Grandma Sha chuckled. “Oh LiNa, every demon in this world has a holy pearl embedded in the heart, and only the individual can feel its existence. It’s a very special gift to have. When the person dies, the pearl will escape from the physical body and return to Aniela.”

“Aniela?” I had a ton of questions, they were both quite used to it by now.

“Aniela is why we are all here. She is the mother goddess of all existence, the creator of life in this world.”

Well, that basically sounded like god, except in this world they have got a different god named Aniela, and she was a female goddess.

Grandma Sha explained. “The holy pearl has a seedling in it, and this seedling is very important to us. It helps to develop the first pairs of wings. Without it, it’s pretty much impossible to do so.”

“Grandma Sha, you have the seedling?”

“Of course, dear, that was the reason for our magic skills. Otherwise this uncultivated land wouldn’t grow a single plant. We have green hands. All demons were blessed by Aniela for this incredible gift of seedling.”

“But why no wings for you and Grandpa Jin?”

Grandma chuckled, “Oh, child, when we plant a seed, sometimes it sprouts and grows into a beautiful tree, but sometimes it would not sprout at all. Demons in the Land of Ruins are seedlings that never sprouted at all. Most of us here would never gain our first pair of wings.”

Well, it was not like the wings are chicken wings at KFC that could fill my stomach with yumminess. They were only used for flying, right? Probably not much of a big deal.

Grandma and Grandpa Jin shook their heads softly, and smiled with wrinkles. “This is a small and isolated village. We are all commoners here, if we have wings, probably have emigrated to a better place by now. Child, do you know why this is called the Land of Ruins?”

I shook my head, and poked the sweet potatoes a bit with the stick.

“This was an uncultivated land when our ancestors first came to escape a war. It took thousands of years to change the soil to livable conditions. Although we have magic powers, it’s only up to a certain extent, in the end it all comes down to people’s hard work and sweat to really change things. At first, our ancestors couldn’t even grow a single grass here, now we can grow more crops, at least enough to get by.” Grandpa Jin said.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Crazy old man, even if you have wings, I bet you a hundred sweet potatoes that you won’t be flying anywhere at all!”

Grandpa Jin laughed at his wife. “You know that was just a joke, we sure are not going anywhere aren’t we?”

There seemed to be tears well up in their eyes, then quickly were gone. I thought I must have seen it wrong, but then remembered their deceased daughter, suddenly realized the real reason for them to stay here no matter what.

This was probably the place where their daughter was buried.

I hurried to rescue the gray atmosphere and asked another question. “I thought magic can do everything. Why not use magic and plant?”

“Magic is like a luxury treasure with limited stored energy. Unless it's necessary, otherwise we wouldn’t use magic all the time. We are just regular demons, not the powerful royals, we can't waste our luxury treasure on something that could be done by hand.” Grandpa Jin said.

“Like what?”

“Like so many others here, my type of magic element is earth, which possesses planting power. The same planting power can have a vast speciality here, such as I might be more skilled to plant anesthetic fruits while other people might be more skilled to plant sweet potatoes. Although I can do so, I won’t go ahead and plant a thousand anesthetic fruits in the garden, it causes energy exhaustion and in the worst case that can lead to death. How much and how often to perform magic arts depends on the individual’s ability and conditions. I can only produce one anesthetic fruit every seven days, and that helps to exchange for a main diet like sweet potatoes. On a lucky day, though not too often, even hunts some buffaloes. Those big guys love to eat my fruits, and just one bite will paralyze them and give me enough time for that final blow.”

I sure learned a lot from Grandpa Jin. I thought having magic means that you can do whatever you like, but it turned out to be a limited warranty. If your warranty expired, then you were dead.

“I don’t have holy pearl. How can I hide from people?” It was just a miracle how we communicated so well despite my poor language skills.

Grandma Sha laughed. “No worries, no one would know unless you tell them, probably only the royals can feel the special energy inside of someone, but there were never any royals in the Land of Ruins.”

The sweet potatoes smelled so good, and made my mouth watery and my stomach growling. I swallowed a bit, and used a stick to pull them out from the hot bonfire bed. They were blackish on the outside, but I knew the inside should be juicy and unburnt. I was an expert at baking sweet potatoes in a bonfire after six months of practice. It was all trial and error, and not to mention the countless dry and hardened sweet potatoes thrown away. Those poor potatoes had sacrificed themselves to improve my cooking skills - respect earned!

“I think the sweet potatoes are ready!”

I let them cool down for a few minutes, then handed them to Grandma Sha and Grandpa Jin, and got one from the ground for myself. I carefully splitted it open into two parts, the steam came up smelling like heaven. I lightly blew some air on the potato to cool it down faster, and then took a bite.

Wow, so yummy!