Chapter 357

Chapter 357
## Chapter 357

Heavenly Riding Demon (3)

Boom—

A fresh, deafening crash echoed from the exterior. It felt as though the chaos would persist indefinitely.

‘What is happening out there?’

Zhuge Hyemi bit down on her lip, her eyes glued to the window pane.

Yet, nothing met her gaze. Only an oppressive obscurity, resembling a dense, pitch-black shroud, blocked her sight.

The disturbance had commenced shortly after the gathering of those ominous storm clouds.

‘This must be connected to that sky. It is no natural occurrence. The most plausible scenario is a clash of arms… but who is involved? Could it be… the rescue squad?!’

Unable to comprehend the reality of the situation, her mind spun rapidly, caught between aspiration and dread.

A spark of optimism, a sudden wave of excitement, washed over her as she envisioned a rescue taking place…

‘…No, we lack the assets required for an operation of that magnitude. Then… is it a different faction entirely? Do they intend to exploit us as well?’

…But her terror, stoked by past ordeals, swiftly extinguished her hope.

Her reasoning automatically veered toward the bleakest outcomes.

‘Or perhaps there is no battle at all. Maybe this is merely… a preparatory rite preceding the main sacrifice.’

Her hopelessness deepened, her thoughts spiraling further into despair.

Nevertheless, despite the panic and bewilderment gripping her, Zhuge Hyemi forced herself to find composure and rose to her feet.

An event of great significance had transpired. Sitting idly was no longer an option.

This presented her sole window of opportunity.

‘If this fails, my fate as an offering is already sealed. It is far better to act than to remain passive.’

Slowly turning the doorknob, she stepped out into the corridor with extreme caution.

—

Swoosh—

Boundless currents of demise flooded over him relentlessly.

The terrain, already devastated and barren, was now utterly blanketed by a dense, sticky obscurity.

The entity enduring this brutal assault was faring poorly.

‘This is a disaster. I must… discover a loophole…!’

Remaining entirely on the defensive was sustainable no longer.

The Six-Headed Dragon clenched his jaws, frantically hunting for a way out.

Yet, no remedy presented itself.

The circumstances deteriorated with every passing breath.

His barriers crumbled, lacerations tore across his gargantuan frame, and crimson blood sprayed into the atmosphere.

His inherent healing factors, choked by the necrotic malice infiltrating his flesh, operated at less than half their normal capacity.

‘If only I had been granted a fraction more time!’

Merely a few additional days… no, even a solitary day… and he would not be reduced to this pathetic state.

He ought to have initiated the ritual far earlier…

His painstaking arrangements, his efforts to extract the absolute maximum utility from their sparse offerings… every calculation had turned against him.

Ultimately, the inescapable conclusion arrived.

Rip—!

Thud!

One of his six countenances was lopped off.

A gargantuan, obsidian scythe, exuding absolute ruin, clove through the air, and the crimson head, its eyes wide with disbelief, crashed into the earth with a resonant thud.

The corruptive malice clung fiercely to the stump, freezing any chance of regeneration.

[“Aaaagh! You! You wretched interloper! Had you not interfered, my ascension would have been flawless…! Why at this hour?! Why now?!”]

His unfinished godhood, held together by a fragile equilibrium, began to fracture.

An enraged bellow reverberated through the space, but its resonance was a mere whisper of its peak majesty.

Whish—!

A second head rolled.

Six visages were reduced to four, and his internal energy fluctuated chaotically, the power reserves within his frame fracturing and colliding violently.

The severe repercussions of an artificial elevation.

‘This cannot be happening! I sacrificed everything for this!’

His frame, slipping from his command, thrashed and convulsed wildly, while his consciousness began to slip away.

It mirrored that fateful era when he had fled from the Golden Island Sect.

Following a brutal confrontation against an array of dragons, his flesh mangled and his pride shattered, he had sought asylum within the Heavenly Demon Cult, an organization infamous for its wicked and dark arts.

It had served as an ideal sanctuary for him, aligning with both his temperament and his desperate plight.

However, as his strength returned and his vigor mended, a deeply troubling realization dawned upon him.

He had touched transcendence, a state of divinity, the very moment he claimed all five dragon heads.

A realm of myth and legend, a state of being parallel to the Divine Transformation Realm achieved by the greatest martial artists.

Though forced to retreat after a clash with a multitude of formidable adversaries, his power remaining volatile… he had maintained absolute certainty that he would recuperate and exact his vengeance.

But his illegitimate elevation, a violation against cosmic order, carried a heavy toll.

‘…I am unable to restore my true power?’

To state it accurately, restoration was possible.

However, it demanded an astronomical quantity of karma.

A sum several times greater than the total number of dragons he had already consumed.

To attain true godhood, a living entity required an immense accumulation of karma.

And he mandated six times that baseline… no, an even greater amount, factoring in the supplemental dragons he had hunted in subsequent engagements.

‘Perhaps… if I obliterate this entire realm… No, even that cataclysm might fall short.’

His advancement had been permanently halted.

While superior to his past self, he had stopped short of authentic divinity. He remained marooned in an awkward, transitional threshold.

Should he present himself to the world in this flawed state, the legions of the Golden Island Sect would crush him before his campaign could even commence.

‘This is… farcical!’

Further development was barred to him.

He had violated cosmic balance, guided by an insatiable thirst for power, and now he was cornered, his ultimate capabilities locked away.

He had exhausted every avenue since aligning with the Heavenly Demon Cult.

He had immersed himself in prohibited invocations and esoteric arts, orchestrating horrific experiments and discarding countless lives…

Through this, he earned a fresh moniker.

The Heavenly Riding Demon, the entity that hoodwinked the cosmos.

And those endeavors, sustained by a mountain of corpses, had finally yielded a solution.

A methodology to shatter his confinement.

‘I must alter my strategy. Rather than striving for divinity via the slaughter of mortals, I shall simply… consume an authentic deity!’

Ironically, it mirrored the exact tactic he had utilized in his youth.

To prey upon and assimilate the essence of others.

Soon after, a perfect specimen materialized.

A traveler from beyond, a being originating from an alternate realm, possessing anomalous traits and an absurd rate of development—specifically one endowed with the Heavenly Slaughter Star attribute, which facilitated rapid accumulation of power.

‘Magnificent.’

Thus, the years drifted by.

Just as he foresaw, the offworlder cast aside his birth name and assumed the mantle of the Heavenly Demon, electing to dwell within this domain and maintaining his meteoric rise.

Until he stood at the absolute zenith of the Master Realm, a mere step away from the Mysterious Realm.

‘A fraction longer… Merely a breath more… ’

An astounding prodigy, who climbed to such heights in a mere matter of decades, whereas he himself had spent millennia in meditative cultivation.

If he could simply bide his time for the perfect juncture, the exact moment that latent power erupted…

He could feast upon his karma, his martial prowess, his capacity, his very destiny, and claim it as his own!

“Well, have you returned to reality? You have grown remarkably quiet. Or have you finally accepted your demise?”

[“What?”]

A derisive voice shattered his internal monologue.

His clouded awareness snapped back, and his surroundings rushed into focus as his sight cleared.

The initial detail he perceived was the absolute dark enveloping the area.

It was no longer just the product of the tempest clouds and the corrupted earth. Night had fallen.

The conflict, which had ignited during peak daylight, had raged for nearly half a day.

‘This is… ’

He attempted to pivot his gaze toward the speaker, only to discover he was pinned flat against the terrain.

He must have surrendered to madness and gone completely feral as his incomplete divinity tore itself apart.

Evidently, the outcome was disastrous.

A sharp, intimately familiar agony flared.

He cast his eyes toward the source of the pain.

His numerous visages lay severed on the ground, their stumps decaying, while the Heavenly Demon stood over him, his dark blade driven directly through the throat of his final surviving green head.

[“…Heh, this is… quite unexpected. I anticipated our inevitable duel, but I never envisioned it ending in this manner.”]

A dry, empty chuckle left his throat.

A grand saga, which had been accelerating toward an epic final showdown, had deviated into a bizarre and abrupt detour—one adversary transformed into a jiangshi, pinning the other to the dirt by his throat.

Had a traveling performer offered such a contrived plot, he would have torn their tongue out on the spot.

‘If the Heavenly Demon is standing here… then the rest have already been slaughtered.’

The din of conflict had evaporated.

Those who offered defiance had been wiped out, leaving behind only the sycophants who chose capitulation.

This monster had not only single-handedly subjugated the core stronghold of the Heavenly Demon Cult with his legion of corpses, but had also pulverized the veteran detachments stationed on the perimeter.

‘He is… an absolute disaster.’

Yalu Huan directed his gaze toward the individual who had completely shattered his grand design.

A middle-aged man, inspecting his dying frame with an detached, nearly scientific curiosity, akin to an academic analyzing a specimen on a slab.

He maintained a mortal illusion, yet he was unmistakably an undead entity, a carcass animated long ago.

Even so,

He had somehow achieved a breakthrough into true godhood.

[“Hehehe… What a waste. Had I feasted upon your flesh, I could have not only repaired my shattered foundation, but also claimed your alien sorcery and obliterated the Golden Island Sect entirely.”]

“Haha— That is quite comical. I highly doubt it. You would have merely suffered a terminal case of indigestion.”

[“Ah, that poses an issue. I am finally beginning to feel rejuvenated. I cannot risk absorbing any further… corruption.”]

“Beginning to feel rejuvenated…?”

Hans inclined his head slightly, processing Yalu Huan’s bizarre statement.

It was standard for numbing agents or shock to distort perception after an extended period.

However…

‘His condition should be worsening, not improving.’

Every head save for one had been lopped off, their wounds rotting away while the undead swarmed the stumps, disrupting any attempt at cellular restoration, their weapons continuously twisting to pump abyssal energy into his veins.

His colossal frame was riddled with gashes, and the abyssal chains alongside the shadow thorns pinning him down were relentlessly siphoning his core vitality.

He should have expired long before this moment, given any standard metric of longevity.

Yet, he claimed to feel recovery?

‘He is on the verge of expiration. His nervous system has entirely collapsed. Still, surviving this long against me is quite a feat.’

He had withstood Hans’s onslaught for greater than ten hours.

Furthermore, Hans had not fought in isolation. He commanded a literal tide of the dead.

Weighing the sheer quantity of undead and jiangshi that had been utterly obliterated beyond repair, the creature had mounted a defense worthy of being deemed a ‘hidden boss’.

[“Hehehe— Hahaha!”]

Yalu Huan, his massive frame convulsing, suddenly dissolved into hysterical laughter, his sanity apparently snapping completely.

Hans, observing the spectacle with a cold intensity, gently rubbed his jawline.

‘The Six-Headed Dragon… or more accurately, Greed.’

An unparalleled resource.

Unquestionably the finest component available across the entirety of Ganghwange.

He had secured every detached head and each Dragon Orb, meaning he possessed the capability to resurrect the beast’s original majesty as a servant of the dead if he so desired.

‘However… ’

His focus shifted to the wider landscape.

The warzone lay entirely ruined, shattered by the prolonged and cataclysmic struggle.

Yet, that devastation was not his primary concern.

‘A demonic realm.’

Standing within this space and witnessing it firsthand, the truth finally crystallized for him.

The reason behind this location’s terrible reputation.

‘The situation is far more severe than my calculations suggested. Evaluating the siphon rates from alternative Dragon Veins, I assumed there was a safety margin remaining… ’

Though currently held in check by neighboring Dragon Veins, the corrupted power emanating from this abyss operated like a gravitational singularity, far more potent than his projections indicated.

If a barrier was not erected swiftly, it would eventually bleed every adjacent Dragon Vein dry, causing all the Ki across the continent to be dragged into this void.

Such a catastrophe would not merely break those who walked the martial path.

Within this realm, Ki was not solely an asset for combat; it served as the foundational life force anchoring all mortal existences.

Should it drain entirely… it would bring about the absolute extinction of all living things.

‘Naturally, this degradation will not finalize by tomorrow. The Golden Island Sect is actively attempting to decelerate the collapse.’

Yet Hans, capable of monitoring the status of the Golden Island Sect via Horus, recognized their efforts were unsustainable.

Mortalities had already occurred during their operations to anchor the Dragon Heart.

‘I must resolve this crisis before the threshold of no return is crossed. A strategy is forming… And should I employ the carcass of that dragon as a catalyst… ’

The Dragon’s Children selected by the Dragon God, the Heavenly Demon, an authentic Karma Jiangshi, and the remains of the Six-Headed Dragon—a creature that had scraped the edge of divinity…

A grander architecture began to assemble within Hans’s thoughts.

Right then,

“Oh?”

…The Six-Headed Dragon, Yalu Huan, abruptly cut his laughter short.

His lingering spark of vitality, which had been sputtering weakly, vanished entirely.

“…He has expired. I wished to observe his maximum threshold.”

Though he had already designated the carcass for alternative functions, a small sense of dissatisfaction lingered.

He had hoped to satisfy his academic curiosity, even if no further material benefits could be extracted.

…Or so he assumed.

《Feat Accomplished! You have eradicated ‘Greed’, the scourge of Ganghwange.》

《You have vanquished the Dragon of Destruction, an anomalous terror that consumed all things, including its own essence, bringing devastation to the realm. You have unlocked the attribute “Power of Gluttony”.》

《You have executed a world-altering action. Karma has been elevated.》

A fresh achievement alert manifested.

His inaugural milestone within Ganghwange.

And it did not conclude there…

《Feat Accomplished! You have ascended as the ‘Last Yellow Dragon’.》

《You stand as the sole surviving Yellow Dragon within Ganghwange. You have unlocked the attribute “Yellow Dragon’s Orb”.》

《You have executed a world-altering action. Karma has been elevated.》

…It appeared to be a dual reward scenario.