Chapter 1031

I didn’t wonder if I could do it.

I had to. I had to see it through.

Power came with responsibility, and the weight of that responsibility wouldn’t let me take even one step back.

That was why I was moving forward now.

Whoosh.

I lowered the First Elder, still in my grip, and planted my foot on the ground. In the same instant, I shot forward.

Ghost Illusory Slaughter Step.

The subtle art I’d learned from the greatest assassin of all time flowed through my feet.

My legs felt impossibly light. Wind brushed past me, then vanished without a trace in the heat radiating from someone nearby.

The moment I tightened my grip on the spear shaft—

Swaaash!

The world slowed.

Seven streams of Force fell like lightning from overhead. Jeok Cheongang and I flung out our hands at the same time.

KWA-BOOOOM!

A crash that seemed to split the sky rang out, and time, paused for an instant, surged forward like a raging torrent.

KRRRUNCH!

The ground flipped over from the force of the collision. My feet, light as air only moments ago, were driven back under a pressure of tens of thousands of pounds.

Damn it.

I felt the difference in strength the instant we collided, and my teeth clenched before I could stop them.

I’d expected them to be strong. Not this strong.

Seven.

Not one, not two, not three—but seven Death Knights.

No, the men in black were far too powerful. They hadn’t merely kept all their former strength; they’d grown stronger still.

Even with Jeok Cheongang at my side, their power was too much to withstand.

“Hngh…!”

A muffled breath came from right beside me.

Jeok Cheongang was holding off four enemies alone, proving his title as the Fire King. But this momentary standoff was like a glass bottle on the verge of shattering.

Just as it was now.

SHWING! KRAANG!

The three spears and swords, shrouded in pitch-black Force, met the White Flame’s blade once more. The impact left me gasping, and I felt my knees bend on their own.

They’re strong. The Three Elders of Tianshan don’t even compare.

The Three Elders had certainly been powerful masters. But inheriting the Thunderbolt Saber King’s internal energy and gaining insight weren’t the only reasons I’d been able to defeat them alone.

Sometimes a pack of wolves was more frightening than a single tiger.

The Three Elders had built their infamy as a pack, much like the Qilian Three Fiends, who had followed the Western Heaven Demon Lord and drenched Sichuan in blood.

But the men in black, closing in on me with tremendous strength and momentum even now, were different.

They were tigers.

Unlike the Three Elders of Tianshan, each one could command an entire mountain range—or, at least, they must have been able to in the past.

The worst part was that these tigers had lost their souls, grown even stronger, and now moved as a pack at one man’s command.

“How do they seem, now that you’ve faced them yourself? Impressive, aren’t they? I call them Black Ghosts.”

Behind the seven men in black—the seven Black Ghosts—the enemy’s vast army drew closer with every passing moment. Even over its roar, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s voice rang clear.

So did his aura, growing more intense with each slow step.

“Don’t struggle too hard. It’s a shame about Senior Jeok, but that can’t be helped. You, on the other hand, are a very important prize.”

I couldn’t see his face behind the Black Ghosts, but I could picture it, if only faintly.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord smiling. His eyes bright with excitement at the sea of corpses and blood to come.

“Who knows? If you surrender quietly now, perhaps both master and disciple can survive.”

Grrk. Grrrk!

Under the crushing pressure, I barely managed to force out my voice.

“Fuck… off!”

KWAANG!

I thrust the spear shaft upward. All three of their spears and swords flew into the air at once.

Four jiazi¹ of internal energy and a body far beyond human limits let me throw off the Black Ghosts’ combined attack, strengthened though they were at the cost of their souls. Only for a moment.

But that moment gave me an opening I wouldn’t get again.

SHHK!

I swung with all my strength and cut through them.

More precisely, I cut three huge black horses in half—ghost horses, powerful monsters in their own right.

FWOOOSH!

Instead of the blood any living creature should have had, a dark mist burst out. Jeok Cheongang, who’d been barely holding on, gaped at the unbelievable sight.

“What kind of fucked-up—!”

I’d have liked to explain, but now wasn’t the time.

The Black Ghosts lost their balance as their mounts vanished beneath them. I seized the chance and charged the four facing Jeok Cheongang.

SHK-SHK! KAKAKANG!

I slashed, stabbed, and struck.

They blocked all three lightning-fast attacks without difficulty. Waiting for them, though, was Jeok Cheongang’s palm strike, wreathed in brilliant white flames.

“Die.”

Whoosh—BOOM!

The Flame Divine Palm shot forward without even a sound of rushing air and struck one of the Black Ghosts.

The man took the blow square in the chest and flew back like a cannonball. Jeok Cheongang bared his teeth in a grin.

Or tried to.

“Good. That’s one—”

—Grrr.

The Black Ghost should have died, his whole body scorched black. Instead, he let out a strange groan and straightened up.

“…No, it isn’t.”

Perhaps the Flame Divine Palm’s force still lingered. Jeok Cheongang stared blankly as the Black Ghost staggered to his feet, then blinked at me.

“What the hell are those things?”

KWAANG!

I parried a Black Ghost’s sword and let out a breath before answering.

“Death. Death Knights.”

“Great Hand, Great Hand, Shift-Head? What the hell are you talking about?”

Unfortunately, I couldn’t clear up Jeok Cheongang’s confusion.

Before I could say another word, all the Black Ghosts charged at once, including the one Jeok Cheongang had knocked away.

KWA-BOOOOM!

My ears rang. Pain shot through my wrist, and both my legs sank deep into the ground.

The pressure was terrifying, as if Taishan itself were bearing down on me.

And just as Jeok Cheongang and I were trapped in a forest of steel, a fierce rush of air sounded from somewhere.

Whoosh—CLANG-CLANG!

A Black Ghost’s great saber knocked away a dozen or so throwing knives. I could guess who’d been fool enough to join this fight.

Sama Pyo. You idiot. What the hell are you doing here?

But there was only a hair’s breadth between courage and stupidity.

Sama Pyo was an idiot, but he was brave. He’d distracted only one of them, yet even that gave us a little room to breathe.

“Old Master, now!”

“Damn it!”

Jeok Cheongang spat a curse and shot out his fist like lightning.

KRRRUNCH!

Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist.

Flames erupted like an explosion, pushing back the weapons wrapped in black Force, if only for a moment.

The earth-shaking blast rattled everything for hundreds of feet. It also concealed a streak of light racing through the flames.

SHWING! THUNK!

A throwing knife left Sama Pyo’s hand and sank into a Black Ghost’s throat. The blade quivered.

Of course, I knew better than anyone that it wouldn’t be enough to bring him down.

Pshk.

The Black Ghost pulled out the knife as though it were nothing. I took advantage of the brief gap in their encirclement to leap back.

“You asked earlier what a Death Knight was.”

“……”

“They’re bastards like that.”

“……Shit. This is a fine mess.”

Jeok Cheongang sighed. Sama Pyo came up beside us, his face calm.

“What monsters.”

“Idiot. You should’ve fallen back earlier. What, did you come all this way for a good view?”

“I already regret it. But what exactly are they? Some kind of jiangshi?”

“Similar, but let’s say they’re a bit worse.”

Jiangshi would be a thousand times better.

If they were a Maoshan Sect specialty, at least the people of this world could call them native creatures.

But these Death Knights—the Black Ghosts—were an invasive species.

They would destroy the ecosystem and shatter every law and bit of common sense.

No. They already had.

How could this happen…?

I swallowed a quiet groan.

How it was possible no longer mattered.

The rules we’d all believed in had already crumbled, and now we had to deal with the wreckage.

That’s right. Not just a handful of us. All of us.

Rumble, rumble.

The ground trembled. The shouts that had shaken everything around us were now at my back, drawing up beside Jeok Cheongang and Sama Pyo.

“Infinite Life Buddha.”

The one approaching with a low invocation was the Wind-and-Cloud Sword Lord.

Beside him stood the Roaring Fury Swordsman and the Taeeul Merciless Sword, who had studied under the same master, along with nearly a thousand disciples of the Zhongnan Sect.

And there was another man, his face set hard.

“So it comes to this.”

The Black Night King, Sima Gong.

He commanded countless martial artists from Gansu—numbers in no way inferior to the enemy’s. His somber gaze rested on us.

No. On Sama Pyo.

His lips parted as though he meant to speak, but in the end he said nothing. He looked ahead instead, toward the rulers from beyond the desert, finally facing us on this vast snowfield.

“Enough.”

The Black Ghosts advancing silently toward us stopped as one. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord stepped out among them, an army of tens of thousands at his back.

Thud.

“Good. This is how you should meet me.”

Vrrrrm.

The gray-white blade trembled. Its color hardly suited the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s title, though it had reaped carnage that ranked among the worst of the Great Faction War.

Dark-red Force welled from it, the surges joining and binding together without pause as he leveled the sword at the people in his way.

It was too late for us to turn back. All we could do was press forward with everything we had.

WAAAAAH!

Shouts and killing intent, fear and anger, mingled and swelled.

Amid that violent whirl of emotion, I took a slow step forward.

Crunch.

Cold. Frost broke beneath my toes.

Thump.

My heart beat.

I quickened my steps to match its harsh, rapid rhythm.

Whoosh. SHWAAAAA!

The wind blew. The mild breeze became a raging gale, and I summoned that gale.

No—the whole battlefield did.

WAAAAAH!

Shouts, clouds, wind.

Beyond them, countless blades flashed.

And two vast armies raced across the dazzling white snowfield, colliding at last in its center.

KRRRUNCH!

The white snow turned red.

Through the blood mist as it billowed and spread, through countless screams and deaths, the superhumans shot toward one another.