Chapter 1048

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord stared at the two figures before him, his gaze wavering.

It was a strange sensation—one even he, a fiend who had made his mark on an entire age, had experienced only a handful of times.

Beneath a sky buried in storm clouds, countless enemies and allies were locked in a desperate battle. And yet it seemed as though those two alone filled his field of vision.

That was how much weight and meaning their titles carried: Fire King and Bow Saint.

All the more so when two living legends appeared in one place.

I can’t see an opening…

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord swallowed without realizing it.

Not a hundred enemies. Not a thousand. There were only two people before him.

And yet those two made him feel as if he were surrounded on all sides by an army of more than ten thousand.

No—the pressure was greater than that.

Step.

For an instant, three footsteps sounded together.

Jeok Cheongang and the Bow Saint slowly closed in from either side. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord instinctively stepped back, then belatedly realized what he’d done and flushed.

He’d been pushed back.

By their aura. By their fighting spirit.

And Fire King Jeok Cheongang was not the sort of man to politely overlook it.

“What happened? A moment ago, you said you’d take us all on. Changed your mind already?”

“…You damn old monster.”

“That sounds good today. Go on, say some more.”

“What?”

“Are your ears already failing you, you little brat? I said keep running your mouth.”

Jeok Cheongang grinned and continued.

He was visibly wounded, but a fierce heat still burned in his voice and on his face.

“Come to think of it, every bastard who’s talked to this old man like that has ended up dead. Every last one.”

“…!”

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s eyelids quivered.

It was an obvious taunt, but he could feel that Jeok Cheongang wasn’t just putting on a show.

No matter how far he’d surpassed his former limits, it was hard to imagine him gaining the upper hand against both the Fire King and the Bow Saint at once.

Shwaak!

And then, at that very moment, a streak of light cut through the air. For all its dazzling brilliance, it was more than enough to deepen the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s unease.

Rrrr, KWA-BOOM!

A Force arrow came flying without warning.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord reacted at once, batting away the terrifying streak of light. As he tightened his grip on the sword hilt trembling from the impact, a graceful figure emerged through the cloud of dust.

Swish.

Her steps were so light they seemed weightless.

Her dust-covered clothes fluttered, proof of the punishing journey she’d made across half the land without a moment to catch her breath.

But the woman’s face, visible above them, was flawless, and her eyes shone cold and bright as she watched her enemy beyond the dust cloud.

Three jang¹ ahead. Three chi² to the left.

So Gyo—no, the great martial artist known as the Bow Saint—shot forward and gripped her beloved weapon.

At the same time, three streaks of Force gathered along her white fingers as they flashed into motion.

Pa-pa-pat!

The dust cloud split apart. Force arrows, carrying power greater than lightning, cut through everything in their path.

Before the Blood-Sword Demon Lord could even see past them, he felt a surge of power on the other side. He swept his sword through the air with all his strength.

Whoooom!

A horizontal slash that seemed capable of cutting through even Mount Tai.

Dark-red Force swelled around the blade, then swept aside the Force arrows with speed and strength far beyond human limits.

KWA-BOOOOM!

The air burst in every direction. The Force that had swallowed the streaks of light shot straight ahead.

Rrrrmmble!

It didn’t merely shake the earth. The strike laid waste to everything in its path.

But the destructive trail of that blood-red flash held no sign of the enemies the Blood-Sword Demon Lord was looking for.

Only two different whistles tore in from a blind spot.

Fwoosh! Shing!

In a world that seemed to slow, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s eyes flew wide.

One attack was as fierce as could be. The other was so stealthy it raised goose bumps.

Their energies were opposites—he could tell that from the sound alone. But the Blood-Sword Demon Lord knew better than anyone what they had in common.

If I let even one strike through, it’s over.

How many martial artists in this vast land could withstand the attacks coming at him now, even if the whole world were turned upside down?

The Fire King and the Bow Saint.

The Bow Saint and the Fire King.

They weren’t merely relics of a distant past.

They had written their own legends then, and carried those legends into the present. In the distant future, countless storytellers would sing of their deeds and praise them.

That was how legends lasted. How giants were remembered forever.

And perhaps, here today, a new verse would be written in that legend.

Two great martial artists had felled the fiend known as the Blood-Sword Demon Lord on the open plain of the Great Snow Mountain, amid blood and snow.

But…

That will never happen.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord clenched his teeth. As the flow of time slowly returned, he pushed every ounce of strength and every sense he possessed to its limit and twisted his body.

He moved with an agility he doubted he could ever summon again in his life.

Slice!

A sudden, burning pain ran along his arm and the side of his neck.

The Bow Saint.

She had separated her beloved weapon, which had been shaped like a bow, into two curved swords. She had already passed him by.

With two flashes of those blades, swung stealthily yet swiftly as lightning, she had torn away part of his nape and the shoulder of his left arm.

But an attack that should have taken his life outright had done surprisingly little. Before the pain could fully register, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord felt an appalling heat rush at him from the side.

Fwoosh! Poom!

Hng…!

It all happened almost at once.

Jeok Cheongang’s Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist swept fiercely past his flank.

That glancing blow alone melted away a fistful of flesh.

And the unbearable pain made the Blood-Sword Demon Lord suck in a breath and stop moving without realizing it.

But that was all.

At that moment, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord was cheering deep down because he had survived.

Even though the Bow Saint had taken one of his arms, and the heat from Jeok Cheongang’s fist had melted part of his flank and reached his innards as well.

That’s enough.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord had something to fall back on. Injuries like these were bearable.

What mattered more than anything was that he hadn’t fallen to the combined attack of the Fire King and the Bow Saint—and that, unlike them, who had already missed their perfect chance, he still had one move left.

I’ll kill them. I swear it!

A decisive strike always left an opening.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord suppressed the pain surging through him and brought his sword down at Jeok Cheongang, who watched him with eyes wide.

No—more precisely, he tried to.

Before he could, someone moved with a desperate resolve equal to—or perhaps greater than—his own moments earlier.

Thuk!

A fierce, unexpected pain shot through him. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord staggered, then stared in disbelief at the dark blade buried deep in his ankle—and at the face of the man holding it.

Black Night King Sima Gong.

“You son of a—”

The moment he managed to force out a groan—

“I told you. Every last one of them died.”

Poom! Krrrcrack!

At Jeok Cheongang’s cold voice, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s vision flipped over.

The dark sky. The ground covered in blood and snow. The countless people fighting and killing one another across it.

Everything turned blindingly white, then red.

Flame Divine Palm.

Unlike Jeok Cheongang’s cold voice, the dreadful heat melted flesh and broke bones as it sank deep into his body. Trapped by the excruciating pain, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord could do nothing.

But an unexpected stroke of luck awaited him—one even he hadn’t foreseen.

KWA-BOOM! KWA-BOOM! Krrrcrack!

His body shot away like a cannonball, unable to withstand the tremendous force. It rolled and crashed along the ground before finally slamming into something.

“Well.”

As the Blood-Sword Demon Lord spat blood mixed with bits of his innards, a voice drifted faintly into his ear.

“You’ve been badly hurt, Demon Lord.”

Was he hearing things?

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord blinked weakly as he wondered. Then he realized the slope beneath his battered body was a hillside, and that the voice he’d just heard sounded uncannily familiar.

“Guh, hahahaha!”

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord burst out laughing without meaning to.

Bloody phlegm bubbled in his throat, and every time his body shook with laughter, tremendous jolts of pain shot through his broken limbs. He didn’t care in the least.

He laughed like a madman.

Like the happiest person in the world. Like someone who had been rescued at the very edge of death.

Trembling with joy, he stretched a bloodied hand toward his savior.

No—he gave his subordinate an order.

“Heal me. Right now.”

The savior, the Grand Sorceress, gazed silently at the Blood-Sword Demon Lord. She slowly parted her lips to speak—

Shwaak!

A streak of light whistled through the air. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s eyes flew wide.

Beyond the Grand Sorceress’s shoulder, he saw a young man hauling himself up from where he had fallen. His eyes blazing, the young man brought his spearhead down.

There was not even a thread of internal energy in it. No trace of his usual strength or speed.

Jin Taekyung was squeezing out every last bit of strength he had left for a strike with all his might.

That crazy bastard…!

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord screamed soundlessly.

Clang!

An invisible barrier around the Grand Sorceress knocked away the silver-white spearhead.

It did so with astonishing ease, as if mocking the desperate hope behind the blow.

And then—

That was all.

Thud.

The spear shaft rolled from its owner’s powerless hand.

In the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s eyes, still wide with shock, a figure slowly began to topple.

Thump.

The body finally crumpled.

Jin Taekyung lay in a wretched heap, glaring weakly at him. The Blood-Sword Demon Lord sucked in a breath without realizing it.

You stubborn bastard.

He’d already reached his limit, and still he’d waited for a chance to strike.

His persistence was so terrifying it inspired awe—or rather, sent a chill down the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s spine.

But…

That desperate struggle ends here.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord bared his bloodied teeth in a grin.

If he were his former self—or even just a flesh-and-blood human—those injuries would have killed him several times over.

But his body, strengthened to an extreme degree, had granted him a brief handful of moments. Those moments would change everyone’s fate.

The Fire King and the Bow Saint, both rushing here with all their strength even now.

The tens of thousands of enemies and allies swinging their weapons amid the sea of corpses and blood.

And, most important of all, the Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s own life and death.

“It’s time… to put an end to this damned battle.”

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord forced out the words, his breathing noticeably more labored. The Grand Sorceress nodded calmly.

“Of course.”

At that moment—

Fwoosh.

A brilliant light spread from the Grand Sorceress’s fingertips.

A healing light, warm as the midday sun and clear as a pond deep in the mountains.

Ah.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord’s eyes closed without his meaning to.

For a moment, he let himself sink into the peace the light brought.

Then, after a moment that felt both brief and eternal, he opened his eyes.

He stared, unable to believe what he saw.

“What… is this?”

His body was still horribly mangled, not healed in the slightest.

And someone else, wrapped in the fading glow, was breathing more steadily than before.

No.

Jin Taekyung.