Prologue - The Sky Dyed in Blood
The sky was dyed in blood.
The air reeked with the metallic stench of it.
It had been a long, long war.
A great war that had raged for decades.
To punish the one responsible, I had wandered for decades.
My once-glossy black hair had faded to a dull ashen gray, until finally streaks of white began to appear.
In that time, the nine great factions that had been the pillars of the orthodox path crumbled.
The five families that formed the heart and core of the orthodox path were burned to ash.
The Black Pavilion that had claimed the throne of the unorthodox path was shattered.
The orthodox path had fallen. The unorthodox path had vanished.
The flames kindled by the demonic path had become a brilliant inferno that reduced the entire Central Plains to cinders.
The world now belonged to the demonic path.
…That was how it had been.
The world had collapsed.
The ‘calamity’ that had shattered the world and brought down the heavens walked forward slowly.
A catastrophe on the scale of a natural disaster. The root of an evil that could neither be avoided nor reversed.
The ruler of the demonic path, the Heavenly Demon.
He spoke.
The calamity—the leader of the Demonic Cult who bore the title of Heavenly Demon—slowly raised his sword and approached. An aura so oppressive it stole the breath poured from his entire body.
He was the calamity who had crushed the Ten Supreme Sovereigns, the strongest in the martial world, as if they were insects. And now that same being was directing his full hostility toward me.
It was unfair.
I had thought I would finally see the end.
Yet in the end, it was the demonic path that saw the end, not me.
Again… I would stand once more.
Even if I died, I would take that bastard’s heart with me.
The corner of the Heavenly Demon’s mouth stretched into a long smirk at the sight of me rising.
With hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, I picked up the sword that had fallen beside me.
A broken, shattered sword.
Once, this blade had cut down countless demons. Now… it no longer held even a trace of its former light.
The calamity took a heavy step forward. The Heavenly Demon pointed his sword at my mangled form and asked.
Thus, I would plant one last seed of hope.
When had I ever been righteous?
I hadn’t.
I had viewed the world through the lens of my own obstinacy and prejudice. Only when the end arrived did I realize there were heavens above the heavens.
Crunch.
The sound of bones being severed.
Blood sprayed. Pain like my heart being ripped apart flooded through me.
“Keuk.”
Blood that should have long since died burst forth like a fountain.
Even so… even so.
Grab.
The desperate will to kill him no matter what still kept me clinging to life.
The calamity swung his sword once more.
Slash!
The arm holding the sword was cut away.
There was no time to register the pain.
Crunch!
I sank my teeth hard into his shoulder. With my remaining arm, I poured every last ounce of strength into holding him tight. I locked him with my legs, bit down with my mouth, and bound him with my one arm.
Since I had exhausted all my energy, he must have been the same.
The calamity could not even resist.
A laugh escaped me.
The bewildered look on the Heavenly Demon’s face was truly worth seeing.
At that moment, the Heavenly Demon’s fingertips trembled. He flinched.
The man who held the world in his grasp, the absolute being who had transcended all things. It was the first time he had ever shown the emotion called fear.
Boom!
I detonated every last bit of latent power I had left. My innate true qi exploded. The air shook violently and space itself was torn apart. My blood boiled. My bones were charred black and my flesh burned away.
Suddenly the Heavenly Demon let out a burst of mad laughter.
“You’re right.”
I smiled through the blood.
As the Heavenly Demon said, there was nothing to reverse.
“I’m not trying to reverse anything.”
Just.
I had wandered the Central Plains for decades for the sake of revenge. On the day my family was destroyed, I witnessed countless deaths and buried them in the earth. All so I could kill the Heavenly Demon who had annihilated my family.
Even if it’s like this…
I, who had lived without meaning, wanted to atone with a meaningful death. It didn’t matter if this was nothing more than my own stubbornness. I consoled myself with that thought as I tried to drag down the calamity that had destroyed the world.
Only now did a faint smile finally bloom on my lips.
Kwaaaang!
And so, everything burned.
A colossal flash of light swallowed the blood-soaked earth.
Kwaaaang!
On the day the world fell, the martial world’s calamity, the Heavenly Demon, took with him the last star of the orthodox path, who also lost his light.
…Huh?
I was definitely dead…?
What was this soft, plush, strangely pleasant sensation against my fingertips?
“…Mmm.”
A woman’s sweet voice tickled my ear.
Mmm?
It was definitely a woman’s voice…?
My eyes flew open.
Or rather, they simply opened.
Beside me lay a half-naked woman, fast asleep. My hand was wrapped around her waist.
“What?”
I cried out without thinking and sat up. The moment I did, the world spun and something surged up from my stomach.
“Urk! Bleeegh!”
The thick smell of alcohol mixed with the revolting stench of vomit. Only after I had emptied everything inside me could I barely regain my senses.
“…”
The moment I saw my reflection in the mirror standing in the corner of the room, I froze solid.
I was young.
The face of a man who had long passed forty was gone. In its place was the face of my youth.
As I confirmed my appearance, fragments of memories from the past began rising to the surface like bubbles.
I clutched my throbbing head and decided to step outside first.
When I opened the door, an all-too-familiar corridor appeared.
Here…
It was familiar. Too familiar.
But that was impossible.
This place should have burned away long ago.
Geungnakru.
There was no doubt. This was the famous pleasure pavilion in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. The very same place I had frequented constantly in my youth.
“Have you awakened, Youngest Young Master?”
The guard warrior stationed outside the door bowed respectfully.
Ah.
It was absurd, but only after the cool breeze in the corridor brushed my face did my mind truly return.
I had come back.
And to the most humiliating period of my life, no less.
“Hm? Our Young Master Ju? What brings you awake so early?”
“…”
The gisaeng had woken up as well.
Ju Woo-jin. The man who had died together with the Heavenly Demon in his previous life and returned to the past.
That was my name.
The gisaeng put on her clothes, then sat close beside me and clung to me with sticky affection.
“Move.”
I needed to organize my thoughts, so I pushed her away lightly.
She simply pressed herself even closer, as if accustomed to such gestures.
“Oh my? Why so cold today? You were so sweet to me yesterday.”
“Yesterday?”
The word felt foreign.
“What exactly did I do yesterday?”
The gisaeng gave me a playful look and burrowed deeper into my arms.
“You told this girl you loved her, didn’t you?”
…No.
I had definitely perished together with the Heavenly Demon. My flesh had been torn apart, my bones reduced to ash and scattered to the wind.
Yet…
“How am I still alive…”
It was a quiet murmur.
The gisaeng must have taken it as irritation.
“Hmph, so cranky first thing in the morning? Fine. Then this girl will take her leave.”
With an expression I had never seen on her before, she retreated hesitantly.
I let out a long sigh. A headache was coming on strong.
Alright. Let’s organize this again.
I had embraced the Heavenly Demon and detonated every last bit of latent power in my body in a suicide attack. In other words, mutual destruction.
The Heavenly Demon and I had definitely died together.
Yet…
“I’ve returned to the past? How?”
No, never mind the complicated questions for now.
What mattered was that this was reality, not a dream.
“What year is this?”
The past I least wanted to remember. The time when my family was still alive and the Demonic Cult had not yet risen.
Which meant Geungnakru would still be standing.
“Before I came of age.”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror once more. Only then did the memories begin to surface clearly.
I let out a long breath.
This was the face I had when I was still alive. No, even younger than that—far younger than I had been before my death.
Fifteen? Sixteen?
From what I remembered, Geungnakru had disappeared the year I turned sixteen. So my current age was fifteen at the very least.
Damn it. My hair was a mess and my eyes were swollen.
Around this time, I had spent every single day drinking with gisaengs and wasting my life away.
And I even discussed the martial world while doing so.
How laughable.
I really had been something else.
Ju Woo-jin. Ju Woo-jin.
My name had not changed.
But I was no longer that Ju Woo-jin.
In my previous life I had been a dissolute young master, and I knew better than anyone that such a path led only to ruin.
“The fact that I’ve returned to the past means…”
It meant that the Heavenly Demon, the one who had ended the world, was also alive in his past form.
Which meant the rise of the Demonic Cult that would occur in no less than ten years would soon become reality. The brutal Demonic Cult would rise once more, and the Heavenly Demon would bare his furious fangs at the martial world again.
That was what mattered.
If I’m fifteen… then in five years, my family will definitely be destroyed. The Five Great Families? The Nine Great Factions? All of them will fall.
No. It wouldn’t be a mere fall.
They would be erased without leaving a single trace.
In truth, by the time the Demonic Cult rose in my previous life, it had already been far too late. They had already worked in the shadows, thoroughly rotting the martial world from within.
“Still… this might be fortunate.”
I knew.
I knew the Demonic Cult was already moving.
The crucial point was that no one except me knew that fact.
In a world that would soon collapse, only I knew how it would end.
Then…?
What should I do first?
Simply becoming stronger?
That was important, of course.
But I could never stop the Heavenly Demon and the Demonic Cult alone.
An unreachable existence.
That had been my honest impression when I faced him.
I recalled the final moment of mutual destruction.
If he had been at his peak, I could never have won.
That was the truth.
At the time, the Heavenly Demon had been exhausted and heavily wounded. Only because the strongest experts of the martial world had fallen one after another, leaving wounds on him, had mutual destruction been possible.
This time, even that stroke of luck might not exist.
That was also the truth.
If so, if that was the truth, then what should I do first?
I had to cut off the preparations the Demonic Cult had made to seize control of the martial world.
“The family.”
It was the most important task.
I had to protect the family that would be the first to be crushed. Without the family, I would lose even the foundation to fight.
Hadn’t I learned that lesson bitterly in my previous life?
Save the family. Protect my relatives.
And… kill the Heavenly Demon.
How?
There was a way.
At this age in my previous life, I had been nothing but a fool who neglected martial arts and cared only for alcohol and women.
And what had happened because of that?
The family was annihilated and the martial world was shattered to pieces.
To swallow the martial world, the Demonic Cult had prepared with ruthless precision and executed their plan without the slightest deviation.
Yes. Perhaps it had been a predetermined fate.
The Demonic Cult had been thorough, while the martial world had been deceived by false peace and wallowed in hypocrisy.
There was no need to think about the entire martial world.
To save the family, what I had to do first was clear.
Destroy the Demonic Cult before they are fully prepared.
I would uproot their entire plan from the root.
If I could eliminate their schemes early, now that the Demonic Cult had begun moving to swallow the Central Plains…
I can completely change the future.
I might even be able to prevent the rise of the Demonic Cult and the appearance of the Heavenly Demon entirely.
If I could do that?
The Central Plains would enjoy a peace it had never known before.
A laugh escaped me.
Confidence surged within me.
“Let’s do it. No—I will do it.”
I could do this.
I would definitely destroy the Demonic Cult and protect my family and the people precious to me.
I opened the door.
The guard was still standing outside.
He must have remained there all night.
And that face… I finally remembered it.
“…Muyoung.”
The one who had found me annoying yet fought to the end to protect the family before dying.
He was alive.
For the briefest moment, I held my breath.
But I quickly schooled my expression into indifference.
“Young Master?”
Muyoung looked at me with puzzled eyes. His face held the peaceful calm of someone who knew nothing.
Only I knew that five years from now that face would be drenched in blood and torn away.
“Let’s go back, Muyoung.”
“Ah, understood.”
Muyoung seemed startled.
The Young Master Ju he served was not the sort to play for only a day and then return.
The sun must be rising in the west.
Well, my whims were nothing new. What could he do? His master had ordered him to return.
Nanchang in Jiangxi Province.
Situated beside Poyang Lake, Nanchang was an exceedingly prosperous city.
It drew countless tourists and idlers, which had led to flourishing commerce and the birth of many entertainment districts.
That was Nanchang.
But there was one thing that made Nanchang even more famous.
The Ju Family Residence.
The greatest family of Jiangxi.
A great clan whose power, prestige, and history could rival even the Five Great Families without falling short. Countless sects and families paid them respect, and even the Five Great Families could not treat them lightly.
“Haa.”
When I arrived in front of the house, my breath caught for no reason.
Yes. The famous Ju Family.
This was my home.
“It’s been… a long time.”
Once, this place had simply been somewhere I took for granted. I had even deliberately stayed away because I hated being at home.
Soon the great gates of the Ju Family swung open.
The familiar courtyard, the familiar buildings, the familiar servants.
But their gazes felt foreign.
The warriors standing guard frowned. The servants whispered among themselves.
“The Young Master is back after only one day? Really?”
“Did something happen? Normally he wouldn’t return for days.”
“I heard he was drinking heavily at Geungnakru again yesterday. Maybe he caused some trouble?”
Useless chatter.
I hadn’t cared before, but now it grated on my ears.
Ignore them.
Without saying a word, I headed straight for the main hall.
The warriors guarding the hall widened their eyes in surprise.
I never came here often.
I used to run away as fast as I could. My father was in the main hall, and I hated seeing the contempt in his eyes, so I had always fled.
But things were different now.
I had learned his true heart far too late.
“Young Master? You wish to see the Family Head?”
“Yes. Open the door.”
I knew he was asking just in case. The warrior looked startled, but then his expression shifted to one of pleasant surprise as he opened the door to the main hall.
When the door opened, the same man as always was inside.
Sword Sovereign Ju Tae-sung.
The current head of the Ju Family and my father. One of the Ten Supreme Sovereigns said to be the strongest in the martial world.
He was quietly reading documents, as always. His appearance was immaculate, without the slightest disarray. His cold yet authoritative presence was so overwhelming it made it hard to breathe.
My father slowly lifted his gaze.
“…This is surprising.”
His tone was calm, but the meaning behind it was clear.
You would never return after only one day. Did you cause some kind of accident?
I lightly bowed my head.
“I have returned, Family Head.”
At that moment, my father’s hand paused for the briefest instant.
A short silence.
In the past, whenever I stood in this place I had always acted sloppily and playfully.
But not this time.
My father stared at me wordlessly for a long while. His gaze was neither light nor warm. As always, it was a cold look that simply evaluated me.
Yet for the briefest moment, that cold gaze seemed to waver.
Of course, it vanished immediately.
“…I see.”
A short reply.
He picked up the documents again, as if he had lost interest.
“We will speak in the evening.”
I paused for a moment, then bowed silently.
“Yes, Family Head.”
He was the man who had never given up, who had raised his sword to the very end to protect the family and its members.
But I still remembered.
The sight of my father’s head torn off by the Heavenly Demon’s hand. The cruel way the Heavenly Demon had severed his limbs just to prolong his suffering.
Covered in blood, my father had still shouted to me.
Run… quickly!
To his worthless son, my father had never once spoken a warm word until the end.
Seeing that same unchanging demeanor…
I have returned, Father.
Only now did the reality of my return truly sink in.
There was one person I desperately wanted to see.
My mother, who had eventually lost to illness and passed away before the Demonic Cult’s full invasion.
I am fifteen now.
Which meant… the mother I had longed to see was still alive!
I left the main hall and hurried toward the rear garden of the residence.
The person who occupied an entire separate building in that garden was my mother, Yu Ha-rin.
The walk to the garden felt unbearably slow.
“Oh? My son. What brings you here at this hour?”
The moment I passed through the gate to the garden, I heard my mother’s voice. She must have been coming out of her quarters and spotted me.
“…”
“Son?”
The mother I had longed to see for so long.
I ran to her in a single stride and took her hands.
The joy lasted only a moment. The instant our hands met, I froze.
What is this?
A strange energy pricked sharply at my fingertips. At the same time, beyond my mother’s breath, I caught the faint trace of a fishy, poisonous aura.
A memory flashed through my mind.
In my previous life, my mother had passed away after her ‘condition suddenly worsened.’
My mind snapped into focus.
Perhaps… just perhaps…
Had that really been an illness?