Chapter 288 - Unkillable Demon King
“How pitiful. That you should be thrust into my domain without an understanding of your place in this game.” Jun Yi Kong’s deep voice dripped with contempt, “But I don’t recall this being part of the plan. Did something go wrong with Akahi’s arrangements? That you had to be sent here to fix her prophecy?”
He chuckled in dark amusement at this thought, not giving Yuzu a chance to answer the question. “I will not let you go, Little Yuzu. Nor will I help your charge with the trial. That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“And what deal was that?” Yuzu asked calmly, “If you wouldn’t mind explaining.”
“Why would I explain it to you? This is a matter between immortals. A game played across the eras, spanning thousands of years.” Jun Yin Kong said, “In a game like this, you are but a pawn.”
Yuzu didn’t answer, knowing that Jun Yi Kong was simply revelling in his own position.
“It is too bad that in this game your Goddess found herself in a losing position. Her schemes and plans could only go so far against her enemies. In her final moments of desperation she turned to me for help.”
“Tell me, Little Yuzu, do you know who I am?” Once again, he didn’t wait for a response. “Or perhaps it is that your elders did not tell you whose domain you were treading on. Poor little pawn of fate, if you knew you would not be so grossly impetulent in my presence.”
He spoke his next line with a dark and ominous rumble.
“I. Am. Jun. Yi. Kong.”
When the Goddess of Fate herself first learned his identity, she trembled from the immense pressure of being in his presence. She never let down her guard, and she feared him even after completely understanding the ritual that bound him to his prison, knowing that he had no way of escaping or influencing the world. This fear was so great that it was only in her final moment of desperation that she agreed to make a deal with him.
And this was already after he had been imprisoned for many, many millenia.
He was an ancient, legendary Demon King. His name would shake the hearts of even the bravest men, much less this puny girl in front of him.
Yuzu paused upon hearing his identity, her eyebrows knit together as she tilted her head,
“…Who?”
Jun Yi Kong paused briefly out of shock before repeating, “Jun Yi Kong, the Demon King.”
Yuzu frowned, a confused look on her face.
“Im-impetulant brat!” He spat, “Do you doubt my words?”
“I’ve never heard of you before.” Yuzu said, then caught herself as a spark lit in her eyes, “Ah, no wait, the guru-chi said something like this to me. He said he believed this place was called Ying Zhen, and something about the owner of this space being ancient— Jun Yi Kong, yes that sounds right.”
“You seem like you used to be a pretty important person, but to be honest I’ve never heard of you before.” She spoke casually, but with an air of sincere confusion.
“Pretty important?!”
The mountain outside the hall began to shake with tremors as if experiencing an earthquake. In the depths of the cave system, Nilya had to hold onto the wall to stop himself from falling as rocks clattered down from the ceiling around him.
“I, Jun Yi Kong, am the Demon King that ruled across the entire southern arm! I defeated the Thousand Eye Rasque. I subdued the Black Trench! Men from all walks of life prayed to me for power, kings sacrificed hundreds in my name!”
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“Don’t play ignorant with me, you brat!”
Listening to Jun Yi Kong’s furious impotence, the memory of that self-important merchant flashed in Yuzu’s mind.
From the moment Jun Yi Kong tried to impress Yuzu with his identity he had already lost.
Throw them off balance, then pull them in. Not too forcefully, not too directly. The point in a deal was not to dominate over her counterpart, but to bring them to her side.
“I’m not lying to you.” Yuzu said calmly, “I don’t know if your name was well known before, but it is not one that I have ever heard whether in legends or history.”
“What uneducated place do you hail from?”
“Kumin, in Nian Xing.” Yuzu replied.
“Such a place does not exist in my memory.” Jun Yi Kong said.
“Mmm..” Yuzu thought briefly about her knowledge of the world.
Most of the maps she’d seen used the Altic Sea as the northern cut off point, with some of them vaguely pointing out Banbajan and Tenyuan as being ‘somewhere to the north’. With Kumin as the center and the Altic Sea to the north, there was the province of Huan to the west and Fuha Wastelands to the south. Across the Chenmai Mountains to the east of Kumin was a land bridge to LingNan.
To the west of Huan across the sea was a large island the size of Kumin. This was the former country of Ying Chu.
“Ying Zhen originally came from Ying Chu…” Yuzu said, “So then, NianXing would be the land to the east of Ying Chu.”
“In my time, that was the kingdom of Lao Shan.” Jun Yi Kong replied. He paused before asking, “My name, it really does not exist in your legends?”
“No.” Yuzu said, “And Ying Chu was destroyed.”
“Is that so…” Jun Yi Kong’s voice took on a quieter tone as he digested Yuzu’s words. “And so it is not just their heir that the guru-chi are seeking to revive…”
“I should add one more thing.” Yuzu said calmly, sensing that the time was right, “I am not a follower of Akahi, nor any god for that matter.”
Yuzu’s words had a sobering effect on Jun Yi Kong, who had suddenly come to the realization that the world was not in the state that he had assumed it was.
“No… This could not be Akahi’s plan…” Jun Yi Kong muttered to himself, “The deal… could it have been broken?”
“If you tell me the deal, perhaps I could help you.” Yuzu said.
“The deal was simple. My assistance, for my freedom.” Jun Yi Kong’s voice rumbled darkly, “Akahi saw her death in the threads and turned to me for help. She could not prevent her death, but she could set up the conditions for resurrection.”
“Ironic, isn’t it. For all their pomp and splendor, the gods still cannot overcome death. Even Fate herself has bowed her head at my feet.”
“What are you the god of?” Yuzu ventured the question.
“Nothing. No one.” Jun Yi Kong chuckled darkly, “I am simply a man who has overcome corruption. That is all.”
Yuzu frowned, not quite buying the Demon King’s modesty. “You’re an immortal that is stronger than gods, but you’re not a god?”
“Little Yuzu, strength and godhood are two separate things. Don’t mistake these two things. When I was sealed in this chamber by the one hundred and fourty four saints whose statues stand around us, there were no gods. There were only monsters and men.
“In my time, the energies of the world were still young and wild. Gods did not exist. The three kingdoms of the Exalted had not yet been discovered. As mankind grew throughout the eons they had to learn how to harness the powers of the aether.
“In my era, each step on the Exalted path was treacherous. There were no recipes for catalysts, and those masters that discovered secrets to advancement guarded them jealously. To become an immortal in those days involved slaying terrible monsters and absorbing their sarira, until such a time that the body was rich enough in aether that it stopped aging.
“But the true danger that Exalted faced was not death by the passing of time, but death from corruption.
“In my day the Exalted immortals followed a strict creed of honour. When their life was at the end, knowing that they would soon succumb to corruption, they would undergo the Honourable Sacrifice Ritual in Heaven’s Palace as their final act. Doing so ended their life, preventing them from turning into an immortal Corrupted One and allowing Heaven’s Palace to gather their sarira.
“Imagine, being at the peak of strength, struggling for hundreds of years to find a way to live, then as despair sets having no choice but to end your life with your own hands. Trembling and wretched, unable to resist the corruption seeping out of your bones. Tearing you apart from the inside.”
The Calamity Mandate. Yuzu thought quietly to herself. The eternal curse of every Exalted person.
“But not you?” Yuzu frowned, “What makes you unkillable?”
“Oh, I may be strong, but there is nothing in this world that cannot be killed. The man who trapped me in this prison had every chance to kill me. But he didn’t. Why? Because he needed me. Akahi visited me over and over for thousands of years and made a deal with me at the end, because she needed me. Even though I told both of them that I could not give them what they wanted, they still clung to me out of desperation.”
“Even when I called them pathetic to their face, and dared them to finish me off, they couldn’t bear to do it.” Jun Yi Kong barked out a dark laugh, “Out of all the domains, Fate is truly the most pathetic of them all, filled with schemers that can’t help but cling to every last, futile string of hope.”
“Little Yuzu, you are truly attuned to the worst domain of all the divine kingdoms.”