Chapter 2
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Descent of the Heavenly Demon
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Sometime ago.
Memories from 21st-century Korea that now felt like ancient history?
Or from those days training between life and death, vomiting blood?
In any case, it had been ages since I'd last drifted into such a light slumber.
"...Divine Emperor. Did Your Majesty cough?"
"Have we arrived?"
Her soft, beautiful voice came from outside the palanquin, prostrating without a hint of presence. My dream faded away, and the gently rocking interior of the divine carriage came into view.
-Ku-gu-gu-gu...
A quick glance outside the carriage revealed massive mountain ranges rolling past like waves. Extending my senses, I could feel the demonic energy of countless followers prostrating toward the Heavenly Chariot I rode.
"I still don't approve."
"Drop the stiff tone. Whatever happened to that Guixian Scholar who tested me, trying to break my intellect rather than my martial prowess to make me follow her?"
At my words, the shadow beyond the curtain flinched, trembling as if holding back her prickly temper.
"Eun-zu-keu... U-ryeo-mib-ul-reu-geu..."
"How long? Until your body turns to dust and your soul to powder."
The messenger I sent was turned away at the door. Even when I came personally, she set up a screen in the middle of the room, declaring she wouldn't remove it until I convinced her. The greatest intellect in Demonic Cult history.
Guixian Scholar.
In the end, after half a day of debate and the conditions I offered, she became my strategist.
But I still hadn't forgotten her bold claims from behind that screen.
Black history like that only grows more fun when you bring it up on every cooldown.
I chuckled lowly and rose from my seat.
"No matter that it was that idiot previous cult leader who started the war. After a year of stalemate, opinions within the cult are seriously overheated. Even if I declared a halt now, would the followers listen?"
On top of that, countless followers had already died meaningless deaths due to the orthodox sects' schemes that had swayed the previous leader.
Even if I controlled the cult from top to bottom, announcing a ceasefire with the orthodox sects now would likely spark internal strife.
"But..."
"It's already decided, and we can't stop anyway."
In my previous life, as an ordinary guy who knew nothing of fighting, I'd scream at the decision I was making now.
How could I, who always saw war as something close yet distant, commit such horrific acts with my own hands?
However, having inherited the legacies of the twelve divine demons at the edge of purgatory where even time stood still.
After a decade of bloody battles and schemes, having become the master of these Ten Thousand Great Mountains, I could say it firmly.
"If we don't fight, we'll only lose everything."
No matter if humanity piled buildings taller than mountains.
Or developed tech to connect the whole world with a flick of a finger.
The greed lurking beneath that thin mask of civilization would always drag humans back to their beastly karma.
-Ku-kung!
"We've arrived."
The divine carriage I'd boarded slowly came to a complete halt. At my gesture, psychokinesis activated, and the layered doors flew open all at once.
"Watch. Just as I promised you, see how the orthodox scum who trampled you and your family crumble."
I didn't look back at the Guixian Scholar gazing at me, only pressing forward.
Three doors lay open before me.
Heaven, Earth, Man.
Passing through the gates symbolizing the three greatest fundamentals of the world, I emerged outside.
Below the massive Heavenly Chariot—more like a moving palace—cult followers threw themselves flat in prostration. Far off, orthodox forces swarmed like ants around Kunlun Mountain, forming their battle lines.
"Alright, let's have some fun."
Like a beast facing a flock of sheep, my lips twisted at the sight of the hypocritical righteous energy filling the distant mountains.
They'd brought the war to our doorstep first, so no need to hold back.
After the civil war against the corrupt leader's clan, my masters—the twelve divine demons—were restless, their true demonic energies screaming for release.
Any reason to refuse?
The corrupt previous leader had defied the law of the strong ruling, clinging to the cult leader position generation after generation, turning it into a hereditary system to feast eternally.
To eliminate opposition and sway negative opinions within the cult, he'd secretly colluded with the orthodox sects to force this righteous-demonic great war.
Turning this ridiculous farce into opportunity, the million demons lurking in the Ten Thousand Great Mountains would devour the Central Plains.
"They're coming."
Perhaps sensing something amiss from our eerily quiet camp at my appearance.
Five powerful presences shot toward us from the enemy lines.
"One bald monk, three Taoist priests in robes, and one guy with a pitch-black sword."
"Those are the pinnacle experts called the Five Great Masters in the current murim, all at the Flower Realm."
Their involvement on the front lines has caused massive casualties on our side. Among them, Shaolin's Hueguang colluded with the traitors Your Excellency purged from our cult, kidnapped the loyal Blood Flower Corps and Moonlight Corps—which were the cult's legions—and subjected them to brutal deaths."
The Guixian Scholar feigned composure to report the intel, but her breath and hands trembled with rage.
I too remembered those two names: Blood Flower Corps and Moonlight Corps.
Composed entirely of women, the groups had visited the orphanage in the gray zone between righteous and demonic murim after a mission.
Hearing of it through the previous leader, Shaolin infiltrated quietly under the pretense of invitation, massacred all the orphans, ambushed the shocked groups in the chaos, killing many, and even the survivors died in lightless dungeons.
The leaders of Blood Flower and Moonlight Corps were the Guixian Scholar's sworn sisters. Hearing of their deaths from me, she'd joined me burning for revenge.
"Well then, my dear friend. Tell me—how shall I kill these hypocrites for you?"
"As promised, rip off their limbs, leave them barely alive, and hand them to me."
She'd followed me through the Heaven and Earth Gates but couldn't cross the Man Gate, hiding in my shadow, weeping silently as she bowed.
"If you let them writhe in agony for decades, neither dead nor alive, bowing eternally to their hypocrisy, I offer you everything I have."
"..."
The first time my hands were stained with blood, I knew instinctively.
I'd spend my life madly yearning for the peace and tranquility of my previous existence, living a deranged path where everything spun out of control.
That instinct would bury itself under countless events, only to resurface now and then to remind me.
A woman accompanying me out of vengeance.
A madman who'd become a god in living flesh.
No room anywhere for simple affection.
Gazing at the weeping, bowing woman, I had to abandon even my last shred of hope.
A hell where I must abandon everything, can only abandon everything, must abandon to charge ahead.
Whatever awaited at the end, if it was irreversible, then no peace, no comfort, no rest—only blood and iron paving my path.
"Very well. Guess we'll just go mad and run to the end."
As always, demonic energy surged from the lower dantian—the root of all demonic arts—rushing to the middle and upper dantians at my chest and hundred convergences. Vast power coursed through my body.
The root of the Heavenly Demon Cult that demonic beings revered.
The last remnant of mythic ages that those righteous dogs racing over lusted after through their villainy.
Complete Manifestation
Power surges through the body
The complete manifestation of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art descended upon my body.
"The Heavenly Demon reveals his divine presence!"
"The Heavenly Demon reveals his divine presence!"
The Heavenly Demon Divine Art was neither purely demonic nor qi art.
To the unqualified beholding it, a living force that blinded eyes.
A remnant of the god infusing power into his incarnation.
The demonic beings around me grew vigorous from my emitted energy, entering ecstasy as they chanted the Heavenly Demon Cult's golden words.
"Demonic Path Rules the Heavens! Ten Thousand Demons Conquer the Central Plains!"
"Demonic Path Rules the Heavens! Ten Thousand Demons Conquer the Central Plains!"
"As it should be."
I'd abandoned everything.
Emptied everything.
Having cast off all that filled me as a human to reach this point.
That void was too deep and empty to fill with petty power.
I had to devour everything beyond those mountains to ease this vicious emptiness even a little.
"Amitabha! Today we purify these wicked demons!"
In an instant, the first to reach me, slicing through the air, was Shaolin's Great Buddha Palm.
A massive golden palm, like the Buddha's hand crushing the fighting elephant, fell toward me.
-Huuuung!
"Hraaaah!"
"..."
That splendid strike was flashy and overwhelming, but to me, utterly hollow.
No need for much strength—just one extended finger would cover it.
Demon Containment Finger
Pierces all illusions
-Tuk!
My extended index finger collided mid-air with the sky-shrouding golden divine palm.
-Pa-sa-sak!
"What!?"
Yes, this was the 'Buddha's heart' those righteous fools preached.
A cheap, flashy apricot blossom—shallow and light enough for my single flick to strip away its gold, revealing Shaolin's living Buddha's ugly true face.
This was the naked truth of Shaolin, bastion of the righteous path.
"Wh-what sorcery is this!"
"Hey, Guixian Scholar. Sorry, but bear with one of my gripes."
"...As Your Excellency wills."
The finger that shattered the Great Buddha Palm pointed straight at the ugly, wailing Shaolin monk's forehead—dead center on his filthy kasaya mark.
"The final lesson for Shaolin, sent by Podalab's pilgrim."
Fourth Form
Silent essence, no pomp
No grand power like Shaolin's finger strikes, no mighty aura.
Purely pursuing essence without needless ritual—the freakish monk Podalab's creation.
His finger flick was this quiet and plain.
-Hwiung
Did a breeze pass? The surroundings were so quiet it felt like an illusion.
No dramatic scene of the monk's head exploding or a new mark on his forehead.
Just.
-U-dang-tang!
A corpse whose breath had stopped plummeted from the air.
Unable even to stand properly before me, it fell like a dead leaf, staining the long stairs of the Heavenly Chariot with blood as it tumbled to the earth of its birth.
-Kung!
After rolling down 108 steep stairs, the Shaolin monk landed with a thunderous boom, his form unrecognizable.
All that remained was a filthy lump of flesh, blood, and meat.
"Daring to call my master's demonic art petty sorcery, when you're no one special. How could I let him live?"
"..."
The remaining so-called Five Great Masters—no, now Four Great Masters—of the righteous path froze in disbelief a step behind.
The demonic followers silently revered the power that turned Shaolin's living Buddha—sworn enemy of the cult—into a pile of meat with a single move.
"Well? Who's next."
Let's have some fun.
Forcing down the vast emptiness in my chest with battle lust, I kicked off without looking back.
The Heavenly Demon Cult's 13th Murim Punitive Expedition.
The moment the living god of the Demonic Cult declared true holy war.