Chapter 695

At first, no one paid any attention.

No—no one had time to pay attention to anything else.

Major incidents had followed one after another, and the general mobilization order had swelled their forces by the day. Even ordinary tribespeople in the Outer Palace held their breath, while nearly ten thousand warriors and beasts waited in the Inner Palace for their new Palace Lord.

Yet amid all this, some still stood watch.

“I’m dying out here. It’s hot, everyone’s on edge, and I’m stuck at the North Gate. Should’ve asked for the East or West Gate. They’ve got it easy.”

The young warrior had just returned from patrol. His senior, a graying middle-aged man seated in the shade against the North Gate wall, clicked his tongue.

“Tsk, tsk. Listen to you. Young man with his whole life ahead of him, already looking for a chance to slack off.”

“You’ve been sitting in the shade the whole time I was on patrol.”

“I’m old. If I can’t rest now, when can I?”

“Well, you’ve got me there.”

The Nanman Beast Palace had three gates in total: the East, the West, and the North Gate where they were stationed.

There had never been a South Gate. The sheer cliff behind the Inner Palace was stronger than any gate.

“How was your patrol? What’s the Outer Palace like?”

“Not a rat in the marketplace.”

“…Of course. Everyone’s worried.”

The older warrior sighed.

Nearly ten thousand warriors had gathered in the Inner Palace alone—an army large enough to belong to a small country. Not since the Great Faction War some fifty years ago had so many assembled in one place.

History repeated itself.

Those old enough to remember the past fell silent. Parents pulled their children close and barred their doors. Everywhere, people feared that a vast war was about to begin.

“But… are we really going to war with the Central Plains?”

The older warrior answered his junior’s cautious question in a low voice.

“Who knows? One thing’s certain, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Before we fight in the Central Plains, we’ll shed blood right here in Nanman.”

“…!”

“You know the former Palace Lord is still alive. The five tribal chieftains who support him have left the Outer Palace. The higher-ups will want to settle that before they march on the Central Plains.”

The older warrior was hardly the only one to see it coming. Anyone with a little sense and experience could guess what awaited them.

Civil war. Their first in some three hundred years.

To pass through the road leading to the Central Plains, they would have to walk over the corpses and blood of comrades with whom they had shared hardship until only a few days ago.

“…”

A shadow fell across the young warrior’s usually carefree face. Among the tribespeople who had left the Outer Palace were close friends he had known since childhood.

The older warrior watched him for a moment, then quietly got to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve slacked off enough. I’ll take a look around the wall. My body aches from sitting still.”

“Why not keep resting? The other squad’s covering the wall anyway—”

“You think those fools are keeping watch? They’ve probably sneaked down to sit in the shade, same as us. If the higher-ups catch them, I’m the gate captain. I’ll be the one getting my ass chewed out.”

He had a point. Outsiders almost never came through, so security had never been especially tight. Since nearly ten thousand warriors had taken up position, it had grown laxer still.

Anyone mad enough to attack the Nanman Beast Palace now might as well kill himself.

Besides…

They’re all troubled.

Far fewer warriors were eager for a fight than one might expect. Yayul Cheok, now branded a traitor to Nanman, had been a Palace Lord everyone respected. And after three hundred years together beneath the Nanman Beast Palace’s banner, the tribes had grown close. They dreaded the civil war and Great War looming before them.

But what could they do? When the people above gave an order, you obeyed.

“Whew.”

The older warrior sighed and climbed onto the wall. Just as he had expected, it was quiet up there.

Well, there was at least one man left behind. The problem was that he was asleep and snoring loudly.

…Fine. Rest while you can.

This was the calm before the storm. Today might be the last chance his sorry subordinates had to rest.

Shaking his head, the older warrior stood atop the wall and gazed into the distance.

It was noon.

The sun blazed high overhead. Beyond the North Gate, the broad pasture and the tall hill overlooking the Outer Palace shimmered in the heat haze—

Wait.

What was that? Had he seen it wrong?

His eyes widened. He blinked several times, then rubbed them hard with his sleeve. The sight before him did not change.

“What…?”

The dazed word escaped him before he knew he had spoken.

Far off in the direction he was staring, a massive White Tiger took a step forward.

Step.

Its pure white fur gleamed almost silver. An enormous forepaw brushed the grass, and a wind swept through the forest behind the hill.

Whoosh!

Tangled branches swayed. Countless leaves trembled. Beneath the shade of the dense forest, another forest began to move.

Rumble.

The ground shook. The air shuddered. The wind scattered. Countless eyes with long, slit pupils gleamed in the dark.

“…!”

The older warrior’s mouth slowly fell open.

Beasts. More beasts than he could begin to count.

He was only an ordinary warrior. He had no way to guess how many lurked behind the trees, or where all those predators with their sharp teeth and claws had come from.

But he could guess one thing.

The one leading that chilling host of beasts might be a person, just like him.

Whoosh!

Two silver figures, one large and one small, raced across the pasture on the cool wind.

By then, the number of White Tigers had increased to two. They stopped before the enormous iron gate, along with the man and woman riding on their backs.

Th-that’s…

The older warrior’s pupils trembled.

Someone else might not have recognized the pair at once. But he had been responsible for the North Gate for ten years, and the moment he saw their faces, it felt as if someone had struck the back of his head with an iron club.

How could he fail to know them?

The woman was one of Nanman’s only four Great Chieftains, while the other young man was…

Jin Taekyung.

Merely thinking his name made it hard to breathe.

It was him. The first outsider to come to this land in the centuries since the Five Poisons Sect’s destruction. The eye of the vast storm hanging over Nanman.

Jin Taekyung had come to the Nanman Beast Palace of his own accord—with countless beasts and Yohi, the Great Chieftain of the Yao people whom he had supposedly abducted.

Wh-what is going on…?

Before he could finish the thought, the young man who had kept his lips shut until now spoke.

“A word of advice. Take your hand off that.”

“…!”

The middle-aged warrior froze just as he instinctively began to sound the alarm. Watching him, Jin Taekyung inwardly let out a sigh of relief.

Thank God. I’m not too late.

One look at the warrior’s face had told him Dark Heaven’s scheme had not yet begun. If the rift had opened, this place would already be a hellscape where no one could live.

And yet, within this stillness—a stillness so quiet that it felt ominous—he sensed a bomb with its fuse burning down.

“Right, Whitey?”

The enormous body beneath his backside flinched.

The guardian spirit of the sacred stone had regained its former appearance, a White Tiger befitting its title. It sent him a thought.

—…How dare you call this body a name like that?

“You’d have been Blackie before. Not that I’m a racist.”

—I have no idea what you’re babbling about. Mad human.

A madman, huh? Yeah, I’ve heard that a fair few times.

Muttering inwardly, Jin Taekyung gave a quiet laugh and lowered the spearhead in his hand.

Was he afraid of what lay ahead? Of course he was.

But he had survived countless brushes with death to reach this place, and he had done everything he could with what he’d been given.

Baeksang. The Southern Heaven Demon Empress. Dark Heaven.

It no longer mattered who stood in his way. He would simply stake his life and fight back.

That’s right. Stake my life.

Tens of thousands of lives hung on this battle. Hundreds of thousands. Perhaps more.

Blood might flow like rivers, and corpses might pile up into mountains.

But…

I have to do it.

Someone had once said:

Do everything in your power, then leave the result to Heaven and wait.

But Jin Taekyung thought differently. Only when a person could even change the will of Heaven could it truly be called Will.

Isn’t that right?

He looked up at the sky. Scorching, dazzling sunlight answered him.

He couldn’t die on a day like this.

Then again, he didn’t want to die in any weather. He had no intention of it.

Even if the Lord of Heaven was waiting behind the iron gate.

Swish! Slash!

In an instant, a blue-white Force tore through the air like a flash of light and split the enormous iron gate in two.

The guardian spirit, reborn as a dazzling silver White Tiger, let out a roar that shook Heaven and Earth.

—GRAAAAAAAWR!

Its jaws opened wide enough to swallow the world. But teeth harder than steel and a red tongue were not all that lay hidden inside.

Fwoosh!

Brilliant light burst forth, bathing the world in its radiance.

From the sacred stone held in the guardian spirit’s mouth, a pillar of light surged over the walls and pierced the sky.

BOOOOM!

It could be seen from a hundred li¹ away. Perhaps even a thousand.

Everyone saw that strange power, that wondrous sight: the ten thousand warriors gathered in the Inner Palace, and the innumerable beasts filling the hill.

—Kyaaaaaaau!

—GRAAAWR!

Their roars broke an invisible dam. The beasts that had waited for their master’s command surged like a wave across the vast grassland.

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

Thud, thud, thud!

Beneath the blazing sun, the earth shook and the wind scattered.

At the head of them all was one man.

“Let’s go.”

The quiet words slipped from his lips. At the same time, the guardian spirit powerfully kicked off the ground.

Whooosh!

The Great War that would decide Nanman’s fate had begun.