Demonic Arts
Xinjiang, inside a vast cavern within the Demonic Sect.
The old man’s parting words caused a stir.
“Only one…?”
“Then what happens to the rest of us?”
The questions hung in the air, left unanswered now that the one who might have explained them was gone, but everyone here already knew.
The worthless ones would all be killed.
As soon as that terrifying, brutal truth sank in, the world around me seemed to change.
The other children no longer felt like companions in the same miserable plight. They felt like prey I would have to outlast and devour.
The moment I fell behind, it would all be over. I couldn’t afford even a single mistake.
The razor-edged tension that filled the entire cave eased only when the masked martial artist spoke.
“Come forward and take a book.”
He pointed toward a stack of something lying in the front.
They were old, dust-covered volumes. A few Thousand Character Classics were mixed in here and there, but the rest were all the same martial manual.
Demonic Sea Heart Scripture. After brushing away the thick dust, those characters appeared on the cover.
“Learn it. I’ll check your progress in one month.”
“Um... I’ve never studied martial arts before.”
“I can’t even read—how am I supposed to learn this in a month...?”
“Cough!”
The masked man grabbed one of the children who had voiced his displeasure and yanked him into the air by the collar.
“What, can’t do it?”
He flung the child aside, the boy’s feet scrabbling uselessly for the ground, and barked, “If you don’t want to learn it, then fine! Trash like you isn’t needed in this sect. I’ll kill you myself.”
As if unable to restrain his anger, he kicked the child who had fallen and disappeared into the darkness.
A few books and about fifty children. That was all that remained in the cave.
“We’re going to be killed... We’re all going to die.”
“Why me...?”
“Mom...”
The cave filled with sobbing and despair, but inside me, hope swelled.
The longer they spent drowning in panic, the better my chances of surviving.
And apart from that, their sniffles and whimpers were getting on my nerves, so I gathered up the book and moved away from them.
In a place like this, if you lose focus, you lose everything.
It wasn’t just me who understood that. A few who were quick to assess the situation had already gone deep into the cave.
Following the winding path, I eventually found a decent spot and settled down there.
There was a small hole in the ceiling, and a little water seeped down through a crack in the wall.
I sat there and opened the book I’d been given, but the more I read, the stranger it felt.
This wasn’t a normal internal cultivation method.
If a practitioner masters this, they will reach a realm in which they think and act according to the laws of the Demonic Sea.
That was the sentence written at the very beginning.
It was dressed up in elegant phrasing, but in the end, it meant the same thing: this art would devour its practitioner and turn them into a monster that pursued only power.
If I cultivated internal energy exactly as written, then, just as its name suggested, I would sink into a sea of demons, lose my reason, and become a madman.
As I fell into thought, the demon who had kidnapped me flashed through my mind.
He had clearly been steeped in demonic qi, yet he still retained his sanity. I had even heard him speaking before I lost consciousness.
The Demonic Sect was certainly an organization that defied common sense, but it wasn’t a place full of lunatics. That old man from before was proof enough.
There was no way they would hand this kind of mental method even to a peak expert like the demon who had abducted me.
This martial manual itself was a test.
Could you preserve your humanity while reciting passages meant to strip it away? That seemed to be what they were asking.
So in the end, was I supposed to gamble my sanity and cultivate internal energy exactly as the scripture prescribed?
No. I had to break free of their intention. Simply doing what I was told would achieve nothing.
While I struggled with that thought, I suddenly remembered what Yiryeong had once told me.
You have the makings of a sect founder.
Right. It was time to use everything I had.
I would combine them. Using the Clear Lotus Art, which built internal energy in a stable and steady way, I tore apart the impatient and imperfect Demonic Sea Heart Scripture.
Sentence by sentence, word by word, I broke the entire scripture apart and removed the impurities that had been deliberately woven into it.
At last, I was left with the bare bones of the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture, and I began to graft flesh onto it from the Clear Lotus Art.
Reciting the new formula, I settled into a seated posture and examined the inside of my body.
Not long ago, because of what those bastards had done to me in the hidden chamber, my body had been twisted completely out of shape.
My meridians had been bizarrely reversed, and the demonic qi that had devoured all my original internal energy now radiated a heavy, oppressive presence.
Trying to circulate qi in this state was madness.
How was I supposed to build internal energy when the current wasn’t flowing properly and was instead running in some absurd direction?
I hesitated, but I had to do it. If I didn’t, death was certain.
Through the altered Demonic Sea Heart Scripture, the qi in the cave spread through my entire body.
The moment it entered me, its nature changed, becoming a dark crimson-black force that wrapped itself around my whole body and writhed in confusion.
The rawness of that energy was very different from the Clear Lotus Art, which had flowed along my meridians and settled harmoniously in my dantian.
“Hk—”
And this time, the quantity was on a completely different level too.
Unlike before, when I had only drawn it in through my nose and mouth, I was now literally sucking in qi through my whole body.
To make matters worse, that unruly power was tearing at my blood and flesh as if it meant to split them apart.
I was debating whether I should stop and accept the internal injuries when the demonic qi crouched within my dantian stirred.
It was the force that had wandered around the hidden chamber before settling in my dantian entirely on its own.
That heavy energy flowed out and filled in the worn-out channels of my body.
It tore and rejoined like muscle, making the path I had built with Yiryeong thicker and stronger.
Even the qi that had been rampaging through my body and throwing a fit quieted down as it fused with the demonic force in my dantian.
Relieved that the demonic qi was now something I could control, unlike before, I barely managed to force it all into my dantian before collapsing face-first.
Something black smeared across my entire body. It looked as though my meridians had been strengthened and the waste had been flushed out with them.
Looking up through the hole in the cave ceiling, I realized a great deal of time had already passed.
I was exhausted from what had been an utterly brutal small circulation, but I focused inward to see the result.
It was hard to close my mouth once it fell open in shock.
With a single circulation, my internal energy had increased by a third of what Yiryeong and I had built up over the course of a year.
It was truly demonic in the deepest sense. I felt as if I might get drunk on the heavy power resting in my dantian.
Afraid I might lose control of myself, I forced my mind to cool down, and almost immediately another question arose.
If even the Demonic Sea Heart Scripture—a method that could only be considered the lowest of low-grade demonic arts—produced results like this, then why would anyone bother learning orthodox methods that cultivated internal energy slowly and steadily?
If every demonic practitioner had experienced what I had, the Demonic Sect should have been ruling the world by now.
Whatever great art those bastards had used before I arrived at Maryeongwan was suspicious, but it wasn’t the sort of problem I could solve by thinking about it alone, so I kept circulating my qi.
I only had a month to prove my progress, so time was already short.
My eyes, now accustomed to the dark cave, snapped after a worm.
Crunch.
I caught it in an instant and shoved it into my mouth. It stank of something fishy and disgusting, but I couldn’t afford to go hungry.
It felt as if I’d gone back to the days before I met Yiryeong. Those were the dark years of a life spent barely surviving from one day to the next.
Yiryeong. Yes, she had saved me.
Just thinking of Yiryeong sent a spark of vitality through my whole body.
The touch of her hand resting on my head, her face smiling so warmly.
I wondered if she was doing well. Lately, that had been worrying me. I was enough trouble for one lifetime.
When I turned my head, I could see marks accumulating on the cave wall.
Looking at the twenty-nine carefully carved notches, I began my qi circulation again in a new way that was already becoming familiar.
I accepted it with my whole body, not just my nose and mouth.
Unrefined demonic qi flowed into me, but there was no need to filter out the impurities.
I let all kinds of energy run wild and free. There was no need to control anything except the power inside my dantian.
Compared to two months ago, when I had parted ways with Yiryeong, the heavy internal energy inside me had grown to nearly three times what it had been.
I moved that force, gathered the demonic qi from every part of my body, and dragged it down into my dantian.
When the strange circulation that could hardly even be called a small circulation ended, I stood up and lightly bounced on my feet.
I had sat for quite a long time, but thankfully my body didn’t seem to have suffered any major changes.
After checking my condition, I used lightness skill to race toward the entrance of Maryeongwan.
There was still one day left, but I wanted to go first and see what state the other children were in.
As I poured out the explosive force throughout my body and unfolded the martial arts of the righteous sects, the imbalance made the whole thing feel awkward, and it was hard to endure.
It was like a grown man riding a tiny foal at a dead sprint.
I didn’t have a sword to verify it directly, but swordsmanship would probably feel the same way.
As I tried out all my techniques, I felt the need to revise them, but since I had never seen the external arts of the Demonic Sect before, it was hard to find a direction just yet.
Tomorrow, the promised month would end, and they would probably hand out a new set of manuals. I planned to use those.
The closer I drew to the entrance, the thicker the smell of blood became, pricking at my nose and forcing my thoughts to stop as I tensed up.
A little farther on, I saw horribly mangled corpses scattered everywhere.
Just from those ghastly remains, I could roughly guess what had happened here.
Then I spotted three or four demons, their faces twisted with madness as they muttered and chewed on something.
Demonic Sea Heart Scripture. The horrifying result of that unrefined demonic art lay before my eyes.
“Kk... kkhh... heh-heh...”
“W-we have to... tear it apart...!”
“K-krrrk... ghh... gk, gk...”
They seemed to have already forgotten how to speak like human beings.
I had survived by gnawing on worms and moss, but those bastards had gone mad long ago, and now every moving thing around them must have looked like prey.
One of them met my eyes. Only the whites showed, webbed with blood.
What on earth did the Demonic Sect want, to make children like this?
That was the thought that came to me as I looked at the ones charging at me after losing their reason.