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Translator: penny
Chapter: 10
Chapter Title: Obtaining a Fortuitous Encounter-2
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Yin-Yang Demon Lee Ho-seon
Born as a hermaphrodite from the moment he came into the world, he endured a tragic childhood filled with mockery and contempt from the villagers, who branded him a cursed child.
In an age where even children raised with endless affection and attention fell short, it was perhaps inevitable that Lee Ho-seon, nurtured solely on scorn and condemnation, would grow into an emotionless, dry child devoid of any emotional expression.
Though he bore the villagers' disdain as one cursed by heaven, his parents cherished and enveloped him in love just like any other child.
Aware of their feelings or not, Lee Ho-seon rarely showed his emotions, but thanks to the abundant affection from his parents, he was able to live days free of loneliness.
That is, until that incident occurred.
One day, a plague swept through the village, claiming countless lives.
The villagers, having lost family and loved ones, were consumed by rage and needed an outlet for their fury.
Lee Ho-seon, born a hermaphrodite, became their target.
Convinced that the plague stemmed from his cursed body, the villagers stormed his home and brutally murdered his parents.
His father was beaten to death mercilessly with clubs, while his beautiful mother was gang-raped by the villagers.
Fortunately, Lee Ho-seon, hidden in the attic, escaped the violence, but through the cracks in the floorboards, he witnessed it all vividly—his father's savage beating and his mother's encirclement by numerous men, raped and then strangled to death.
Having personally seen his beloved parents slaughtered so mercilessly, Lee Ho-seon shed tears of blood, coming to hate the world and humanity itself.
Vowing revenge, he headed to the Ten Thousand Great Mountains where the Demonic Cult resided and became the joint disciple of the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, who were elders at the time.
Among the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, the Yin Demon was a master of the Essence Absorption Technique, inheritor of the yin cold energy art known as the Yin Wind Divine Moon Art—a seductive witch who had drained the essence of countless warriors, her victims numbering well into the tens of thousands. The Yang Demon was a master of the Yang Absorption Technique, inheritor of the hot yang energy art called the Fierce Wind Divine Yang Art—a lustful demon who had ravaged numerous female heroes and absorbed their essence, amassing tremendous inner power.
Though these two fiends wielded starkly different martial arts, they shared the same roots in the Yin-Yang Sect, so the world grouped them together as the Yin-Yang Twin Demons.
Both had reached the pinnacle of demonic arts as absolute masters, yet they always lamented their inability to transcend to the Transcendent Realm due to the limitations of their techniques. Then, along came the hermaphrodite Lee Ho-seon.
The Yin-Yang Twin Demons believed that with him, they could achieve the harmony of yin and yang they so desired and reach the Transcendent Realm, so they took him as their joint disciple.
Thanks to his unique hermaphroditic physiology, Lee Ho-seon could cultivate both the Yin Wind Divine Moon Art and the Fierce Wind Divine Yang Art simultaneously, and his burning thirst for vengeance propelled his progress daily.
In the end, the first demonic practitioner not born of a demonic lineage to reach the pinnacle of demonic arts was born.
The first thing Lee Ho-seon did upon attaining the Absolute Realm was to kill his masters, the Yin-Yang Twin Demons.
They had raised him like their own precious child as the Yin-Yang Sect's first joint disciple, but to Lee Ho-seon, who had lost all humanity, they were nothing more than superior spiritual elixirs.
The Yin Demon was subjected to Yang Absorption by Lee Ho-seon, who drained all her yin cold energy, leaving her a dried-up corpse. The Yang Demon suffered Yin Absorption from him, losing all his hot yang energy, and met the same fate.
This depraved act was possible only because Lee Ho-seon possessed both male and female genitalia as a hermaphrodite.
For a seductive witch and lustful demon who had toyed with countless heroes and heroines, dominating an era, their ends were pathetically mundane, perishing miserably at the hands of the disciple they had cherished so dearly.
Even after devouring the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, Lee Ho-seon did not stop, beginning to prey on numerous other demonic practitioners.
With his Absolute Realm prowess and the immense inner power gained from consuming his masters, few could stand against him.
In the end, he devoured hundreds of demonic practitioners before being caught by Radiant Heaven Demon, the Demonic Cult Leader at the time, incurring his wrath.
No matter how much he was called the pinnacle of demonic arts with Absolute Realm skill and near-infinite inner power, facing Radiant Heaven Demon, who had transcended beyond that to the Transcendent Realm, was impossible, so he fled the Ten Thousand Great Mountains without hesitation.
Though the enraged Radiant Heaven Demon assembled pursuit forces, he had already vanished.
Upon entering the Central Plains, the first thing Lee Ho-seon did was exact revenge on the villagers who killed his parents.
Arriving at the village, he sought out those who had raped and murdered his mother. He severed their limbs, then raped their sons and daughters at will before beating them to death with clubs.
The villagers wept tears of blood and begged for mercy, but he had none to give.
Afterward, he performed Yang and Yin Absorption on everyone left in the village, turning them all into dried husks and massacring them, then set the entire place ablaze, reducing everything to ashes.
As if the village had never existed to begin with.
With his parents' vengeance complete, Lee Ho-seon roamed the regions, performing Yin and Yang Absorption indiscriminately on men and women alike, reducing countless martial artists to husks. The world began to call him the Yin-Yang Demon in fearful whispers.
The Yin-Yang Demon reigned as a terror of the murim for a long time and was declared a public enemy, but countless warriors fell before his supreme martial prowess like leaves in the wind.
However, he suffered a grievous wound at the hands of the once-in-a-generation eccentric known as Immortal Elder and vanished from the murim.
This was the backstory of the Yin-Yang Demon, whom Lee Jae-won encountered as an awakening catalyst before facing the Heavenly Demon Emperor.
As the story neared its climax, lacking a proper trigger to advance from the Flower Realm to the Mystic Realm, the author created this one-off boss.
Don't protagonists usually grow stronger after losing something precious?
Lee Jae-won, the protagonist of High School Senior Goes to the Murim!, was no different.
The Yin-Yang Demon, gravely wounded by Immortal Elder—whom one could call Lee Jae-won's master—honed the Harmony Divine Art in bitter resentment and sought him out for revenge. Immortal Elder, already advanced in years and nearing the end of his lifespan, could not withstand him and met his death.
Witnessing this, Lee Jae-won awakened, reaching the Mystic Realm, and clashed with the Yin-Yang Demon.
Filled with rage, Lee Jae-won ultimately routed the Yin-Yang Demon, inflicting severe internal injuries and avenging his master.
In truth, the Yin-Yang Demon was also a MacGuffin of sorts.
Though Lee Jae-won won the fierce battle, he failed to deliver a killing blow, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty about his return—yet he never showed so much as his nose until the ending. A true one-off boss.
That was the Yin-Yang Demon.
It was impossible not to be startled seeing such a character as the author of the manual.
Even as an awakening fodder, his presence was exceptional thanks to the author's detailed setup, so Seon-u recognized the moniker immediately.
Out of curiosity, Seon-u began examining the manual more closely.
📜 Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art Manual 📜"Defeated by Immortal Elder, this seat could not even sleep. Even the great ruler of the Demonic Cult, Radiant Heaven Demon, could not rout this seat so easily." "Seeking the cause of my defeat, I inspected my martial arts and finally discovered the fatal flaw in the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art!"
The content was so intriguing that Seon-u's hand flipped the pages faster.
"From the start, the methods of my masters, the Yin-Yang Twin Demons, were wrong!" "Yin Absorption for Yang and Yang Absorption for Yin are not about unilaterally draining an opponent's essence through relations. They are about refining each other's pure inner power even purer through harmonious union, allowing immense power from even small amounts of energy." "The impure energy gained from chaotic, one-sided relations is inefficient and diminishes martial prowess, making it impossible to defeat Immortal Elder." "Thus, I dispersed all the inner power I had accumulated over fifty years and started anew." "I pursued natural harmony of yin and yang through genuine relations, not forced patchwork, and strove to refine pure inner power even further." "As a result, I completed the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art and gained power incomparable to before."
"Successor, I go to face Immortal Elder with this perfected art. I will triumph, of course, but in preparation for the unlikely, I leave this record."
"I do not wish for my Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art to be forgotten."
"Successor, cultivate the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art."
"And become the supreme under heaven!"
Feeling his heart pound, Seon-u turned to the next page.
The following pages detailed the incantations, techniques, and various methods of the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
If the contents were true, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Though Jang Sam was nominally Lee Jae-won's senior disciple, Lee Jae-won had rarely properly taught him martial arts.
The reason? In truth, Lee Jae-won lacked the ability to teach disciples.
Having easily attained realms others spent lifetimes chasing—thanks to the author's conveniences—he differed fundamentally from murim practitioners who gained profound insights through trials and training.
Moreover, Immortal Elder's martial arts weren't designed for rapid progress to begin with.
Immortal Elder's arts embodied the traits of orthodox faction techniques: long-term contemplation, cultivation of the Dao, purification of essence, qi, and spirit, leading to great enlightenment in one's later years.
Lee Jae-won grew explosively because Immortal Elder directly implanted his enlightenment into his mind, but the self-taught Lee Jae-won couldn't replicate that convenience, so he couldn't pass it to Jang Sam.
This was why Jang Sam, disciple of the supreme under heaven, had only reached the Peak Realm.
No, reaching the Peak Realm in his mid-twenties with Immortal Elder's notoriously slow arts was enough to call him a prodigy of the world.
And now, the Absolute Divine Art known as the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art had come to him.
In High School Senior Goes to the Murim!, only five had reached the Mystic Realm: first, the orthodox faction's supreme Immortal Elder and his disciple, the Absolute Martial God Lee Jae-won; next, the previous Demonic Cult Leader Radiant Heaven Demon and his son, the novel's final boss Heavenly Demon Emperor; and finally, the Yin-Yang Demon.
With the Yin-Yang Demon's signature ultimate art right before him, Seon-u felt the urge to abandon Immortal Elder's slow progress and switch to this.
Of course, Jang Sam would never betray his sect by learning a demonic public enemy's arts, but Seon-u was different.
To survive these barbaric Central Plains folk, he would use anything.
Even if it was the arts of the once-public enemy Yin-Yang Demon.
In the worst case, if Lee Jae-won became his enemy, Immortal Elder's arts wouldn't stand a chance.
Lee Jae-won, empowered by protagonist cheats via implanted enlightenment, had an immense gap over Jang Sam, who self-studied the arts hailed for the beauty of enlightenment without a master's aid.
To bridge that gap, he needed arts that were reliably fast and easy to grow strong.
The Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art perfectly fit the bill.
In summary, it was an art that grew stronger through intense relations with women, boasting extreme efficiency with its exceptionally pure energy, allowing vast power from minimal amounts.
And he had the famously pure Clear Spirit Stone Oil, didn't he?
Melting it into his body with the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art would likely convert it to inner power with almost no loss, he thought.
It was so appealing there was no reason not to learn it.
And the biggest draw for Seon-u was that this was the art of the Yin-Yang Demon, who—even at the end of his lifespan—sent the Mystic Realm Immortal Elder to the heavens.
It could be his final bastion against Lee Jae-won in the worst case.
The deliberation was shorter than expected.
Seon-u opened the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art manual and began memorizing every passage.
'I will survive. I will survive. Even if I die, I will survive!'
Gritting his teeth, Seon-u reaffirmed his resolve and delved into thoroughly reading the manual.
As he read, Seon-u felt a sense of relief.
Fearing the peerless divine art might be incomprehensible, he was pleased to find the Yin-Yang Demon had added detailed annotations throughout, making it easy to understand.
Unlike Lee Jae-won, the Yin-Yang Demon seemed to possess the qualities of a good master.
Seon-u lost track of time, immersing himself completely in the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art.
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