The Awakened Demon Lord
Zhuge Hui wore the look of a man turning something over in his mind. He hesitated a moment longer, then seemed to reach a decision and spoke.
"Under these circumstances, we should share everything we know."
His voice was stiff, frozen, as he looked at Ouyang Qiangang.
"That thing is the Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi of the Soul-Commanding Blood Cult."
He had spoken aloud rather than through sound transmission, so everyone in the party heard it. The color drained from every face except Ouyang Qiangang's.
The Soul-Commanding Blood Cult was a heterodox sect that had sided with the Demonic Cult during the great Righteous-Demonic War, and the Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi they had created became an object of such terror that it perished together with — took down with it — ten elders of the Nine Great Sects.
Though the precise method of refining one had been lost to history, a legend still drifted through the murim like smoke: it required the blood and lingering souls of thousands.
Pung So-cheong had gone pale as well.
"Then... all of this human-hell, including Ghost Valley Village... was built to create that one monster?"
"It would appear so."
Ouyang Qiangang murmured to himself.
'It seems Zhuge Hui doesn't realize that thing is actually still alive?'
[The murim appears to believe it is a jiangshi, not someone who mastered demonic cultivation.]
Pung So-cheong looked back at Ouyang Qiangang and spoke.
"When I saw the lesser jiangshi, the soldier jiangshi, and the blood jiangshi, I did think of the Soul-Commanding Blood Cult... but I never dreamed we'd run into a Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi here."
Zhuge Hui addressed the party in a firm, resolute voice.
"We must stop them before the ritual is complete. If the soul priests awaken the Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi, we will not be able to handle it."
Hwangbo Pung clenched his fists and roared.
"Then we destroy it! What else!"
With that, he charged at the grotesque figures with terrifying momentum. The others moved without hesitation.
At that very instant, the soul priests halted their incantations in unison and turned their heads toward the party. From eyes reduced to pure white, only the whites showing, a gloomy light flared with fierce intensity.
And from the hollow sockets of the Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi suspended in the air above, a horrifying crimson glow began to smolder.
Hwangbo Pung led the charge, the Heavenly King Fist flashing as he bore down on the nearest soul priest. The moment his fist carved through the air, the priest belatedly sensed the danger and crossed its gaunt arms to block. It was a futile resistance.
CRUNCH!
With a tremendous explosion of sound, Hwangbo Pung's fist snapped the priest's arms like rotten branches and punched clean through the desiccated chest.
"KRAAAGH!"
The soul priest screamed as it hurtled backward. They were skilled in dark arts, nothing more — their martial arts were barely first-rate. There was no way they could withstand the Heavenly King Fist of a Peak master like Hwangbo Pung.
Paeng Man-gyeong's great saber swept toward the two soul priests on the left with terrifying force.
SHWAAAAAANG—
It was the ultimate technique of the Five Tigers Gate-Cutting Saber Method — Fierce Tiger Emerges from the Mountain.
The two priests gasped and hastily swung twin palms, spreading a black curtain of qi before the blade. But Paeng Man-gyeong's saber tore through that barrier like paper and cleaved through their necks and waists in the same motion.
Shk! Craaack!
Blood sprayed in all directions.
Han Jo's Black Dragon Chain was not idle either.
SSSSRRRRRAK—
The tip of the chain whipped like a venomous serpent, striking at the priest on the right. The terrified priest threw everything into evading the Black Dragon Chain but was one step too slow. The chain bent at an impossible angle and coiled precisely around its neck.
KRAK!
With its neck broken, the soul priest crumpled to the ground, lifeless.
Pung So-cheong's Moon Shadow Daggers and Zhuge Hui's Heavenly Wind Fan were already punching through the vital points of yet another priest. In the time it took to draw a few breaths, more than half of the ten soul priests lay dead.
It was exactly that moment.
The Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi on the ceiling began slowly to rise.
The sight of a monstrosity nearly a full zhang tall standing up in midair was like some ancient god waking from slumber.
KRRK-KRRK-KRRK-KRRK—
The sound of bone joints grinding against one another echoed throughout the entire cavern.
Seeing it, Zhuge Hui bit his lip until it bled and muttered.
"We were too late...!"
The elders of the Nine Great Sects had been Transcendent masters. And now the legendary monster said to have perished together with ten of those peerless masters was rising before them. No wonder a shadow of dread crept across Zhuge Hui's face.
The fully risen Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi opened its mouth. From its gaping maw poured a monstrous sound like the wind of hell itself.
"GRRRRRRRR..."
The sound alone made the entire underground cavern tremble. Dust poured from the ceiling like rain, and the skulls strewn across the floor rattled and rolled about. The skeletal jaw of the monster, glaring at the party through crimson eyes, moved as if it were a living man.
"To dare obstruct the great work of I, the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord. You must carry spare lives about with you."
It was a rasping, splintered voice that crawled out of a grave centuries old — a voice that made the skin crawl on its own.
"Th-that thing... it's talking...?"
The voice of Zhuge Hui, a man who had never once lost his composure in any situation, shook with disbelief.
Paeng Man-gyeong and Hwangbo Pung likewise turned white as they realized what they faced was not a jiangshi at all, but a being possessed of intelligence.
The Soul-Commanding Skeleton Jiangshi — no, the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord — seemed to savor their terror. Still reclining in the air, heedless of gravity, it began to rise slowly upward. Its gaunt body swam through the emptiness as if gliding over invisible water, closing the distance to the party in eerie silence.
That grotesque, unnatural movement summoned a fear in the hearts of the party greater than any martial art could have inspired.
Watching the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord drift closer, Ouyang Qiangang asked Akasha.
'Can you gauge the level of its martial arts?'
[Analysis is impossible.]
A deep furrow carved itself between Ouyang Qiangang's brows.
'Impossible?'
[Yes. Its strength cannot be measured.]
'Damn it all...'
[Doctor, this is not an opponent you can defeat with willpower alone. Escaping this place immediately is the optimal course.]
'Then everyone here dies. And if that thing gets outside, the people are in danger. That thing is a calamity, Akasha.'
[This fight is reckless.]
'I can't run with my tail between my legs without even trying.'
Akasha let out a quiet sigh.
[Haa... Ever since you came to this world, Doctor, your risk-avoidance index has dropped by nearly a factor of four on average. Which is why you seem to grow more reckless by the day.]
'Maybe that's my real personality. The scaffolding of society back home was so rigid that my true nature rarely had a chance to show itself.'
[That may be so.]
At that moment, the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord's figure vanished from before the party's eyes like a mirage — and reappeared, abruptly, right in front of Hwangbo Pung's nose.
"Gahk!"
Utterly stunned, Hwangbo Pung swung the Heavenly King Fist on pure reflex, but the Demon Lord seized his fist as lightly as one picks up a toy and hurled him bodily away.
KWAANG!
Hwangbo Pung flew back over a dozen zhang and slammed into the wall. Shards of stone scattered in every direction.
"You monster!"
Paeng Man-gyeong roared in fury and swung his great saber.
SHWAAANG—
A frigid wave of saber qi erupted from his blade and flew at the Demon Lord like a bolt of lightning. But the Demon Lord moved with the languid irritation of a man swatting a bothersome fly, raising its forearm bone to meet it.
KKAKAKAKANG!
With a hideous screech of metal on metal, the great saber bounced away, spent. The tremendous impact transmitted through the blade sent Paeng Man-gyeong staggering back two or three zhang, blood streaming from his mouth and the corner of his lips. His face had gone ash-gray.
'My Mountain-Cleaving Tyrant Saber... blocked by a mere forearm bone? My blade, which cleaves through cast iron like tofu...!'
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes grew heavy.
'Akasha, analyze that thing's bones!'
[Deploying nanobots to penetrate the target's epidermis... Penetration failed. An unknown energy field is physically repelling the nanobots' approach. Qualitatively different from Cheon Un-gi's, but the effect is similar.]
'You can't get through?'
For the first time, bewilderment bled into Akasha's voice.
[Doctor, energy compressed to an extreme degree has condensed like solid matter across the surface of its bones and skin, nullifying all external physical and energetic interference at the source.]
At that moment, a memory flashed through Ouyang Qiangang's mind — the surgery on the Crown Prince. The thread-fine sword gang he had barely managed to conjure by wringing out every last drop of his mental force and internal energy. That too had been created by raising the density of qi to its absolute limit.
A low murmur slipped from Ouyang Qiangang's lips.
"Don't tell me... Protective Gang Qi?"
[Yes. Cross-referencing against the data from the Imperial Treasury, the energy enveloping the target is presumed to be Protective Gang Qi — something only a master of the Transformation Realm could ever manifest.]
Even as he spoke, Zhuge Hui, Han Jo, and Pung So-cheong were gripping their weapons and charging the Demon Lord.
Zhuge Hui's Heavenly Wind Fan Method whipped up a whirlwind that blinded the Demon Lord's vision, and Han Jo did not miss the opening — the Black Dragon Chain flew out soundlessly and coiled around its ankle like a serpent. At the same instant, Pung So-cheong's Moon Shadow Daggers darted upward like glinting swallows and pierced dead center into the hollow eye sockets of the immobilized monster.
It was a flawless coordinated assault crafted by three Peak masters.
But every single attack shattered into nothing the moment it touched the Demon Lord. It wasn't even defending itself. And still, the whirlwind of the Heavenly Wind Fan scattered without ever touching its body, the Black Dragon Chain bounced away as limp as thread against bedrock, and the Moon Shadow Daggers ricocheted off with an ugly screech of metal.
The bones bore not even a scratch.
"KKEKEKEKEKE..."
The laughter flowing from the Demon Lord's mouth was not human. It was a voice like thousands of skulls clacking their teeth in unison — a sound that seemed to well up from the deepest pit of hell.
As it slowly raised both hands, darkness darker than the night sky began to condense above its twenty skeletal fingertips like storm clouds. A black, bone-chilling gang qi was squirming and growing atop its claw-like nails.
"This is..."
The faces of all who saw it turned ghost-white. Their instincts told them they would not be able to evade that shrieking earth-rending qi.
At the very instant the death-gang qi coalescing at the Demon Lord's fingertips took shape —
KWAJIK!
The ground beneath Ouyang Qiangang's feet, who had until now been observing the battle, spider-webbed with cracks and exploded outward.
A space itself seemingly erased in a flash of movement, his new form claimed the position directly above the Demon Lord's head. The speed of the Phantasm Shadowless Divine Movement Art was enough to startle even the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord.
"You little—!"
Before its shock could even finish forming, Ouyang Qiangang's cold cry, standing in midair, rang through the entire underground cavern.
"Gale Nine Tribulations Hand!"
The moment his right hand carved the first palm imprint into the empty air, the flow of time warped.
KWAANG!
Before the first shockwave had even finished shaking the space, a second and third palm imprint layered themselves over its afterimage and detonated in a chain reaction.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWABOOM—!
Destruction begetting destruction, shock amplifying shock — nine layers of calamity poured down upon a single point like a storm. The immense mass that had been twisting the physical world around it finally revealed its dreadful true face to reality.
With a thunderclap ofSerial detonations, an astronomical force slammed into the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord's Protective Gang Qi.
KWAKWAKWAKWAKWABOOM!
With the roar, the blood-red gang qi sheathing its entire body shattered like glass and scattered. And the colossal skeleton jiangshi was driven back more than ten paces.
Ouyang Qiangang landed soundlessly on the ground, his face hard as stone.
The Gale Nine Tribulations Hand, carrying the power of twelve stars, possessed force enough to pulverize a ten-thousand-jin boulder. Yet the Demon Lord had merely lost its Protective Gang Qi — it had withstood that monstrous force with its bare body.
'If my internal energy had kept pace, I could have blown that monster apart entirely...'
Ouyang Qiangang swallowed his boiling blood. The shackle Akasha had warned him of — incomplete — had caught his ankle at the most decisive moment.
From the Demon Lord's hollow eye sockets, a blood-red flame blazed up, a seething mix of shock, fury, and a vicious humiliation. It seemed unable to accept that a mere insect had dared to inflict pain upon it.
Meeting that gaze head-on, Ouyang Qiangang spoke to the party in a voice gone cold and still.
"I will take this one. All of you — finish off the remaining priests!"
The faces of the others went pale. For him to say he would take on the Soul-Commanding Demon Lord meant he had resigned himself to death.
"KEKAKAKAKAKA... KRAAAAAAAAAAGH—!"
From the Demon Lord's mouth burst a monstrous cry, impossible to tell whether laughter or a howl of rage. A murderous intent so pure it bordered on the absolute shook the entire underground cavern. Shards of stone rained down from the ceiling, and the others staggered, hands flying to their ears without conscious thought.
"Good... I shall devour you very, very slowly — beginning with your four limbs and ending with the last fragment of your soul, leaving nothing behind!"
Its voice carried an inexpressible hatred and bloodlust, like lava boiling up from the very floor of hell.