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The first thing he gains is self-awareness.
It takes him less time than most demons to do so, perhaps because his true form is so close to what humans used to be.
One moment he just exists, the next he turns into something, someone who is aware of his own place in the world.
(Someone who might one day even be worthy of a name.)
He often regrets that very first step in the millennia to come.
With awareness comes the rage, the malice, the cruelty. He can't help it, it's what he was born to be – what his body was made to contain.
He fights tooth and nail not to drown in it, but in the end he loses himself in the storm of dark emotions. It uses him to hurt and kill, and in the rare moments of clarity that follow after, when his mind finally reemerges from the sea of red-tinged haze, he learns his first and most bitter lesson:
The worst thing about being in control of his own actions is having that control taken away again.
And he begins to understand what despair feels like.
His fur hasn't been white in a long time.
Whenever he's conscious enough to indulge in some much-needed grooming, it's always speckled with dark, red blood – never his – and the constant stench of it fills him with another emotion: disgust.
Every day at dawn he crawls into a small cave he found among the rocks on the endless shore and curls up in exhaustion until dreamless sleep takes over.
In the evening the red haze will return, and he needs all the rest he can get.
He doesn't know how many years go by like this, doesn't remember what it's like not to be a vessel for all the malevolent energy in the world.
Until one day, he hears the music.
He instinctively knows it's her. Everyone in the Wilderness knows her name.
The tune is simple, yet uplifting, and after centuries of pain and anger it feels like sunshine on his battered soul. The melody dispels the fog that cloaks his mind and fills him with a new emotion – one he identifies to be hope much later.
It's his favorite one yet.
(It's also the most dangerous of them all and he'll learn to despise it as he grows older.)
He doesn't hear the music again, not for many years, but at least the rage doesn't take a hold of him either.
For the first time in almost 400 years he's free to do what he wants – and to find out who he actually is, now that the malicious energy doesn't dictate his every move.
So it doesn't come as a surprise that the next emotion he learns through cultivation is curiosity.
Over the next few centuries, he roams the vast, barren lands of the Wilderness, travelling from the farthest shores in the east to the deepest, darkest abyss in the west, from the frozen plains and eternal nights in the north to the endless snowcapped mountain ranges in the south.
On his travels, he sees rivers of stars and floating islands of glass and black deserts and eternal maelstroms, but he's too young and feral still to appreciate their beauty.
He experiences the simple joy of being instead: of living in the moment, moving freely around the Wilderness by day and sleeping under the stars at night.
For a while, he doesn't have a care in the world.
And for a while he's content with that.
Along the way, he meets many demons.
Most of them are lower ones just like him, but he rarely interacts with them. If they're not outright hostile, they go into hiding when they feel him approaching, for they can sense what he is, can smell the stench of death on him.
He doesn't feel rejected, not exactly. He's used to that reaction. And still.
Still, he feels like something is missing.
He doesn't know what it is, until he meets the Old Ones, the true Great Demons of the Wilderness, for the first time. They are not afraid of him; they are much too powerful to have any reason to be.
Great Demons come in many shapes and forms. Some of them are beings of pure energy, while others prefer to remain in their true form.
And then there are those who have taken on a human appearance.
It's them that he's most interested in.
They are the ones who teach him the human language, who indulge his endless curiosity by telling him stories of the mortal world, and who fill him with a longing for places he's never been and may never see in his lifetime.
But hope is a resilient thing, and so he decides to finally give himself a name – a promise to himself that he might one day be able to use that name in the strange other world they tell him about.
Zhu Yan is the name he chooses.
It feels right.
When the blood moon appears in the sky again, he stares at it in awe, not yet realizing what it means for him.
But as soon as the red haze begins to swirl around him, and an uncontrollable rage starts to take hold of his mind, he remembers, and panic sets in. He can't possibly go through that again. He can't. But it's not his choice.
And as the dark energy slowly reduces him to a mindless, savage beast, he suddenly understands another emotion, and it's the strongest one yet: fear.
First and foremost, he fears for himself. But in recent years there has also been a small part of him that fears for those around him, be they demons or creatures of the wild, and that's what makes the loss of control so much worse.
And Zhu Yan doesn't understand. He has never cared about anyone but himself before, so he doesn't understand why he would suddenly care whether they live or die.
It's a mystery that he won't solve for another 14,000 years, which is the time it will take him to properly cultivate that particular emotion.
It takes weeks until he regains consciousness.
When he wakes, he finds himself trapped between the branches of a giant pagoda tree.
He's badly bruised and barely alive, the last remnants of malevolent energy still burning through him. He has no memory of how he got here, but he can feel the faint demonic energy coming from the tree and he understands that his confinement is no accident. He discovers long, deep gashes where his claws have torn through the bark; he must have fought the tree demon for quite some time to regain his freedom, but to no avail.
It had just held onto him tightly until the anger had burned off.
Now its leaves are gently shaking, as the branches slowly lower him to the ground and set him free.
But Zhu Yan doesn't move. He's too tired and in too much pain, and he still lacks the pride to leave and suffer alone.
Instead, he crawls between the roots of the pagoda tree, closes his eyes and sleeps.
(The deep claw marks he has left will, in time, turn into faint scars on pale skin – scars that he will only rediscover many years later.)
The red fog stays away for now.
Zhu Yan is older and much stronger than he was before, and he won't be so easily possessed again. His freedom doesn't come cheap, though, and he has to fight the darkness inside him every single day to stay in control.
But it will take another blood moon to take that control away again and to truly unleash the uncontrollable rage inside him.
And when that happens, he doesn't want to be here.
So once his wounds have healed, Zhu Yan leaves the nest behind that he has made under the branches of the pagoda tree and continues his journey through the Wilderness.
He doesn't look back.
He regrets it later.
After two centuries of cultivation in the Wilderness, he returns.
The pagoda tree still stands tall and strong, and Zhu Yan is greeted with a wave of familiar demonic energy.
He doesn't know why, but as soon as he rests under the tree, he feels ... not companionship, no. But a connection he hasn't experienced before.
The tree demon is the first creature that survived his rage. It could have killed him in retaliation, but chose not to. But then again, unlike him, it is not free to roam the lands and meet other demons, and Zhu Yan understands that he's not the only one destined to be alone because of who and what he is.
And he decides to stay.
It doesn't matter where he cultivates, so this place is as good as any in the Wilderness. And other than in that small cave on the shore where he dwelled many years ago, he doesn't feel alone here.
That night he sleeps on the tree again, cradled safely in its branches.
When he wakes, his body is no longer covered in white fur, but pale human skin.
Zhu Yan is so startled by that discovery that he falls out of the tree.
The human body is not what he expected at all. Without his fur he feels cold and naked. His claws aren't as long and sharp as they used to be, his fangs are gone, too, and his whole balance is off because his body has become gangly and weird.
It takes him several days to learn how to walk again in this unfamiliar new form. When he finally succeeds, laughter escapes his lips. He immediately covers his mouth in shock; never before has he made such strange noises.
And then he suddenly realizes that, without his fangs, he will finally be able to form words. For a moment he doesn't know what to feel.
His human vocal cords are untrained, so his voice is raspy and low when he speaks.
"I am," he says, and hesitates, before trying again: "This is me."
When he hears the sound of his own voice, wetness begins to spill from his eyes – another thing he's never experienced before. He collects some of it with his fingertips and stares at it in wonder.
And then he lets himself cry some more, just because he can, and his tears seep into the bark of the tree as he leans against it to steady himself.
A Great Demon once told him that there's a fine line between joy and sadness, and that tears can be a symbol of both.
Zhu Yan didn't understand then.
He understands now.
He uses his demonic energy – carefully, very carefully – to make clothes for himself out of moss and fallen leaves.
At night, he still climbs up on the branches of the pagoda tree to sleep, slowly balancing each part of his body so he won't fall again.
And he talks. Now that he has learned how, he can't stop; he just loves the taste of the words on his tongue.
He tells the tree demon of his travels, of the lands he has seen, the creatures he has met along the way and the countless stories he has heard. He confesses his longing for the human world and his hope of one day seeing it with his own eyes. He even talks about the red haze, his most personal and terrible secret, and about the terrifying rage that comes with it.
Zhu Yan doesn't know if the tree demon can actually understand him; he hasn't found out how high its cultivation is yet.
"But I'll stay," he assures it. "I'll stay, even if you take human form some day and we can finally have a proper conversation."
The pagoda tree's demonic energy only flickers in response, and Zhu Yan feels himself smile.
And then one day, the tree is suddenly gone.
A wave of grief hits Zhu Yan when he returns from a few days of travelling and immediately notices its absence.
But the grief doesn't last, because when he looks closer, he discovers a human form – clad in nothing but long black hair – sitting where the roots of the pagoda tree used to be. Zhu Yan gets so angry that he can feel the malicious energy surge inside of him, and for a moment it takes all of his willpower to regain control.
"Who are you?" he demands to know. "What have you done to my tree?"
The demon slowly opens its– no, his eyes and looks at him in silent amusement.
"Your tree?" he asks. His voice is gravelly, as if it hasn't been used in a long, long time.
Zhu Yan opens his mouth in indignation before closing it again.
"Well, no," he finally says. "It obviously belongs to itself. But I'm the one who lives in it!"
The other demon snorts softly. "Don't I know it."
Then he gets up from the ground and raises his arms high above his head, a storm of leaves rising around him.
"What do you think happened to your tree?" he asks over their rustling.
And Zhu Yan finally recognizes the demonic energy. If he could feel embarrassed, he would, because it took him far too long to understand what has happened.
"It's you!" He can barely contain his relief. "You've taken human form!"
The leaves flutter slowly to the ground as the storm dies down.
"I have," the tree demon quietly confirms. Zhu Yan isn't very experienced at reading human faces yet, but something tells him that the other demon doesn't particularly enjoy his current state.
"Wait," he says. "This is not the first time you have changed, is it? You have done this before."
The tree demon averts his eyes. "Yes."
"And you didn't like it."
"... yes."
"So why now?" Zhu Yan looks at him curiously. "Why did you take on this form now?"
The other demon doesn't answer him for a long time. Finally, he looks up and meets Zhu Yan's eyes.
"Because I decided to take a chance," he said. "Because you promised to stay with me."
He slowly blinks at Zhu Yan. "Was that true? Will you?"
Zhu Yan doesn't know what to say. It's not that he doesn't want to stay. He has grown strangely fond of his tree. It's just that it's going to be an incredibly bad idea once the blood moon rises again.
"I told you what I am," he says. "You know I can't control it. I will hurt you again."
But the tree demon doesn't seem too bothered by that.
"Then hurt me," he says. "We both know that you can't kill me. But I can trap you until you regain control. And isn't that what you want? – Control?"
It is. Zhu Yan has to admit that the offer does sound tempting. As does the companionship it entails, and the ... care, if that is the right word for it.
And Zhu Yan gives in.
He doesn't regret it as much as he expected.
"What is your name?" he asks as they leave the cave together for the first time.
He can feel the tree demon looking at him strangely. "I have no name."
"Is that so." Zhu Yan turns his face to him and smiles. "Let us travel the world then, until you find one that suits you."
The demon shakes his head. "You are the strangest creature, Zhu Yan."
It's the first time he calls him by his true name. And it feels good. Important.
It feels like fate.
And Zhu Yan accepts it.