Reincarnation of the Blood Demon - Chapter 31

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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 Reincarnation
Chapter 31
Bang!
“……Is there no Altar we can reach?”
A situation verging on the grotesque.
Heo Jin, Sect Master of the Hwanhon Sect, asked with a rigidly set expression.
A single Sect Disciple serving as messenger knelt and answered.
“Yes, Sect Master. We sent the signal at once, but no one responds. There are no signs of damage to the Illusion Magic Formation either.”
Heo Jin let out a thin breath.
The formation stood intact, yet the people had vanished.
‘They were already inside the formation. Or someone let them in. Is there a traitor among us?’
He furrowed his brow, murmuring to himself.
“If something’s gone wrong with the mechanism……no, that can’t be it.”
The danger was far too clear to dismiss as mere coincidence.
And when he considered the Altars that had gone silent……
‘Someone is coming. Toward the center. Directly.’
But who, exactly?
Yet the truly terrifying fact lay elsewhere.
“Why is the speed……”
An Elder’s voice, uncomprehending. And he was right.
The rate at which the lights symbolizing the Vessels at each Altar were extinguishing. That speed.
“……is accelerating.”
As though the earlier Altars were being consumed as fuel.
Faced with an impossibility, Heo Jin’s words escaped his lips without force.
“What in the heavens is coming……?”
* * *
An Altar laid to waste, as if struck by a Lightning Bullet.
“Survivors?”
“……”
“Survivors.”
“P-please……spare me……”
Jeok Un-hwi, having asked curtly, snapped the throat of the necromancer he held.
Crack.
The sound of vertebrae shattering.
Immediately, the corpse withered to a husk, and Jeok Un-hwi cast the necromancer aside like refuse, then moved forward.
* * *
Flicker.
Another branch Altar’s light extinguished.
Heo Jin rose from his seat to shake off the revulsion crawling down his spine.
“At once—declare emergency status to all Sect Disciples. Muster the rear forces and activate the Soul Gate Forbidden Lock Formation.”
“Understood, Sect Master.”
Elders and Disciples scattered to their tasks.
Watching them, Heo Jin spoke with grave resolve.
“Remember this. The safety of the Vessel must be our absolute priority.”
With that, Heo Jin gazed at the Vessel at the center of the Altar.
The enormous Vessel, half-filled with blood. Even now, blood continued to accumulate drop by drop.
The Vessels at each branch were transmitting the accumulated Blood Essence they held to the center.
‘……Not much longer now.’
Thinking thus, Heo Jin squinted at the Stone Tablet.
The flickering lights of the Vessels seemed ready to die out at any moment.
* * *
A forest Altar.
The Vessel that had held the sacrifice’s blood lay shattered beyond recognition.
The Hwanhon Sect Martial Artists who had blocked the way stood withered like mummies, scattered across the ground.
The Altar itself was engulfed in roaring flames.
And.
Jeok Un-hwi walked.
His face expressionless, forward.
* * *
Flicker.
“……Summon all forces from the northern branch at once. Leave the Vessel for now. Securing the front line comes first.”
“But if we do that, the ritual…….”
“Is this really the time for such talk?”
The Elder who had raised the objection fell silent at the Sect Master’s irritable tone.
“We have time. We can rebuild.”
Like a lightning bolt from a clear sky, the crisis had forced the Sect Master to reassure himself with these words, murmuring them as if under hypnosis.
* * *
“You! Stop! Don’t go any further──.”
Snap!
A black projectile shot from the man’s fingertip pierced clean through the forehead of the Hwanhon Sect disciple who’d been shouting the warning.
Jeok Un-hwi turned to the frozen disciples, his voice cold and measured.
“Any survivors among the sacrifices?”
“…….”
“Does the Main Headquarters lie straight ahead?”
He posed the question, but no answer came. Not so much ignored as it was that his overwhelming presence kept them from finding their voices.
“Fine. It’ll be the same anyway.”
This exchange had been repeated too many times already.
Nothing would change.
Jeok Un-hwi slung his sword across his shoulder at an angle, asking casually.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming?”
* * *
Flicker.
Another signal—the Vessel at the Altar had been destroyed.
The Hwanhon Sect’s leadership stared at the Stone Tablet in silence.
“……Breached?”
Someone murmured vacantly.
Every Hwanhon Sect disciple held in reserve was mobilized to stop the unknown beast.
Nearly half of all sect disciples had been deployed, a decision made only after accounting for the Blood Essence lost from the Vessels at each Altar.
Yet it had still been breached.
And that was not the end.
Flicker.
Flicker.
Flicker.
The Stone Tablet’s lights extinguishing in rapid succession.
The beast showed no signs of slowing. If anything, it was tearing through each Altar far faster than before.
Even accounting for casualties among their forces, the speed was absurd.
This was catastrophic. So few barriers remained between it and the Central Altar.
‘Just one left.’
The number of gates standing between it and the Central Altar.
The Sect Master looked toward his side, his face hardened with tension.
“Great Elder. Take all remaining forces and crush it.”
The man who nodded at that command had a massive scar carved across his right eye.
His expression stern, he bowed in acknowledgment.
“I will return shortly, Sect Master.”
Jin Wi-hon, Great Elder of the Hwanhon Sect.
A master who had trained in the sect’s secret technique, the Phantom Soul Ghost Suppression Grand Method, to its very pinnacle.
He was the core powerhouse of the Hwanhon Sect, second only to the Sect Master himself.
With the Sect Master forced to defend the Central Altar, Jin Wi-hon was the most formidable card still in play.
“Surely, if it’s the Great Elder…….”
“There should be no problem.”
The other Elders, their faces etched with tension, nodded in relief.
The Great Elder they had known was the most trustworthy of them all.
“Then.”
Bearing the weight of everyone’s hopes, Great Elder Jin Wi-hon departed with his disciples, striding forth with commanding presence.
* * *
Thud, roll——
Something tumbled forward. The Sect Master and the Elders stared at it with stricken faces.
It was the severed head of a middle-aged man, withered and gaunt as old wood.
His expression twisted grotesquely, as if he’d confronted something unspeakable.
Had it not been for the massive scar running across his right eye, they would not have recognized him at all.
“…….”
Heo Jin blinked, his face drained of color.
The beast that had hurled the Elder’s head was approaching from the distance.
“Not quite who you were hoping for? I can see the disappointment in everyone’s eyes.”
Remarkably, a boy no more than eight or nine years old.
His martial robes, soaked in blood from countless brutal clashes on the way here, clung to him in tatters, and across his exposed skin—his face, his hands—black veins writhed grotesquely.
Yet despite all these terrible marks, his eyes alone burned with a blood-red luminescence that eclipsed everything else.
“……Who in the world are you?”
Heo Jin furrowed his brow and asked.
He truly could not comprehend this.
What he had anticipated was either a vast army from some hostile faction or a supreme master of Elder rank.
He had never imagined a child appearing as such a beast.
‘Could it be a Half-Demon Transformation……?’
His thoughts written plainly across his face, Jeok Un-hwi let out a soft laugh and spoke.
“How disappointing. We’ve met before.”
“What?”
At those words, Heo Jin’s eyes, which had been studying Jeok Un-hwi intently, widened in shock.
“……Surely not the Third Young Master?”
Jeok Un-hwi did not answer directly, but Heo Jin was already certain, stunned by the recognition. It was a face he remembered.
Or rather, it was quite different from the face in his memory, which made it all the more shocking.
“How did you……?”
As befitted the Sect Master’s own blood, the Third Young Master had appeared at public functions often enough. Heo Jin, as one of the sect’s finest, had crossed paths with him several times before.
But this was not that sullen, cowering boy he had known then.
Even after the fierce battles, his posture and gait were perfectly upright, and the intensity burning in his eyes was unrivaled by anyone.
‘I heard he had unified Namhwa County……’
Yet to appear before him in such a shocking state was beyond expectation.
“……Why are you attacking the Main Headquarters?”
He still could not understand. Aside from that impossible power, this was the Third Young Master—he who had been shut away in his Separate Palace all this time.
It was inconceivable that he, for all his busy years, had ever formed any enmity with him.
Of course, Jeok Un-hwi cared nothing for such questions.
“It’s always the same.”
“……?”
“Knowing full well there’s a crisis, yet dragging feet. So afraid of losing just a little more, you end up inviting disaster anyway.”
Jeok Un-hwi muttered in a flat voice.
“You should have committed fully from the start.”
Then a situation like this would never have come to pass.
“But ending it like this doesn’t feel quite satisfying either.”
To Heo Jin, whose pale face was now twisted in distress, Jeok Un-hwi spoke as if granting a favor.
“Your strength lies in Necromancy Art, doesn’t it? Formations especially. I’ll give you a chance.”
“What……”
“Whether Illusion Magic Formations or any other formation—prepare with all your might. I’ll wait.”
“……!”
Heo Jin’s rigid expression twisted into confusion.
‘Is he serious? Those words make no sense.’
To speak such arrogance against a sect as great as the Hwanhon Sect was absurd beyond measure.
Yet this Third Young Master now stood before him, having already defeated so many disciples and the Elder himself.
That sheer, outrageous confidence somehow rang true.
Heo Jin fell silent for a moment.
‘The Elder and disciples may have fallen, but we are not finished.’
He himself remained, the supreme master, and the other Elders were gathered here as well.
It was still hard to believe that the Third Young Master alone had defeated the disciples and the Elder, but the forces in the central Altar were formidable in their own right.
‘He too must be exhausted. If worst comes to worst, “that method” remains available.’
Of course, using it would render all the effort so far worthless, but one had to survive first.
‘If, as he says, the Hwanhon Sect’s forbidden formation techniques can be deployed……’
Even if an Elder from the main temple arrived, they would not come away unscathed.
“……You’re not trying to trick me, are you?”
Heo Jin looked at Jeok Un-hwi, conflicted, but the boy simply closed his eyes as if bored—a gesture of utter dismissal.
A complete and thorough disregard for his opponent.
His face flushing with an indescribable shame, Heo Jin nevertheless turned to command the Elders.
“Deploy the Soul Gate Forbidden Lock Formation.”
The forbidden technique of the Hwanhon Sect—the Soul Gate Forbidden Lock Formation.
A finicky formation that transformed a radius of dozens of paces into treacherous ground where even a single step became difficult.
In the current situation, there was no better choice.
“Quickly!”
At the Sect Master’s urging, the Elders scattered hastily in all directions, weaving their hand seals.
From the pillars positioned throughout the Altar, a sinister black Aura began to rise, and the strange lines drawn on the ground flickered with ominous light.
The formation took considerable time to complete, yet Jeok Un-hwi remained motionless with his eyes closed, as if he truly intended to wait through it all.
‘Arrogance beyond measure. And I’ve lived because of it!’
Just as the Sect Master, whose expression had been grim throughout, was about to laugh in triumph, his face went rigid.
‘…Wait.’
Something was wrong.
The Sect Master was a seasoned Martial Artist. Naturally, he had ample experience in combat.
And so, though late, he could still perceive it.
‘His Aura…?’
Just before the formation completed, his opponent’s Aura had shifted.
Whether it was mere fancy, the air around them felt distinctly colder.
Even the instincts of a Martial Artist who had survived centuries were ringing alarm bells.
Piecing together the signs, every thread pointed to one conclusion.
‘…A trap!’
The Sect Master cried out urgently.
“Attack him now──!”
“Wrong.”
But Jeok Un-hwi’s eyes opened first.
“Too late.”
With a contemptuous whisper, Jeok Un-hwi spread his left hand, aiming it forward.
His right hand steadied the wrist firmly.
And then.
“Boom!”
A Qi Cannon Projectile erupted, sweeping through everything in sight.

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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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