Chapter 1134

The air on Mount Kunlun was heavy and cold that day.

Mist lay thick over the towering peaks. The creatures large and small that had once shared this beautiful wilderness with humans had long since vanished.

Only blood-red eyes glimmered through the dense mist, accompanied by eerie cries.

“Grrr.”

A savage growl came from between yellowed teeth.

The mountain lord¹ that had ruled Mount Kunlun only a month ago lowered its body, now larger than it had been in life, to greet its master.

Around it, thousands of human demons surrounded Taiqing Hall—the very symbol of the Kunlun Sect—without leaving a single gap.

“Everyone has gathered, as you commanded.”

The report came from one of the hundred or so figures wrapped head to toe in jet-black robes. Ma Sanbao asked eagerly, “How many in all?”

“About five thousand. Three thousand of them are monsters.”

A smile touched Ma Sanbao’s lips.

“Then Mount Kunlun’s spiritual creatures must be extinct.”

Anyone familiar with the state of Murim who heard their purpose and conversation might have scoffed at such an absurd claim.

Five thousand was no small number, but even the Hundred Thousand Demonic Disciples, who had once blanketed the world in darkness, had failed to take the Central Plains.

Ma Sanbao had good reason to smile, though.

It’s enough. More than enough.

Ma Sanbao swept his sunken gaze over the subordinates packed in all around him.

The monsters’ blood-red eyes flashed without pause. The fanatics moved only at his command, little more than soulless puppets.

Fully prepared and waiting for Ma Sanbao’s orders, they deserved to be called a Demon Army. Comparing them to the mere Demonic Cult, now a ghost of the past, would be an insult.

But the greatest source of his confidence was the hundred or so corpse sorcerers before him, including the man in black.

None could compare to Ma Sanbao himself, but each was a true monster capable of leading an army so long as there were corpses to use.

He regarded them with satisfaction, then spoke.

“We’ll split the army in two and move out.”

“Forgive me, but has the plan changed?”

Ma Sanbao nodded at the black-clad man’s cautious question.

Under the original plan, they would have split into seven groups and spread chaos across the land. But circumstances had changed.

Sword Saint Mae Jonghak had appeared in Qinghai with no fewer than ten thousand elite troops from the Murim Alliance.

Who would’ve thought the Alliance Leader himself would bring reinforcements?

Ma Sanbao had stayed behind in case something like this happened. Even so, Mae Jonghak’s arrival had surprised him as much as the Green Forest Alliance and the Yangtze River Channel League’s betrayal.

But the fact that Alliance Leader Mae Jonghak had left the Murim Alliance meant he must have left at least a minimal defense in Henan.

Of course, with its main force gone, it’ll be nowhere near enough. Still, to prepare for any eventuality, we’d be wise not to spread ourselves too thin.

This was an opportunity Ma Sanbao had won with great difficulty—perhaps even a stroke of heavenly fortune. Given what the corpse sorcerers could do, his caution might be excessive. But he wanted the safest, surest course.

He meant to hold a place second only to one and above ten thousand in the world remade under the Lord of Heaven’s rule. He had no intention of meeting a miserable end like the Blood Lord.

After careful thought, he had narrowed his targets to two places.

“Henan and Shanxi.”

At his superior’s voice, which broke the brief silence, the black-clad man bowed deeply.

“As you command. An excellent decision.”

With the Jin Family of Taiyuan away, Shanxi Province was all but an ownerless mountain. Henan, meanwhile, had to be taken for both its symbolic importance to Murim and its strategic location.

With Mae Jonghak gone, this was the perfect chance to seize it.

Henan and Shanxi also shared a border. Should anything go wrong, the two forces could support each other.

“If I give you two thousand troops and half the sorcerers, can you take Shanxi Province within seven days and nights?”

Shanxi Province had grown stronger by the day since the Jin Family of Taiyuan united it.

The black-clad man answered without hesitation. His force might number a mere two thousand now, but with dozens of corpse sorcerers, it would multiply without end.

“Four days will suffice.”

“And if I include Hebei?”

“Give me ten days. I’ll return leading an army of a hundred thousand.”

Ma Sanbao’s smile deepened at the ready answer.

“I’ll remember that promise.”

At that very moment—

Sssaaaa.

Faint strands of light began to rise from the ground.

The Moving Formation the Grand Sorceress had installed during her stay on Mount Kunlun—no, the Magic Formation—was activating under the hands of the sorcerers who had remained with Ma Sanbao.

Vroooom.

Two enormous circles of light spread outward, growing by the second until they enveloped everyone.

Ma Sanbao felt a mysterious surge of energy from every direction and trembled with elation.

I’ll end it all in one stroke. With my own two hands.

No one who knew him could deny that his confidence was justified.

He was the most powerful corpse sorcerer to carry on the Maoshan Sect’s legacy. As a martial artist, he was also a Supreme Peak master who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Ten Kings.

With the Three Saints, Jin Taekyung, and Jeok Cheongang all absent, nothing in the Central Plains’ Murim frightened him.

Sword Saint, you of all people shouldn’t have left.

Whatever defenses they had prepared, this force could cut through the heart of the Central Plains in an instant.

By the time word of its arrival reached the enemy, the army would number tens of thousands rather than thousands.

An immortal army whose ranks would fill again no matter how many times its soldiers were killed.

Today, the course of history changes.

The world would remember forever that Ma Sanbao had been there for the first step of a grand new history that would endure a thousand years.

Fwoosh!

A brilliant flash washed his vision white. Smiling, Ma Sanbao closed his eyes and yielded to the mysterious force pulling his spirit and body toward a distant place.

He imagined the great strides he would take, one after another, and the mighty trail they would carve across the world.

Paht.

The change was instantaneous.

The air and wind around him were different now. Instinctively, Ma Sanbao knew the Grand Sorceress’s Magic Formation had carried him and some three thousand of his subordinates to the promised place.

At last, it begins.

Thrilled to be taking that great first step, Ma Sanbao opened his eyes.

Or rather, he tried to.

Crunch—splat!

A gruesome sound of flesh being torn rang out, and something hot and sticky covered his face before he could open them.

“…!”

The smell of blood seeped deep into his nostrils, all too familiar.

It felt as though the world had stopped. Ma Sanbao struggled to lift his trembling eyelids.

Then he saw clearly what else he had failed to realize.

Thump. Splatter.

In some nameless, remote mountain valley where even the moonlight didn’t reach, large and small figures crumpled like bundles of straw without so much as a dying cry.

Ma Sanbao could neither move nor stop it. The survivors around him were no different.

All they could do was stare blankly at the deaths of fully two thousand of their comrades, felled before they could take their first step in Henan.

Their bodies had become one with rocks and trees rather than falling to blades or spears. They lay dead in hideous, unnatural shapes.

“What… What in the world…”

Just then, an unexpected answer reached Ma Sanbao’s ears as he muttered in a dazed voice, as if under a spell.

“What do you think? Exactly what you’re looking at.”

A calm voice sounded from the darkness.

Ma Sanbao whipped his head toward it like lightning and stared.

How long had that man been there?

Several dozen jang² away, a middle-aged man stood atop a hill that ringed the basin like a wall. He looked down over the fear and confusion below.

No—he was looking at Ma Sanbao.

“Good to meet you. I mean that. I was so worried you wouldn’t come that I could hardly stand it.”

The man slowly surveyed Ma Sanbao, frozen stiff as a statue, and the subordinates who had survived. He smacked his lips.

“I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed…but I suppose that was enough of a welcome. Don’t you think?”

Ma Sanbao did not answer.

He couldn’t. Right then, it was all he could do to grasp the word filling his blank mind.

A trap…!

Yes. This was a trap, and a meticulously prepared one.

And the refined-looking middle-aged man smiling on the hill was unmistakably the one who had laid a trap in the Moving Formation the Grand Sorceress had carved deep into a remote valley in Henan that no one ever visited.

A hunter who had set the simplest, surest, most horrific trap of all.

“Don’t glare at me like that. I’m the disappointed one. If I’d known the Moving Formation’s exact range, I could have finished you all in one stroke.”

The man even let out a theatrical sigh. Ma Sanbao felt his blood boil.

“You’ll regret that you didn’t. I’ll tear you and every last member of your household to pieces.”

The man had not introduced himself, but Ma Sanbao already knew who he was.

The portrait Ma Sanbao had seen during his years in the East Depot and the pure-white fan in the man’s hand left little doubt.

“Crouching Dragon Guest, Zhuge Feng.”

Zhuge Feng, the current Family Head of the Zhuge Clan, widened his eyes.

“Oh? You know me?”

“I do. I remembered you. After today, though, I’ll forget you.”

Ma Sanbao drew up the qi within him.

The trap had cost him more than half his subordinates, but the corpse sorcerers—his most important force—had suffered little damage.

Once the fighting began, there would be more corpses.

Whatever Zhuge Feng had prepared, Ma Sanbao was certain he would be the one to leave this valley alive at sunrise.

At least, he was until a familiar face appeared behind Zhuge Feng.

“Then you remember me, too. Don’t you, Eunuch Ma?”

A chill passed through Ma Sanbao’s chest.

How could he forget a face he had seen for decades? Or the resonant voice of the veteran general who had protected the imperial household through every peril?

But Baek Yeon, the Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the imperial household’s greatest master, was not the only reason Ma Sanbao was shaken.

If the man who served as the imperial household’s sword and shield was here, it meant something else.

Scuff.

A slender figure stepped out from behind the burly veteran.

He looked down at his former servant with the haughty gaze only someone born to noble blood could possess.

No—at the criminal for the ages who had dared to overthrow the imperial household.

“So, was playing traitor worth it?”

At the Son of Heaven’s question, Ma Sanbao groaned.