Chapter 921

Fwoosh!

The moment they saw the streak of light hurtling toward them, the three thousand rebels charging as one instinctively understood.

Unavoidable death awaited them on the only path they had thought could save them.

“Dodge—!”

KABOOOM!

Someone’s scream was swallowed by the deafening roar. Amid the dust cloud that billowed up with the explosion, headless corpses and men and horses torn limb from limb shot into the air, spraying fountains of blood.

“GRAAAH!”

“S-spread out! Spread out at once and keep charging!”

“Don’t stop! If you stop, you die!”

Urgent commands rang out over countless screams.

Overcome by fear and confusion, the rebels forced strength into their trembling legs at the orders of their surviving leaders.

That was right.

If they stopped here, it was all over.

They had climbed onto the back of a rampaging tiger. Their fate was already sealed.

“AAAAAAH!”

“Charge! Chaaaarge!”

Bloodshot eyes wide in faces white as paper, the surviving rebels screamed in desperation and pressed forward.

Praying that the Force arrows liable to come flying from anywhere at any moment would spare them, at least.

Using the unlucky men at the front as shields.

Please, please!

They charged on with that desperate plea running endlessly through their clenched teeth. Then a dazzling streak of light appeared before them and blocked their path.

No. It swept them away.

BOOM! CRUNCH!

The earth shook. Rising dust soaked up blood and turned red.

Yet the gaze watching that horrific scene—and the hand that kept drawing the bowstring—remained terrifyingly calm.

Four hundred paces.

Ziiing.

The great bow shuddered. Its string and arrow, shining with their owner’s internal energy, unleashed speed and force no other archer could match.

Just as they did now.

Thrum. Fwoosh!

Another gale of light swept over the enemy, bringing the death—and the screams—that awaited them. Each arrow made of Force snuffed out dozens of lives like candles in the wind.

Three hundred paces.

Again.

Two hundred paces.

Again.

KABOOM! KABOOM!

The closer they came, the more corpses piled up. The men at the front had been replaced several times over, and those charging now howled like madmen.

Toward their only way out, which was also where they would die.

They pressed on as pawns on a vast game board until they met the dazzling light that would be the last thing they ever saw.

Crunch!

How many had died by the time they covered half the four hundred paces?

How many more would die crossing the two hundred that remained?

No one could answer the question that suddenly occurred to them.

Not those collapsing as they felt the life drain away. Not those forced to leave their fallen comrades behind and keep going.

Not even the leaders, who sent their men ahead while shouting for the charge.

“We’re almost there! Whoever captures the Emperor will be made a marquis and—!”

Poom!

A sharp crack cut off the shout.

In the blink of an eye, the commander flew from his saddle and landed in a pool of blood.

Splash.

“Ugh!”

“G-General of the Swift Cavalry!”

No one heard the rest of what he said, but looking at the General of the Swift Cavalry lying motionless in the blood, no one could help thinking of death.

He was unmistakably dead.

The powerful commander who had held military authority for so many years had died just like that.

Suddenly, miserably, and leaving one question behind.

How?

The leaders nearby were bewildered. The streak of light, far too powerful to seem like an arrow, had been nowhere in sight a moment ago.

Then who…?

As they turned to look for the unseen attacker, a low voice reached their ears.

“There’s something this old man wants to know. What do you call the bastards who started this goddamn mess?”

Someone else answered.

“What else? They’re fucking assholes.”

“Then what about the ones hanging back even now?”

“Hmm. Shitheads?”

“And if they’re both?”

“In a four-character idiom? Fucking dog-shitheads.”

“Fucking dog-shitheads, is it? That rolls right off the tongue.”

Not in front. Not behind. Not to either side.

The leaders, frozen like statues, slowly looked up.

Two people stood in midair above their heads.

A dreadful thought came to them: perhaps the sight before them and those voices would be the last things they ever saw and heard.

“W-wait. If you help us now, we can give you whatever you want…”

Whoosh.

A breeze blew. That was all.

It should have been all.

Then why were their minds growing hazy? There had been two people standing above them. Where had one gone?

“You fucking…”

A voice squeezed out between someone’s lips.

Shhk.

Deep within their bodies, death woke late and stretched. Faint red lines appeared where a spearhead had passed too quickly to see.

Slip. Fwoooosh!

Blood welled in small beads, then burst out. Heads, arms, and legs separated; bone and flesh came apart and slid away, defying their owners’ will.

The collapsing bodies fell behind the young man holding a spear untouched by blood—and poured down over his head.

Thud-thud-thud!

The young man standing beneath that red rain in the dark was Jin Taekyung. He finally gave them his answer.

“Help you? The best help you bastards can offer is to just fucking die. You fucking dog-shitheads.”

“……!”

“……!”

Those who had witnessed the horrific, unbelievable sight before their eyes were struck with shock—and despair, as they realized it was all over.

Every one of them wore splendid clothes. They were powerful figures who had pledged loyalty to Dark Heaven and the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord, committing their families for generations to come. They had crossed a river they could never return from.

It’s over. Completely.

Jin Taekyung stood with his spearhead lowered and a calm expression, despite the hundreds of guards surrounding him. Jeok Cheongang still stood in the air.

Only then did the onlookers understand that their dreadful premonition had come true.

This vast rebellion was finished. So were the wealth and glory they had enjoyed for so long.

Their only consolation was that, instead of enduring brutal torture before being torn limb from limb by carts, they might receive a quick death from that martial-world ruffian.

Or so they thought.

Until Jeok Cheongang spoke.

“Leave the ones who look like the top dogs alive. I don’t know if they’re gold mines or spent ones, but we won’t know what’s in there unless we dig. Might as well take a few swings with the pickaxe.”

“……!”

“……!”

Their shock and resignation turned to fear in an instant. Before that instant was over, Jin Taekyung sent ten sharp cracks through the air toward them.

Fwish-fwish-fwish!

They weren’t given time to take out the poison pills they had kept hidden, just in case—or even a moment to draw the daggers at their waists and slash their own throats.

Thud-thud-thud!

They felt it.

Finger Qi crossing the distance in an instant and stiffening their entire bodies. The world slowly tilting as despair weighed down on their minds and bodies.

Slip. Thump!

They fell like waterlogged logs. Golden flags fluttering on every side filled their vision. Above the dragons writhing on the flags, countless arrowheads rained down across the dark sky.

Shhhhhhh.

A thousand repeating crossbowmen poured steel over the remaining rebels.

Thud-thud-thud!

The sounds of flesh being pierced announced the end of the blood-soaked banquet. Screams of pain joined them, mingling with the powerful, unceasing beat of drums.

Thick and sticky as blood.

Boom. Boom. Booooom.

Fifteen minutes.

That was how long it took for all three thousand rebels to be wiped out.

The Imperial Army swept into the grand banquet hall beneath a rain of arrows, bringing more than enough force to put an end to the long, horrific feast.

“Rebels, listen!”

“Rebels, listen!”

“Disarm and surrender at once!”

“Disarm and surrender at once!”

Shouts charged with powerful internal energy rang out one after another.

The twin officers urging them to surrender sounded so alike in voice and tone that they could have been one man. At the sight of them, the surviving rebels seemed to lose their last hope.

Clunk. Clunk.

Clang.

They loosened the joints of their bloodstained armor and dropped their cracked and broken weapons as if throwing them away.

No one knew who surrendered first, but the wave soon became a tide sweeping through the grand banquet hall.

“I surrender. I’ll surrender.”

“Please, just spare my life…”

Their eyes were vacant, their faces empty.

Some clutched the stump of a missing arm and begged for their lives. Others, backed to a cliff’s edge with nowhere left to retreat, made a choice they could never take back.

Stab.

“Kh… Urgh!”

A body pitched forward with a muffled death rattle.

The nameless rebel crumpled. His face held the despair of knowing it was over, and a trace of the peace he had found in escaping this hell.

“It’s over.”

At the faint words Jeok Cheongang murmured as if to himself, I forced myself to nod calmly.

Yeah. It was over.

The vast battle that had swallowed countless lives, both in plain sight and out of it, had finally ended.

But not everything was over.

The dead had gone somewhere far away, never to return. But the monster who was neither dead nor alive still remained here.

And we still had to deal with the living.

Squish.

A footstep landed in a pool of blood.

I watched her approach, my gaze cold and steady. Each light, graceful step left a sticky imprint of blood behind.

So Gyo.

No—the Bow Saint.

The woman who had kept everything about herself hidden.

At our first meeting, she had pretended to be the Emperor’s loyal servant. At our second, she had worn the mask of Dark Heaven. Only at our third had she finally revealed herself.

Now she was coming toward me.

With catlike steps that suited the name So Gyo, she crossed ground strewn with countless bodies. People who might still be alive if she had revealed her identity a little sooner.

Fwoooosh.

Blade-sharp qi rose from every part of my body. The Bow Saint stopped a few steps away and looked at me in silence, then suddenly spoke.

“So it was you.”

What did she mean?

I hesitated, unable to understand the meaning behind her words. A low voice sounded in my ear.

—The one the Martial God spoke of. The chosen one.

…What?