Chapter 1058

It happened in an instant.

The Blood-Clad Men, drenched head to toe in blood as they slaughtered their enemies, surrounded Sama Pyo and unleashed a terrifying wave of killing intent.

Shhhhhh.

There were about a hundred of them.

Their qi was so fierce that the lingering heat of the battlefield seemed to freeze. The air shifted all at once, and I could feel it clearly.

Even from thirty-odd yards away, where I’d stopped to watch.

And so could the Fire Dragon Pavilion members farther off, waiting as ordered with no idea what was happening.

“My Lord! It’s dangerous!”

The killing intent was so thick it seemed to erase the distance between them.

Taishan sensed Sama Pyo’s danger at once. With an urgent shout, he launched himself forward—only to be stopped in his tracks.

By me.

“What do you think you’re doing, Pavilion Master!”

He practically growled the words, his fighting spirit blazing.

I’d never seen him like this before.

But I couldn’t back down either.

This wasn’t some damn twist of fate or stroke of bad luck. Sama Pyo had made his own choice.

“Don’t go. Not yet.”

“Taishan will not obey such an unreasonable order!”

“I’m not ordering you. I’m asking. Just like Sama Pyo asked me not to interfere.”

“…!”

Taishan’s huge eyes wavered.

The Fire Dragon Pavilion members caught up, but before any of them could speak, Namho cut in with an unusually subdued voice.

Though perched on Taishan’s shoulders, he didn’t look especially authoritative.

“I know how you feel, but now isn’t the time.”

“Namho, but—”

“Oh, look at this angry bull!”

Smack!

Namho landed a sharp slap on Taishan’s forehead and gave him a stern scolding.

“Was it not enough to let sentiment blind you? Have you gone deaf too? Did you even hear what the Pavilion Master said?”

He was right.

I’d told Taishan clearly.

Not yet… Don’t go yet.

That’s right. Not yet.

I murmured it to myself and patted Taishan’s shoulder as, after a moment’s struggle, he lowered his two-section staff.

Then I turned toward the hundred figures radiating killing intent.

The Blood-Clad Men—or rather, the Kongtong Sect Disciples.

At their center stood an old man, watching Sama Pyo with deep, unreadable eyes.

Perfected Being Hyeoncheon.

The Sect Leader of the Kongtong Sect, one of the Nine Sects and One Gang. The greatest martial artist in Gansu.

And…

Another man bent on revenge, betrayed by those he’d trusted as allies and forced to lose countless Disciples.

Whoooosh.

His sleeves swelled with the force of his formidable internal energy.

At that moment, the emotionless, ink-black eyes—so deep their depths were impossible to discern—didn’t reflect Sama Pyo.

They reflected the bloodline of his enemy: a man Hyeoncheon would gladly tear to pieces.

Rumble.

The air trembled for yards around them. It was hard to breathe.

In the moment the overwhelming qi began slowly tightening around him from every direction, like the hand of an invisible giant, Sama Pyo froze. Then Perfected Being Hyeoncheon suddenly spoke.

“Lately, I keep remembering the first time I met your esteemed father, my friend. It was in the middle of the Great Faction War.”

The old Daoist had devoted his entire life to the Dao,¹ from infancy to old age. His gentle nature had earned him the respect of many.

He had never joined the ranks of the Ten Kings, but even as Sect Leader of the renowned Kongtong Sect, he had always been humble.

Yet even the largest vessel has its limits.

“At the same time, I regretted it. I wondered if I should have killed him then and there.”

Sama Pyo said nothing to the deep sigh in Hyeoncheon’s voice.

No—he couldn’t answer.

He hadn’t told the old Daoist the truth, but Hyeoncheon had already glimpsed part of it.

He had first heard of it from a woman.

“At first, I didn’t want to believe it. I tried to convince myself it was a ploy to stir up internal strife among the survivors from Dunhuang—that we were being used as stepping-stones for an even greater scheme.”

Hyeoncheon had tried to forget what he’d heard while hiding silently in the undergrowth. But his suspicions had only deepened with each passing day.

His distrust of one man: Sima Gong, the Black Night King.

Everything, including the ominous signs he’d sensed before setting out for Dunhuang, fitted together like the teeth of a gear.

“The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Every piece of information we received from the Black Dragon Demon Gate was wrong. And we were the only ones who bled.”

Kongtong Mountain, the Kongtong Sect’s home since ancient times, lay at the southeastern edge of Gansu. The Black Dragon Demon Gate’s territory, by contrast, covered the Dunhuang region in the northwest.

So the Kongtong Sect and the many sects that followed it had acted on information provided by the Black Dragon Demon Gate—and suffered a crushing defeat.

“Thousands died. In that single day.”

At the slight tremor in Hyeoncheon’s voice, the hundred Disciples surrounding Sama Pyo clenched their teeth.

How could they forget that horrific battle, which had begun like a bolt of lightning?

No. It had been a one-sided slaughter.

“Defending the city meant nothing. When that enormous army appeared out of nowhere, we couldn’t do a thing.”

The Three Elders of Tianshan.

The three old fiends from Tianshan, returned after decades away, had led the charge. Behind them came tens of thousands of cultists who knew no fear.

Neither the defenders’ unceasing volleys of arrows nor the city walls—built of solid stone coated with yellow earth—could stop them.

That immense human tide, black as night, had brought down the high walls in an instant and swept away everything in its path.

It swallowed the lives of fellow Disciples, friends, and family who had stood beside them for years.

“I would rather have fought there with them and died. Heroically, with my last breath.”

Hyeoncheon wasn’t alone in that wish. A hundred pairs of eyes, reddened and now glistening with tears, showed it.

But they had survived.

They’d had to.

If only to avenge those who had died screaming.

“So we ran away like cowards. We received unexpected help along the way and shook off our pursuers easily. The others weren’t so lucky.”

Luck wasn’t shared equally.

Thousands had died in Dunhuang alone. Those who fled in tears were still prey.

They scattered to survive, and thousands more were killed or wounded as they were hunted down.

Yet even after escaping Dark Heaven’s encirclement, Hyeoncheon and the Kongtong Sect Disciples hadn’t returned to the rear.

More precisely, they couldn’t return right away. Every one of them had been injured, some more seriously than others.

The suspicion the Grand Sorceress had planted deep in their hearts had already taken root. And as Hyeoncheon lay groaning from the severe injuries he’d suffered in battle against Dark Heaven, he suddenly realized whose familiar faces had passed through his mind.

It had happened as he hovered between life and death, vowing revenge.

They weren’t the faces of the mysterious woman behind the silver-white veil, or of the Three Elders of Tianshan and the Blood-Sword Demon Lord, who had captured and killed two Elders and hundreds of Disciples.

They belonged to the allies he’d trusted to guard their backs.

“Strange, isn’t it, my friend?”

His voice was low.

After three days at death’s door, Hyeoncheon had barely recovered from his injuries. He’d thought then:

Why?

Why, at the very moment he’d vowed revenge with the bitterness of chewing bear gall,² had they come to mind?

The Black Night King, Sima Gong. The Roaring Fury Swordsman, Song Il. The Taeeul Merciless Sword, Hwangbo Eom.

And the many leaders of Gansu who were little more than the Black Dragon Demon Gate’s servants.

Why did fire rise deep in his chest whenever he recalled each face and name the woman had revealed from behind her silver-white veil?

In the end, Hyeoncheon had found an answer.

He had come here with the surviving Disciples to confirm it with his own eyes.

And now, before he could begin his revenge, a young man had come to him of his own accord.

“Boy of the Sama family.”

His way of speaking had changed.

His voice was steady, edged with iron, but cold flames burned in the old Daoist’s eyes.

“Bring me your father. There’s something I must confirm before I draw my sword.”

Rumble.

The ground trembled faintly.

Sama Pyo looked down in silence at the ripples spreading across a pool of blood. Then he raised his head, which had remained bowed all this time, and spoke.

“He’s already gone. To a distant place from which he can never return.”

“…!”

Perfected Being Hyeoncheon’s eyes flew open.

So did the eyes of the Kongtong Sect Disciples surrounding Sama Pyo, their suffocating killing intent still bearing down on him.

They understood at once what he meant.

He was dead.

The Black Night King, Sima Gong.

The enemy they should have put to death with their own hands. The traitor whose crimes cried out to heaven.

And Sima Gong wasn’t the only traitor to meet that fate.

“Sect Leader!”

A grief-stricken cry rang out from somewhere.

A Kongtong Sect Disciple closed a distance of well over a hundred yards in an instant, moving like an arrow. His face was streaked with grief and fury as he threw himself down before Hyeoncheon.

“They… those men…!”

Before his cry could give way to sobs, Hyeoncheon turned.

In the distance, he saw the Zhongnan Sect’s flag rising at an angle.

Or rather, the two pieces of white cloth tied to its pole, fluttering weakly.

“A mourning flag…!”

At the anguished whisper that slipped through someone’s clenched teeth, the qi surrounding them surged violently.

The white cloth signaled someone’s death. Then there was the reaction of the Disciple who had just returned.

The meaning was clear.

The Roaring Fury Swordsman, Song Il, and the Taeeul Merciless Sword, Hwangbo Eom.

The two Zhongnan Sect traitors they’d meant to punish after Sima Gong were gone too.

Gone somewhere no movement technique could reach: the afterlife.

“Dead? You’re telling me they’re dead? Just like that?”

Grrk.

Hyeoncheon bit his lip.

The flesh split and blood flew, but that pain was nothing beside the agony in his chest, which felt ready to burst.

“How… how dare they…!”

Hyeoncheon flew into a rage.

Despite his still-healing body, his immense qi pressed down all around him. Even the Kongtong Sect Disciples nearby had to hold their breath.

Only Sama Pyo stood his ground.

“I’ll take his place.”

He barely forced the words out as he endured the Supreme Peak master’s qi with his whole body. Hyeoncheon’s gaze darkened.

“What did you say?”

“I said I’ll take his place. I’ll accept the punishment my sinful father owes for what he’s done.”

Silence fell. Sama Pyo bowed his head to everyone, Hyeoncheon included, and went on.

“I know how presumptuous that is. I know my insignificant life can’t make up for the grievances of those who are gone.”

He was right.

A person’s heart couldn’t simply be filled whenever it was emptied.

Nothing could fill a hole once it had been torn open.

You could keep putting things into it, trying to forget. Or you could look at the hole that remained no matter how much you put in and remember.

What had vanished because of a single mistake. The regret of losing it.

That was why Sama Pyo stood here. Why he wanted to walk a different path from his father.

“An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Death for death.”

In Murim, a blood debt between martial artists could only be repaid with blood.

“Strike me down. I won’t hold it against you.”

And at that moment—

Shing.

A dazzling flash burst from the sword at Perfected Being Hyeoncheon’s waist.