'Aaahhhh!!!!!
I'm alive! I'm alive!
I'm still alive! Why am I still alive?!'
It took a minute to register the fact that he was breathing and it took another few minutes to panic over the fact that he was still breathing.
He internally screamed and panicked over the situation, but on the outside, there was only a slight confusion seen on his stern face.
Wearing luxurious black silk, Seated on a throne placed high above on a platform, having advisors seated below, not even daring to raise their heads towards him; this was clearly not a scene even from his wildest of dreams.
Something was wrong...
Something was very... Very... Very wrong!
"Demon Venerable Shen, i-is there something wrong?" A man stuttered with fear as he questioned, clutching tightly onto the scroll that he was reading.
Jie Fu Lian frowned as he heard this and his expression made the man break out in cold sweat.
He lifted his finger and the man flinched, but instead of being struck by the fatal attack that he was expecting, the man saw Jie Fu Lian pointing at himself as he asked, "Demon Venerable Shen...? Me?"
"Eh?" The man looked to be even more horrified and his eyes slowly widened in shock and realization before his legs gave out and he dramatically fell to the ground on purpose, constantly banging his head on the floor as he shouted, "I was wrong! I was too presumptuous! Great supreme demon lord, Please have mercy on me!"
Jie Fu Lian's mind immediately went blank.
The great supreme demon lord.
Demon Venerable Shen.
Shen Fang...
He remembered that name.
He remembered that name very clearly, however, he was more than sure that he had nothing in common with that cruel tyrant.
He remembered stepping back and falling down into the abyss. The feeling of his body being ripped apart into bits and consumed by blood-thirsty vultures... The feeling of his bones decaying with the soil... The feeling of his soul being torn apart as slowly as it could... The feeling of pain that made him lose his mind completely... It was all clear. Very vivid and fresh in his mind.
He died.
If there was anything in life that he was a hundred percent sure about, it was the fact that he had died.
In that abyss, he had taken his final breaths and had come to terms with his death.
He held no hopes and only a single regret.
It was the end and he was okay with that.
However, now he was suddenly in this weird place, sitting on this weird throne, looking down at these terrified people with demonic Qi surging through their veins.
No, they weren't terrified people at all... They were terrified demons!
It was all too unfamiliar and all too confusing for him.
He gulped as he tried to make sense of the situation.
An almost crazy thought popped up in his head and he dare not believe it.
"Who am I?" Jie Fu Lian questioned no one in particular. His voice was loud and clear, holding an authority that could instill fear in the hearts of the listeners.
"The great supreme demon King!" The man who was banging his head on the ground didn't even stop to look up as he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Jie Fu Lian suddenly felt his heart drop.
He hesitantly looked down at his hands.
When he was eight years old, he had once stolen a horse in hopes of being able to ride it, but instead of a horse riding lesson, what he received was a life lesson on why stealing horses was, in the first place itself, a bad idea to begin with.
The horse dropped him off a cliff and he was lucky enough to have gotten out of it alive.
Although he was bedridden for the next few weeks, he was still going to live with only a scar on his hand that was marked as proof of the memory.
But now that he looked down at his hands, he saw no scar...
He thought that he had remembered it wrong and quickly checked his left hand as well, but once again, there was no scar.
The reality dawned on him like a lightning strike that had been aimed at him from the heavens.
He wasn't Jie Fu Lian anymore...
He was Shen Fang.
Shen Fang, the demonic king that had been ruling the demon realm for the last one thousand, six hundred and eighty-two years...
The tyrant Shen Fang whose origins had been erased with history and whose name was infamous for his brutal cold-hearted way of dealing with any and all living and dead beings alike.
"Have mercy on me!" The man on the ground was still banging his head as he shouted.
Jie Fu Lian couldn't help but click his tongue as he thought, 'Forget about me, have mercy on yourself. You'll kill yourself before I even get the chance to.'
"Stand up," Jie Fu Lian ordered and the man immediately pushed himself off the ground. At a frightening speed, he recovered from the injuries he had caused himself.
"Continue talking," Jie Fu Lian spoke as he rested his head on his hand, leaning back in a confident and unimpressed manner.
Jie Fu Lian was smart. He had been praised for his intelligence even as a kid who could barely read simple words.
He was smart and quick to adapt.
In such a situation, a normal person would panic and throw a tantrum about their sudden change in identity, but thankfully enough, Jie Fu Lian wasn't a normal man.
As soon as he learned that he was now Shen Fang, he immediately understood that he would now have to start acting like Shen Fang.
Shen Fang was a creature of perfection. The epitome of greatness and evil. He cared about neither living nor dead.
His every action, he'd make to kill. His every expression meant someone's demise. His every word contained an authority that would bring even great Dao cultivators to their knees.
He wasn't a being to be feared. He was the embodiment of that very fear that every being on this earth was born with.
Jie Fu Lian could try, but at the end of the day, he still knew that there was no way he would be able to perfectly impersonate the man.
However, he also knew that Shen Fang was a man whose actions followed no rules nor principles. If he felt like it, he would do it. That was simply the motto Shen Fang lived by and hence, Jie Fu Lian could rest assured that nobody would ever catch up to the truth of him possessing this body.
The man, who had now fully recovered from the head-banging he had done, cleared his throat as he clutched onto the scroll and continued to speak as if he had never been interrupted in the first place itself.
"The HuiXue Sect has announced that whoever helps solve the mystery of the Xu clan's extermination would be awarded with the overwhelmingly powerful sword, Changbo, that had once been wielded by one of the strongest cultivators this world had ever seen, Immortal Jie Fu Lian."
Jie Fu Lian almost choked on his breath.
Now that he was dead, he was being respectfully titled as an immortal...?
What happened to his infamous title 'The disaster of the heavens'?
What happened to the people that were cursing at him and trying to kill him every single day?
Had everything changed now that he was dead?
"We plan on sending two of our most trusted demons down there to keep an eye on the situation. They'll fake evidence and lead the investigation astray."
"I'll go," Jie Fu Lian suddenly announced, cutting off the man's next few words.
"Huh?"
"I want to go and see for myself whether they really dare to possess the great Changbo or not."
"B-but, Demon Venerable Shen, you can't!" The man sounded a bit terrified but he still raised his voice as he tried to stop Jie Fu Lian.
Jie Fu Lian's eyes narrowed down on the man dangerously and the man almost felt as if his soul was about to leave his body.
"I can't...?" Jie Fu Lian repeated in a questioning manner, each word loud and clearly pronounced, holding with it an intimidating aura of an obvious threat.
"T-That is..." The man stuttered as cold sweat started trailing down his forehead. At the end of the day, he was too afraid to even look at the demon king's face and hence, he lowered his head in submission and stayed quiet.
Jie Fu Lian smirked in satisfaction as he spoke, "Collect all information about the Xu clan's extermination and present it before me within the next three hours."
Jie Fu Lian had never heard about the Xu clan and that was only natural considering the fact that he only paid attention to his friends and enemies. If one wasn't a foe nor a friend, he would simply not be interested enough to ask their name.
That was simply the kind of personality he possessed.