Heavenly Demon of the Huashan Sect - 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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Chapter 2
Four days had passed.
Time flowed like water, relentless and indifferent, yet my circumstances remained unchanged from before.
‘I never imagined I’d end up like this.’
My body’s condition was abysmal.
I’d widened my blood meridians with the energy that had entered me then, but that was only a temporary measure—it hadn’t fully healed this cursed body.
As a result, this wretched flesh wouldn’t even permit me to move a finger, let alone open my eyes.
Of course, I could have fixed it if I wanted.
But I deliberately refrained from taking any drastic action.
‘…Not yet.’
After all, what good would it do to wake up without understanding my situation?
‘Besides, now that I’ve heard the name Huashan sect, it wouldn’t be wise to move rashly.’
Fortunately, my mind remained sharp, and the sounds around me came through crystal clear.
Thanks to that, I gathered far more information than expected and managed to piece together what was happening.
‘They all called me Tianhu.’
I found it absurd at first.
Who was I?
Dokgo Guyeon, the Absolute Heavenly Demon.
I was the supreme being whose reputation echoed not only through the Tianma Singyeo and Tianshan, but through every corner of the Nine States and Eight Wastelands.
‘But Tianhu?’
If they’d called me that once or twice, I could have dismissed it.
But I couldn’t dismiss this.
They called me Tianhu every single day.
At first, I was confused.
Why were they calling me Tianhu?
And why was I in this state?
The more I pondered these questions, the more a single answer crystallized.
I was now Tianhu.
There was no other explanation.
‘I simply have to accept it.’
After accepting this, I organized my thoughts.
If my speculation was correct, the great technique had transplanted my soul into the empty shell left behind when the boy Tianhu’s soul departed.
‘Then the Eternal Immortal Sovereign Technique failed…?’
Irritation surged through me.
It was a technique into which I’d poured ten years of time and all my knowledge.
And it failed?
‘No, it couldn’t have failed.’
I recalled the moment it happened.
The Eternal Immortal Sovereign Technique activated, and a prismatic radiance beyond anything mortal enveloped me.
The technique proceeded flawlessly, exactly as written.
So how did this happen?
‘Could it be…!’
A thunderbolt struck my mind.
Perhaps “achieving eternal immortality” meant transferring one’s soul to inhabit another body….
‘That damned fool! You should have at least written down what would happen afterward!’
A curse escaped me unbidden.
Still, there was one saving grace.
I harbored no attachment to my past.
Not to fame, not to power.
Why else would I have relinquished the sect master’s position and abandoned the Tianma Singyeo so readily?
And immortality itself held no interest for me either.
Where there is birth, there is death.
I had only meant to follow the natural way of things.
My only regret was not witnessing all the martial arts under heaven.
But this?
This wretched situation didn’t sit well with me at all.
The Huashan sect? Was it the Huashan sect?
Those meddlesome dogs from the Nine Sects and Eight Clans who’d been pestering me forever?
And I was supposedly their disciple?
This was absurd beyond measure.
But there was no help for it.
The situation had already spiraled this far.
‘I need to learn about this Tianhu.’
From that day on, I held my breath and strained to gather information from every word that passed through the Medicine Hall.
Fortunately, most of the visitors were connected to Tianhu in some way, so information came in abundance.
By listening intently to their conversations and collecting details bit by bit, I managed to piece together a rough picture of the boy called Tianhu.
A child too young to have even reached the Foundation Establishment stage.
The youngest disciple of the late sage Hyeongang of the Huashan sect.
A pure-hearted, kind boy beloved by everyone in the Huashan sect.
These were all the words used to describe Tianhu.
And now they described me.
Pfft—
Someone once said that people laugh when something is too absurd to believe.
That was exactly how I felt.
Pure-hearted, kind, and beloved?
I had never heard such words in my entire life.
If anyone from the Tianma Singyeo said such things to me, my first instinct would be suspicion.
Of course, there was no one who would say such a thing.
‘The Tianhu they speak of is not me.’
Just as I finished these thoughts.
……
The faint voices that had drifted in from time to time suddenly ceased.
Following that, a spreading silence gradually consumed the entire Medicine Hall.
‘I’ve gathered enough useful information, so perhaps it’s time to make a move.’
I focused my mind and examined my body.
Sure enough, the condition inside was a complete disaster.
It would be a long way before the blood meridians could recover their strength, and the Twelve Primary Meridians through which qi and blood should circulate were completely clogged.
It would not have been strange to die at any moment.
Contrary to what Hyeongang had said four days ago—that I only needed to rest—my body was precariously balanced between death and life.
And that made sense.
No matter how much he had studied medicine, he could not have grasped the true nature of my condition.
All he had perceived was the blood meridians that had been expanded using the power of the Zisodan Pill.
Any other person would have concluded the same as he did—that Tianhu had stabilized.
‘Of course, if he had known the truth about this body, he might have noticed something amiss. But if he had known, he would never have left me alone all this time.’
As I examined my body, I discovered it.
The collapse was not due to fragility.
It was because of a bizarre severed meridian condition.
‘I never expected it to truly exist.’
It was back when I was deeply absorbed in the study of medicine.
I recalled a medical text I had found in a corner of the Tianma Library, covered in layers of pale dust.
The Greatest Medical Text Under Heaven.
The medical text with such a ridiculous title was the work of Saengsahwaeui, a charlatan physician who had practiced bizarre medicine in ages past.
Despite its grandiose name, the book was hardly a proper medical text at all.
It contained methods for efficiently creating corpse demons.
Theories on whether implanting a rotted limb would allow one to master the Skeleton Function, the martial art of corpse demons.
It was filled with human experiments that no true physician would ever conduct.
‘If you set aside that it was a medical text, it was actually quite fascinating.’
Still, despite being a work of a charlatan, it did have elements befitting a medical treatise.
It contained detailed descriptions of all manner of severed meridian conditions and body types that existed under heaven.
Through human experimentation, perhaps.
There existed constitutions that had never been heard of before.
Such as the Three Spirit Pure Yin Body, the Five Demon Body, the Imperishable Heavenly Strength Body, the Heavenly Killing Light-Shadow Meridian, and others.
At the time, I had thought the contents absurd and ridiculous, but now I could believe them.
No, I had to believe them.
Because this body of mine was one of those severed meridian conditions described in such detail.
The Yin-Yang Supreme Spirit Severed Meridian.
A constitution that had inherited both the yin essence of a hundred souls and the yang essence of a hundred souls at the same time.
The original young Daoist owner of this body must have endured the burden of that combined force with great difficulty.
Eventually, unable to bear it any longer, they had withered away and died.
‘And so my soul came to occupy the shell left behind when theirs departed.’
How it had come to this, he could foresee.
‘No point overthinking it. It’ll only get messier. Just fix the severed meridian first.’
If Saengsahwaeui had been here now, he would have scoffed outright.
―The Yin-Yang Supreme Spirit Severed Meridian is the most cursed of all severed meridians. How could a human possibly bear and process the yin and yang energies of a hundred souls on their own?
Even he, who had conducted every bizarre and unspeakable human experiment, had said there was no method for the Yin-Yang Supreme Spirit Severed Meridian.
Yet here was talk of fixing the constitution.
Saengsahwaeui would have dismissed it as utter nonsense, barely stifling a laugh.
‘That’s your thinking, though.’
Instead, he scoffed himself.
‘Of course, common fools like you would have failed, but I can manage it.’
He traced the currents of his body slowly.
Fortunately, the energy was abundant.
The power of the Zisodan Pill lay dormant in his blood meridians, unabsorbed.
Then…….
Thump―
Blood rushed rapidly through his entire body.
Along with it, his consciousness surged.
Whoooosh!
A colossal wave of internal power crashed through him.
It was startling.
Tianhu was a Daoist who had not trained in martial arts.
Yet such tremendous internal power was manifesting.
‘Just as I thought—it manifests even without cultivation.’
Such was the efficacy of the Absolute Sovereign Art.
Ordinary cultivation methods accumulated internal power in the Lower Dantian to be wielded, but the Absolute Sovereign Art departed from that conventional path.
Typically, a cultivation method stored internal power in the Lower Dantian, which was then controlled.
Therefore, it was natural that power and capability were determined by the amount of accumulated internal cultivation.
But the Absolute Sovereign Art shattered that framework.
The soul.
The soul was the vessel of the Absolute Sovereign Art.
Thus it could be awakened.
It appeared no different from other cultivation methods on the surface, but in that single distinction lay a fundamental difference in rank and quality.
And with his own exceptional talent added to it, the Absolute Sovereign Art had transformed into a supreme cultivation method that far transcended all the martial arts known throughout the world.
‘Since the vessel doesn’t rest in the Lower Dantian, I can command all Three Dantians.’
Crack―
The Baihui Point opened.
Through that opening, an indescribable force surged in like a vast sea, stirring the power of the Zisodan Pill that had lain dormant like death within his blood meridians.
Thump! Thump!
The Eight Extraordinary Meridians burst open.
The yin and yang energies of a hundred souls circulated through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and flowed into the Twelve Primary Meridians.
The Governing Vessel and Conception Vessel, along with the Penetrating Vessel, Belt Vessel, Yang Heel Vessel, Yin Heel Vessel, Yang Link Vessel, and Yin Link Vessel.
Every circulation unfolded naturally.
When the energies finally swept through all the Twelve Primary Meridians, it was finished.
* * *
Blink―
Eyes heavy as stone lifted open.
With a mind refreshed as though waking from a long sleep, he turned his neck.
Crack― crack―
The neck was still stiff to move, but compared to before, it was like being touched by an immortal’s hand.
Rising from the bed like that.
“…….”
The change registered instantly.
A noticeably lowered vantage point.
And a more delicate frame—hands and feet alike.
It was plain to see that he’d grown younger.
“Fourteen years old, you said, but it’s smaller than I imagined.”
A thin voice reached him without warning, and he touched his own throat.
Then he scratched the back of his head.
Standing idle like this and worrying endlessly wouldn’t solve anything.
What mattered now was to move forward.
“Let me see for myself first.”
I lifted my head and gazed out the window.
The morning sun, rising far in the distance, was finally burning away the thick darkness.
Tap. Tap.
I took slow, deliberate steps.
Walking through the still-shadowed interior for a moment, I spotted a closed door.
Without hesitation, I opened it.
Whoosh!
Pure white light assaulted my eyes.
“Ugh!”
I raised my hand against the brilliant glare.
Perhaps it was because I hadn’t seen light in so long.
My eyes stung the moment the light touched them.
After blinking several times,
I slowly
lowered my hand.
The pure white radiance began to take on color, and a breathtaking panorama unfolded before me.
Plum blossoms scattering on the wind.
Jagged peaks as if carved by a blade.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
It was utterly unlike the barren landscape I’d seen in the Tianshan range.
—Hah!
A sharp cry echoed from below, and I jerked my gaze downward.
There lay an enormous Training Ground.
And upon that ground, Daoists clad in robes embroidered with plum blossom patterns were wielding their blades with fierce energy.
“Damn it.”
I glared down at them with undisguised displeasure, then scratched my head roughly.
“So it really is Huashan.”
The Great Demon Sect Master, Absolute Heavenly Demon.
I—who had once made the Guzhou Bahuang tremble—had awakened as a disciple of the orthodox path, and of the Huashan sect no less, one of the Nine Sects and Eight Clans.

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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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