The Heavenly Demon of the Blue Sky - Chapter 54

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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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Cyan Heaven Heavenly Demon Episode 54
Some time before that, while Shanxi descended into chaos from war.
In a forest on the outskirts, not far from the Jinjueon Clan Headquarters, sounds of movement stirred.
Scrape-scrape, creak-creak-creak.
The quiet earth began to convulse as if seized by an earthquake.
Black soil was torn open, and a procession of figures clad in beast bones thrust upward from beneath the ground.
The emergence of the Blood Spirit Squad—the Blood Cult’s sorcery battalion, masters of the dead’s spirits and blood.
A man leaning on a Skull Staff released a murky breath.
“……Too quiet.”
The commander of the Blood Spirit Squad, and the elder brother of Gu Ma, whose head had been severed not long ago.
Sin Ma.
From a lifetime spent buried underground, modifying human bodies and consumed by vicious sorcerous experiments, his skin had turned ashen and pale like a corpse starved of sunlight.
His frame bent slightly forward bore sharp, cunning features reminiscent of a rat.
And the long mustache drooping from his philtrum, which he had cultivated since youth.
Where his younger brother Gu Ma, blessed with natural strength, had entered the Assassins’ Squad and delighted in wielding a blade to kill, Sin Ma was different.
Congenitally frail, he had abandoned the frail vessel of flesh and instead pursued cursed arts and Blood Cult Sorcery with maniacal obsession, eventually claiming a seat of power.
Though he easily slew and tortured others, he treasured his younger brother alone.
Yet the brother who had departed on a mission had not returned.
Consumed by unease, he had traced the last traces and arrived at this place.
“The trail goes cold here. Perhaps our paths have crossed elsewhere.”
At his subordinate’s report, Sin Ma limped forward on his staff, surveying the forest.
To the naked eye, there was not a drop of blood, not a single corpse in sight.
But something reached him. His narrow nostrils flared slightly.
“No, this is the place.”
A faint scent only the highest Blood Cult sorcerers could discern.
The forbidden pill that Gu Ma had chewed and swallowed in his final death throes, a last desperate gambit.
The acrid reek of the Beast Blood Pill lingered faintly in the forest air.
And within it, a scent only Sin Ma could recognize.
Thump. Thump.
Leaning on his staff, he approached the clearing where the blood scent was most concentrated.
With trembling hands, he began clawing frantically at the earth.
Crack-crack!
From between the torn black soil, white ash scattered and dispersed.
“Ah……”
In that instant, Sin Ma’s face contorted hideously.
“My brother…… Aaaagh!”
Sin Ma, who had hummed while flaying living skin and scraping bone, now clutched at the ash scattering on the wind and wailed.
“Who was it…… What wretched bastard did this to my brother……!”
His eyes blazed bloodred with venom as he scanned the surroundings.
Then it happened.
Swoosh—! A tiny, razor-sharp fragment grazed his cheek.
“……!”
His cheek tore lightly, and droplets of crimson blood beaded on the wound.
Sin Ma reflexively grasped the fragment that had grazed his face between his fingers.
An impossibly small shard of metal.
It was a fragment of his brother’s beloved blade, the Ghost Blade, shattered and scattered.
Sin Ma’s teeth ground audibly as he rose to his feet.
He gripped the Skull Staff and drove it violently into the earth.
Boom—!
“With the blood of vengeful spirits opening the way, and torn souls woven to reverse time.”
The Soul-Chasing Blood Mirror Grand Technique, a secret sorcery of the Blood Cult.
The earth where the staff was planted blazed crimson with blood, and a massive, grotesque Four-Sided Mirror erupted from the ground at terrifying speed.
Whirrrrr—!
The scattered blade fragments converged, forming a mirage.
Sin Ma stared with bulging eyes at the phantom reflected in the mirror.
The killer’s face was not clearly discerned.
The forms perceived by objects and the bounds of human cognition differ.
But the manner of death was rendered in perfect clarity.
In the phantom, his brother held a Secret Martial Technique aloft, his mouth open in silent anguish.
In that instant.
Whoosh!
Someone descended like a swallow cutting through the sky, and with a single strike, severed his brother’s neck.
“Leaping off a tree with string……?”
Sin Ma’s hunched shoulders flinched.
A report from the Blood Cult spy planted in Yongbong not long ago.
During the ambush on the Righteous Faction’s Promising Young Talents by Eon Tae’s Corpse Demons, it said that the Namgung Clan Head had displayed quick thinking—grasping the string and flying through the air to evade all the Corpse Demon attacks.
Did that past feat not match the sight before him now?
The name escaped Sin Ma’s lips, dripping with killing intent.
“……Namgung Hyeok!!”
Namgung. It was Namgung again.
The events of the past few years crashed through his mind with savage fury.
The fierce war with Namgung back then.
Though they had succeeded in destroying Namgung, the Blood Cult too had suffered grievous wounds and lost vast military strength.
A frontal assault was impossible until the sect recovered its full power.
And so the Blood Cult had chosen a new method of warfare.
It was to root through the Righteous Faction’s interior and make them destroy themselves.
The Jinjueon Clan had been marked as the first sacrifice—a family that had lost its Clan Head at a tender age and whose foundations now trembled.
The operation proceeded with cunning precision.
The Blood Cult released spies among the Righteous Faction’s ranks, sowing malicious rumors.
—How could the Jinjueon Clan be called members of the Righteous Faction, which stands for righteousness and trust, when they abandoned their benefactor Namgung and treasured only their own lives?
—And more: a mere greenhorn who has not even awakened proper Sect Technique now leads the family—they can no longer be called a prestigious orthodox sect!
While spreading contempt and mockery toward the Jinjueon Clan, they simultaneously leaked false intelligence that rival families were quietly plotting to absorb them from within.
Of course, there were those within the Righteous Faction possessed of wisdom.
The Jegal Clan, renowned for the finest minds under heaven, was foremost among them.
They observed this phenomenon—rumors spreading through the Martial World, sowing mutual rejection—and called it the work of a hostile force seeking to destroy the Righteous Faction, working to dispel the rumors and mediate.
In a time of ordinary peace, the Jegal Clan’s words would have prevailed.
But the timing was ill-fated.
After Namgung, the great pillar of the Righteous Faction, had collapsed so ignominiously.
A desperate anxiety and hair-trigger sensitivity gnawed at the entire Righteous Faction—the fear that they too might suffer the same fate.
When rumors sowing mutual suspicion began to circulate, despite the Jegal Clan’s mediation, the families bolted their doors and closed their ears.
Suspicion bred suspicion, until they came to despise and scrutinize one another ever more deeply.
Just as the emotional rifts within the Righteous Faction had become irreparable.
The Blood Cult sensed the moment had come at last, and sent Sin Ma to the young Clan Head of Jinjueon, Eon Tae.
Eon Tae, who had been languishing in frustration, unable to properly master his family’s Secret Martial Technique.
When Sin Ma urged him to submit to the Blood Cult, he blazed with fury, his fists clenching.
“What vile scheme is this! I’ll crush your neck this instant!”
Sin Ma did not flinch a muscle before the killing intent radiating from Eon Tae.
“Compose yourself, young Clan Head. Look beneath your feet.”
As he tapped the ground with his staff, thick smoke billowed up from underground.
“Our sect’s assassins have already flooded the earth beneath the Jinjueon Clan. Should we emerge to the surface…… do you truly believe the Jinjueon Clan alone can hold us back? Even Namgung could not, and they were destroyed.”
“Nngh……!”
“Will you cry out to the world? Will those arrogant orthodox sect members, who were so busy scorning and mocking you before, now risk themselves to rush to the Jinjueon Clan’s aid?”
Before this chilling question, Eon Tae lost all words, like one struck dumb.
A deep isolation seized the young Clan Head’s breath.
Sin Ma, in his peculiar cunning voice, whispered against Eon Tae’s ear.
“The Righteous Faction is merely a hollow, selfish collective. We, by contrast—do we not remember those beset by hardship and seek them out in person, offering our hand gladly to stand with them? This is why the world’s fate now flows around our sect.”
He spoke as though only they understood the Jinjueon Clan’s loneliness.
Reading the wavering light in Eon Tae’s eyes, Sin Ma withdrew from his robes a tattered, grotesque tome and extended it toward him.
“This is the Corpse Manipulation Art—a secret transmission numbered among the sect’s most prized. With this Secret Martial Technique, the Jinjueon Clan, mocked for lacking an orthodox Sect Technique, would stand as formidable as any other family under heaven. Should you submit to our sect, I offer this technique freely.”
“Corpse Manipulation……Art…….”
“Moreover.”
Sin Ma’s ashen lips twisted upward like a serpent’s.
He had glimpsed the void left by Eon Tae’s father, buried deep within the boy’s heart.
“Should you master this Corpse Manipulation Art and reach a sufficiently high level…… you could even resurrect your departed father.”
“Wh—what!?”
“Your father’s tomb remains intact, does it not? If his body was not buried long ago and his vital essence has not yet scattered, it is entirely possible.”
At those words, the rage blazed anew in Eon Tae’s eyes as his spirit returned.
“Lies! How dare you turn the departed into a demon and disgrace them!”
Eon Tae, seized by fury, grabbed Sin Ma by the collar and brought his fist down toward his face.
But the tightly clenched fist only trembled in the empty air, never falling upon Sin Ma’s face.
It was a longing so fierce—the desperate wish to see him just once more—that anchored the young Clan Head’s feet to the ground.
“Your father, too, must have harbored such bitter regret, bequeathing a heavy clan to a child still so young, then closing his eyes in solitude. And if his spirit knew of the present state—the clan cowering under the world’s contempt—how could it ever find peace?”
“Stop it… stop…!”
“It is said that parents worry for their children even in death. To answer that fervent prayer, to have the departed father remain alongside his child, guarding the clan until the Jinjueon Clan stands complete and whole—is that not the truest filial devotion, a balm for the vengeful spirit of the dead?”
Sin Ma spread his arms wide and smiled with a chill that turned the blood to ice.
“We shall accomplish everything you desire, Clan Head. All of it. If you find our proposal disagreeable, strike us down here and now. But know this—the moment you refuse, the Jinjueon Clan shall be annihilated.”
Somewhere between threat and compassion.
“Ah… ah….”
Eon Tae Gyeong’s fist, hanging suspended in the empty air, trembled without cease.
Then, all at once, his hand went slack.
He released Sin Ma’s collar and sank to the ground where he stood.
Burying his face in his knees, he began to weep uncontrollably.
Though he had hidden it until now, the weight of becoming Clan Head at so tender an age, and the loneliness of standing abandoned in the world after losing both his parents, pressed upon him with unbearable force.
After a long time spent in tears, Eon Tae Gyeong slowly raised his head.
The light of reason had vanished entirely from his bloodshot eyes.
The corrupted heir of the Orthodox Sects spoke in a voice cracked and fractured:
“…Very well. If you would use the Jinjueon Clan, then let the Jinjueon Clan seize the Blood Cult’s power and usher in a new age that no one shall dare to scorn!”
Eon Tae Gyeong had finally surrendered himself to the Blood Cult, seeking to hide his own inadequacy beneath their strength.
From that day forward, the deep underground chamber beneath the Jinjueon Clan Headquarters reeked of rot so sickening it seemed to vibrate through the walls.
Having acquired the Corpse Manipulation Art, Eon Tae Gyeong fell completely into madness.
Without the knowledge of the clan’s elders, he pilfered the corpses of servants who had wasted away in illness and death, conducting horrific experiments day and night.
He hoped to make the Jinjueon Clan powerful through the fruits of this labor.
Powerful enough that none would dare to slight them. But the Blood Cult harbored different ambitions.
They had never intended for the Jinjueon Clan to master the Corpse Manipulation Art so thoroughly as to become an uncontrollable force.
They needed only a disposable tool—one that would muddy the Orthodox Sects’ waters and coax them toward self-destruction.
An opportunity to use such a tool soon presented itself.
Word arrived that the Jegal Clan, seeking to restore order to the turbulent Orthodox Sects and strengthen their bonds, had gathered the Promising Young Talents to convene the Yongbong Gathering.
Sin Ma instructed Eon Tae Gyeong to attend the gathering and ambush the Orthodox Sects’ future hope—the talented youth assembled there.
Should such slaughter occur, the Jegal Clan would bear the full brunt of blame, and the Orthodox Sects would descend into a factional chaos from which there was no return.
Yet Eon Tae Gyeong hesitated.
“The Corpse Manipulation Art is not yet perfection. Moreover, if I lay hands on the Promising Young Talents of the realm gathered in one place, the blame will surely reach the Jinjueon Clan—and we shall face the Catastrophe of Clan Destruction.”
Sin Ma, as if he had anticipated this, planted seeds of suspicion in the nearby Seomun Clan.
He deliberately let slip hints that the Jinjueon Clan was researching Blood Cult Sorcery.
Later, he sought out Eon Tae Gyeong once more, feigning grave concern.
“It is already too late. The Seomun Clan Minor Head, renowned for his wisdom, is investigating you even now. If you do not silence them at this gathering, the Jinjueon Clan shall fall to the Orthodox Sects’ hands before ever we can lend you the Blood Cult’s aid.”
And to the terrified Eon Tae Gyeong, he presented an offer impossible to refuse.
“Yet, should you succeed in this task, I swear by the Sect that we shall marshal all our secret arts to resurrect your father as a Corpse Demon of the highest grade—one that transcends humanity itself.”
Cornered and desperate, Eon Tae Gyeong accepted Sin Ma’s proposal.
The primary targets Sin Ma designated were the Seomun Clan, who harbored suspicion of the Jinjueon Clan.
And Namgung Hyeok—whose brilliant rise had shattered the Sage’s lineage—and his sister, whom Sin Ma marked as troublesome obstacles.
Eon Tae Gyeong displayed remarkable cunning, exploiting the Jegal Clan’s goodwill toward the Jinjueon Clan by disguising Corpse Demons as stone statues and presenting them as gifts to the Buddhist Temple.
On the night the courage test was held, the plan unfolded flawlessly—the Corpse Demons awakened on schedule, and all seemed to proceed perfectly.
Yet there was one.
That sickly boy of the Namgung Clan—he reduced every scheme to ash.
Namgung Hyeok not only survived; he evaded the Corpse Demons with movements both precise and uncanny.
Then, with chilling deductive brilliance, he identified Eon Tae Gyeong as the culprit.
The Blood Cult’s grand design—to corner the Jegal Clan and extend their claws across the entire Orthodox Sects—was shattered completely in the hands of a single clan leader.
It was a variable neither Eon Tae Gyeong nor the Blood Cult itself had foreseen.
They dispatched Gu Ma and the Blood Spirit Squad to recover whatever Secret Martial Techniques and Corpse Manipulation secrets remained hidden within the Jinjueon Clan.
“And yet….”
Shatter! The mirror’s phantom broke, and reality returned—the forest once more.
Sin Ma’s ashen face twisted grotesquely with rage.
“Not only did you ruin the sect’s plan, you took my brother’s life as well! Namgung Hyeok!”
The veins on Sin Ma’s hand—still gripping the Skull Staff—bulged dark blue, as if ready to burst.
Properly, he should have returned to the sect to report the situation.
But having lost his brother and learned the name of his murderer, composure was beyond his reach.
His eyes burned with a terrible, obsessive madness.
“I shall tear that arrogant whelp to pieces and keep him as my plaything for all his days!”
He hobbled toward the Ancestral Burial Ground, where the former Jinjueon Clan Head and generations of martial masters lay at rest.
It should have been a sacred precinct, heavily guarded—yet now that the clan had fallen, it lay abandoned and desolate, not a soul in sight.
“We may not have claimed the Jinjueon Clan’s Secret Martial Techniques, yet the corpses of those who comprehended all of the Jinjueon Clan’s secrets in life remain intact and whole.”
In the pitch-black darkness, a bloodied cry echoed forth with eerie resonance.
“The Jinjueon Clan shall toil eternally for our Blood Cult, even in death……!”

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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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