At that moment, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord was smiling.
Pure delight and excitement filled his crescent-shaped eyes. His long, vertically slit pupils trembled with anticipation for what was to come.
More precisely, with anticipation for one young man.
Yes. That’s it. That’s exactly the look.
Watching Jin Taekyung’s eyes widen with shock and fury, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord felt his heart pound.
He had erased a thousand lives with a single gesture, yet he paid them no mind. All his senses were fixed on Jin Taekyung.
He felt not the slightest guilt for the dead, nor the slightest remorse for breaking his promise.
He had been born and raised in the Demonic Cult.
The cruelty he’d possessed since his mother’s womb had blossomed through the demonic martial arts he’d learned from the time he could walk. Even among the twenty-four great fiends who served the Heavenly Demon, no one could match him.
Now, Jin Taekyung was the only thing that interested him.
The Divine Dragon of the Central Plains Murim, a rising star whom his master was watching closely.
The Blood-Sword Demon Lord wanted to see everything about that young brat.
He wanted to feel the full extent of the martial prowess unleashed at his fingertips, the emotions pouring out of him, the something special hidden within.
Show me. Hurry!
And just as the Blood-Sword Demon Lord cried out in his heart—
Whooosh!
An immense, unprecedented energy surged up around one man.
“Who should I kill first?”
Jin Taekyung.
At the sight of the cold flames pouring from the young man’s eyes, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s smile deepened.
The Three Elders of Tianshan’s first reaction was suspicion.
Jin Taekyung held a spear that hadn’t been there moments ago.
How?
The promise had come to nothing now, but one of the terms of their meeting had been to come unarmed. Jin Taekyung’s side had honored that condition.
They had all arrived empty-handed, a considerable comfort to the Three Elders of Tianshan.
If they could handle the terrifying old monster called the Fire King, two weaponless young brats shouldn’t be much trouble.
Even if one of them was the renowned Blazing Flame Divine Dragon, Jin Taekyung, the three elders were fiends of a bygone age whose infamy had spread from Tianshan to the Central Plains.
As far as they were concerned, it was a fight they could win.
At least, until a spear appeared in Jin Taekyung’s hand.
Until an immense power, far beyond anything they had expected, enveloped that divine weapon, clearly made of Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron.
Hummm.
The dazzling white spearhead trembled.
No—the air around it shuddered in tiny ripples.
At the same time, an immense, pure energy surged up and wrapped around the spearhead. It was far too vast to be contained in the body of a young man who had turned twenty only a few years ago.
Ssssss.
What people called Force was no longer a dazzling blue-white.
This is…
The three old men caught their breath without realizing it.
What could they even call this power?
The Force gathered at the spearhead was dark as the deep sea. It burned blue like fire at its fiercest, yet also flashed like a thunderbolt.
It’s different.
The Three Elders of Tianshan felt it instinctively.
That energy was of a different kind, a different order, from the energy they had cultivated all their lives.
But they had no way of knowing what it truly was.
They did not know that the strange familiarity they felt came from the internal energy Jin Taekyung had received from the Heavenly Power Demon.
They did not know that the ominous power born of demonic martial arts had finally become one with the Fire Gate Clan’s hellfire and the Hebei Peng Family’s thunderbolt.
Nor did they know just how immense and keen the power within that dark-blue streak of light was.
The one person who understood all of it better than anyone stood beside Jin Taekyung.
Ah.
The Fire King, Jeok Cheongang, watched Jin Taekyung, his gaze deep and still.
He had suspected as much. He simply hadn’t confirmed it with his own eyes.
The summit of martial mastery.
The young man had reached the highest peak, one that touched the heavens. Age and experience were no longer measures by which to judge him.
He was a great martial artist who had forged a path of his own, one no one else had walked before.
Jeok Cheongang wanted to ask him, in all sincerity:
Do you know how remarkable the realm you’ve reached is?
And he wanted to tell him:
Across the Central Plains Murim, people gave those who reached such a realm a name spoken with the deepest respect.
The Ten Kings.
A vast, boundless sky and three stars.
Beneath them had stood ten giants.
And today, here and now, Jin Taekyung was proving himself the eleventh.
But he was different from those who had fallen to the passage of time or collapsed beneath their enemies’ cold-blue blades, spilling their blood. He was a hero of a new age.
On this battlefield, where a thousand lives had been extinguished, an immense blaze was rising.
How dazzling you are.
A shiver ran down Jeok Cheongang’s spine.
Then he looked at the Three Elders of Tianshan, staring at Jin Taekyung in a daze, and saw the shadow of death slowly falling over them.
“Old Master.”
A quiet call, seething with pain at having failed to prevent so many deaths—and with the fury that pain had bred.
Jeok Cheongang spoke.
“Do as you’ve decided.”
They didn’t know those few, cryptic words were the trust and encouragement of a master to his Disciple, who was willing to risk his life.
Nor did they know that the brief exchange had sealed their fate.
Whoosh!
A sharp gust of wind swept through.
A dark-blue flash—impossible to tell whether it was flame, wave, or thunderbolt—distorted space as it rushed at them, impossibly fast and carrying tremendous force.
Slash!
Goose bumps rose across the First Elder’s body. He twisted aside on instinct, but blood and terrible pain spread along the path of the strike.
“Gah!”
The flash had passed, and that was all.
If he hadn’t glimpsed something indistinct at the last moment, his ghost would already be wandering the Nine Springs.
How? How could this…!
The First Elder gritted his teeth and barely held back the pain and shock. His face stricken, he clutched his deeply slashed chest and staggered backward.
Against such speed and power, retreat would only lead to death. Fortunately, he had two dependable sworn brothers.
“Elder Brother!”
“No!”
The Second and Third Elders cried out and charged. One wielded a saber, the other a sword. Their hands blurred as they swung at the same target.
Jin Taekyung, who had rushed at them with the ghostlike movements of an assassin.
KWAANG!
One spear against a saber and a sword.
The three weapons, carrying several jiazi1 of internal energy, collided with a terrible roar that shook everything around them.
The earth heaved. The air burst apart.
Amid waves of power more violently turbulent than anything they had ever felt, the two old men saw it clearly:
The cold flames pouring from Jin Taekyung’s eyes. His hand gripping the spear shaft without the slightest tremor, even against two Supreme Peak masters.
And he was holding it with only one hand.
“Wa—”
Before the warning could leave their lips, Jin Taekyung’s palm slammed into the Third Elder’s chest.
Ah.
His vision swam. The Third Elder felt a terrible heat smash through bone and flesh and burrow deep inside him.
Crack.
The sickening sound came a moment later, faint as a distant echo. Blood surged into his mouth. As his body began to crumple, familiar shouts rang in his ears.
“You bastard!”
“Little Brother!”
No mistake. His elder brothers.
The world had called them fiends and bastards, but they had cherished him as if all three had been born of the same mother.
Crunch.
The Third Elder bit his tongue and forced his collapsing body upright.
He couldn’t fall here. He hadn’t survived this long to meet such a pointless end.
Besides…
We have the Demon Lord. We have his power.
The Third Elder was certain.
By now, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord must have stepped in.
He couldn’t see clearly through the haze in his mind, but surely a single command from the Demon Lord could free him from this terrible internal injury and pain.
But…
But why?
Why can’t I feel anything?
Even with his vision blurred, his senses as a Supreme Peak master remained. Yet as the Third Elder staggered and steadied himself, his Qi Sense told him everything was just as it had been.
Even while his two sworn brothers fought Jin Taekyung with all their might, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s presence remained where it had been, more than ten jang2 away.
“Demon Lord! Demon Lord!”
Crack! Boom!
The roar erupting from the spearhead swallowed the Third Elder’s desperate cry. But the Blood-Sword Demon Lord could not have failed to hear him.
Still, nothing changed.
No—that wasn’t quite true. Something did change.
It was tiny beside the immense energies surging all around them, and all the more stealthy for it.
Whish—thunk!
“……!”
The Third Elder’s body locked up.
He felt a cold blade pierce his back, with saber qi gathered at its tip. He spun around in a flash and swung his arm.
Whoom—boom!
Compressed air exploded, but his blow struck nothing.
He stood frozen, staring at the empty air he had hit. Then someone’s figure slowly came into focus.
Black clothes as dark as pitch. Calm eyes.
The young man looked barely thirty, yet his voice was so low and composed it was almost hard to believe.
“You should always watch your back. Leave an opening like that, and even I can’t just stand by.”
“You…!”
The Third Elder bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
It wasn’t the Fire King, Jeok Cheongang. It wasn’t the Blazing Flame Divine Dragon, Jin Taekyung.
It was the young brat he had ignored from the beginning—the one who had somehow kept a dagger hidden and now driven it into his back.
With a single surprise attack.
“And you still call yourself a man of the orthodox faction!”
It was a hollow accusation, without sense or grounds. Sama Pyo shrugged.
“That’s all right. I’m from the unorthodox faction.”
“……!”
“And one more thing.”
Sama Pyo paused and casually flicked his hand.
Another flash came from the ample sleeve of his martial robe.
“I brought plenty of daggers.”
Whish!
A sharp whistle drowned out his last quiet words.
Watching the streak of light fly straight toward him, the Third Elder sneered inwardly.
At least, until he realized he couldn’t move. The terrible internal injury Jin Taekyung had dealt him and the dagger lodged in his back held him fast.
What is this…!
Thwack!
The dagger pierced the center of his forehead, and the Third Elder felt the world go dark.
The last thing he heard was Jeok Cheongang, who had watched it all, speaking.
“That’s one. No, two.”
The Third Elder, whose breath had already stopped, didn’t see it.
At the very moment his final breath left his body, the spearhead of White Flame, cloaked in dark-blue Force, sliced through the Second Elder’s throat.
Slash!
Beneath the fountain of blood, the First Elder’s eyes widened in horror. His body trembled.
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