What is that?
The question filled the Southern Heaven Demon Empress’s mind. Her eyes widened.
Light.
Bigger and brighter than any light she had ever seen.
A tremendous radiance that had erupted without warning swelled as though it might burst, swallowing the approaching darkness as it seeped into the world.
Kwooooooo!
A pillar of light shot toward the distant sky and pierced the heavens. Sunlight poured through a gap in the dark clouds.
The darkness that had surged over the stone walls like a wave faltered the moment it touched the radiance, as though its path had been blocked.
Blocked? Even the demonic qi summoned from the rift?
It was impossible to believe.
The rift’s demonic qi was immensely powerful, a force of pure darkness. Even the imugi1, after hundreds of years of cultivation, had been unable to withstand its full power and had fallen to corruption.
Yet the scene before her was real.
The dark clouds were slowly scattering.
The wave of darkness could advance no farther against the radiance.
And then—
“Wow. This really works.”
“…!”
Jin Taekyung stood at the center of the radiance, grinning at her.
The Southern Heaven Demon Empress clenched her teeth.
“How… How in the world?”
Before she could finish, Jin Taekyung shrugged.
“No big deal. Everyone’s got a divine artifact stashed away somewhere, right?”
“…!”
Divine artifact.
The words struck her like a hammer to the back of the head.
Only then did her gaze slide away from Jin Taekyung and settle on another being.
That beast.
The enormous White Tiger had its jaws open as if roaring. Like the imugi1 she had corrupted, it was clearly more than a spiritual creature.
Through the dazzling radiance, she could faintly make out something shining with a clear, luminous glow.
At the same time, an ancient legend of this land flashed through her mind.
“…The Beast King Stone.”
The words slipped between her pomegranate-red lips. Jin Taekyung gave a quiet laugh.
“Oh. You know it?”
How could she not?
The symbol of the king before whom every beast in the world bowed. Nanman’s divine artifact, lost for hundreds of years.
No, she could hardly have failed to recognize it. She was the one who had combed every inch of Nanman’s rugged terrain for the Beast King Stone.
For more than ten years.
Yet even after enough time had passed for mountains and rivers to change, she had failed to find so much as the slightest trace of the Beast King Stone itself. In the end, she had left the ancient legend behind and begun her grand plan.
But why? Why now?
“You bastaaaaards!”
Whoooooosh! Crack!
A terrifyingly immense surge of qi rose and pressed down on everything around it.
The countless beasts that had been baring their teeth and growling tucked their tails between their legs. Pavilions throughout the area began to collapse as though a giant had stepped on them.
Tribespeople fleeing the Outer Palace in terror spotted the figure suspended in the air and gaped.
“A-Ah…!”
Darkness.
A woman wrapped from head to toe in surging darkness looked down upon the ground.
Like a god—or a Fiend out of legend—she seemed to be weighing how much life they had left.
Yet while everyone else stared at her in fear, the Southern Heaven Demon Empress had eyes for only one thing.
“Hand it over.”
Rumble.
The dark clouds filling the sky gave a great roar.
Her chilling voice rang through the world of light and darkness, reaching every ear.
“It is something the Lord of Heaven must rightfully take. It is not an object that insignificant beings like you are fit to possess.”
Beasts and humans alike froze before her overwhelming power. They forgot to scream, forgot to run, and stared blankly up at her.
All except two people.
No—two beings.
“Bullshit, you crazy bitch.”
—How dare a mere human covet the sacred stone?
Jin Taekyung and the guardian spirit stared at the Southern Heaven Demon Empress.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
They could feel it: the unprecedented power coiled inside that small body.
The qi pressing down around them was greater than any the guardian spirit had encountered in a human over the past several hundred years. It surpassed even that of the Western Heaven Demon Lord, whom Jin Taekyung had fought while narrowly escaping death time and again.
Strong.
And frightening.
Fear was something every living creature knew. But feeling it and surrendering to it were different things.
They knew that even now, they had to endure the fear pressing down on their entire bodies and advance. Only then could they win.
—Much blood will flow, human.
“Fuck. If I survive this, I won’t even take a piss toward Nanman again.”
Jin Taekyung muttered through clenched teeth and tightened his grip on White Flame’s shaft.
Then he spoke quietly to Yohi, who stood frozen behind him.
“You know what to do, right?”
“…!”
“Get the people out of here. Now. Run like hell, and take them as far away as you can.”
Countless tribespeople lived in the Outer Palace, beyond those he could see.
Jin Taekyung did not want them caught in the horrific hellscape about to unfold here.
It was enough for those with power to bleed. The tribespeople, with neither weapons nor sharp teeth, had to survive.
Even if everyone who remained here died at the Southern Heaven Demon Empress’s hands.
But… I’ll stop her. We’ll stop her.
For now, the sacred stone’s power was holding back the demonic qi pouring from the rift.
He did not know how long this tense standoff would last, but before the situation grew any worse, they had to defeat the Southern Heaven Demon Empress and close the rift.
No matter what it takes.
Whoosh.
Jin Taekyung drew a deep breath and glared at the figure high above the wreckage of the pavilions.
The Southern Heaven Demon Empress. The beginning and end of everything that had happened in this land.
Someone had to fall before this cruel story could end.
“Let’s go.”
The low voice had just slipped between his lips when—
—Kraaaaaaang!
A fierce roar tore through the wind.
The radiance that had been fading against the darkness swelled once more, rousing the terrified beasts and people.
Fwoosh! Kwoooooosh!
Light burst forth with the roar. Flames blazed around the silver spearhead.
The outsider who had come to this land after hundreds of years soared upward as one with the enormous White Tiger.
Bang!
He kicked off the ground.
Pop!
He stepped on the invisible air and wind.
Whoooooosh!
Toward the darkness spread across the distant sky.
No.
Toward the being made still stronger by that darkness.
“Southern Heaven Demon Empress!”
His flame-wreathed azure dragon’s roar flew with the spearhead, cleaving through space.
A chilling look crossed the woman’s face, now twisted like a Fiend’s, with not a trace of beauty left.
“The Lord of Heaven desires it.”
At that moment—
Flash!
Light and darkness mingled in a blinding flash that washed over the Nanman Beast Palace.
Rrrrrumble.
A roar like the sky splitting apart accompanied a tremendous surge of qi that swept in every direction.
Baeksang instinctively shut his eyes against the blinding flash. A gale struck his entire body, and he swallowed a groan.
Hngh.
What kind of overwhelming power was this?
Even as a Supreme Peak master, he could barely keep his balance against the aftershock.
When he finally opened his eyes, the area around him had already been reduced to ruins. The tribespeople who had barely survived thanks to the protection of the beasts were fleeing while screaming.
“Kyaaaaaa!”
“Hoya! Hoya! Where are you?”
“M-Mother!”
Pavilions and houses built over many years collapsed one after another. A grown son cried out at the sight of his elderly mother pinned beneath a fallen stone wall.
Screams and death. Blood and bodies.
Only days ago, these streets had been full of laughter and music. Now there was no trace of either—only an endless din of roars and screams.
Bang! Kwoooooang!
Light and darkness shot toward each other and tangled together, again and again, in the space of an instant.
Baeksang stared hollowly at the hellscape beneath the murky flashes and sky-splitting roars. Then he reached out in one direction.
Boom!
The force of his palm crossed the distance and knocked a large boulder away.
A half-gray-haired middle-aged man who had been struggling to save an old woman trapped beneath the stone wall widened his eyes.
“Y-You…”
Something about the man’s face was familiar. Perhaps they had met somewhere.
Baeksang watched him help the old woman up, anger and gratitude mingling on his face. Then he saw her face and understood.
He looks like her. So much.
It was the old palace attendant he had personally ordered expelled from the Inner Palace before any of this began.
One of the few people left who remembered the man he had once been was bleeding and groaning before him.
“Cough. Mmm…”
“M-Mother!”
She had a child?
Baeksang watched the man hurriedly check on his mother, then found himself walking toward them.
He did not know why. He simply felt that he should.
“D-Don’t come any closer!”
The cry was full of hostility.
People could shut their doors and lock them, but they could not close their ears.
By now, everyone in the Nanman Beast Palace knew their Palace Lord, the Great Chieftain of the Bai people, had betrayed them. They knew Baeksang was responsible for the screams and deaths that continued even now.
The man before him knew it too. He stood between Baeksang and his mother, clutching a sharp piece of stone he had picked up somewhere.
“If you take one more step…”
Swish! Crack!
Finger Qi pierced the stone, and it crumbled in his hand.
Baeksang passed the frozen man and reached toward the old woman.
Tap. Tap!
The blurred hand moved like lightning, touching the old woman’s acupoints. At the same moment, her furrowed brow smoothed.
“Cough.”
She spat out stagnant blood, and her face relaxed.
The man hastily checked his mother, then looked up at Baeksang, unable to understand.
“W-Why?”
Why?
Baeksang could not answer even that simple question. Perhaps he would not be able to answer it in ten years, or a hundred.
He did not know the answer himself.
When he finally broke the brief silence, he gave no answer.
“Leave with the others. Get as far away as you can.”
“S-Sir!”
“Do you intend to let your mother die like this? Or…….”
Baeksang’s gaze darkened.
“Will you make her watch you die?”
“…!”
“Go. If you head for the East Gate, a way out will open.”
Baeksang turned away. Behind him, the man’s hoarse voice rang out.
“Do you think this will… Do you think this will make the sins you committed forgivable!”
Baeksang answered the angry shout only in his heart.
No. I never once thought I would be forgiven.
Rumble, rumble!
A deafening roar rolled behind him as he headed toward the Inner Palace.
He sped onward without a trace of hesitation.
It was time to face the moment he had pictured for decades.
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