WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
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◈ I Became the Mad Demon in a Novel ◈
Chapter 17: Non-Souls (不魂)
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I sent Que Biao straight to the Ten Thousand Demons Hall.
As expected, the Divine Maiden dropped everything and rushed to Revered One Hall.
The moment they arrived and saw the smiling Heavenly Demon, they bit their lip hard enough to draw blood.
“W-we need to cancel the Demon Muster Edict right now! Brother!”
They were thinking the same thing I was.
The Heavenly Demon, that terrifying being, was smiling.
It meant he had managed to control his body, even if only for a moment.
What if he recovered completely and started running his mouth to the cult members?
We had defiled the Heavenly Demon’s sacred body and even dared to call ourselves his mouthpiece.
Everyone standing here was as good as dead.
‘...’
The Heavenly Demon was still baring his teeth in that sinister smile.
Thankfully, he remained little more than a ghost for now. But the thought that this ultimate predator might awaken left me struggling to speak.
After a long period of thought, I looked at the Divine Maiden.
“The Heavenly Demon’s word is law, so withdrawing the Demon Muster Edict would be easy. But it wouldn’t change anything. If that horrible man comes to his senses, we’re finished anyway.”
“...Then what do we do, Brother?”
“Wait. Just give me a moment to think.”
Faced with the greatest crisis of my life, I put every last bit of brainpower to work.
One wrong move here, and I would certainly die.
There was no guarantee that death would send me back to the modern world, or that I would possess another character.
We were in as much danger as clowns performing acrobatics on a blade.
Once I had gathered my thoughts, I spoke gravely.
“That... divine power of yours. What exactly can it do?”
“I can see the spirit realm within a person.”
“Spirit realm?”
“It’s where reality and consciousness intersect. I can read the thoughts of the lingering impressions that drift there. Very rarely, I can send my voice into it too. But I can’t do that if the other person is too strong. I could burn up.”
“Really?”
I wanted to know what state of mind had produced that smile.
If the Heavenly Demon had truly watched everything we had done, that unsettling smile made no sense.
Surely his mind was boiling with murderous intent. What the hell was he grinning about?
“Then could you take another look?”
“...What?”
The Divine Maiden began trembling as though the very thought was horrifying.
“We need to find out whether he really might wake up, and why he’s smiling like that.”
“But...”
“I know. I’m asking too much.”
They had said that using divine power left them bedridden for at least fifteen days.
Yet only two days had passed since they last poured out their power.
Even now, their face was as pale as wax.
“All right, Brother. I’ll try again.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not like we have a choice.”
After saying that, the Divine Maiden began removing their court robes with a blank expression.
Once they were wearing the familiar plain white mourning clothes, they squeezed their eyes shut and started walking toward the Heavenly Demon’s grand tutor’s chair.
It seemed they could hardly bear to face him.
Step, step.
Like someone being led to the slaughter, they stopped in front of the chair.
A trembling hand felt for the Heavenly Demon’s forehead.
Then their other hand settled over it.
Whoooosh!
Their eyes flew open, pouring out a brilliant blue-white light.
They screamed even more violently and desperately than before.
“Urgh! Ghhh!”
Muffled groans burst out one after another.
Their thin white clothes were soaked with sweat in an instant.
Their pale skin flushed red, as though heated by fire.
Shaking as though the divine fever would burn them alive, they suddenly whipped their head around.
Even with their eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, they forced the words out.
“Ghhh... Take... my hand...! Quickly...!”
“Your hand?”
“No time... to explain...! Calling us... Definitely calling us...!”
What? The Heavenly Demon was calling us?
“Hurry...! If we don’t go now... our chance...!”
As though bewitched, I rushed over and grabbed their burning hand.
“Ghk!”
A terrible heat pierced through me, tearing a scream from my throat.
The pain was unreal. It felt as though every joint in my body was melting and my brain was evaporating.
They had endured this kind of pain?
My vision soon began flashing red.
* * *
When I came to, the Divine Maiden was lying on the ground.
But I was no longer standing in the main hall of Revered One Hall.
It was a dark space, with acrid demonic energy wrapping around my whole body.
The pitch-black ground seemed to have been formed from bitter resentment and murderous intent.
The Divine Maiden and I were stranded on that darkness, which was as sticky as a swamp.
Then they stirred and got up.
“Hngh... Brother...”
“Where are we?”
At my urgent question, they looked around and shuddered.
“Inside... the Heavenly Demon’s Spirit Realm of Thought...”
“You never said anything like this was possible.”
“I don’t know... I was just drawn in, like I was bewitched... This has never happened to me before either... Ah! Over there...!”
Their pale finger pointed straight ahead.
Beyond that space filled with nothing but dreadful darkness, something so smooth it seemed out of place was floating in the air.
“What’s that?”
It was a gigantic sphere.
A perfectly round shape without a single gap.
Something I could not identify was clearly coiled inside the slowly rotating sphere.
“He’s definitely... in there... The Heavenly Demon...”
I swallowed hard.
A huge billiard ball that looked at least several dozen meters across.
Was that giant marble the Heavenly Demon himself?
“Brother... He’s calling us.”
I clenched my fists.
Right. We had come this far. There was nowhere to retreat.
I pushed forward through the darkness weaving tightly around us.
When I reached into the sphere, my hand slipped inside surprisingly easily.
The smooth surface rippled like water and soon swallowed me.
For a moment, the silence made my ears feel blocked.
Complete numbness washed over me. I could not even feel the weight of my body.
When I barely managed to focus and lift my head, someone was smiling before me.
A blood-red Milky Way flowed like water through the space.
At its center, a man reclined at an angle, using empty air as his backrest.
‘The Heavenly Demon?’
His silken hair fell to his shoulders like a waterfall.
With a strange light shining in his eyes, the Heavenly Demon was devastatingly beautiful.
‘Is this what he looked like when he was young?’
Then his lips, as alluring as white jade, slowly moved.
[Seeing it for myself, I can only call it absurd. You truly walked straight through that dreadful barrier.]
The Heavenly Demon’s voice seemed to echo from every direction.
I barely managed to hide my tension as I glared at him.
“Barrier?”
A fierce light burst from the Heavenly Demon’s eyes.
[Even my spiritual power, which has reached the stage of the Soul-Severing Demon Realm, cannot make it budge. Yet you lot simply walked through it.]
The reclining Heavenly Demon gracefully sat up and stared at me.
[I know you lot well. Unbelievers whose lips speak of the Great Light and faith, while your minds are utterly corrupted. You impious wretches push aside this cult’s Venerables with moves that are difficult to read, then seize enormous profits. As though you have grasped all the fortune in heaven and earth.]
His eyes suddenly filled with immense hatred and murderous intent.
[You possess some unknown form of the Heavenly Eye. You know what will happen in the future. You mock every chain of cause and effect beneath heaven. Even I have never encountered monsters like you.]
My heart sank.
This Heavenly Demon.
He clearly recognized that we were outsiders who had crossed over from the modern world.
Did that even make sense?
Surely nothing like this had happened in the original novel?
‘Did the Heavenly Demon’s supreme mind sense that something was fundamentally wrong?’
Then he gazed intently at the spherical shell surrounding us.
[After long years of thought, I have reached one conclusion. That terrifying barrier is providence, or perhaps a law. An incomprehensible mystery that no scholar beneath heaven could explain. Heaven’s providence, made to imprison Cheon Sa-baek and no one else. When you stepped inside so easily, everything finally became clear.]
Uh...
The author probably never intended to let the Heavenly Demon out even by the ending, so I supposed he was half right.
I had thought the Heavenly Demon was simply a frightening, powerful man.
The fact that he had reached that conclusion on his own was quite interesting.
But then...
“So? What can a piece of shit like you do about it, even if you know?”
The Divine Maiden was smiling, staring straight into the purple light swirling in his eyes.
“That’s right. You can’t get out of here. That’s just how the setting works. What are you going to do about it, you fucking worm?”
[...The setting?]
The Divine Maiden looked half out of their mind.
I decided to leave them alone as they poured out their hatred.
For someone with the soul of a perfectly normal man to suffer such vile things at the Heavenly Demon’s hands...
I would have struggled to stay sane too.
[...The setting.]
Interest flickered in the Heavenly Demon’s eyes.
The dark-red Milky Way wrapped around him like a blanket suddenly rippled.
Before I knew it, the flowing stars had transformed into a lotus.
The Heavenly Demon rose, and the lotus floated behind him like a halo.
[Then let me ask you.]
He glared at me.
[Are you the false ones, or am I?]
The Heavenly Demon’s question was simple.
But it carried the weight of his entire life.
An absolute ruler who had lived for over a hundred years.
Such a supreme being was asking a dangerous question, one whose answer might deny his very existence.
Yet I could not answer easily.
“...”
We, the readers of Mad Heaven Records, had collectively possessed people in this world.
To those who had lived their lives in this vast world of martial arts, we were clearly the false ones.
On the other hand, this Heavenly Demon was ultimately just a character in Mad Heaven Records.
A fabricated spirit.
Someone who did not exist in reality.
My silence stretched on, but the Heavenly Demon’s unwavering gaze remained fixed on my mouth.
“Who knows? Now that you put it that way, I’m not sure.”
Invaders who had barged in, ignoring this world’s laws and chains of cause and effect.
And, on the other side, people from a novel who had never existed.
[Then it has yet to be decided.]
I smiled at his words.
Perhaps the Heavenly Demon and I were both prisoners, trapped by some god’s cruel game.
Without even knowing what sort of entertainment we were being used for.
Lowly clowns who could do nothing but struggle.
[From this moment on, I shall define your kind as the Non-Souls.]
Non-Souls (不魂).
“Not” and “soul.” So we weren’t souls?
This fucker?
[I will leave this place. This is the pledge of ten thousand demons, and the first move toward a reign that will punish your kind. If this cult is not enough, I shall join forces with the old ones in River North and destroy you Non-Souls.]
Taking the Divine Maiden’s hand, I led the way outside.
The surface of the slowly swirling sphere flowed over my hand once more.
“Heh.”
Breaking through the author’s setting? What a joke.
As the Heavenly Demon himself had said, that was this world’s providence.
There was no way such a thing could happen.
“If you can get out, that is.”
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