Reincarnation of the Blood Demon - Chapter 1

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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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Blood Demon Reborn
Episode 1
Blood Demon Reborn
The First Blood Demon.
Jeok Sa-hyeok of Blood Heaven.
An absolute master of the martial world from a distant age, and founder of the Blood Heaven Divine Cult, a demonic sect.
A supreme master whose name appeared without fail in any discussion of the greatest practitioners in martial history.
Yet so ruthless and depraved that his infamy rose to the heavens themselves.
Each morning he rinsed his throat with the blood of newborns; each evening he bathed his body in blood mixed with fragrant oils.
When boredom seized him, he would impale captured prisoners on stakes and watch them die, and whenever he conquered a city, he offered every soul within as sacrificial victims to dark powers.
Truly, a paragon of evil.
An unprecedented, absolute darkness that silenced even crying children.
Of course…….
“What the hell is this nonsense?”
Yet the man himself felt profoundly wronged.
* * *
Looking back, he harbored not a shred of regret about his life.
He had crushed all who strutted about as Sword Saints and sect leaders, ascending to supremacy among all under heaven.
He had proven that the Blood Heaven Divine Cult was the mightiest force in the world, and his unique martial art, the Demon Heaven Blood Sea Technique, was the supreme martial technique under heaven.
After pacifying the realm, he had married the treasured daughter of Heaven Demon, borne three sons and three daughters, and raised them well.
Thus he had lived out his natural span and closed his eyes peacefully before all his followers, content at last.
So Jeok Sa-hyeok, the Blood Demon, had died.
Or so it should have been.
But then…….
“……Obey the blood and return to your command, scarlet purification.”
What was this grating murmuring?
‘This is…… an incantation? For what purpose?’
And the moment he heard that chant,
Jeok Sa-hyeok suddenly became aware that his consciousness was being drawn rapidly toward some unknown place.
Whoosh——
He plummeted through endless, suffocating darkness at a speed beyond comprehension.
As if being transported from one world into another, a phenomenon transcending ordinary reality.
Throb.
At the same instant, a throbbing headache of staggering intensity crashed down upon him, and his skull throbbed as though it would split open.
‘What…….’
He was unmistakably a dead body, so pain ought to be impossible, yet there was no other way to describe what was happening.
“All that lives must perish, blood returns to its source.”
Still the chant continued to echo, and the pain intensified with each word.
It was no ordinary ache. Something foreign was being forcibly driven into him, as though a sharp, cutting blade were shredding not merely his brain but his very soul.
‘What in damnation is happening?’
Through his confusion came a new sound that scraped against his ears.
“Hngh, hhhnnngh……!”
It was the stifled sobs of children.
The violent shock that had struck his mind made it difficult to grasp what was unfolding.
Yet the confusion did not last as long as he might have expected.
“Burst flesh and bloom, blood ascends to heaven.”
That cursed chant continued to reverberate without mercy.
‘It has been a long while since I wanted to kill someone with nothing but their voice.’
Perhaps for that reason, his foggy consciousness sharpened, and reality realigned around him.
His awareness, which had seemed to be falling endlessly into some abyss, suddenly blazed with intensity as though arriving at its destination.
“Return to command, Blood Heaven! Sacrifice the self!”
At last the chant reached its crescendo.
“Enough. Someone’s trying to sleep here.”
Jeok Sa-hyeok opened his eyes, his brow furrowed in displeasure.
And what greeted his gaze was:
“You’ve awakened, Young Master! Let us complete the ritual at once!”
Grotesque figures beaming down at him, and children around fifteen years old trembling violently, their foreheads pressed to the ground in terror.
Each of the strange figures bore bizarre, ominous markings on their faces—drawn in blood, rendered in a dark crimson hue.
‘What the hell are these madmen.’
Jeok Sa-hyeok, cradling his throbbing head instead of responding, swept his gaze across the chamber.
A strange cave, its candles burning with an ominous glow. A ritual diagram drawn in blood. Children, bound and trembling with fear.
And reflected in the bronze mirror before him—the gaunt, skeletal face of an unfamiliar boy.
“What the hell…….”
The moment Jeok Sa-hyeok’s eyes narrowed in confusion, incomprehensible scenes flickered through his mind like a lantern show.
─Yoon-hui. You worthless wretch. Why not simply take your own life?
─The Third Son? What value is there in entertaining such a defective specimen?
─How did such a flawed thing ever come to be born…….
A sickly-looking boy trembling at the edge of desperation, and the sharp gazes and cutting remarks directed toward him.
Most of them were far from pleasant memories.
And the unfamiliar scenes flowed past as swiftly as they had appeared, reaching their final whisper.
─Third Son, if you undergo the ritual, you can be cured. I stake my reputation on it.
A proposal reeking of sinister intent from a man whose malice was barely concealed.
The cornered boy cautiously nodded his head, and with that,
the strange scene that had echoed through his mind vanished.
Though the situation was utterly bewildering, Jeok Sa-hyeok, who had witnessed it all, could understand.
‘This…….’
These were the memories of this body’s original owner.
“Live long enough and you’ll experience things you never thought possible.”
Unbelievable as it was, this was undeniably real.
He was not someone who could confuse reality and illusion.
Soon, Jeok Sa-hyeok, having accepted the situation, let out a short laugh.
“So I’ve been reincarnated.”
True to those words, the name of this body that now opened its eyes was not the First Blood Demon Jeok Sa-hyeok, but rather Jeok Yoon-hui, Third Son of the current Blood Heaven Divine Cult Master.
Born with an unusual constitution that indiscriminately absorbed all the energies of heaven and earth—the Absorbing Star Blood Aid Constitution—his meridians had naturally sealed, and he was merely counting down the days until death.
Lacking any foundation compared to the other princes, he was treated openly as a cripple within the sect.
And those very men had coaxed such a wretch with promises to cure his constitution, brought him to this isolated mountain cave, and now conducted this human sacrifice ritual.
‘Whether it succeeded or not, I couldn’t say.’
In any case, he had been revived like this, so nothing else mattered.
To briefly summarize this absurd situation: this was what had happened.
He had certainly died at the end of his natural lifespan, yet now he had been granted another chance at life.
Leaping across five hundred years of time.
‘All things change in this world, they say…….’
But the direction of that change had gone terribly wrong.
It seemed his Blood Heaven Divine Cult had degenerated quite thoroughly over these five centuries.
Those men’s very proposal to cure the Third Son was nothing but human sacrifice.
This was not his way.
“Young Master, has something been troubling you since…….”
“My descendants do some remarkably stupid things.”
Even in life, the Blood Heaven Divine Cult had not truly been classified among the Righteous Sects, but there were still principles.
The Blood Heaven Divine Cult he had founded followed the logic of strength, but it never engaged in the petty depravity of draining the blood of the weak.
Soon, the corners of Jeok Sa-hyeok’s lips curved upward in red.
“And yet those who call themselves Blood Heaven Divine Cult followers dare conduct human sacrifice within the sect’s domain?”
“……!”
In an instant, the atmosphere in the gathering froze solid.
The captured children opened their eyes wide in shock, while the shaman who had first spoken to Jeok Sa-hyeok furrowed his brow before smoothing it just as quickly and spoke.
“……Third Son. What do you mean by that? Human sacrifice? Haven’t I told you repeatedly? This isn’t human sacrifice, but rather──.”
The Third Son had already grasped everything.
‘That fool, for all his appearances, is still just a boy.’
The shaman had been about to coax and soothe him as he always did.
“Be quiet.”
But there was something he had overlooked.
“At least judge your audience before you wag that tongue.”
The Third Son standing before him was no longer the one he had known.
And this changed Third Son was not someone whom three inches of honeyed words could sway.
“……Pardon?”
The bewildered shaman narrowed his eyes, but Jeok Sa-hyeok’s gaze was fixed elsewhere.
“Listen here. You little……no, you brats.”
The children, trembling in terror, startled and looked toward Jeok Sa-hyeok.
Jeok Sa-hyeok spoke briefly.
“Close your eyes.”
The words sounded genuinely ominous, so the shaman swallowed hard and retreated.
“Third Young Master, what have you been—”
Snap.
Jeok Sa-hyeok’s hand had somehow moved through the gaps in the ritual space itself, coming to rest against the shaman’s nape in an instant.
“That’s right. You wanted to kill me from the start.”
“…!”
In that fleeting moment, the shaman’s eyes flew wide.
The instincts and senses of a human facing death heighten to their peak. In that fraction of a second, he took in everything around him.
“Master shaman—”
The guard warriors nearby lunged forward in shock.
The children of various ages standing rigid, their eyes squeezed shut and ears blocked as instructed.
Then all that backdrop blurred in an instant…
Crack!
Jeok Sa-hyeok’s hand tore savagely at the shaman’s throat.
A choking sound—
With nothing but the rasp of escaping breath for a final word, the shaman collapsed and expired.
“Your guards show remarkable incompetence.”
Jeok Sa-hyeok, his face spattered with blood, laughed as he looked at the horrified warriors.
“All of you kneel. Unless you wish to die.”
* * *
“Impressive.”
Jeok Sa-hyeok, perched atop something dark, scratched his scalp with his sword-tip before releasing a heavy sigh.
“A truly spectacular mess.”
Having assessed the situation and peered through the third young master’s memories into the current state of the Blood Heaven Divine Cult, he found it far worse than expected.
He’d recognized the dire straits from the moment he found himself in this ridiculous predicament, but nothing—absolutely nothing—was sound.
Rather than polishing their martial arts, they’d devoted themselves entirely to every vile and wicked sorcery imaginable, until they’d become nothing more than a proper pseudo-religious cult.
Compared even to orthodox Demonic Sects, they were ranked as exceptionally savage; the Blood Heaven Divine Cult had become something entirely different from its early days.
‘At least the current cult master forbids some of the most vicious sorceries, so things have quieted somewhat…’
Perhaps that was why the shaman hadn’t openly conducted human sacrifice but had made some pretense of concealment.
Of course, judging by how he’d approached the third young master to perform sorcery, it seemed such rituals still occurred in the shadows.
“I suppose that’s what comes from naming it the Blood Heaven Divine Cult.”
Back then, his subordinates had even questioned why he’d chosen such an inauspicious name, asking why he didn’t simply call it something ordinary like the Iron Blood Gate instead.
‘At the time, it seemed like a decent idea…’
He’d heard pseudo-religious sects made excellent money, and had wanted to try his hand at playing cult master.
So he’d borrowed a bit from the names of those flourishing Heaven Demon Divine Cult fellows.
At the time, it had been a decision made without much thought, and he’d never anticipated it would snowball into something this enormous.
People say that a name carries power befitting it, and it seemed to be true. The power that settled into this name was profoundly malevolent.
So malevolent, in fact, that even his own name as the founder had become shrouded in infamy.
“If I’d known it would come to this, I should have named it something like the Alliance of Justice instead.”
Then perhaps he’d be remembered as a legendary benefactor rather than a demonic sage of the highest order?
Of course, the problems didn’t end there.
Gulp.
Jeok Yoon-hui suppressed the rising blood with effort, his eyes narrowing.
‘All this from just a brief exertion…’
It was true he’d overextended his sickly frame.
Yet from that mere moment of movement, his heart was already thundering as if it might burst, and every muscle in his body screamed in agony.
“There’s a mountain of things to fix. Starting with this wretched body of mine.”
Jeok Sa-hyeok, frustrated, idly twirled the confiscated ritual dagger, and with each movement, the armrest of the chair he sat upon trembled.
The chair was none other than the shaman’s guard warrior.
The warrior remained prostrate, continuously drenched in cold sweat.
‘This madman, what’s he been muttering about by himself?’
The incomprehensible mutterings continued, and they were genuinely unsettling.
Of course, the trained warrior’s sturdy arms should have had no trouble bearing the weight of a sickly boy.
But the reason he trembled so violently was simple: every other warrior was dead.
‘How is this possible? He was a cripple who couldn’t even properly master martial arts.’
It hadn’t been overwhelming force and inner energy that killed them all.
With merely bizarre, inexplicable movements, the third young master had exploited their blind spots and carved through his comrades in a heartbeat.
Every attack from the third young master had touched death itself.
He’d only survived by surrendering immediately.
When the warrior squeezed his eyes shut—
“Is this right? Is this the proper Blood Heaven way?”
As Jeok Sa-hyeok spoke, he glanced downward, and the guard warrior startled, stammering his reply.
“N-no, sir.”
“If you knew it was wrong, you shouldn’t have done it. What crime did those children commit? Isn’t that so?”
“I apologize, sir.”
As the guard warrior trembled and bowed his head again, Jeok Sa-hyeok questioned him.
“What kind of ritual was it, exactly?”
“As I said, to transform the constitution——”
“Don’t lie to me.”
At Jeok Sa-hyeok’s icy voice, the guard warrior’s complexion turned ashen.
Finally, he answered in a faint voice.
“I only heard it was a type of Spirit Summoning Ritual. That the bloodline of a Blood Demon was absolutely necessary——”
The moment his earlier suspicion became reality.
Jeok Sa-hyeok nodded.
“If it had succeeded, what would have happened to me?”
“That is… that would have——”
Unable to finish, the guard warrior fell silent, and Jeok Sa-hyeok smiled coldly in his stead.
“I would have vanished. That phantom summoned by the spirit art would have seized this empty vessel in my place.”
For that was precisely what had occurred to him now.
Of course, his situation differed slightly—his consciousness had possessed the third son before the ritual could properly complete—but from the guard warrior’s expression, it seemed his guess was closer to truth than not.
‘What became of the original heir?’
As Jeok Sa-hyeok brooded over this with an unsettled expression, the guard warrior pressed his forehead to the ground, pleading in his pallid state.
“P-please spare me. I only did as I was ordered.”
His voice trembled with terror. Jeok Sa-hyeok nodded as if in understanding.
“Yes, I understand. A subordinate cannot defy his superior’s command. After all, your own life would be forfeit if you did.”
“Yes, yes! Exactly——”
Just as hope began to brighten the guard warrior’s expression at the third son’s peculiar tone.
Jeok Sa-hyeok stilled the dagger he’d been twirling and spoke.
“But here’s the thing, my friend. That’s your problem.”
Whether ordered or not, he had already participated in human sacrifice.
In other words, he had bared his fangs at Jeok Sa-hyeok.
And if that were the case.
“He must answer for it.”
“……!”
The guard warrior’s eyes flew wide as the third son’s atmosphere abruptly shifted.
Driven by nothing but survival instinct, he raised his head and cried out.
“It was all arranged by Jeok Sa-bang Master! Please, I’ll lead you to him!”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Having already absorbed the third son’s memories, he knew everything worth knowing.
For instance, as the man had said, those who orchestrated the human sacrifice belonged to the Red Snake House, one of many sects within the Blood Heaven Divine Cult’s domain.
It was Jeok Sa-bang Master who had first proposed the scheme to the third son, and the Shaman had been procured by him as well.
“P-please! I’ll tell you anything!”
“Then take that message to King Yama instead.”
As the guard warrior’s face drained of color, realizing his fate was sealed.
Jeok Yoon-hui reversed his grip on the dagger.
“I already know where Jeok Sa-bang Master is, after all——”
There was no reason to keep this useless life any longer.
“N-no——”
——Thuck!
Jeok Sa-hyeok—or rather, Jeok Yoon-hui—drove the dagger clean through the guard warrior’s heart and rose to his feet with a satisfied expression.

“It’s been so long since I came home.”
His footsteps carried no hesitation as he left the chamber.
“Perhaps I should do some cleaning.”

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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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