Chapter 696

Rumble, rumble, rumble!

Buildings shook. The earth trembled.

The silence surrounding the Nanman Beast Palace had long since shattered.

In the Outer Palace, tribespeople hiding behind locked doors pulled their young children close. Warriors idling away their shifts atop watchtowers turned their heads—and stared.

“W-what is that…?”

GRAAAAAAAWR!

A tremendous roar that shook Heaven and Earth swallowed the dazed voice that had slipped between someone’s lips.

One warrior finally came to his senses and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Th-the enemy!”

Most of the others did not move. They could not.

How could they? All they could do was stand with their mouths open and watch an army of beasts race along the dozen or so broad roads through the Outer Palace.

Th-this can’t be.

The sight was as terrifying as it was wondrous.

Thousands—tens of thousands—of beasts ran as one.

No one there had ever seen anything like it. Not even the oldest person in the land. Probably not even his grandfather.

A calamity. Or a miracle.

Faced with something beyond their understanding, the ordinary warriors stood frozen like statues. Even their superior’s shout, the first to break through the shock, reached them like an echo from far away.

“The alarm bell! Ring the alarm bell! Tell the Inner Palace, now!”

“Ah… ah…”

“You idiots!”

The enraged superior shoved aside his dazed subordinate. Then, just as he reached for the rope connected to the alarm bell, he realized that the sunlight that had been beating down fiercely only moments ago had vanished.

Whoooooosh.

Dark clouds?

No. The dark clouds he knew did not move this fast or hang so low.

A strange sound reached him. As the darkness drew nearer, he finally saw what it was.

“…Goddamn it.”

The dark cloud—or rather, countless flying beasts that had flown in and dyed a section of the vast sky black—descended upon him.

Whoooooosh!

Flap, flap, flap!

He could tell neither how many there were nor what kinds. Sharp cries, flashing beaks, and flying feathers filled the air.

The flying beasts, transformed into one enormous monster, swept through five watchtowers like a storm.

No. They smashed them apart.

CRACK! CRUNCH!

“The watchtower’s coming down!”

“AAAAARGH!”

Charging together, the birds were a living battering ram.

The world tilted. For an instant, the warriors felt themselves floating. Then they fell with the shattered watchtowers.

Rumble, rumble, rumble! Daaang!

An alarm bell nearly as large as a grown man hit the ground first and rolled. The warriors twisted in midair and landed after it, stumbling but upright.

Panting, they raised their heads. A vast shadow fell over them.

“Where is Baeksang?”

“……!”

The quiet voice bored into their ears. Yet everyone there felt a chill that seemed to freeze their hearts.

Was it the enormous White Tiger, so large that looking at it made their knees weak? Or the countless beasts behind it?

No. The White Tiger felt strangely warm and mysterious, and the beasts facing them up close had gentle eyes.

What froze the warriors was the gaze of the man on the White Tiger’s back, looking down at them.

He was tall and perfectly proportioned, with carelessly tousled hair and striking features unlike those of the Nanman people.

And in his hand was a pure-white spear.

“Jin Taekyung!”

At someone’s shriek, the warriors instinctively reached for the weapons at their waists.

They tried to draw them.

At least, they did until Jin Taekyung opened his mouth.

“If you pull those out, you won’t like what happens.”

“……!”

“And if you’ve got eyes, look around. Who else is here besides me?”

Jin Taekyung was the monster blamed for throwing all of Nanman into an uproar. Since he had appeared with an enormous number of beasts, they had thought there could be nothing left to surprise them.

Then they recognized another face.

Step.

A second, smaller White Tiger approached. On its back rode a beautiful woman whose exhaustion did nothing to hide her looks.

“Su-surely not…”

“Great Chieftain Yohi?”

Yohi spoke, her voice clear.

“Do you recognize me?”

How could they not? Every year, when she appeared before the public for the Tribal Grand Council, people packed the streets for a glimpse of her.

But what confused them most was seeing her beside Jin Taekyung, neither afraid nor bound. After the incident at the Western Yao Estate a few days earlier, rumors of her death had spread quietly through Nanman.

And now she was at the head of an immense host of beasts.

“G-Great Chieftain. Why are you with a monster like him…?”

“A monster…”

Yohi muttered quietly and turned her head to look at Jin Taekyung, but Jin Taekyung was not looking at her.

His eyes were fixed on the enormous iron gate separating the Outer Palace from the Inner Palace, at the far end of the road. Something about it felt ominous.

“There comes the monster,” he said.

The next moment, the gate began to open with a heavy grinding sound.

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

Countless arrowheads appeared along the high stone walls of the Inner Palace.

Click, click, click!

Sunlight flashed on their tips. Nearly a thousand archers aimed from the walls, bowstrings drawn taut, their breathing tight with tension.

Then the figure hidden behind the iron gate came into view.

Step.

His footsteps rang out with unusual clarity.

The hem of his spotless white robe brushed the ground. His calm gaze crossed the distance and met one man’s eyes.

“You came. In the end, you did.”

Baeksang.

His voice carried powerful internal energy. Jin Taekyung lowered his spearhead and answered.

“Yes. I came.”

You fucking bastard.

Baeksang.

The moment I saw his face, I felt the internal energy throughout my body boil like lava.

I wanted to charge out immediately.

I wanted to kick off the guardian spirit’s back, race toward him like the wind, and kill him with the fastest, strongest strike I could deliver.

But…

Slick.

A slender finger caught hold of my sleeve. Yohi’s trembling voice reached my ears.

“No. Not yet.”

Yes. I knew that too.

If I cut Baeksang’s head off right now, it would be like lighting the fuse of a bomb with no time left on it.

Baeksang—he could not die like that. He had to die not as the Palace Lord of the Nanman Beast Palace, but as the traitor and usurper who had deceived all the Nanman people and joined forces with Dark Heaven.

The Palace Lord’s death would bring a brutal battle. But no warrior would fight for a traitor.

It was the only way to spare even a few needless deaths. And Yohi, beside me, was the one person who could expose the truth and stop the battle bearing down on us.

“Let’s go.”

The guardian spirit and Muyaho nodded at my whisper and started forward.

We moved at a steady pace. A thousand arrowheads tracked us, ready to loose a rain of arrows at a single command.

But as we drew closer, their flashing tips began to waver. Taut bowstrings slackened. Unease spread along the Inner Palace walls as the archers recognized Yohi.

There was one exception.

Baeksang.

I stared at his unshaken face.

“The Great Chieftain you used to eat with has come back alive. You could at least ask how she is. Don’t you think?”

Charged with internal energy, my voice carried in every direction.

The unease swelled. Baeksang parted his lips.

“What affection is there between us that I should greet her? We were bound together only by our separate aims.”

“……!”

“……!”

My face stiffened. Yohi’s probably had too.

We were thinking the same thing.

Why?

This was not the Baeksang I knew. He was sly and cunning. His scheming, more frightening than his martial arts, was one of the chief reasons Nanman had fallen into chaos.

Yet he had acknowledged Yohi. In front of everyone who followed him.

My grip tightened around the spear shaft. I clenched my teeth and glared at him.

“What the hell is this…? What kind of bullshit are you pulling?”

“Did you think I would deny it?”

Baeksang turned to look behind him.

Beyond the wide-open gate, countless Nanman warriors stood amid a mountain of sabers and a forest of swords. They and the archers on the walls stared at him, eyes wide.

“What more is there to say? Everything you know—and everything they will soon realize—is true.”

“……!”

“Yes. That is correct.”

Baeksang looked away from his warriors and up at the sky.

Not a cloud marred it. Hot sunlight fell across his face.

“I betrayed everyone.”

His quiet voice, charged with internal energy, broke the suffocating silence that had settled over the area.

It traveled on the air, pierced through the wind, crossed the broad road running through the Outer Palace, passed over the stone walls of the Inner Palace, and reached everyone.

“I lived each day as though it were ten years. To achieve one goal, I became an unforgivable turncoat. And at last, I came this far.”

My breath caught.

This was not a confession in which he admitted the sins he had committed and begged for forgiveness.

No. It was…

Relief that it was over. And despair.

Something altogether different from giving up.

Baeksang was letting out what he had held down every day for decades. He made no attempt to hide his despair, even though he had achieved the goal he had wanted for so long.

No way.

A thought flashed through my mind like lightning. Every hair on my body stood on end.

Then a scream burst from my lips.

“Everyone, fall back—!”

And the next moment—

Rumble, rumble, rumble! Flash!

Thunder shook Heaven and Earth. Dark clouds spread over everyone’s heads.

In a world where not even a single ray of sunlight could be found, someone’s voice bored into my ears.

“What a shame. It’s already too late.”