Chapter 1047

If you asked what mattered most in deciding the outcome of a battle, every single person would give the same answer.

The quality of the troops—or their numbers.

But ask a general commanding an army, and he would answer differently.

He would name the two words that flashed through the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s mind at that very moment.

Momentum.

There was no doubt about it.

The enemy’s momentum—the tide of battle—had changed.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord suddenly felt the air grow hot.

Their fighting spirit, which had been fading little by little like a campfire soaked by drizzle, was flaring up again. The shouts they raised with all their strength grew louder and fiercer.

An emotion close to desperation. A resolve to face death.

Weapons swung with their final spark of life, as if their wielders had never once considered giving up.

And then—

Shwaaa!

A dazzling streak of light cut through the air ahead of them.

KWA-BOOOOM!

A flash packed with terrible destructive force swallowed dozens of Dark Heaven cultists in an instant.

The explosions of fireballs, large and small, had already opened gaps in the cultists’ ranks. Now another powerful streak of light shook their once-solid formation.

All the enemy needed was a spear to slip through that opening and pierce their heart.

Something like…

A golden spear called the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

KRAK-KOOM!

Deafening shouts mingled with thunderous booms.

The two sides collided. Blades swung like lightning, lives were lost and spared, and a thick mist of blood blanketed the area.

It took only an instant for the golden wave that had swept down the steep slopes of the Great Snow Mountain and charged onto the battlefield to turn red.

Slice! Thud-thud!

A flashing blade severed a neck in one stroke. A sharp spearhead pierced a chest.

Each guard had reached at least Supreme First Rate, and some had attained the Peak realm. That was how they had earned the honor of protecting the Imperial Family. The Great Nation’s most powerful fighting force cut and stabbed through everything in its path.

Their fierce shouts proclaimed why they had come to this battlefield.

“Long live His Majesty the Emperor! May His Highness the Imperial Younger Brother live a thousand years!”

“For the Marquis of Shangshan!”

“Attack!”

Shwish-shwish-shwish!

With the fanatically loyal guards at their head, more than twenty thousand surviving Coalition Army soldiers charged forward.

Some sought revenge for their comrades. Others fought for a greater cause.

Their reasons and aims differed, but they all wanted the same thing.

Victory.

And the Blood-Sword Demon Lord, who felt the scales of battle tipping rapidly in the face of this unexpected turn, wanted a glorious victory here today just as much as they did.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…!”

A groan escaped through his clenched lips.

The battle was unfolding in a direction he had never expected.

The Bow Saint—and now the Embroidered Uniform Guard?

The Bow Saint was one of the Three Saints; nothing more needed to be said about her. The Embroidered Uniform Guard, directly under the Imperial Family, was the Great Nation’s sharpest sword.

His side still held the advantage in numbers, but he could no longer be sure they were stronger overall.

And now that this powerful reinforcement had restored the momentum of the more than twenty thousand enemy soldiers, they were charging wildly. Unease began to take root in one corner of the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s mind.

No… No, that can’t be.

He tried desperately to reject the word that had appeared in his mind without warning.

Defeat.

Even now, when he had become more powerful than ever, he could feel himself shrinking from the thought.

The sorcerers are still here. The Grand Sorceress is, too. If that bitch can do what she did before, we won’t be outmatched.

But why?

The enormous ball of fire that had stunned even him, though he was on her side, had not appeared again.

He sensed neither another spell nor a surge of qi heralding one.

…Why?

Could something have happened to the Grand Sorceress in that brief time?

His heart lurched, and he turned to check what was happening on the hill.

Or rather, he tried to.

Someone who had been watching him calmly spoke up.

“Things aren’t going your way, are they?”

Black Night King Sima Gong.

At the words that passed between his bloodied lips, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s face twisted like a fiend’s.

“What?”

“I understand. Sometimes things turn out that way.”

Sima Gong continued calmly, though his voice was weary. He looked at his arm—or rather, the shoulder where the Blood-Sword Demon Lord had brutally torn it away.

“Half an hour ago, I never imagined I’d end up like this either.”

He wasn’t saying that merely because he had lost an arm.

Sima Gong was half-submerged in a pool of blood. Thick blood that belonged to him alone.

Yet the Blood-Sword Demon Lord, who had struck down the traitor in his path in moments, trembled with rage, not the joy of punishment.

“If it weren’t for you—if it weren’t for you…!”

Everything had gone badly wrong.

Under the original plan, Sima Gong was supposed to order the Gansu Coalition Army to retreat at the right moment, leaving the Blood-Sword Demon Lord an easy victory.

That had been their bargain.

If Sima Gong helped Dark Heaven win in Gansu, they would use the province as a foothold to seize the Central Plains. In return, they would recognize his ownership of Gansu and Shaanxi.

A secret bargain, struck on terms both sides found reasonable.

And part of it had already been carried out successfully.

Not here at the Great Snow Mountain, but in Dunhuang, at the western edge of Gansu Province.

“Was this your plan from the beginning? Did you use the Kongtong Sect—of all people—as a mere decoy, just to win today and convince us you were still our spy?”

Questions poured out of him in a rush.

There was no time to waste. He ought to have killed this traitor, whom he could have torn apart without feeling satisfied, and begun salvaging the situation at once.

But the Blood-Sword Demon Lord still could not believe his judgment had been wrong. He had to hear the answer.

The Black Night King Sima Gong he knew was an unorthodox man to the bone. To survive, he would join hands with the devil himself, let alone Dark Heaven. He was a pest worse than a bat.

That was why the Blood-Sword Demon Lord had chosen him for the bargain. Even so, he had held on to his last doubts right up until he set foot in Gansu.

Only after he won a resounding victory over the Kongtong Sect guarding Dunhuang, using the information Sima Gong had given him, had he finally let those doubts go.

“Answer me! Now!”

Anyone else would have reacted the same way.

The Kongtong Sect had resisted fiercely in Dunhuang and suffered terrible losses. No one, however willing to sacrifice the few for the many, would have dreamed of using a member of the Nine Sects and One Gang as bait for a temporary ruse.

At last, under the overwhelming aura radiating from the Blood-Sword Demon Lord, Sima Gong’s tightly closed lips parted.

“I’m not a madman. I’m too rational to commit the lunacy of betraying someone a second time. That’s why I joined hands with you.”

His words confirmed what the Blood-Sword Demon Lord had thought.

But the answer he wanted only left him with a bigger question.

“Then why the hell—”

“Why? Why did I do this? Well…”

Sima Gong cut him off. He blinked weakly and asked himself the same thing.

Why had he made such a foolish choice?

When everything had been going smoothly, why had he crossed a river he could never return from?

Then he found himself thinking of someone who was not here—and should not be—and smiled bitterly.

“Maybe I lost my mind for a little while.”

“What… did you say?”

“But it’s a damn good thing I did. It worked, didn’t it?”

In the end, the moments Sima Gong had spent holding back the Blood-Sword Demon Lord had not changed the course of the battle. But Fire King Jeok Cheongang, whom he had helped, would never forget them.

That was enough for Sima Gong.

Even if he died, the Black Dragon Demon Gate would have at least some measure of absolution, enough to survive.

His heir, who wasn’t here, would live and make everything Sima Gong had passed down even stronger.

“I’m tired. Time to rest.”

The old unorthodox sect leader spoke calmly to the Blood-Sword Demon Lord, who stood frozen with his eyes wide.

Then he added the one thing he had long wanted to say to the fanatic before him, the man who had betrayed the Heavenly Demon to serve a new master.

“Go ahead and kill me, you bat-like Demonic Cult bastard.”

“…!”

Grind.

A chilling scrape came from between the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s clenched teeth.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord clenched his molars as if to crush them, then raised his sword, pouring his rage into its tip.

He aimed it at the traitor who had ruined a plan that should have succeeded—who had dared to throw filth across the path of the mighty Lord of Heaven.

Shwaaa!

But just as the blade, wrapped in dark-red Force, was about to fall like lightning—

Shing! KRAK-KOOM!

A streak of light flew in from somewhere and struck the flat of the blade dead on.

Slice!

The sword veered off at the last moment and split the ground instead, as easily as a knife cutting tofu. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord recognized the streak of light and shouted, his voice boiling with fury.

“Bow Saint…!”

As if answering his call, another Force arrow came flying through the crumbling ranks of Dark Heaven’s cultists.

Shwish-shwish-shwing!

Five streaks of light illuminated the surroundings. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord gritted his teeth, and his figure blurred.

Bang! Bang! KWA-BOOOOM!

Explosions and thunderous booms followed his sword as it moved faster than sound.

Considerable force traveled through the trembling blade into his hand, but that was all.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord easily cut or deflected every Force arrow the Bow Saint fired. He bared his teeth in a grin.

“So this is all you’ve got?”

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord remembered something his moment of doubt had made him forget.

That’s right.

With the sorcerers’ help, he was stronger now than he had ever been.

Even if the Bow Saint, one of the legendary Three Saints, had appeared, she was no match for him now that he had surpassed his limits.

I don’t know why that insolent bitch, the Grand Sorceress, is still quiet…

Tzzzz.

Beyond the blazing Force, a sinister blood-red light glinted.

“Come on. I’ll take you all on.”

And in the very next moment, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord realized—

“Now that’s good to hear.”

—there was another fact he had briefly forgotten.

“Joining forces to take on one man at my age was going to be embarrassing. You’ve set my mind at ease.”

Fire King Jeok Cheongang.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s pupils trembled as he spotted the old monster of Mount Jiuhua. A kindly smile rested on Jeok Cheongang’s lips, utterly at odds with the terrifyingly intense flames wrapped around both his hands.