WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
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◈ I Became the Mad Demon in a Novel ◈
Chapter 19: Bloodstrife Night
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For the first time since falling into this martial arts world, I woke up feeling refreshed.
I rubbed my eyes and walked into the main hall.
Oh, right. I couldn’t forget the first task of the day.
Smack!
The Heavenly Demon’s head snapped to the side.
There was no particular reason.
I’d simply wanted to hit him.
The slap felt especially satisfying today, which lifted my mood even more.
After I stretched lazily and waited for about thirty minutes, Que Biao appeared in the main hall.
As I’d ordered yesterday, he had brought all the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon with him.
“You’re here?”
“The Divine Cult shall rule all under heaven! All demons...”
“Hey, stop right there. Would you quit smashing your heads into the floor? Do you know why you’re always half a beat slow whenever I ask you something? Because you’re scared of me? No. It’s because you’re getting dumber.”
“What do you mean...?”
“Tsk. Listen to me. I don’t care what you do around the other Venerables, but from now on, no smashing your heads into the floor in front of me.”
“A-as you command!”
“That’s better.”
Slamming your head against the ground didn’t just split your forehead.
The impact actually traveled straight to the back of your head.
Strikes to the back of the head were banned in modern combat sports because that was where the brain stem was.
And aside from the brain stem, it would put considerable strain on the spinal nerves running through the neck.
Could all that head-smashing be why these Demonic Cult bastards had such an unnatural gleam in their eyes?
If that was part of the setting’s internal logic, I had to give it credit.
The author of Mad Heaven Records was an absolute god-tier writer.
“But why have you summoned us...?”
“Someone’s impatient.”
I opened the wooden chest I’d prepared last night.
Gold flashed in the morning sunlight spilling into the hall.
The eyes of the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon widened at the sight of several dozen gold ingots.
“Que Biao. You first.”
“...Pardon?”
“Your monthly pay. From now on, you’ll receive it on the first day of every month.”
People trembled when their credit card payments and loan repayments came due.
Even if these bastards were the Ten Armies of the Mad Demon, they still needed money to live.
“O Chuk-ang. Where did all this money come from...?”
Was receiving monthly pay from your lord really that strange?
“Buy yourselves some clothes, all right? And get your hair cut. Stop making people uncomfortable for no reason.”
I’d only learned this recently, but their clothes hadn’t originally been black.
Layers of dried blood and dust had turned their red robes pitch-black.
“You’re the leader, so you get four. Two each for the rest. Oh, you only get one.”
Lang Bai, the man who had humiliated me by carrying me like a princess, stared at me with trembling eyes.
“Why... am I the only one receiving one?”
“You have a bad attitude. So I’m docking your pay.”
“W-what’s wrong with my attitude...?”
“Shut it! Observe a moment of silence! I said so. Why are you arguing?”
“...”
I ignored Lang Bai as he withdrew in low spirits and looked back at Que Biao.
“You need to eat and have a drink now and then, too. How have you been getting by all this time?”
“Well, we obtained funds from our clans, or from friends...”
“Debt? Ha. What a useless bastard.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m not talking about you.”
Oh, Mad Demon. Mad Demon.
This was why everyone called you trash.
You’d turned these loyal men into debtors.
“So? Have you found anything out about that Agyo bastard?”
Que Biao had been endlessly running his hands over the gleaming gold ingots.
The excitement and gratitude on his face quickly gave way to a serious look.
“Well... it’s rather strange. Becoming a maidservant at the Fate Lot Pavilion should mean that Agyo passed through the Demonic Studies Office, but there’s no record of graduation.”
“What else?”
“The claim that Agyo comes from Moon Valley is also suspicious. Dan Ha-myeong, the Moon Valley Lord, knew nothing of a maidservant called Agyo.”
If all the publicly known information was false, that meant it was a cover identity.
Given the Demonic Cult’s strict systems, the only explanation was that someone had pulled strings to plant Agyo there.
“So they’re an outsider who slipped in.”
“That appears to be the case.”
Someone bold enough to sneak into the Demonic Cult with nothing but a false identity.
At last, I could be certain.
‘The chance that this bastard is a Galler is over ninety percent now.’
Nobody could pull that off unless they were a Galler who knew the original novel inside out.
But then...
“C-Chuk-ang...!”
Creeeeeeeak.
The thick doors of Revered One Hall yielded silently to the pressure.
Men appeared, trailing dense demonic energy.
Three black shadows slowly climbed the steps.
The first thing I saw was a dry gaze that seemed stripped of all emotion.
Beside it, a flushed red face wore a grotesque smile.
And the last man...
A terrifying, ghostly aura surrounded him, as though he had just brushed off the dirt and climbed out of a grave.
I froze.
Nobody needed to explain who these men were.
The Fierce Lord and the Blood Lord.
And finally, the Evil Lord.
The Demonic Young Masters had arrived as though recreating the most famous entrance in Korean film history.
Then they slowly lowered themselves to the floor.
As expected, I wasn’t the object of their worship.
They were bowing to the Heavenly Demon.
“O Venerable of World Destruction, we worship the Divine Demon’s power with all our hearts.”
The low voice of the Fierce Lord, eldest scion of the world’s demonic path, filled the hall.
The Ten Armies of the Mad Demon stood frozen like statues, unable even to breathe aloud.
The excitement over their monthly pay had already vanished without a trace.
I swallowed and stole a glance at the Heavenly Demon.
As usual, he was just striking a cool pose like he belonged on a web novel cover, without any particular reaction.
Was it just my imagination that his eyes looked a little angry?
Right. Get it together.
If I screwed up at a moment like this, everything would be over.
“There should still be time before the Demon Muster Edict takes effect.”
The Evil Lord was the first to respond to my casual voice.
He started running his mouth without even looking at me.
“We don’t believe it.”
Killing intent burst from the Evil Lord’s eyes like a storm.
“The very idea that the Divine Demon would visit Revered One Hall first upon emerging from seclusion is absurd.”
Well, sure, they could be suspicious.
But the Heavenly Demon was sitting right in front of their eyes, and they were still spouting this nonsense. I couldn’t believe it.
“Furthermore.”
The Evil Lord slowly turned his eyes toward me.
“The Divine Demon resolved to enter seclusion. He is not someone who would tolerate leaving his Demon Transcendence incomplete. Yet he put aside that great undertaking and chose to emerge? You expect me to believe that?”
The Evil Lord slowly rose.
“And on top of that, he would share his thoughts only with you, the one he has always despised most? Are you joking?”
Hmm. Had I underestimated these bastards?
But what were they going to do about it?
“So what? Are you saying I went into the Heavenly Demon Tomb and kidnapped the Divine Demon?”
According to the setting, nobody could enter the Heavenly Demon Tomb unless they carried the blood of the Nine Heavens Demon Clan.
Unless these bastards could break that rule, the theory that I’d dragged the Heavenly Demon out by force couldn’t stand.
That was an absolute restriction known throughout the Hundred Thousand Mountains.
“What we seek is the truth. Why on earth would the Divine Demon expose his helpless state to every member of the cult?”
Krrrrrumble!
His mighty lion’s roar shook the great hall.
The sheer power of his deeply cultivated internal energy made my stomach churn as though I might throw up.
And this was the weakest of the three Demonic Young Masters?
Was this the Heavenly Demon Divine Art I’d heard so much about? Fuck, I was jealous. I was jealous of every bastard with a dantian.
“And? Are you going to deny the authority of Ten Thousand Demons Hall, too?”
The Divine Maiden could see into a person’s inner self, into the very nature of their soul.
And she had recognized me as the Heavenly Demon’s mouthpiece.
She had publicly declared that the Divine Demon of World Destruction conveyed his Mind-Speech of Luminous Wisdom only to me, the Mad Demon.
The authority of Ten Thousand Demons Hall was sacred, equal to the laws of the Demonic Cult.
These bastards were denying the very roots of the faith that held the Demonic Cult together, the foundation of their own religious beliefs.
“Then I can consider this treason, can’t I?”
At that moment, the Fierce Lord’s gaze slid toward me.
He really was terrifying.
Any human being would show emotion in one way or another, but there was none in his eyes.
“Listen, Mad Demon.”
This little shit.
I was still the Chuk-ang, with authority equal to the Divine Maiden’s.
“I have no interest in how you clouded the Divine Maiden’s eyes. I had thought you a real man, at least. But is this truly the Mad Demon’s way?”
“What?”
“How laughable, believing a mere Demon Muster Edict can stand in the way of our cult’s path of conquest. Very well. I shall do the same.”
Clack, clack.
Something landed at my feet.
I looked down and saw jade tokens covered in hideous designs depicting all sorts of demons. Five of them, at that.
Wait.
Were these...?
“Bloodstrife Night, Mad Demon.”
My mind went blank.
Those five jade tokens lying at my feet...
It felt as though the sinister energy they gave off was crawling over my feet and tightening around my heart.
‘They’re seriously bringing this out?’
Bloodstrife Night (血爭魔夜).
As an obsessive reader who could spend an hour poring over a single installment of a web novel, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize that term.
The worst custom of the Demonic Cult, mentioned only in a single footnote tucked away in the Mad Heaven Records setting guide.
A lawless night declared just once in the history of the demonic path, to unite its countless rival factions.
For that night, every law of the Divine Cult was suspended.
Murder, looting, betrayal. Any bloody slaughter was permitted.
A lowly demonic foot soldier could take a Venerable’s head without committing a crime. A son could stab his father through the heart, and the law would remain silent.
It was a time for beasts, when strength alone became justice and only the survivors became truth.
But this was clear intervention by the Five Great Demonic Clans.
The heads of the five clans that sustained the Demonic Cult’s actual military might.
Their reason for presenting their divine tokens and invoking this ancient ritual was simple.
They intended to crush the authority of the Chuk-ang and the Divine Maiden through force, and even that of the Heavenly Demon himself.
‘Damn it. Does this even make sense?’
An empty laugh escaped me as I stared at the jade tokens scattered before my feet.
As if shattering an only flesh-and-blood son’s dantian and driving him out hadn’t been enough, now they were opening a lawless night to make certain they finished him off.
This was completely unexpected.
Bloodstrife Night had never once been mentioned in the gallery.
My Demon Muster Edict had caused a butterfly effect, returning as this sudden Bloodstrife Night development.
“From midnight tomorrow night until sunrise, the territory of the Divine Cult shall embrace Bloodstrife Night.”
The one and only power the Five Great Demonic Clans held that could oppose the Heavenly Demon’s authority.
And, ironically, the Heavenly Demon’s own sons were exercising it.
Just then, a thought flashed through my mind like lightning.
‘Wait. Isn’t this actually a good thing?’
Was I the only person that Fierce Lord bastard wanted dead?
Nobody in this martial arts novel wanted to kill one another more desperately than these Demonic Young Masters.
‘Who says I’ll be the only target?’
From what I’d learned of their relationships by reading through chapter 206 of the original novel, they were practically ticking time bombs.
On the surface, they bowed and paid their respects, calling one another brothers. Deep down, these vicious devils were only waiting for the right moment to drive a blade through each other’s hearts.
And now they were being granted a night when killing anyone wasn’t a crime?
This was a trap to catch me, but it was also the opportunity of a lifetime to legally take each other’s heads.
Oh, of course.
As long as I wasn’t the target.
I picked up the divine tokens of the Five Great Demonic Clans.
Naturally, I remembered to give them a nasty smirk.
“Fine. I accept. Let’s do it.”
I had every confidence.
Confidence that I could sneak off and hide somewhere alone.
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