See You in Hell, Moyong Bi
In all the years I had lived, I had witnessed countless sights, but I could say without hesitation that this was the most shocking of them all.
Three thousand unit members slit their own throats with sickles.
Their carotid arteries severed cleanly, blood erupted in fountains more than three spans high. It was enough to make one believe a second crimson ceiling had formed at roughly the height of a man.
The martial artists of the Blood Flying Eight Gates lay with arms and legs twisted together like braided rope, packing the arena so densely that scarcely a gap remained. The jets of blood still spraying from their corpses had not lost their force. Like a torrential downpour they shot skyward as if to pierce the heavens, struck the air above, then bent and fell back as rain, drumming against the bodies with a relentless patter.
Trickle… trickle…
The blood flowed and became ditches. The ditches gathered into rivers. The rivers pooled around ankles and climbed over insteps.
“Dear gods… dear gods in heaven. If only this were a dream. No… children…”
A man who appeared to have been the unit commander of the Blood Flying Eight Gates knelt among the corpses, muttering.
“You… you!”
Bloodshot rage flooded my eyes. I was just turning my gaze toward Ryu Hwasa when—
—Kyaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!
“Khuh!”
A ghostly wail tore the air apart. I clamped my hands over my ears. The sound rose from deep beneath the earth. Heaven and earth began to tremble. The ground shook. The entire altar quaked.
—Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
The earth began to drink the blood in a mad frenzy. The half-blue, half-red dolls that had been watching the arena all turned their smiling faces fully red.
—Gurgle, gurgle.
A crimson swamp formed on the floor, and pale hands of corpse-ghosts thrust upward. They seized the bodies of the Blood Flying Eight Gates and dragged them down, scraping every last drop of blood with their nails.
—Kyaaaa!!!
The ghostly wail scattered into fragments. Ryu Hwasa plucked the mandala that had been clinging to his heart and drinking his blood. He flung it into the air. The moment it struck the ground it scuttled like a living thing, racing madly toward one corner—where Ak Ryu-yeop, one of the Three Evil Young Masters, had been hiding and observing everything.
“W-wait! Why me…! Spare me…! Kuh, kuhk!! Aaaagh!”
The dual swords he swung wildly did him no good. The mandala latched onto him.
“Uwaaaaagh!!”
—Crunch-crack!!!
The instant it attached, hundreds of pale corpse-ghost hands erupted from below, seized every limb of Ak Ryu-yeop, and hauled him into the earth.
“No! I don’t want to die! Not like this! Not like—!”
A final, desperate scream, and he vanished without a trace, swallowed into the ground together with the countless corpses of the Blood Cultists.
—Crunch-crack!! Snap! Grind!
The sickening sounds of bones being chewed and swallowed faded. When it was over, only a vast hole remained in the center of the arena.
Hellish silence settled over everything.
—Hummm.
A red mist bloomed in the air.
—Thump… thump…
Accompanied by the distinctive rhythm of a peculiar footwork, a tall, gaunt man stepped out of the mist.
“I expected it, and I steeled myself for it, but still…”
The man could not close his mouth at the carnage before him.
“…Ryu Hwasa, you really went and did it. You truly are the maddest bastard in the Blood Cult—no, in the entire martial world. There were rumors that the Seven Palace Lords who split the Blood Cult into seven pieces would unify it, then the Demon Cult as well, and finally revive the White Lotus Demon Sect… I dismissed them as nonsense, but after this I almost believe it. I can understand those rigid Demon Cult fanatics, but you? You I will never understand.”
Ryu Hwasa glanced back.
“Ghost Shadow Divine Thief. Forgive the trouble.”
I flinched.
That man…
The figure emerging from the red mist was someone I knew. Just before reuniting with So Yeomgyo in Unwol Jiju, I had clashed with him—the one who commanded jiangshi, Ryu Cheong-jin, the Ghost Shadow Divine Thief. He used a bouncing, distinctive footwork, throwing daggers, controlling jiangshi, and moving with terrifying speed. A Blood Cultist through and through.
Ryu Hwasa spoke.
“Watch my back, Ryu Cheong-jin. I need more time. The body of the Ten Thousand Blood Emperor is just beginning to harden from its chrysalis stage—this is when it is most vulnerable. From now—”
“Who said you could?”
I took one step forward.
—Crack.
Black lightning rose from the tip of my foot.
“Wait… that black lightning. I’ve definitely seen it somewhere.”
Ryu Cheong-jin’s brow furrowed. Behind him Ryu Hwasa retreated, still speaking.
“…Because the maddest mad dog in the martial world, another child of the Mother, the Heavenly Demon of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, will come charging like a lunatic.”
“Hold on. Those eyes and that bone structure… they look familiar…”
Ryu Cheong-jin’s gaze raked me from head to toe in an instant.
“….”
A taut silence stretched between us. Back then I had worn a mask. I had almost hoped…
The brief moment passed. Ryu Cheong-jin’s eyes flew wide, a smile splitting his face.
“Heh… heh-heh… so it’s you. That bastard from back then.”
“…!”
“My eye for bodies—honed by molding thousands of corpses into jiangshi—never fails. I welcome you with both hands. In fact, this is something I wanted even more.”
“….”
Ryu Cheong-jin loosened his hands and stepped between me and Ryu Hwasa.
“It seems you two are already acquainted.”
Ryu Hwasa looked from me to Ryu Cheong-jin as he walked toward the hole leading underground in the center of the arena.
“I made a firm pact with Mara Jin to repay the seven thousand bodies I borrowed this time with ten times that number—seventy thousand murders—within three years.”
Ryu Hwasa’s mouth stretched into a grin so wide it nearly split his face.
“But Mara Jin made a mistake. I have no intention of stopping at a mere seventy thousand. Seventy thousand is only the beginning. And that beginning starts today. The unstoppable beginning is today. In short, you and I are gambling. Gambling. Yes, a gamble.”
He flicked his tongue across his lips and nodded.
“You and I. Both of us are sitting in the best seats, staking everything on the Central Plains. Our lives, our heads, every last inch of us—on the gamble of a lifetime. The loser dies completely.”
Our bloodshot eyes locked, each ready to kill the other.
“If my calculation is correct, the Ten Thousand Blood Emperor who awakens on my second altar will retain its full power, yet its mind will be incomplete—parasitizing the spirit of the vessel that provided the body. Occasionally the power itself is lost as well, but that would simply be extraordinarily bad luck.”
…Grit.
Mumyeong ground his teeth faintly in the shadows.
Ryu Hwasa continued.
“Once it passes through the seven nights and becomes a complete adult form, it will be a malevolent god that no one in the martial world can stop. And the human collectives I know are so slow that grasping the situation and mobilizing large-scale organizations will naturally take more than a week. So what does that mean?”
He shrugged.
“Do you roughly understand the situation now?”
“You crazy son of a bitch.”
“From the moment I began drawing in the Mother’s sects, there was never a middle ground in this catastrophe! Either this spark will burn the entire Central Plains to ash, or it will be snuffed out completely—only one of the two!”
From beyond the closing red mist, Ryu Hwasa laughed.
“See you in hell, Moyong Bi-gun. Well then, Ryu Cheong-jin. You may kill him.”
“What about the children we were going to use as offerings?”
To Ryu Cheong-jin’s question Ryu Hwasa answered with pure indifference.
“Handle them however you like. Now that the Ten Thousand Blood Emperor is secured, we no longer need Guardians like the White-Headed Yaksha.”
Ryu Hwasa leapt straight down into the underground.
Ryu Cheong-jin glanced into the bottomless pit. He sniffed the bloody stench carried on the wind.
“This smell… so the path that once required a long detour through the underground waterways of the annex to reach the second altar now leads straight down.”
He looked at me.
“Anyway, we have plenty to talk about ourselves, don’t we?”
—Thump… thump.
Ryu Cheong-jin began bouncing on the tips of his toes.
“No point dragging this out. I know your skill is no ordinary thing. Back then your speed looked ordinary, yet you used True Words and unleashed a decisive ultimate technique—so at minimum you’re a Transcendent Peak master. I’ll treat you accordingly.”
He drew short daggers into both hands. Internal energy began to pour from his body. He gestured at the empty air. Red mist rose from every direction. From within the gaps, blood jiangshi began to crawl out—more than twenty of them—forming a formation.
Mumyeong surveyed the surroundings and spoke.
Slow, but he can also wield sorcery that manipulates space. It seems many high-ranking Blood Cultists combine martial arts with sorcery.
Ryu Cheong-jin looked at me and grinned.
“Your expression is completely unhinged. Hard to concentrate, isn’t it? After hearing something like that.”
“….”
“Shall I raise the tension a bit for you?”
He gestured to a blood jiangshi.
—Whoosh-whoosh.
One of them charged furiously toward the wall behind us.
—KABOOM!!
A massive explosion collapsed an entire section of the spectator stands in an instant.
“…!”
When I had subdued him before, I had only reached the second stage of the Asura Great Annihilation Calamity—the Advance stage. Now I stood at the third stage, Annihilation, just short of the final one. He naturally had no way of knowing that. I intended to use that ignorance and kill him the moment I moved.
As if reading my mind, Ryu Cheong-jin sneered.
“Your footwork looked pretty quick. And you know how to use your head. I won’t get caught the same way twice. So I specially prepared these jiangshi just for you.”
A greasy smile spread across his face.
“Their martial skill is only first-rate at best, but their ability to collide their internal energy and explode in an instant surpasses even ordinary thunder bombs, as you just saw.”
“You idiot. You think that’ll work on m—”
Ryu Cheong-jin bared his teeth.
“Of course it won’t. Even if it was only a proxy fight, you still caught up to me—the Ghost Shadow Divine Thief—and slammed me down. How could I ever pin you with these sluggish blood jiangshi and make them self-destruct in time? After how hard I ground my teeth over that, you dog. But then I remembered something you said. You—”
He smirked.
“What was it? ‘I’m something of an orthodox martial artist’? Fine. Let’s have a look at that orthodox conscience of yours. Heh-heh-heh.”
“…!”
He gestured again.
—Hummm.
The red mist rippled. Wooden cages of oak rolled out. At first I did not understand what they were.
“M… Mommy?”
“Hungry…”
“I want Daddy…”
Inside were children no taller than a navel, packed tightly together.
“Ah.”
My mind went pure white. These were the very children who had been destined as offerings for the Blood Cult’s Guardian ritual—the ones kept locked away and fed only dew.
“You son of a bitch!”
I exploded forward with a thunderclap. Ryu Cheong-jin thrust out a hand.
“Whoa, whoa! Stop right there! You can’t just charge in!”
—Clack-clack!
Pitch-black blood jiangshi latched onto the wooden cages.
“Kh!”
I slammed on the brakes so hard the marble cracked beneath me. Sparks flew in my eyes. Black lightning erupted from my body as I roared.
“If even one of those children is hurt, I will tear you to pieces this time for real!!”
Ryu Cheong-jin’s face turned ashen.
“Ah… this. I had a feeling, but… so even back then you weren’t going all-out. You really are a monster bastard.”
I glared at him with bloodshot eyes. He could not even meet my gaze. He sidled carefully behind the oak cages.
“Now then. If you so much as try to rush me, we all go boom together with the children. Got it?”
“Grit.”
I stared at the children trapped inside. I ransacked every method I knew. There was none. I tried every possibility.
“Easy now. All right.”
Ryu Cheong-jin gestured.
“Blood jiangshi, all of you—use the cages as shields and form up behind them.”
Cleverly he placed the cages as a shield wall in front and arrayed the jiangshi behind them. I could not unleash any overbearing ascending martial arts. Even if I tried to use my fastest footwork at full power, the fundamental premise was still moving forward. It was a complete deadlock.
Ryu Cheong-jin grinned.
“I’ll send the blood jiangshi at you one by one, so just stand there quietly and get blown to death. Understood? Of course you’re free to dodge. The children will all die, though. And for the record, don’t even think about some foolish attempt to kill all the jiangshi at once.”
The Ghost Shadow Divine Thief Ryu Cheong-jin spoke with a voice dripping with mockery.
“That’s impossible unless you’re at the level of a Guardian.”
“That’s exactly what I am, you son of a bitch.”
“…?!”
Startled, Ryu Cheong-jin whipped his head around, but it was already too late.
—Flutter.
Crimson martial robes billowed. Black hair streamed. A flash of red flame-light glittered. Between them stretched a long, pale leg.
Blood Demon Serpent-Wheel Soft Sword
From behind us a crimson serpent coiled and lashed out in eight directions at once. That ferocious assault swept over every blood jiangshi and Ryu Cheong-jin himself, tearing them to shreds.
“It can’t be.”
In all the martial world there was only one person who could unleash this technique. I murmured the name I could scarcely believe.
“…So Yeomgyo?”