Delinquent Duo

Hearing the angry voice resound in his mind, William began panicking.

Instinctively, he attempted to let go of his throat, but realized that he seemed to have lost any semblance of control on the right side of his body.

"Arrogant Demon, get out of my body immediately before you regret it! My father is not someone who you can afford to offend!"

The voice rang in his mind again.

"Who the hell are you?" William tried to cry out, but only some incoherent mumbling came out as half of his face had refused to move when he willed it.

"I'm Zhang Chun Wu, third young master of the preeminent Zhang clan!"

William subconsciously thought that he had heard wrongly. Chun Wu was the Chinese legal birth name his parents had given him, before he was given his legal name of William. Before he could retort however, he heard the other voice mumble.

"How does this demon not know who I am? Did he just randomly stumble across my body and attempt to possess it? But I've never heard of such a technique before…"

Without contemplating the significance behind that statement, William unconsciously thought, "A bit rude to call someone you meet for the first time a demon isn't it?"

A moment later, the other voice retorted,

You're the one in this young master's body, what else can you be if not a demon?"

His retort temporarily stumped William. It seemed that he had been sent into another person's body, but the other person was still living there. Didn't the protagonists in his friend's books all take over their own bodies? How did this strange situation occur?

"Okay, first of all, I'm not a demon like you believe…" William tried to think.

"Oh? If not a demon, who are you then? A devilish cultivator from the Heishan Mountains?" The other voice asked.

"Uh, well… my name is William, and my last name is also Zhang, and I suppose I was randomly sent here after I died from a lightning bolt?" He replied.

There was silence on the other side for a moment.

"You must be one of those stupid bear demons if you think I'm going to believe that."

"HEY! I'd like you to know that I went to an Ivy League University!" William angrily thought.

"What's an Ai-vee li-gue university… Okay, forget it, bear demon. No one in our Zhang family would go by the strange name of "Will-lee-am" anyway. Just get out of my body and I can let this matter rest." He heard the other voice say.

William let out a depressed sigh.

"I don't know how to break this to you, but I really don't know how to get out of your body… I think I'm stuck here until you can figure something out."

He heard some inaudible cursing on the other side, before the other voice returned.

"I don't know if you're telling the truth or not, but I think I can still believe it if a bear demon used a possession and doesn't know how to cancel it."

There was a pause, before the right side of his body wiggled a bit.

"If you're telling the truth, give me back my body for a moment, I'll go ask for a hearing with my family's patriarch. He's a Nascent Soul-levelled cultivator and should be able to sort this problem out."

William's ears perked at the words "Nascent Soul". That was another term he had heard before in his original world. It appeared that the world he was sent into was a world similar to those martial arts novels that his friend, James, liked to read.

He thought for a moment, then tried to relax the side of the body he was still in control of. Immediately after, he felt the same force quickly taking control of the rest of his body.

William was quite fascinated by the state that he seemed to be left in. It felt like what a person might describe as an 'outer body experience', but at the same time, he was still capable of viewing and feeling the surroundings in a first person perspective.

He watched as his body began walking around the room. First, he dressed up in a rather fancy-looking robe, before walking to the corner of the room and grabbing an archaic looking spear, and bound it onto his back. Finally, before exiting his quarters, he kneeled down before a small incense, grabbed a piece of paper from the nearby stacks of thin papers, and lit it on fire.

The other soul, Chun Wu, kowtowed three times before the stick of incense, and William felt a wave of sorrow pass through him, before he saw his body stand up again, and leave the room.

<~>

Zhang Chun Wu exited his quarters and sauntered into the main hall of the Red Jade Pavilion that many of the Zhang family's clan members occupied.

Greatly unsettled, he pondered how he could gain an audience with his clan's patriarch so that he could cleanse the demon that had managed to sneak into his body without his noticed.

It had greatly shocked him to wake up to see that he was already standing straightforward like he was possessed, and when he heard the demon speak about finding some sort of disk, Chun Wu had immediately sprung into action in an attempt to suppress the demon.

Surprisingly, it wasn't very hard to convince the Bear Demon to let go of it's control over his body, and Chun Wu was quite confident that the creature would not be able to withstand the interrogative techniques of the clan's patriarch.

He just had to get there without the creature finding out his true intentions.

As he walked through the pavilion, the other voice rang in his mind. Chun Wu had already figured out that the demon was somehow capable of communicating with him mentally, but the demon wouldn't be able to know anything he didn't specifically think of.

"Hey, don't you feel tired carrying that giant spear on your back? I thought people had like, those space ring things to store objects you carried".

"Hmph," Chun Wu replied, "Spacial Rings are incredibly expensive even for our Zhang clan. How can I carry one around just for a single Constructed Artifact?"

It was not like Chun Wu didn't want a spacial ring to carry his belongings, but even the Zhang clan only had around 20 rings.

"I guess if I were the oldest in the family I might have gotten one though," he thought, reminiscing about his oldest brother who had gone to the Shaking Mountain sect three years prior. Before he had left, their father had applied to the patriarch to give one of their few spacial rings to the eldest of their family.

"More importantly, I'm already at the second stage of Foundation Building, so it's not difficult to move around even with the artifact on me".

"Second stage Foundation you say?" He heard. "How many stages is that from Nascent Soul?" The demon called William asked.

Chun Wu scoffed internally.

"You're a bear demon and you don't even know the cultivation stages in the human world? You must be even dumber than I thought."

"How many times have I told you, I'm not a bloody bear demon!"

"Yeah, sure, sure." Chun Wu decided to humour him. "You already know I'm at the foundation building stage, and after that is the Core Formation, followed by Perceiving Mind stage, Earth Revolution stage, which is equivalent to you demon beast's Form Transcending Stage".

He paused for a moment.

"The Nascent Soul stage should come after Earth Revolution".

"Interesting…" he heard the other party mumble.

"What about after Nascent Soul?" He heard William ask.

Chun Wu was momentarily confounded.

"How does this guy not know basic information?" Chun Wu thought to himself, "Don't tell me this guy really isn't a demon?"

He began to continue, but suddenly a cacophonous noise interrupted his line of thought. Without noticing, Chun Wu had already walked out of the Red Jade Pavilion and into the front courtyard of the Zhang family's estate. The racket seemed to be coming from near the Zhang family's front gate.

Walking up to the gate, Chun Wu saw two groups of people preparing to face off.

Upon noticing he had arrived, half of the first group bowed towards him. They were naturally the Zhang family's guards. One of them walked up to him to report the situation when suddenly a loud voice cried out.

"Zhang Chun Wu, you crippled bastard! How dare you injure my cousin?!"

Chun Wu reflexively looked past the guard and saw two youths surrounded by body guards adorned in bright green. They were members of the Li family, another prominent family in the county of Zhihui.

Chun Wu responded with a growl.

"Hmph, Li Fei Yuan! Your little cousin Li Tai Shan nearly killed one of our clan's young miss yesterday, I merely taught him a lesson and you're already acting like the sky has fallen?"

"You!" Li Fei Yuan roared, before a hand grabbed him on the shoulder, restraining him.

Zhang Chun Wu looked at the older man who had just appeared, and his face grew solemn. It was Li Hou Jun, an elder of the Li family, who was at the late stage of Perceiving Mind.

"I admit that our Tai Shan was being unruly, but injuring the genius of our clan just for an outer member of your family is indeed a bit out of line, don't you think?"

Before Zhang Chun Wu could respond, he suddenly felt a wave of anger shooting through his body.

"What kind of bullshit explanation is that? He can injure anyone he wants but no one can do the same to him?!" He subconsciously spoke out, before turning red. The demon had suddenly seized control of his mouth and spoken those words, seemingly intent on embarrassing him.

Everyone stared at him strangely, as if he had spoken something incredibly silly.

"Little brother, you couldn't have fallen for that Dai Yu right?" Zhang Chun Wu heard a voice behind him. It was his sister, Zhang Xia Yun, who was accompanied by one of the Zhang family's elders.

Before he could respond, Li Hou jun interrupted, "regardless of how you feel for her, the Zhang family must give us an explanation for this matter. Our Tai shan is already at the ninth stage of Body Refining at the age of 12 years, an unparalleled genius! Breaking his arm means he won't be able to train or cultivate for at least a month, we deserve an explanation!"

Zhang Xia Yun scoffed.

"Genius? Your Li Tai Shan? Then who is our Zhang Chun Wu? He's at the second stage of foundation building at a mere 13 years old! How can your Li Tai Shan possibly compare to him?"

Before anyone could reply, Li Tai Shan suddenly blurted out "Hmph, I'm obviously more impressive than him! He can't even use his Primary Artifact!"

Zhang Chun Wu's face immediately darkened. Yesterday, it was exactly because Li Tai Shan muttered those words that Zhang Chun Wu had taught him such a harsh lesson, but it seemed that he had forgotten the previous lesson now that he had come with an elder of the Li family.

"If you think you're so impressive, why don't you have a match with my cousin Li Fei Yuan? You two are both at the second stage of Foundation Building, do you have the balls?"