(Sakhyulations translations Ch. 1-11)

On that teenager’s face, just as he had expected, was an entire batch of severe burn scars. However, underneath these criss-crossed scars, one could see vaguely three to four small faces.

These faces were those of young children, as small as the hollow of the palm, scattered randomly across the teenager’s cheek and forehead. Because they had been severely burned by fire, the five facial organs of these faces were all shriveled, looking as though they were all screeching in pain. With these twisted faces crowded on the one normal face, it was really perhaps more frightening to look at than any demons out there!

Having seen this face for a moment, Xie Lian felt as though he’d fallen into a nightmare. So great was his fear that he’d turned numb, to the extent that he had no idea when he’d stood up again, and had no idea what sort of expression he had, except that it must have been of extreme fright. [The teenager calmly loosened his bandage]. He originally looked anxious and frightened, but when he saw the reaction from Xie Lian, he also took a couple of steps backward, knowing Xie Lian couldn’t handle his appearance. Wanting to protect himself, the teenager suddenly covered his face, shouted, and ran towards the forest.

Xie Lian was kicked into gear again. “Wait!!!” He chased and shouted, “Wait! Come back!”

But because he’d reacted a little too slowly, and because the teenager was familiar with the forest and was used to running and hiding in dark places, the teenager had disappeared without a trace within moments. No matter how he called, the teenager wouldn’t come back out. With nobody with him to search for the teenager, and no spiritual power left in his body, he couldn’t open a spiritual connection to ask for help, and had depleted his physical energy by sprinting after the boy. A good half hour of searching brought him no results in this state. A gust of cold wind sobered his mind and he realized he couldn’t keep banging his head against the wall, so to speak. He forced himself to stop. “Perhaps the boy will go back to retrieve the body of Little Ying.” He turned around to return to the Ming Guang temple front, still a little shaken.

Only to meet a group of black-clad people crowded behind the temple, their expressions solemn, slowly and carefully bringing down the forty-four bodies that had been hanging inverted from the trees. Before the forest, a long silhouette was holding Shuang Shou, examining the scene. With the turn of its head, the silhouette revealed a very cold and elegant youthful face – it was Fu Yao. It seemed he had returned after making a trip to Xuan Zhen Palace to bring back a party of heavenly officials to help.

Xie Lian was about to open his mouth when he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. Nan Feng had also returned from sending home the villagers. He saw the situation, glanced at Fu Yao, and said, “Didn’t you run away?”

These were not pleasant words. Fu Yao twitched an eyebrow, displeased. Xie Lian didn’t want them to fight at this moment, and said, “It was I who asked him to bring help.”

Nan Feng sneered, “Those are help? I would think at the very least you should ask your general to personally come down.”

Fu Yao coldly answered, “When I went back, I heard the younger General Pei had already come down, so I didn’t search for my General. Also, even if I did try to go find him, he’s so busy that he might not have had the time to come down.”

Truth be told, according to what Xie Lian knew of Mu Qing, he wouldn’t have come down personally even if he had the time. But he hadn’t time to mull over this, and said, slightly exhausted, “Stop fighting for now and help first. Let’s go find that bandaged teenager together.”

Nan Feng frowned. “Wasn’t he with you just a while ago, guarding the body of that girl?”

Xie Lian said, “I got him to take off his bandages, and I scared him away.”

Fu Yao twitched the corner of his mouth. “No way. You’re not that scary in a woman’s clothes.”

Xie Lian sighed. “Blame the fact that I was so shocked I couldn’t move for several moments. With the girl dying, the fact that he’d already had such horrible experiences, and thinking that I wouldn’t accept his appearance, he probably couldn’t bear the entire situation and ran.”

Fu Yao wrinkled his nose. “Was he really that horrible to look at?”

Xian Lian said, “It wasn’t whether or not he was horrible to look at. He… has [the human face disease].”

Hearing those three words, both Nan Feng and Fu Yao went stiff.

They finally understood why Xie Lian had reacted the way he did.

Eight hundred years ago, the ancient Imperial City of Xian Le had a flooding epidemic that had nearly wiped out the entire country. The people who had fallen ill to this disease would first discover small lumps of growth on their bodies. These growths would grow bigger and harder and feel sore. Then they would discover the growths would develop an uneven surface with three indents and a single protrusion, resembling eyes, mouth and nose. Those facial organ-like features would grow clearer until, finally, they would become distinct human faces. It was said that, when those faces grew to a certain point, they would even open their mouths to speak, even to scream.

And this disease was called The Human Face Disease!

Fu Yao’s face changed many colours, and he even put down his Shuang Shou. “How could that possibly be! That kind of disease was wiped out several hundred years ago, and definitely couldn’t be occurring again.”

Xie Lian simply said a single sentence. “My eyes were not mistaken.”

Nan Feng and Fu Yao both could not refute this. What Xie Lian had said, nobody could refute it.

Xie Lian said, “There were lots of burn scars on his face as well. He probably wanted to burn off those necrotic faces.”

Catching such an unfortunate disease, a lot of people’s first reaction would be to use a knife to cut those things off, or to use fire to burn them, and would go so far as to rip flesh and break bones without hesitation. Nan Feng sagged, and said, “Then I’m afraid he’s not a regular human. He’s probably been alive in this world for several hundred years. But such talk aside, this plague on his body – is it contagious?”

[Even though this gave him a headache], Xie Lian had already calmly thought about this issue and confidently replied, “No. The Human Face Disease is extremely contagious. If the blight on that child’s body were still contagious, then, since he’s been hiding around this mountain village for so long, the entire village should have already caught it. His illness must already have… been cured. It’s simply that the scars left by this disease would never be erased.”

The three of them dared not be careless, however. Fu Yao had some power in Xuan Zhen Palace, and brought Heavenly Officials over to Yu Jun Mountain for the search. However, even when they did whatever they could, they couldn’t find the teenager’s trails and were afraid he had already left the mountain, hidden away amongst other people. For now, they could only return to the Heavens and request Ling Wen’s Palace officials to help with the search, calmly telling them about the news of this teenager and the blight on his body. The fact that he wasn’t contagious calmed some hearts, but every time Xie Lian remembered his appearance he felt unnerved. He was also afraid that, if the teenager were discovered after he descended from the mountain, he would be considered a freak and be beaten and killed. It would be better if they were to find him quickly first.

As it would not be good to dally on the mountain any longer, Xie Lian carried Little Ying’s body and step by step descended the mountain. Because his mind was in a state of absent-minded shock, he was only snapped back to the present by the shouts of the tea shop manager, whose shop he’d nearly entered with the dead body. Apologizing profusely, Xie Lian changed direction and went back outside to get help to bury her body before returning. Once this matter was taken care of, Xie Lian sat down, took a deep breath and exhaled.

One thing taken care of, [he felt that after flying like this for these few days was even worse than all the pain he’d received in a year in his past life, climbing up and falling down, rolling and yelling, [易装兼杂耍???]], his entire body wanting to fall apart from exhaustion, while also having problems unsolved and acquiring more. He wanted to tell the world that going to the Heavens wasn’t worth the pain. Fu Yao agitated the hem of his clothes and sat down next to him, finally giving him the eye roll he’d been withholding for a while, saying, “What are you doing, still wearing that?”

Seeing his eye roll, Xie Lian felt something of a closeness with Fu Yao. He finally took off the clothes he’d been wearing for the entire journey, rubbing off the makeup on his face while feeling slightly gloomy. “Then have I been wearing this the entire time talking to the younger General Pei? Nan Feng ah… you should have reminded me.”

Fu Yao said, “He probably didn’t because you seemed obviously happy to wear it.”

Nan Feng had been running around for the whole day and was finally able to sit down and rest as well. “I didn’t need to. Younger General Pei wouldn’t care what you were wearing. Even if you were wearing something ten times stranger, he wouldn’t go back and speak a word of it to anybody.”

Xie Lian felt that this junior Heavenly Official really did a lot of hard work today and poured him a cup of tea. He remembered the cool manners and attitude of the younger General Pei, contrasted with the craziness of Xuan Ji, and said, “This younger General Pei was an incredibly calm and collected person.”

Nan Feng drank the tea. “He may look as though he’s calm and collected, but he’s just like his senior, both difficult to deal with.”

That Xie Lian could already naturally see. Fu Yao for once had a similar opinion as Nan Feng. “Pei Xiu only ascended within these couple hundred years as a new appointee, but his powers are pretty intense so he climbed pretty quickly. He was taken under by the senior General Pei when he was still quite young – do you know what he did to achieve this?”

Xie Lian asked, “What?”

Fu Yao spat out the words. “Massacred a whole city.”

Xie Lian listened, pensive and thoughtful but not surprised. In the Heavens, with Emperors and Generals everywhere one walked, they were all in this business of conquering and protecting land, for which they achieved renown over ten thousand bleaching bones. For their desire to achieve immortal greatness, they must first become outstanding in general.  The path to achieve such was a bloody, beaten path. Fu Yao concluded, “In the Heavens, there aren’t many that are good. You can’t trust anyone.”

Listening to Fu Yao, who sounded rather like a cynical old person trying to give wise life lessons, Xie Lian wanted to laugh. He wondered if Fu Yao held any grudges from within the Heavens, and had felt deeply enough about this to speak like this. But Xie Lian knew himself that, although he’d ascended thrice, every time he’d ascended it was for a period of time as short as the bloom of the night cactus, ending in a flash. He probably couldn’t hope to know more than these two young Heavenly Officials about the workings of the Heavenly gods. Nan Feng didn’t approve of Fu Yao’s attitude, and said, “Stop frightening people with your cynicism. There are good and bad everywhere, and the Heavens aren’t lacking in trustworthy officials.”

Fu Yao replied, “Haha, trustworthy officials. Are you talking about your own General?”

Nan Feng said, “Whether or not it’s my general, I don’t know, but I definitely know it’s not yours.”

Facing this situation, Xie Lian had long since gotten used to this and kept his calm. In addition to all the problems he was currently going through, he didn’t have the energy to pull them apart.

Finishing this business up north, returning to the Heavens, Xie Lian first visited Ling Wen’s Palace, and told her all about the bandaged teenager and entrusted her to cast a net in the human realm to find him. Ling Wen’s face was grave, promising to go down, and finally said, “My palace will use all of its strength for the search. I didn’t realize a trip to the north would involve so many problems. This time we really caused you bother, Your Highness.”

Xie Lian replied, “This time I need to thank the two Heavenly Officials who voluntarily went down to help me, as well as Ming Guang Palace’s younger General Pei. I truly don’t know how to thank them.”

Ling Wen said, “Since this was a problem caused by the old General Pei, naturally the younger General Pei would need to come down to deal with it. He’s used to dealing with old General Pei’s problems, you don’t need to thank him. Now when you have the time, please enter the spirit communication array. Everyone would like to gather opinions about this problem.”

Xie Lian had many questions that were still unanswered as he exited the Ling Wen Palace and, wandering about, he discovered a small rock bridge. The bridge overpassed a small stream in which the water was so extremely clear that one could see clouds and mists floating about beneath the water, even the rivers and mountains and villages of the human world underneath. “This is a good place,” he said to himself as he sat down at the foot of the bridge, and entered the spirit communications array.

Upon entering, the Heavens within the spirit channel was in a rare state of complete chaos, several voices fighting to be heard at once – in short, a mess. The most prominent voice that could be first heard was that of Feng Xin’s angry one. “Speak! Have you picked which mountain to put her under? That female demon Xuan Ji is a lunatic, no matter what you ask her, she’d only scream to see General Pei. She cannot at all answer where the Green Demon Qi Rong is!”

The younger General Pei answered, “General Xuan Ji has always been acutely stubborn.”

Feng Xin’s voice sounded completely furious. “Younger General Pei, has your senior returned yet? Hurry up and get him to meet her, and quickly find out where the Green Demon Qi Rong is and then get rid of her!”

Feng Xin was most unused to dealing with women, yet he was assigned to do this interrogation. Xie Lian couldn’t help but sympathize. The younger General Pei said, “Even if he did meet with her, she’d go even crazier. There’s no point.”

Another voiced piped in, “Hanging corpses again… Qi Rong’s tastes are really in a bad way. How unpleasant.”

“Even in the demonic world, they avoid his methods and tastes. His rank must truly be below disgusting.”

There were no breaks in between their conversations; clearly, they knew each other very well. As a newcomer who’d ascended eight hundred years ago, Xie Lian should keep his silence, but listening to this for a while, he couldn’t help but enter the conversation. “Excuse me everyone, but what’s the situation about the hanging corpses on Yu Jun Mountain? Is the Green Demon Qi Rong in that area as well?”

Because he rarely entered the communication array, his voice was unfamiliar to many of the Heavenly Officials, who didn’t know whether or not to answer. The first to answer him was Feng Xin. “Green Demon Qi Rong isn’t on Yu Jun Mountain. However, the hanging corpses were the female demon Xuan Ji following his orders, an offering to him.”

Xie Lian asked, “Xuan Ji is the Green Demon’s subordinate?”

The younger General Pei answered, “Yes. When General Xuan Ji died a few hundred years ago, she certainly had resentment, but never had enough to do cause any major troubles. Only about a hundred years ago, the Green Demon Qi Rong noticed her and took a liking to her. After he took her in as a subordinate, her powers increased exponentially.”

His words implied that they cannot blame the demon Xuan Ji’s doings on General, as he did not have the power to cause a resentment that would engender such a horrific tragedy. If one were to blame anyone, one should blame the Green Demon Qi Rong, as he was the one that took her in, and gave her the ability to harm people. In their hearts, the gathered Heavenly Officials originally all thought it was the General Pei’s problem and had just not said it, but now they were exposed. [Not too harshly and not too lightly, they were reminded, and immediately they hid their thoughts deeper.] Xie Lian said, “Have you investigated Yu Jun Mountain thoroughly? There should be another demon.”

This time, Mu Qing’s voice came out, neutral in tone. “Demon? What other demon?”

Xie Lian thought that Fu Yao probably did not fill him in with the details, and perhaps even hid from him the entire fact that he’d come out to help. So Xie Lian didn’t bring up Fu Yao in order to save him trouble, and said, “When I was in the sedan, I heard the voice of a small child, giving warnings in a nursery rhyme. The two officials beside me at that time didn’t hear it, so that demon was probably quite powerful too.”

Mu Qing said, “In Yu Jun Mountain we didn’t find any other demons.”

Xie Lian thought that was strange. It couldn’t be that demon specifically came to warn him? Thinking of this, he suddenly remembered something he’d been thinking about this whole journey, and said, “Speaking of, in Yu Jun Mountain, I also met a boy who could command butterflies. I feel all of you should probably know who exactly that was?”

The spirit communications array had been loud and chaotic, but once he said those words, a sudden wave of quiet rolled over.

Xie Lian had anticipated such a reaction. He waited patiently. After a very long time, Ling Wen asked, “Your Highness Crown Prince, what did you just say?”

Mu Qing said coldly, “He said, he met Hua Cheng.”

Finally having gotten the name of the red-clad youngster, Xie Lian was indescribably in a good mood, and laughed, saying, “So he’s called Hua Cheng? That name certainly suits him.”

Hearing him speak in such a tone, in such words, the Heavenly officials within the spirit communications array were all dumbfounded. In a short moment, Ling Wen asked in a quiet voice, “This… Your highness Crown Prince, have you not heard of the [Four Elemental Harms]?”

Xie Lian said, “Unfortunately, I’ve only heard of the [Four Name Jing].”

What is called the Four Name Jing is four captivating legends of four of Heaven’s Heavenly Officials, Young General Qing Jiu, Crown Prince Yue Shen, General Zhe Jian, and Princess Zi Wen. Among them, Crown Prince Yue Shen is Xian Le’s [most graceful]. [To be able to rise to become one of the Four Jing didn’t mean one was strong in power; it only meant that rumours of powers passed around very quickly and people enthusiastically discussed them. Such news about the outside world, Xie Lian was very slow to uptake, and it could be said he was rather ignorant, [and being one of them for only a little while], he only understood a little. This “Four Elemental Harms”, it was probably a new saying in very recent years that Xie Lian hasn’t ever heard of]. Since it used the word “harm”, it probably wasn’t a good thing. He said, “Unfortunately, I’ve never heard of it. Dare I ask what are these Four Elemental Harms?”

Mu Qing said coolly, “You Highness Crown Prince, grinding by in the human realm for hundreds of years, and yet uninformed, really piques one’s curiosity. What have you been doing down there?”

Well, naturally it was eating and sleeping and selling art and generally begging for rubbish. Xie Lian said, laughing, “To live, you know, there are many things to do. It’s quite bothersome. It’s not any easier than being a Heavenly official.”

Ling Wen said, “These Four Elemental Harms, please remember, Crown Prince, are Black Water Chen Zhou, Green Light Ye You, White Cloth Huo Shi, and Blood Rain Tan Hua. That is, for the High Heavens and the Middle Heavens, they are four devils of the demon world that cause us extreme headaches.”

People, who ascend – become gods; who descend, is because of demons.

The Gods of the gods have opened up the heavenly world as their dwelling place, separating themselves from the human world, condescendingly overlooking the earthly world, overriding all beings. Yet the Ghost World has not been separated from the world. Demons and people share the same land, some lurking in the dark, some disguised as human beings, mixed in the crowd, wandering in the world.

Ling Wen continued to speak, “The Black Water Chen Zhou is said to be a big water demon. Though he’d already arrived in the waters, he rarely ever comes out to cause trouble and is extremely quiet. Not that many people have met him, so we don’t really keep an eye on him.

“Green Light Ye You is the demon that we said has lowly tastes, and loves to hang inverted coprses – the Green Demon Qi Rong. However, out of all the four, he’s the most [desperate. Why is he here? Probably because he causes trouble all year round, or because adding him makes a number easier to remember. We won’t talk about him].

“The White Cloth Huo Shi, this one, you should probably be familiar with. He has a name and it’s Bai Wu Xiang.”

Sitting on the rock bridge, when Xie Lian heard that name, he suddenly felt a tremor in his heart that throbbed with pain. The back of his hand shook, and unconsciously he made a fist.

Of course he was familiar with that name.

[When the devil is born, woe befalls the world.] And when this Bai Wu Xiang was born, the first country to be destroyed was the country of Xian Le.

Xie Lian fell silent. Ling Wen continued, “However, Bai Wu Xiang has already been defeated. We won’t talk about him either. Even if he still existed in this world, he’d only worry about not being in the limelight.”

“Your Highness Crown Prince, those butterflies you saw on Yujun Mountain are also called Dead Spirit Butterflies. Their master is the last of those Four, and also the one that nobody in the Heavens want to provoke. ‘Blood Rain Tan Hua’, or Hua Cheng.”

In the Heavens, those of grandest repute and fame are the Heavenly Emperor and the Xian Le’s Crown Prince. Although these two are quite the opposite of one another, the scales of their reputations are about the same. And in the demon world, the one with an equivalent scale of reputation is Hua Cheng, with no second to the title.

If you want to understand a Heavenly Official, walk on the road for a bit, enter a temple, look at what sort of clothes they are wearing on their image, what instrument they are holding, and you could probably understand something about them. If you want to understand more, listen to their legends circulating orally, the dramas and plays written about them, and you’d more or less dig out most of what there is to know about them. But this is not the case with demons and ghouls; what sort of person they are, what they look like, are all elusive riddles.

The name Hua Cheng must be fake. His image, whatever it was, must be fake as well. In rumours, sometimes he was a temperamental and perverse teenager, sometimes a soft and gentle beautiful young man, sometimes a gorgeous girl with the heart of a snake – there were any number of descriptions. Regarding his appearance, the only thing the rumours agreed upon were that he wore red from head to toe, and that after a scene of carnage he’d appear, butterflies in his wake.

Regarding his background, there were even more versions. Some people said he was born deformed, born without a right eye, and so was constantly bullied as a child and grew up hating the world. Some people said he was a young soldier who died in a war for an ancient country and whose soul did not rest peacefully. Some said he was a fool that suffered because a loved one had passed. And others have said he was simply a freak. The strangest account was that he had been a Heavenly Official that had ascended. After he had ascended, he jump down again to become a degenerate demon. However, these were all simply rumours, mere hearsay legends. Nobody knew if any were true, and few believed. However it was said, if one said they were true, then it was just as possible they were false. Because, in this world, the fact that there was a person who would throw away their heavenly ascension and prefer to become a demon was complete humiliation for Heaven. All in all, the more this topic was discussed, the more people became confused.

Why all sorts of heavenly officials were particularly afraid of Hua Cheng, there were many reasons. For example, he had a befuddling temperament, sometimes cruelly fond of murder, sometimes capable of bizarre deeds of kindness. He was also extremely powerful in the world and had a great number of believers.

Yes, people worshiped for blessings and protection against demons and ghouls, and that was why heavenly officials had followers and believers. However, Hua Cheng, this demon, had also a massive number of worshippers.

This, one needed to talk about why. When Hua Cheng first appeared, he did something of incredible notoriety.

He challenged a public battle with thirty five Heavenly officials. The battle was to involve [Wu Shen’s style martial arts fighting, and Wen Shen’ debating of law.]

Within these thirty five officials, thirty three of them felt this was laughable, but also felt provoked, and so accepted the challenge, and prepared to give him a beating, to force him to give up.

The first to fight him was Wu Shen.

Wu Shen was, in Heaven, the strongest and most powerful of the officials, with nearly the largest following of worshippers everywhere, and so against this fresh-faced young demon, it could be said he would easily achieve victory. Who knew, with one strike of his scimitar, he was entirely, completely defeated, with even his soldiers wiped out as well!

It was only after the defeat that people realized he’d come from Tong Lu (Literal English translation: Copper Furnace) Mountain.

Tong Lu Mountain was a volcano, though that wasn’t important. What was important was that within this volcano there was a city, called the [Witchcraft City. It wasn’t a city where everyone were like witches; the entire city itself was a big poison].

Every one hundred years, ten thousand demons would converge here to fight until only one was left standing. Usually, not one would be left standing, but if one did survive and come out, then that one must be the devil incarnate. For several hundred years, only two demons had been able to come out, and both had managed to become household names.

Hua Cheng was one of them.

Once Wu Shen was entirely defeated, it was Wen Shen’s turn.

If they couldn’t beat him in fighting, could they beat him through words?

Funnily, they couldn’t defeat him there either. Hua Cheng had gone to great lengths to study theories of the ancient and the present. He was gentle, vicious, tough, incisive, sophisticated, and truly, his steel teeth dripped evocative demagoguery. The heavenly officials of Wen Shen were thoroughly lectured from the sky to the earth, from the past to the present, and they were so angry blood rained from their mouths from the skies.

Hua Cheng, with a single battle, attained fame.

However, this was not the source of people’s fear of him. The fear came when, after the landslide victory he made against Wu  Shen and Wen Shen, he requested the remaining thirty three Heavenly officials to fulfill a promise.

Before the battles, both sides agreed to make a commitment: if Hua Cheng lost, then he would offer the ashes of his bones. If the heavenly officials lost, then they all must descend from the Heavens to become criminals from henceforth. Were it not for his arrogant attitude and betting, though those thirty three heavenly officials believed firmly they would never lose, they would not have agreed to fight and debate with him.

However, none of the officials would take initiative to fulfill the agreement. Though going back on their agreement would tarnish their reputation, there were thirty three of them that lost. If one lost, then that was a terrible loss of reputation for that one individual, but with the power of thirty three of them, then their reputations weren’t lost at all, and they could all turn around and ridicule their opponent instead. They all came together to an agreement and pretended the contract had never happened. As human forgetfulness was powerful, after fifty years, no one might remember.

This wasn’t a stupid idea. What they had calculated wrong was that Hua Cheng was not nearly that tolerant.

Breaking their promise? All right then.

Thereupon, he burned down all the temples in the human realm that belonged to these thirty three officials.

This was the nightmare that the immortals still talked about today – the demon in red, burning down the temples and worship of thirty three heavenly officials.

Temples and followers were a heavenly officials’ largest source of power. Without a temple now, where would these believers go to worship, to burn their incense? To have their powers suddenly destroyed, restarting their careers would take at least a hundred years, and it was possible they’d never recover to where they used to be. To the heavenly officials, this was more horrible than [simply losing]. Among these officials, some had followings of up to thousands, and the smaller ones had at least hundreds, totaling up to tens of thousands followers. Within a single evening, Hua Cheng had completely destroyed it all with fire. Nobody knew how he did it, but that was what he did.

It was complete lunacy.

The heavenly officials cried to Emperor Jun Wu, but Jun Wu was helpless as well. Since this challenge and all its contracts had been accepted by themselves in the first place, with Hua Cheng himself exceedingly cunning, he’d only burned the temples and hadn’t hurt a single person. He’d only dug a hole, asked them to jump in, and they’d all but dug it deeper and jumped in it themselves. As it stood, what could anybody do.

Originally, these heavenly officials had wanted to choose a place where those of great power in the mortal realm, like emperors and nobles, would witness the battle and debate with this small demon. The heavenly officials wanted to show off the great powers of heavenly might. Who knew that they would be made to witness instead the complete defeat of the heavenly officials. When the nightmare was over, quite a number of these powerful mortals had stopped respecting them and had begun worshipping the demon instead. These thirty three officials lost both temples and followers and gradually disappeared, until a new generation of ascended officials came to take their place, filling the hole they left behind.

From then on, every time someone mentioned the name “Hua Cheng”, many heavenly officials would tremble with fear, so much so that if they heard about red clothes or butterflies, their hairs would stand on end. Some were afraid that he would be provoked and come to challenge them and burn down their temples. Some were afraid he had blackmail material and would render them helpless. Some were simply afraid of how dangerous and powerful he was in the mortal realm, as some had to ask requests of him to get things done there, to open doors for them. Over time, even though many divisions of heavenly officials had many conflicted opinions over this matter, they still couldn’t help but admire him.

Consequently, the entire Heavens simultaneously held hatred, fear, and respect for him.

Within those thirty five Heavenly Officials, the two warriors that had not taken up his challenge were Xuan Zhen General Mu Qing, and Nan Yang General Feng Xin.

They hadn’t taken up on his challenge not because they were afraid of Hua Cheng, but simply because they hadn’t paid attention to him at all and thought there was no need to accept this kind of challenge. As it happened, who would have thought how lucky that was. However, because they hadn’t accepted the challenge, Hua Cheng did not forget about them. Every Ghost Festival (15th day of 7th lunar month when offerings are made to the deceased), the two sides would run into each other and fight each other with spells from afar, and the two officials would leave [deep shadows on the savage, devastating butterflies].

Listening to all this, Xie Lian could only think of the sparkling, translucent butterflies that had fluttered around him, cheerful and lively, and couldn’t match that up to the brutal image painted by the heavenly officials and the rumours he heard.  He couldn’t help but think, “How were those butterflies scary? They were fine… actually, kind of cute.”

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