Chapter 920

It all happened in an instant.

At least, that was how it felt to the East Depot masters charging at the vanguard as they scrambled over the rubble of the collapsed outer wall.

Fwoosh.

What in the world was this?

How could anything be so fast—and so destructive?

A dazzling flash filled their vision. For a moment, they could only stare. It was the last thing they ever saw.

KABOOM!

A tremendous roar battered their ears. An irresistible force swept over their bodies, frozen like stone statues.

Crunch! Fwoosh!

The flash vanished as quickly as it had come. One of the East Depot eunuchs charging behind his comrades blinked.

When his vision finally cleared, he understood.

That flash had been Force fired by someone.

That terrifying energy had swept away dozens of his comrades—and taken one of his arms, too.

“A-ah. Ahh. Aaaaaah…”

His jaw trembled. A dazed moan slipped between his teeth as they clattered without pause.

They were dead. No—they’d been butchered.

His eyes took in what remained of the men who had once been his comrades: chunks of meat so mangled he could no longer tell who was who. His mind struggled to accept the sight.

Only then did pain reach him from his shoulder, left in shreds as though a beast had torn into it.

“GRAAAAH!”

A scream of agony poured from his gaping mouth.

But he wasn’t the only one caught in shock and pain.

“Ugh… Uuugh.”

“P-please, save…”

“Ugh—bleurgh!”

Some groaned as they clutched the stumps of their severed legs. Some pleaded desperately for help on the brink of death. Others bent over and vomited at the carnage before their eyes.

They trembled, terrified by the gruesome deaths they’d witnessed and helpless to do anything.

Those who realized what had happened a moment later were little better off.

“W-what is this…?”

Some of the Imperial Guards, long since recruited by the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord and drawn into the rebellion, and the East Depot eunuchs who had led them into the grand banquet hall were struck speechless.

One strike.

A single strike had killed or incapacitated more than fifty soldiers.

Each had charged at the vanguard without hesitation, and each was a formidable fighter, ranging from Supreme First Rate to Peak.

Compared to the full force of some three thousand, it wasn’t a major loss. But everyone had stopped because that one attack had swallowed dozens of Peak masters in its terrifying power.

No—it was the master behind that attack, whose might seemed almost demonic, who had stopped them.

Who…?

Who was it?

The question pierced everyone’s mind.

The three thousand rebels who had surged into the grand banquet hall.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard and Fire Dragon Pavilion members fighting the dead, who refused to fall no matter how many times they were killed.

Even the dead, driven still further out of their minds when the bell was destroyed, stopped at some instinctive warning.

Then they turned their heads.

Toward the source of the flash.

At the end of countless gazes stood someone, trampling the twitching limbs of the dead.

Whoosh.

A breeze stirred the woman’s thick hair.

“So Gyo…!”

In the silence that had fallen over the hall, a cry like a scream rang out belatedly. The woman—no, So Gyo—lifted her head and looked toward the voice.

More precisely, toward the person standing there.

Jin Taekyung.

Her lips moved without a sound, and her dark blue eyes grew solemn.

The hundreds of steps leading up to the dais were already buried beneath countless bodies.

The thousand or so dead had been torn to shreds and finally died—or lay there writhing with their limbs severed.

As if hoping someone would put an end to their stubborn lives.

Slice.

A streak of light cut through the air.

The man who had split in two a dead man crawling up the steps on his one remaining arm lowered his sword and breathed hard.

Huff. Huff.

His entire body, soaked in blood and sweat, heaved.

His golden armor and sword, as intricate and splendid as works of art, felt heavier than ever.

No—perhaps it was the weight of the responsibility and guilt he had carried all this time.

And yet… he had no regrets.

He must not.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard who had turned to ash here today had also been prepared to die.

To pity them for a sacrifice they had chosen would be an insult worse than death.

Even if he was the most exalted man beneath the heavens, the one who stood above all others.

“Baek Yeon.”

The man—the Emperor—spoke, his voice rough with a metallic rasp.

He turned to the imperial court’s foremost military commander. Baek Yeon had done more than anyone to protect the late Emperor and the imperial family, and whenever the Emperor faltered, Baek Yeon’s harsh rebukes had lifted him back to his feet. He was more a comrade than a subject.

So the Emperor gave him a request, not an order.

“Sound the drum. The war drum.”

“……!”

Baek Yeon’s eyes trembled.

Taking in the Emperor’s exhaustion, his fatigue more visible than ever, he bowed deeply and extended a palm toward the great drum that had announced the start of the banquet.

Boom!

The drumbeat, charged with profound internal energy, rang out without end.

It carried the heart of a warrior who had waited so long for this day. It carried the Emperor’s will.

Once.

Then once again.

The sound was immense enough for everyone in the grand banquet hall to hear. No—it rolled like a wave that might sweep across the entire Imperial Capital.

Booooom!

Even when the third drumbeat rang out, the three thousand rebels didn’t know what to do. They hesitated.

It had all unfolded so naturally.

So Gyo’s overwhelming display of martial power had abruptly swept through the vanguard, and the drumbeat resounded with a grandeur they couldn’t explain. For a moment, they had been overwhelmed before they even knew it.

Even the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord—the instigator and center of the rebellion, who should have been leading them from the front—lay in a horrific state at Jin Taekyung and Jeok Cheongang’s feet.

What is this? What in the world is happening?

The Eastern Heaven Demon Lord had been captured. Ma Sanbao was nowhere to be seen.

The Imperial Guards and East Depot leaders who had betrayed the imperial court and the Great Nation to join Dark Heaven looked at one another in confusion.

When they took the Outer Palace, they had thought it was all over.

Even when they had seized every gate leading into the imperial palace and defeated the remaining defenders, taking advantage of another allied force sweeping through the capital, they had been certain a new age was about to begin.

But the reality they had so eagerly come to meet was different. The battle should have been theirs already.

The flags that had flown so proudly when they first stormed into the grand banquet hall now fluttered as uneasily as their hearts.

And at that very moment—

Boom. Boom.

Another drumbeat reached their ears.

Every hair on their bodies stood on end. A chill ran down their spines.

The fourth drumbeat was no louder than the ones before it, nor did it have a deeper, more resonant ring.

Yet it made the rebels’ hearts sink for one reason alone.

Behind them.

The sound came not from Baek Yeon, visible in the distance, but from somewhere behind them.

And then it spread in every direction.

Boom. Boom-boom.

The countless drumbeats spread like flames across a wide plain. They were not echoes bouncing back from somewhere. They were not a trick of the ears.

They were the signal that this long and gruesome banquet was coming to an end—the footsteps of hunters closing in on prey caught at last in a trap.

Rumble.

How long had this been going on?

Where had such a vast army been hiding, and why had it waited until now?

A trap!

The realization struck like lightning through their skulls. At the same time, the rebels felt immense tremors drawing closer.

Then they saw them.

Hundreds of flags rising high on every side.

Following the fluttering flags, a dragon embroidered in golden thread writhed as though alive.

“……!”

“……!”

Shock, joy, and despair swept across the grand banquet hall.

Some were seized by an elation so intense their hearts felt ready to burst. Others clenched their teeth until they bled.

The three thousand rebels were the latter.

Thousands. Or tens of thousands.

No one could guess the exact number of their enemies, but one thing was certain: the forces tightening the encirclement would overwhelm them.

The rebels felt the killing intent bearing down on them.

They saw their faces reflected in the rippling pools of blood and imagined what was about to happen.

But they also thought of the only way out of this hopeless situation, surrounded on all sides.

The center of everything. Its beginning and its end.

The ruler who stood at the highest peak in all the vast world.

“The Emperor…”

The faint voice that slipped from someone’s lips swelled into a shout born of the desperate will to live.

“Capture the Emperor!”

The victor was king; the loser, a rebel.

Already driven to the edge of a cliff, they had no other choice.

A body without a head could not move.

Capturing the Emperor and his family to make the rebellion succeed was the only way forward.

“Whoever captures the Emperor and his family will become a marquis and enjoy wealth and glory for generations to come!”

At that moment—

Rumble!

Thousands of men and horses surged forward like a wave.

Toward the Emperor looking down at them from the high steps, his face worn with age.

They tried to drown out their fear of the woman standing before him with furious shouts.

“GRAAAAAH!”

“Charge! Don’t stop!”

Their cries, almost screams, mingled with countless footsteps and pounding hooves. The sound woke the deep night and spread through the thick darkness hanging on every side like a curtain.

Far away. Farther still.

Loud and clear.

Yet their desperate advance and shouts seemed unbearably slow and distant.

At least, they did to the young man and woman looking at each other in that moment.

He looked at her. She looked at him.

The hundred or so jang¹ between them meant nothing now.

They both knew.

They knew they were looking at each other. They knew whose gaze had met theirs across the distance.

But only So Gyo had realized the other person’s true identity.

So it was you.

Swallowing a cryptic murmur, So Gyo silently looked down at the battlefield spread out beneath her.

It was vast. And it was horrific.

The grand banquet hall, stretching for hundreds of jang¹ in either direction, was awash with blood. Ownerless weapons and severed limbs lay scattered across the ground. The wide-open eyes of the dead held no trace of life.

The music that had sounded for a brief while was gone. Only death remained in its place, and more people were surging in to pile death upon death.

Whoosh.

Amid the enemies’ thunderous shouts, a cold wind billowed her silky hair. It carried the smell of blood deep into her nose, thick as the crimson pools all around her.

Thick enough to draw fragments of the past up from where time had buried them.

Thick enough to revive the horrific memories she’d wanted to forget but never could.

Perhaps that was why she felt not the slightest joy, though she had found the answer—the key—she had sought for so long.

Perhaps that was why she knew it was time to end this long and gruesome banquet.

Shhk.

In the silence, So Gyo moved both hands. The two curved swords gripped in her blood-caked hands pointed toward sky and earth. Then she brought them together.

Shrring. Clack.

Steel forged by a craftsman’s countless rounds of quenching and hammering rang coldly. A hidden groove and the metal set within it joined the two weapons.

As if they had been one from the beginning.

As if they had once been something other than curved swords.

Wooooong.

Restored to its original form after long years, the weapon trembled in its owner’s hands. It resonated with the familiar energy flowing deep into it and shed tears of light.

Zing.

The air quivered.

A pure-white flash joined the two angled ends that had made the pieces look like curved swords.

Just as it had in the distant past.

Still bearing the splendor of an age when it had been divine punishment to some, salvation to others.

“It’s been a long time.”

So Gyo lifted her beloved weapon, her voice tender.

Then, as she had done tens of thousands of times before, she gripped the flash joining its ends and pulled hard.

Fwoosh.

A brilliant shaft of light took shape in midair, nocked against the shining bowstring.

The unbelievable sight stirred the old memories of someone watching from afar. It raised someone’s figure from a past buried in dust.

An old woman who had ruled the battlefield with a bow larger than any other, unleashing Force like lightning.

“The Bow Saint…!”

At that very moment—

SHWAAAAAK!

The shaft of light flew from So Gyo’s—or rather, the Bow Saint’s—fingertips and streaked across the grand banquet hall.