Breath Intake.
Inhale the auspicious energy in the air between heaven and earth.
Qi Circulation.
Set that auspicious energy circulating through one’s body, making use of the principle by which the mind moves together with qi, blood, and flesh.
Technique Practice.
Refine the body, energy, and mind that move as one, so that they gradually come to resemble auspicious energy itself.
And then, Breath Regulation.
Expel the turbid energy once its auspiciousness is spent, stabilizing body, mind, and strength.
Such procedures were essential to both internal cultivation methods and qigong.
And elevating oneself through such martial arts into a greater existence—that was the dream of every martial artist.
Money and women. Strength and power. Liquor and meat.
Who wouldn’t want such things?
And if one wanted them, who would not hone their martial path? Strength was the very means of obtaining all of it!
The martial arts of Yan that had spread throughout the world must have been passed down according to that very principle.
But Lee Yohan thought otherwise.
The things that had flowed out of Yan—a place that felt rather like China—apparently had not retained their original form by the time they reached Kazdel.
Otherwise, there was no way martial arts could be this much of a mess.
What the hell was Originium? And what the hell were these things that looked like spirit stones? Why was there nobody who knew anything about internal cultivation methods, and why had spirit stones become essential to martial arts in the first place?
What were they, exactly, that one had to inflate their qi through spirit stones to use proper martial arts?
Lee Yohan remembered.
Things like that could not possibly be the orthodox path.
"...Good grief. Of all places, I had to end up in a shitty world like this."
And whatever contained such things was undoubtedly an artifact of the unorthodox sects and the demonic path.
After spending an entire year deciphering a martial arts manual called [Thirteen Forms of Shaking Thunder], which had supposedly leaked out of Yan, he came to that realization.
True martial arts never left the sect.
In other words, this trash that had made it outside was the sort of reject they could not accept there.
So what was he supposed to do?
In Kazdel, where people with stones and horns growing out of their bodies shuffled around like zombies, constantly bumping into one another at every turn.
What could Lee Yohan—a hornless, stone-free outsider who was occasionally chased down and nearly hunted by people, and who had discovered that even his last hope, a martial arts manual, belonged to the heterodox path—possibly do?
What could he do in the land of Kazdel, where the nights were absurdly cold?
He clutched the spirit stones he had occasionally picked up when horned bastards burst apart as they died, and hesitated.
Several spirit stones he had gathered despite being shunned and called a corpse robber shifted harshly and sharply in his palm.
Lee Yohan, a survivor entering his second year in Kazdel, wore the clothes of dead men like a blanket without so much as a candle or campfire. Peering into his own heart, he shouted on reflex.
"Use demonic ways for righteous ends!"
If he had no strength, there was no other way now.
Lately, the mad horned bastards trying to hunt him had gone beyond all limits.
If he had no strength to endure, if he could not fight off the red-eyed monsters that occasionally invaded at night, then he would surely become meat soup in Kazdel and live on in the hearts of those horned bastards!
So there was only one option...!
"It is enough to use even something wicked and vile in the right way...!"
There was no room for hesitation.
Having made his decision, he lifted the spirit stones in his hand—and shoved them into his mouth.
Crunch. He chewed.
He crunched down while sensing that the energy contained within them and the qi he had felt in the air since falling into Kazdel were, in essence, the same thing.
Then his vision turned red.
The power within the spirit stones descended into his body as though a dragon were twisting through him. It felt as if even the air around him had shifted toward him.
Resonance.
As the power within his body churned, Lee Yohan felt the energy surrounding him being drawn in with his breath, and his eyes flew open.
‘Just you wait...!’
If you seek death, you will live. If you seek life, you will die.
Lee Yohan, who had somehow fallen into this shitty world, could no longer tolerate any more despair or frustration.
Strength.
To obtain strength, he could do anything.
‘Once I become a peak master, I’ll take care of every last horned bastard who’s been chasing me...!’
And when the resolve he had made to gain that strength drew in the qi spread around him—in heterodox terms, microscopic Originium dust—
And when the spirit stones—in heterodox terms, Originium ore—began to cause a rejection reaction as tumors formed inside his body...
Lee Yohan realized.
The Sarkaz royal court, which did nothing but whisper among themselves and waste time, and the Sarkaz, so broken that they killed one another and even ate people, would soon realize it as well.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Kazdel.
In a place so remote that the Vampires hunting 『humans』 could not find it, something that should not exist in this world had been born.
[Star-Sucking Grand Art].
Or [Heavenly Demon Divine Art].
In heterodox terminology—physical proliferation caused by an Originium rejection reaction in an entity that was neither old humanity nor new humanity.
At the same moment Lee Yohan collapsed...
A legend began.
The man who would one day be called the Heavenly Demon.
The moment he felt heat spreading over his body as though it were the sign of an internal cultivation method, while trembling from acute cancer caused by Originium lodged in his stomach—
—Lee Yohan rejoiced at the birth of a demonic art that chewed and ate Originium.
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