Chapter 64
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 63
Chapter Title: Scatter - 3
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How much time had passed? Little Divine Dragon had no idea.
"One more shichen!"
His life was on the line right now. He couldn't afford a single careless move with any technique, or he'd quickly find himself restricted.
The sight of the scouts unfolding their flashy formations might have looked frantic at first glance. Naturally, there was no time to leisurely gaze up at the night sky.
How could he even think of gauging the moon's position to track the time? Demonic Cult disciples were swarming right in front of him.
But.
"Just hold out for another shichen, and we're good!"
"Got it!"
He uttered the lie to bolster their spirits. But it wasn't entirely false.
Fire Cloud Wind Sword had shattered the Thousand-Li Scent, so the sensory expert back at the main force would pick up on it. The rescue team was coming. If they endured, they could survive.
They absolutely would.
Little Divine Dragon was certain. He had to be.
"Hah!" His morale dipping? That must be why Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger bellowed boldly.
He stepped forward and swung his blade. Wind howled along the massive cleaver's edge. The Five Tiger Cleaving Gate Blade evoked a storm, whipping up gales with a single stroke.
The fierce tiger of Hebei had roared through the night. But even that roar was now cracking hoarsely at the end. His throat had given out.
Both blade and master.
Tonight, Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger had shouted his battle cries countless times. He poured his will into his bursting voice.
He wouldn't yield before crisis. The Peng Clan endured to the very end.
True to his clan's teachings, he never let his momentum falter.
"Nngh!"
But the great blade's power had clearly waned. The human body wasn't a well, nor the dantian an ocean.
The blade arts for wielding such a massive weapon required stomping footwork that consumed vast inner energy with every move. Strikes that once felled two foes per clash now struggled against even one disciple.
"Tch!"
The enemy flipped his eyes back while grabbing the blade with his own body. The cleaver halted against flesh. Resentful eyes glared in the final moments before death.
The instant Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger yanked his blade with all his might.
A Demonic Cult disciple beside him thrust his sword as if waiting for the cue. One blocked with his body, another sealed the weapon, and the last struck. It was a pattern all too familiar by now.
The only problem was how deadly it remained every time.
That was when it happened. Shaaak! Puk!
Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger's peril vanished.
The sword blade slicing through the night air was dyed red with blood. Yang Choseol's sword pierced another vital point.
The Point Spear School's Shooting Sun technique had already claimed countless lives. At some point, she had fallen silent.
No one knew if it was labored breathing or resentment reaching the heavens.
Fire Cloud Wind Sword stopped her as she stiffly tried to stab the corpse.
"Conserve your inner energy."
"..."
The axe-wielding man and the twenty from the Five Apostles had died long ago. They'd endured the attacks that followed.
And the ones after that, and the ones after those. Yet countless disciples still lurked in the forest. Iron Chain Path caught his breath.
"Right. Save your inner energy. We can't see the end yet."
"Relentless bastards. How can such a group exist in this world?"
The enemies were tenacious. Like ocean waves crashing endlessly, never ceasing, they threw themselves forward in sequence.
They never poured everything in at once. Over there, the disciples who appeared only as shadows charged in groups of just over twenty at a time.
Wheel battle. A method that sought certain exhaustion over a quick finish.
Not a style favored in the martial world.
Those who lived by the blade were bold about victory and defeat. They preferred all-or-nothing duels over dragging things out and inviting needless variables.
The enemies' approach smelled more of strategists... or the military. Cold and sharp.
Yet utterly effective.
Every scout was gasping for breath, inner energy running dry. How many more waves could they take?
Relentless. They feared neither death nor clung to life. Resentment and hatred seeped through beyond the scouts' lines.
"Just until the rescue team... just until the rescue team arrives."
Little Divine Dragon repeated it like a mantra. They would come. His father wouldn't discard lives like rags.
Just stay alive.
"They're coming!"
And the same cycle repeated.
Kill.
Slash, stab, kill, block, dodge, kill. Growing numb to the slaughter felt horrific.
Fire Cloud Wind Sword had been raised in the Blade Gate. He'd never enjoyed taking lives during righteous acts.
But since Peng Soyoung's death, he'd changed bit by bit.
"Uwaaak!"
"Die!"
He dodged the enemy's pickaxe thrust with Six Harmonies Steps. A red plum blossom bloomed where he'd sidestepped.
Puk! Crunch! The sensation of his sword tearing flesh felt mechanical now.
Exhausted, but he couldn't stop. Before the onslaught of death, everything else was negotiable.
"Watch out!"
Everything was unclear.
The rescue team was supposed to be his senior brothers and juniors. It felt too late, urgency gnawing at him.
"Rescue team..."
"They're coming! They will! Just half a shichen more!"
Little Divine Dragon's frantic voice. He knew it.
The seemingly endless encirclement of disciples was thinning. The night's darkness lifted ever so slightly.
The brightening sky and dwindling foes weren't lies. A little longer, and they'd make it.
Yet the situation grew ever more dire.
Inner energy depleted, they fought with raw physical strength. Arms swung too many times had lost all feeling.
He'd collapse before the end.
-If only a small variable.
Someone muttering to themselves? Or a desperate wish as hallucination?
Every scout heard it amid the Demonic Cult disciples hammering like demons.
And one laughed bitterly.
Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger.
The tiger mad for honor and battle had weathered countless fights. In pure combat experience, he rivaled even Iron Chain Path.
He sensed it. They couldn't win like this.
If a variable appeared—he exhaled deeply the moment he heard it.
Gazing at his axe-chopped leg.
At the young martial prodigies standing beside him.
Thinking of Peng Soyoung, who fell to their hands. Not bad. Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger's eyes widened fiercely.
"Come on!"
He deliberately shattered the circular formation they'd barely held. The mad tiger advanced two steps.
Deep into the Demonic Cult disciples' midst. As Yang Choseol hurriedly thrust her sword, Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger glanced back one last time.
He'd never lived as a burden.
Dawn was breaking. The remaining disciples' numbers were now clear.
Every one of them burned with resolve. The last survivors had to be the most determined.
Those who wouldn't flee after witnessing countless deaths.
Great cleaver raised high. Legs infused with every last drop of inner energy.
Boom! The ground quaked under his stomping footwork. In this instant, Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger borrowed a realm forbidden to him.
The Blade King's enlightened world, where Peng Soyoung had barely touched before dying—another Peng clansman stepped in.
Innate True Qi. Honed as a Peng clansman through ascending heart methods. Embracing purity and shunning turbidity over decades.
A power unusable without paying with life granted one miracle in a lifetime.
In the sensation of merging with natural qi, Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger swung down.
"I'll go ahead and check on the young master first!"
The technique that ended the long fight.
The move that devoured a Five Great Clans' peak expert swept the remaining disciples. Resisters fell one by one.
The Five Tiger Cleaving Gate Blade's fangs severed without mercy.
Only when the very last staggered and collapsed did Glorious Combat Radiant Tiger halt.
He moved no more.
"Hah, hah..."
Dawn fully broke. The sky had turned blue before they knew it. Only then did the survivors see the battlefield.
Mountain of corpses and sea of blood, nothing alive anywhere. After enduring the night, the scene they and the Demonic Cult had wrought was a pile of bodies and one death.
"Why..."
Fengyang Morning Grace spoke. Swallowing surging nausea. Even seasoned Iron Chain Path was the same.
Those who'd never witnessed the Demonic Cult's work firsthand couldn't comprehend. No one could describe such horror in words.
To the question with nowhere to go, Little Divine Dragon answered.
"Because they're demons."
The day Huangfu Clan burned, he'd abandoned understanding. To Little Divine Dragon, the Demonic Cult was no longer a band of humans.
Unpredictable swarms of locusts. Calamities that left nothing in their wake.
"That's why... they're the Demonic Cult."
But the shock wasn't over yet.
As they silently retraced their steps and met the main force with dismayed faces, they learned the truth: that desperate night they'd held on for dear life, over seven peak experts had sacrificed themselves.
The rescue team—and those who'd gone to find them—had died too.
The Murim Alliance, resolved to eradicate the Demonic Cult, crumbled in Guangdong without even entering. They couldn't continue the journey.
It was too great a loss against just over a hundred disciples and a single sword demon.