Chapter 1123

“You…!”

Hearing that familiar voice tremble with agitation, I let out the breath I’d been holding.

I blinked slowly and swallowed the blood pooled in my mouth.

It was a strange feeling, unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

I felt hazy, as if I were trapped in a dream I could never escape. And yet, at the same time, everything around me came through with perfect clarity.

As for what this unfamiliar sensation was, the System gave me a clear answer, as it always did.

In its uniquely kind and cruel way.

Beep.

System

Status Effect: Final Rally has been applied.

Final rally.

Like sunlight blazing just before sunset, it was the last flame to burn at the darkening edge of a life.

So this is what it feels like.

The thought came to me suddenly.

I thought of the final moments of those I’d brought down with my own two hands—and those I’d desperately tried to hold on to, only to lose them anyway.

All the countless emotions I’d glimpsed in them.

At last, I felt as though I could understand them all.

I understood something else, too. Unlike them, who had waited for death as it slowly drew near, I was the kind of fool who had no choice but to run toward it.

Ding.

System

A sudden Quest, A Candle in the Wind, or a Flame, has been generated!

Death awaits you. You cannot refuse this Quest!

Time Limit: 9 minutes, 59 seconds

System

Final Rally is an act of divine mercy, an expression of human will, and a candle by which you may reflect on the life you have lived. Though its flame burns only briefly, that moment of light will shine so brightly that even death may be forgotten.

This time, it wasn’t the cold, harsh warning tone.

A familiar, clear chime rang in my ears, rousing my body and mind from their endless plunge into darkness.

Just as the System had said, it was a light bright enough to make me forget even death.

System

All pain you feel is greatly reduced for the duration of Final Rally.

My body stopped trembling under the pain and death closing in by the second.

System

Qi Sense temporarily increases greatly.

A spark caught in the ashes of my cooling mind.

Fwoosh.

Sudden warmth seeped into my back, and the spark swelled into a flame.

System

Scorching Yang Qi cradles your exhausted body and heals some of your Internal Injuries.

Two flames could not coexist.

Sooner or later, they would collide and destroy each other.

But if they came from the same root, they were one flame to begin with.

Just like the person who, despite suffering severe Internal Injuries of his own, had shared his qi with me without hesitation.

“What are you waiting for?”

His face was as pale as paper. Wounds large and small covered his body, and his frame trembled.

But Jeok Cheongang was smiling at me.

He was trying to hold back both his joy that his Disciple had regained a little strength and his sorrow at what that meant.

“Come on. Let’s go. Together.”

At that moment—

Ding.

Time began to flow again. I gripped White Flame tightly and took a step forward.

Into the nightmare that wasn’t over yet.

No—toward a reality worse than any nightmare.

I’ll change it. I have to.

If this had been my fight alone, I might have given up already.

I might have leaned my exhausted body against a pile of corpses, looked back on the time I’d left behind, and waited for death to slowly descend.

But—

SHWICK!

I wasn’t alone anymore.

KWA-BOOOOM!

Dazzling light-flames swallowed the enemies whole.

Amid the reddish, overheated earth and the shimmering haze that warped the air, a giant of fire roared.

At the same time, the Slaughter Saint, the Bow Saint, Cheongpung, and the last of the devoted defenders advanced.

Countless civilians followed behind them like a wave, no longer shouting out of desperation but calling a name none of us had expected.

“Charge! Charge! Protect the Marquis of Shangshan!”

“……!”

The great shout shook the battlefield and reached my ears. A jolt like lightning shot up my spine.

They said they would protect me.

Me, of all people.

Those people with neither a scrap of internal energy nor a proper weapon, gripping sickles and pickaxes in their hands.

They were risking their lives for me—the man who hadn’t even managed to protect his own people.

Right. In the end, I couldn’t protect you.

The beloved faces I would never see again flashed through my mind, and I shot toward the fanatics.

SHWIIK!

My toes. My waist. My shoulder. My arms and wrists.

My body followed movements etched into instinct through countless repetitions and real battles, splitting the raging wind and rain.

Slice!

A single, cool cutting sound crossed the air.

At the same time, more than ten pairs of eyes flew wide open.

The fanatics stared at me in disbelief, clutching their slit throats as they crumpled to the ground.

White Flame’s spearhead, trailing a faint heat, was slower and weaker than it had ever been. But for some reason, the enemies waiting in its path couldn’t react in time.

Neither could those surging forward to fill the gaps left by their dead comrades.

Stab! Crack!

I stabbed through everything in my way, pulled my spear free, and twisted it.

My vision was still hazy, but my senses were sharper than ever.

So were the faces and voices that flickered past, one by one, through the thickening mist of blood.

“I’ll join you. Just make sure the danger pay is generous.”

A pair of fierce eyes, and the willow-leaf saber he always kept close.

But despite his rough appearance, Song Ilseom had always been a reliable comrade and a good person to me.

He complained about the danger and the extra pay on every mission, yet he always fought in the most dangerous places.

He’d left behind the path he’d walked his whole life to protect someone. I was sure he’d kept that vow until his final moments.

He must have. The Song Ilseom I knew would have.

There was more to a person than what you saw.

That was true of a wandering martial artist others might have seen as nothing but rough and uncouth. It was true, too, of the two unorthodox faction members I’d unexpectedly formed ties with.

Am I too late?

That day in Gansu, when a battle like this one had raged, Sama Pyo had returned from staying with his father through his final moments and asked me that question.

I’d answered without hesitation.

No. You came right on time.

I’d meant it. There hadn’t been a trace of a lie in my answer.

Even if he lost his way while wrestling with his choices and took a long detour, Sama Pyo was the sort of person who would find his way back to the right path in the end.

No.

He was that kind of friend.

The words echoed endlessly somewhere deep inside me, and I moved as if entranced.

SHWICK!

Like Song Ilseom, I rolled through a pool of blood to evade blades flying at me from every direction.

Slice!

Like Sama Pyo, I ended my enemies’ lives by the cruelest, surest means.

KRRRUNCH!

Like someone else who wasn’t here, I swept through everything in my way with an overwhelming aura as immense as Taishan.

Taishan believes in Pavilion Master! Likes him second best in the world, after Lord!

I pressed forward.

Voices rang like hallucinations amid flying blood and screams.

Familiar faces appeared, one after another, over the enemies collapsing like bundles of straw.

“Would you like to take a walk?”

The memories rose like mist and passed like wind.

The Fire Courtyard of the Yongbong Escort Bureau, shrouded in darkness, and the full moon, unusually bright and large that night.

“Great Hero Jin.”

Her lively voice and light, dancing steps, buoyed by drink.

“Do you think…I can do it?”

And the tears in her eyes that none of it could hide.

“Can I really do it?”

I remembered it all vividly.

Every bit of it.

How I’d made a pointless fuss about the brightness of the moon, then fallen silent at her unexpected question.

Even the moment I’d looked into her tear-filled eyes and spoken.

“It’s all right if you can’t do it well. You don’t have to force yourself.”

That night, I hadn’t been looking at the moon.

“Wouldn’t that be enough, Young Lady Ju?”

I’d been staring blankly at her eyes, brighter than the full moon and curved like a crescent.

I’d never imagined a day like today would come—or that pitch-black Force would come rushing toward me as it was now.

WHOOOOOSH!

“Get out of the way!”

When had I gotten this far?

Jeok Cheongang’s urgent shout rang out behind me, deep in enemy lines, and a terrible whooshing sound swallowed the noise around us.

But I didn’t flinch.

More precisely, I didn’t have even that much reason left.

I only faced the two streams of energy darkening my already hazy vision. They were so murky they hardly seemed alive at all.

Not with my eyes, but with my senses.

No—with my heart.

And in the gap between moments slowed to a crawl, I thrust out my spear.

SHWICK!

White Flame’s spearhead, wreathed in a faint blaze, cut through the air.

It pierced space, the darkness beyond it, and a single point.

Fwoosh!

“……!”

“……!”

The two streams of Force, which had seemed ready to swallow everything without a trace, scattered helplessly. I felt the air tremble all around me.

Destruction? A clash?

No.

The only word for what had just happened was shattering.

It was so inexplicable that even I, the one who’d done it, couldn’t understand it.

So perfectly shattered that it enraged even the dead who had just fired Force at me.

—JIN. TAE. KYUNG!

The last two Black Ghosts cried out in unison and charged.

A ghostly horse leaped across the dozen or so jang¹ of open air in an instant, casting its shadow over me. With its blood-red eyes flashing, the now-enlarged Force came crashing down.

KWA-BOOOOOOM!

The rushing blast was violent enough to shake even my already-burst eardrums.

But I wasn’t the only one in its path.

KWAANG! RUMBLE!

In the blink of an eye, four streaks of light tangled in midair and swelled.

The compressed air exploded, and the earth overturned beneath the tremendous force.

At the heart of it were two superhumans who had rushed to save me.

Stab! Crack!

The Slaughter Saint’s short knife and ox-hair needles, and the two curved swords clenched in the Bow Saint’s hands, pierced and sliced through the Black Ghosts at lightning speed.

The two Saints gritted their teeth, faces ashen, wringing out what little strength they had left. The Black Ghosts, meanwhile, refused to fall.

They recovered from mortal wounds and even severed limbs, rising again after dozens of deaths.

Wooooong.

The air trembled.

Countless overlapping spells bolstered the Black Ghosts’ ability to heal and gave them still greater strength and speed.

Enough to face two of the Three Saints, who had fought more fiercely than anyone and were now pushed to their absolute limits.

“Go! Hurry!”

The Slaughter Saint’s urgent shout pierced my ears. The Bow Saint’s tired, lowered gaze touched my cheek, as if telling me to prove I was the one who’d been chosen.

Or that this wasn’t where I was supposed to die.

Right. I can’t fall here.

I staggered forward, leaving them behind.

Following Jeok Cheongang and Cheongpung as they opened a path, I cut down the enemies looming through my dreamlike haze, again and again.

I thought of a promise to one person that could never be kept now.

Of the moment I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell someone who had become my greatest memory in this world to run away.

“I’m Hyuk Mujin, Captain of the Gatekeepers of the great Jin Family of Taiyuan. State your identity and purpose for visiting… What? A pleasure house?”

“Third Young Master, I may be a low-ranking Captain, but let me say one thing.”

We’d met as enemies who couldn’t seem to shake each other.

“A scouting squad? Why me, Third Young Master…?”

“I’ll follow your orders. Captain—no, Captain, sir.”

Before long, the two of us had fallen into step.

“Now, now, Captain. What’s there to worry about when you’ve got me?”

“Your heart! Your right arm! Trust Hyuk Mujin!”

“……Even so, isn’t your little toe a bit much?”

Then we’d become inseparable.

So close that, at some point, being apart no longer felt right.

When I couldn’t see him, I missed him. When he was away, I worried about him.

My most trusted friend and subordinate.

That guy—Hyuk Mujin—had died.

In the end, I hadn’t even seen where he’d died or who had killed him.

Even if some miracle saved him, I’ll never see him again.

The last promise I’d made to him would never be fulfilled.

I would die before it could be.

Because I’d have to leave behind the people I’d wanted to protect—or the people waiting somewhere for me, desperate for my return—and set off down a long road from which there was no coming back.

But…!

I gritted my teeth and let out the breath I’d been holding.

I swung my spear, rekindling the dying flame without pause.

Trampling the corpses piling up with each step and the blood spurting into the air, I moved as one with the people protecting me.

Toward the last, the only path left for the living and the dead alike.

Toward the blood-red eyes I could sense clearly even through my hazy vision.

KRRRUNCH!

The fanatics’ flesh and bones broke apart beneath the spearhead I brought down on instinct.

Beyond that fierce storm of blood stood a monster steeped in blood and madness.

“You should be running for your life, yet you’ve come to me of your own accord. I hardly know how to thank you.”

The Blood Lord, at last standing before me again, smiled broadly.

More precisely, he smiled at Jeok Cheongang and Cheongpung, both exhausted beyond measure, and at me standing between them.

“Now, it’s time for you to die.”

Maybe he was right.

But—

Beep.

System

Time Limit: 5 minutes, 00 seconds

Not yet.