The Name Blood Heaven
Blood Demon... No way. Is this man really the Blood Heaven Great Emperor?
Chen Lei swallowed dryly as he stared at the man standing before him.
Needless to say, Chen Lei knew the epithet Blood Heaven Great Emperor all too well. No—he couldn't not know it.
Salmak, the assassin pavilion Chen Lei had once served, had been in conflict with the Blood Cult long before the Great Murim Tournament. Cult Leader Guyang Hyeok of the Demonic Cult had commissioned Salmak to assassinate the Blood Cult's new Young Cult Leader, and the contract had been treated as a top-priority mission from the moment it arrived.
The problem was that every attempt, even by Salmak's Cheonsal-ranked assassins, had ended in failure.
And honestly, if it had stopped there, they might have gotten lucky.
On the very day Salmak lost its ninth Cheonsal-ranked assassin, the Young Cult Leader of the Blood Cult walked through the doors of the pavilion's headquarters himself.
That was the day Salmak's long history came to an end.
Its master, dozens of Cheonsal-ranked assassins, and even the Gwiyeong-ranked shadows beneath them all perished at the Young Cult Leader's hand. Having apparently judged the Janyeong-ranked leftovers not worth his time, the man simply discarded them—and only those survivors lived to tell Murim the truth of what happened that day.
Chen Lei, a mere Heukyeong-ranked assassin at the time, had escaped the catastrophe by pure luck—he'd been away on a mission.
Absurd.
Of course Chen Lei refused to believe the man claiming to be the Blood Demon. Such an absolute being should not exist on Earth—least of all in a country called Korea.
That swordsman had been a fraud impersonating Murim's true Sword Emperor in the first place, so the odds were far higher that the man in front of him was an imposter too.
Anyone who'd returned from Murim would know of the Blood Heaven Great Emperor—Namgoong Changcheon or otherwise.
The problem was that Chen Lei himself had never seen the real one's face.
Come to think of it, he doubted anyone alive had. The Young Cult Leader had hidden his identity with obsessive care, and those who had met him and lived could be counted on one hand.
"Stop lying. You think I'd buy that kind of nonsense?"
"Believe me or don't. That's your business. Wei Jinsheng—am I clear to deal with this one?"
Chen Lei gulped at the Blood Demon's words and looked to Wei Jinsheng. Even without it being spelled out, he understood well enough that his life now hung on the man's answer.
"Think carefully, Wei Jinsheng. It's not too late even now—"
"Yes. Please do as you wish."
"You—you traitorous bastard—"
Watching Wei Jinsheng step back and abandon him without so much as acknowledging his words, Chen Lei felt his breath catch in his throat. The way things were unfolding told him plainly enough that his life hung by a thread.
It was at that very moment that the man calling himself the Blood Demon thrust a photograph of a woman in front of Chen Lei's face.
Confused by the unfamiliar gesture, Chen Lei could only stare—until the man posed his question with a completely blank expression.
"Have you ever seen this woman?"
"..."
"Think hard. Give me even the smallest clue, and I'll let you live."
Chen Lei's eyes darted as he studied the photograph. He had no idea whether the man was truly the Blood Demon, or what he stood to gain by asking this—but only one path to survival seemed open to him.
"Well, now that you mention it, I think I might have seen her some—"
"Now that's a lie."
The moment Chen Lei began his answer, the man glared at him with an icy expression and said those words.
"I wasn't ly—"
"No. You were. People always react the same way when they're feeding you a line. So long, then."
He patted Chen Lei lightly on the shoulder as if offering a casual farewell. Chen Lei tried desperately to protest, but his mouth never moved again.
His vision had flooded black in an instant.
"He's dead, then?"
I gave Wei Jinsheng a light nod. You wouldn't find so much as a fingernail's worth of a wound on Chen Lei's body, but there was no question that he had already breathed his last.
Instead of addressing the stunned Wei Jinsheng, I turned my gaze to Kang Iseol, who had been quietly observing the whole affair. The usual, faintly scattered air about her was gone. She simply regarded the situation with cool, level eyes.
"Could I ask you to handle the cleanup?"
I asked her deliberately. Depending on her answer, the shape of my relationship with Kang Iseol would settle into place in my mind.
"Yes. I can resolve it without any problems."
A faint smile crossed my lips at her reply. At the very least, I doubted we'd be seeing that characteristically scattered side of her while we worked together.
"Are you sure about this? Getting tangled up here could mean trouble with one of China's massive guilds."
"They didn't come in through any legitimate channel to begin with. I've already dealt with the CCTV footage near the apartment and the witness records. Even if Cheonmuseong belatedly realizes one of their guild members died here, they won't be able to make it a public scandal—not openly."
Watching Kang Iseol map out the situation with such speed, I found myself genuinely impressed. She seemed far more capable than I'd given her credit for.
But her words didn't end there.
"Above all, you showed Baekya a great kindness, Jaeseong-nim. Cleaning up something of this scale is the least we can do."
I nodded lightly at that. As tremendous as my power might be, there were undeniable limits to what one man could accomplish alone.
Especially with Chinese assassins striding onto Korean soil and drawing their blades in broad daylight. Behind those assassins stood Cheonmuseong—and who knew what else lurked behind them.
If my enemies began moving as an organization, then I, too, would need a wall built to match them.
As expected, there's only one answer.
A solid power that would handle the tedious work on my behalf—and stand as a fortress around my family. That was exactly what I needed right now.
"Guild Master Kang Iseol. Is my earlier offer still on the table?"
"The offer... which one do you mean?"
"The cooperation. No—truthfully, I'd like something far closer than that."
That was the moment Kang Iseol's face flushed red again. I made a show of not noticing her wide-eyed stare as I laid out the picture in my head.
"I'd like to bind Baekya's Yeongdeungpo and Cheongseol's Yangcheon-gu together, with Guro at the center. What do you think?"
Kang Iseol regarded me with a tense expression. From her position, I suppose it might have sounded like I was demanding she hand over a perfectly healthy guild—but that wasn't what I wanted. If she helped with what I needed done, then I would gladly lend my strength to whatever she couldn't solve herself.
Still, the words that finally left her lips after that brief silence caught me off guard once again.
"If we're binding ourselves together like that... I think we'll need a new name."
"Hyeolcheon."
My answer was short. In Murim they had called it the Blood Cult, but its formal name had always been the Blood Heavenly Cult—Hyeolcheongyo. And my own epithet, the Blood Heaven Great Emperor, had followed from that name.
After all, not a soul remained in Murim who would dare call the Blood Heavenly Cult anything so casual as the Blood Cult.
So then.
"Hyeolcheon seems like a fitting name."
There could be no name better suited to the fortress I was about to build.
That way, when those bastards finally come, they'll know exactly where to find me.
Though, admittedly, there was one or two slightly different reasons mixed in as well.
"Helloo, uncles, aunties, and big brothers! It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Choi Taemin could barely hide his awkward expression as he watched his daughter chatter away at the camera by herself.
Even before he'd been trapped in the Yeouido Gate, personal hunter streams had been a fairly popular form of content. The problem was that never in his wildest dreams had he imagined his own daughter would be running one.
In front of a C-rank Gate, no less.
"Today I'm not going into the usual D-rank—I'm planning to enter a C-rank! So everyone, feel free to get excited!"
At his daughter's bright, cheerful voice, Choi Taemin swallowed a deep sigh. A C-rank Gate.
Back in his day, for the man once hailed as the Last Hope of Korea, it would have been child's play—he could clear one with his eyes closed. But his body had been frozen stiff for four years now.
And even setting his condition aside, wasn't his daughter being a little too relaxed standing in front of a Gate?
While Choi Taemin's insides churned, the live chat on Seoyeon's phone was scrolling by at a respectable clip.
"Ah—of course I'm not going in alone! Ta-da! Today's Gate companion is none other than this gentleman! My dad. Dad, say hi."
"Huh? Uh—yes. Hello, everyone."
Startled by his own face suddenly appearing on screen, Choi Taemin offered the viewers an awkward greeting.
So this is what Jaeseong was talking about.
Choi Taemin smiled wryly, remembering how Jaeseong had muttered under his breath on the way out of the house—something about how he refused to be the only one put on the spot.
And the moment Choi Taemin's face hit the broadcast feed, the already fast-scrolling chat exploded.
"That's right—my dad really is Hunter Choi Taemin. We honestly thought something terrible had happened, but by some miracle he's come home safe and sound, just like this!"
Where Choi Taemin remained dazed and bewildered, Choi Seoyeon beamed brightly at the screen as she spoke.
Then she suddenly bowed her head.
"Thank you all so much for caring about my little stream all this time. I'm not here to show off, I promise. I just really wanted to say those words. Especially StarryNight, who always visited my room—and Let'sEatBeef. And Robang. Honestly, you're the reason I always found the strength to keep going. So... I just wanted to greet you properly like this, at least once."
Choi Taemin said nothing at all. What had looked to him like nothing more than childish antics—now he could finally glimpse, even a little, what that stream had truly meant to his daughter.
"Wha—I never asked anyone to donate! And of course this isn't my last stream!"
Choi Seoyeon laughed, embarrassment written across her face at the donation alerts suddenly flooding in.
Then her expression stiffened slightly.
Only now had she noticed it—Robang, her very first subscriber and most devoted regular since the day she started streaming, was nowhere in the chat.
"Anyway! Alright then, let's get this C-rank Gate raid properly underway!"
She spoke to the camera with her usual plucky grin. Word of a hero's glorious return—the man who had once set all of Korea ablaze—was sending her viewer count climbing fast.