Reincarnation of the Blood Demon - Chapter 34

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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 34
My Heart
Extreme violence swallows even sensation itself.
And so, paradoxically, the space had fallen silent.
The Hwanhun Mun Master blinked, confronting the world anew.
…….
Crimson.
Everything he saw was red.
As if the entire world had fractured, savage lacerations were carved across every visible surface.
Yes—even the empty void itself.
He understood perfectly what this meant.

‘The Formation Barrier has been torn.’

The external shell he’d created to evade the Crown Prince’s gaze.
The Formation Barrier and defensive barrier deployed by Hwanhun Sect with full force—shredded in a single move by the Third Prince.
Then.
Crackle-crackle-crackle—
With the sound of something solid shattering, the fractures in the void began spreading at frightening speed.
Burst!
A sharp, intense sound, and the fragments of emptiness scattered into pieces.
The fragments that fell to the ground faded away as if they had never existed.
Once the barrier collapsed, what lay revealed was a peaceful forest landscape.
No blood-soaked Formation Barrier, no ominous stone altar—just the sort of ordinary forest you’d see anywhere.
Chirp-chirp……
From somewhere far away came the sound of insects singing, and at that same moment, the Hwanhun Mun Master crumpled, falling to his knees.
Like the barrier itself, his upper body was covered in ragged, torn lacerations.
By all rights, he should have been dead already.
Yet the fact that the Third Prince—who had ripped apart even Hwanhun Sect’s secret techniques and barriers—had not slaughtered him outright made no sense.

‘He let me live on purpose?’

The Hwanhun Mun Master lifted his head, confusion written across his face.
Before him stood Jeok Un-hui, his expression composed, looking down at him.

“If you mean to kill me, do it quickly.”

He spoke in a hollow voice, but Jeok Un-hui paid no mind and said what he had come to say.

“You said we had no grudge between us. You were wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”

When the Hwanhun Mun Master’s eyes narrowed at this sudden claim, Jeok Un-hui spoke on in an indifferent tone.

“You killed my people first.”
“What do you mean……?”

That couldn’t be.
While preparing the Grand Ritual, he had been scrupulous beyond measure to avoid drawing the attention of Blood Yang and the Crown Prince.
He hadn’t provoked any troublesome figures, and had even restrained external activities.
Though he hadn’t considered the Third Prince—trapped in Nam Hwa County—to be a threat, he had no memory of directly antagonizing him either.
To this confusion, Jeok Un-hui’s answer was simple.

“The sacrifices of the Grand Ritual. Every one of them was my person.”
……!

The Hwanhun Mun Master’s expression crumbled in absurdity. Did this man truly not know how many sacrifices had been used?

‘We gathered sacrifices from the vicinity of Nam Hwa County as well.’

To keep from drawing the Crown Prince’s attention, he couldn’t have resolved everything in Seo Ryong County.
For that reason, without distinguishing between the Blood Sect’s territory and the outside world, he’d gathered sacrifices from several places in small batches, and among them were sects from Nok Rim and Nam Hwa County included as collaborators.
But that was all. Originally they were only a fraction, and the vast majority of the victims weren’t even Blood Sect members. It meant there was no possibility of entanglement with the Third Prince, who’d locked himself away in his separate palace.

“Why four people, then?”

To the question thrown with trembling eyes came only a careless answer.

“Because I felt like it.”

An absurd situation. Forgetting even the resolve he’d held to abandon everything, the Hwanhun Sect Master asked again.

“Is that truly all there is to it?”

The reason the Hwanhun Sect, once renowned as masters of the Blood Sect, had been destroyed. The reason he himself was dying so miserably here.
Not an attack aimed at the Hwanhun Sect’s territorial rights, not even some deep-seated hatred carved into the bone——

“Just because I happened to catch and kill a few vermin?”

His mind, serene in the face of death, burned hot.
Indignation surged up, and the longing for life he’d half-abandoned revealed itself anew within him.

“Don’t mock me! It can’t be that reason, that petty a reason——! How far do you mean to humiliate me!”
“Believe it or not, that’s up to you.”

Jeok Un-hui clicked his tongue and limped forward unsteadily.
He too looked haggard. His state testified that it had been no easy fight.
But the Hwanhun Sect Master’s eyes could not register such things, and so he staggered backward, coughing blood.

“Stop! Listen—let’s do this instead. I’ll lay bare everything I know. Just spare my life.”

A moment ago he’d demanded a quick death; now his resolve wavered and he begged for life with shameful desperation.
Jeok Un-hui walked forward slowly, his face expressionless.

“It was Yuk Elder! He manipulated me! It wasn’t just me—I’ll give you the names!”

The Hwanhun Sect Master, stumbling backward in panic, crashed into something.
He turned to see the desiccated corpse of a Hwanhun Sect elder.
The body had been drained of its life force by the Hwanhun Sect Master’s own betrayal, its face twisted with eyes open wide in indignation. When his gaze met that of his subordinate, the Hwanhun Sect Master’s complexion turned ashen.

“I had no choice——!”

The Hwanhun Sect Master muttered as if seeing a phantom.
Jeok Un-hui, who had halted directly before him, looked him straight in the eye and spoke.

“Keeping you alive would bring considerable advantage.”

Plainly, he could acquire Yuk Elder’s confession of complicity and evidence besides.
Surely the old man would have prepared at least one proper document somewhere, just in case.

“Then——!”
“But I have no reason to go that far.”

Because ending this matter wasn’t his responsibility.

“That’s entirely my brother’s work.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Jeok Un-hui’s mouth. He slowly bent at the waist.

“And even if I set aside everything else…….”

Softly, he seized the Hwanhun Mun Master’s hair.

“I just don’t want to.”

What met his gaze was nothing but crimson eyes burning with pure malice.
The Hwanhun Mun Master gasped, terror flooding through him as if his very soul were freezing.

“P-please……!”
“Remember this well.”

Crunch—.
He adjusted his grip on the sword hilt.

“You’re dying because of the insects you looked down upon.”
“……!”

Both eyes flew wide, contorting with emotions even the Hwanhun Mun Master himself could not name.
He tried to speak from his gaping mouth.
Swish—.
Jeok Un-hui’s blade had already carved through his neck and passed beyond.
Thud.
The sound of a headless body crashing to the ground.
Such was the end of the Hwanhun Mun Master.

* * *

“Cough……!”

Blood erupted from his mouth before he could even suppress it.
The color was so dark it had gone beyond crimson—nearly pitch black. When he saw traces of torn organs mixed in among the spray, it was clear his condition was anything but sound.
His complexion turned pale beneath the onslaught of pain, yet his expression remained oddly serene.

‘It’s not as though I didn’t foresee this.’

He had absorbed the life force of scores upon scores of martial artists—ultimately numbering in the hundreds—and finally drained even the several hundred gathered Life Forces that the Hwanhun Sect had so carefully stockpiled.
The Blood Explosion Thunder had been in constant activation, and he had even deployed the first ultimate technique of the Demonic Heaven Blood Sea Art.
It was perhaps miraculous that he remained alive at all, but there had been no choice.

‘The Hwanhun Sect was no trivial faction to be defeated without accepting casualties.’

The world said the Sect Master’s martial prowess had reached its zenith.
Even his subordinate elders were well-established masters of their craft.
One might think this ambiguous by conventional standards, but truly, measuring sorcerers against martial systems was hardly a fitting comparison to begin with.
Sorcerers properly prepared were regarded as a step above the martial artists of the Dongkyung Region, and an expert in Formation Barriers—which only grew stronger the better prepared one was—was something else entirely.

‘Had I not fought as I did, victory would have been impossible.’

Even at a bargain price, then, the cost had been steep—yet steep or not, his situation remained fatal.

‘At this rate, I die.’

His heart thrashed erratically beneath the aftershock of the Blood Explosion Thunder pulsing through his middle dantian, and every blood meridian in his body had ruptured, leaving his internal injuries severe beyond measure.
Fortunately, the several hundred Life Forces he had gathered—far more than he could contain—had simply dispersed cleanly after he took the Hwanhun Mun Master’s head, as if they had found peace, which eliminated one crisis. Yet this alone did not change the situation.
The most dangerous threshold remained.

‘Too much Death Qi has accumulated.’

Having drained nearly the entire Hwanhun Sect, an unprecedented accumulation of Death Qi now filled every part of Jeok Un-hui’s body.
It was the worst situation yet. Different even from when they’d crushed Heungryong Mountain Fortress. This was closer to death than life.

‘Damn it. This isn’t some tournament match.’

Why did he keep setting new records for disaster?
When he thought about it, most of this was his own fault—so there was no one else to curse. Jeok Un-hui furrowed his brow at the unease and sank into thought.

‘The Reverse Saint True Scripture again?’

But he dismissed it just as quickly. For one thing, the blood meridians that would carry the Death Qi were already shattered; for another, the absolute volume of Death Qi was overwhelming.
The time he had left was too short to release it gradually in pieces. And if he tried to expel this massive quantity all at once……

‘Not just his left arm—his entire upper body would fly off, and that might still not be enough.’

He couldn’t extract the Death Qi, and if he couldn’t extract it, he’d die.
Trapped between two impossibilities.
There was nothing he could do.
……Not for now, anyway.

‘Then.’

He would create one.
Create ‘a way forward.’
Jeok Un-hui, who had been standing motionless, suddenly dropped down into a cross-legged seat.
As he regulated his breathing, his eyes met those of the severed head of the Hwanhun Mun Master.

─Come with me, won’t you? We can go together!

A feeling as though the dead man were calling out in a pitiful voice.
Jeok Un-hui laughed softly.

“Go to hell.”

He cleanly ignored the grieving gaze of the already-dead head, then slowly closed his eyes.

‘Time is running out.’

His body was already on the verge of death, and if he delayed any further, warriors from the Crown Prince or Seo Ryong County would come pouring in.
If that happened, nothing good would come of it.
What he wanted was to draw out the Crown Prince and propose a deal—not to be captured by him.

‘Recover the body’s condition, erase the traces, and escape.’

Clearly extreme conditions. One could only wonder if there was any path forward.
But he didn’t flinch at all.

‘I’ve lived through this kind of thing dozens of times already.’

He hadn’t become the Greatest Under Heaven by accident. Something like this didn’t even rank among his greatest crises.

‘……Though, to be honest, that might be overselling it a bit.’

In any case, if he couldn’t break through a crisis of this magnitude, then his capacity was only as great as that. And wasn’t that precisely why he’d destroyed the Hwanhun Sect in the first place?

Fortunately, he already had a plan for what he needed to do.

‘Never thought I’d have to try it in a situation like this…….’

The one and only way to turn crisis into opportunity.

‘Death Qi is a form of inner force after all. Everything has its use.’

So here, in this moment, I create it.
An unprecedented martial art—one that harnesses the essence of death itself.
—Whisper.

“Huuuh…….”

Jeok Un-hui’s breath flowed out, turned pale and frost-white.
The temperature of the entire region plummeted in an instant.
The sect master had begun to channel Bearing Wrongful Qi.

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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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