The Heavenly Demon's Tragic Backstory
In the Heavenly Demon Tomb, one of the Demonic Cult members' head exploded with a wet pop. The cultist kneeling beside him flinched as the chunky spray splattered across his cheek. It was hot, perhaps because these primitive ancient Chinese people had a pathological hatred of cold water. At this point, even the most devout believers (or glory-seekers) were bound to have their faith shaken.
The Heavenly Demon had promised them eternal wealth and power. Heavenly Demon Descent, Ten Thousand Demons Prostrate. Liberate the Central Plains, rule the world under the Divine Cult. Yet here he was, dispensing death with casual flicks of his finger.
The cultists in the innermost circle began slowly, stealthily shuffling backward, exchanging glances. The Heavenly Demon ground his teeth and lifted his foot. The Demon God, destroyer of the world, could set reality ablaze with a single step. All things would turn to ash and return to the empty void where only darkness remained. Heavenly Demon Tyrant Step. The first stride of annihilation that crushed the earth and destroyed all life.
A majestic power capable of shattering stars gathered beneath his foot. The original owner's will was desperately trying to protect that wretched old man, so the Heavenly Demon intended to obliterate the entire space along with him.
It was a good attempt. But right before his foot came down, the energy suddenly scattered, turning the stomp into nothing more than an ordinary footfall. Had it landed properly, Choe-ri-ong would have become a flattened corpse like a squashed frog.
Then, a mysterious movement occurred. The Heavenly Demon's foot slid backward as smoothly as a river flowing into the sea. The opposite foot followed with the same technique. The result was the majestic Heavenly Demon advancing with imposing dignity while actually retreating backward. It was a miracle no human eye could believe.
People move forward by pushing against the ground. That was the way of the world. Yet the great Heavenly Demon had just shattered even that fundamental truth.
“......?”
It was an astonishing technique, but... why? And so suddenly?
The solemn silence that had filled the tomb gradually took on an awkward, uncomfortable hue. It was the kind of eternal, unbearable awkwardness that descends when your friend leaves you alone with their friend you barely know.
In that excruciating atmosphere, the Heavenly Demon continued drawing circles by walking backward. Could it be that mere humans were incapable of understanding the will of the great Demon God? The cultists could only sigh and roll their eyes in confusion.
Riiip!
The blue tape sealing the wall was violently torn away. Since his body had already passed through the tape barrier, it was naturally covered in the sticky stuff. The Heavenly Demon flailed like he was swatting away insects before finally balling up the tape and hurling it aside.
“Oh. You’re here?”
Cheong greeted the Heavenly Demon cheerfully. She held a chicken drumstick in each hand.
“Sorry, but I can’t share the drumsticks. The wings and the little bony parts are off-limits too. The chewy bits between the thigh and body are mine. The breast has its own charm when you chew it. So pick between the right or left dry breast meat. Right? Left?”
Offering a guest dry breast meat instead of anything decent was practically asking to be slapped. Still, it was an excessive courtesy to extend to an uninvited guest who had smashed through the wall and destroyed the security deposit in the process.
The Heavenly Demon stammered, his voice rising with rage.
“What... exactly... is going on here? Your soul’s foundation, your very spirit, should have been shattered...!”
“Not telling. Though I have to say, the feeling of your head exploding wasn’t half bad. Kind of liberating, actually.”
She took a hearty bite of the drumstick.
The Heavenly Demon frowned and raised his hand, pointing a finger at her.
“Stop! Finger down!”
Cheong spat out the half-chewed chicken in her mouth like bullets and shouted urgently.
“Hey, you don’t interrupt someone while they’re eating. Even dogs bite if you bother them during a meal, you know? Since I was born human, I can’t lose to a dog, so I might just throw a tantrum too.”
The absurd statement momentarily stunned the Heavenly Demon’s mind.
“...So you’re saying you’ll act even worse than a dog?”
“Want me to do the Tangseon Taluimu dance in front of your followers? Then you’ll regret it, thinking, ‘Damn, I should’ve just watched her mukbang in peace.’”
The Heavenly Demon who had accepted the Joyful Palace was the same Heavenly Demon. After all, every Heavenly Demon had been this man. He knew exactly what that obscene dance was. If the supreme leader of the Cult started stripping for vulgar seduction, his dignity would be destroyed forever. (Though Heavenly Demons from other worlds did it quite often.)
The Heavenly Demon opened and closed his mouth speechlessly before finally letting out a deep sigh and lowering his finger.
“Fine. I shall no longer touch your father. Satisfied? Truly, like father, like daughter. To be so attached to trivial affection. How can one born as the daughter of the Divine Cult interfere with the long-cherished wish to liberate the Central Plains?”
It was a serious misunderstanding on the Heavenly Demon’s part. An inevitable one, perhaps. To his eyes, this body had been a living corpse. He naturally assumed it had been created by the cultists to receive his Heavenly Demon Soul. When the old man interfered, he thought the geezer who had spent forty-nine days breathing life into it and feeding it must have clung to it as his daughter out of lingering attachment. He also assumed the incoming soul had likewise accepted the old man as father and grown fond of him.
He had roughly sketched out quite the touching story in his head.
It was a magnificent misfire.
“Huh? Our father? Daughter of the Divine Cult?”
“That insolent old man outside.”
“Ah. Gramps? Gramps isn’t my dad!”
It was pure, innocent patricide.
The Heavenly Demon’s expression grew serious as he asked again.
“What nonsense is that? Clearly—”
“That old man’s been acting a bit loopy lately. I saw it too. He’s completely lost it. He has no hobby of impersonating anyone, nor any intention to.”
Cheong had watched Choe-ri-ong’s passionate performance through the screen. Truthfully, she hadn’t liked it one bit. She had only spared him because she’d grown fond of him and pitied him. If not for the current situation, she would have immediately started radioactive physical therapy to knock some sense into him.
“Then why exactly are you interfering?”
“Are you seriously asking that? You think I’d just sit back and watch while you spout nonsense about liberating the Central Plains and charge in with your mob?”
“Haa. So your ignorance was the only reason.”
“What? No, every time I do anything, these people—”
“Enough. You will understand once you see with your own eyes.”
The Heavenly Demon cut off Cheong’s words and raised his hand. The four walls of the studio apartment fell backward, revealing the outside scenery.
Wow, he’s dismantling someone else’s house without permission.
Cheong grumbled but decided to see what was so impressive. She continued gnawing on the drumstick as the scene changed.
It was somewhere in the Central Plains, filled with people too starved to even stand properly. Emaciated, ragged figures lay scattered everywhere, completely devoid of vitality. It was practically a beggar’s village.
About a dozen men walked around, examining the fallen people. They spoke to them, waved hands in front of their faces. When they found a corpse that didn’t respond no matter how much they poked, slapped, or shook it, they smiled faintly and picked it up.
As the men carried the bodies away, at the end of their path stood an enormous pot—
“Stop! What the hell are you doing while someone’s eating? Not that I’d hesitate to eat human flesh, but it’s obvious this is just Demonic Cult propaganda.”
This one saw it with his own eyes. For over a decade, the summers were cold and the rains ceased, so no crops grew. The beasts had long been eaten, and people stripped tree bark to boil and eat until even the trees withered and died. It was an era when people ate one another’s corpses just to survive.
“Oh. So it’s real?”
“However, not everyone went hungry. Behold.”
The world seemed to blur like watercolor before refocusing on a splendid palace. On a massive table large enough for twenty grown men to lie across, an extravagant feast of every delicacy imaginable was laid out. Everyone at the table, including the man at the head, had bulging bellies and multiple chins. Their appearances were the very picture of abundance.
That man is the governor of the city you saw earlier. Instead of helping the starving people, he squeezed them dry and held grand feasts for every meal. The Daoist beside him is an elder from Mount Hua or some such. Those seated here are either so-called righteous experts of the orthodox sects or the wealthy merchants they protected with their blades.
“Is that the Mount Hua I’m thinking of?”
“Mount Hua alone? The Shaolin monks, the Wudang Daoists, all the so-called prestigious Nine Great Schools clung to power and led the exploitation.”
Wait, the orthodox Murim had this kind of dark history? Cheong’s eyes widened.
“In that era, the concept of orthodox sects barely existed. That is why it is so laughable when later generations split into orthodox and unorthodox factions as if it were natural. For orthodox sects to exist, unorthodox factions and the Demonic Cult were necessary. Without them, there was no need to distinguish the more polite sword-wielding thugs from the rest.”
If one had to classify, there were only the government and Murim. Even then, the government viewed Murim as unpaid volunteers to be used freely from below.
“This is just an old story.”
“Keep watching. See how they suppressed those who simply cried for help.”
An old man begging for a single handful of grain because he was starving received only brutal beatings. An old woman trying to beg for gruel to feed her sick child breathed her last and was seized by pitiful ghouls who saw corpses as nothing but meat. A warrior rose up, unable to watch any longer. It was the man standing before Cheong’s eyes now. He raised a red banner shaped like the sacred flame of the White Lotus, and the people’s fervor burned like wildfire.
“Wait. Can you not wave a red flag? Why does it have to be red? Also, doesn’t this make them the Yellow Turbans?”
Weren’t they supposed to be in a Chinese game? Was there no problem with waving red flags and talking about building a nation for the people? This was because Cheong had never played the game. Within the game, these events were buried so deeply they didn’t even appear as a single line of background lore.
“Yes. I admit it. Some believers did shout about the return of the Yellow Turbans. The result was similar.”
Spears and blades flew toward the commoners who had risen up simply begging to live. The spears belonged to the army. The blades belonged to Murim warriors. Before long, the scene shifted to the desperate flight of the survivors after the suppression. Crossing mountains and rivers, enduring countless deaths across deserts, they finally reached a massive mountain range. It was the beginning of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
“Thus, all that remained was revenge. For me, and for every descendant of the Divine Cult, it is a revenge that must be carried out.”
The man, having lost his family, friends, and revolutionary comrades, leaving only scars, spoke. Those countless scars were the graves of his dear friends buried in his heart. It was the grudge of a vengeful spirit who called himself the destroyer of the world, burning so fiercely that he refused even death.
Facing that blazing inferno, Cheong said,
“What a load of horseshit.”
“What?”
“Revenge is something only you’re clinging to. The Demonic Cult bastards don’t have any thoughts of revenge left in their heads.”
Cheong recalled her time with the Demonic Cult, which hadn’t been short. It was a group so broken you couldn’t find a single normal part. Given that their so-called leader was like this, it was only natural.
“If you’ve lived long enough, you should just die gracefully. What’s with body-snatching like some kind of mental parasite and saying you’ll keep going until you win? Pathetic.”
This was Cheong’s specialty: the Gates of Hell.
“You know what? A failure is destined to keep failing no matter how many times they try the same method. When a person fails, they should think about why they failed and try a different strategy next time. ‘This time my body was weak, last time my forces were lacking.’ If you’ve already failed four times in a row, I’d be so embarrassed I’d just bite my tongue and die.”
Thud.
That was the fatal weakness of the Gates of Hell. Once your head flew off, you couldn’t use it anymore.
The Heavenly Demon shouted with a face as red as blood.
“Very well. Let us see this through. How long can a mere Peak-level insect of a spirit endure being killed over and over? I will make you regret running that insolent mouth of yours!”