled up in a jar.

"They go to the big cities to earn money," Huo'er continued to inform him.

"Go to the big cities... earn money."

"Shadow, let's go too?

We’ve been stuck here for decades, I’m sick of it," Huo'er finally revealed her true motive.

"The demon I caught yesterday said there are loads of them in the big cities." ※※※※※Ten days later, on the bustling streets of XX City.

Shadow perched atop a streetlamp, observing the endless river of people; he had never witnessed such a crowd.

"Shadow, you do that one!" Huo'er pointed excitedly toward the roller coaster in the amusement park.

Two days later, national newspapers were filled with reports of the catastrophic accident on the XX City roller coaster, and Shadow and Huo'er hastily slipped out of the city.

In YY City, Huo'er gazed thoughtfully at a university lecture hall.

"Shadow, you should go do that." Three days later, news that a student had severely injured their professor swept across the campus, and Shadow and Huo’er were once again on the move.

In ZZ City, Huo'er spotted a traffic cop directing vehicles with imposing authority and exclaimed, "Shadow, go do that job!" Four days later, media outlets everywhere broadcasted the story of a series of massive, serial traffic accidents in ZZ City, and Shadow and Huo’er...

In Lixin City, Shadow felt a familiar sense of dejection again.

Huo’er, bored, kept watching the traffic flow back and forth until she felt dizzy.

Suddenly, inspiration struck her: "Shadow, why don't you drive a car and just pull me along!" "Driving a car..." "Exactly, driving!" "Then, let's drive..."