Chapter 977

Shame was only one of the many emotions every human being felt, but its weight varied enormously from person to person.

For a slave scorned from the moment they were in their mother’s womb, shame might be no different from fate. For the noble and the wealthy, it could tear at the heart more cruelly and sharply than any blade.

And the North Heaven Demon Lord was very much the latter.

“Our Poppy! I was wondering where you’d run off to in such a panic. There you are.”

A face and voice full of concern.

And a smile whose lopsidedly raised corners made that concern look all the more absurd.

“I was so worried. I thought I might’ve lost you for good.”

With every mocking word Jin Taekyung spoke, the North Heaven Demon Lord’s eyelids twitched.

As if walking into an obvious trap of his own accord weren’t bad enough, now he was being treated like a dog that had run away from home.

The shame and despair gripping him were unlike anything he had ever felt before.

“How dare a nobody like you—”

“Shut up.”

Jeok Cheongang appeared beyond the thinning cloud of dust, cutting the North Heaven Demon Lord off. His gaze had gone cold and deep.

“Who do you think you are, running your mouth like that? You’re a nobody.”

The North Heaven Demon Lord gritted his teeth.

Why was this happening?

In his eyes, Jeok Cheongang had grown as imposing and brilliant as he had been long ago, during the Great Faction War.

The sight brought back the man he had once been, shrinking without realizing it before the giant known as the Fire King.

Step.

Footsteps rang unusually clear in his ears.

But Jeok Cheongang stopped on his way toward him and let out a short laugh.

“I’ve walked a good ten paces, yet I’m no closer. I feel like I’ve been bewitched. Don’t you?”

At his Master’s question, Jin Taekyung frowned as if puzzled.

“Come on, that can’t be right. Maybe you’re imagining it?”

“Imagining it?”

“That makes no sense. It’s not like you’re walking in place. Why wouldn’t you be any closer?”

Scratching his chin, Jin Taekyung went on with a perfectly straight face. He glanced at the North Heaven Demon Lord’s stiff expression.

“Unless some coward got scared and started backing away.”

“……!”

“Oh, wait. Is that it? Seriously?”

Crack.

Skin split, and blood flowed.

The North Heaven Demon Lord had clenched his teeth hard enough to split his lips. He looked down at the legs that had carried him backward on instinct.

Or perhaps he’d looked away because he couldn’t bear to face the mockery on that bloodied brat’s face.

If he didn’t at least look away, he felt he might lose the last thread of reason he had left.

“Wow, it really was true. A minute ago, you took a pill and started acting all high and mighty, throwing a goddamn fit.”

Jin Taekyung strode closer with another taunt.

But this time, the North Heaven Demon Lord didn’t retreat.

No—he couldn’t.

Soft step.

Unlike the master and Disciple blocking his path, the footsteps behind him were light as feathers.

He half-turned. A woman approached like a gentle breeze.

The Bow Saint.

Caught between them. Surrounded on all sides.

Neither phrase came close to describing his situation.

Three Supreme Peak masters.

One was a member of the Three Saints, known throughout the world. Another was an old sovereign who stood shoulder to shoulder with her. And the last was a young Divine Dragon, soaring toward the heavens with that sovereign’s teachings as his dragon pearl.

This can’t be happening. It can’t.

The words slipped out alone from a hollow corner of his heart.

Then, at some point, the trembling in the North Heaven Demon Lord’s eyes subsided. His gaze settled.

“Even if you defeat me here today, nothing will change.”

Jin Taekyung shot back without hesitation.

“Do you people go around memorizing speeches or something? Is there a punishment if you get even one word wrong? Your internal energy gets confiscated for a week?”

“Say whatever you want. It makes no difference. That is the only truth.”

“We’ve done a pretty good job stopping you so far, though. Today included.”

At Jin Taekyung’s reply, the North Heaven Demon Lord let out a short laugh despite himself.

“If that’s what you believe, then so be it. There’s nothing wrong with holding on to hope.”

“What?”

“Finding myself in this situation made me wonder. Why did the Western Heaven Demon Lord, the Southern Heaven Demon Empress, and the Eastern Heaven Demon Lord fail? How did a plan they’d spent so long preparing fall apart in an instant?”

Jin Taekyung’s face hardened at the unexpected words. So did everyone else’s.

“What are you trying to say?”

Jeok Cheongang’s voice was cold. He looked ready to burn the man alive on the spot, but the North Heaven Demon Lord answered calmly.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say.”

“You bastard—!”

“Don’t rush, Fire King. Even if you don’t hurry me, we don’t have much time left.”

With his mind emptied, his voice was calm as well. The North Heaven Demon Lord looked inward, contemplating the energy that remained in his body, and continued.

“Half a year at most. That’s all.”

The war had already begun.

It had begun the day the absolute ruler in the darkness awoke from a long slumber.

No—long before that.

“Power beyond anything the hundred thousand followers of the Demonic Path possessed. Unbelievable powers. ‘A new heaven’ refers to that person.”

Everyone there knew whom the North Heaven Demon Lord meant.

“The Lord of Heaven…”

The Bow Saint murmured to herself, then lifted her clear eyes to look at the North Heaven Demon Lord.

“Was that why you abandoned the comrades who shared life and death with you, and betrayed the world?”

“Comrades? Did you just call them comrades?”

The North Heaven Demon Lord suddenly burst into a hearty laugh.

Comrades. People who walked the same path.

The meaning held in those two words—their utterly worthless value and the past they called to mind—made him laugh in spite of himself.

“It seems you lived in a different world from me. Well, what could you possibly know, when you shut yourselves away in remote mountain valleys without roots, turning your backs on the world?”

His bloodshot eyes moved over Jeok Cheongang and the Bow Saint in turn.

Neither of them had been known by name before the Great Faction War. They had been eccentric, reclusive masters.

But the North Heaven Demon Lord—Murong Baek—was different.

As a direct descendant of the Murong Family, one of the Five Great Families, he had seen the world. He had to wage covert battles against others who shared the same orthodox fold.

“Everyone smiled and spoke of righteousness while hiding unseen blades in their sleeves. Is that what you call comrades? Is this the orthodox faction?”

Even the stars looking down on the world would one day lose their light and fade.

Everything grew old and declined.

The world of martial artists was no different.

As time passed, the martial world had disappeared. All that remained was a cold Murim.

Chivalry had lost more and more of its worth, while the orthodox faction—including the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Families—poured its strength into struggles for power.

Taking in countless lay disciples to expand the sects under their control had become commonplace.

Some even committed the taboo of bringing the unorthodox faction into their fold. Others caused numerous casualties in clashes waged in secret.

Expansion ended in an explosion.

The power they had built up over so many years was eating away at the orthodox faction in the form of conflict.

And the northern lands, far from the Central Plains, were no exception.

If anything, things were harsher there.

At least for the Murong Family.

“You can’t claim you don’t know what roots I—or rather, the Murong Family—come from.”

The North Heaven Demon Lord looked down at the pool of blood beneath his feet.

He had the handsome features of a man who had spent his life as the Family Head of a prestigious great family, and the authority and strength to match.

Yet even after all the years the Murong Family had been rooted in Liaoning Province, the faint traces of his foreign ancestry still flowed through his veins.

Enough to bring to mind, for a moment, the face of Jamukha lying dead.

“Nomad?”

At Jin Taekyung’s murmured question, the North Heaven Demon Lord’s fist clenched on instinct, his knuckles turning white.

He had heard that word countless times.

The pointing fingers and voices that had followed him from out of sight were still there in his eyes and ears.

Nomad. Invader. Outsider.

And barbarian.

Long ago, the northeastern people called the Murong Xianbei had occupied the edge of the continent and founded a nation.

It was an age of chaos.

Five foreign peoples and sixteen small kingdoms¹ stood divided across the land.

But the divided land eventually found stability, and the invaders who had used the turmoil to charge across the continent with lances and composite bows were either driven beyond the Great Wall or absorbed.

The Murong Xianbei were among those absorbed.

They remained in Liaoning Province and laid new foundations, establishing a great family.

The Murong Family was born.

A family of invaders descended from barbarian blood.

Their peerless martial arts and superb horsemanship had made them a towering force in Murim. Yet the other towering forces—the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Families—had looked down on them and treated them with contempt, though never openly.

“Sometimes I wondered: if the Great Faction War had never happened, would the Murong Family have survived to this day?”

Expansion ended in an explosion, but the aftermath of an explosion beyond anyone’s imagination could leave reconciliation and peace behind.

The arrival of the Demonic Cult as an outside enemy changed everything.

To survive, everyone had to join forces and fight together. The Murim Alliance, formed around the Martial God, united the feuding orthodox faction.

But Murong Baek—and the Murong Family—hadn’t forgotten.

They remembered it all clearly.

“There is no more chivalry. No more benevolence or righteousness. In the end, the only ones who survive through the years are the strong.”

The strong prey on the weak.

That was the only truth of the world the North Heaven Demon Lord had learned.

The only value and purpose in a Murim built on violence.

And so Murong Baek became the North Heaven Demon Lord.

“That was why. Nothing else.”

Rumble. Rumble.

A powerful tremor spread across the ground.

The North Heaven Demon Lord’s eyes were now so red that “bloodshot” no longer described them. His blood-red gaze swept over everyone in the gorge as he roared.

“Who dares! What hypocrite has the right to condemn me!”

BOOOOM!

The internal energy carried in his aged shout burst outward as a mighty sonic wave.

The aura was truly terrifying.

Blood flowed from the ears of the people of Shanxi, frozen like statues. Several who had been shaken to their cores by the roar alone coughed up blood and dropped to their knees.

Vrrrrm.

Terrible power churned around one man.

Though gravely wounded, he radiated a vast wave of qi that seemed to squeeze the air on every side. Jeok Cheongang realized the North Heaven Demon Lord had already crossed the point of no return.

Innate qi.

Just like the heads of Dark Heaven who had gone to the afterlife before him, the North Heaven Demon Lord was burning up everything he had been given in that moment.

Even knowing death waited at the end.

“If I tell you to back off, will you?”

At Jeok Cheongang’s quiet question, his Disciple reached out without a word.

Whoosh—tap.

A spear shaft shot toward Jin Taekyung from behind like an arrow, and he caught it firmly. Blue-white flames surged up and wound around the almost transparent spearhead. That was answer enough.

“I’ve had to listen to this bullshit for so long my whole body aches.”

“You’re too young to ache all over.”

Jeok Cheongang gave a short laugh, and Jin Taekyung laughed with him.

“I’ll go on ahead. You two can take your time catching up.”

At the same moment, dirt and rock crumbled beneath Jin Taekyung’s toes.

Crack—BOOM!

The ground split like a spiderweb, and a streak of flame shot forward.

The two old monsters blurred, following the Divine Dragon as he charged ahead with greater speed and force than ever.

Flash.

As the distance vanished between them, a blood-red glow surged upward.