Shwaaaa—
The rain began to fall, drenching the blood-soaked earth. The fresh, earthly scent of the downpour briefly masked the foul stench of slaughter. Yet, even over the heavy drumming of the rain, the slow, deliberate footsteps of the Heavenly Demon were deafeningly loud.
The Young Leader didn't dare look at the terrifying figure. He had been praised his entire life as the greatest talent of his generation, building an ego that looked down on everyone. But now, in the presence of the living myth his father had warned him about, that arrogance crumbled into dust. He couldn't even manage to raise his eyes from the mud.
The surrounding martial artists weren't any different. They didn't even dare to breathe properly, terrified that the slightest gasp might draw his attention. But amidst their terror, a collective thought brought them comfort: if the Heavenly Demon had personally arrived on the battlefield, the bastard Mad-Blood Demon was finally done for.
Amidst the sea of trembling masters stood the Mad-Blood Demon. His eyes were fixed entirely on the Heavenly Demon.
He finally came, huh...? My luck is really something... The Mad-Blood Demon took a deep breath and exhaled, a meager attempt to calm his racing mind. "Here to kill me?"
The Heavenly Demon didn't say anything. He simply looked at him, his void-like eyes slowly dropping to glance at the man's empty hands.
"Draw your weapon." His voice was calm, yet profoundly unsettling.
"Straight to business? Don't be so cold-hearted, cutie."
The surrounding martial artists collectively gasped in shock. They couldn't control it. One or two even had to channel their Internal Energy to forcefully clamp their jaws shut just to keep from letting out a hysterical, terrified laugh.
The Mad-Blood Demon internally winced. He clearly hadn't wanted to say that last part out loud, but as always, his mouth and his brain operated on entirely different wavelengths.
The Heavenly Demon remained completely silent. His facial muscles didn't twitch even the slightest fraction at the absurd remark.
Looking at that unfazed, marble-like face, the Mad-Blood Demon coughed awkwardly. "I have a request. Oh, so great Heavenly Demon, please do not deny it."
The Heavenly Demon still didn't speak, but a subtle shift in his abyssal eyes gave permission.
"Let's take a short walk and talk."
"!"
It was a completely unexpected request.
Everyone present fully believed the wretched bastard would beg for mercy, or at least a painless death. But to ask for a leisurely stroll and a chat with the absolute ruler of the Demonic Cult? What a joke.
An Unorthodox martial artist foolishly voiced these exact thoughts out loud. "You damn wretch! Asking the great Heavenly Demon to take a walk with you?! Do you think he would ever want to talk with a bastard like you?!"
The man's eyes were still glued to the ground in submission as he yelled. The crowd froze in shock at the sudden outburst.
The Heavenly Demon didn't even glance in the sycophant's direction. His hollow eyes remained focused solely on the Mad-Blood Demon standing before him.
Encouraged by the silence, the Unorthodox warrior opened his mouth to say another word, desperate to gain the favor of the Demonic Cult Leader.
Then, the invisible pressure descended.
"N-no..." The warrior choked, his hands flying to his temples. An unbearable, crushing weight suddenly locked onto his skull. His head began to swell rapidly, veins bulging purple against his skin. He couldn't even form a plea for mercy.
Before anyone could fully process the horrifying sight, his head burst into a violent shower of bone, flesh, and blood.
The people kneeling around him were instantly drenched in hot brain matter. They desperately wanted to scream, to vomit, to run—but they bit their lips until they bled. They knew if they acted recklessly or made a single sound in the Heavenly Demon's presence, they would be next.
The Heavenly Demon finally moved. Without a single word, he walked slowly past the Mad-Blood Demon.
A second later, the Mad-Blood Demon sighed, turned around, and began to follow him into the rain.
"Did you really have to kill that fool?" the Mad-Blood Demon asked, his boots splashing in the muddy puddles. "I guess that's why they're all so terrified of you."
The Heavenly Demon kept walking at a slow, measured pace, his void-like eyes gazing toward the distant horizon.
Receiving no response, he continued anyway. "Do you remember the rumors that surfaced about you ten years ago? There were all kinds of absurd things in there. One of them claimed you were addicted to... violating livestock. Yeah, that was all me. Though your cult members brought my little campaign down and completely annihilated the underground organization I hired to spread it."
The Heavenly Demon didn't react to this confession either. His pale side profile remained elegant and completely unreadable. No one knew what was going on inside the mind of the man the entire world feared.
"Though I enjoyed spreading them, there was an actual reason behind it," the Mad-Blood Demon said, his voice dropping a fraction. "A person... no, my friend. He admired a crazy fuc— I mean, a crazy person like you. He was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He used to joke about meeting you someday. I traveled everywhere trying to find a cure for him... but I failed, as usual." He let out a long sigh, the rain washing over the heavy memories of his late friend.
"I planned to at least arrange a meeting between the two of you, even if it cost me my own life. I was just a beggar anyway. He was definitely much better than me, both as a person and as a martial artist. I had hoped you would actually react to my provocations and come find me. Don't misunderstand... I tried to contact you through normal channels first. But I guess a certain supreme ruler is too prideful to meet someone who's just begging at his gates. During those days, I realized another thing about myself... I wasn't a very good beggar."
His steps finally came to a halt. A second later, so did the Heavenly Demon's. The absolute ruler of the Demonic Cult slowly turned around to look at him.
Before the Mad-Blood Demon could utter another word, the impossible happened. The Heavenly Demon spoke first.
"What was his name?"
"Cheonha."
"Such an arrogant name..." The Mad-Blood Demon looked down at the muddy ground, the hard lines of his face softening into profound sadness.
"Was he a part of the Demonic Cult?"
Another shocking event. The Heavenly Demon had actually asked two questions in a row.
"N-No. He was a mercenary."
Both men internally understood the unspoken weight of that admiration. Admiring the Heavenly Demon wasn't something a normal person did.
The figure standing in the rain was a monster who had butchered his entire family just to claim the throne of the Cult. He had mercilessly slaughtered anyone who stood in his way, innocent or not. He was a human utterly devoid of humanity.
"Anyways..." The Mad-Blood Demon forced a bitter smile. "That's all I had to say."
"Oh! Right... another question. Are you really here to kill me?" the Mad-Blood Demon asked. He genuinely didn't understand the reason behind this sudden appearance. Though he had killed some members of the Demonic Cult in the past, the Heavenly Demon wasn't the type of person to seek out petty revenge. To him, his subordinates were merely disposable pawns.
The Heavenly Demon's face remained completely emotionless.
"Why...?"
The Heavenly Demon slowly raised his pale hand. The cold raindrops pelted his palm—until they suddenly froze in mid-air.
"...No reason."
The suspended raindrops rushed together, forming a swirling sphere of water that rapidly froze into solid ice. In a flash, dozens of jagged icicles shot out from the sphere, rocketing toward the Mad-Blood Demon like deadly ballista bolts.
But none of them connected.
The Mad-Blood Demon's face remained perfectly calm as the ice shattered into mist inches from his body. He hadn't even deployed a defensive art; the sheer, oppressive density of his passive Qi was enough to grind the attack to dust.
When it came to the fundamentals of martial arts, he was an absolute anomaly. Though, until today, he had never tested that strength against the Heavenly Demon.
"..."
"Let's fight..." His naturally downturned lips twitched, curling upward into a vicious, bloodthirsty smile.
Swishhh—
He concentrated his Internal Energy into his right arm.
A torrent of pitch-black Qi erupted, rapidly shifting in state. It sparked wildly like volatile plasma, condensed into a thick, swirling liquid, and finally hardened into an absolute solid. It took the terrifying shape of a jagged, black blade extending directly from his forearm.
For the first time, the Heavenly Demon's abyssal eyes widened a fraction of an inch.
Condensing Qi into a purely solid state was no ordinary feat.
In fact, it was considered theoretically impossible even for the greatest of grandmasters—surprisingly, even for the Heavenly Demon himself.
The Cult Leader unsheathed his Demonic Sword. The steel shone with a deadly brilliance before being instantly swallowed by a roaring aura of deep purple Demonic Qi.
In the next fraction of a second, both figures vanished.
They reappeared in the distance, tearing through the heavy fog. The Heavenly Demon brought down a devastating, heavy strike.
BOOM!
The Mad-Blood Demon caught the strike seamlessly with his solid black Qi blade.
A massive shockwave tore through the battlefield, accompanied by a deafening ring that threatened to rupture eardrums. The ambient energy was so sharp that the famous martial artists standing hundreds of feet away received shallow cuts across their skin just from the aftershock.
Panic ensued. The supposedly fearless warriors scrambled back, slipping in the bloody mud, falling over corpses, and crawling desperately to escape the blast zone.
BOOM!
Another earth-shattering strike landed, and again, the Mad-Blood Demon blocked it.
In the distance, the Young Leader watched the clash with absolute awe. Despite having fully deployed his defensive arts, his body shivered violently from the sheer kinetic force radiating through the air.
"Young Leader! Fall back! It's not safe here!" the Mount Hua Sect Leader shouted over the roaring wind.
But the Young Leader didn't budge. To a true martial artist, witnessing a battle of this godly caliber was nothing short of a fleeting fantasy. He couldn't look away if he tried.
The two figures vanished into the air again, reappearing high above the ground as their blades crashed in a flurry of purple and black. The shockwaves grew increasingly deafening as they poured more power into their strikes. The sheer heat of the sparks and colliding Qi evaporated the falling rain, creating a massive, dry dome of steam in the middle of the downpour.
"How is it, Heavenly Demon?!" the Mad-Blood Demon shouted over the thunder. If there was one thing he absolutely loved in this miserable life, it was the blood-pumping thrill of fighting a truly strong opponent.
Slash!
Seeking an opening, the Mad-Blood Demon unleashed a flurry of rapid, piercing thrusts. But each time, the Heavenly Demon's Great Demonic Defensive Arts flared up, forming an impenetrable barrier of purple Qi that effortlessly deflected the solid black blade.
Slash!
The Mad-Blood Demon ground his teeth, his mind racing faster than his blade. He had to find a way to shatter that absolute defense, while simultaneously surviving the relentless onslaught of the Demonic Sword.