CHAPTER 44: THE HEAVENLY DEMON’S MIGHT

Sword Empress’s POV

They say when a person is pushed to their limits, their wicked nature emerges.

I’d always dismissed that as a feeble justification for the depraved—a crutch for those too spineless to leash their baser impulses. Even the most shadowed soul, I’d believed, could summon the will to restrain, to rise above the mire of their flaws.

But... but...

"Ahh..."

What right did I have to sit in judgment? What moral perch allowed me to condemn when I teetered on the brink of my own abyss, entertaining thoughts so foul they curdled my blood?

What had my existence amounted to, if not a hollow edifice of hypocrisy—preaching restraint while my desires gnawed from within like vermin?

Crack.

A fracture spiderwebbed through the fortress I’d deemed impregnable, my heart’s unyielding core splintering under the strain. At this precipice, qi deviation loomed not as specter but inevitability—a cataclysm that could unmake me from the inside out.

And in that suspended instant of unraveling,

"Mm..."

Squeeze.

His lax fingers, moments ago adrift in fever’s tide, clenched around mine with sudden, fervent need. Not content with clasp, he tugged—both hands drawing my arm inexorably toward him.

"W-What...?"

The pull lacked force, a whisper against my strength, yet in my fractured haze, resistance crumbled. I yielded, tumbling onto the bed’s edge in a graceless sprawl.

Squeeze.

"Hehe..."

Now he cradled my arm fully, nuzzling into it with unabashed delight.

"Master, that tickles... Hehe..."

"..."

Mesmerized, I extended a tentative hand, slipping beneath the hood’s shadowed brim to trace his scalp. Illusory or not, the strands yielded soft and warm, a tactile phantom that soothed despite its unreality.

"Ehe..."

A giggle bubbled forth, pure and impish, evoking echoes of unscarred youth.

Pat pat.

I persisted in silence, fingers weaving gentle rhythms through the unseen locks, then hooked the hat’s edge with delicate intent.

A faint tug resisted—subconscious, perhaps—but yielding to will, it would lift. He slumbered deep; a glimpse, swift and stolen, then restoration—undetected, unremembered.

"...Hoo."

With a measured exhale, I relinquished the brim, letting it settle undisturbed. Reasons shrouded his features for a purpose; to breach that barrier unbidden smacked of violation, a discourtesy I could not countenance.

"For now... let’s head to Anhui."

Verification awaited in that distant province—the suspect awaiting scrutiny. If falsehood prevailed... well, inquiry could follow in gentler measure.

And if truth unveiled him as Dan Yuseong...

...I’d spend my life atoning.

+

The Martial Alliance proclaimed victory absolute in the war against the Blood Cult: leader slain, every vestige purged in purifying flame.

Such was the edifice of their narrative, broadcast to soothe the fractured realms.

Yet whispers persisted, truths too incendiary for proclamation. The cult’s downfall owed less to righteous steel than to a provocation that summoned apocalypse.

For the Demonic Cult—and its sovereign, the Heavenly Demon—had long cast covetous eyes upon the Central Plains, ambitions waxing and waning through epochs. Cycles of incursion: spies unmasked in shadowed alleys, demonic blades carving crimson swaths through villages, only to recede into myth until the next tide swelled.

Decades prior, however, a seismic shift rippled through the infernal hierarchy. Murmurs escaped the Demonic Cult’s veiled bastions: a usurper had rent the prior Heavenly Demon asunder, claiming the throne not with hunger for conquest, but startling apathy toward the mortal sprawl beyond their peaks.

Such tidings, sifted through webs of espionage, reached the Alliance’s vaults. Skepticism reigned—deeming it stratagem, they redoubled infiltration. Yet abruptly, their embedded shadows evaporated, supplanted by a missive stark and sender-anonymous:

["Do not meddle. I will do the same."]

Inference was swift; the hand unmistakable.

Credulity faltered before such decree, but coincidence conspired: the Blood Cult ignited its inferno precisely then, demanding every vigilant eye. Resources funneled to the crimson tide, the demonic truce held tacit, untested.

War burgeoned, a maelstrom devouring the heartlands. In the terminus clash—retreat forsaken—the righteous vanguard crumbled: luminaries felled like autumn leaves. Even the unorthodox, forged in opportunistic pact, scattered as the chasm in might yawned abyssal.

In nadir’s clutch, she materialized—a tempest incarnate.

["Are you the one called the Blood Demon?"]

Before her, the Blood Cult’s legions—teeming hordes, elite butchers who bloodied even paragons, the sovereign himself entwined in deadlock with the Sword Empress and Blue Thunder Sword—dissolved to chaff.

She pulverized 3,000 zealots in solitary fury.

She sundered a phalanx of over a hundred archfiends, their arcane lattice fracturing like brittle ice.

She dismantled the leader’s vaunted maledictions unscathed, consigning him to oblivion—not mere demise, but erasure absolute, no sanguine trace to mar the earth.

Potence transcending reason. "Absolute master" fell short; she evoked the divine—or infernal—beyond humanity’s frail taxonomy. The boundless Central Plains strained to encompass her; she towered, singular, unchallenged.

"Aah!"

In a subterranean vault, hewn from the Central Plains’ fringes—crimson-veiled, reeking of iron and incantation—the Blood Cult’s purportedly eradicated dregs prostrated before a profane altar, fervor etching their obeisance.

"The time has finally come!"

A woman commanded the dais: progeny of the fallen sovereign, anointed priestess of the resurgent cult, her visage alight with zealous rapture.

"It has been 19 years since the former leader met a horrific end at the hands of that heretic! At last, the moment we’ve waited for has arrived!"

""""Oooooh!!!!""""

Crimson irises gleamed, countenances stripped of rationality—hallmarks of the faithful, the damned.

"Why do you think our cult was defeated?! Why, despite having the power to turn all those hypocritical righteous sect bastards into piles of blood, did we have to flee back then?!"

""""Because we were weak!!""""

"Yes!! We were weak!! The former leader couldn’t fully accept the power of the Blood Demon into his body!! And that’s why we lost!!"

Blasphemy against kin spilled from her lips unheeding; piety held no sway in their creed, only the sanguine gospel.

"And so, I realized! No matter how much humans strive, they remain mere humans! Foolish mortals scrambling to claim the arrangements left behind by the Blood Demon! To truly dye this world in blood, we must not simply take the Blood Demon’s power into our bodies—we must bring the Blood Demon himself back to this land!!!"

Boom!!!

Arms flung heavenward in exaltation, the priestess invoked the rite.

"Now!! O Blood Demon!! Please descend upon this land once more!!!"

The altar brimmed with their hoarded tribute: 9,999 vitae—harvested from man and beast alike, a calculus unearthed in forbidden tomes as the key to invocation.

Hummm!

Flawlessness graced their arcana; the edifice drank deep, hearts pulsing in unison, aura malign and burgeoning.

Hummmmmm!!!

Resonance swelled, saturating the chamber, a dirge presaging rupture. Then—

BOOOOM!!!!

Cataclysm rent the dais asunder, birthing a silhouette amid the pyre’s afterglow.

"Ugh... Where am I...?"

Jet tresses framed a pallid countenance, vermilion slits for eyes, sable cloak pooling like spilled night. He crumpled, cradling his skull.

"I was definitely struck by that divine harlot..."

"Aaaaah!!! O Blood Demon!!!!"

"Vampire...? Am I really a vampire...? Ugh..."

His pallor gleamed unnatural as he rasped lexicon alien to these climes.

Orientation paramount, he appraised the babbling supplicant before him.

"Come here and offer your neck."

"Aah!! Yes, gladly!!"

Compliance came with zealous zeal, her honor ecstatic—baffling, yet secondary to clarity.

Crunch.

Fangs lanced her jugular with predatory grace; agony eluded her, replaced by rapture’s glaze.

Gulp.

"Hmm... The taste is quite decent."

"Haa... Haa... Thank you..."

Through vitae imbibed, he siphoned her chronicle—tapestry of grudge and rite.

Varstein, Lord of Vampires, Third Commander of the Legion of the Undying.

He decreed.

"I need corpses."

This cadre sufficed not. To muster legions true, he required vessels—his brood, the eternal kin who’d warred at his flank.