The Heavenly Demon of the Blue Sky - Chapter 16

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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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Cangtiandemon Qi — Episode 16
While Shaolin and Gaebang clashed fiercely against the Blood Cult,
Whoosh—!
I slipped through the chaos and drove deeper into the temple.
The damp reek of blood thickened in the stale air.
A steep staircase yawned open before me, descending into the underground dungeon.
I plunged through the darkness and came face to face with an enormous iron door.
A sheet of steel so thick and heavy that three grown men together couldn’t budge it an inch.
Its surface writhed with bizarre markings twisted in chaotic patterns.
“This….”
Drawing closer to examine it, I saw it was no ordinary lock or mechanical trap.
It was a kind of cipher—dozens of grooves that had to be traced in precise sequence to open.
Break the door by force, and a device inside might slaughter every hostage held within.
“A rather ingenious mechanism, I must say. Shaolin monks or Gaebang beggars would’ve struggled here quite a while.”
Drawing my blade slowly from my belt, I let it sing free.
‘But tricks this shallow won’t work on me.’
From deep within my dantian, I drew forth the violet Cangtiandemon Qi.
“Open.”
With that whispered command, I swept the sword through empty air.
Shing-shing-shing—! The blade traced a sharp Sword Path, flowing and bending with the grace of a dance.
Like constellations embroidered across a starlit void, I traced mysterious patterns, one by one overlaying the strange marks upon the iron.
The power of a great Demon Sage consumed their shallow sorcery utterly.
Clank-clank-clank—clack! Click!
At once, the bolts sealing the iron door shot left and right.
Ssshhhhh….
Through the gaping entrance rushed a suffocating wave of blood-stench.
And from the darkness came the desperate groans of those imprisoned within.
I stepped slowly into the bowels of the underground dungeon.
Beyond the faint glow, the sight that met my eyes was nothing less than a hell on earth.
Men and women hung suspended by iron chains thick as a man’s forearm, strange tubes driven into their blood vessels, their life’s blood drained away into collection vessels.
They were Namgung bloodkin, kidnapped from across Gangnam.
“Please, please, no more…!”
They mistook me for another devil come to drain them, terror naked in their eyes.
A young man ahead of me raised his head with effort, his voice hoarse as gravel.
“You must be Namgung Kyung.”
His face bore a fearful resemblance to my trembling uncle—where the uncle was squat as a toad, this one was round as a frog.
“Who, who are you, sir?”
“Stay still. Don’t move.”
Foregoing introductions, I raised my blade.
Whoosh-crack—! I severed the chains and the hideous tubes feeding upon them in a single stroke.
“Agh!”
They collapsed soundlessly to the floor.
“You’re all wrecked.”
I found their dulling blood channels and sent a soft, luminous stream of pure Cangtiandemon Qi flowing through them.
A fundamental, warm resonance—the kind any true Namgung bloodkin would recognize instinctively as their own.
“This power is….”
Color crept back into ashen cheeks that had been fading toward death.
The life force torn from them met the majestic Cangtiandemon Qi and began to pulse again.
Slowly, awareness returned to their hollow eyes, and wonder spread across their faces.
“Your wits are returning.”
At my calm question, Namgung Kyung’s trembling lips parted.
“How do you know who I am…?”
“Your father wept and railed—begging me to save his precious son.”
“My father…?”
“Did you think a fallen house would be forgotten, left to perish alone?”
At my blunt words, tears flooded Namgung Kyung’s eyes in an instant.
He must have felt, in the pitch darkness of despair, the ache of absolute isolation.
“I, I don’t know how to thank you for such kindness….”
As all eyes fixed upon me, I straightened slowly.
Beneath the faint light, my pallid, elegant face emerged from shadow.
“The new Clan Head of Namgung is Namgung Hyuk.”
The moment I revealed my identity, a heavy silence descended over the underground dungeon.
At the same time, the eyes of Namgung Kyung and the talented ones trembled violently.
“Surely not the youngest lord who was said to spend his days confined to a sickbed……?”
“What? Disappointed that I’m not a living corpse?”
“N-no, that’s not it. I’m simply… astonished…….”
These were the men who had abandoned the clan and fled when the main house burned and the family crumbled.
A sickly young lord whom no one had expected had descended to the very depths of hell to find them—men who had scattered in every direction, shameless in their cowardice, seeking only their own survival.
“We are ashamed. We know not what face we should show to beg your forgiveness…….”
Namgung Kyung pressed himself flat to the ground and bowed his head deeply.
The others too fell to their knees, tears streaming down their faces as despair and guilt overwhelmed them.
I gazed down at their pitiful forms and clicked my tongue.
“You think I came all this way to hear your apologies?”
At my words, the Namgung men swallowed their ragged breaths and looked up at me.
“Don’t mistake this—I came to nip the problem in the bud before enemies could assault the main house and threaten my life.”
I then pointed to the prostrate Namgung Kyung.
“Moreover, Uncle promised to surrender his entire fortune if I would save his son, so I came. The rest of you—the stragglers left behind—I saved only as an afterthought while I was here. I don’t expect even a hair’s breadth of gratitude from traitors who abandoned the clan and fled, so if you have time for empty words, get up now and follow me instead.”
My cold words drained the color from the Namgung men’s faces in an instant.
“H-how could betrayers like us ever be worthy of…….”
Their spirits crushed, they hung their heads lifelessly.
“Ah!”
Suddenly, Namgung Kyung, who had been lying prostrate on the ground, jerked his head up sharply and burst into tears with a cry of emotion.
“Clan Head! I failed to grasp the true depth of your noble intention!”
“…What?”
Regardless of my furrowed brow, Namgung Kyung, trembling with overwhelming emotion, cried out to his kinsmen.
“Everyone, did you hear? The Clan Head now speaks harsh words to encourage us, not wishing to burden us with our own guilt and shame!”
What nonsense is this.
“If you have tears to shed, you have strength to stand! Excuses and regrets are luxuries only the living can afford! This is the Clan Head’s true heart!”
“Ohhh!”
At Namgung Kyung’s passionate cry, sparks of determination ignited in the eyes of the others all at once.
They had fallen firmly into an astonishing misunderstanding—that the Clan Head’s cold indifference was in fact a profound compassion meant to embrace and comfort them.
“C-Clan Head! We were short-sighted! Now I understand—your words were to tell us to live first and repay the debt of gratitude!”
Those who had been drowning in despair mere moments before, unable even to raise their heads, were now supporting each other as they struggled to their feet with faces alight with resolve.
“No, listen to what I’m actually saying. I never meant——”
I tried to clarify, but they were already drunk on their own overwhelming sentiment and paid my words no heed.
Their eyes blazed with fervor no less fierce than zealots’.
‘…What is this.’
At this point, shouldn’t the entire Namgung clan undergo a collective psychiatric evaluation?
My sisters were the same way, and now the other Namgung men were too.
Perhaps the harshness of their reality had left them desperate for someone to lean upon.
But why it had to be me, I had no idea.
Exasperated, I clicked my tongue softly and simply nodded.
“Fine, that’s enough. Whether you misunderstand or not, if you’ve gained strength to move forward, that’s all that matters. If you’re ready, don’t delay—follow me.”
“Yes! Everyone, follow the Clan Head!”
I spun around and took the lead.
As I climbed the dingy stairs and emerged outside, pandemonium greeted us.
“Aaaahhh!”
“Hold the formation! Fall back and you die!”
According to my plan, Gaebang and Shaolin had joined forces to encircle the enemy.
But there was one factor I had not anticipated.
“Whelps! Is this all you can manage?”
Whoosh!
Each time the enemy commander swung his fan, a blood-soaked gale swept across the battlefield.
Hye Gwang and Jang Ho tumbled ignominiously across the ground.
The enemy commander’s strength far exceeded my expectations.
“C-Clan Head! That man is…… the root of all calamity and an elder of the Blood Cult—Sadoum. Though the former Clan Head dealt him internal injuries, he has prolonged his life by consuming Namgung blood.”
Namgung Kyung spoke what he knew of the enemy commander in a trembling voice.
An elder meant he had long stood among the realm’s most formidable masters.
It was no wonder that even two men lauded as the elite of Shaolin and Gaebang were being pushed back.
“As things stand, who could possibly face that monster……. If this continues, even the Clan Head will be in danger, so perhaps we should stay behind……!”
Namgung Kyung seized the broken sword hilt that lay scattered on the ground, gripping it tightly.
His body was gaunt—skin stretched taut over bone—yet his eyes blazed with grim resolve.
“We wish to stand as well! Grant us the chance to atone for our past failure, when we abandoned the clan and fled!”
At Namgung Kyung’s cry, the other Namgung clansmen stepped forward too, wielding whatever they could grasp—stones, broken branches—to bar my path.
Having already brushed against death, they had found a courage they did not know they possessed.
‘Look at them.’
In my past life, the Demonic Sect was a gathering of the rejected and the rootless from across the land, bound only by the hunger to survive another day.
Because of that, no one would ever step forward in my place, would ever shield me from harm.
But this life was different.
These foolish Orthodox Sect youths, knowing full well their lives had value, were willing to stake themselves for my sake.
“Arrogant whelps. Who is protecting whom, exactly?”
I furrowed my brow, yet felt my lips curl upward without my bidding.
“I am not so weak that I would owe my life to dying children.”
I shoved aside their skeletal shoulders as they moved to step forward, and let out a cold sneer.
“Skin and bone clinging to each other—and you think you can shield me? Become living shields, will you, so a single flick of my fan opens your throats? Silence. Step back.”
“B-but how can we prevail? Even gravely wounded, you are among the foremost Demon Sages who led the assault on Namgung itself…!”
This one still knows nothing of me.
I gripped the sword hilt lightly, lifting one corner of my mouth into a smile.
“Ridiculous.”
Foremost Demon Sage, simply because I dealt in crude bloodshed.
To one who held countless demonic cultivators beneath his heel, such flattery was nothing but a mockery worthy of scorn.
Shrink—the sword sang its clear note as it left the sheath, and the Cangtiandemon Qi began to boil up from my Dantian, wrapping itself around my entire frame.
Then I stepped forward, speaking in a low murmur.
“Watch from the shadows. I will show you what a true Demon Sage is.”
As I moved toward the battlefield, I swept my gaze across the situation.
The skirmishes among the lesser fighters were trending steadily toward victory for Gaebang and Shaolin.
But in the heart of the battlefield, Sadoum posed the true threat.
Screeeee—! Sadoum’s vicious blood-wind swept toward Jang Ho and Hye Gwang.
Like a great serpent rearing its head to strike.
“Aah!”
Both their faces drained white. There was no time to block, no room to dodge.
“Fall back!”
Shwooosh—!
I planted the Asura Heaven Wind Step and shot forward to stand before them.
The compressed air burst outward, scattering dust and earth in a violent cloud.
With both hands, I wrenched the sword hilt up and drove it skyward with brutal force.
Asura Heaven Wind Sword, Fourth Form: Reverse Wind Breaks Heaven.
Kabooooom—!
The blade summoned a fierce counter-wind, cleaving perfectly in half the serpent’s head that Sadoum had unleashed.
“Hak—!”
Saved by the narrowest margin, the two gasped harshly, staring up at me.
They had not imagined they would owe their lives to me.
“Do you want to stand there gaping until you’re dead?”
I glared back at them, and only then did they scramble to their feet, brushing off their hands.
“C-Clan Head. What has happened? The Namgung people—?”
“Already secured. I told them to hide. This one is the problem.”
Sadoum bit his lip, enraged that his attack had been thwarted.
“Who in blazes are you?”
He bellowed, his voice ringing with the scrape of metal, and fixed his gaze upon me.
“You sought to destroy Namgung, yet don’t recognize the clan’s master?”
“What—? That cannot be! The Namgung I knew was surely—!”
“Fallen? Indeed it was. And through me, it has risen anew.”
I exhaled the Cangtiandemon Qi from my core, a deep violet hue spreading through it, and a chill, overwhelming presence crushed down upon the world.
“Th-this aura is—what is this—?”
The azure of heaven and the darkness of the abyss, and blood-red swirling together like the currents of a profound cosmic void.
An absolute power that none in all the Jianghu could match—the presence only a Heaven-Breaking Demon Sovereign and Clan Head of Namgung could possess.
“Wh-what manner of being are you!”
Sadoum’s jaw trembled as he began to regard me with caution.
His face had turned ghastly pale, like a mouse cowering before a predator.
He had sensed the full depth of Righteous and Demonic within my power.
He leveled his sword point toward the man with deliberate slowness, a thin smile playing at his lips.
“I told you. Clan Head of Namgung.”
Though his mouth spoke the title of an Orthodox Sect leader, his eyes held the arrogance of the Heaven-Breaking Demon Sovereign who once commanded the Ten Thousand Great Mountains.
The same sentence he had uttered countless times while subjugating the Blood Cult now fell from his lips again on this distant Hangzhou soil, after all these long years.
“There will be no place left for you vile insects who feed on the blood of others.”

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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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