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The exalted emperor of the Southern Kingdom, Huo Huihua, was born on an auspicious day. It was the summer solstice, and the sun shone so strongly that thousands of lesser demons had been burnt to a crisp by the time the sun set in the sky. Huo Huihua had not only been born on an auspicious day, but also at an auspicious hour. The sun had been directly overhead and, when he first opened his eyes, his pupils burned with the same intensity as that majestic orb in the sky.
His clan’s elders had been jubilant, praising the Huo family’s luck and proclaiming that their youngest son would be the pride of the clan.
His parents had been overjoyed, immediately throwing a month-long celebration where Huihua was paraded around their territories, completely naked except for the blood of a hundred sacrifices covering his wrinkled body and thin gold rings that had been melded to the horns upon his head.
It had been a joyous affair, filled with duels, feasts, orgies, and assassinations. By the end, every demon in his clan’s territory could proudly proclaim that their prince was the most outstanding of all princes and would surely bring their people fortune beyond their imagination.
And Huo Huihua managed to exceed their expectations. By the age of five, he had been proclaimed a genius. At seven, he filled the power vacuum created by the defeat (and subsequent imprisonment) of the previous emperor Tianlang-jun, claiming the throne of the Southern Kingdom as his own. By the age of eight, he had completely redesigned the kingdom’s economy, created a thriving international trade, and used the money, not to line his own pockets, but to build a new capital city at the heart of the Southern Kingdom.
By age eleven, the Southern Kingdom was the richest kingdom in the human and demon realms. They traded their commodities from the coldest part of the Northern Wastes all the way to the human cultivators of Cang Qiong Mountain.
Early in Emperor Huo’s rule, there were many who contested his ability and suitability to lead a kingdom. But every assassination was a failure, every duel was lost, every seduction was rejected, and every scheme was foiled. It was during these tumultuous stages of this new era that the demons of the Southern Kingdom learned some very important things about their new ruler.
Huo Huihua looked vulnerable, with a curvy body, delicate features, and slender horns that disguised the spirit of a vengeful fighter whose knives had felled many skilled warriors.
Huo Huihua had truly been blessed by the sun. Fire bent to his command and his body carried a temperature so strong that any poison would evaporate before ever doing him harm.
Huo Huihua was as intelligent as the stories described him. He was constantly ten steps in front of every opponent and had a talent for blocking even the most skilled strategist into a corner from which they could not escape.
Huo Huihua had no interest in even the most exotic and gorgeous demonesses his opponents – and his parents – could find. Only the most exquisite demons of the male variety could make him turn his head, and it was only to spare them an admiring glance before his attention was diverted to other matters.
And lastly, Huo Huihua was not only protected by his omnipotent abilities but also by the most impenetrable circle of loyal followers he had: his family.
Huo Huihua’s parents were as inherently lazy as every other Southern Demon. Only bloodshed could invigorate them, so after seeing the extent of their son’s success, they almost immediately gave him full control of their clan and the armies they had once controlled, a donation that strongly contributed to his conquering of the Southern realm.
His older siblings were much the same. The eldest had inherited the bull-like traits of his mother, standing at nearly eight feet tall with horns that had been permanently stained with the blood of his enemies and muscles the size of melons that wielded a war hammer of monstrous capacity. He had been appointed the general of Huo Huihua’s army and spent most of his time leeching off of the generosity of his younger brother.
The rest of Huo Huihua’s older siblings had varying roles in his palace, serving as advisors and protectors who enjoyed the palace intrigue far more than Huo Huihua did.
So even if a demon (or the unlikely human) was confident of their ability to defeat Huo Huihua, they had to overpower a dozen highly-trained demons who were proud of Huo Huihua and relieved that he had been willing to relieve them of the responsibility that came with ruling a kingdom.
So, by the age of sixteen, Huo Huihua was loved by all. The poor were rich, the rich were richer, food was abundant, and the number of foreign dignitaries always meant plentiful entertainment.
If anyone were asked if there was anything they didn’t like about Huo Huihua, the only thing that would come to mind was his ban on public nudity, but everyone quickly brushed this off with the consensus that, as their emperor was still a white lotus, the pleasures of carnal desire were still unfamiliar to him and therefore he could not understand the delight in seeing another’s nakedness.
Some people did have an issue with their emperor’s ban, due to the unbearable heat, but Huo Huihua solved this problem as well. The emperor commissioned every weaver in the empire to create a material that was as light as air and as sturdy as silk. With the incentive of a hundred thousand gold coins to anyone who created such a cloth, people flocked to the palace within a week’s time. Merely days later, clothes that preserved modesty while still keeping the wearer cool appeared on the market and became so valued that the type of cloth became the second-most exported good in the capital in just one year.
It was agreed. There was no problem Huo Huihua couldn’t solve. There was no situation Huo Huihua couldn’t escape. He was the shining jewel of the capital.
And then their jewel was stolen by the King of the Northern Kingdom whose delicate constitution struggled on the mildest days in the south, whose territory was barren and lifeless, who didn’t even have a defining animalistic clan characteristic that every self-respecting demon possessed. (They completely ignored that only Southern demons had these traits and that the Northern ancestors had far more humanoid forms.)
But dissent quickly evaporated when word of someone much more problematic swept through the land. The son of Tianlang-jun had appeared, eyes blazing with the power only a Heavenly Demon could possess. He toppled the North first, leaving Huo Huihua’s lover defeated in the snow. He then marched his army to the Southern Kingdom. Huo Huihua valiantly met Luo Binghe at the border and challenged him to a duel.
For the first time in his life, Huo Huihau lost, but not before giving the Heavenly Demon a near-fatal blow that left him with a burn that would never heal.
Mercifully, after crowning himself Emperor of the Demon Realm, Luo Binghe appointed Huo Huihua and Mobei Jun as his trusted right-hand officials. They were given sovereignty over the land they had once ruled and they promised to always follow Luo Binghe’s rule.
Despite his defeat, Huo Huihua’s feats were still not over. After de-escalating a war between the demon and human realms, officiating a wedding between Luo Binghe and his human lover, and establishing the first interracial institute of learning where human and demon could study side-by-side, he then led an expedition to explore the depths of the Abyss. Years later, he organized the first annual cultivator-demon conference that was designed to promote peace and prosperity between the two countries.
Huo Huihua was arguably the most influential king of demon history, and would be remembered for the rest of history for his contributions to demonkind.