Chapter 100: Heavenly Demon Tomb

Generals, as a rule, don’t lead from the front.

Sure, it looks damn cool when the commander shouts “Follow me!” and charges headfirst into the fray. Heroic, even. But if that general catches a stray arrow and goes down? Morale evaporates instantly. Strategy crumbles. The battle plan becomes worthless without its leader.

So, a general charging ahead isn’t virtue; it’s usually just selfish ambition. Necessary, sometimes, when lives are truly on the line, but rarely wise.

Strictly speaking, there was zero reason for the Supreme to personally join this expedition. He could have just parked his ass on his throne and waited for his underlings to deliver the Heavenly Demon Soul. In fact, the current Supreme was practically a figurehead, not even invited to the real leadership meetings run by the Demon Cult’s top dogs. His presence here, on a potentially dangerous mission? It was weird.

Except… the Heavenly Demon Soul wasn't just any artifact. It was a divine relic of the cult. It couldn’t be safely transported by just anyone. Only the qualified could touch it without dire consequences.

It was something the Supreme had to retrieve himself.

And Ximen Qing, who had dared to covet what wasn't hers, now paid the price.

It felt like the floor dropped out beneath her. A dizzying, soul-crushing sensation of falling, pulled down by an inescapable gravity, swallowed her whole.

Qing’s consciousness winked out.

Meanwhile, Qing’s body was going through its own hell.

The Heavenly Demon Soul, already halfway merged with her hand, erupted. A dense, pungent wave of demonic energy—Sky-Rending Demonic Energy—blasted outwards.

This wasn't just any power; it was malice incarnate, condensed by the Demon God Angra Mainyu himself from all the despair in the world.

The demonic energy devoured Qing’s physical form, then exploded outward, swirling into a majestic vortex of pure darkness in the center of the tomb chamber, mimicking the shape of the cosmos itself.

Watching this, Ji Seungju simply shook his head. He’d seen this coming. Ever since she started cracking skulls during that transfer, he knew she’d push too far and bring disaster upon herself. But to be this stupid? To not even realize she was walking into her own death?

Sky-Rending Demonic Energy wasn't something a normal human could handle. Only those born with demonic lineage, their energy pathways fortified since childhood through special procedures, who diligently practiced the basic arts of the Divine Meridians—only they could hope to become a vessel capable of containing the Heavenly Demon Soul.

Anyone else who tried? Their body, unable to withstand the raw, primal malice of the energy, would simply shatter into pieces. Explode.

And the demonic energy, its vessel destroyed, would just return to the Soul. A pointless, stupid death. A dog's death.

As Ji Seungju clicked his tongue in dismissal…

“No…”

Beside him, Choi Leeong collapsed heavily to the ground.

Ji Seungju glanced at the broken old man and shook his head again. Pitiful, really. Only the Purple Lightning Demonic Warlord suffers like this.

He remembered the illusion he’d seen earlier: Qing’s bloody corpse sprawled in a courtyard modeled after the Divine Cult’s Mythic courtyard, the Great Protectors' estate back home. At the time, he’d assumed someone hated Qing enough to kill her even in an illusion, or maybe it was just the lingering trace left by some time-meddling demon’s twisted hobby.

Now, it clicked. The host of that illusion… it must have been Choi Leeong himself. No wonder the old man had acted so strangely towards Qing. The formation had completely twisted his mind, merging the image of Qing with his dead daughter. His daughter’s corpse had taken Qing’s form in his broken psyche.

Thanks to Qing's reckless act just now, Choi Leeong had effectively watched his daughter die for a second time. Truly tragic.

But then again, Ji Seungju thought clinically, Choi Leeong was already a dead man walking. More importantly, someone needed to attend to the pathetic Supreme, who was still lost in his own illusion, oblivious to reality reasserting itself.

As Ji Seungju started towards the Supreme—

“Oh, the Heavenly Demon!”

“The Heavenly Demon descends!”

Excited shouts erupted from the other cultists.

Ji Seungju’s head snapped around, the young Demonic Brain’s eyes widening.

The cosmic vortex of demonic energy imploded, contracting in a heartbeat to a single point—a void so black it was invisible. Then, from that point, two immense wings of pure darkness unfurled, stretching towards the sky, burning like black fire, filling the entire tomb chamber.

Enormous wings. And the wings opened their eyes.

Thousands upon thousands of eyes blinked open across the feathers of darkness, lifting hideous eyelids in a chaotic, independent rhythm. Eyes small and large, slanted and wide, each with an arbitrary number of pupils—one, two, three, sometimes more.

A woman stood at the center, wings spread like living walls of shadow.

Faced with this mythical incarnation of pure evil, the cultists instinctively slammed their knees to the ground.

A moment stretched, feeling like an eternity.

Then, as suddenly as they appeared, the wings vanished without a trace.

And in the center of the chamber, the girl—Qing’s body—took its first conscious breath.

The Heavenly Demon Reborn.

The Divine Cult’s age-old wish had finally come true.

When she opened her eyes, the world was pitch black.

Startled, Qing bolted upright. “Right! The Heavenly Demon Soul!”

Scrrrape—CRASH! The chair she’d jumped from slid back and toppled over.

She whipped her head around, blinking… and froze. A five-wheeled office chair.

Wait a minute…

Her eyes scanned the room. Blackout curtains blocked every sliver of light. The only illumination came from the faint, cold glow of a computer monitor. The space felt alien, yet disturbingly, achingly familiar.

Acting on pure instinct, her hand fumbled along the wall, finding the light switch. Click.

LEDs flooded the room, banishing the darkness.

Next to the small sink stood a 138-liter refrigerator.

Reflexively, Qing opened it, pulled out a can of beer. Pop-hiss. She tilted her head back and chugged, the ice-cold liquid scraping its way down her throat.

“Ahhh. So cold. Whew.”

The beer hit her empty stomach with a jolt. Finally, the fog in her brain began to clear.

A small, disbelieving chuckle escaped her lips.

What kind of crazy dream was that?

Getting sucked into a game? The fuck?

First things first, she checked the clock. 10:23 PM.

Okay, hold on. Was I on night shift or day shift?

Day shift vs. night shift—a critical distinction. It dictated sleep schedules. Maintaining that rhythm, even for a few days, was the hard-won wisdom of the manufacturing worker, the only way to preserve some semblance of health. Day shift meant sleep now. Night shift meant push through till morning.

But… she couldn’t remember her work schedule at all.

Of course I can’t. That was years ago.

No, wait. Years? That was just the dream. What am I even saying?

But… damn, it really feels like years have passed.

She frowned, digging through her memory, but came up empty. Frustrated, she scanned the desk. Her familiar smartphone. She picked it up, her fingers tracing an unlock pattern she didn’t consciously remember. Must have fumbled it, because the camera app immediately launched.

A pretty girl’s face stared back from the screen.

“Huh?”

Qing blinked, leaning closer to the phone. A stray lock of hair had fallen loose above her right ear, framing the unfamiliar-yet-familiar face. With practiced, absentminded skill, she swiftly untied her hair and bundled it back up.

And then… she felt strange.

“—A woman’s body? Women aren’t supposed to be born with Divine Meridians, though?”

A sudden voice. Clear as day.

Qing’s head whipped around. The voice was coming from the computer speakers.

The monitor showed a game screen. A beautiful girl, rendered in an elegant art style, looked out from it. Below, in a letterbox format, the line of dialogue corresponding to the voice faded, replaced by new text.

Qing leaned in, reading the descriptive text:

“A woman’s body? Women are not supposed to be born with Divine Meridians, though?”

The Heavenly Demon frowned, muttering aloud inside the new vessel. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar weight on the chest, but the shoulders felt stiff. Standing felt… awkward. Uncomfortable. She’d lived dozens of lifetimes, but never once as a woman.

But the feeling passed in an instant.

Observing this new body, the Heavenly Demon couldn’t suppress a surge of admiration.

The muscles were like woven steel, harboring the strength to lift mountains. The tendons were tough yet incredibly flexible, far surpassing any human limits she’d known. And the vastness of the energy center… it was more marvelous than any vessel she had previously inhabited, reaching a level that could hardly be called human.

None of her past bodies had ever fully contained the Sky-Rending Demonic Energy. They inevitably broke down, limiting how long she could remain manifested on earth.

But this body?

It held the entirety of the Sky-Rending Demonic Energy with room to spare. Room enough, in fact, for other energies to exist alongside it.

The Heavenly Demon frowned again. Deep within the upper energy center, hiding from the swirling demonic tide below, resided other strains of true energy. Not just one, but several. Energies that, by all rights, should have clashed violently—unbalanced by Yin and Yang—were instead strangely, tightly clustered together in a corner, forming a defensive array, as if guarding something.

Hmm. Not an important location, though. The Heavenly Demon quickly dismissed it, returning to pure appreciation for the vessel itself.

“So what if it’s a woman’s body? I quite like this vessel. To possess such a physique and only be at the Peak Realm, though? The previous owner must have been remarkably untalented, hm?”

Silence reigned in the tomb chamber. Dozens of cultists knelt, scarcely daring to breathe.

Into this quiet, a sound began to ripple—creak, grind, pop—the sound of bones twisting and grating against each other.

It came from the Heavenly Demon’s body.

Bones settled into new alignments, muscles unwound and reattached with new density, the skin rippling and bulging as the framework shifted beneath.

Overhaul Rebirth.

Literally ‘changing bones and shedding the body,’ it was the process where a physique that had reached the Transcendent Realm was reassembled, optimized into its absolute best possible form.

The optimization of the flesh.

Even amidst this transformation, the Heavenly Demon continued to walk forward smoothly. A truly astonishing feat. Normally, one was utterly defenseless during Overhaul Rebirth. Joints dislocated, bones lengthened or reshaped, muscles detached and recompressed—it was a once-in-a-lifetime ordeal after reaching the Transcendent Realm. The agony, combined with the bizarre sensation of the body being forcibly rebuilt, typically caused even seasoned masters to lose consciousness.

But the Heavenly Demon had undergone this countless times. She was intimately familiar with the process, able to walk without a single stagger even as her body reshaped itself.

When the Overhaul Rebirth finally completed, the womanly form had settled. What stood there now was a peerless beauty, so stunning that darkness itself might seem to shy away, drawing back its black curtains in deference.

“Demonic Brain, are you present? Who serves as the Demonic Brain in this era?”

“The Heavenly Demon has descended, all demons bow down! This lowly one is Ji Seungju. I greet the owner of this soul and the master of our future!” Ji Seungju stepped forward immediately, bowing his head low in respect.

The Heavenly Demon extended a slender, porcelain-white hand. Beautiful fingers gently stroked Ji Seungju’s head.

“Oho. A young Demonic Brain. In all my long lives, this is the first time I’ve had one so young. All the better—it means I shall keep you by my side for a long, long time. That pleases me greatly. I look forward to working closely with you.”

The Heavenly Demon’s voice was soft, filled with a gentle benevolence. These were the words of the Heavenly Demon Supreme —a living god, the embodiment of the Divine Cult’s long history.

“Yes, O Heavenly Demon Supreme!” Ji Seungju’s voice trembled with raw emotion.

It was at that precise moment—

“Heavenly Demon Supreme! There is a body here! A proper body for you to take!”

A voice dared to ring out, unbidden.

Simultaneously, an old man shot forward like lightning.

He grabbed the Supreme’s nape, slammed his face-down onto the stone floor, then dropped down, pinning him beneath his knee. Without even pausing to ask permission to speak, the old man opened his mouth, voice filled with righteous fury.