Chapter 1066

Ding!

System

Entered Qinghai Province.

The System notification chimed just as I was striding toward Great Sir with my fist clenched. I stopped.

“You made the right call. There’s nothing to gain by hitting someone who’s already in rough shape… Are you listening to me?”

“Shh.”

Hyuk Mujin had sighed in relief, apparently thinking I’d changed my mind. I signaled for him to be quiet and looked around.

Dense forest lay under the cover of darkness, and insects chirped here and there.

Nothing about the landscape had changed, but all of us had just crossed an invisible boundary. The System was always accurate. It never lied.

Great Sir had somehow fulfilled the task he’d been given. Now he looked as puzzled as the question marks that had floated above his head.

“What’s wrong, Jang Sam?”

“…I’m Jin Taekyung, not Jang Sam.”

To be honest, I’d doubted him right up to the end.

Following someone who couldn’t even remember his own name was hardly a wise decision. He’d kept changing direction along the way, too. Even Sama Pyo, who’d spent his whole life in Gansu Province, had questioned him more than once.

Still.

It worked out.

We’d shaved at least two days off the journey I’d expected. The mountain route had been rough, but the time we’d saved gave us a chance to rest and build up our Stamina.

The question is, how does this guy know a route like this?

The obvious question came back to me. But then Great Sir opened his mouth in a jaw-splitting yawn, and I found myself shaking my head.

What good would it do to keep wondering? The man had been all over the place for ages, and the System had stamped him with its official Madman seal. There was no room left for doubt.

What mattered was that Great Sir was at least on our side. Thanks to him, we had reached Qinghai Province.

More precisely, the area near Qinghai Province’s northwest border.

And this place is…

Right.

Enemy territory, now under Dark Heaven’s control and filled with countless dangers.

Some three thousand people.

That was no small number. In the modern world, a Guild with that many Hunters would easily count as a major one. Even a sect among the Nine Sects and One Gang—apart from the Beggars’ Sect—would have to gather its lay Disciples from outside its main stronghold to reach that number.

But everything was relative.

Dark Heaven’s army invading Qinghai rivaled the Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples of old. Against it, three thousand people were no more than fireflies before the sun.

This is urgent, but if we rush straight in with everyone this exhausted, we’ll be the ones getting slaughtered.

So I proposed a day’s rest in the mountains where we’d stopped. No one objected.

Not even Perfected Being Hyeoncheon, whom I’d expected to be the hardest to persuade. If anything, he went out of his way to show me more respect than necessary, which only left me flustered.

“A sound judgment indeed. Very well. What are your orders after we rest?”

“Sorry? My orders?”

“Is something wrong? If you’d rather call them commands, I don’t mind.”

“…I’d rather you curse me out. Why are you doing this to me?”

Was this how a family heir felt when his grandfather’s generation bowed deeply to him during a holiday gathering?

At my thoroughly disconcerted reaction, Perfected Being Hyeoncheon gave a quiet laugh and said something I hadn’t expected.

“Perhaps you should look around you once in a while.”

“What do you mean…?”

“See how many people stand around you. See how they look at you. That will tell you where you stand now.”

“…!”

Only then did I notice how many eyes were fixed on me.

The admiration and goodwill in their gazes were so clear I felt I could reach out and touch them. Gratitude showed in their faint smiles, impossible to hide.

Then Perfected Being Hyeoncheon’s warm voice drifted into my ears.

“Whether you ask, instruct, or command us makes no difference. We all owe you a great debt.”

“A debt…”

“In Murim, gratitude and grudges must be repaid. But I have forgiven my grudge. Now I wish to repay the kindness shown to me. I expect they feel the same.”

I thought for a moment about how they must feel.

They’d lost comrades they’d shared years of hardship with, family, Senior and Junior Brothers. Before they’d even begun to recover from the fear and sorrow they’d felt on the battlefield, they’d chosen of their own accord to follow me into another deadly place.

They had come to repay a debt, but they were also driven by a desire for revenge that would bring darkness to this land.

And that desire was itself a light against the darkness.

“Ah.”

It was a strange feeling. One I couldn’t imagine ever getting used to.

I had no idea what to say.

But the old Daoist, whose wisdom matched his long life, didn’t demand a reply.

Pat, pat.

He gave my shoulder a couple of silent pats and walked away. Everyone else’s attention remained on me.

The Disciples of the Kongtong and Zhongnan Sects.

The martial artists of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Black Dragon Demon Gate.

Even Jeok Cheongang and Bow Saint, standing among the Fire Dragon Pavilion members, merely nodded in silence.

As though they’d follow me to the end, even if I were headed straight for hell.

“I… No, I…”

With some three thousand people watching me, I slowly opened my mouth.

And at the very moment the suffocating silence broke, a thought suddenly struck me.

How can it be this quiet?

Only then did I realize that the loud chirping of insects hidden throughout the thick forest had stopped at some point.

The birds perched high in the branches had vanished, too.

“…!”

A chill ran down my spine.

Rumble. Rumble.

A faint tremor finally reached us from far away. With it came the eerie cry of something unknown, carried to my ears on the desolate wind.

Grrrk.

“…Shit.”

The curse slipped out on reflex.

I tightened my grip on White Flame’s shaft and stared past the darkness at the enemies coming to meet their unexpected visitors.

Then I gave my first command in Qinghai Province.

“Prepare for battle.”

Shing! Shing! Shing!

Countless waves of steel rose all at once, their cold gleam lighting up the darkness—and revealing the enemies who had approached behind its veil.

“…A-ah…”

At the low groan that escaped someone’s lips, the enemy crawling up the ridge ahead of the others tilted his head.

Plop. Plop.

Pale brain matter dripped from his skull. Nearly half his head was already gone.

Since a time so distant it had left no written record, people had called a vast mountain range at the far western edge of the world:

“The land closest to heaven, its highest peaks touching the clouds…”

The Blood Lord murmured the words to himself, looked around, and nodded.

The mountain range stretched on in endless, overlapping ridges, its many peaks rising here and there. It was majestic and beautiful enough to make anyone gasp.

“Quite a sight. I can see why people of the Central Plains hold this place sacred. And why those worthless Kunlun Sect Daoists fought so desperately to protect it. Don’t you agree?”

At the Blood Lord’s sudden question, the Grand Sorceress, seated on a large rock and making strange gestures with her hands, answered,

“You seem rather taken with the scenery.”

“Well, Tianshan is bleak. You can’t deny that.”

“Then why not formally ask to join the Kunlun Sect? Who knows? Perhaps you’ll become its Sect Leader someday.”

The mockery was obvious, but the Blood Lord didn’t react as she’d intended. He stared at her with an odd look, then shrugged.

“Not a tempting offer. Got anything better?”

His easy reply made the Grand Sorceress frown.

“What’s gotten into you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You weren’t like this before.”

“Wasn’t I?”

The glib answer was nothing like the man she remembered. As she watched him, irritation welled up inside her.

Deranged monster. Acting as if he hasn’t a care in the world.

The Blood-Sword Demon Lord had been a bloodthirsty killer, but she found the Blood Lord even harder to stomach.

Stupid, vicious, and utterly shameless.

Those three qualities gave her ample reason to dislike him. But something else bothered her more.

Why does that person keep someone like him so close?

She couldn’t understand it.

As far as she had seen, the Blood Lord was neither more skilled in martial arts nor more cunning than the four Demon Lords and the Demon Empress who had died before him.

But there was no denying that, unlike the Blood-Sword Demon Lord, a mere piece on the board, the Blood Lord had his master’s trust. And the fact that he stood on equal footing with her only made her more uncomfortable.

And then there was the person sitting just a few jang¹ away, giving off a dreadful stench the entire time.

Jingle. Jangle.

The Grand Sorceress grimaced at the man in black. He sat cross-legged, muttering without pause.

The foul odor drifting over on the wind was bad enough, but the dull, grating jingling of his bells every time he moved was even worse. The more she heard it, the more it grated on her, as though an awl were digging into her ears and unsettling her mind.

“Who is he?”

“My subordinate,” the Blood Lord answered readily.

“You had someone like him working for you? There’s something oddly familiar about him. And unpleasant.”

“That would be because he’s a sorcerer.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. He’s a different kind of sorcerer from a certain sharp-tongued bitch. He only joined my ranks recently, actually.”

The Grand Sorceress’s eyes widened as she caught his meaning.

“Then…”

“That’s right. Until a few months ago, he served another Demon Lord. Though, to be precise…”

The Blood Lord’s mouth curved into a smile.

“I suppose he was that Demon Lord’s Disciple, rather than his subordinate.”

At that very moment—

Clatter.

The bell rang again, louder and deeper than before, and the man in black raised his head.

Pale skin. Eyes with a bluish cast.

And a dry voice, without a hint of emotion.

“I found it.”

Not so long ago, Ma Sanbao had held the imperial court in his grasp as the East Depot’s Brush-Holding Eunuch. At his report, the Blood Lord smiled with satisfaction.

“Now that is very welcome news.”