Chapter 101
Chapter 101
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 101
Chapter Title: The Heavenly Flower Sect Lord's True Identity
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The liquor had been as poisonous as expected, and the coughing fit that followed was just as violent. Watching Wi Seong-cheon spit out the alcohol with his face flushed bright red, the Black Demon King burst into laughter.
Wi Seong-cheon twisted his face at the bitter taste lingering in his mouth and glared at the Black Demon King.
“What kind of joke is that……!”
“It’s no joke.”
The Black Demon King chuckled as he spoke. He poured fresh liquor into his cup and continued.
“What reason would this lord have to make such an out-of-place jest?”
A new cup of liquor floated up and flew toward Wi Seong-cheon. He clamped his lips shut and accepted it. But unlike before, he didn’t bring it straight to his mouth.
The Heavenly Flower Sect Lord is Duggo.
No matter how he thought about it, it sounded like nothing but a joke. Yet, as the Black Demon King had said, there was no reason for him to make such a random quip.
‘For real?’
But it was impossible to accept. He knew about Duggo. He’d heard about him in Professor Sang Myeong-jung’s martial world history class at Uicheon Academy, and Mu Yeon-jun had mentioned him too during their time at the Gansu demonic beast extermination site.
Duggo was strong, but he was alone.
If he hadn’t wandered the demonic realm by himself and had accepted help from the other Ten Heroes, he might have taken down not just the Blood Capturing Demon but the other Nine Demons as well.
I…… must not disappear like Duggo.
Mu Yeon-jun had said that, looking as if he were being crushed under the invisible weight of Heaven’s mandate.
Duggo.
A mysterious master who had appeared out of nowhere twenty years ago. He roamed the regions of Shenshuo, Xijiang, and Qinghai, hunting demonic beasts and fiends.
One famous anecdote symbolizing Duggo was how one of the Demonic Cult’s Ten Demons, the Blood Capturing Demon, was defeated by him, and his severed head hung at the gates of Qinghai Castle.
However, after slaying the Blood Capturing Demon, Duggo vanished. Either he was killed by another demonic cult fiend, or he sustained an irrecoverable wound in that battle and went into hiding. Whatever the truth, Duggo no longer existed in the current world.
“By the way.”
The Black Demon King suddenly spoke up. He stared intently at Wi Seong-cheon, whose face had stiffened, then pointed at the flower still dangling there.
“What’s that? A gift for this lord?”
“……Cut the nonsense and tell me the story properly.”
Normally, he might have responded with a playful retort, but right now, he wasn’t in the mood. Far from being offended by Wi Seong-cheon’s curt reply, the Black Demon King seemed amused and laughed.
“Judging by your reaction, you never even imagined it.”
“……My father is the Heavenly Flower Sect Lord. That’s all he’s ever been to me.”
“Have you never wanted to know more? You know better than anyone that the Heavenly Flower Sect’s arts aren’t something to be despised—you’ve mastered them yourself. You’ve easily defeated disciples of the Nine Great Righteous Sects and possess skill on par with the Dragon-Phoenix ranks. Haven’t you ever questioned your father?”
“Of course I have.”
Wi Seong-cheon’s voice rose.
“Even before coming to Uicheon Academy, I naturally had my doubts. But Father never once told me about his past—not even a single time.”
It would have been impossible not to wonder. The more he trained in the Heavenly Flower Sect’s arts, the more Wi Seong-cheon realized he wasn’t weak at all.
Before arriving at Uicheon Academy, the ten years he had steeled himself for were meant to be devoted to mastering the Heavenly Flower Sect’s arts and building his own confidence.
If he hadn’t come to Uicheon Academy, he would have trained at the Heavenly Flower Sect for those ten years before stepping out into the martial world.
After that, he would have proven to the world that the Heavenly Flower Sect was no weakling.
Though he hadn’t gotten the full ten years he’d planned, even after coming to the academy, he’d confirmed that the Heavenly Flower Sect’s arts were plenty strong.
Wi Seong-cheon had defeated Dragon-Phoenix’s Kwon-gol Hwang Bo-seongu and Shaolin’s Iron Wave Staff Jin Bae. He’d earned recognition from one of the Ten Heroes, the Taiji Sword Lord, and astonished one of the Demonic Cult’s Ten Demons, the Poison Blood Ghost Demon.
Each time he “verified” the Heavenly Flower Sect’s arts like that.
Father.
Heavenly Flower Sect Lord.
The man known as Yi Juseok became an even greater mystery. The father Wi Seong-cheon knew was……
“What do you know about your father?”
The words caught in his throat.
He couldn’t even answer the question in his own mind. Father. He didn’t know much about other fathers, but the one Wi Seong-cheon knew, experienced, and felt……
He wasn’t authoritarian just because he was the father and sect lord. Yet he was resolute when he needed to be.
He often cracked jokes and spouted nonsense, and he was strict about training. Strangely, though, when teaching martial arts, his eyes would sometimes mix with all sorts of complicated emotions.
Also, his father was different inside the Heavenly Flower Sect and out in the world. The strongest memory Wi Seong-cheon had of his “great” father was from their first trip together to the Murim Alliance, where Father kept bowing his head repeatedly.
“……What do you know about my father, Black Demon King?”
“I don’t know everything.”
Wi Seong-cheon asked in a strained voice, and the Black Demon King smiled faintly as he replied.
“As I told you earlier, I don’t know everything about the Heavenly Flower Sect either. I didn’t hear it properly from the previous Black Death Chain Lord.”
“……Pardon?”
“It was fifty years ago already. Back then, this lord was counted as the top unorthodox master, greedy for fame and power. So I challenged the Black Death Chain Lord of that time, Sama Il-jon.”
The floating liquor bottle tilted toward the cup.
“But Sama Il-jon didn’t accept my challenge. Instead, he stepped down himself and yielded the seat of Black Death Chain Lord to preserve his life.”
The Black Demon King’s eyes narrowed.
“This lord wasn’t pleased. But to uphold the code toward an unorthodox senior seeking to preserve his life, I didn’t kill him.”
“……What did you do instead?”
Wi Seong-cheon stammered the question. What the Black Demon King was saying was unknown to the world.
A tale from fifty years in the distant past. The Black Death Chain Lord of that era, Sama Il-jon, had stepped down and yielded his position to the Black Demon King.
Afterward, Sama Il-jon vanished from the secular world into seclusion. That was the known story.
“I crippled his dantian.”
The Black Demon King said as he brought the cup to his lips.
“I also severed the tendons in both his hands and feet. I considered ripping them out entirely but thought it might be too much for a senior…… so I showed mercy. He’ll be lame for life and won’t even be able to eat properly alone, but at least I didn’t kill him.”
“You made him wish he were dead.”
“Sama Il-jon was the one who wanted to live on pathetically.”
The Black Demon King bared his teeth in a grin. Wi Seong-cheon felt a intense sense of dissonance from that smile. Despite committing such merciless acts, the Black Demon King’s laugh was as pure as a child’s.
“Anyway. This lord showed mercy in his own way, but it seems the Black Demon King didn’t see it that way. I only found out much later.”
The Black Demon King grumbled as he brought the cup back to his mouth.
“The trigger was pure coincidence. I was idly flipping through the Black Death Chain’s old records for amusement, and strangely, every mention of the Heavenly Flower Sect was missing.”
“……Pardon?”
“It was twenty years ago.”
The Black Demon King clicked his tongue.
“I went looking for Sama Il-jon to ask about the Heavenly Flower Sect, but I couldn’t find that old man. So what could I do? I had to go there myself.”
Wi Seong-cheon swallowed hard.
“There, this lord witnessed something utterly unexpected.”
The Black Demon King slowly turned his head to gaze outside. The night market’s lights and pale moonlight dyed the night sky a reddish-brown. From that sky, the Black Demon King recalled climbing Shinryeong Mountain, where the Heavenly Flower Sect lay, twenty years ago for the first time.
“That day, the sunset was an unusually blood-like red.”
Saying that, the Black Demon King let out a low chuckle, as if amused by his own words.
“No. Maybe it was the smell.”
“The smell……?”
“Blood was thick in the air.”
Black dried blood was splattered everywhere along the paths. The Black Demon King of that time found it odd but was intrigued. The trail of blood led all the way to the Heavenly Flower Sect, and there,
“Your father was in a state that deserved death but somehow hadn’t died.”
His body should have been dead by all rights, yet it clung to life forcibly. Or perhaps it was already dead and just moving. Either way, it was eerie.
“The worst was his pulverized dantian, but even accounting for that, the Heavenly Flower Sect Lord’s condition was bizarre beyond belief. It seemed like poisoning at first, but it wasn’t.”
The Black Demon King had spent long years honing his martial arts and destroying countless human bodies. He had personally crushed the dantian of the previous Black Death Chain Lord, Sama Il-jon.
But the Heavenly Flower Sect Lord’s body back then was a grotesque state even the Black Demon King had never seen before.
“My father’s dantian was crushed?”
Wi Seong-cheon jumped in shock. It was unbelievable. He had sparred with his father countless times.
And he had never once won. A crushed dantian meant the end of a martial artist’s life. If his father’s dantian was truly crushed as the Black Demon King claimed, there was no way Wi Seong-cheon couldn’t have beaten him.
“At least that’s how it was when I saw him. Didn’t this lord say I saw something unexpected there? The sect lord’s physical state was surprising enough, but that wasn’t all.”
The Black Demon King, who had been looking out the window, turned to stare at Wi Seong-cheon.
“Won Gwang Bul, the Murim Alliance Lord of that era, was personally tending to the Heavenly Flower Sect Lord’s condition.”
Wi Seong-cheon’s hands trembled. He had been able to enroll in Uicheon Academy thanks to Won Gwang Bul’s letter of recommendation.
He had always wondered what connection his father and Heavenly Flower Sect had with Won Gwang Bul, but he’d never gotten a straight answer.
“As this lord passed through the gate, Blood Victory blocked my path.”
“And who’s Blood Victory?”
“Hmm, the young ones these days don’t know? That’s the generation gap for you.”
The Black Demon King shook his head with a click of his tongue.
“A master who appeared around twenty years ago. He always wore blood-red robes and shaved his head like a monk—that’s where his nickname Blood Victory came from. He rampaged more in the demonic realm than the martial world, and like Duggo, his activity was very brief, so it’s no wonder you don’t know.”
“Did you kill him?”
Wi Seong-cheon blurted out. The Black Demon King burst into laughter at the question.
“If Won Gwang Bul hadn’t intervened, I would have. Of course, this lord could have killed Won Gwang Bul, the dying Heavenly Flower Sect Lord, and Blood Victory all the same. But…… I didn’t. Or rather, there was no reason to.”
The Black Death Chain Lord tilted his head and muttered.
“Anyway. This lord asked Won Gwang Bul what was going on and what the hell the Heavenly Flower Sect even was.”
“……You said you didn’t know everything about the Heavenly Flower Sect, Lord.”
Wi Seong-cheon desperately suppressed the urge to bolt from his seat and rush to see his father—to demand what had happened.
The Black Demon King’s story wasn’t over yet.
“Right. In the end, this lord didn’t hear what kind of sect the Heavenly Flower Sect is.”
The Black Demon King grinned.
“Liar.”
Wi Seong-cheon spat out.
Crack!
The cup in Wi Seong-cheon’s hand shattered. Liquor and shards spilled out, but his hand was unscratched. He glared at the Black Demon King with bloodshot eyes.
“In that situation, you could have killed everyone there, just as you said.”
“Indeed.”
The Black Demon King nodded.
“But you know, there are people—rare, but they exist—who won’t open their mouths even with death at their throats. In that light, this lord was unlucky. All three there refused to break before my might and kept silent.”
“What does that have to do with anything……!”
“Don’t speak so lightly.”
The Black Demon King’s voice sank coldly.
Whoosh!
The Black Demon King’s previously lax energy shifted in an instant. The sharpened aura choked off Wi Seong-cheon’s breath.
He leaped back instinctively. The Black Demon King sat still, holding his cup, but Wi Seong-cheon was freshly reminded that even seated, he could kill him hundreds or thousands of times over.
“It’s natural to bow before displayed power.”
The Black Demon King set down his cup.
“I’ve never met the Heavenly Demon in person, sadly, but this lord is still an incarnation of violence with strength among the world’s elite. You retreated not by reason, but instinct. That’s what I am.”
The Black Demon King smiled faintly.
“Just as your righteous faction pursues justice, values chivalry, and respects righteousness, this lord has his own pursuits, values, and respects. I admire unyielding resolve and blind faith.”
The Black Demon King slowly rose.
“This lord crippled Sama Il-jon because he bent before even facing me. He had no conviction worthy of the Black Death Chain Lord’s seat, so I made him a cripple.”
The Black Demon King strode toward Wi Seong-cheon step by step. As the distance closed, Wi Seong-cheon’s hairs stood on end and his skin crawled.
Feeling his mouth go dry, Wi Seong-cheon desperately fought the urge to flee.
“So I respected them. Since they wouldn’t speak even in death, I let it go. No need to test it by actually killing them.”
Sweat drenched his bangs. Through the strands of hair, Wi Seong-cheon saw the Black Demon King standing tall.
“When this lord said that, the Heavenly Flower Sect Lord spat blood and laughed.”
Tap.
The Black Demon King’s finger lightly flicked Wi Seong-cheon’s forehead. His choked breath came free. Wi Seong-cheon exhaled deeply and collapsed into his seat.
“Curious about that laugh, I asked who he was.”
Fortunately, he answered that one.
“The Heavenly Flower Sect Lord said he was Duggo.”
Wi Seong-cheon stared up at the Black Demon King with blank eyes.
“When I asked if it was a wound from the Blood Capturing Demon, he shook his head with a smile.”
The Black Demon King leaned down slowly to peer into Wi Seong-cheon’s face. His eyes brimmed with deep curiosity and interest, wondering what expression his words would elicit.
“Heavenly Demon.”
The Black Demon King whispered.
Wi Seong-cheon’s face drained to corpse-like pallor.
“It was the Heavenly Demon who crushed the Heavenly Flower Sect Lord’s dantian.”