Young Demon Lord

The Young Demon Lord is the youngest son and successor of the ancient Demon Lord, an underestimated prince who engineers the coup in Xuelao City and rules the demons through their final war with humanity. He combines concealed martial talent with political patience, ruthless dynastic violence, and an unexpectedly serious concern for the survival of demon culture. After inheriting his father's complete legacy, he becomes a peer and enemy of Chen Changsheng, then gradually turns their conflict into a long negotiation over surrender.

Biography

The Coup in Xuelao City

Before taking power, the youngest prince deliberately allows the court and continent to regard him as mediocre. His cultivation talent and developing demon body appear inferior to Nanke's, while his declaration that he will possess Xu Yourong earns ridicule rather than fear. The concealment leaves stronger siblings and senior ministers looking past him, but it also gives him time to align his ambitions with Black Robe and the Demon Commander. When the truth emerges, the supposedly frivolous prince is revealed as the central planner rather than their puppet. (Chapter 739)

He uses that misjudgment to overturn his father's government. Black Robe and the Demon Commander cast the old Demon Lord into the abyss on his behalf, while the new regime beheads nobles, eliminates rival members of the Imperial clan, and drenches Xuelao City in blood. Han Qing returns expecting to rescue a frightened younger brother, only to discover that both powerful women trust the prince and share his vision. The Young Demon Lord sends Han Qing to the abyss and launches an invasion south, presenting warmth, sunlight, spring, and conquest as one common dream while famine and declining military numbers make delay dangerous. (Chapter 739)

The coup does not actually kill his father. After learning that the old sovereign survived and fled with Nanke, the Young Demon Lord exploits a human assassination scheme against Chen, replacing its intended killer and waiting for his father to seek Chen's blood. He acknowledges that Chen is bait and that killing the Pope would be useful, but his indispensable goal is patricide: only Imperial blood can reliably bring down the Astral Executioner, so he has already removed the brothers who could have taken his place. When the old Demon Lord is weakened, the son personally uses the artifact to summon the fatal pillar of starlight. (Chapters 780–782 and 785)

Father and son nevertheless part with recognition rather than simple hatred. The old Demon Lord admits that clinging to power after his body and ambitions had decayed was his gravest error, accepts the son's plan, and passes on the complete Imperial legacy. The successor mourns him sincerely, then immediately attacks Chen with his newly strengthened cultivation and the Heavenly Demon Horn. Nanke contests his succession and joins Chen, while Black Robe's Essence Qi Locks close the escape routes; outside intervention ultimately prevents a decisive victory, leaving the new Demon Lord in possession of the throne but with two peers who have survived his first open display of power. (Chapters 781–786)

The White Emperor City Design

The Young Demon Lord later enters White Emperor City alone to formalize an alliance with Madam Mu through marriage to Luoluo. He claims that the union can prevent a continent-wide war, but speaks more candidly when Luoluo challenges him: he does not love her, respects her as an Imperial equal, and also views taking Chen's student as petty revenge for losing Xu Yourong. Luoluo rejects both the political burden and his threat that refusal will bring war, exposing the limit of his charm when it is used to make another person carry the cost of his statecraft. (Chapters 974–979)

Chen's arrival turns that diplomatic contest into a duel. The Demon Lord expects his complete inheritance and concealed resources to make a younger Pope manageable, but Chen unveils the South Stream Temple sword array wielded by one person. Hundreds of coordinated swords destroy the Seventeen Netherworld Armors and overcome the Demon Lord on the observation platform, forcing him back rather than killing him because Madam Mu intervenes. The defeat revises the balance established in the snowy mountains: he remains individually formidable, but Chen's sword cultivation has developed beyond the assumptions on which the marriage design was built. (Chapters 980–987)

When the White Emperor returns and human experts surround the Demon Lord's refuge, the Demon Lord again uses darkness, the Setting Sun Sword, and his remaining artifacts to resist. The larger design involving two Angels of Sacred Light belongs chiefly to Black Robe and Madam Mu, not to him, although their intervention gives him the opening to break the incomplete Li Palace array and threaten its exhausted defenders. Chen and Xu Yourong wound one Angel, while Shang Xingzhou and the White Emperor destroy the advantage created by the other. The scheme collapses without granting the Demon Lord either the marriage or the death of his rival. (Chapters 1017–1037)

The White Emperor nonetheless decrees that the Demon Lord may leave the city alive, preventing the gathered human experts from completing their assassination. He departs quietly under that protection, having survived by diplomatic status and another ruler's calculation rather than battlefield victory. The outcome preserves him as sovereign but reverses nearly every intended gain: Luoluo remains in White Emperor City, the proposed alliance fails, the Angels are destroyed, and Chen leaves recognized as a sword grandmaster capable of defeating him. (Chapters 1037–1042 and 1109)

Rule during the Final War

In the years before humanity's final campaign, the Young Demon Lord governs conservatively despite nobles who call restraint cowardly or shameful. The demon population is shrinking, lower-class tribes are increasingly difficult to sustain, and a direct contest with the flourishing human powers offers no credible victory. He does authorize one exceptional gamble when Black Robe predicts that Xiao Zhang is about to enter the Divine Domain: he personally asks three ancient Mountain Men to kill Xiao Zhang and then ambush Chen and Xu. The failure confirms that a targeted reversal cannot repair the wider decline. (Chapters 1114 and 1125–1129)

Once the human armies advance, the demons lose in months rather than the years anticipated by their enemies. The Demon Lord uses wolf cavalry for limited counterattacks and keeps Xuelao City's upper society from abandoning the capital, but he does not waste the remaining population on an aggressive campaign. In the final confrontation, he explains that low fertility has steadily reduced the higher-class demon population and then reveals a second cause: Black Robe, who designed the military strategy, has deliberately accelerated defeat so that desperation will make the demons accept aid from the Sacred Light Continent. His rule ends with recognition that survival now requires surrender or servitude to God. (Chapters 1162 and 1170–1172)

He negotiates from inside the occupied Demon Palace with historians and scholars present so the final state of demon civilization will be recorded. He refuses terms that would turn lower demons into mine slaves or dilute the race through forced intermarriage, then threatens to use the Astral Executioner and Black Robe's sacrificial altar to call down an army of Angels unless humanity retreats. Tang Thirty-Six, who secretly helped compose Chen's early letters to him, recognizes that the threat is a bluff. When Chen confirms the more favorable conditions from their eleventh letter, the Demon Lord hands over the Astral Executioner and discloses the altar's location. (Chapters 1170–1174)

Black Robe then reveals a different route for the Angel army, using the Sacred Light within Chen as a beacon. The Demon Lord had already rejected this result because returning to God would reduce demons and humans alike to servants. When Wang Zhice prepares to leave with the defeated Black Robe, the Demon Lord creates the opening that lets Liu Qing kill her, fulfilling her wish to die rather than depart while also preventing her plan from continuing. He says that he cannot share her birthday but can share her deathday, bids Chen and Tang farewell, and walks into the demon flames until his body returns to the void. (Chapters 1174–1181)

Appearance and personality

The Young Demon Lord is a handsome young demon whose smile softens the innate nobility and dominance of the Imperial clan. On the throne after his coup, this youthfulness makes the bloodshed around him look even more dissonant. In White Emperor City he can appear pale and composed beneath a flowering pear tree, creating the image of an elegant chosen husband. At his last appearance, he wears a long white gown with his hair loose, resembling a poet who has lost his country or a singer grieving over it; physical exhaustion leaves his face pale and his lips unnaturally red. (Chapters 739, 974–978, 1167, and 1171)

He is patient, charming, ambitious, and ruthless enough to kill his father and brothers, yet his emotional attachments are not all performances. He sincerely mourns his father once succession is settled, loves Black Robe despite understanding that her final objective would destroy his race, and treats his exchanges with Chen and Tang as a genuine intellectual intimacy. His humor and romantic language coexist with coercion: he can speak of sunlight, dreams, and peace while ordering executions or threatening Luoluo. In defeat, the same theatrical instinct becomes dignity, helping him preserve cultural claims, concede when his bluff is exposed, and choose the manner of his death. (Chapters 739, 781–782, 978–979, 1170–1174, and 1180)

Abilities and cultivation

The Young Demon Lord conceals the quality of his cultivation until after seizing power. Once the old Demon Lord dies, the darkness in the sky seems to flow into him and the complete legacy of successive Demon sovereigns passes to him. Golden Imperial blood confirms that inheritance. At that point, an injured Chen judges him stronger than himself, Xu Yourong, or Qiushan Jun in direct cultivation, although the comparison is not permanent: Chen later defeats him with the South Stream Temple sword array, and he remains below the Divine Domain when Chen becomes the strongest cultivator beneath that threshold. (Chapters 739, 782–784, 987, and 1114)

Imperial darkness and physical power

His inherited demon arts manifest as a darkness that can spread across a battlefield, obscure perception, consume light, and provide a medium through which he blurs his body or retreats from an attack. He can use it to isolate opponents and disturb the connection between the Divine Staff and the artifacts maintaining the Li Palace array. The effect is powerful but not absolute: zither notes, Blazing Sun techniques, coordinated artifacts, and Chen's sword array can thin or tear it, forcing him to rely on weapons or allied power rather than remaining untouchable inside it. (Chapters 782–785 and 1019–1034)

His demon body and Imperial legacy allow him to continue fighting through deep wounds from Nanke and to overpower her after dozens of exchanges. Golden blood marks the true legacy rather than invulnerability; Nanke wounds his abdomen, Chen later destroys his defenses, and an expert of Wang Zhice's level can seize him by the throat before he can complete an artifact attack. His strength therefore places him near the summit below the Divine Domain, but the story repeatedly demonstrates a hard boundary when he confronts mature Divine experts or arrays designed to bridge cultivation gaps. (Chapters 783–785, 987, 1114, and 1180)

Imperial weapons and defenses

The Heavenly Demon Horn resembles a goat-horn comb and carries an oppressive black Qi. After inheriting the complete legacy, the Demon Lord uses it to bring a darkness like a bottomless abyss down on Chen and to pursue him through the air. Black Robe can coordinate distant Essence Qi Locks with this attack, making escape through ordinary movement or the Garden of Zhou unreliable. Its limitation is dependence on containment: Chen and Nanke can still contest the Demon Lord together, and outside intervention breaks the carefully prepared killing ground. (Chapters 782–786)

In White Emperor City, he carries the Setting Sun Sword, his father's personal weapon, and the Seventeen Netherworld Armors. The armors form ten-some rotating black shields without a visible gap, but Chen's coordinated swords destroy them in one assault. The Setting Sun Sword is strong enough to break individual swords already taxed by that attack, cut through zither notes, and strike open a retreat into darkness, yet it cannot destroy the entire South Stream Temple sword array. Their representative use therefore ends in withdrawal, not victory, showing that even the Imperial treasury cannot substitute for a decisive cultivation advantage. (Chapters 1021–1022)

Astral Executioner

The Astral Executioner is a stone pestle made from the same otherworldly substance as the Heavenly Tome Monoliths. It uses Imperial blood to indicate a location across the sea of stars and call down a concentrated pillar of power. The Young Demon Lord kills his father with it after removing other brothers who might have borne the dynastic requirement, accepting the risk that the signal could eventually help beings from the Sacred Light Continent find the Central Continent. The strike succeeds against the already weakened old sovereign and finalizes the son's inheritance. (Chapters 780–782 and 785)

Its later strategic use depends on combining its positional signal with an altar capable of opening a spatial path. In the last war, the Demon Lord uses that possibility to threaten Chen with the descent of many Angels, but he hesitates because a full army would enslave rather than rescue the demons. Tang Thirty-Six identifies that absence of true resolve, and the Demon Lord relinquishes the pestle under the negotiated surrender terms. Once it reaches the Tang Old Master's custody, Black Robe has to reveal that her real beacon is Chen's Sacred Light, proving that the artifact was essential to the Demon Lord's version of the plan but not to hers. (Chapters 1172–1175)

Strategy, deception, and rhetoric

His most consistent ability is strategic concealment. He hides talent beneath a frivolous reputation, wins the simultaneous trust of Black Robe and the Demon Commander, anticipates his father's pursuit of Chen, and replaces a human assassin without alerting either intended victim. He also uses information as a long campaign: years of letters with Chen gradually define surrender conditions while making the Pope take the danger of the Sacred Light Continent seriously. These plans succeed because he understands what different parties hope to gain, not because they are loyal to him in the abstract. (Chapters 739, 780–782, and 1170–1173)

His speeches are similarly constructed. At Xuelao City's fall, he begins with history, extinction, culture, and freedom before revealing the Angel threat, giving an apparent delaying tactic enough weight to be believed. The method has a human limit: Tang recognizes that the Demon Lord's demeanor contains resolve and love but lacks the exhilaration of a successful reversal. Once exposed, he does not continue a useless performance. He accepts the wager, hands over the Astral Executioner, and redirects his remaining cunning toward ensuring Black Robe cannot carry her plan away from the hall. (Chapters 1170–1180)

Power progression

Relationships

• Demon Lord: His father is both the ruler he must remove and the source of his complete Imperial inheritance. The son engineers the coup, later kills the surviving sovereign with the Astral Executioner, and still mourns him; the father ultimately recognizes that succession should have occurred earlier. (Chapters 739 and 780–782)
• Black Robe: He studies Black Robe's willingness to use any useful person and wins her trust through their shared ambitions. He treats her as a teacher and loves her, but refuses her plan to enslave both continents to God; his final deception gives Liu Qing the opening to kill her before he follows her in death. (Chapters 739, 780, and 1171–1180)
• Demon Commander: The Demon Commander is his powerful aunt and one of the two pillars of his coup. She supports his throne and final war, while he regards her as the model he and Black Robe once hoped Nanke could become. Her death during the surrender negotiations marks the collapse of his last independent military support. (Chapters 739, 1125, and 1173–1174)
• Nanke: He spares his sisters after the coup and insists that he loves Nanke most, but she challenges him after learning that neither their father nor Black Robe chose her as successor. He defeats her and attributes her exclusion to her congenital illness. At Xuelao City's fall, he regrets that her loyalty to their father left her weakened, and she is present when he accepts surrender rather than fight to extinction. (Chapters 739, 783–785, and 1166–1174)
• Chen Changsheng: The Demon Lord first uses Chen as bait for his father and then tries to kill him. Defeat in White Emperor City leads into ten years of private correspondence that turns hostility into negotiated respect; Chen ultimately accepts his surrender and sincerely wishes him a good final journey. (Chapters 780–786, 981–987, and 1170–1180)
• Xu Yourong: His youthful claim that he will possess Xu becomes one of his most famous declarations, and he admits at the end that he genuinely loves her. She remains Chen's partner and opponent to his designs, helping defeat an Angel in White Emperor City and witnessing the end of his rule without reciprocating his affection. (Chapters 739, 1028–1029, and 1174)
• Luoluo: He accepts Madam Mu's plan to marry Luoluo as the seal on a demon–demi-human alliance. Their candid conversation establishes that he respects but does not love her; she rejects his attempt to turn peace, war, and Xuanyuan Po's life into pressure for consent. (Chapters 974–980)
• Tang Thirty-Six: Tang secretly composes the first letters that Chen sends the Demon Lord, making him an unacknowledged correspondent. In the final negotiation, he reads the Demon Lord's emotional state, exposes the bluff around the Astral Executioner, obtains the agreed surrender terms, and exchanges a genuine farewell with him. (Chapters 1172–1180)

Items

• Astral Executioner: A stone pestle and forbidden Imperial artifact that calls power across the sea of stars. The Demon Lord uses it to kill his father, later presents it as the positional key to an Angel invasion, and finally surrenders it to Tang Thirty-Six under the negotiated terms. (Chapters 780–782 and 1172–1174)
• Heavenly Demon Horn: A goat-horn-comb-shaped artifact that carries dense black Qi and deepens the Demon Lord's darkness. It is his primary weapon in the snowy mountains after receiving the complete Imperial legacy. (Chapters 782–785)
• Setting Sun Sword: The old Demon Lord's personal sword, inherited and wielded by his son in White Emperor City. It breaks weakened individual swords, disperses zither notes, and opens a path into darkness, but cannot overcome the complete South Stream Temple sword array. (Chapters 1021–1022)
• Seventeen Netherworld Armors: A set of rotating black defensive shields carried into White Emperor City. They prevent immediate attack from every direction until Chen's coordinated torrent of swords destroys them. (Chapters 1021–1022)