My Father Is the Number One Under Heaven - Chapter 164

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

Episode 164. Cutting Through the Demon’s World, and
The surroundings had grown impossibly dark.
From all directions, grotesque laughter echoed.
It was the sort of bone-chilling sound that would freeze an ordinary person solid.
A succession of images so unsettling one might wonder if this were hell itself.
Literally, a seething world of demons lay before his eyes.
This was a transcendent power that only those who had reached the realm of the Twelve Supremes—beings called the absolute masters of an era—could manifest.
As such, it was undoubtedly an absolute realm rarely glimpsed anywhere else.
Yeo Un-hwi turned his head slowly, eyes widened.
At that reaction, Gok Cheonhu smiled.
That response.
It convinced him utterly that he had already seized victory.
“You’ve had quite the run, haven’t you.”
Gok Cheonhu twisted the corners of his mouth and raised both hands.
“Today I’ll show you there is another sky above the one you know.”
The moment those words ended, grotesque demon forms materialized from all directions.
Demons blanketed the very heavens, their fangs bared toward Yeo Un-hwi alone.
“Welcome to my world! Let’s see how long you can endure here, where everything becomes your enemy!”
Keeeeeeek!
As if answering Gok Cheonhu’s words, the demons released an ear-splitting shriek.
An absolute multitude facing a single existence.
It was as though the entire world had turned against Yeo Un-hwi alone.
The oppressive weight of one world seeking to annihilate a single being was the sort that no ordinary person could withstand.
True to form, under that tremendous pressure, Yeo Un-hwi appeared rigid, unable to move or flinch.
He merely stared at the world besieged by demons, his eyes wide.
Watching Yeo Un-hwi—who seemed to have frozen in terror—Gok Cheonhu cried out with unbridled confidence.
“Krahaha! So confident a moment ago, yet now you’re stiff as stone—a sight to behold!”
Naturally.
How desperate would solitude be in such a world?
And yet,
“…So the entire world has become my enemy, it seems.”
Yeo Un-hwi, who had been quietly surveying his surroundings, his expression easing, suddenly let out a quiet laugh.
Laughing?
Gok Cheonhu’s face twitched.
Regardless, Yeo Un-hwi continued.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that.”
“What nonsense do you speak!”
“I mean I’m very familiar with such situations.”
Living as a single existence facing the entire world.
Could anything be more familiar to Yeo Un-hwi than this?
Before his regression, his life had been an endless succession of such circumstances.
So there was no reason to fear facing such a situation anew.
“Ha!”
At Yeo Un-hwi’s response, Gok Cheonhu let out a scoff.
This world was one he had created.
It meant there was nothing such bravado could accomplish here.
For him not to grasp the true nature of his situation.
The man was nothing but a fool blind to his own circumstances.
“Madman, you certainly do pour effort into spouting drivel. Fine, then!”
Gok Cheonhu’s eyes blazed to life.
Cheonji Amhon Gok.
Keeeeeeek!
The demons’ laughter grew deafening, as if tearing eardrums asunder.
Loud enough to strip away reason from those who heard it.
Had he been an ordinary person, he would have lost consciousness on the spot and not endured for a moment.
This was Gok Cheonhu’s mental world, after all.
His power unfolded here, amplified many times over.
The murderous aura flowing from his entire being choked the breath away.
“I shall end you in one stroke.”
Gok Cheonhu had no desire to prolong his confrontation with Yeo Un-hwi.
He had no time to entertain such bluster.
No matter how formidable Yeo Un-hwi’s martial prowess might be—strong enough to stand against all the Sipma Seong—the moment he entered this place, he was as good as dead.
No one had ever escaped this Mental World alive.
“Let’s end this. Die screaming in torment like the damned.”
He had much work ahead of him.
Once he won recognition from the Cheonma through Wi Seol-rin and claimed those things for himself, he would restructure Cheonma Singyeo and begin his true march toward supremacy in the demonic realm.
Gok Cheonhu raised his hand slowly toward the sky.
Shriek! Shriek!
With each gesture, demons erupted in seething masses, the red sky turning black and back again, over and over.
A sight as though heralding the world’s end.
Then, pointing his finger at Yeo Un-hwi, his eyes blazing crimson,
he unleashed the Asura Yukhon Janbaek Myeolgyeop So.
Tens of thousands of demons crashed down upon Yeo Un-hwi.
There was no conceivable way to withstand such overwhelming numbers.
Shriek! Shriek!
In an instant, Yeo Un-hwi’s body vanished beneath the teeming mass of demons.
“Ahahaha!”
Gok Cheonhu threw back his head in triumphant laughter.
That wretch’s flesh and soul alike would be shredded and devoured.
Formidable though his martial power was, this was the limit of his reach.
It had always been his destiny to meet death by Gok Cheonhu’s hand.
But he could not have known.
The martial arts Yeo Un-hwi had mastered were precisely those that consumed demons.
Crack!
A colossal bolt of golden lightning tore down from the red sky.
Straight into the place where Yeo Un-hwi lay buried.
“What in the—!”
Gok Cheonhu’s eyes went wide with disbelief.
Shriek!
The demons struck by the golden bolt shrieked and dissolved into nothingness.
Gok Cheonhu froze.
He could not believe it.
A phenomenon he did not understand, occurring in this Mental World where he reigned supreme.
He was the master here.
Surely he had to be.
Yet what was this situation?
Unable to make sense of it, Gok Cheonhu’s mind churned in confusion.
‘If such a thing is even possible….’
The opponent would need to be at least his equal—or his superior—in manifesting this Mental World.
But that could not be!
Even as Gok Cheonhu denied what unfolded before his eyes, darkness suddenly engulfed everything.
The red sky vanished. The demons’ laughter ceased.
All that remained was an abyss of absolute darkness.
“Gasp!”
It felt like a nightmare.
Then,
a deep, distant growl echoed forth.
From somewhere in the dark, a colossal beast was calling.
Then, from the shadow itself, two enormous golden eyes emerged.
And what took shape was a towering golden dragon.
At the creature’s overwhelming presence, Gok Cheonhu’s breath caught.
‘This is…!’
Yes, this scene!
Gok Cheonhu had faced this before.
Days ago, in a nightmare—and in that dream, he had surely…!
“Don’t be absurd!”
Denying his own end, Gok Cheonhu drew upon every shred of power he possessed and tore open a gateway.
The red sky and the demons’ laughter surged back into view around him.
Even if Heaven itself has decreed it—I, Gok Cheonhu, the Demon Emperor, have walked the path of defiance all my life! I will never bend to its will!
His eyes turned completely white.
And then,
the Daeyeokcheon Gusa,
his ultimate Jeolgi—which had brought down every rival he’d ever faced, including his own father, the former Demonic Sect Master and previous Sect Leader Gok Cheongang, who had been descending into madness—finally revealed itself.
Nine white serpents raised their heads in unison.
It was unmistakably a power that surpassed even Gok Cheongang’s Daecho Geuk Hyeol Sa from before.
“Indeed, the serpent’s offspring is a serpent.”
A merciless serpent who had devoured even his own father and made him a living weapon.
Could there be anything more evil than that in this world?
Yet the power of Gok Cheonhu, the Paragon of Ruin, was unmistakably that of a true Mu-wi, befitting one of the Twelve Supremes.
Gazing at the nine white serpents that reared their heads toward the heavens as if to swallow the entire world, Yeo Un-hwi found himself seized by a sudden thought.
‘Why, in the end….’
Why had this man, possessed of such strength, spent his life killing others, stealing from them, and using them?
Why?
But then Yeo Un-hwi shook his head.
What good would it do to dwell on that now?
All that mattered was this: if such evil existed, then Yeo Un-hwi would live by protecting his people from it.
That was all the certainty he needed—that the two of them could never draw breath beneath the same sky.
Crack.
In that moment, Yeo Un-hwi straightened his path once more.
Here and now, he would end one of the great evils that had plagued this world.
With that resolve hardened in his heart, his energy poured forth from every limb.
A colossal golden dragon surged skyward.
And then,
the heavens rumbled with a deafening roar.
From the sky through which the dragon had ascended, a massive bolt of golden lightning came crashing down upon the blade Yeo Un-hwi held aloft.
Crack-snap-hiss!
In an instant, Yeo Un-hwi’s blade became as lightning itself, illuminating the seething realm of demons with brilliant clarity.
At the sight, Gok Cheonhu’s face twisted in agony.
“Grraaahhh! Die!”
He poured forth every ounce of his strength.
The nine colossal white serpents lunged at Yeo Un-hwi from all sides.
Their fangs bared wide.
Shriek! Shriek-shriek-shriek!
In that moment,
the Myeolma Mujik Do,
Yeo Un-hwi brought his blade sweeping down.
Whoooosh!
With a single stroke, the nine white serpents and Gok Cheonhu’s world alike were severed in two.
A cataclysmic roar!
The end of a vast realm.
The seething demonic world was obliterated.
And then,
thud, thud-thud, thud-thud-thud.
Gok Cheonhu’s body, now split in half, fell to the ground.
He never so much as uttered a final cry—death simply claimed him in that moment.
For one of the Twelve Supremes, the Master of Cheonma Singyeo, the absolute sovereign known as the Paragon of Ruin, his end was pitifully, wretchedly insignificant.
Beyond Gok Cheonhu’s corpse, now cold upon the ground, the ruins of Cheonma Singyeo stretched out before Yeo Un-hwi’s eyes, swept clean of all structures.
More than half the main compound had been utterly destroyed by his hand.
How could all of this—all of it—have been wrought by a single man?
Without witnessing it directly, no one would ever readily believe such a thing.
In that moment,
the blade crumbled to dust.
Yeo Un-hwi’s sword, which he had been holding, disintegrated into powder.
Perhaps it could not endure the weight of his own power.
“Exhale.”
Yeo Un-hwi turned his hand lightly and released a quiet breath.
It was finished now.
Today, with his own hands, he had killed the Sipma Seong and the Sect Master—the very pinnacle of Cheonma Singyeo’s strength.
It had been a day stained with far too much blood.
Yet for all that, not a trace of regret lingered in his heart.
But just then,
A figure glided forward.
A woman approached.
She was clearly one of the women who had been cowering before the sect leader when Yeo Un-hwi first arrived.
Her robes set her apart from the others—she bore the unmistakable bearing of their highest authority.
Yet without warning, she bowed deeply before Yeo Un-hwi.
What?
Her unexpected gesture left Yeo Un-hwi tilting his head in confusion.
Perhaps she was offering thanks for being rescued?
That was as far as his thoughts had ventured.
And yet—
“The Divine Maiden greets the Cheonma.”
The other priestesses in the chamber, following her lead, all turned toward him and bowed in unison.
“We greet the Cheonma!”
…What?
The abruptness of it sent confusion flooding across Yeo Un-hwi’s face.
“Wait, what in the—”
Yeo Un-hwi had no way of knowing.
Above his head, the Heavenly Path had begun radiating brilliant golden light.
This was a turn of events he had not foreseen in the slightest.
They’re calling me the Cheonma?
It was without doubt the most startling moment since his return.

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