Hell's Handbook

A humongous figure that resembled a giant walked out from the black mist. It used a large hand to fan away a large amount of mist to reveal itself.

“Gosh, it’s… the Silver Horned King?” Su Jin was a little taken aback, because this demon was one that his entire country would recognize. It was the Silver Horned King from Journey to the West.

The Silver Horned King thrust the sword in his hand toward Su Jin, but instead of dodging, Su Jin stretched his arm toward it. Or rather, Su Jin raised one finger and successfully blocked the sword coming his way.

“A Rank A demon?” Su Jin wasn’t sure if the Silver Horned King was a Rank A demon or not, but he had a good idea on how to deal with this demon. There was a flash and Su Jin disappeared.

The Silver Horned King had appeared this early in the Challenge because it had sensed the powerful presence of Su Jin. Now that Su Jin had suddenly disappeared, he did not dare to take it easy. He slapped his belt, and a purple gold gourd flew up from it.

But before the Silver Horned King could use the gourd, he felt a heat in his chest. He looked down to see a large hole in his chest.

Thud! The Silver Horned King collapsed onto the ground, his eyes round and wide, as though he never expected anybody to defeat him so easily. Su Jin leaped onto the equally gigantic purple gold gourd, let out a snort, and the purple gold gourd fell toward the ground. It crashed hard and destroyed several houses.

Su Jin narrowed his eyes slightly. His Handbook did not reflect any increase in points. He turned back to the Silver Horned King and said with a smile, “Get up! You don’t seem to be moving anymore, but I have many ways to ascertain if you’re really dead or not. I’ll give you three seconds. If you don’t get up within three seconds, you’re dead meat!”

Immediately after he said that, the Silver Horned King leaped up again. He stared at Su Jin in disbelief and horror, while the purple gold gourd beneath Su Jin’s foot struggled nonstop, as though it wanted to return to its owner.

The purple gold gourd was clearly sentient, and Su Jin even suspected that this thing was a demon in its own right. After being threatened, it stopped moving.

“You… cannot… stop me! This is… your fate!” said the Silver Horned King like he had a speech problem, but Su Jin felt that he spoke like that only because he wasn’t familiar with the language that Su Jin spoke.

Su Jin shook his head at the Silver Horned King and said, “I don’t really care about the Challenge per se, but I’m rather curious about you guys. Why don’t we sit down and have a chat?”

The Silver Horned King fell silent. Meanwhile, the black mist around him continued to transform into more demons that ran after Liu Bowen and his group.

Su Jin waited patiently for a response, but it seemed more like the Silver Horned King was stalling for tand waiting for the demons to finish killing off the other group of owners. After a while, Su Jin said, “Stalling for tlike that is meaningless, because I just want to talk to you guys. You know very well that if I wanted to kill you… it wouldn’t takea lot of effort.”

The Silver Horned King put his sword back into its sheath and scoffed disdainfully, “Owners… are weak! I’m going to kill… all of you!”

“Haha!” Su Jin laughed heartily. He looked at the cloud of black mist behind the Silver Horned King and suddenly narrowed his eyes as he said, “No wonder you’ve suddenly becarrogant again. Your backup is here, I see! In that case… get all of them to show themselves!”

Immediately after he said those words, the cloud of black mist changed in shape and ctogether to form five figures of differing sizes. The mist faded and revealed what they really looked like.

“The Golden Horned King!” Su Jin looked toward one figure that was small in size, but looked identical to the Silver Horned King, except that the horn on his head was gold in color. Compared to the Silver Horned King, the Golden Horned King was about the ssize as an ordinary human. He leaped in the air and landed neatly on the shoulder of the Silver Horned King.

“The thunder god?” Su Jin looked at a giant figure and found that he resembled the Japanese thunder god. He had the demon face unique to the Japanese depiction of demons, surrounded by flashing gray clouds and carried a taiko drum on his back. According to Japanese folklore, the thunder god would strike the drum when there was lightning, and that’s how they explained the sound of thunder.

“Bifang?” Su Jin turned to look at yet another figure, which looked like a giant bird covered in flames. Su Jin wasn’t quite sure if it was Jinwu or Bifang, as they were both Chinese mythological birds, but given that this was supposed to be the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, he felt that it was more likely to be Bifang, as Jinwu was associated with the creation of the world, while Bifang was supposedly to blfor disasters related to fire.

He turned again and saw yet another gigantic figure. This strange creature had a pair of wings, a red face, and a long nose. Many people would recognize this creature immediately.

“Daitengu!” exclaimed Su Jin before turning to look at the last one who had appeared.

The last figure was an extremely beautiful woman. Su Jin had never seen any human with features that were beautiful to this extent. Ye Yun and Kano Mai were certainly great beauties, but they had a realistic and lively sort of beauty, a beauty that moved one’s heart, that made you smile and cry with them.

But this woman was illogically beautiful, and her beauty struck one deep inside. Su Jin even felt his heart waver for a moment. He wasn’t made from stone, so it was natural for him to be mesmerized by beauty. But he had sensed clearly that his heart trembled not because he was admiring her beauty, but because this woman had an incomparable ability to charm others.

“Ah… should I be calling you Tamamo-no-mae, or the nine tailed fox?” Su Jin’s eyes glowed a brilliant silver. This woman’s charming abilities were sufficient to take control of any owner and make them her slave. Su Jin could only think of two demons that would have such powers, and they were actually the sthing – the nine tailed fox.

Tamamo-no-mae was a demon from Japanese folklore who poisoned the mind of Emperor Toba and fled Japan after the famous medium, Abe no Seimei, detected her deeds.

There was also another myth about her, which was that Tamamo-no-mae was a nine tailed fox from the Shang dynasty, and she fled to Japan because she was chased out of China.

These five great demons, along with a sixth one, the Silver Horned King, surrounded Su Jin on all sides. Su Jin did not have any intention to fight them and escape, but took his tto observe these demons that should have only existed in folklore.

“You wanted to talk to us?” said the thunder god disdainfully before smiling nastily at Su Jin, “Are you regretting it now?”

“Regret? A little. You guys are… way weaker than I had imagined,” Su Jin shook his head. After seeing what the Silver Horned King was capable of, he had looked forward to seeing the other demons with him. But the Silver Horned King had turned out to be one of the strongest among them, and only the nine tailed fox was stronger than him.

“Weak? How dare you! I’m going to crush you under my feet!” The thunder god immediately raised a foot and brought it down toward Su Jin. His eyes were filled with disdain for the owner so tiny, he wouldn’t even be able to use him as a toothpick.

“Watch out!” yelled the Silver Horned King suddenly. Of course, he wasn’t saying that to Su Jin, but to the thunder god.

But the thunder god was too quick. His foot ccrashing down with a loud thud and the entire town shook along with it.

“Humph! You can’t even dodge my foot and you dared to be so arrogant? Gosh, I can’t believe you were frightened of such a creature, Silver Horned King! HAHA!” the thunder god cackled loudly.

Just then, the thunder god felt something cold on his neck, then saw a silver beam of light separate his head from his neck, then… he lost consciousness.

Su Jin stood on the thunder god’s shoulder as he held up the thunder god’s head with one hand. As the thunder god’s body swayed unsteadily and was about to collapse, Su Jin suddenly stomped hard to force the thunder god’s arm bone to shoot out, pierce through his thigh, and pin the entire body to the ground.

The other five demons stared in shock at what just happened. The thunder god was not the strongest among them, but he wasn’t the weakest either. Yet, he had died in just seconds.

“Can we talk properly now?” Su Jin shrugged and cast the thunder god’s head aside. He dusted his hands off and said, “I think that all of you are very interesting characters. You’re all very strong, and even though you’re not as powerful as gods, you’re almost there. And most importantly… none of you are controlled by Hell’s Handbook!”

“How did you know that?” the nine tailed fox spoke up first. She was the most powerful of the demons, and also the most intelligent.

“Because I’m like all of you. I’m not controlled by Hell’s Handbook. We’re all… free.” Su Jin hopped off the thunder god’s shoulder to land right in front of the nine tailed fox.