Chapter 2
Chapter 2
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Opening My Eyes Again
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How long had I been floating above the world?
My eyes snapped open as if I were being sucked into something.
“—Do you understand? What you must do when the family head graces us with his presence.”
Eeeee—
My ears were ringing.
On top of that, tinnitus piled on.
It felt like dozens of swarms of bees were buzzing around me.
“Stay calm, always calm. Remember your place. Answer the family head’s questions with utmost courtesy, but in your heart, always know your station and bow your head accordingly. And after that, you are not to step foot outside your quarters in the White Hall even once—”
Somehow, as I struggled to regain my senses, the sounds around me began to separate one by one.
The blurry world sharpened, regaining its colors.
A woman with venomous eyes was glaring at me (which seemed to be the body I’d possessed).
She held a bloodstained switch in one hand.
Huh?
Blood?
It looked like I’d been getting beaten...
What could a person have done wrong to get hit until blood stained the switch?
I hadn’t anticipated this at all, so a hollow laugh escaped me involuntarily.
Unlike my fears of failure, the Prime Spirit Wheel Transmigration had succeeded flawlessly.
But it seemed this new life was just as fraught as my previous one.
The Prime Spirit Wheel Transmigration could only be cast on bodies that had died recently or were on the brink of death.
It replaced the soul that had been there before, which meant the original owner of this body I’d entered was dead.
No matter how much they hated this body, beating a person to the point of death?
They wouldn’t treat even a lowly slave like this.
...Or maybe it was some criminal who’d committed an outrage against heaven and earth?
That would be a hassle if they held grudges...
Just in case, I quickly sifted through the body’s lingering memories.
But the results were nothing like I’d imagined.
This body was at most seventeen. Still a child.
The woman before me was the child’s stepmother.
Looking down at my arm, white skin was covered in red bloodstains and bruises.
Unlike the woman, who was decked out in splendid silk that looked freshly laundered, my clothes were filthy and reeked.
I could guess how this child had been treated all this time.
What a shitshow.
Even in the demonic path, crawling with inhuman scum, I’d always felt instinctive disgust toward people like this.
“Lady.”
“...What?”
The voice that had been prattling on suddenly cut off.
Like a wind-up doll that had broken.
Over her rigid pupils, she saw an unfamiliar child (gorgeously handsome, not even losing to my past self, which I liked) smiling coldly.
“Your breath stinks. Could you move that mug out of my face?”
“!!”
In an instant, the woman’s face flushed beet red.
It was a sight to behold.
* * *
“Don’t even think of stepping outside until you realize your mistake!”
Bam!
I found myself confined to some nameless hall.
“And you lot—don’t you dare give that child so much as water or food! If you get caught sneaking him scraps out of pity like last time, I’ll tie you up and toss you in the well! Remember that!”
That lady must’ve swallowed a megaphone. What a voice.
Unlike me snickering, the maids trembled and mumbled weak replies.
This clearly wasn’t the first time.
“What were you thinking, young master? You know Lady’s temper better than anyone! Now we’re all in for it because of you!”
The steward who’d been dragged into the hall with me let out a heavy sigh.
He shot me a look full of contempt and reproach... Hah!
I couldn’t help but laugh. It was absurd.
Come to think of it, this guy had been openly taking orders from that lady before we got here.
“What’re you staring at?”
“Why? Can’t I just look?”
I hadn’t fully read all the lingering thoughts in the body yet.
But understanding my current situation wasn’t hard.
Even I, the young master of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, had heard of this place.
—The Nine Dragons Branch of the Tang Clan.
Also called the Nine Dragons Branch Family, it was a branch run by the Sichuan Tang Clan, famous for poisons and hidden weapons.
The Nine Dragons Plains connected westward to the Qinghai region with the Podalab Palace’s Western Chief and the Kunlun Sect; southward to Yunnan with the Heavenly Dragon Monastery, the Jeomchang Sect, the Five Poisons Sect, and flowing waterways—a key transportation hub.
Even in the white paper the cult prepared for clashes with the Central Plains martial world, it was marked as a top-priority strategic point to seize in any war. That’s why it stuck in my memory.
Naturally, the Sichuan Tang Clan couldn’t ignore it if they wanted to maintain hegemony.
So the current family head, the Dark Sovereign Tang Munhyeok, had entrusted the protection of the Nine Dragons Plains to his right-hand man from his days as young master: the Mad Wind Chaotic Hero Tang Hosan, who had dominated Sichuan’s martial world alongside him.
Tang Hosan had set up the branch with a few members of his Mad Wind Squad.
That was the origin of this Nine Dragons Branch Family.
Tang Hosan was a renowned figure in the jianghu.
He was the hero whose feats had helped the Sichuan Tang Clan drive out the Orthodox sects’ Qingcheng and Emei to dominate Sichuan’s martial world.
I’d even received reports that quite a few cultists had died to his hidden weapons, marking him for execution...
And I’d possessed his son?
The body I’d taken, ‘Tang Unhwi,’ was born from a maid Tang Hosan had slept with while drunk.
In other words, a bastard son.
Tang Hosan had taken him in from that one-night mistake but never treated him like a son.
So the martial arts passed down were just the Tang Clan’s External Vitality Sealing Art that outer relatives practiced.
In this situation, the other relatives couldn’t help but look down on Tang Unhwi, and especially the principal wife, Namgung San-yeong (that lady from earlier), nitpicked constantly and even beat him.
“......”
No matter that I’d chosen the possession target randomly, landing in this mess left me speechless.
That’s why I’d always hated gambling—dice, three-card monte, all of it... Hah!
Father, mother, family environment—if we compared misfortunes, I’d bet on this over my past life.
At least there was one half-sister who occasionally looked after Tang Unhwi, but she wasn’t at the branch now, so no help there.
“Stop with the nonsense and tell us what you plan to do now! How do you intend to take responsibility for this?!”
On top of that, this so-called personal steward wasn’t pitying the poor kid but scolding him for talking back.
It reminded me of the neighborhood brats who used to mess with me as a child.
What did I do after becoming Master’s disciple?
Tap, tap—
“?”
I approached silently, and the steward stared blankly, as if wondering what I was up to.
His gaze was still full of contempt.
Slap!
Without looking back, I smacked his face.
“Y-Young master?”
The steward clutched his reddened cheek, staring in disbelief.
“Bite down hard.”
“W-What—”
“I said bite down hard.”
Slap!
His head snapped to the other side.
“If you keep this up, I won’t stay quiet—”
Slap!
“Lady will find out—”
Slap!
“St-Stop!”
Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!
I kept slapping the steward’s cheeks without pause.
When his head lifted, I hit the other side; when it dropped, I grabbed his nape and smacked him again.
My hand hurt like it might fall off... but hey, during my beggar days, I didn’t just take beatings like an idiot.
If I got punched once, I’d smash their head with a brick. That was the old ‘Yeon Unhwi.’
After becoming the proud disciple of the Divine Sword Heavenly Demon, I hunted down my tormentors and threw them in prison one by one; as young cult leader, I shipped them off to labor in the mines.
Master had said, “Do you really need to go that far? You’re the future cult leader—start embracing the followers’ past faults.”
Well?
My thoughts remain the same, Master. I believe everything you said, but I won’t yield on this.
Eyes for eyes with bricks. Teeth for teeth with clubs. If you don’t repay tenfold what you receive, you’re always the one getting hit.
Slap!
“P-P-P-Please, sp-sp-spare me, y-y-young m-m-master...!”
Finally, the steward grabbed my leg, his face swollen like a steamed bun.
A few teeth had fallen out, making him look even stupider.
“Why should I?”
“I f-forgot my pl-place! I f-forgot my station. So please—”
“So why should I spare a fool who forgot his place and flapped his gums?”
“Th-That’s!”
Threats have to be done right. To the point where they think they might really die.
You corner them in a dead-end alley and stoke their fear—that’s when my voice truly reaches the depths.
Sizzle—
Suddenly, a violet glow flared above my eyes like eerie flames.
Purple Demonic Eye.
A technique that shook the opponent’s spirit, imprinting my presence deeply.
It was how I, as the Little Heavenly Demon, had commanded my followers.
By now, to the steward, I probably looked like a ghost wearing a red-hot iron mask.
Tremble, tremble...
Sure enough, his face paled, and he shook like a leaf.
He couldn’t even meet my eyes.
“Hyungsan, you’re the one Mother picked as my personal steward just because you were her hometown friend. She pulled you up from a life as a mere servant, yet instead of gratitude, this is how you act?”
“I-I won’t show such irreverence again! Please, have mercy!”
No matter that the Nine Dragons Branch Family was a branch split from the main house, it bore the Tang name.
The Sichuan Tang Clan was infamous among all jianghu clans for its strict discipline. The branch was no exception.
Defying superiors was punishable by death. Even insulting a superior could get you crippled and exiled.
And after exile? Who’d hire someone the Tang Clan had cast out?
The weight of the Tang Clan in Sichuan was that immense.
Seeing him grovel in terror, I figured he was finally ready to listen.
“So from now on, you’ll do exactly as I say?”
Hyungsan nodded frantically.
* * *
‘Young master! The young master has changed!’
The moment he left the White Hall, Hyungsan bolted like mad. As if someone were chasing him.
‘I’ll give you exactly one shichen (two hours). Bring every item I ordered within that time. If not... well, figure it out yourself.’
Those rippling eyes like a demon’s.
That voice cold as the North Sea.
The new image of Unhwi etched in his mind was nothing like the weakling before.
Had he been hiding it all this time? Or had the principal wife’s beatings built up until they exploded?
Either way, the problem was that the anger might now turn on him.
So Hyungsan forgot Namgung San-yeong’s earnest order: ‘If the young master pulls any funny business or acts suspiciously, report it immediately.’
‘I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die...! If I don’t do as he says properly, he’ll devour me, ugh!’
Hyungsan had seen it clearly. The massive demon face looming behind Unhwi.
Those jagged teeth, ready to devour him any second.
Of course, it was an illusion. But once fear took root that deeply, it wouldn’t fade easily.
He had just one shichen.
To finish everything, he had to hurry.
* * *
“Ugh. Trying sorcery without spiritual power gives me such a headache.”
After chasing Hyungsan off, I lounged on the bed and pressed my temples with my index finger.
All the sorceries I’d learned were based on the brain gate and upper dantian.
But using an advanced one like the Purple Demonic Eye in this body that hadn’t even properly trained its martial arts left quite the backlash.
Still, in a place with no one I could trust, I needed at least one dog I could control freely to build a foundation.
Hyungsan would never defy me again.
I’d imprinted terror of me deep into his subconscious with the hallucination.
“Alright, time to take a look.”
As the headache eased, I sat cross-legged, straightening my back.
Now to inspect this body.
If my guess was right, this body had one advantage over my originally crippled one.
Gazing inward.
Just below and to the right of the navel.
The dantian was there.
Reincarnated Demon God Hall