Chapter 70 – Heavenly Demon

What is a demon?

It’s not something grandiose. It’s always around us. Hong Yeon-hwa sincerely believed that.

For example, the demon of the mind.

Attachment, delusion, anger, resentment, despair, fear, and so on. All of these things make the human body and mind exhausted.

In addition, if something doesn’t go well in everyday life, people say it’s a day with a demon.

In the end, demons can be considered a collective term for negative things.

Just as there are good things and bad things, it’s natural for people to be affected by demons.

…But there’s a limit to everything.

Hong Yeon-hwa recalled the old days when she used to use the Heavenly Demon martial arts to the extreme.

Her world was a world that was being destroyed.

There were more people dying than being born, so eventually everyone would die and disappear.

The people who were outside the control of the royal family worshiped only power regardless of their sexual morality and pursued their own pleasure.

It was a martial world without chivalry.

The Heavenly Demon religion began as a folk belief that was created to somehow hold onto hope in such a world.

Those who oppress and plunder me and my family are truly evil. Surely the devil will come down from heaven and punish them.

It was just a small hope.

The weak licked each other’s wounds, and they drew a future that didn’t exist, struggling to survive today in a living hell where death was more comfortable than life.

It was a very cult-like belief, but surprisingly, it had an effect. Humans become tenacious when they have a place to rely on.

Thanks to that, they searched for ways to survive without giving up. They fled to the west beyond the central plains, to even more dangerous places.

In this way, they were able to settle in the Hundred Thousand Mountains and live under the name of the Heavenly Demon religion.

When rumors spread that the fugitives had successfully settled down, more people began to head towards the Hundred Thousand Mountains. Among them were craftsmen and a few martial artists.

The Heavenly Demon religion became more and more livable, but the dark memories within them did not change.

It was so bad that even a perfectly healthy martial artist could become a demon practitioner due to demonic influence.

Of course, the believers liked it. Demonic power was dangerous, but above all, it allowed them to gain strength quickly.

To those who desperately needed power, it was an unparalleled blessing.

The system of the strongest martial artist becoming the leader was born in this deformed environment.

And a woman arrived at the Hundred Thousand Mountains.

She was a woman who was beautiful but was used as a concubine by the powerful man who ruled the surrounding area. However, she was abandoned when she became pregnant and sick of it.

In this era, it was common for women to be used and abandoned, but even her child was not ordinary.

Hong Yeon-hwa was exceptional from a young age.

From the moment she was born, she instinctively built up her energy through breathing, and her blood not only never became stagnant but gradually became wider and cleaner over time.

Moreover, after seeing a martial art once, she could follow along, after seeing it twice, she could find areas for improvement, and after seeing it three times, she could create even better martial arts.

The believers of the Heavenly Demon religion who saw Hong Yeon-hwa had a feeling.

They thought that this child might be able to fulfill the revenge that they couldn’t, or maybe this child was the reincarnation of the true Heavenly Demon they had been waiting for.

So they invested everything in Hong Yeon-hwa.

Even in the barren Hundred Thousand Mountains, they could always eat their fill as long as Hong Yeon-hwa was there.

They used the Heavenly Demon martial arts that they risked their lives to obtain and made them into protective gear for Hong Yeon-hwa.

They generously taught her all of their martial arts, which they considered their own everything, and sometimes even passed on their internal energy through physical contact.

The peculiar thing was that they never asked Hong Yeon-hwa to become a Heavenly Demon for their sake.

They knew how miserable life was when someone was forced to do something, so they refrained from making such a request.

But when they watched over Hong Yeon-hwa, she was also watching over them.

There was a boy who survived by eating the corpses of his family who died before him because there was nothing else to eat.

He still vomited up his food during meals and repeated the process of picking it up and eating it again, just like when he put his family in his mouth.

There was a middle-aged man who witnessed his wife and daughter being slaughtered in front of him.

He rebelled every night and was tormented by hallucinations and auditory hallucinations while holding onto his severed arm. He was still repeating hell.

There was a widow whose newborn baby was taken away by a monk who ate newborn babies because he needed it for the elixir of immortality.

She wrapped herself in a blanket and treated it like her own child, desperately taking care of it as if it were still in her arms, longing for the day when the baby would have been in her arms.

Hong Yeon-hwa saw demons from them.

She saw them being crushed and destroyed by demons.

…She didn’t want to see it anymore.

So Hong Yeon-hwa swallowed the Holy Flame on her own will.

A mysterious flame that all previous Heavenly Demons had poured their internal energy into to cultivate.

It was her last resort in case of an emergency, but Hong Yeon-hwa had already made up her mind to end everything on her own.

The Heavenly Demon reigns, the Heavenly Demon returns, all demons bow down.

Hong Yeon-hwa became a Heavenly Demon, and as the master of all demons, she believed that she should bear the burden of the demons that weighed on the shoulders of the believers.

And time passed, leading to the present.

Magi erupted explosively from Hong Yeon-hwa’s body, causing a storm that began to engulf everything around her.

“Oh, Primordial Celestial Lord…!”

“I didn’t expect it to be this powerful!”

The martial arts prince from the shaman clan drew his sword and shouted for help, and even Peng Ojin, who had been on our side, reflexively drew his sword due to the massive amount of magi.

The Blue Dragon Sect leader, who had insisted that Hong Yeon-hwa had to be killed, was stiffened and unable to breathe properly… but no one would dare to jeer at him.

That was how intense the magi was.

If all the negative things in the world were gathered and made into the form of a natural disaster, would it be like this?

She forced her strength into the collapsing bridge of the Lingless Divine Art.

She didn’t want to show anyone that she was afraid of Hong Yeon-hwa.

When the black storm grew stronger and Hong Yeon-hwa’s figure was no longer visible.

Suddenly, the wind stopped, and it became dark even though it was daytime.

When she looked up as if possessed by something.

“Crazy….”

There was a giant demon with its back to the sun, looking down at the ground.

Horns on both sides of its forehead, a sinister face resembling a wild boar, and a strange body that seemed to be half human and half beast.

It felt like the world had become dark because the shadow of the black steel qi covered half of the training ground.

Looking up at the demon, she realized instinctively.

This. This is the essence of the Heavenly Demon martial arts.

All martial arts have a fundamental image. Although there may be differences in depth, it does not change.

And when she reached the Hwagyeong, she began to be able to handle her determination and internal energy like her own body, and this fundamental image began to manifest itself outwardly.

For example, the shaman clan’s Taegeuk Hyegeom swordsmanship can reverse the direction of a waterfall with a few sword swings.

The Volcano Sect’s Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Swordsmanship creates the scent of plum blossoms and fluttering petals with a sword swing.

All of these are manifestations of that fundamental image.

Then what about Hong Yeon-hwa’s Heavenly Demon martial arts?

Strangely enough, it was the embodiment of the shapes of countless demons.

Despair, anger, resignation, but also revenge.

Revenge for her father who was beaten to death.

Revenge for her sister who only returned her fingers.

Revenge for the starving child who died.

Revenge. Revenge. Justified revenge.

It felt like the injustice and pain of countless people were being transmitted to her.

That’s why she was even more certain. None of them were blaming Hong Yeon-hwa.

This also meant that Hong Yeon-hwa had never once stained her hands with the blood of an innocent person, as she had said.

There was no way the Blue Dragon Sect leader wouldn’t notice what I had noticed. His pupils shook as if he had experienced an earthquake.

Hong Yeon-hwa stared at him intently before assuming her stance.

“Listen.”

She spread her legs shoulder-width apart and put her fists on her waist, adhering to the basics.

The demon also took the same stance as Hong Yeon-hwa.

“I am the owner of the Manma, the ruler of the demons.”

The demon’s aura became even more intense.

However, this time it was not the aura of the nameless ones, but Hong Yeon-hwa’s own aura.

The suffocating reality, the chains of resignation, and the pain of her followers who had suffered within them.

She couldn’t accept any of it.

That’s why Hong Yeon-hwa wanted to destroy the world.

——————!!

A strike that resembled lightning bolted from the ground to the sky.

With a loud noise, the surrounding space began to distort and crack, as if cracks had formed.

Hong Yeon-hwa scattered even the clouds in the sky and left clear traces of her fist.

“……”

“……”

“……”

Pacheon Hwacheon.

No one could open their mouths in the face of such overwhelming power.

In the midst of the forced silence, Hong Yeon-hwa’s calm voice was engraved in their minds like a wedge.

“I am the Heavenly Demon.”