Chapter 23
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 23
Chapter Title: Cheon Hong - There Are Four Kinds of Demons in This World
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Under the moon tinged with frosty light, Hee Yeon stood alone.
Gazing at the letter threatening her father and family, she felt an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
"That time... that's what it meant..."
'Choose wisely.'
No matter how mighty the South Heaven Sword Family, the moment the Cult Leader set her mind to it, annihilation was unavoidable.
The handful of families supporting her. Six elders.
Even the Cult Leader's personal warriors.
"Tsk..."
Clutching her head changed nothing.
She was just one piece among countless Go stones.
Placed in a spot easy to grab and rattle.
Her head throbbed.
The Heavenly Mountain she'd dreamed of wasn't meant to be like this.
Splitting into factions.
Drawing lines between sides.
No different from the Central Plains righteous sects the Heavenly Demon Cult despised so much.
Hee Yeon paced outside for a long while.
How could she sleep?
"Ah..."
Even the moon is veiled.
I...
Lost in thought, she heard a faint voice from afar.
"Left Envoy, next time let's bring the Right Envoy along too."
It was Geum-gang and Cheon Hong returning.
She hid herself like she was fleeing.
'Sorry, Geum-gang. And...'
That day, Hee Yeon didn't sleep.
Geum-gang only woke at noon, when the sun beat down fiercest.
Every night rummaging around with Cheon Hong had clearly left her short on sleep.
"Uhaam."
Stretching long and hard, she rose and sat cross-legged, slowly sensing the changes in her body.
No shift in her internal energy.
It merely flowed on and on.
And the Golden Body Art?
During her spar with the Eighth Elder, when she'd manifested the Heavenly Robe Transformation.
She'd entered the mature third stage.
In that instant of ascending to a higher realm, Geum-gang's senses had sharpened extraordinarily.
She could now perceive units down to the level of bodily tissues that had eluded her before.
The fourth stage, dubbed the Immortality Scripture for halting aging.
Golden Body Art cultivators could slow their aging the moment they stepped into it.
Ha Jin looked about thirty on the outside, her physical aging arrested long ago.
Her true age was unknown, but she appeared only fifteen years older than Geum-gang.
'A little more, and the knack will come.'
The barrier to the fourth stage loomed just out of reach.
Geum-gang was up against it.
Sparring with Hee Yeon had helped immensely, but lately, she seemed to be avoiding her.
'Sparring with experts is crucial, kid. Etch their forms and physiques deep into your eyes.'
Ugh.
Who among the experts would spar with her?
Yeo Jin-ok looked pretty strong.
'Spar? Me? Have you lost your mind, Left Envoy?'
No chance of that.
Kknock.
Ugh.
As Geum-gang sank deep into her worries, a familiar knock sounded.
"Left Envoy, open the door, will you?"
Imagining the pint-sized girl on the other side brought a slight smile.
And there she was—ruby-glowing eyes waiting patiently.
Cheon Hong extended something with her tiny hand.
"Geum-gang. Take this."
A small, pretty stone.
Polished smooth into a bead, as if by some tool.
"So pretty. For me?"
"Doesn't its sparkle remind you of yourself?"
Geum-gang had heard "pretty" and "sparkly" endless times, but coming from a child, it embarrassed her deeply.
"It's embarrassing. But how did you make it so perfect..."
As she asked how the stone had been shaped to gleam like that, Cheon Hong casually summoned a thick aura.
"Hm? Like this."
She pulled another stone from her pocket and held it between her palms.
The moment it touched the black energy, it spun every which way, grinding down smoothly.
Yet the fragile stone neither shattered nor lost its form.
It was control bordering on the divine.
No average expert could manage...
"Ah!"
Expert.
She'd forgotten the girl right in front of her.
The Heavenly Demon.
Utterly blanked on it.
The girl whose head Geum-gang was stroking right now.
This girl was a transcendent realm master.
The expert she'd craved—the supreme under heaven—was standing before her.
Geum-gang had Cheon Hong perched on her knee, gently combing her hair.
With candy in her mouth, she looked blissfully content.
"Mmm. Tasty. From Jin-ok?"
'Hand over the sweets. Unless you want to die.'
"Something like that."
"You mentioned a favor. Geum-gang. Anything's fine by me."
It was a flash of inspiration, but Geum-gang felt oddly reluctant.
Uncertain what martial arts meant to this child, she hesitated.
Yet part of her wondered if it might help the girl too.
"Um. Not something a Left Envoy should say, but... teach me."
"Teach?"
"Lately, I've hit a wall. And you're the Heavenly Demon, after all."
Cheon Hong pondered with a troubled look for a long stretch.
Her head bobbed this way and that as thoughts flitted about.
"Um. I see. Left Envoy."
At last, she hopped off the knee and paced the room, mulling it over.
Checked the corners.
Spun in circles.
"Urgh. Sorry."
Her final verdict: impossible.
"Left Envoy, I don't know martial arts. This is something else entirely. Even if I explained, you'd struggle to grasp it."
"That's fine. Even if I don't get it."
At Geum-gang's resolve, Cheon Hong grew utterly serious.
"Geum-gang, are you anxious? Why do you need strength?"
The straightforward question flustered Geum-gang a bit.
Cheon Hong usually seemed like an ordinary child, but at times she acted like someone who'd attained enlightenment.
Dao towering, demons rampant? Or demons towering, Dao rampant?
Geum-gang needed time to mull it over too.
"Three longstanding reasons. One recent."
She explained, unfolding fingers one by one.
"Heavenly Demon, I hate being bullied."
"Me too, Left Envoy."
"I hate being forced into things by others."
"Everyone does."
"I don't want to lose the people precious to me."
"Ha Jin, you mean? What a tight master-disciple bond."
"Those are the three old reasons."
Geum-gang held up three fingers on her right hand.
"Then, what's the new one?"
Only in moments like this did she truly seem the Heavenly Demon.
Geum-gang slowly closed her eyes.
When Geum-gang was very young.
She saw an adult.
An adult brutally beating a little girl.
A child with no connection to her.
Jung-seok charged at the adult, bit their foot, raised hell.
One day, the director's wife berated her.
For trivial reasons.
Dust here, whatever there.
She charged again.
Such things happened endlessly.
Actions and outcomes always the same.
Charge in, get thrashed.
Jung-seok didn't know.
Why she charged.
Why she had to take the beatings.
Geum-gang.
Geum-gang received Ha Jin's doting.
Lived cherished.
Cherished wherever she went.
Thus, Geum-gang figured it out.
What she loathed.
Why she'd had to grab those bricks.
Why her little siblings had to grab bricks.
Why they had to take bricks to the head.
Geum-gang slowly closed her eyes, then opened them, extending a finger.
"The last reason: the Left Envoy needs strength to protect the Heavenly Demon."
When the Heavenly Demon cried, why had she been so furious?
That day, the little child's scrawny back bore burdens heavy as Mount Tai.
Perhaps she'd seen someone else in her.
Geum-gang somehow felt at ease with herself.
She wished she didn't need anything from Cheon Hong.
It felt unsettled.
"Never mind. Back on the knee."
At those words, it was like Cheon Hong's invisible tail shot straight up.
"Hee. I like knees."
Geum-gang reseated her and resumed combing.
'Master...'
She knew it would shatter someday, but wished this languid routine would last.
That day should have been like any other.
Cheon Hong dashing in to wake Geum-gang, anticipating the night.
Hee Yeon unable to dodge training together.
Yeo Jin-ok glaring at them.
That's how it was meant to flow.
But looking back, the oddities had piled up from the start.
Heavenly Demon Hall Leader Yeo Jin-ok.
Why was someone of division-leader caliber posted in the Heavenly Demon Hall?
Why no attendants at all in the hall?
Even with the Cult Leader checking the Left and Right Envoys, having Jin-ok shoulder everything alone was too strange.
"Who'd have thought there was a reason like this..."
Was the girl before her truly Cheon Hong?
Or...
"Geum-gang, Hee Yeon! Snap out of it! Fight like you mean to kill!"
Yeo Jin-ok gripped her iron fan and bellowed.
'We know too...!'
Geum-gang sensed it as well.
'One slip and we're dead...!'
Hee Yeon, visibly shaking, still assumed her stance.
"Jin-ok! What the hell is this...!"
"Why do you think the hall's been empty all this time!"
Jin-ok hiked up her long skirt, ripping it to bare her thigh.
Traces of every kind of wound.
"I was barely holding it back...! Geum-gang, Hee Yeon—look at that! The Heavenly Demon is a monster...!"
The Heavenly Demon, Cheon Hong.
She was a child.
She bore genius far beyond her years.
An ocean crammed into a tiny vessel.
What happens when a tiny vessel tries to hold an ocean?
When an insect's eyes behold infinity—what then?
When a little girl comprehends nothingness—what happens?
The Heavenly Demon's martial principles were the utter extreme of the six desires.
No child ignorant of the world could contain them.
"Geum-gang, Hee Yeon—not too late yet! Subdue her now! Before 'that' fully breaks free...!"
Jin-ok felt her old wounds throb.
She'd been at Cheon Hong's side since the girl took her first steps.
No one mistreats a bloody newborn harshly.
She hadn't been that cruel.
Cheon Hong, age two.
Ripped open her wet nurse's belly.
Cheon Hong, age five.
Killed her own father.
Cheon Hong, age nine.
Massacred 342 monks of Podalrak Palace.
The Cult Leader implanted a command in the heart-demon-plagued Cheon Hong.
'Fall into affliction and perish.'
"In this world, there are four kinds of demons."
"The demon of heaven: Heavenly Child Demon."
"The one hundred eight demons of man: Demon of Afflictions."
"The demons of the five senses: Demon of the Five Aggregates."
"The demon of death: Death Demon."
⟨ Four Demons of the World ⟩
The Cult Leader planted the Demon of Afflictions deep in Cheon Hong's heart.
The Heavenly Child Demon was suppressed beneath it.
Yet the Heavenly Demon, foremost among demons.
Could not be fully sealed.
The martial principles of unchecked six desires soon took form.
Form birthed the self.
And that became a heart demon of man.
People called it the sky-touching demon: the Heavenly Demon.
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