Chapter 1122

With the collapsed walls at their backs, the defenders fought more fiercely and more valiantly than ever.

After surviving against impossible odds and retreating to the Inner City, they numbered a little over five thousand.

Compared to the tens of thousands of fanatics blackening the land on every side, they were a mere handful. Yet the last-ditch defenders didn’t give an inch.

No—they couldn’t.

Behind them, beyond the rubble of the fallen walls, countless civilians trembled before the threat of death drawing closer by the second.

But having nowhere left to retreat didn’t mean they could advance.

KRRRUNCH!

Flesh split, revealing white bone. Amid the red mist that swirled over the battlefield at the moment of impact, anguished screams and shouts rang out, muffled and dull.

“Graaaagh!”

“Hold the line! We have to hold—!”

Stab!

An axe blade cleaved through the crown of his head, cutting off the shout.

The man who crumpled had been a Peak master renowned as a hero throughout Qinghai for decades. But in this horrific melee, amid all this death, none of that meant anything.

And he wasn’t the only one.

The Sect Leader of a school. The Family Head of a household surrounded by relatives.

A young man whose downy cheeks hadn’t even lost their softness.

The moment the fanatics’ blind blades swept them up, they fell as nothing more than lumps of meat.

CRUNCH! Stab-stab-stab!

Perhaps the outcome of this desperate final battle had been decided before it even began.

The defenders had long since pushed past the limits of exhaustion.

Surviving this long in today’s battle was proof of their strength. But what lay before them couldn’t be overcome by sheer will.

The energy they had left. Their numbers.

They lacked everything. Desperately.

The dead rolled limply across the ground. Those still alive could only tremble on instinct as they watched the advancing enemy trample over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Fear and anger gripped them, along with the helplessness of being unable to do anything.

Perhaps that was why, as their bodies and hearts—and the whole world around them—seemed to sink into pitch-black darkness, the flame someone kindled shone all the brighter.

Fwoosh—BOOM!

The air caught fire. Heat like the sun evaporated the rain and swallowed the fanatics whole.

At the heart of the fierce flames surging forward stood a giant of fire, his burning eyes flashing.

“Who dares!”

With a furious roar, Jeok Cheongang, the Fire King, swept his sleeve.

The flames, whipped up by a fierce wind, melted steel and burned the fanatics’ flesh and bones.

“Stand in our way?!”

Jeok Cheongang had always called himself “this old man,” but not this time.

He wasn’t walking alone anymore.

Now, they walked together.

Along the perilous, steep path to the brink of death that Jeok Cheongang had always been forced to walk alone, there was now someone at his side—a man who had become both a part of him and his whole world.

“Don’t retreat! Don’t be afraid!”

Supporting Jin Taekyung as he staggered, Jeok Cheongang burned the enemies rushing in from every direction and shouted with all his might.

Blades he would normally have scoffed at and dodged grazed his body. Every time he summoned his internal energy, pain blazed through his tangled acupoints. None of that mattered to him now.

“Open a path!”

It was a request from Jin Taekyung, his one and only Disciple.

A reckless request. One that might truly be his last.

But the old Master couldn’t refuse his Disciple, already standing at death’s door.

And Jeok Cheongang wasn’t the only one willing to grant it.

Slice!

Dozens of heads flew into the air in a dazzling flash.

Jeok Cheongang swallowed the blood that suddenly surged into his mouth and watched with a faint smile.

“Took you long enough. You’re slow as hell.”

At the familiar reproach, the Slaughter Saint spoke, his face pale as a sheet.

He, too, had suffered serious injuries fighting to hold back the Grand Sorceress and the Black Ghosts during the retreat to the Inner City.

“I couldn’t see the patient, so I went looking. Figured I’d drag him back by the collar.”

“And what do you intend to do?”

SHWICK!

The Slaughter Saint answered by bringing down his small knife.

The strike was ghostly in its speed and precision. The fanatics rushing in to fill the momentary gap crumpled like bundles of straw.

Just as his heart had when he saw Taekyung’s condition.

“Before it’s too late…I’ll take the lead.”

At the Slaughter Saint’s quiet reply, something tightened in Jeok Cheongang’s chest.

Perhaps the man could escape this battlefield right now. He was the greatest assassin of all time.

That was why they called him the Slaughter Saint.

Yet Jeok Cheongang gritted his teeth against the weight pressing down on his heart.

Before it’s too late.

That was what he’d said. Clear as day.

Jeok Cheongang knew instinctively that the words hadn’t come from the Slaughter Saint as an assassin, but from the Divine Physician. And that his answer held not a glimmer of hope, but despair.

He’s going to die.

A cruel truth too hard to believe, too hard to accept.

Jeok Cheongang stared blankly at Jin Taekyung, limp in his grasp as if unconscious. Then he clenched his fist.

There were no choices left for them now.

All they could do was give everything they had and kindle one last flame—perhaps their final one.

Even now, that flame was slowly growing larger and hotter.

SHWAAAA!

Force suddenly shot out from somewhere and spread across the space.

Unlike the Slaughter Saint’s Force, so keen it seemed it could cut you just by looking at it, this web of Force felt as free as the wind. It wrapped around the enemies.

Calmly. Gently.

Then it struck with enough destructive power to wipe away that fleeting impression.

Slice—SPLAAASH!

A fountain of blood burst into the air.

Among the enemies crumpling to the ground, the Bow Saint appeared. Following the movement of her fingers, the broken bowstaff—split in two amid the fierce battle at the West Gate—moved with blinding speed.

KRRRUNCH!

It had lost its original shape, but her bow had always been made to come apart and serve as a pair of curved swords.

Without a word, the Bow Saint swept through the fanatics like a storm. Close behind her, another familiar face appeared.

“Benefactor!”

Despite his urgent shout, Cheongpung’s sword technique flowed as gracefully as a painter’s brush across white paper.

SHSHSHK!

A handful of purple Force, the color of sunset, sketched out flowers.

The dozens of plum blossoms seemed beautiful—until they touched the fanatics. Then they turned an even deeper red and bloomed in a glorious spray.

“Why’d you have to come along too…?”

Before the Slaughter Saint could stop Cheongpung from plunging deep into enemy lines to join this perilous undertaking, a roar from far away swallowed the battlefield.

“……!”

“……!”

If a sound could take the shape of a giant, would it look like this?

The roar was so immense it shook even the eardrums of someone whose hearing had already burst. And there was a desperate, almost spiteful edge to it.

Everyone who turned toward its source stared wide-eyed.

Jeok Cheongang and Cheongpung, injured themselves, supporting Jin Taekyung as they fought off their enemies.

The Slaughter Saint and Bow Saint, realizing that the enemy reinforcements who had finally taken the East Gate had arrived.

And one man walking slowly toward them, an overwhelming aura pouring from him.

No—a monster.

“That’s…”

His words trailed off.

The Blood Lord stared toward the source of the roar, an indescribable look on his face. Then he burst into laughter.

“Pfft—hahahahaha!”

His booming laughter had no place on a battlefield covered in a sea of corpses and blood.

But the Blood Lord didn’t care. He laughed like a madman, bending over and clutching his stomach as if he’d never heard or seen anything funnier in his life.

Then, as if he hadn’t laughed at all, he lifted his head, his expression cold, and looked at the countless people approaching from far away beneath shouts that seemed to pierce the heavens.

They were weaker and more insignificant than any enemy he had faced so far. That only made those damn moths flying into the flame more infuriating.

“What kind of lunatics are these…?”

The Blood Lord meant it. He could think of no other explanation for the absurd sight reflected in his blood-red eyes.

But no matter how he questioned it or thought it over, he couldn’t find an answer.

No—even if the Blood Lord gained the power of true immortality, he could never understand it.

The old, the powerless, the very young—people born to spend their lives being trampled and trembling in fear—were risking their lives to protect someone else. He couldn’t even imagine it.

And yet they were there.

They shouted with set faces and trembling voices, caught between desperate resolve and fear they couldn’t quite shake. They gripped crude bamboo spears and rusty axes with all their strength.

They had spent their lives yielding to fate. Now they defied it to help those who had staked their own fates on protecting them.

Countless civilians, seeking for the first time in their lives to protect someone beyond their own families.

They were here.

Today. Right here.

“How—dare you!”

The monster’s roar, charged with power beyond anything before it, crushed the civilians’ seemingly endless shouts.

“…up.”

With a faint voice only a handful of people could hear, Jin Taekyung forced his eyelids open in his Master’s arms and struggled to speak.

“Shut up already…you fucking bastard.”