Ding. Ding. Ding.
Clear chimes rang in my ears. At the same moment, System notifications confirmed the results of my actions, and new vitality welled up from deep within me.
System
Defeated Lv. 152 Go Gwangryung!
Defeated Lv. 150 Jeok Hwanyang!
Defeated Lv. 155 Pung Sogwi!
Defeated Lv. 160 Hwang Dokso!
Acquired a massive amount of EXP and Fame!
Level Up!
The effects of leveling up have restored all energy, cured all status conditions, and healed some injuries!
Shaaah.
Was this what it felt like to wash yourself from head to toe in a cool mountain stream on a sweltering summer day?
I took a deep breath as the exhaustion of that brief but fierce fight melted away all at once.
Whew.
But it wasn’t a sigh of relief at having taken down four Black Ghosts.
It was only a breath to steady myself while I waited for the one person still standing—the one we had to defeat to win this battle.
“Old Master.”
“Yeah.”
Jeok Cheongang nodded at my brief call.
“He’s coming.”
At that moment—
Clack, clack, clack.
The Dark Heaven followers had never seemed to grow fewer, no matter how many we killed. Even after the Black Ghosts fell, those fanatics had kept closing in around us. Now they stopped in unison.
Then they opened a path with grave, orderly movements.
A path for just one person.
Step. Step.
“My apologies. I’m later than I intended.”
His footsteps and calm voice carried clearly, even from a distance.
I shrugged at the Blood-Sword Demon Lord.
Thump.
I kicked the remains of what had been called Black Ghosts—now scattered into dozens of large and small fragments.
“If you’re sorry, go kill yourself.”
“That would be difficult.”
“Figured. Anyway, I’m fine. I was playing with your friends.”
“Friends? If you mean the trash lying there, you’re mistaken.”
“Trash?”
“Every one of them was pathetic. During the Great Faction War, they either ran wild like reckless brats who didn’t know their place and got themselves killed, or failed to recognize the true Heaven and raised their swords against it.”
That gave me an idea of what the Black Ghosts—the Death Knights who had appeared here today—had been in life.
“They were Demonic Cult fiends. You used to eat from the same pot.”
The Blood-Sword Demon Lord nodded readily.
“Once. A very long time ago.”
I’d suspected as much.
Everything that came into being had a cause. To make Death Knights this powerful, you obviously needed people of comparable stature to make them from.
“No wonder. Even their names sound like they belonged to a bunch of lowlife bastards.”
“Their names?”
“Go Gwangryung, Jeok Hwanyang, Pung Sogwi, Hwang Dokso… No one with a normal head comes up with names like those. Right?”
The names came out without a moment’s hesitation. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord looked at me in surprise.
“How strange. How do you know their names?”
“What, weren’t they famous? Just hearing their names puts me in a shitty mood. I can practically tell what kind of lives they led.”
“There was a time when everyone in the Central Plains knew of them. By their sobriquets, that is. But…”
The Blood-Sword Demon Lord looked between Jeok Cheongang and me before adding, “A martial artist is known by their martial arts and sobriquet, not their name. Even back then, very few knew those men’s real names. Even with someone who’s spent many years gaining experience at your side, you couldn’t have learned those names.”
He sounded certain.
And for good reason. Xinjiang, once the Demonic Cult’s stronghold and now Dark Heaven’s home, had always been that kind of place.
A Land of Ruin where no one could set foot without permission.
A religious state beyond the desert, whose veil even the Hidden Shadow Pavilion had managed to lift only a little, after long and meticulous preparation.
But I was different.
I could read information no one else knew, even if it was only in fragments.
As long as the subject was in front of me.
And as long as the gap between our strength and abilities wasn’t too great.
Shaaah!
At that moment, a blue circle I couldn’t see swallowed up the space around us in a flash of light, responding to my will.
Qi Sense, now nine-tenths mastered, reached out from me and washed an area more than fifty jang1 in radius in blue.
Ding. Ding-ding-ding.
Countless System windows appeared over the heads of the hundreds—no, thousands—of enemies within Qi Sense’s range.
But my gaze stayed fixed on one person.
The Blood-Sword Demon Lord had stopped walking the instant Qi Sense activated.
System
Lv. 170 Chuk Banghyeol
I could clearly make out the Level window above his head from more than twenty jang1 away.
I could see his furrowed brow and puzzled expression, too.
“What in the world did you just—”
Qi Sense wasn’t a term exclusive to me. Martial artists who had reached a certain realm routinely gauged and read their own qi and that of others.
But Qi Sense as part of the System felt different from theirs.
“What did you do?”
His voice had dropped. The warmth had gone from his tone.
I grinned at him.
“Our Banghyeol sure has a lot of questions. Is it because you’re still in your prime?”
“……!”
“Oh, was that name a secret too? Why do you fiends have so much to hide?”
Jeok Cheongang had experienced my Qi Sense when we first met in Shanxi Province. He clicked his tongue and joined in.
“You may not know this, but that thing feels pretty damn unpleasant. The first time, even I thought some bizarre dark art had been used on me.”
“But he’s a fiend. Shouldn’t dark arts feel familiar to him?”
“Well…”
Jeok Cheongang studied the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s rigid face before answering.
“Maybe he’s embarrassed. Even from what little I’ve heard, it’s not a very good name. Banghyeol? That’s supposed to be a person’s name? Sounds like a fart.”
“Come on. Even if you’re old enough to have shoved your years up your ass, you can’t make fun of him for that. That man’s probably almost a hundred himself.”
“You wait till you’re old. Sometimes you feel strange for no reason. Who knows? Maybe he sits under the moon every night with tears in his eyes.”
“Oh.”
The idea that a notorious great fiend had finally entered menopause was pretty interesting. But the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s next words wiped the look from my face.
“You’re right, Blazing Flame Divine Dragon Jin Taekyung.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you just say it yourself? That dark arts ought to be familiar to him.”
He gazed down at his hands, as though trying to recall the sensation my Qi Sense had left behind.
“I see. It’s a little different from what I know, but it does feel familiar.”
“……!”
My eyes widened before I could stop them.
Different, but familiar.
The meaning of those few words was becoming clearer. So was the source of the unease rising within me.
“At first, I was surprised. Now I finally understand why that person watched you so closely.”
Step. Step. Splash.
The Blood-Sword Demon Lord crossed the dry, frozen ground and stepped into a pool of blood.
Plip.
Blood splashed with his roughened stride.
A powerful energy covered the slowly rising blade, thicker and more viscous than the blood itself.
“But this time, that person was wrong. I should have handled this myself from the start. There was never any need to stop me or worry about me.”
Wooooong.
I felt something change around the Blood-Sword Demon Lord.
Not because the wind had stopped and the air was trembling.
Not because the sword in his grip was roaring as it poured out immense Force.
Beep.
System
Lv. 175 Chuk Banghyeol
“……!”
It had changed.
The qi he gave off. The number in his Level window.
This is…
I knew instinctively.
The Blood-Sword Demon Lord hadn’t simply been concealing his strength through Returning to Simplicity.
He definitely, definitely wasn’t this strong before.
We had clashed once before the battle began in earnest. Jeok Cheongang and I had fought at full strength, and so had the Blood-Sword Demon Lord. The result had been clear: he was at a disadvantage.
So why?
Beep.
System
Lv. 178 Chuk Banghyeol
How?
Beep.
System
Lv. 180 Chuk Banghyeol
How was the Blood-Sword Demon Lord growing stronger even now, as he slowly approached us?
“What in the world… What dark art are you using?”
There was no way a master wouldn’t feel what his Disciple felt.
Jeok Cheongang’s question cast light on the unease that had been swelling inside me.
Dark arts.
A dark, devious technique, just as the words themselves meant.
Those who used them had strayed from the straight and righteous path into demonic, heterodox arts. And those who dwelled deepest in that abyss belonged to what people called—
The Demonic Path.
People who rejected life as humans and chose the path of demons.
Then what should the dark arts wielded by beings so full of incomprehensible mysteries be called?
How had those beings known as Black Ghosts come into existence, and appeared here?
“…No.”
“What?”
“It’s not dark arts.”
The words slipped from my lips in a dazed murmur.
Jeok Cheongang’s repeated questions grew distant, like echoes. For a moment, I even forgot the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s presence, growing stronger with every step he took toward us.
As if entranced, I looked at the white-robed figures.
Until now, his presence had obscured them. They were only a tiny part of this vast battlefield, where the fighting still raged.
No. Like the Black Ghosts, they possessed power that should not exist in this world.
“Magic.”
And the moment that familiar, unbelievable word slipped from my lips—
“Power of the Wind Ghost.”
A chant rang out clearly from far away.
“Dwell within him.”
The spell, imbued with intent, manifested in the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s body.
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