The Heavenly Demon of the Blue Sky - Chapter 1

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

Cang Tian Heavenly Demon 001
The summit of the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, the Demon Palace.
The flames that had never once been extinguished now flickered precariously.
Cheon Ha-jin, the Heaven-Breaking Demon Lord who had drenched the world in blood.
My life force was running dry.
“Kh-kugh! Master! If you close your eyes like this, what are we to do?!”
The ones prostrating themselves before the sickbed were the elders and guardians known as pillars of the Divine Sect.
Demons who ordinarily felt neither blood nor tears now wailed like beasts robbed of their parents.
Well, to them I was the god of martial prowess and absolute salvation. At least, that’s how it appeared on the surface.
‘Finally, I can stretch out and sleep! That insufferable bastard!’
Nine times out of ten, that was surely their true sentiment. For decades, catering to my volatile temperament had been nothing short of hell.
Even I knew I was a selfish creature. I believed only in the law of the jungle and refused to suffer the slightest loss.
“I can hear every thought rattling around in those skulls of yours, you dogs.”
I pried open my heavy eyelids with effort and let out a soft laugh.
In an instant, the Demon Palace froze as if doused with ice water, and dozens of cyan Sword Qi rose to hover, pointing at their throats.
A being who could divide the living from the dead with nothing but the aura of a single severed breath.
That is what the Sword Demon and Heavenly Demon—myself, Cheon Ha-jin—am.
“Ugh—gulp!”
The shoulders of the weeping elders stiffened. The Left Guardian even swallowed his sobs.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you rejoicing in your hearts at the thought of my death? Especially you, Left Guardian. The moment my breathing stops, you’ll be making straight for the Night-Shining Pearl in my study, won’t you?”
“Master! That is not—I would pluck out my own heart to prove—!”
“Damn fool. Take it all. I’m not dragging gold and jewels into the grave with me. Just make sure the strongest liquor in the sect graces my memorial table.”
If there was one regret, it was having no family to hold my hand. And.
‘Curse it all. Even in death’s moment, it haunts me.’
Through my dimming vision, I gazed up at the vast ceiling of the Demon Palace. The phantom Sword Path I had coveted my entire life yet never reached drifted before my eyes.
‘I can see it, yet I cannot touch it.’
Even the greatest under heaven could not reach that realm.
I swallowed the bitter saliva lingering on my lips, burning with thirst.
At last, my eyes closed.
“The Heavenly Demon Returns! Ten Thousand Demons Bow in Submission! May you rest in peace!”
The last sound I heard was the wailing cry of everyone in the Divine Sect.
Thus my first life came to an end.

* * *
The scent of incense.
My brow furrowed at the delicate fragrance tickling my nostrils.
Surely I had breathed my last at the highest point of the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, in the Demon Palace.
That place, where only the thick stench of blood, the reek of slaughter, and the rot of corpses had ever hung in the air year-round—there was no way such a gentle aroma would drift through it.
‘So the afterlife is a fragrant and peaceful place, then.’
I drew in a leisurely breath. Or rather, I tried to.
“Gack—cough, cough!”
In that instant, an agonizing pain crashed over me as if ten thousand burning needles were piercing my lungs.
My breath caught, and every blood vessel in my body twisted mercilessly as if caught between a beast’s teeth.
My Dantian was hollow, my Qi Meridians tangled like a spider’s web and completely blocked.
Not even a hair’s breadth of True Qi could be felt—a body utterly ruined.
Simultaneously, a profound helplessness crashed down, making it nearly impossible to twitch even a single finger.
My blurred vision gradually sharpened, and an unfamiliar ceiling and worn rosewood furniture came into focus.
‘Where is this…?’
Bewildered by it all, I clutched at my face, only to notice something wrong.
My skin, which should have been rough and thick, felt unnaturally smooth and unpleasant; where my cheeks should have been covered in scars from crossing death’s threshold dozens of times, I felt only soft down.
‘What—’
Alarmed, I grabbed the mirror beside the bed and held it up.
A strange boy with wide eyes stared back at me.
Skin so pale it seemed transparent, delicate features with thin lines like a girl’s.
‘This is… me?’
I could not believe it. Who was I?
The Heaven-Breaking Demon Lord who had lived oppressing the world with a massive frame and terrible aura!
Yet this body bore no resemblance to my original form in a single way.
That was when it happened. Click—
The door opened, and my eyes met those of a young Attendant.
The child had a mole between his nose and upper lip, and his eyes had grown wide as lanterns.
“Gasp! Young master! You’ve opened your eyes!”
Clang! The Brass Basin he’d been holding clattered to the floor, water spilling everywhere.
“I’ll go fetch the elders at once!”
“Stop. Stay.”
“Ah! Yes, yes!”
He called the Attendant to a halt and gestured for him to come closer.
“Where am I? Who am I?”
“Yes, well, that is to say…… I’m not certain what you mean, sir.”
“Speak plainly. Tell me the truth.”
“This is the inner courtyard of the Namgung Clan……!”
His eyebrows shot up in a sharp arc.
The Namgung Clan? That family called Cang Tian?
He’d spent his entire existence warring against hypocritical righteous sects, and now he opened his eyes to find himself in the very heart of that vaunted orthodox stronghold. And worse still.
“Young master is the sole Legitimate Son of the late clan patriarch…… Namgung Hyeok!”
It was enough to make his blood boil. Of all the cursed luck, to be born of such an orthodox line through and through.
‘What kind of wretched joke is this……’
He gazed out through the window frame at the blue sky beyond. As if voicing complaints had ever earned him an answer.
Not once. Not ever.
Only mountain birds swept past as if mocking him, adding their cries to the indifferent morning.
“Ha, hahahaha!”
A hollow laugh escaped him, as though his mind had shattered at the sheer absurdity.
This was the beginning of a second life, twisted and knotted beyond measure.

* * *
After laughing himself hoarse like a madman, his mind grew cold and clear. The information he wrung from the Attendant painted a grim picture.
First.
A hundred years had passed since the day he died.
Death, which had been but a single breath, had become a distant memory.
Impossibly, the Divine Sect’s followers had been enslaved like cattle.
The Blood Sect—those he had utterly crushed—had rallied heretic sorcerers and seized control of the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, or so the Attendant claimed.
‘Damn it all.’
Fury rose in him, eclipsing even shock. The Heavenly Demon Sect he had led might be called demonic, but it had never walked the path of true evil.
There had been conviction, a code that could stand before both others and oneself.
The Blood Sect and their heretic allies, by contrast, were nothing but garbage—trafficking in human flesh, conducting unspeakable experiments.
‘I’ll crush these dogs right now—’
He lurched from the bed in fury, but his legs betrayed him and he crumpled to the floor.
‘Damn this wretched body……’
He’d forgotten. He was a frail young master now.
But that was not where the troubles ended.
Second.
The Namgung Clan to which this body belonged had collapsed entirely. The story went like this.
Years ago, the Namgung had been the first to discover the Blood Sect’s ambitions to swallow the Central Plains, and sent warning to the Martial Alliance.
But in the interim, the Blood Sect launched a massive assault and overran Heavenly Lord Mountain, the chokepoint of the Central Plains.
This body’s father, the clan patriarch, led the Namgung masters in a fierce battle, refusing to yield an inch until reinforcements arrived.
Thanks to that blood-soaked sacrifice, the Martial Alliance managed to regroup and drive back the Blood Sect—but they could not push into the sect’s stronghold, and a stalemate settled in.
The Blood Sect remained intact while the Namgung alone lay in ruins.
“In that war…… the patriarch and madam, along with all the Namgung’s finest warriors, gave their lives……”
When the pillars that had sustained the clan were torn away, the prosperous village where they had dwelt became a wilderness choked with weeds.
‘A family once called illustrious and righteous, brought to this……’
Despite their noble sacrifice, their ruin was so complete and utter that a strange bitterness settled in his chest, leaving him unsettled.
Third.
This body, now fifteen years old, was born with the wretched constitution called the Absolute Yin Vein—a severe condition such that even a chill wind would send him coughing blood before collapsing.
And yet, despite this, or perhaps because of it.
His three sisters, his only blood kin, doted on him obsessively in place of their long-departed parents.
“So…… I fell into a pond four days ago?”
“Yes, yes, that is correct, young master!”
“And my sisters are filling it in themselves with shovels and hoes?”
“That is to say…… they insisted the pond that nearly took you need not exist in the Namgung……”
He pressed his palm to his forehead, utterly speechless.
‘Caught a cold, so you dam the pond?’
Even in the Demonic Sect, I never did anything so crude.
‘No. I mustn’t fall for it.’
He narrowed his eyes to slits. The righteous sects were by nature a breed whose hypocrisy and affectation ran bone-deep.
Such lavish care lavished upon a useless scrap of flesh could only hide something vile and sinister beneath.
‘No doubt. They’ll nurse me back to health with utmost devotion, then use me as bait for some political marriage or sacrifice me in some sinister ritual. Disgusting creatures.’
I am the Demon Sovereign who spent a lifetime in winds of blood. Fear losing vigilance even with family? Hardly.
“That’s enough. Leave.”
“Y-yes! Yes, Young Master! P-please rest!”
The door closed, and silence settled over the chamber. Slowly, he pushed himself upright on the bed.
‘I need to conduct an inner examination first.’
Supporting his unsteady frame, he crossed his legs in meditation. Eyes closed, he began drawing up the faint traces of Qi sensation that remained, scanning the depths of his own body.
‘This is… troublesome.’
His Dantian lay not merely empty but split like drought-cracked earth, while the Qi Meridians throughout his body were locked solid in an icy grip.
The Attendant had spoken truly. It was indeed the Absolute Yin Vein.
A cursed constitution—born to reject all the world’s Yang Qi and abnormally harbor only Yin Qi within itself.
No martial art of the righteous sects could remedy it, least of all the internal cultivation of the Namgung Clan, which prized speed and power above all. It was a death sentence.
‘But….’
A cold smile crept across his lips.
To the righteous sect dogs, this vast reservoir of Yin Qi would be poison eating them alive. But to me, Cheon Ha-jin, the Renegade Demon Sovereign, it is different.
Yin Qi and Demonic Qi share the same roots by nature.
To harbor such pure, boundless Yin Qi coiling within one’s body meant that through proper cultivation, it could be transformed entirely into the highest-grade Demonic Qi.
And that was merely the beginning.
If I could fuse the martial arts of the righteous and the demonic—opposites in perfect balance?
I might touch that phantom Sword Path I craved for countless lifetimes yet never reached.
“Kkk… Cough! Ptui.”
Attempting a triumphant laugh, he choked and spat blood.
Damn it all. His mind was supreme, yet his body was a corpse that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a grave tomorrow.
‘First, I must clear the blocked Qi Meridians….’
There was no knowing what schemes the nauseating righteous sect dogs might devise and unleash.
Before that came to pass, he had to reclaim at least the minimum strength to move of his own will.
Supporting his unsteady frame, he crossed his legs and sat in meditation once more.
Eyes closed, he began to slowly circulate the foundational technique of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art—the discipline he had honed for decades in his past life.
‘This body is flush with toxic Yin Qi. There’s no need to draw from the natural world.’
As the meditation took hold, the energies locked to his meridians like ice began to stir weakly.
“Ugh…!”
In that instant, a horrific wave of pain crashed over him—bones shattering, internal organs shredding into ribbons.
A body that had never channeled True Qi screamed in agony at the attempt to harbor a demon’s technique.
An ordinary martial artist would have collapsed with a death cry.
‘Who am I?’
I am Cheon Ha-jin, the Renegade Demon Sovereign who once plunged the world into terror. Would I bow to the pain of this fledgling form?
Crack! Crunch!
Grinding his teeth, he forced open the sealed gateway to the Ren-Du Meridians.
Then, in the hollow depths of his empty Dantian, he planted a seed—a mote of black energy no larger than a millet grain, the Demon Seed.
“Haaah….”
At once, a long breath laden with murky Turbid Qi escaped his lips.
His entire body drenched in cold sweat and a stench like a sewer clinging to his nostrils, yet the crushing oppression that had suffocated his chest evaporated as if scrubbed away.
‘I’ve broken through barely a fingernail-sized passage of one Qi Meridian, but for a beginning, it suffices. Wait, Blood Sect. The moment I reclaim my strength, I shall demand payment for the affront to the Divine Sect!’
Dreaming of vengeance, he opened his eyes. It was then.
Bang—! The chamber door burst open with a deafening crash, swinging wide.
‘An attack!’
Instinctively summoning killing intent, he was pushing himself to his feet when—
“Our precious youngest!”
Those who flooded into the room were without exception beauties that defied belief.
Cang Tian Demon Sovereign
A Hycath New Martial Arts Epic Novel
Author
: Hycath
Publisher
: Kwon Tae-wan, Woo Cheon-je
E-book publication date
: July 10, 2026
Price per episode
: 100 won (episodes 1–15 provided free)
Publisher
: KWBOOKS
Address
: Room 203, Ace Artis Forum, 62 Digital-ro 31-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul
UCI
G720:N+A014-20260702063
This e-book has been published by KWBOOKS in accordance with a contract with the copyright holder.
Unauthorized reproduction of the contents of this book is prohibited by copyright law without the permission of the publisher.

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