I could see the cold sweat running down him. His pupils trembled, and one hand clutched at his lower dantian.
The way his huge body seemed to be slowly collapsing despite its size showed that my plan had worked perfectly.
‘So it does work.’
I had wondered what I would do if it failed. The versatility of demonic qi seemed broader than I had expected.
As I examined the fallen Dangdeok, I recalled the reason he had ended up like this.
Dangdeok’s subordinate, whose name I could no longer even remember. Was it Julbok or Jungbok?
The moment I corrupted his subordinate into a demon, I established a purpose for doing so.
If the man returned and ended up being killed by Dangdeok—
I wanted the demonic qi he possessed to spread into his surroundings.
It was an application of the fact that, when a demon died, the demonic qi within him spread into the surrounding area.
I slowly approached him, checking my own condition as I went. Unlike my plan, which had worked perfectly, there was one problem.
‘This is a little difficult.’
Using the demonic qi I had planted in Dangdeok was rather taxing.
I had felt it with the Black Dragon Sword as well, but the higher the opponent’s realm, the more difficult it seemed to use demonic qi to restrain him.
Of course, it was still far better than the pressure Dangdeok must be feeling now.
I approached him with an expression that tried its best to appear unconcerned.
“Nice to meet you.”
“…”
Dangdeok looked at me with trembling eyes.
The demonic qi gradually tightening around his body seemed to have left him considerably flustered.
“…What did you do to me…?”
“Do you like the present?”
“You bastard…!”
Dangdeok shouted at me, his face twisted to its limit.
“Did you poison me?!”
He seemed to have mistaken my actions for having fed him poison.
Well, it was poison, in a sense.
‘He’s very angry.’
I let out a faint laugh as I sensed Dangdeok’s fury.
To him, poison was a sort of dagger.
His body was entirely incapable of developing resistance to poison.
And then there was the inferiority complex stemming from the surname he carried.
Looking at him, I smiled broadly and said,
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
“You insolent cur!”
Boom—!
A fighting aura erupted from Dangdeok’s body.
Though his body was bound by demonic qi, the energy he gave off was still tremendous.
In terms of sheer momentum, he was perhaps only slightly inferior to the Black Dragon Sword.
Judging by this, he too had reached the Transformation realm.
Just as I was gradually confirming information about him with my eyes, Dangdeok growled and demanded,
“Have you joined hands with the Poison King…?”
His words were rather unexpected, and I had to tilt my head.
“Why do you think that?”
At my question, Dangdeok curled up the corner of his mouth and answered,
“Because the only family capable of using a poison like this is that fucking family.”
“That’s a bit harsh. ‘That fucking family’? You were born into that family too, weren’t you?”
“You bastard…! How dare you compare me to a place like that…!”
“Come to think of it… I suppose you aren’t. They abandoned you long ago. They’ve probably forgotten you by now.”
“…!”
Dangdeok ground his teeth at my words.
“How much do you know, exactly…?”
“I don’t know that much in particular…”
If he was asking how much I knew—
“The Heavenly Martial Constitution Birth Project.”
“…!”
“About that much.”
At my answer, Dangdeok’s eyes opened wide, and his body began to tremble.
He clearly had not expected me to know this much.
‘I didn’t exactly want to learn about it, either.’
The Heavenly Martial Constitution Birth Project.
Going by the name alone, one might wonder what it was supposed to mean.
But delving into the truth revealed an undertaking filled with filth and depravity.
It was the title of an experiment devised by the former master of the Tang Clan, a master of the previous generation known as the Poison Lord.
Poison Lord Dang Biseong had loved the Tang Clan more than anyone.
He thought highly of the status the Tang Clan possessed, and more than anyone else, he wished for the clan to rise to an even higher position.
What was the fastest way to accomplish that? It was something Dang Biseong had always agonized over.
Yet the answer was very simple.
In a way, it was only common sense.
The fastest way for the Tang Clan to rise to the highest position was simply to possess the strongest martial artist in the Central Plains.
That was why, despite possessing sufficient status and renown, none of the four families known as the Four Great Families could be called the foremost family.
The absence of an absolute being.
The present was an era in which the Three Venerables had appeared, marking the beginning of the Orthodox Faction’s golden age.
Yet it was also an era in which the figure who had existed in every age had disappeared.
The Greatest Under Heaven.
The Sword Venerable, the Tyrant Venerable, and the Heaven Venerable.
The question of which of the three was strongest continued to be debated.
But no one could give a definitive answer as to who truly stood above all under heaven.
They were masters who each operated within the domains they had established, and there was no movement to determine such a thing in the first place.
Thus, it was merely called the age of the Three Venerables, and peace had been achieved.
In some respects, it could be called the most well-balanced era.
But the Poison Lord was not pleased with it.
The Poison Lord must have thought at the time:
The Tang Clan’s heir should seize the summit during a gap in such an opportunity.
He himself could not do it.
The Poison Lord clearly understood his own limits. Accordingly, he decided to look toward the future.
That was the starting point of the Heavenly Martial Constitution Birth Project.
The Heavenly Martial Constitution referred to a person possessing a body and talent granted by the heavens.
A body perfect for learning martial arts.
A mind most suited to understanding martial arts, along with a vast dantian ideal for accumulating internal energy.
The greatest being one could become as a martial artist.
That was the Heavenly Martial Constitution.
The Poison Lord wished to raise such a person within the Tang Clan.
Then, in the future, turn him into the Greatest Under Heaven and make the Tang Clan known as the foremost family.
That was Dang Biseong’s ambition.
This plan, like his inflated ambition, proceeded in an exceedingly cruel manner.
The Heavenly Martial Constitution was not something one could obtain simply by wishing for it.
It was called a talent that might appear once in a thousand years, if at all, for good reason.
Rather than place his hopes in such slim odds, Dang Biseong sought to create a Heavenly Martial Constitution artificially.
An artificial Heavenly Martial Constitution.
What a contradictory phrase.
That was what I thought at first.
Then, as if to prove that my thoughts had not been misplaced, the method of experimentation was enough to make even me recoil in disgust.
First, Dang Biseong brought nameless orphans from all across the Central Plains, imprisoned them underground, and gave them the surname Dang.
After that—
‘He injected them with the blood of monsters.’
He forcibly injected the children with monster blood.
It was a bizarre thing to do, but that was what the records said.
Demons possessed muscles far tougher and more durable than those of ordinary humans.
Among them, he used the blood of primate monsters, whose appearance most closely resembled that of humans.
What was the result?
What do you think? Every one of them died.
It was only natural. Monsters were beings entirely different from humans.
Even the color of their blood was different.
When a large quantity of it was forcibly injected into a human body—
the human would be unable to withstand the monster blood, suffer convulsions, and die.
I found this information in my previous life, when I discovered the underground chambers of the Sichuan Tang Clan. It was recorded deep within them.
Thousands of journals containing such information were discovered.
Including the journals that had gone missing, there might have been twice as many.
Just how many people had been swept up in Dang Biseong’s ambition and died because of it?
According to the records, the youngest child had been five years old. The oldest had been no more than ten.
Could children of that age truly have died because of Dang Biseong’s ambition?
That was something I could not know.
And the Dangdeok standing before me was one of the victims of that experiment.
Moreover, I recalled what had been written at the very end of those thousands of journals.
In a situation where it was only natural for every subject to die, there had been exactly one individual who succeeded in blending with the monster blood.
By my common sense, it was impossible.
How could a human survive after being injected with monster blood? It was difficult to believe.
And yet the records clearly said so.
Blood fusion successful.
Increased skin durability, along with a drastic rise in muscular strength… That was roughly what had been written.
I did not know what method he had used, but Dang Biseong’s experiment had succeeded.
According to the records, the subject should have obtained a body close to the Heavenly Martial Constitution he so desired.
And yet, at the end, he had written that the experiment subject was a failure.
Why had he recorded it as a failure after conducting more than several thousand experiments?
The reason was none other than—
‘The absence of poison resistance.’
That was the true meaning of the experiment.
Dang Biseong wanted the Greatest Under Heaven to exist beneath the Tang Clan’s name.
Thus, what he considered more important than anything was not merely whether the subject possessed a powerful body, but whether he could learn poison arts.
In that respect, the experiment subject was indeed a failure.
The conclusion had been that he could never develop resistance to poison arts.
It was hard to understand how such an outstanding body could produce such a result.
But that was reality, and so Dang Biseong had apparently recorded it as a failure.
Of course, since the body itself was so excellent, he continued repeating countless experiments in an attempt to create resistance to poison.
But all of them failed.
The records of Dang Biseong stated that he had ultimately disposed of the experiment subject.
But I was certain.
The protagonist of the experiment I had just described was none other than the Dangdeok standing before me.
‘The name written in the records was Dangdeok, after all.’
There had been more than one Dangdeok, and I had not examined all the records, but his characteristics made it clear.
His name was Dangdeok.
The possessor of an absurd degree of physical strength and a body closest to being impervious to blades.
A body incapable of developing resistance to poison.
His hatred toward the Tang Clan.
Wasn’t that enough to figure it out?
“A failed experiment that could not become the Heavenly Martial Constitution. That’s you, isn’t it?”
“…You… Just what are you?”
“My identity?”
I pondered Dangdeok’s question for a moment.
My identity…
What should I say? For some reason, I found myself actually considering it.
Then, without realizing it, I murmured the word that came to mind.
“The Heavenly Demon.”
“…What?”
“Ah, forget that. It was just something that suddenly occurred to me.”
Why had I suddenly thought of the Heavenly Demon? I had no idea.
I had uttered the word without thinking, yet for some reason Dangdeok gave a slight nod.
“A demon sent by the heavens… Truly, it suits you.”
“What did you just say, you bastard?”
I had no idea when he had seen me to insult me like that.
I felt irritation rise within me, but I had to suppress my emotions for the moment.
Krrrk.
Dangdeok was rising to his feet while gripping his spear.
“Moreover… I now know that you are connected to the Poison King.”
“…”
That wasn’t particularly true, but I did not bother denying it.
Even if I denied it here, I did not think he would believe me.
And besides—
‘It doesn’t matter even if he doesn’t.’
That was not what mattered here.
Dangdeok rose to his feet, pointed the tip of his spear at me, and said,
“You will die here by my hand.”
Even while struggling against the demonic qi, his spirit remained unbroken.
He had been like that in my previous life as well, even while I gouged out his eyeballs with my own hands.
“The Poison King’s descendants—the damned old man’s descendants—will also die by my hand.”
His hatred toward the Tang Clan ran deep.
Well, it was only natural. If I had suffered what he had, I might have lived for revenge as well.
And the bandits who had gathered beneath him—
‘Were they all people who hated the Tang Clan?’
They wore the outward appearance of bandits, but at their core, they were revenants gathered for revenge.
I did not know whether they, too, were victims of the experiments.
I had no interest in that much.
I did not think the Tang Clan had done the right thing.
What they had done was vile, and perhaps they deserved to be condemned and have revenge visited upon them.
But—
‘I don’t care.’
Unfortunately, I had little interest in that matter. Dangdeok’s anger—
his desire for revenge—I could understand all of it.
But—
‘It has nothing to do with what matters to me.’
There was something more important to me than that.
Even if that made me seem cruel, or selfish and ugly—
I did not care.
I only needed to protect what I wanted to protect.
And Dangdeok was merely a piece on the board for that purpose.
Just as I was thinking that, Dangdeok continued speaking.
“And the Poison King’s daughter… I hear she is there as well?”
At the mention of Dang Soyeol from Dangdeok’s mouth, I frowned.
“She will die by my hand as well—”
“Hey.”
When I called out to him, Dangdeok looked at me with a strange expression.
“That’s enough.”
“What?”
“I need to keep you alive and make use of you…”
I forcibly suppressed the emotions boiling up inside me.
I felt like walking over right then and snapping his neck.
But I had to endure it.
“If you say anything more, I’ll have to kill you. Shut your mouth and do what you’re supposed to do. Are you going to attack or not?”
“…”
Haa…
Dangdeok let out a short sigh at my words, then gripped his spear tightly and gradually spread his fighting aura.
I had already infused him with demonic qi, yet he could still release this much fighting aura…
Why was that?
It felt as though the demonic qi I had planted in him was not manifesting properly.
Could it be—
‘Is the monster blood within him the problem?’
It was possible. Before demonic qi was the energy possessed by the Heavenly Demon, it was also an energy contained within the magic stones of monsters.
As such, perhaps the blood itself possessed some resistance to demonic qi.
If so, would fighting Dangdeok while he remained incompletely consumed by the demonic qi be too much for me?
I watched him in silence and reached a conclusion.
‘I’ll find out if I try.’
You could not know without trying.
That was my conclusion.
Since entering this life, I had not fought many martial artists who had reached the Transformation realm.
At most, there had been the Black Dragon Sword, the White Heaven Sword Lord, and perhaps my father.
That was about it.
Compared to them, fighting this man felt somewhat comfortable.
I had also wanted to properly test myself in battle after reaching the Transformation realm.
‘It doesn’t matter if I kill him.’
That thought alone was a considerable help.
Of course, I would not kill him, since I needed to make use of him.
But that meant I had no burden weighing on me.
“This time, I won’t touch your eyes.”
“…?”
Dangdeok looked at me with confusion.
“It’s just that your eyes looked rather tempting.”
“…You truly are a bastard.”
Thinking I was provoking him, Dangdeok immediately shot his massive body toward me.
I watched him, the corners of my mouth lifting as I drew up my demonic qi to its fullest.
At that instant, demonic qi filled one side of my heart.
Crack—!
I felt strength surge through my entire body, and energy burst forth from me.
First—
‘Black Heaven.’
I erased the stars above the sky.