Volume One: The Devil's Nature Never Changes, and Even in Death, a Devil's Heart Knows No Regret
Within the vast expanse of limitless existence… inside the Supreme Void—
The Devil of Rebirth stood.
The Void trembled.
A bald, muscular man stepped forward, a Buddhist mark glowing upon his forehead.
His voice erupted with fury:
"You accursed devil! Your fate is death—and the punishment of the heavens!!"
Space trembled behind him…
Slowly, an enormous golden shadow began to take form.
The Palm of Buddha.
The palm descended from the heavens, pressing everything beneath it.
But the devil…
did not move.
He calmly raised his hand and said:
"Soaring Demonic Palm."
A black palm formed before him—
smaller in size…
yet heavier.
The two palms collided.
A moment of silence.
Then…
something was born between them.
A black hole.
It was not large…
Yet its mere existence was enough to devour light itself.
Everything began to be drawn toward it—
the air, the dust…
even the pendant hanging around the monk's neck.
The Buddhist man's eyes widened.
"Impossible…"
At that moment—
a white-haired woman vanished.
She appeared directly before the devil.
Her blade pierced his abdomen.
Time froze for the briefest instant.
Then she laughed and said:
"I expected you to resist a little, but it turns out you're weak…"
The devil moved.
A single punch.
It sent her flying toward the black hole.
He pulled the blade from his body and spat out blood…
Yet his expression did not change.
Boring.
Always…
boring.
He raised his gaze—
and saw the black hole swallowing them both.
But before everything could end—
space shook.
"Heaven-Splitting Blade!!"
The black hole was severed in two.
It did not explode.
It did not disappear.
It simply remained there—
two separate halves suspended in the Void.
And behind it—
a black rift appeared.
It was not nothingness…
but something watching.
Eyes.
Countless eyes.
And limbs resembling the arms of an octopus, moving slowly within the darkness.
For the first time, the devil clenched his teeth.
"…Cthulhu."
The entity emerged from the rift.
An enormous body…
and a hideous face surrounded by twisted, fleshy appendages.
At that same moment—
the heavens tore apart.
One gate…
Two…
Dozens…
No—
thousands of gates opened.
His pursuers emerged from them.
"Today, we carry out the Devil Extermination Decree against you, bastard!!"
The devil laughed.
Quietly.
He opened his palm—
and another black hole appeared behind Cthulhu.
But this time…
it did not pull anything inside.
Instead, something emerged from it.
Black limbs.
They seized the creature…
and dragged it violently into the darkness.
It vanished.
As though it had never existed.
"It has been banished to Hell."
Then—
with a single blow—
existence shattered…
and nonexistence shattered alongside it.
He opened a gate—
and disappeared.
…
Those were nothing more than memories from a few days ago.
"My demonic nature has not changed, even after dying millions of times—and still, my heart carries eternal perseverance."
A man stood within a field where stalks of wheat swayed like waves. The wind whispered through the crops, tugging at his loose black robe.
A bamboo hat rested upon his head, with a black veil hanging from its brim and concealing his face. Nothing could be seen beneath it except faint traces of his deathly pale skin—the complexion of a young man whose life had faded long ago.
He raised his gaze toward the heavens, a faint smile resting upon his lips.
He raised his gaze toward the heavens, a faint smile resting upon his lips.
A scarecrow built to ward off crows stood before him.
Above, enormous clouds gathered, hanging low and heavy.
The earth itself was still and cold after a catastrophic explosion, carrying a chill that seeped into the bones and an unsettling silence far too unnatural to be ordinary.
Behind the man, a rupture in space-time opened, resembling an endless blue gateway.
Someone stepped through.
He had long gray hair and a faint beard, while his eyes overflowed with tears, rage, and hatred. His clothes were drenched in blood.
His voice erupted with power, filled with malice and revulsion:
"Damn you, devil!! You won't escape today! Stop running like a rat, you [REDACTED INFORMATION]! You will die for your sins—sins the heavens will never forgive! We will avenge my wife and my clan!!!"
The man standing in the wheat field did not move a single step.
His faint smile disappeared.
He exhaled once, then turned to face the newcomer with suffocating composure.
The second man drew a sword from the sheath fastened across his back.
The blade bore the golden emblem of the Yang Clan, but rust had devoured it until it looked ready to crumble apart.
His hand trembled as fear seeped into his grip.
He charged forward, aiming the sword directly at the pale devil.
The devil's expression did not change.
His faint smile returned, and he spoke with profound boredom, his eyes fixed upon the weapon.
"Hmm… that sword? The same sword I drove into your wife again and again until her body was torn apart… Her agonizing death was unbearably boring.
"Repetitive."
He raised his hand.
A crow's feather appeared in his palm, then turned into black ash and scattered through the air.
"I've seen endings like that before. Every life is the same—boring. I have lived countless lives, lives that cannot be numbered or measured… and in the end, they all became identical."
He stepped forward, closing the distance between them until he was staring directly into the second man's eyes.
When Yi Shang saw the devil's eyes—one pure and radiant white, the other a dark, black abyss—his stomach lurched.
He nearly vomited from the demonic aura dwelling within this person…
or rather, within this devil.
At that moment, he understood that the devil's nature had never changed—and that his heart would never know regret for anything he had done.
The devil spoke again, his voice louder this time.
"Hah… Yi Shang. You are the most foolish and irritating of all the Devil Hunters. Your emotions move you, not your mind. Nothing worthwhile can be accomplished with someone like you. You behave like a puppet, endlessly repeating words such as clan, family, and loyalty without a single trace of independent thought."
"Tell me, Yi Shang—do you truly believe your clan would save you if you were the criminal?"
Yi Shang's face twisted with confusion before hardening once more with anger.
"Of course! The clan considers every one of its members precious! Every member possesses value, and every person gives the clan another reason to exist! Even if I were—and let us suppose this only for the sake of argument—a merciless demonic criminal pursuing selfish interests and foolish goals like you… my clan would still support me forever!"
The devil burst into laughter.
His smile widened unnaturally—
so much that Yi Shang trembled.
It was not the smile of a human.
It was the smile of a devil.
Yi Shang's fear intensified when he saw blood leaking from the devil's eye, flowing down his cheek to his jaw before dripping onto the golden wheat field.
The devil's voice came again, cold as demonic frost.
"The individual is the most important thing to the clan? Don't make me laugh, Yi Shang. The clan treats everyone like pawns—no, not only clans… everyone does."
"The powerful, the wealthy, the talented, the intelligent, and the gifted—those are the ones revered, sought after, and protected. The rest are worth nothing."
"A talented young heir becomes the hope of the clan, while someone less gifted becomes the clan's laughingstock—or the sect's."
"And in the end, the clan handed over its most talented member, Qing Yan, to a Great Emperor so he could slaughter him."
Yi Shang interrupted in a hoarse voice:
"But the clan only did that because it feared the Emper—"
An energy blade grazed the side of Yi Shang's neck, slicing away part of his hair before tearing through the space behind him and leaving a hollow region stripped of existence.
The devil's aura collapsed upon Yi Shang like a mountain, crushing him into the ground.
"Do not interrupt me again, you dog bound by a leash called loyalty."
Yi Shang burst into loud laughter as he forced himself to stand once more, clutching his abdomen in pain.
His intestines had been crushed.
"Go on… kill me, devil! I will never stop pursuing you! I'll become a spirit that haunts you! I'll scream at the heavens until they return me to life, only so I can take revenge upon you! But the hope within my heart will never die—the hope of killing you…"
He lowered his head.
The mad laughter vanished, replaced by despair and sorrow.
"Damn it… the pain is unbearable. I'm going to die without taking revenge. We should have waited for the other hunters… I was angry…
"and reckless."
The devil shook his head.
His smile disappeared.
He passed by Yi Shang like a swift phantom and answered:
"That is the last piece of advice I will ever give you as your fellow disciple, Yi Shang. And the reason I have not killed you is…"
His words stopped.
Several spatial gateways tore open simultaneously, and many people rushed out of them.
A huge, heavily muscled man carrying an enormous sword over his shoulder roared:
"Qing Yan, you bastard! You will die today! May Buddha grant me the strength to kill you!"
From another direction, a girl with crimson eyes and a face twisted in rage shouted while gripping two daggers:
"You defiled me, killed my children, and slaughtered my husband! I will have my revenge, you accursed devil—rot in Hell!"
Weapons slid from their sheaths.
Killing intent flooded the wheat field.
The devil returned to stand before the scarecrow.
He placed one hand behind his back and spoke in a calm voice that carried not the slightest trace of regret.
"Yi Shang… this is your chance to kill me. Go on. Do it."
Without warning, the Buddhist monk moved.
The wooden staff resting across his shoulder shot toward the devil like a beam of divine punishment.
The devil's expression did not change.
With calm, demonic indifference, he raised one hand and caught it.
Then, with a casual movement—
he sent it back.
The staff tore through the right side of the monk's body, severing his arm and ripping away a large chunk of flesh.
The monk fell to his knees in pain.
A moment later, a small green insect crawled out of the torn wound.
Its color was strangely soothing to the eye.
Its presence…
was not.
The instant it appeared, the monk's severed arm and mangled flesh began to regenerate.
The moment his recovery was complete, Yi Shang moved at once, gripping his clan's sword as he shouted:
"Die!!"
He plunged the blade into the devil's soul.
The devil spat out thick blood, yet still said:
"The reason I did not kill you, Yi Shang, is that this is the Fifty-Seventh Layer of Hell… where every power that might aid me is forbidden."
"If not for that restriction, you would already be dead, my foolish brother."
His body began fading into pure white, as though ink were being erased from a page.
Sorrow spread across Yi Shang's face.
When the devil disappeared completely, he left behind nothing but a blank patch of white.
The others departed one after another.
Yi Shang turned toward one of the men and asked:
"Was what we did truly right? I feel… some regret for killing my fellow disciple."
The man opened a green gateway through space-time, then looked at him with pity.
"That devil had to die. What we did was right—he was a dark, demonic being who could never be trusted in any way."
"What matters is that he's gone."
Yi Shang remained alone in that dead place, swallowed by silence, as the sword slipped from his hand.