Overlord of Sichuan

Chapter 298: Blood Demon’s Dream (1)

This place was neither a horrifying Blood Palace nor a desolate battlefield.

‘What in the world…?’

Sewoon had become a transparent spirit body, drifting through the void.

At some point, his physical body no longer existed.

Only his consciousness remained, swept into someone else’s memories.

Though bewildered at first, Sewoon quickly steadied himself.

If he lost himself to confusion here, he could fall prey to the Blood Demon’s schemes.

He had to examine the lingering afterimages he could see and find information that would allow him to escape this place.

Step. Step.

What came into Sewoon’s view was a small boy, not even five years old yet.

The boy was walking alone through deep mountains.

‘……How far back in the past is this?’

Yet the world within the memory was utterly different from present reality.

Enormous trees towered as if piercing the heavens, and from their branches hung clusters of radiant, glowing fruits.

It was a mysterious sight, like an Immortal Realm where sages were said to roam.

‘The ancient world from thousands of years ago, spoken of only in legends…!’

Could this truly be real?

Did such a thing even make sense?

And yet, what lay before his eyes was far too intricate to be something created by Evil Art or illusion techniques.

A village of round, earthen pit houses molded from packed mud stood clustered together.

Women boiled millet porridge in clay pots, while children ran about noisily on the dirt ground.

Their clothes were made of coarse hemp, and their feet were bare.

Upon the land where the yellow waters of the Yellow River flowed endlessly.

Before the Age of Iron had begun, people wove together earth, stone, and wood to build the foundations of their lives.

But even within that peaceful scenery, an inexplicable sense of unease lingered.

As the sun set and a crimson afterglow spread across the sky.

‘War…!’

The people of a neighboring village attacked the boy’s village, weapons in hand.

Before the boy’s eyes, his family and siblings were slaughtered.

At the site of that horrific massacre, the boy awakened.

‘……!!’

From the boy’s entire body, overwhelming power began to surge forth.

Harnessing the energy of heaven and earth, he began annihilating his enemies without exception.

The boy was an overwhelming prodigy.

From birth, he could see and feel the Qi that filled heaven and earth, and without anyone teaching him, he accumulated that energy within his body through breathing alone, rapidly growing stronger.

Though his revenge was complete, his village had already been reduced to ruins.

After burying everyone, the boy left for another place.

Before he realized it, the sole purpose of his life had become nothing but ‘growing stronger.’

In the process of growing from boy to man, he fought life-and-death battles against others who, like him, had mastered Qi.

‘If this truly is the ancient martial world, then that era must have been a transitional period where proper martial principles and martial arts had yet to be established. Other than battles of life and death, there would have been no way to accumulate enlightenment.’

Just as Sewoon thought, no one could dare become the man’s master.

He surpassed everyone else in the world.

Everything the man achieved was unprecedented.

The first Transformation Realm.

The first Manifestation Realm.

The first Life and Death Realm.

He concluded that heaven had bestowed him with innate talent so that he might witness the very end of martial arts.

But…

Even as inevitable death loomed closer, he could not find a single clue to transcend his realm.

-Why—why will you not permit it!!

His physical body had already transcended all pain and anguish, perfected beyond flaw.

But his mind had not.

His humanity gradually faded away, leaving only an obsession with becoming stronger itself.

Yet the principles governing life and death lay beyond his control.

He despaired at his own limits.

And that despair soon transformed into madness.

-Time. Yes, it is only time that I lack. If only time were infinite, I would surely shed humanity and reach godhood!

Betting everything he possessed, he began devoting all his strength to attaining immortality.

Watching that 모습, Sewoon felt an unbearable sense of revulsion.

‘……Those are no longer the eyes of a human.’

The man’s eyes had completely lost all humanity. Only an unfathomable void resided within them.

Just like someone else’s eyes he had seen before.

At that moment, the man within the memory began to learn Evil Art.

Though it followed a completely different path from martial arts, he was a one-of-a-kind genius.

His power swelled just as rapidly as it had through martial arts.

-Master! Please stop! That is not the path of humanity!

-My lord, please return to us.

Followers and disciples, moved by his past deeds, tried to dissuade him as he delved into Evil Art and sorcery.

Loyalty and worry were mixed upon their faces.

But the man did not heed their advice.

-Worms destined to fade beneath the laws of the present age dare speak.

Aaaaaargh!

Demonic Qi erupting from the man’s hand tore them apart in a gruesome fashion.

Their screams were nothing more than noise to his ears.

To him, they were all obstacles blocking his path to becoming a god.

And finally.

-It is done! The power of immortality is now in my grasp!!

He escaped the laws of existence, overcame death, and became an undying being.

He believed this to be the first step toward godhood.

From the man’s eyes, blackened tears of blood streamed down, yet he did not see them. His laughter continued endlessly.

Then he split space apart, creating a place that only he could belong to, and there he began once more to accumulate the martial learning that would lead him to godhood, which had been halted while he pursued immortality.

……However, the joy of achieving immortality, the hope of reaching godhood, did not last long.

The reason was simple.

Hundreds of years—no, thousands of years passed, yet—

-Why won’t it work……! Why, why…?

Not a single clue.

Not even the slightest progress.

He despaired.

Had he never possessed the talent to become a god in the first place?

Was he nothing more than an ordinary human, no different from the dust or insects he had wiped out?

His mind was swallowed by despair.

A realm beyond the Life and Death Realm.

In the end, he was further consumed by madness.

At last, he fell into corruption and crossed a line that should never be crossed.

-I must accumulate more power. Power greater than anything else……

It was not as though his training after obtaining the power of immortality had yielded nothing.

A heaven-defying power, created by overturning and twisting all principles and laws of the world.

Reverse Heaven Qi.

To nurture this power, the world had to collapse even further, and far more ‘death’ was required.

-In the Immortal Realm that existed before the human world, it is said that Immortals slaughtered all the inhabitants of an entire city to create a single pill, and sacrificed a whole nation to cultivate a single method. If so, how is this any different now?

Sewoon was left speechless in horror.

There was no way to describe it other than madness.

The man was declaring that, in order to ascend to the realm of godhood, he would use all existence as sacrifices.

Breaking his long seclusion, he emerged into the world and began to subtly yet viciously plunge a peaceful world into chaos.

-From the beginning, righteousness existed. Our Orthodox Path cannot acknowledge any crooked martial arts!

-Who says martial arts consist only of righteousness! Only the free Unorthodox Path, unbound by any rules in the pursuit of strength, is the sole way to prove martial arts!

In order to create more death, he divided the martial world into righteousness and unorthodoxy—concepts that had not originally existed within the martial world.

At times, the man became a grand master of the Orthodox Path and swept away the Unorthodox Sects.

When that ended, he crossed over to the Unorthodox Sects, became the foremost expert of the Black Path, and wiped out the Orthodox Sects.

As the years passed, to the point that even the reasons for their mutual hatred were forgotten, countless lives were soaked in blood by the man’s hands.

As much as the power of Reverse Heaven Qi grew, it was still not enough.

For even greater evil, he established heretical cults and created demonic arts mixed with bizarre powers, yet he still felt parched and incomplete.

At that moment, a single conclusion flashed through his mind.

-Sacrifices are insufficient.

More blood.

More corpses.

Yes, let us erase all existence from the world.

-If I become a god anyway, can I not simply revive everything afterward?

After all, were they not mere dust, living lives shorter than mayflies, incapable of achieving immortality like himself?

Dust was dust, in the truest sense.

There was no need to feel guilt toward dust.

Rather, if they were to be used for a greater cause, would that not be a more joyous life for dust?

‘Ah…’

Without realizing it, Sewoon let out a low groan.

Despite being a spirit body, he felt as though he might retch at the horrific truth that lay beyond comprehension.

Yet Sewoon clenched his teeth and continued to observe the memories to the very end.

For the sake of all those who had been sacrificed, he could not afford to miss even a single moment.

Thus, after living through thousands of years, the man finally emerged fully onto the world stage and established the Blood Cult.

And for the first time, he annihilated the world.

He erased all life that existed, leaving not a single being behind except himself.

He had literally brought about the end of the world.

But—

-Failure…?

He had failed.

In a world where all breath had ceased, he did not become a god.

-No, my thinking was not wrong. I merely overlooked something……!

He never once considered that he might have been mistaken.

After that, he repeated countless destructions in search of his error.

Twisting time and returning to the past, he began destroying the world endlessly.

Yet nothing changed.

So much time passed that it was impossible to even estimate how long it had been.

In an eternity of boundless tedium and emptiness, when only hollow void remained.

Thud!

For the first time, his head was pierced.

It was an entirely unexpected existence.

‘That is……!’

In that instant, Sewoon’s heart surged violently.

It could not be otherwise.

Before him was his own form from before regression.

An existence that, despite not having reached the Life and Death Realm, forged Formless Swords through the talent of a Demonic Craftsman.

After firing an Invisible Dagger at Sewoon and sending him back into the past—

-So that was it. That was the answer.

A single realization surfaced in the man’s mind.

For the first time, he understood the reason for all his failures.

Offering up the entire world could not have worked.

Because among the sacrifices, there had been no existence that met the level he desired.

‘If I can devour an existence equal to myself—!’

Then I will surely transcend the Life and Death Realm and become a god.

At that moment, as though time itself were rewinding, the world began to rush forward and be dyed in pure white.

[Have you seen it all?]

At that moment, the Blood Demon’s voice was heard.

That was right. These memories were the Blood Demon’s own memories.