Millions of years ago, at the end of what would become known as the Age of the Gods, a blood-red sky wept over the ruins of the ancient Realm of Sacred Blood. Legions of righteous cultivators triumphed atop mountains of corpses, their golden swords gleaming with an almost divine light.
Surrounded by his enemies, the one who would be known as the last demon cultivator, the demon king Ming Liezong, watched his dreaded death slowly approach.
Defeat was inevitable, but surrender was a word the proud warrior could not utter.
He looked at his eternal enemy and leader of the righteous alliance before softly saying, "I would have at least appreciated dying by your blade, Bai Long."
"A demon like you will have none of his wishes granted."
As a tide of swords rained down upon their last foe, the demon king did not retaliate. Just when everyone expected a glorious final battle, the emperor of the devastated realm frantically spun his qi and destroyed his own cultivation.
A blinding, destructive energy of a demonic purple swept across the land, vaporizing millions of righteous warriors in a single blast.
As a deathly silence fell, a skeletal hand emerged from the rubble. Bai Long, half of whose body was consumed by demonic remains, screamed, "He won't die from this! Search the entire area and bring me that devil!"
Hidden deep within a secret cache, Ming Liezong stared at his emaciated body and felt his life about to evaporate. In a final, desperate act, he tore out his heart, gathered some demonic script, and hurled it through space, toward the lower realms.
"My story ends here below, but my arts must endure forever," were the last words of the former emperor before his departure for samsara.
---
The icy wind whipped Li Mao's face as blood trickled down the right side of his stomach.
His dull face stared up at the sky as he felt his cold back against the ground. He raised his hand toward the faint light visible from the crevice where he lay.
He had slipped into that crevice, and despite his friends' attempts, they couldn't pull him out and went to the city to seek help.
At least, that's what the young people would say when they arrived in Skyroot Town. But the truth wasn't so enchanting.
Li Mao, a young boy of about fifteen, with deep black hair and lavender eyes, was just another street kid. His parents had died when he was young, and he had survived day to day ever since.
Like any child in a mortal kingdom, he dreamed of becoming a cultivator, and he had eagerly awaited his twelfth birthday to have his talent tested.
So when his average, middle rank 1 talent was revealed, he was bursting with ego. Unfortunately, while this kind of talent was enough for cultivating, it wasn't enough to be taken in and adopted by a wealthy family.
For three years, he had done everything he could to improve his talent and strengthen his body, eventually reaching the stage of skin strengthening: the first stage of cultivation.
So when he learned that a centuries-old giseng had been sighted in the mountains, he left as quickly as possible and braved the mountain and its dangers to seize it at all costs.
Against all odds, he managed to get his hands on it and obtain this legendary root that would allow him to strengthen his body and heal all his accumulated injuries and imperfections.
But once again, life gave him hope, only to snatch it away the next moment. Su Lidong, a young man from the city and a farmer who had achieved viscera strengthening, and his companions had followed him into the heart of the mountain.
No sooner had he meticulously finished extracting it than the young farmer was seized by the pursuing group, who stripped him of his prize.
Despite the difference in strength between the two sides, Li Mao refused to easily surrender the ginseng and fought to the very end.
As he was cornered and about to lose his treasure to his attackers, they began to laugh frantically.
"What's so funny about being robbed, you filthy beggar?!"
Li Mao looked at them, his sharp tooth visible beneath his wide grin. "I was just thinking it's hilarious that we went to so much trouble for no one to get anything, don't you think?"
"You don't seem to get it. You're the only one here who won't get a piece of ginseng."
"You're the one who doesn't understand, Su Lingtong." He took the ginseng out of his bag and held it out to the opposing group. "If I don't get it, no one will."
Su Lingtong and his group's eyes widened as they watched Li Mao grind the ginseng before throwing it into one of the crevices in the area.
"You... You didn't dare, you filthy son of a bitch?! I was going to let you go, but it looks like you're going to have to die here."
"Not without a fight."
And so he finally bled to death in that pit where only death awaited him.
---
Blood gushed from his stomach as he replayed the past in his mind, feeling his life slowly drawing to a close.
"If I had given it to them, I would have had another chance, but I condemned myself to die like a dog." Hot tears streamed down his cheeks as he spoke these words.
"No, I'd rather die like a dog than give back what I took. If it's not mine, then no one deserves it."
Despite his weakness, he still clenched his fists and bit his lip until it bled at these thoughts.
He laughed suddenly, a light, mocking smirk. "Even on my deathbed, I still have this hatred in my heart. I'm pathetic, damn it."
"Of course not, young man. On the contrary, hatred allows you to move forward fully."
"Wh-who's there?" Li Mao asked, slowly succumbing to panic.
Suddenly, a strange rhythmic vibration rippled through the stone floor. It was like a distant, heavy heartbeat. Like a giant slowly playing an immense drum.
As he looked toward the sound, he saw that the cave seemed strangely unnatural, like a valley of the uncanny, but for a cave.
Using his hands to crawl painfully, he dragged himself toward the sound.
A bone-chilling air billowed from the depths, laden with the scent of ancient dust and iron.
Finally, the tunnel opened into a vast, hidden chamber composed of imposing stone pillars, carved with monstrous and strange faces, rising toward the high ceiling.
In the center of the room stood a rudimentary stone altar, unperturbed. Despite the absence of natural or artificial light, the room was as bright as day.
An eerie silence reigned, broken only by his panting breaths. Moss clung to the base of the pillars, gleaming with a faint, sickly green light.
Ancient bones littered the edges of the room, half-buried in the earth. Clearly, others had wandered here through the eons, but none had survived.
Li Mao's gaze, however, remained fixed on the altar.
A jagged obsidian shard floated above the altar.
A dark energy pulsed from its core, casting long, sinuous shadows across the stone floor.
The sound grew increasingly deafening, as if the world itself were beating in unison with this profoundly black heart.
Beside the floating shard lay a leather-bound scroll, its pages yellowed with age.
Li Mao forced himself to stand, leaning heavily against the altar.
"That's it, kid, you've got it, come get me," the voice whispered, but Li Mao seemed to completely ignore it, as if the sound were nothing more than a breath of the wind
His hand trembled as he brushed aside the thick layer of dust covering the scroll. He recognized the mystical writings of martial techniques.
These were the writings of the last Demon King, master of the forbidden arts. These texts spoke of a new path, seemingly hidden because it was envied.
Li Mao stared at the words, his heart pounding. Completely absorbed by the strange promises of these incomplete texts.
This was heresy, the ultimate sin of the Thousand Kingdoms.
"Righteous sects preach purity, but they only produce weaklings who bow before the strong," the small voice mocked. "Demonic cultivation revealed a brutal and implacable truth: strength at any cost."
Li Mao raised his hand to his chest, feeling the faint pulsations of his human heart.
Had he ever received kindness through righteousness? No. Only pain, humiliation, and the nauseating stench of his family's burnt flesh.
He turned his gaze back to the obsidian shard, its dark pulsations synchronizing with his failing heartbeat.
Whispers echoed in his mind, soft, seductive, and ancient.
"You will have the strength for revenge and a destiny forged in the blood of his enemies."
Slowly, he extended his hand, his fingers brushing against the cold, dark stone.
Before his skin even touched it, the obsidian shard blazed with a fierce violet light. It had responded to his despair, yearning for his flesh and his soul
Suddenly, the shard erupted and crashed into his chest. A searing pain, sharper than a blade, ripped through him. "Ahahahahah, there it is! Let me feed on your soul!!"
Drunk with joy at having another meal, the demonic heart took a moment to realize that its host was more combative than expected.
"How can a beggar with no history have a heart strong enough to resist?!"
Li Mao convulsed in pain as the heart merged with his own, pitting the two spirits against each other in a battle of wills.
Unfortunately for the heart, millions of years had weakened the spirit within, allowing Li Mao, at the cost of a painful struggle, to seize control of the shard.
As his wounds closed and his mind was completely destroyed, Li Mao screamed, but for the first time in a long time, not from pain but from an insatiable hunger.