Everything happened in a flash.
Jeok Cheongang sensed the sinister energy flying at him from behind. Alarm bells rang in his mind, and he twisted away.
But even instinct, faster than reason, couldn’t help him fully evade the strike.
Crunch.
Hot. And cold at the same time.
The two opposing pains began in his side and spread through his body like wildfire, bringing with them a question he could not answer.
“……!”
Jeok Cheongang looked down, his eyes trembling, at something buried halfway in his side.
It had crushed flesh and bone, severing the vital points and internal energy within him strand by strand. It was a white hand.
Pale as a corpse’s—or rather, the hand of someone who should have been lying dead.
“How could you… how could you…”
Jeok Cheongang lifted his head, forcing the words out. Before him was a face he should never have seen again.
“You were clearly… dead.”
The owner of the hand, the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, replied.
“Yes, I was.”
Then he added, his voice calm as if nothing had happened, his expression showing not a trace of pain:
“But who in this world can lose his one and only life twice?”
“……What?”
Jeok Cheongang stared at him, eyes wide, unable to make sense of it. Instead of an answer, icy energy burrowed into his body.
Danger!
It happened almost at the same time.
Powerful Palm Force drove deep inside him, and Jeok Cheongang twisted away in a flash.
But caught off guard by the first blow, he couldn’t evade this one completely.
Boom!
Jeok Cheongang bit his lip as his vision dimmed for an instant.
Kh.
The pain was intense.
He felt the Body-Protecting Qi around him scatter like smoke, and his body shot backward.
Whoooosh!
His vision blurred. The sky and earth flipped over and over.
Someone screamed. Fragments of whatever his hurtling body had struck flew in every direction.
A blow like that would have taken even a Supreme Peak master out of the fight.
But he was the Fire King, Jeok Cheongang.
Crack! Bang!
He twisted in midair, righted himself, and landed on his feet.
Jeok Cheongang carved a deep furrow several jang1 long into the ground, absorbing the remaining force. Then his body suddenly staggered.
Hack.
Dark red blood spilled from between his lips.
Unable to hold back the congested blood that had risen with his internal injuries, Jeok Cheongang spat it out. That was when a faint whistle reached his ears.
Whoosh.
He couldn’t see it. But he could feel it.
A strike plunging toward his head. The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord reaching out with a hand that shone an icy, glacial white.
Picturing the scene half a beat before it happened, Jeok Cheongang pushed off the ground.
Shwaaack! Boom!
In that sliver of an instant, the strike narrowly missed him. It cleaved through the ground like tofu, then exploded, leaving a huge crater.
A few Embroidered Uniform Guards nearby were unlucky enough to be swallowed up by it.
But the predator’s pursuit didn’t end when it missed its prey.
Swish.
The movement was as smooth as a snake’s.
The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord rose from the crater and stepped toward the retreating Jeok Cheongang.
Papap!
In an instant, he closed the distance between them. A dazzling, icy white light burst from his fingertips.
Fwoosh.
Jeok Cheongang watched that brilliant, dreadful light swell and swallow the darkness. He gritted his teeth.
Crack.
A faint pain, then the taste of blood in his mouth.
At last his blurred vision came into focus. His dulled senses returned, making the pain from his internal injuries sharper, but he paid it no mind. He drew up the internal energy throughout his body.
Wooooong.
The air, chilled moments ago, grew hot. His torn meridians screamed.
The fire dragon inside him writhed violently, barely under his control.
As if it would burn even its master’s body.
As if it would devour everything and reduce it to ashes.
And yet—
“I don’t know what strange power brought you back to life.”
Jeok Cheongang met the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord’s gaze without a flicker of hesitation. His voice burned like lava as he went on.
“But I’ll put an end to that stubborn life of yours.”
Even if he had to do it dozens, hundreds of times.
His closed lips held back the words he left unsaid. They could not hold back the several jiazi2 of Scorching Yang Qi surging through his body, setting every limb and meridian ablaze.
KWAOOOOO!
Amid a roar like a dragon’s, light-flames and white light shot toward each other. At last, they collided.
At the center of that space, warped by an energy beyond anything seen before, they swallowed even Jeong Hogun’s scream-like order to retreat.
Fwoosh.
And in the blinding flash that filled his vision, Jeok Cheongang heard a voice.
“Old Master!”
The next moment—
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The entire world—the sky and the earth—shook.
There are moments when it feels as if the world has stopped.
When the shock and roar shaking everything around you numb every sense.
That was how it felt to me right then.
“……!”
If the sun fell from the sky and landed right in front of you, would it feel like this?
Blinded and deafened by the flash and roar, all I could do was protect the people nearby as best I could from the enormous force about to hit us.
“Get down, ri—!”
I had no idea whether my frantic shout reached the Fire Dragon Pavilion members, or whether they’d dropped to the ground when they heard it.
I knew only one thing for certain: if they’d hesitated for even a moment, not one of them would still be on their feet.
KWAaaaaa!
Rrrrcrack!
The raging gale shoved me back. The ground heaved like a volcanic field, and bluestone broke into dozens, hundreds of fragments that flew in every direction like hidden weapons.
The corpses of those already dead went with them, along with the countless weapons that had lain scattered around like their gravestones.
Sh-sh-sh-shik! Thud!
“Aaargh!”
Someone’s blood and screams scattered on the wind.
But I drove both feet deep into the ground and took the shock wave with my whole body.
Squeezing out what little internal energy I had left, I knocked aside or cut down everything flying toward us.
Pit-pit!
Even when small, thin fragments of blades and bluestone swept in with the gale and grazed me all over, I didn’t care.
If I dodge, the others will get hurt.
If someone had to be hurt, it was a hundred, a thousand times better for that someone to be me.
Old Master must have felt the same way.
I’d seen him clearly at the last moment.
He’d heard my shout and suddenly shifted to block the direction we were heading.
KWAaaaaa……
How much time passed?
After what felt like an eternity, the roar and the shock began to fade.
One by one, the things the wind had hurled into the air fell back down. Sounds that had gone muffled for a moment began to reach my ears again.
“Ungh……”
“P-please. Save me……”
The groans of people from both sides, fallen in a tangled heap. Someone begging for their life.
And finally, familiar voices behind me.
“Is everyone—everyone all right?”
“Cough. I’m fine.”
“Taishan gritted his teeth and held on by thinking about two hundred plates of five-spice pork.”
“I’m really sorry to ask at a time like this, but can someone break that bastard’s teeth?”
I wanted to answer Namho, but my strength had given out. Even that was difficult.
I staggered, and two people hurried over to grab my arms.
“Benefactor—no, Young Master Jin—no, Pavilion Master.”
“Captain, are you all right?”
I told Ju Hwaran to pick one form of address and stick to it. Then I gave Hyuk Mujin a long look that meant, Do I look all right to you?
Only then did I see the undead army climbing over the stone wall several dozen jang1 away.
The Imperial Guards, who had changed sides to avoid being branded traitors, were now falling in droves as the monsters that had appeared out of nowhere tore into them.
Damn it. Maybe I should’ve lured them here after all.
I couldn’t help wondering whether we might have done some damage to them if I had. But there was no telling how it would have turned out.
Those things were undead, plain and simple.
Monsters that got back up even with their arms and legs torn off or their chests pierced.
But the word monster wasn’t reserved for things with grotesque appearances or strange powers.
People used it for anything that defied common sense.
And the man known as the Fire King belonged in that category, too.
Papap!
I pushed Hyuk Mujin aside when he tried to stop me and hurried toward Jeok Cheongang as fast as I could.
No—I tried to.
If not for the one thing Jeok Cheongang said next.
“Stand back.”
His voice was deeper than usual.
His entire body was covered in blood and soot, but he kept his eyes fixed ahead without even glancing at me, though I stood a few steps behind him.
At the lone figure standing beyond the slowly settling dust cloud.
And right then—
Fwoosh.
A breeze blew from somewhere, sweeping away the dust cloud. Beyond it, the figure came into view, walking slowly over countless corpses and pools of blood.
“……!”
I caught my breath without meaning to. Only then did I understand.
Why Jeok Cheongang had told me to stand back.
And why I hadn’t sensed even the slightest sign of life from someone who, for a moment, had been right beside us.
“Impressive, Fire King Jeok Cheongang. Truly impressive.”
Squish.
With each step, blood that had pooled to his ankles sprayed in every direction.
Arms and legs that had belonged to someone unknown bobbed in the blood as it pushed them along.
Yet none of it was as chilling as that thing.
“I very nearly died, you know.”
Crackle. Sizzle.
The flames were still burning his face. Beneath it, the only part that had kept its shape—his lips—curved into a gentle smile.
Cang Gong—the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord—or rather, the man who could no longer be called human, was smiling.
Melted skin left the bones beneath it plainly exposed.
In a state that would have killed anyone made of flesh and blood several times over, he looked at Jeok Cheongang, then at me, frozen behind Jeok Cheongang’s shoulder.
And then he spoke.
“You two seem very close, master and disciple. Don’t you think?”
At that moment, a voice I’d thought I would never hear again reached my ears.
“Yes, Master.”
“You’re late.”
“Forgive me. Your unworthy Disciple’s training wasn’t sufficient.”
Another figure staggered to his feet as he answered.
Ma Sanbao pulled out the short spear I’d driven deep into his body and came toward us. Jeok Cheongang muttered:
“Master?”
“Why? Is that strange?”
The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord stepped forward and continued:
“I once had a sect, too. A Master who became a parent to me, and countless Senior and Junior Brothers who became my family.”
“……You bastard. Don’t tell me…”
“But they all died. They bled and fell defending their sect’s home against an oppression that made no sense.”
The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord slowly turned his head. At the end of his empty gaze sat the Emperor, on a tall, ornate throne.
No—what lay there was a past long gone.
“Under the pretext of moving the capital, I had to lose them all.”
“……!”
“……!”
At that moment, I realized who he really was. Before he became the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord of Dark Heaven, before he became Cang Gong of the East Depot, where had he belonged?
Jeok Cheongang realized it, too.
“……The Maoshan Sect.”
The words slipped from his lips like a groan.
Crick. Crrrick.
At last, the army of the dead breached the stone wall and poured into the grand banquet hall.
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