Chapter 1107

Murim warriors spend their whole lives lingering at the crossroads of life and death.

Some live out their natural years thanks to their skill and the luck they were born with. Others get dragged into some petty squabble and die like dogs in an instant.

That was probably why.

They lived closer to death than anyone, so they’d even coined a grand term like life-and-death duel, trying to make their own uncertain end sound a little more solemn.

But at some point, I realized that no matter how many flowery words people used, or how many valorous titles they bestowed on one another, the nature of it never changed.

In the end, this was just a fight.

Each person gave everything they had to bring down the opponent in front of them, driven by their own cause, circumstances, or private feelings.

It could be fair. It could be unfair.

That was why it was a fight.

A simple, straightforward process: the one who was even half a step faster, ten geun¹ stronger, and far more ruthless and calculating won.

And I knew that very well.

I knew how wide the gap was between my opponent and me. I knew the best I could do right now.

And the worst, too.

Watching the Blood Lord cross a dozen or so jang² through the slowed world, I muttered to myself.

Did I regret this choice? Was I afraid of dying?

I didn’t know.

More precisely, I didn’t have enough time to answer.

Even in the sluggish flow of time, the Blood Lord moved like a flash of light—and I was definitely slower.

Half a step.

No. At least a full step stood between us now, a gap I could never close. It was an iron wall.

So there was nothing else I could do.

I could only charge at him like a moth.

Before that torch, reeking of blood, swallowed everyone, I had to put it out with one last beat of my wings, giving it everything I had.

Grnnk.

Every muscle in my body contracted at once.

At the same time, the internal energy I had left—less than a third—surged from my Lower Dantian to my Middle Dantian, then awakened the hundreds of large and small acupoints and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians lying dormant in my body.

Hoo.

I was so hot I felt as if I’d become a fire dragon myself. If I opened my mouth and roared, lava might pour out.

But I couldn’t do that.

I had only one chance to let that lava loose.

It wouldn’t be my first time, but it was all but certain to be my last.

The System warning chime that suddenly pierced my ears seemed to say as much.

Beeeeeeep.

Slowed along with the passage of time, it stretched into a long ringing, like the flatline of a heart monitor announcing a patient’s cardiac arrest. That hardly seemed an exaggeration.

One Annihilation.

The colossal mass of lava boiling up from deep within me held enough destructive power to turn even me to ash.

Fwoooosh.

Heat slowly surged outward, warping the space around me.

Flames that had seared my Lower Dantian, Middle Dantian, hundreds of acupoints, and Eight Extraordinary Meridians layered themselves over the spearhead.

All for one final chance.

This is it. The only way to bring him down.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time I’d used One Annihilation against the Blood Lord.

During the Shaolin Bloodshed, he’d taken the full force of it and still gotten back up, thanks to his incredible regenerative ability.

But an almost unfathomable gulf separated the me who’d been stuck at the Peak realm back then from the me I was now.

One Annihilation had grown just as much—powerful enough to devour even its wielder’s life.

Unlike last time, he won’t get back up.

One blow would render even the Blood Lord’s terrifying recovery useless.

Blue-black flames that would turn his body and even his soul to ash in an instant flickered along the spearhead of White Flame, drawn far back. And then—

Fsssss.

A sudden chill crept down my spine.

What was this feeling?

I was the archer. My body was the bow, and the string was already drawn all the way back.

All I had to do was let go.

All I had to do was thrust my spear at the Blood Lord, now just one jang² away, as if to blow up the whole world—and it would all be over.

Then why, at the most important moment, had this inexplicable sense of wrongness come over me?

Fear of the death that was all but certain now?

Regret for the life I’d lived and the people I’d leave behind?

Or my life flashing before my eyes as I sensed the end?

No.

That wasn’t it.

This feeling was different from any of those I’d experienced before.

It was a warning.

A signal from the other me—the one that followed nothing but instinct.

And at last, the moment reason and instinct met inside me—

……!

……!!

Time, held back until now, and everything around me—the noise and the surroundings—came crashing down all at once, like a massive wave breaking through a dam.

Through it all, a blurred afterimage flashed between the Blood Lord and me as we shot toward each other.

Fwoooosh!

From outside my field of vision came a fierce whistle, cutting through the wind and rain.

I realized too late that someone was there, clad from head to toe in pitch-black armor. No—something.

The blood in my body turned cold.

Black Ghost……!

So that was it.

That was what the unease I’d felt earlier meant.

The card the Blood Lord had kept hidden until the very end. He had grown stronger than before, and his planning had grown sharper still.

He planned it. He’d been waiting for this moment from the start.

The realization struck like lightning through my skull.

Only then did I understand.

It wasn’t the Blood Lord who’d let his guard down. It was me.

The other side could learn from past mistakes, too.

Despite his inhuman regenerative ability and overwhelming martial prowess, the Blood Lord had waited for One Annihilation until the very last moment, then put the Black Ghost he’d kept hidden in front of him as a shield.

As if he wouldn’t allow even the smallest variable.

And the price of my carelessness was shoving me hard in the back, right at the edge of a cliff.

There was no other way.

I’d already come too far to turn back.

“Damn it.”

With no choices left, I spat out the curse I’d been holding back and thrust my spear forward. My entire past and future rested on its tip.

Gooooom.

Space warped.

The fire dragon’s flames let out a tremendous roar, flooding everything I could see in blue-black.

At the last moment, as that dreadful heat was about to devour everything in its path, a streak of light swept past the Black Ghost like an apparition.

Shhk.

A faint sound of air being cut—so faint I wouldn’t have heard it if my senses hadn’t been sharper than ever.

And it wasn’t an apparition or a hallucination.

One Annihilation.

When that terrifying strike—the one that had briefly cornered him in the not-so-distant past—shot toward him, the Blood Lord thought:

It’s over.

Certainty in a life-and-death duel was no different from poison.

But even he, who’d endlessly turned over the final moments of the four Demon Lords and the Demon Empress who had fallen to Jin Taekyung, couldn’t help feeling certain now.

Blazing Flame Divine Dragon Jin Taekyung.

His sickening history with that damned brat, who made him feel foul just to think about, ended here.

The plan was perfect. It was as good as done.

You’ll never kill me.

There was no mistaking it: Jin Taekyung had grown beyond recognition.

And so, the Blood Lord had no doubt that the strike he couldn’t begin to understand had grown terrifyingly powerful, too.

It had become so powerful that even the Blood Lord, who now considered himself all but immortal, had thought of death when he felt the unprecedented energy wrapped around the spearhead.

But this was as far as it went.

The lion uses all its strength, even when hunting a rabbit.

Even a predator gives everything it has to catch a single rabbit.

It had taken the loss of an arm and a long period of humiliation for the Blood Lord to learn that lesson and put it into practice. But thanks to that, he could avoid the sharp teeth the rabbit had hidden.

The one Black Ghost he’d kept by his side for this moment alone.

He’d sent as many as eight Black Ghosts to the three gates other than the West Gate, then entered through the breached wall alone. It was all to pin down the enemy and make that brat let his guard down.

So Jin Taekyung would focus solely on him.

So he would believe the Blood Lord was his only enemy.

And the Blood Lord’s plan had worked.

No—more accurately, he thought it had worked.

The vast flames bursting from the spearhead swallowed the space around them. At that moment, a streak of light flew in from somewhere and swept past the Black Ghost that had moved between Jin Taekyung and the Blood Lord at his command.

Shhk.

……What?

A ripple of shock disturbed the Blood Lord’s unwavering gaze.

His eyes trembled, then slowly turned to the Black Ghost’s neck as it rose into the air.

In the gap between the two halves of its body, separated by empty space, a handful of purple Force scattered like flower petals.

That’s…

There was no mistaking it.

That distinctive light, spreading like plum blossoms or the colors of the sunset, belonged to the Zaha Divine Technique alone.

Staring blankly at the scene, stunned as if the world had stopped, the Blood Lord remembered a face he’d momentarily forgotten.

The man bore a striking resemblance to the one who had taken his arm. Yet he’d vanished from the battlefield so anticlimactically that he’d hardly seemed worthy of inheriting that man’s teachings.

But before the Blood Lord could speak the other brat’s name, the blue-black flames swallowed the Black Ghost’s body without a trace—and engulfed him.

KWA-AAAAA!

A colossal pillar of fire surged upward, sweeping across heaven and earth.