The High God Insists on Marrying Me - Chapter 5

I wasn’t lying. The previous Demon Lord, Yin Su, had been ill. Seriously ill in the head.

In ten thousand years of life, he’d done exactly one thing: pick fights with heaven, hoping to overthrow it and take its place.

Unfortunately for him, heaven had Sovereign Chenyang, the strongest being in the Six Realms.

Yin Su caused trouble and lost. Caused more trouble and lost again. He never gave up: defeat after defeat, battle after battle. Eventually, all that losing seemed to break something in him. He began to go deranged.

Desperate to beat the gods just once, he took up forbidden arts.

The art he practiced had a lovely name: Twin Mandarin Ducks.

He even acquired a vessel from somewhere for the purpose.

He planned to trick Sovereign Chenyang into it and drain his divine power, strengthening himself while eliminating his greatest enemy.

An evil dream, yes, but it sounded workable.

The execution was another matter entirely.

Before he even began his assault on the gods or his plot against Chenyang, he’d fed tens of thousands of demons and beings of other races into that vessel.

Their cultivation and resentment would wear Chenyang down first. Then he’d go in and reap the benefits.

Never mind what those tens of thousands thought of it. When his elders urged him to have a conscience, he actually said, “I’m a demon. What’s wrong with me practicing forbidden arts? It’s perfectly in character.”

To this day, that statement sits in the Chronicles of the Demons as an object of condemnation.

I personally added a note: Do not imitate. Your name will stink for ages, heaven will punish you, and your death will be extremely unpleasant.

Yin Su’s death had, indeed, been extremely unpleasant.

According to the divine chronicles, Sovereign Chenyang was a warrior with no weaknesses, superb in every respect. Yet somehow, during that war, he really fell for Yin Su’s trap and entered the vessel.

Yin Su thought victory was certain and went in to collect.

He became the harvest instead.

At the price of sacrificing himself, Chenyang reversed the spell inside the vessel. He saved the tens of thousands trapped there from utter annihilation, and summoned heavenly lightning that struck Yin Su crisp outside and tender within. There wasn’t even an intact corpse.

Yin Su left only one final demand: “I refuse to accept this! Make my grave three chi higher than Chenyang’s!”

Chenyang didn’t fare much better. He died with Yin Su, and left no intact body either.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that after they died, the lightning kept falling for three days and nights.

Humans have a saying: when immortals fight, mortals suffer.

When those two fought, the Demon Realm suffered.

Dozens of spiritual veins were destroyed. The southwestern mountains where they’d fought were blasted into ruins, leaving our realm short of spiritual energy and making cultivation difficult. After Yin Su’s death, several powerful demons spent thousands of years fighting over control, making the people’s lives even worse.

No exaggeration: in the ten thousand years and more after that war, our race didn’t produce a single demon god.

Until I was born a thousand years ago, in a demigod’s body.

Our Grand Elder had been injured in the war. Ever since, he’d hung about the Demon Realm half dead, serving as a mascot, taking no part in the powerful demons’ open or covert struggles. He hardly even showed himself.

When I appeared, he suddenly seemed to awaken to his calling. He was back in business.

After violently sorting out those powerful demons, he tossed me onto the throne. That finally ended the civil wars.

Perhaps he feared I’d become a second Yin Su and plunge our people into conflict again.

From the day I took power, his one passion was giving me lessons, determined to raise a Demon Lord with a conscience.

You see, when I was born, crows had massed in the skies above all thirty-six cities of the Demon Realm. A spectacular sight—exactly like the day Yin Su had been born.

The Grand Elder therefore used Yin Su as his daily cautionary tale. For a while, I thought he was a spy for heaven.

After all, heaven had always suspected Yin Su hadn’t quite died, but was hiding inside someone else. According to Wuhuan, for the last ten thousand years, the faintest rumor of his return had sent the gods into action even faster than the demons. They were determined to strangle his rebirth in its cradle.

And what kind of demon spent every day dragging his own lord’s name through the mud instead of defending his dignity? The gods’ chronicles praised Sovereign Chenyang to the skies. Even his death was described as a sacrifice for the Six Realms, followed by ten thousand words extolling his noble character.

Unofficial histories, though, said Chenyang had been tricked into the vessel because his beloved was trapped inside. He’d gone in to save them.

When I learned that little piece of gossip, I made a point of asking the Grand Elder.

“Yes,” he said.

My appetite for gossip blazed to life. “Who was Sovereign Chenyang’s beloved?”

He wouldn’t say. He only kept lecturing me. “Don’t imitate him either. Being a fool for love can get you killed.”

I went quiet.

I retracted my accusation that he was a spy. He simply had no respect for the dead.