Chapter 1: The Rope That Snapped

Heavenly Demon of the Dead Gate · Volume 1: Risen from Suicide

***

Pain.

That was the first thing that reached his awareness. Not a sharp pain, but a dull, wet one, as if some invisible hand were still choking him from the inside.

Yun Zhou opened his eyes.

A ceiling. Dingy yellow paint peeling at the corners, a water stain shaped like the map of a country that had never existed, and a single bare bulb swaying gently at the end of its cord. The air smelled of damp, of stale instant ramen, of someone who had stopped caring about his own life a long time ago.

Not a palace. Not the throne room of the Demon Sect. Not hell, either, which by his estimate should have been a lot more crowded.

He didn't move right away. That was an old habit, one that hadn't died with his old body: never let anyone know you're awake until you know who's in the room.

Breath shortened. Shoulders loosened. Ears working.

A leaky faucet dripping. The hum of an old refrigerator. A motorcycle passing somewhere in the distance, a car horn, a child crying on the floor below. No other breathing in the room.

Alone.

Only then did he move his finger.

***

The first finger moved with effort, like lifting a boulder. The second trembled. When he tried to sit up, the whole world spun and his stomach screamed for food.

Weak.

He reached the verdict in a single word, without emotion, like a physician examining a patient already beyond saving.

Propping himself up on one elbow, he dragged his body to the wall and leaned against it. He was out of breath from nothing more than sitting. Cold sweat soaked his back.

On the floor, right beside his feet, lay a length of nylon rope, snapped clean in the middle. One end still held the shape of a noose.

Above him, on the ceiling, a bent iron hook dangled with the other half of the rope.

Yun Zhou stared at the two objects for a long time.

Then he raised a hand and touched his neck. The skin was hot, swollen, and raw under his fingers. A ring ran all the way around it. He didn't need a mirror to know the color: reddish purple, thick, and ugly.

Hanged himself, he thought. And the rope broke.

His lips moved. At first just slightly, then into something that would have made an onlooker take a step back. Not a smile. More like something that had borrowed the shape of one.

"Suicide," he muttered. His voice was hoarse and strange, the voice of a young man he had never heard before. "And he failed."

A short laugh scraped out of his injured throat. It collapsed into a cough, and the cough pulled a thin thread of blood onto his tongue. He spat it onto the floor without a second thought.

There's something dumber than a traitor, he thought coldly. A man who throws away his own weapon.

***

He closed his eyes and inspected the body from the inside.

In his former life, this kind of examination took three breaths. Ki would flow from the center of his body through every channel, bringing back word on every bone, muscle, organ, and wound.

Now, three breaths only carried him to a wall.

No flow. No center. Where an ocean of Ki should have been, there was only a cold, dark emptiness, like a dried-up well with cracks running through its walls.

Ki pathways: completely blocked.

The muscles in his thighs and arms were thin as twigs. He could count his ribs from the outside. His heart beat weakly and irregularly, like a market vendor too tired to shout anymore. His stomach was shrunken from too long without food. His lungs felt rusted.

He opened his eyes and let out a long breath.

Once, when his name was spoken, a hundred thousand disciples knelt. When he walked, the seven orthodox sects shut their gates and raised their barriers. His right hand had once leveled a mountain in a single night.

Now that hand shook just from gripping a wall.

"Interesting," he said quietly.

Not angry. Not despairing. He simply didn't have time for either.

A good ruler doesn't waste time mourning a lost kingdom. He counts what's still in his hands.

Soul: intact. Memory: intact. Body: garbage. Time: unknown.

Mind: still running.

That would do.

***

In the corner of the room, a small cracked mirror was taped crookedly to the wall. With great effort he pushed himself up, braced against the doorframe, and dragged his feet over to it.

The young man in the mirror stared back.

Twenty-one, maybe. Messy black hair falling over his forehead. Hollow cheeks. Dark circles under his eyes like bruises. Skin as pale as used paper, collarbones jutting out beneath a thin T-shirt with a stretched-out collar.

And around his neck, a thick reddish-purple line, like a necklace nobody had asked for.

Yun Zhou tilted his head. The boy in the mirror tilted his head too.

Dark brown eyes. Empty. Not the emptiness of a fool, but the emptiness of a house whose owner has left and has no plans to return.

But inside that emptiness, there was now something else.

Slowly, the reflection changed. The shoulders stopped slumping. The chin rose an inch. The stare stopped blinking, and the eyes, once dead, began to appraise. Cold. Calm. Like a merchant sizing up a piece of junk and deciding it could still fetch a high price with a little polish.

"Yun Zhou," he said to the reflection. "The same name. What a funny joke fate has played."

He brushed his fingertips along the line on his neck. It hurt, but he didn't flinch.

"You gave up," he said, without hatred and without pity. "I won't."

***

The sharpness in his own reflected eyes dragged another memory up to the surface, uninvited.

Not the previous owner's memory. His own.

The main hall of the Demon Sect. Black candlelight. Seven figures standing in a ring around him, their dark crimson robes rippling in windless air. In their hands, the Seven Heart-Guarding Artifacts glowed faintly.

He remembered how he had smiled that night.

Not out of joy. He'd felt something was off for a week, but Oculus, his ability to read hearts, had caught nothing from them. No malice. No fear. Nothing hidden.

Clean. Too clean.

He had chosen to trust that cleanliness. The greatest mistake of his long life.

The First Elder stood closest. The man he had picked up off the streets, fed, taught, and raised to be his sworn brother. Luo Canghai.

His brother smiled gently. The same smile as the day they first met.

"Elder Brother," he said. "Forgive me."

The sword went in from behind, at the exact spot that only a handful of people knew. A spot he had shown to exactly one person.

He had shown it to Luo Canghai, on a drunken night, as a sign of trust.

Yun Zhou stood before the cracked mirror and did not move.

His hand, resting on the edge of the table, slowly, very slowly, curled into a fist. His knuckles went white. Thin veins tightened along the back of that pale hand.

Then he regulated his breathing. One inhale. One exhale.

The fist loosened.

"Luo Canghai," he said, very softly. Just once. As if the name were something to be tasted, not shouted.

Some people store their hatred in screams. The more dangerous ones store it in silence.

He did not scream.

In the mirror, the young man with the bruised neck smiled, and there was not a trace of warmth in it.

***

From that day on, he had learned one thing carved into his very bones: trust is poison.

Loyalty can be bought, can change, can be sold to the highest bidder. The only thing that can't be lied to is collateral: secrets that can destroy, debts that can't be repaid, hostages, and fear.

A man with nothing to lose is the most dangerous kind. And a man who can lose nothing to you is a man you will never trust.

Not until death. He had already proven that once.

"Never again," he whispered.

***

His stomach growled loudly.

Yun Zhou blinked, then snorted. Even the soul of a demon still had to bow to an empty belly.

He opened the small cabinet under the sink. Three packs of instant ramen, a bottle of cooking oil down to its last quarter, half a jar of sugar. On the folding table by the bed sat a phone with a cracked screen, two electric bills stacked neatly, and a plastic card bearing a blue shield.

A Hunter card. He picked it up.

YUN ZHOU. Rank: E. Class: Unknown. Status: Active.

Beneath that, in small, carelessly printed text: Condition: Damaged mana channels.

He read the line twice. His eyes narrowed, just barely.

Damaged.

Something about that word turned his fingertips cold. Not because the word was wrong, but because something inside him, far down at the bottom of that dry, empty well, had stirred for a second.

Very softly. Like a baby breathing in its sleep.

He held his breath and waited. Nothing more came.

"Hmm," he murmured. No one heard.

He filed the oddity away in the same place as all his secrets: in his head, without telling a soul.

***

The sky outside the small window began to pale. Dawn. Across the street, a giant screen flickered on, playing the morning news. The anchor's voice drifted faintly across the distance:

"...a Class-C Gate has once again opened in the eastern district. The Hunter Association urges residents to remain indoors..."

Gates. Hunters. Monsters.

Fragments of the previous owner's memories were already creeping to the surface of his mind, like dirty water rising from a drain. He didn't want to sift through all of it yet. One thing was enough for now: this world was chaotic, dangerous, and ruled by money.

The perfect world for a man who knew how to deceive.

He was just about to tear open a pack of ramen when a sound came from below. Footsteps. Heavy, more than one set, climbing the metal stairs, deliberately in no hurry.

He stopped.

His ears counted. Three pairs. One dragging. One clicking like expensive shoes on a cheap staircase. One stomping, full of swagger.

His hands, which had been trembling moments ago, went still. His face, before he even realized it, had already changed. Brows lowered, breath shortened, shoulders sagging half an inch. A sick young man, out of hope.

The mask went on in two seconds. He barely felt it himself.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door.

Silence.

Then three knocks, hard enough to shake dust loose from the doorframe.

"Yun Zhou!"

A rough, raspy voice. The voice of a man used to being obeyed and even more used to hurting people.

"Payment's due today! Open the door, or we'll open it for you!"

Yun Zhou stood in the middle of the room, wrapped in the pale light of dawn. The ring of the noose mark stood out plainly on his neck.

He looked at the door. Those dark brown eyes, which had seemed so frightened a moment ago, did not tremble in the slightest, if anyone could have seen them behind that curtain of hair.

In his mind, one simple sentence surfaced:

Then let's begin.

***

To be continued in Chapter 2: "Memories of the Dead"