Appearance of the Heavenly Demon - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 2
Chapter 1. A Child Marked by Death
Dried meat?
Yunhyeon’s gaze fixed on the small cloth sack the child was holding.
Inside the sack lay a few more strips of dried meat, each no larger than the child’s palm.
At that moment, a sharp tsk sounded through the air.
Yunhyeon’s eyes widened, and he stared at the child.
Had the child just clicked their tongue in disapproval?
Before the question could even settle, the child strode into the room and thrust the dried meat toward him from the sack, expression distinctly reluctant.
Very reluctant indeed.
Yunhyeon looked bewildered, his eyes darting between the child and the offered meat.
The child pushed the dried meat closer, insisting.
“Here. Take it.”
“No… it’s all right.”
To eat dried meat the moment he woke was beyond him. Speaking alone sent sharp pain lancing through his throat.
“Water, though… could I have some water?”
The child’s expression brightened at once, and they bolted across the room, returning moments later with a water gourd.
“Thank… you.”
Yunhyeon sipped the water the child offered, studying the boy or girl carefully as he drank.
The child was humming softly, carefully packing the dried meat strips back into the sack.
‘Who on earth is this child?’
But then, come to think of it.
‘I didn’t sense the child approaching at all.’
Yunhyeon looked down at his own hands.
He’d tried to sense whether there were other people nearby besides the child, but he couldn’t feel any presence at all.
‘My Blood Meridians are in a state.’
That much was to be expected.
A body shattered by poison and combat alike.
Not only were his Blood Meridians ruined, but there was scarcely a part of him left whole.
It was almost strange that he was alive at all.
Yunhyeon watched the child still rummaging through the sack.
“Was it you who saved me?”
The child looked up, meeting Yunhyeon’s gaze directly.
Finding only a blank stare, Yunhyeon asked again.
“I asked whether you saved my life.”
But the child still showed no sign of understanding, simply staring back with uncomprehending eyes.
Yunhyeon sighed softly.
‘No. There’s no way this small child saved me.’
The Dang Sect’s poison was renowned even across the Central Plains as the work of a true master of toxins.
No way this small child could have purged such an extreme poison from his veins.
‘Then who could have…?’
As the thought formed, a round rice ball suddenly appeared before his eyes.
Yunhyeon looked startled at the child offering the rice ball.
“Are you giving this to me?”
The child nodded.
“Eat.”
His stomach chose that moment to growl loudly.
His throat still ached, though the water had provided some relief, and the hunger was real enough. Yunhyeon accepted the rice ball from the child.
The shape was clumsy—clearly the child’s handiwork.
The child watched him intently.
As though urging him to taste it.
Yunhyeon felt the weight of that gaze and bit into the rice ball.
“It’s delicious.”
The child’s mouth curled up in a smile of pure satisfaction.
The child plopped down in front of him, pulled another rice ball from the sack, and began eating, munching away contentedly.
The sight of the small fingers sticky with grains of rice was quite endearing.
Wrapped in this strange peace, Yunhyeon spent a long time eating rice balls alongside the child.
As the savory grains went down slowly, the rice balls from the child soon vanished entirely.
Yunhyeon smacked his lips and glanced at the sack the child held.
“Do you have any more?”
The child turned their head with a sharp click.
The look the child fixed on Yunhyeon was piercing.
Begging for food was shameful enough, but being alive meant hunger—what could be done about that?
“You’re hungry, aren’t you….”
The child rose from where they sat.
Rummaging through a cloth bundle, they approached Yunhyeon with quick strides.
“Thank you. I won’t forget this kindness—uh!”
Something was thrust abruptly into Yunhyeon’s mouth as he spoke his gratitude.
It was grass, greenish and reeking of damp earth.
“Mmph, mmmph-mmmph!”
He tried to spit out the unknown plant, but his dying body lacked the strength to overcome even the child’s small hand pressing against his lips.
A fool’s mistake.
He’d grown careless, thinking them merely a child!
By the time regret came, his exhausted frame had no strength left to resist—he collapsed.
“Mmph! Ughhh!”
Dirt—if only he could brush the dirt away…! Swallow it…!
The child poured water into the prostrate Yunhyeon’s mouth, and he had no choice but to swallow it to survive.
Gulp—
“Cough—cough—hack!”
Having finally swallowed the grass caked with soil, Yunhyeon gasped for breath and stared at the child.
“What… what in the world did you make me eat….”
Yunhyeon couldn’t finish his words.
Before that sentence could even end, he lost consciousness and collapsed.
Watching him fall asleep at once, trembling slightly, the child grinned with satisfaction and wiped the water from their face with the back of their hand.
* * *
How many hours—or was it days—had passed?
Yunhyeon’s eyes opened again.
‘That brat!’
He lurched upright, then froze.
‘What is this?’
Yunhyeon clenched and unclenched his fists several times.
His body, which had felt heavy as waterlogged cotton, now seemed remarkably lighter.
‘No, this isn’t imagination. My Blood Meridians have stabilized too.’
Puzzling over what could have happened, the door suddenly burst open and the child appeared once more.
The child glanced at him as he stirred, then stepped into the room.
Yunhyeon asked, his expression guarded.
“How long was I lying there?”
The child rummaged through their bundle as before and answered.
“A day.”
“A day? That’s all?”
In just one day, his body had become this light?
“What… what exactly did you make me eat yesterday?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
They’d made him eat grass without even knowing what it was?
“I just plucked it because I thought it would be good for grandfather.”
“That’s—”
So they’d fed him unknown grass simply because it looked like it might be good for him. What kind of logic was that?
“Are you hungry?”
The child reached into their bundle.
At that moment, remembering yesterday’s ordeal, Yunhyeon flinched without thinking.
He cleared his throat and spoke carefully.
“I am… quite hungry, yes.”
“Here. Eat this.”
Fortunately, what the child suddenly held out was a Rice Ball, same as yesterday.
Yunhyeon glanced at the child and accepted the Rice Ball.
Just as before, the child sat across from him eating their own portion with relish, then left the room unhurriedly.
After that, Yunhyeon’s body recovered rapidly.
Though the instability in his Blood Meridians prevented him from circulating Qi, his external injuries steadily improved.
The child came to him every day, bringing Rice Balls and water, and occasionally presenting mysterious plants for him to consume.
He didn’t want to eat something whose nature he couldn’t identify, but he found himself unable to refuse.
The child watched until Yunhyeon had eaten it, and if he hesitated, the child tried to force-feed him.
A few times over.
Then Yunhyeon understood.
The abnormally rapid recovery of his body was due to the medicinal herbs the child kept bringing.
After that, Yunhyeon accepted everything the child offered him.
And so a month passed.
* * *
Yunhyeon often came out to the veranda to sit in the sunlight.
His Internal Injury remained severe, making Qi Circulation difficult, yet outwardly he bore no visible wounds—his appearance had become clean and unblemished.
During this month spent here, Yunhyeon had uncovered several facts.
First: the child lived alone.
This was the child’s home. The child occupied the room next to his—in other words, they were sharing a tiny house of barely two rooms.
Though he’d observed the house’s comings and goings throughout the month, only the child’s presence registered. There were no signs of the child’s parents or siblings.
Second: there was someone looking after the child.
The child didn’t cook.
Young children naturally couldn’t, but the real question was this: where did all the rice and snacks that appeared daily come from?
From his observations, someone brought food once a day.
That person never entered the house—they simply left a day’s worth of provisions in the yard and departed.
During this month, that person was the only visitor to the small dwelling.
And finally, third.
…….
Yunhyeon withdrew the book he’d been keeping in his robes.
The Black Heaven Technique.
This was a Demonic manual.
Not an ordinary cultivation method, but a meditation technique for accumulating Demonic Qi.
That this book had come from the child’s room meant only one thing.
‘The child is from the Demonic Sect.’
And that meant… this place was within the Demonic Sect’s domain, the Shiwan Great Mountains.
‘Was I spared because they don’t know who I am?’
Or was there some other purpose at work?
Since learning that this place belonged to the Demonic Sect and the child was one of its disciples, Yunhyeon had kept his guard raised.
‘The Demonic Sect. What is it, truly?’
Creatures of the Demonic kind that thirsted for blood.
Those who, in pursuit of strength and power alone, killed their own family without hesitation—lawless and treacherous to the core.
Beasts, really, hardly worthy of the name human, who sowed death wherever they went, driven by the instinct of the strong consuming the weak.
So….
‘There’s no telling when they might reveal their true nature.’
Pad. Pad.
Yunhyeon watched silently as the child entered the yard.
His gaze fixed on the Axe the child held in his hand.
Pad. Pad. Pad.
The child walked toward him.
With each step, the blade of the Axe swayed up and down.
“Grandfather.”
The child stopped before him.
So it comes.
Meeting the child’s gaze, which burned with a peculiar resolve, Yunhyeon summoned every ounce of his focus.
If a fight broke out here, he would do his best not to harm the child….
“How much longer do I have to feed and shelter you?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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