Chapter 844

“Is that it?”

The man who spoke looked to be around thirty at most. His face was ordinary—the kind you might see several times in a day at the marketplace.

Yet no one would dare look at him and think he was ordinary.

He wasn’t standing in a marketplace. He was standing in a pool of dark-red blood.

“It’s certainly improved, but it’s still nowhere near what I expected…”

Crunch.

He stepped on an arm half-submerged in the blood and continued.

“Did you call me here just to show me this?”

The owner of the arm? He didn’t know. He had no need to know.

It belonged to one of countless test subjects, one of the dozens he had killed here today.

The problem was that he wasn’t particularly pleased with the experiment’s results.

“You’ve all got mouths. Say something, will you?”

The black-robed men lined up before him swallowed dryly in the icy silence.

They knew the man all too well. Whenever his temper soured, blood was sure to follow. Some of their own comrades had died that way.

After witnessing it countless times, who would dare open their mouth?

Their silence was a lesson learned through repetition. But for all the man’s brutality, he wasn’t stupid.

“Hah. Look at you lot. I call you sorcerers and treat you like people, and this is what I get…”

He gave a short laugh. The next instant, his figure blurred.

Thud.

Flesh and brain matter flew in every direction. One of the black-robed men—or rather, one of the sorcerers—crumpled like a rotten tree, his head smashed to pieces.

Boom.

The thunderous sound told the sorcerers what they had to do.

Thump.

They dropped to their knees without hesitation.

Silence wasn’t the only lesson they’d learned. They also knew that however cruel the man was, he preferred not to spill more of their blood than necessary.

“P-please, calm your anger.”

“Blood Lord…!”

The man—the Blood Lord—looked down at the sorcerers as they cried out and knocked their heads against the stone floor. A faint bloody light glowed in his eyes.

Vermin.

He wanted to tear their limbs off right then and there, but he forced down the urge to kill them.

Western Heaven is dead, and now Southern Heaven too. We need to preserve every bit of strength we can if we’re to accomplish the great cause.

Sorcerers were precious. Few in Dark Heaven could wield supernatural powers, and the research they’d pursued for years was bearing considerable fruit.

Today’s results simply hadn’t pleased him.

Once they produced something close to a finished result, its impact would be more than enough to swallow the world.

“Not enough. Still not enough.”

At the words he seemed to have spoken to himself, the sorcerers bowed their heads even lower.

If it wasn’t enough, they would have to make up the difference somehow. They didn’t want to end up like their comrades who had died before them.

“Blood Lord, if you could tell us which part you found lacking…”

“Every part of it.”

The Blood Lord turned slowly and gestured toward the bodies scattered around them.

“They were all too weak. And the duration still hasn’t improved.”

“We’re looking for ways to improve them, but we’re nowhere near able to increase the potency of both effects at once. Obtaining enough Peak masters is just as difficult.”

The Blood Lord frowned at what sounded like an excuse, but this time he had to accept it.

Peak masters couldn’t be made overnight.

Even at the great sects of the Central Plains, which accepted only exceptional talent, reaching the Peak realm took more than ten years of grueling training.

The time varied with talent and effort, but that was all. Even demonic, heterodox martial arts, which could be mastered far faster than those of the orthodox faction, were no exception.

Nothing came easily. Those martial arts lacked purity and depth, and countless practitioners faltered before the wall of the Peak realm.

Those two were the exceptions.

The Blood Lord bit his lip. He couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud.

As he recalled the not-so-distant past, a bloody gleam flickered in his eyes.

Jin Taekyung. Cheongpung.

At first, he’d thought they were earthworms. Creatures that would pop with a little pressure from his foot.

But at some point, those two earth dragons had become heavenly dragons. They’d risen from a mud pit full of filth and flown into the blue sky.

No. At least one of them was never an earthworm to begin with.

Even the Blood Lord had to admit that comparing Cheongpung to an earthworm might have been too harsh.

The youngest Disciple Sword Saint Mae Jonghak had accepted in his later years. A martial talent bestowed by the heavens.

Cheongpung was a genius whose equal was hard to find in Murim’s history, born with the destiny of a dragon.

But…

What the hell is Jin Taekyung?

The Blood Lord had been the power behind Jin Yangbaek, Head Elder of the Jin Family of Taiyuan. He remembered all too clearly the day he’d first received a report on Jin Taekyung, long ago.

He remembered the first thing he’d said to the subordinate who delivered it, too.

“Investigate him again.”

“Pardon?”

“How can anyone be that fucking useless? There must be something he’s hiding.”

It was only natural.

Jin Taekyung’s martial arts were worse than a Third Rate street thug’s, and he even made a schedule for his rounds of the pleasure houses.

If the eldest son, struggling to restore the family’s fortunes, and the second, training day and night, were the pillars of the Jin Family of Taiyuan, Jin Taekyung was gnawing at what remained of them from the roots up.

An earthworm.

No. A bug.

But one day, Jin Taekyung changed.

Unlike Cheongpung, Jin Taekyung had been born a bug. Then he became an earthworm, then a venomous centipede, then an imugi,¹ and finally a dragon.

When the Blood Lord pieced together the entire transformation, he was stunned.

That bastard has gone far beyond anything that makes sense.

Cheongpung was born with the destiny of a dragon. There was nothing strange about calling him one now.

Jin Taekyung had been granted no such destiny by the heavens.

He was nothing but a bug, an earthworm. All he could do when stepped on was writhe.

That should have been all.

Throb.

A sudden pain made the Blood Lord clench his teeth.

He looked down at his arms. Both were whole and attached. Someone’s purplish Force had once severed them, but they had grown back stronger than before. Now they trembled faintly.

From fear? No. This was anger.

And pain and humiliation etched into his soul.

If Jin Taekyung hadn’t gotten in my way…

The Blood Lord ground his teeth as he recalled that day: Jin Taekyung, drenched in blood, clinging to his ankle and refusing to let go—and the Sword Saint Mae Jonghak’s Force sweeping across his arm.

Worse than the pain had been the ridicule of the others.

Though two of them were lonely spirits now.

Western Heaven. Southern Heaven. Watch closely from wherever you are. I’ll accomplish what you two failed to do.

The Western Heaven Demon Lord and the Southern Heaven Demon Empress had been too powerful for even the prideful Blood Lord to dismiss.

Their deaths were an enormous loss to Dark Heaven, but they had taught him two lessons.

First, he must never let his guard down against Jin Taekyung.

Second, helping the Lord of Heaven accomplish the great cause would require greater strength and effort than ever before.

“Spread them.”

“What?”

The Blood Lord looked at the sorcerers who had questioned him without thinking. The bloody gleam that had been in his eyes moments ago had settled into a cold stare.

“Now that the Great War has begun, we need to gather every bit of strength we can. We can’t keep using Peak masters in experiments like these forever.”

“You mean…”

“You’ve already planted seeds throughout the Central Plains. Am I wrong?”

The head of the sorcerers bowed deeply.

“No. Some of the seeds have already blossomed.”

It was true.

With vast wealth and years of research, Dark Heaven had created the “seeds” and scattered some of them throughout the land long ago.

Some had gone to Henan and Shaanxi, at the heart of orthodox Murim. Others had gone to border regions such as Guangxi and Guangdong.

And some… to the northern plateau bordering Shanxi Province.

The seeds were both an experiment and a means of sowing chaos across Central Plains Murim. Barely a month ago, one had nearly shaken an entire city.

Nearly.

“You failed spectacularly in Guangxi Province.”

“That was…”

“I know. If the Fire King—that old man—hadn’t happened to show up pretending to be a monk, it might have worked.”

The unorthodox faction’s uprising in Guangxi Province had been no coincidence.

A man carrying a “seed” had gathered followers and seized control of half of Guangxi.

At least until Jeok Cheongang, hiding his identity under the sobriquet Blood Monk, had smashed his head.

“But those were failures made before we improved the effects. If the ones we have now fall into the wrong hands…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The Blood Lord cut off the sorcerer’s warning that the blade might turn against them.

“Select men fit to become seeds and bury them deep. Make sure they can be spread whenever the time comes.”

The sorcerers could see that further objections were useless.

They had two choices: obey or die.

And the Blood Lord wasn’t wrong. They chose to obey.

“As you command.”

The Blood Lord’s eyes flashed as he looked down at their bowed heads.

He could still recall every word of his conversation with the Lord of Heaven, who had awakened without warning from his long slumber just ten days ago.

“The time has come.”

“Lord of Heaven, what do you mean?”

“The world is twisting. Now… bring down the heavens.”

The Blood Lord drew a long breath.

After issuing that one command, the Lord of Heaven had fallen asleep again. He had given his faithful servant an unbelievable opportunity: the chance to draw the bowstring in his name.

And now the Blood Lord knew by instinct.

It was time to release it.

“Send out missives.”

That day, dozens of black-feathered hawks took to the sky.