Demon Calamity

It was the depths of winter.

The land lay frozen beneath a howling north wind, as though the earth had donned a silver-white straw raincoat.

Scattered low houses stood amid the snow, gathering into a village of roughly a hundred households. Some had fallen into disrepair over the years, their damaged roofs riddled with holes that had been haphazardly plugged with stones and chunks of wood.

A thread of morning light slipped through the crack in the door and into the pitch-black room.

Wrapped in a tattered thick quilt, Wu Ming curled up on a narrow bed. Though daylight had come, it was freezing at this time of year. Even as waves of hunger rolled through his belly, he had no desire whatsoever to crawl out of the warmth beneath the covers.

Whenever this happened, Wu Ming could not help longing for his previous life. Though he had been nothing more than an ordinary workhorse back then, at least his hard labor had let him eat his fill and keep warm. Compared to his life now, those days had been far better.

Sleep a little longer.

Thinking this, Wu Ming turned over and, in his haze, dreamed once more of countless scenes from his previous life.

But before long, a burst of clamor shattered his dream.

"...Who got hurt?!"

"Ah, it was Old Master Forty-Nine. Before the New Year, he went into the mountains to chop wood and broke his leg in a fall. He'd been bedridden for a month, and his household had long run out of food. To keep Liu from starving to death, he secretly went to the Far River yesterday, hoping to catch some fish to trade for grain. But he ran into a fish demon..."

Listening to the waves of discussion outside,

Wu Ming woke up at once, his expression turning grim. He quickly climbed from his bed, pushed open the door, and stepped outside. Quite a few villagers could be seen heading toward the entrance of the village.

Blending into the crowd, he soon reached the village entrance as well—and immediately saw a horrifying sight.

A person... or perhaps he could only barely still be called a person, lay in the snow at the village entrance. His temples were half-gray. He was one of the village elders, named Wu Sijiu. The reason he could only barely be considered human was that, aside from retaining a human shape, nearly everything inside his body had been hollowed out!

His flesh, blood, and organs had almost all vanished without a trace. What lay in the snow was nothing but a skin sack and a skeleton!

"Another demon calamity."

Wu Ming's face looked terrible as he watched the scene.

Nearly every household had suffered something similar. Poor commoners like them had no right to settle in Jingye City, more than a dozen li away. They could only live in remote villages, where demon calamities were virtually impossible to avoid.

During the worst periods of demonic rampage, those monsters would even enter villages to eat people!

Ordinary people had no right to stand against Demons. Only martial artists could fight them, yet among the hundred-odd households of Wu Village, only a mere handful had nurtured Blood Qi and could be called true martial artists.

The demonic rampage was truly happening right beside him.

It had been seventeen years since Wu Ming was born into this world. Yet since he recovered all the memories of his previous life and completely pierced through the Mystery of the Womb, he had only been in this world for a little over a year.

After his past and present lives fused and his personality was reshaped, countless troubles weighed upon his heart. Based on the memories of this life, he knew that this world was no ordinary ancient dynasty. It was a place fraught with danger, where Demons ran rampant and ravaged mankind!

"Grandpa!!"

Wu Liu, Wu Sijiu's only grandson, threw himself into the snow and wept so bitterly that heaven and earth seemed to mourn with him.

The people gathered around them all felt the same sorrow at the sight, each sighing to themselves.

Wu Sijiu had struggled for his entire life before finally arranging a wife for his son. Yet less than three years later, his son and daughter-in-law had both fallen victim to a demon calamity, leaving behind only little Wu Liu. Now Wu Liu had just turned eight, and Wu Sijiu too had let go of the world.

Wu Ming stood to one side in silence.

Though he sympathized with their plight, there was nothing he could do.

Still, he was not entirely without anything. Ever since awakening to the Mystery of the Womb and realizing the truth of his past and present lives, he often dreamed of a picture depicting a deity-like being subduing Demons. Every stroke was lifelike.

This picture was called the Black Emperor's Demon Subduing Diagram.

Wu Ming did not know where it had come from, but it truly existed within his mind. Yet over the past year or more, he had tried to explore it countless times without gaining anything, unable to determine what use the diagram had.

Judging by its nature, perhaps the diagram could subdue Demons. But the problem was that he possessed only a mortal body. He had practiced martial arts for more than a year and a half, yet had never truly stepped into the realm of a martial artist. He could hardly go looking for Demons of his own accord.

Besides, forget about subduing Demons.

In truth, Wu Ming now faced an even more basic problem: survival.

In his previous life, even the laziest person could easily maintain the most basic standard of living. Here, that was impossible. Wu Sijiu, who had gone to the Far River to catch fish in exchange for grain and suffered a demon calamity, leaving behind nothing but an empty skin, was proof enough!

"Little Liu, stop crying."

At that moment, a broad, powerfully built middle-aged man walked over. His face was resolute, and though his temples had begun to gray, making him look to be forty or fifty years old, his Qi and Blood was extremely vigorous. He was Wu Village's clan head, Wu Qu.

Wu Qu looked solemnly at Wu Sijiu's corpse, then shook his head and said, "Fourth, go help bury him. Little Liu, from today onward, come eat at my house."

Eight-year-old Wu Liu had no ability to survive and would surely starve to death if left alone. Though more than half of Wu Village's hundred-odd households bore the surname Wu and were related in one way or another, at this time of year every household struggled to spare any grain to help Wu Liu. As the most capable clan head in Wu Village, Wu Qu still had to provide some care for a Wu Clan child with no ability to survive.

Wu Ming mingled among the crowd for a while before quietly turning and leaving.

"Ming'er, what happened outside?"

When Wu Ming returned home, he saw a young woman supporting an older woman as they stood in the courtyard and peered outside.

The young woman was his older sister, Wu Yu, while the older woman was his mother, Liu Shi.

Wu Ming's family had four members, and both his parents were alive. His father knew a little about repairing and building houses. Not long ago, he had accepted work from a wealthy household in the city and gone there to work. Only Wu Ming, his sister, and his mother remained at home.

"Old Master Forty-Nine met with trouble."

With a grave expression, Wu Ming recounted what had happened, omitting the ghastly state of Wu Sijiu's corpse.

After hearing him out, Liu Shi sighed deeply. "They were all people burdened by bitter fates. Little Liu's whole family has only that one single sprout left. Fortunately, the clan head is willing to help..."

After saying that,

Liu Shi looked at Wu Ming again and said in a low voice, "Ming'er, things aren't peaceful outside these days. You mustn't go out. There isn't much food left at home, but if your sister and I tighten our belts, there will still be enough for you. We only need to hold on until your father comes back."

There was not much grain left in the household, and Wu Ming's father had been gone for a long time. Liu Shi feared that Wu Ming, like Wu Sijiu, might seek food in some dangerous place beyond the village, so her tone was somewhat stern.

"Don't worry, Mother. I won't rashly leave the village."

Wu Ming shook his head in reply.

In truth, the nearby mountains and rivers outside the village were not especially dangerous because they were close to Jingye City. But for that very reason, all the nearby mountains and rivers belonged to someone, and people could not freely hunt in the mountains or fish in the rivers.

As for the ownerless distant mountains and remote rivers, they were far from Jingye City, and the danger could be said to multiply many times over. Forget ordinary people—even proper martial artists who had cultivated Blood Qi would not dare claim they could travel there and return safely.

"Big Sister, help Mother go rest. I'll make some porridge."

Wu Ming gave Wu Yu an instruction, then turned and entered the house. From inside the kang bed, he pulled out a cloth sack containing less than half a sack of coarse rice and some mixed grains.

Wu Ming weighed the cloth sack in his hand, his face growing heavy.

"There's not much left."

By his calculations, even if the family reduced their consumption, this half-sack of mixed grain would last at most six or seven days.

During high summer, there was plenty of work to do. Liu Shi also knew how to weave straw sandals and cool mats, and she would take Wu Yu to weave mats and sell sandals. Their life was fairly comfortable then. But at the onset of winter, straw sandals and cool mats could not be sold, and it was hard to find other work. With the entire family relying only on Wu Ming's father to earn money outside, they inevitably found themselves stretched thin.

Of course,

the greatest problem was that his consumption was too great.

It was not that he had an unusually large appetite or could not endure hunger. Rather, he could not afford to endure it.

He did not know how to use the Black Emperor's Demon Subduing Diagram in his mind, so he could not count on it for now. What he could rely on was only solid, down-to-earth Martial Path cultivation.

He was seventeen this year, and from sixteen to eighteen was the best stage in the Martial Path to condense one's first strand of Blood Qi.

During this period, even ordinary people who lacked precious medicinal herbs or all manner of meat rich in Qi and Blood still had a slim chance of condensing a strand of Blood Qi and stepping across the threshold of Martial Path cultivation.

And this,

was practically the only chance for impoverished commoners at the bottom to turn their lives around.

If one failed to condense Blood Qi by eighteen, the resources required to do so afterward would multiply... For the common people at the bottom, if they could not achieve it during the easiest two years, then naturally they would be even less able to do so later.

"If I can cultivate Blood Qi, everything will be completely different."

Wu Ming understood this clearly.

In this world where martial strength was revered, whether one could cultivate a strand of pure yang Blood Qi was the enormous dividing line between common folk and proper martial artists. It might not be the difference between clouds and mud, but they were still entirely different levels.

If ordinary people could not condense Blood Qi and become Blood Forging martial artists, then their future path would be nothing more than farming fields for wealthy households, repairing homes, or even feeding horses and shoveling manure—going hungry one meal and full the next, wasting away at the bottom all their lives.

But if one became a Blood Forging martial artist, then there were far too many paths open to them.

For a Blood Forging martial artist, three generations of direct descendants were exempt from taxes. In the city, they could serve wealthy households as guards and thugs; among gangs, they could become minor leaders. No matter what they did, they could eat their fill and stay warm, easily support an entire family, and if they wished to marry and have children, once word spread, families with daughters of suitable age from villages ten li around would come asking on their own initiative, leaving them free to choose.

Becoming a martial artist

could be said to be the hope upon which all commoners at the bottom placed their faith.