Chapter 4

Chapter 4 – The Crescent Moon And The Goddess Of The Hunt, Artemis

Perhaps not only for me but for anyone, if an arrow flew out of nowhere and threatened their life, they would be quite furious, right?

But, what if the one who shot that arrow was an incredibly beautiful girl?

More beautiful than any celebrity you have ever seen, even more beautiful than the most beautiful in the Central Plains?

How long would that anger last?

“Wow....”

No other exclamation was needed.

Just wow.

A single word that summarized the beauty of the woman glaring at me fiercely.

Her white skin was so radiant that it made the beautiful moon in the sky lose its light.

Her glossy black hair sparkled mysteriously under the scattered moonlight from the sky.

Her black eyes gleamed with a strange light in them, exuding mystery, and her body, somewhere between a girl and a woman, was so fresh that it could almost be felt.

And the vitality and liveliness overflowing from her whole body. At a glance, she was a girl with natural strength and muscles.

If this were the Murim world, I would have immediately taken her in, fed her good food, dressed her in fine clothes, and taught her all kinds of martial arts.

She seemed a bit old to start learning martial arts, but that would naturally be resolved through some rolling and getting hit, so it wasn’t a problem at all.

However, recalling the fierce aura of the North Sea Ice Palace Lord I encountered in the frozen Great Snow Mountains...

It seemed unlikely that the situation would end well.

“This arrow, you shot it...”

“Arrogant one, how dare a man hold my moonlight in his hand and touch my divine power?”

“Wow...”

The same exclamation flowed from my mouth at that venomous voice I heard.

No way, she even says the same things as the North Sea Palace Lord?

The chilling déjà vu was enough to make my skin crawl.

The Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace, Snow Flower Goddess, Baek So-sul.

She, with her name and epithet, always became the talk of the martial world whenever there was a contest of beauty.

The geographically isolated environment of the North Sea Ice Palace inevitably stimulated the poets’ imaginations.

Among them, the Snow Flower Goddess, who had appeared a few times at the events of the Murim Alliance, was the subject of many poems and anecdotes due to her snowflake-like beauty.

Moreover, the mystical power of the North Sea Ice Palace, which wielded the force of the thousand-year-old ice spirit from ancient times, was so profound that even high-level warriors couldn’t easily surpass it.

Gwi Hyun-sa often cited the Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace as the biggest variable in the Great Demon War.

And that variable appeared before me, leaving an indelible scar.

The beginning was an incident where the demonic army, advancing through the Qinghai region and Sichuan, collided with the delegation sent from the Ice Palace to the Murim Alliance due to the Murim Alliance’s scheme.

In response, the people of the North Sea, incited by the Murim Alliance’s one-sided media play, became extremely angry and invaded the Great Snow Mountain Range in Sichuan, where I was residing.

‘It was really a mess back then.’

What happened at that time was that the frontline with the Murim Alliance was steadily pushed back, and Qinghai and Sichuan completely fell into my hands.

The poisoners of the Sichuan Tang Family, one of the Five Great Clans, were purified by fire; most of the malcontents of the Qingcheng Sect were annihilated and sealed; and the Emei Sect was divided by the schemes of Gwi Hyun-sa, leading to their self-destruction as they fought among themselves.

From the perspective of me and the Demonic Cult, it was an unbelievably favorable situation.

While waiting for reinforcements from the cult, I was completely immersed in paperwork to implement various civil policies and recruit small and medium sects to make Sichuan and Qinghai the lands of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.

Suddenly, a cold wave hit Sichuan on a scorching summer day.

At that time, I had occupied the Tang family’s main residence in the Great Snow Mountain Range and was using the head of the family’s office as my temporary office.

The office of the family head, which was the highest and had the best view, offered a refreshing sight of the beautiful mountain range through its large window opposite the desk.

I was arduously handling the attack of black letters and white papers, drawing strength from the comfort of the Great Snow Mountain Range.

Then.

Amidst two weeks of overnight work, with frustration and annoyance rising within me, even Gwi Hyun-sa seemed to be wary of me.

As the struggle between white paper and black ink was nearing its end, imagine the approval documents getting all distorted before your eyes.

Seeing the documents, which I had slaved over for a whopping two weeks, getting soaked and disappearing far away made me feel like I was about to lose my mind.

I even had the silly thought that the Zhuge family might have learned some ancestral weather manipulation technique to assassinate me.

No more words were necessary.

Anyway, as I was frantically running around trying to save the documents distorted by the snow while screaming like a girl.

The shut-in from the North Sea Ice Palace, who had brought the blizzard, boldly entered through the window and said to me.

“How dare you invade my sanctuary with your filthy hands? Do you wish to taste my wrath?!”

-Swoosh!

“Huh?!”

The tip of that arrow was, of course, aimed at the beautiful forehead of the moon goddess, who was babbling nonsense.

It was a situation completely opposite to when the arrow had flown at me earlier.

However, I have lived a much harsher life than a god born arrogant and powerful.

Unlike a foolish goddess, I would not waste the element of surprise on a cheap provocation.

“As death whispers, I do not choose the time.”

Imperius Soul Arts-Imperius Soul Martial Kick.

In place of Artemis’s silver divine power, the silver arrow imbued with my Martial Spirits Cultivation qi twisted its trajectory as I flipped my hand.

The sharp moonlight tore through the pure white shoulder of its own master.

-Pwak!

“Kyahhh!”

They say the blood of gods is golden.

The blood of immortals, called ichor, is the divine power and the essence of immortality itself.

I pierced through the golden blood, reminiscent of molten gold, and dug into her perimeter.

“Making a fuss over just one arrow!”

“You... you worm-like creature!!”

But my opponent was the goddess of hunting, who had lived for thousands of years.

Even as she staggered in pain, the powerful qi resembling moonlight targeted and rushed at me.

“Right, you didn’t just spend those thousands of years idly, did you?”

That form, just as the Snow Flower Goddess had shown in the past, displayed powerful destructive strength, but since it was merely qi, it just looked like a delicious piece of meat to me.

“Well then, shall we see how delicious the divine power of a goddess who has maintained her virginity is?”

Already tired of this small, fragile body, this beautiful goddess offered me a feast.

Of course, it was only proper to eat it deliciously.

Even the fierce blizzard of the goddess of the North Sea, the Snow Flower Goddess, was nothing more than a refreshing bowl of shaved ice in front of me. The sun of the Solar Palace was also swallowed like hot soup and digested in my dantian.

People feared that in the right arm of the Heavenly Demon, a mythical beast that devours everything, a rival to the Buddha, was sleeping.

“Five Whole Defeating Arts.”

-Shwaaaaaak!

From the tips of my fingers, a gigantic maw of gluttony bloomed and voraciously devoured the silver divine power.