Chapter 1024

For martial artists who lived on the edge of death, hearing was an invaluable sense.

Sound carried a great deal of meaning.

When you were facing an enemy, the whisper of a sleeve brushing past could only mean they were launching a sneak attack. And you could read someone’s state of mind from the pitch and tremor of their voice.

To a martial artist, sound was information.

And the drumbeats rolling in from far away at that very moment were no exception.

Thump. Thump-thump. Thuuump!

There was no proper rhythm, and each beat rang out at a different volume.

An image came to the middle-aged man’s mind: somewhere in the snow-covered mountains, a drummer was pounding away with all his might, looking as if half his soul had already left his body. He scratched the back of his neck.

“Did we come on a little too strong with the greeting?”

Low laughter rippled through the group at his words.

By now, they weren’t the only ones who knew that the hundred scouts from the Great Snow Mountain they had encountered nearby two hours earlier were dead.

“Can you blame them? The people they shared meals with came back as corpses overnight.”

“Those horses came back with heads dangling all over them. Looks like everyone’s scared out of their wits already, and this is only the beginning.”

“Still, we mustn’t let our guard down. We don’t know exactly how powerful the Fire King, that old monster, is…”

Boom!

A deafening whoosh swallowed the rest of the old man’s words.

Before he could finish speaking, an immense force slammed into his chest. He shot backward like a cannonball, righted himself in midair, and tried to land.

“Ugh, bleurgh!”

Blood spilled from his lips. He lost his balance and staggered.

Unable to withstand his internal injuries, he dropped to one knee. The other two elders, who had been laughing along moments ago, stared at the middle-aged man, their faces stiff.

Having felled a Supreme Peak master with a single move, the middle-aged man glanced from his hand to the fallen elder and back, looking perfectly unconcerned.

“Well, I put too much into that. Elder Three, are you all right?”

Elder Three knelt there coughing up blood. He answered between gasps.

“I’m… I’m fine.”

“I didn’t mean for it to come to that… More importantly, what do you think?”

“What… do you mean?”

The middle-aged man smiled at him.

“I’m asking how I compare to the Fire King, that old man.”

“……!”

“What, you think I don’t stand a chance? Well, you don’t know much about the Fire King either, so I suppose it’s hard to answer. You said you’d only seen him once, from a distance, a long time ago. Wasn’t that right?”

He looked over the three elders in turn, smacked his lips, and muttered, “Shouldn’t have asked. You ran off like rats, so how would you know?”

Could there be a greater insult to martial artists, who were said to be made of pride and confidence instead of flesh and blood?

Yet the three old men—the Three Elders of Tianshan—could only tremble in silence.

Were they trying to suppress the rage welling up inside them?

No.

How could they suppress something that wasn’t there?

There was no anger toward the middle-aged man in their aging bodies or hearts. What bound them like chains was fear.

He’d lashed out with a killing blow without hesitation over a single word that displeased him. His expression and tone made it seem as though he were looking at ants he could crush underfoot at any moment.

The middle-aged man before them had both the strength and the right to act that way.

“Please forgive us!”

“I-It’s because we’re lacking.”

“This foolish old man misspoke. How could the Fire King possibly be a match for the Demon Lord?”

The three fiends of Tianshan, who had once drenched the Central Plains in blood beneath the Demonic Cult’s banner, scrambled to prostrate themselves.

If they didn’t, they felt the middle-aged man—the Blood-Sword Demon Lord—might kill them on the spot.

He looked down at them with an unmistakable sneer.

Pathetic fools. Did we really try to conquer the world with men like these?

His scorn wasn’t limited to the Three Elders of Tianshan. It was directed at the man he had once followed, the man who had been everything to him.

You were bound to fail, Cult Leader. You were only human, yet you compared yourself to Heaven.

The Heavenly Demon.

Remembering the man who had inherited that title through the generations and ruled as the king and Heaven of the Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord let out a hollow laugh.

Looking back now, it was laughable. He had placed his faith and loyalty in a man of that caliber.

That he had dreamed of a Demonic Path ruling the world—a feat no Heavenly Demon had achieved in a thousand years.

But things were different now.

Failure had brought him enlightenment, and he had accepted a new Heaven.

A new Heaven called the Lord of Heaven.

His true master.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord firmly believed that the enemies drawing nearer on the Great Snow Mountain would soon serve the Lord of Heaven alongside him. Even if they refused, resisted with all their might, and chose death in the end, the outcome would be the same.

In the end, they’ll seek shelter in that person’s shadow.

Laughing softly, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord turned to look behind him.

Crunch. Crunch.

Tens of thousands of troops were marching toward the Great Snow Mountain, crushing the frost-covered plants underfoot.

At their head were seven strange figures dressed in black as pitch, and, in stark contrast, several dozen people dressed in white.

“You seem worried, so I’ll tell you one thing.”

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord spoke without warning, then continued slowly, addressing the Three Elders of Tianshan.

“Someone like the Fire King could never stop us.”

This wasn’t confidence. It was certainty.

Certainty in the strength they had kept hidden even when they crossed Jade Gate Pass and trampled Dunhuang, defended by the Zhongnan Sect, in a single sweep.

The Three Elders of Tianshan had an inkling of it too. Even they, fiends who had once dominated their age, sensed something ominous about those figures. Whoever they were, they were no ordinary people.

But…

What exactly are they?

He hasn’t told us their names or titles. How can he be so certain?

There’s nothing we can do. We just have to follow him.

They swallowed their questions. They didn’t dare meet his eyes.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord clicked his tongue at their bowed heads, then gave his first order on the Great Snow Mountain.

“Send them a messenger.”

“A messenger?”

“We’ve already given them a greeting. We might as well show them the mercy of offering a chance to surrender. And…”

The Three Elders waited, but he left the sentence unfinished. A faint smile crossed his face.

There’s someone I’d very much like to see, too.

He didn’t mean the Fire King, Jeok Cheongang—an old enemy who had fought on a different battlefield for a different goal.

Before the fighting truly began, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord wanted to meet not the old monster from Mount Jiuhua, but his Disciple.

The Blazing Flame Divine Dragon, Jin Taekyung.

For some reason, the young colossus of the orthodox Murim had drawn the attention of his master—the Lord of Heaven—in a way the Demon Lord couldn’t understand.

From the moment he received the excessive order not to kill Taekyung even if they met, his thoughts had been fixed on him.

Let’s see if he’s worthy of that attention.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s eyes gleamed.

A hundred.

Not one of the Great Snow Mountain’s hundred scouts had been spared.

They had set out four hours earlier to check the enemy’s movements. Now they had returned together—as heads dangling from the saddles of their horses.

“J-Junior Sister…”

“No. No!”

Cries like screams rose all around us.

Those who had lost people close to them in the scouting party poured out their grief and rage. Even the Fire Dragon Pavilion members, who were used to gruesome sights, clenched their teeth.

“This…”

Someone’s lips trembled, unable to finish the thought.

But in a situation like this, someone had to keep a cool head. I examined the severed heads, then exchanged a look with Jeok Cheongang.

“You saw it?”

“Yes. Each was cut with a single stroke. And the wounds are all alike.”

“So that means…”

“One person did it. That sword technique is fearsome. I’ve seen few like it in all my years.”

Death left its mark. The cuts that had severed the scouts’ heads were so uniform and sharp they looked as though they’d been measured with a ruler.

If even Jeok Cheongang judged it that way, then it had to be a master at least comparable to one of the Ten Kings—or someone even stronger—who had slaughtered them all.

“And this…”

Jeok Cheongang stopped and frowned.

“Damn it, I can’t place it. I’m sure I’ve seen a wound like this somewhere before…”

He seemed to be searching his memory, but I quietly shook my head.

The enemy’s identity wasn’t what mattered right now.

What mattered was the horrifying number of enemies approaching in the distance, raising a vast cloud of dust.

I couldn’t make out their exact numbers yet, but even just counting those pouring down the hill toward us, there were a staggering twenty thousand.

They were still several hundred jang¹ away. Even so, the aura and killing intent pouring from that enormous army sent the birds of the harsh Great Snow Mountain beating their wings in frantic flight.

“Damn it. It was real. What I saw was real. Those fiends made it all the way here.”

Ma Junggeol, chief of the Seven Masters of Baekma Bang, had been dragged here as something of a hostage. He chewed his lip as he muttered.

In his trembling hand was a telescope—or, as they called it in Murim, a ten-li² scope.

“Madness. The Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples, just like I’d heard. We’re finished. It’s all over…”

“Shut your mouth, unless you want to be the first one finished.”

That was enough to silence Ma Junggeol. Hyuk Mujin snatched the scope from his hand and whispered to me.

“Captain. What do you plan to do now?”

I answered evenly.

“You know what we have to do.”

With the enemy almost upon us, only one choice remained.

Battle.

No—a bloody fight.

Once a fire took hold, it wouldn’t stop until it had burned the whole field. The fire called Dark Heaven had started in the desert and reached the Great Snow Mountain. We would set a fire of our own against it.

It’ll only end once everything around us is stained with blood.

Hyuk Mujin knew it. I knew it. Everyone on the Great Snow Mountain preparing to fight for their lives knew it.

And none of us knew how the battle would end.

Though someone might already have a guess.

I glanced at Sima Gong, directing the martial artists of the Black Dragon Demon Gate in the distance. Then at Sama Pyo, who stood staring down the mountainside, his face rigid instead of its usual calm.

The next moment, I realized why.

It wasn’t the pressure of battle, or some secret he was hiding.

“They’re coming.”

At his quiet words, I turned and saw them.

A group carrying a white flag high overhead was making its way toward us through the tens of thousands of troops that had crested the hill and blackened the foot of the mountain.