What is a Heavenly Demon?
A Heavenly Demon—what could it possibly be? Nothing all that grandiose, really. Demons are always lurking around us. Hong Yeonhwa truly believed that.
For instance, there are heart demons. Obsession, delusion, rage, resentment, despair, fear, and so on. Anything that ravages the body and mind of a human is a heart demon. And in everyday life, don't we say a demon's possessed us on days when nothing goes right? In the end, demons are just a catch-all for negativity.
Just as good fortune is balanced by misfortune, it's only natural for demons to cling to people.
...But even so, there's a matter of degree.
Hong Yeonhwa, having unleashed the Heavenly Demon Divine Art to its utmost for the first time in ages, briefly recalled the old days.
Her world had been one hurtling toward destruction. More people were dying than being born, so eventually, everyone would perish. Martial artists free from imperial control worshipped raw power above all else—righteous or unorthodox didn't matter—and chased their own pleasures relentlessly. A world without true heroes was that vicious.
The Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had begun as a grassroots faith, born from a desperate grasp at hope in such a hellscape. "Those who oppress and exploit me and my family are true evil. Surely the heavens will send down demons to punish them." It was nothing more than that humble wish.
The weak licking one another's wounds, dreaming of a future from a nonexistent transcendent being, thrashing about to survive just one more day in a living hell where death seemed kinder than life. It smacked of a cult, but astonishingly, it worked. Humans cling tenaciously when they have something to lean on.
Thanks to that, they refused to give up and sought ways to survive. Fleeing the Central Plains to the west, into even harsher lands. They made it to the Ten Thousand Great Mountains and took root as the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
Word spread of the refugees' successful settlement, drawing more and more people to the mountains. Artisans and a handful of true heroes joined their ranks. The cult gradually became a livable place, but the dark memories etched into its people never faded.
No wonder even sound martial arts twisted into demonic ones under the weight of heart demons. The cultists loved it, though. Demonic arts were dangerous, but they granted power faster than anything else. To those who desperately needed strength, it was an unparalleled blessing.
The system where the strongest warrior became cult leader arose from this warped environment.
And then, one woman arrived at the Ten Thousand Great Mountains. A beauty targeted by the sect leaders lording over the area, used as a plaything until she got pregnant—then discarded. Common enough in that era, but her child was anything but ordinary.
Hong Yeonhwa had been extraordinary from birth. She instinctively gathered qi through breathing, and her meridians never clogged with time—instead growing wider and purer. Add to that her peerless genius: she could mimic any technique after one look, find improvements after two, and create something superior after three.
The cultists who saw her knew it instinctively. This child might achieve the vengeance they couldn't. Perhaps she was the true reincarnation of the Heavenly Demon they'd awaited.
So they poured everything into her. Even in the barren Ten Thousand Great Mountains, she always ate her fill. They hunted rare heavenly silkworms at the cost of lives to refine them into elixirs just for her. They taught her their most prized martial arts without reservation, even transferring their accumulated inner energy through body-to-body transmission.
Curiously, they never demanded she become the Heavenly Demon for their sake. They knew better than anyone how wretched a life of coercion was.
But as they watched over Hong Yeonhwa, she watched them right back.
A boy who survived by eating his family's corpses after they starved first. Even now, at every meal, he vomited his food and ate it again—like when he'd put his family in his mouth.
A middle-aged man who watched his wife and daughter raped and butchered before his eyes. Every night, he clutches his severed arm from resisting, tormented by hallucinations and screams. He's still trapped in that hell.
A widow robbed of her infant by a Daoist who devoured it alive for some eternal life ritual. She wrapped a wooden pillow in swaddling and cherished it like her own child, yearning for the days it nestled in her arms.
In them, Hong Yeonhwa saw demons. She saw them crushed and broken by those demons.
...She never wanted to see it again.
So Hong Yeonhwa swallowed the sacred flame of her own will. The mystical fire nurtured by generations of Heavenly Demons infusing their inner energy—a final trump card held in reserve. But she had already resolved to end it all in her lifetime.
Heavenly Demon Reincarnation. All Demons Shall Bow.
Hong Yeonhwa became the Heavenly Demon, sovereign of all demons—and thus, the burdens weighing on her followers' shoulders became hers to bear as well.
And so time passed, leading to the present.
Demonic energy exploded from Hong Yeonhwa's body, whipping up a storm that began devouring everything around it.
"Primeval Heavenly Lord...!"
"To think it was this intense!"
The Murim Alliance leader, from the Wudang Sect, cried out in Taoist invocation and drew his sword in panic. Even Paeng Ojin, who'd been on our side, reflexively pulled his saber. Such was the overwhelming demonic aura.
The Azure Dragon Unit leader, who was supposed to kill her, stood frozen, barely breathing... but no one dared mock him. It was that vicious.
Imagine gathering every negative force in the world and shaping it into a natural disaster. That's what it felt like.
I channeled the Martial Spirit Divine Art to force strength into my buckling legs. I didn't want anyone—least of all Hong Yeonhwa—to see me cower and collapse.
By the time the intensifying black storm hid even her figure...
The wind suddenly died, and I realized the midday world had gone dark.
Lifting my head as if entranced...
"Holy shit..."
There loomed a colossal demon silhouetted against the sun, glaring down at the earth. Curved horns sprouting from its forehead, a ferocious yaksha-like face, a grotesque body blending human and beast. Its shadow, forged of inky rigid qi, blanketed half the training ground—that's why the world seemed shrouded in darkness.
Gazing up at the demon, enlightenment dawned naturally.
This is it. This is the true essence of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
Every martial art has a core image at its foundation. The depth may vary, but it never changes.
Once you reach the Flower Realm, where intent and inner energy become extensions of your body, that image manifests outwardly.
For example, Wudang's Taiji Radiant Sword can reverse a waterfall with a few swings. Hwasan's Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Technique scatters peach blossom fragrance and petals with its strikes. All manifestations of their core images.
So what of Hong Yeonhwa's Heavenly Demon Divine Art?
Strangely, it embodied not her own image, but countless demons. Despair, rage, resignation—yet vengeance. Vengeance for a father beaten to death. For a sister returned with only her finger. For a child starved to death.
Vengeance. Vengeance. Righteous vengeance.
I could almost feel the injustices and agonies of countless souls transmitting to me. That's why I knew for certain: not one of them aimed arrows of resentment at Hong Yeonhwa.
It also meant she'd never stained her hands with the blood of the innocent, just as she claimed.
If I'd noticed, the Azure Dragon Unit leader surely had too. His pupils shook wildly, like an earthquake.
Hong Yeonhwa stared him down, then slowly assumed her stance. Legs shoulder-width apart, fists at the waist—a basic, faithful posture.
The demon mirrored her exactly.
"I am the master of myriad demons, sovereign of the demonic path."
The image emanating from the demon intensified. But this time, it wasn't nameless souls—it was Hong Yeonhwa's own.
The suffocating injustice of reality, the chains of resignation that "it can't be helped," her suffering followers trapped within.
She rejected every bit of it.
And so, Hong Yeonhwa...
...wanted to shatter the world.
Heaven-Breaking Strike
A strike like lightning surging from earth to sky.
With a deafening roar, the surrounding space warped, cracking as if reality itself had fractured.
Hong Yeonhwa had scattered the clouds overhead, leaving a vivid imprint of her fist high in the heavens.
"......"
"......"
"......"
In the overwhelming silence, almost forcibly imposed, her calm voice etched into our minds like a wedge.
