Chapter 248
Chapter 248: Alliance (4)
The head kept rolling long after it had come all the way down the slope.
Only after striking a rock the size of itself did it finally come to a slow, settling stop. Over the severed cross-section, blood that had not yet congealed trickled slowly down, staining a handful of earth blood-dark. Both eyeballs had popped out during the rolling and were dangling loose. The skull was crushed too, and brain matter was oozing down continuously.
"……"
The battle cry of the advance cut off.
The grand force and fighting spirit with which the massive force had been shaking the fields in ferocious momentum abruptly died down, and in the center of that silence a single head stared blankly up at them with empty eyes.
Though time had been short, the formations of two Formation Tower Trigram Leaders had been unable to stop them—yet they had been halted by the most basic 'formation' laid by a single dead man.
The formation that was Hyang-Rakshasa's severed head.
"Namu Amitabha."
The Scarlet Rakshasa's expression shook once and then settled. Neither the fury of a senior brother, nor the anguish of one who had lost a junior brother. Not a trace of either rose anywhere on his blood-red kasaya or face. Only the bone rosary between his fingers rolled at an even faster pace. Outside of that, not a single crack was visible in his stillness-in-motion.
"Hyang, you have attained liberation in a manner this wretched and yet this sublime. Truly, all that remains is your passage to paradise. Guanshiyin Bodhisattva."
With the end of that Buddhist invocation, the Scarlet Rakshasa's gaze left his junior brother's face and turned toward the summit of the ridge.
There, two people stood blocking the blood-dark field.
Dong Bong-soo—the man in a black robe with "Enemy" carved upon his back.
Two or three steps behind him, Yeop Bi-hwa—the peerless beauty in Vast Heaven martial attire—stood side by side, looking down toward them with lofty composure.
Swiiish—
He slowly planted the two of them in his pupils.
Thud—thud—
He drove the banner he had been holding deep into the center of the field and rose from his position.
From beneath the Scarlet Rakshasa's feet, blood-dark earth was pushed aside few meters in every direction.
Huuuuuuuuu—
His blood-red kasaya swelled with the true energy surging from within, spreading wide in all directions, and began to billow above the field, grown to two or three times its original size. The shadow extending through the gaps of that enlarged kasaya fell long over the two thousand of the main force, and the blood-dark field sank into an even deeper blood-red hue beneath that shadow.
It was an energy so immense that even a single blade of grass on the field, a single pebble atop the earth, was drawn toward the Scarlet Rakshasa's feet by that blood-red pull with the faintest of tremors.
The banner just driven in fluttered grandly dozens of times in answer to its master's majesty. In that billowing, the single character Blood stamped dead center of the blood-dark cloth became a living blood-red thing in itself and grew all the deeper.
Only at his fingertips, the beads of the bone rosary swapped positions faster and faster.
At that, the main force members dropped to their knees one by one in succession.
Thousands of kasaya panels all billowed in the same direction at once, thousands of heads bowed in the same posture toward the same person, and all those movements spread simultaneously across the field like an epidemic in an instant. As if the entire great plain east of Gangdo had lowered itself wholesale toward the Scarlet Rakshasa.
"We……receive the Left Guardian's command."
As Vajra-Rakshasa gave the low opening words, the entire main force rose to the same one phrase at once, following that voice.
"We……receive the Left Guardian's command."
Across the blood-dark plain, a chorus of acknowledgment spread wide in all directions.
"Our Junior Brother spread the will of the Buddha and was mercifully gathered into that will ahead of us. You are to walk the path our Junior Brother left unfinished and ensure the Revered Master's compassion reaches those wicked ones, the heretics not yet taken in."
"We will spread the Revered Master's compassion, following in our Junior Brother's wake."
The voices of Vajra-Rakshasa and Mandala-Rakshasa rang out simultaneously.
In the very motion of the two kicking off the dirt floor together, the energy of their offensive was already embedded grain by grain.
In Vajra-Rakshasa's two hands, two black Vajra rods were lifted in turn, and beside him, the Mandala cloth that had been hidden inside Mandala-Rakshasa's kasaya flowed out from between her fingers and fluttered long above the field.
The signal flare of a combined assault in which two senior-junior brothers of the Dark Net Rakshasa Path's four great master-disciple lines linked the same movement together.
And so the two figures took their first steps toward the summit of the ridge.
In one of Vajra-Rakshasa's hands, a length of bone chain unspooled with each step and dragged across the field.
***
Meanwhile.
"Phew……almost died there."
"Right……"
Dong Mu-toe and Eom Bi-ryeong steadied their breathing two or three steps behind.
Only after both facts had settled together in their heads—that thirty Curved Blades on the rear slope had been an instant from reaching their backs, and that those Curved Blades had in the end never reached them, parting left and right—did both their shoulders at last quietly relax.
"Well, whatever, in any case……thanks. Guild Master."
Eom Bi-ryeong shifted her eyes awkwardly toward Dong Bong-soo's back. It was a tone wringing out its usual abrasiveness, but at the end of it flowed a crisp gratitude unlike herself.
"Ha ha. I knew it'd be like this. Our lord……Guild Master. I'll make a special exception and let today's question slide."
Dong Mu-toe chimed in from beside her.
"But that 'gift'—who is it?"
Dong Bong-soo, his gaze still fixed on the field below the ridge, answered.
His eyes were pinned precisely on the spot where Hyang-Rakshasa's severed head had come to rest.
"Picked it up on the way here."
"As expected of our……Guild Master. Picking up a noggin off the road and then bestowing it upon the enemy as a gift."
"Want me to shut that mouth again?"
"……No, what I said wasn't wr—. No, it wasn't, not at all. Yes, yes. Long live our Guild Master!"
"You two—stay next to Yeop Bi-hwa here. Put down the formation arts and formation techniques for a moment too."
Dong Bong-soo's voice turned toward the edge of the ridge's crest.
"Huh? So you're telling us to just stand here? Two Formation Tower Trigram Leaders, of all things……"
"Consider it a day trip, for today. Think of it as watching a show and heading home. And there are still some left behind back there, aren't there?"
"Ah, that I am gratefully well understood, Guild Master. But—"
Dong Mu-toe glanced back and said in a near-whisper.
"Did you say Yeop Bi-hwa just now?"
No answer came back, but he and Eom Bi-ryeong locked eyes and simultaneously turned their heads back in that direction.
Yeop Bi-hwa.
She had a Divine Pill held in her mouth. The secret transmission of Vast Heaven quickly dissolved beneath her tongue and began seeping into the interior of her internal energy roots. Her internal energy, depleted from the sparring earlier, was being recovered in urgency.
Shortly after, a hand seal unique to Vast Heaven formed in her hands, and—
Chaaang—
From the tips of her fingers, a column of brilliant light shot straight up into the sky beyond the ridge.
At the point where it reached its apex, the beam of light split open as if drawing a sword stroke.
Vast Heaven Sword Light.
A signal system that only a swordsman of Vast Heaven could inscribe in the sky.
Because somewhere to the north of Gangdo, there would be Vast Heaven's people who could read this arc.
At that moment, Dong Bong-soo lightly loosened his feet at the edge of the ridge's crest.
Both hands closed and opened simultaneously in the air, and at the end of that opening, two swords had taken their places in his grip. In his left hand, the jet-black Demon-Expelling Annihilation Wheel Sword; in his right hand, the straighter and shorter Evil-Warding Sword.
And then.
Whiiirrrrr—
His Super True Energy Field's upheaval and Footwork played in concert as his form scattered like dispersing mist, kicking off the earth and cleaving through the air.
Sspot—
Two lines of swirling dust spread long from the ridge's crest.
And so his figure came plunging down to the midslope of the ridge, directly into the path of the two Four Rakshasas who were already charging toward him like a storm. Like a hawk snatching up prey.
The feet of the two Four Rakshasas simultaneously kicked off the slope and retreated nine meters in an instant.
Their forms froze momentarily in that same posture in which they had been storming up against the ridge, and Dong Bong-soo's figure drove down heavily into the dirt floor at the dead center between them.
Thud—
The earth where his feet touched was gouged deep in all directions, and the tremor of that gouging flowed heavily down the entire slope.
Mandala-Rakshasa's pupils contracted further, and blood-red true energy built up thickly upon Vajra-Rakshasa's giant frame.
"……The Revered Master's compassion."
The same sound flowed from both their mouths simultaneously. It was the activation of a full-scale combined resolution in which the same bloodline of a master school converged along the same alignment. The resolution of solidarity in which three senior-junior brothers of the Dark Net Rakshasa Path were bound by the same will—called the Rakshasa Unity Heart Formula.
Though now only two remained, even that alone was a combined formation technique with virtually no match under heaven.
Huuuuu—
Mandala-Rakshasa's fingers moved first. The Mandala cloth coiled around her back billowed grandly, and among the five colors, blue flowed down to the tip of her index finger like a beam of light.
Blue.
Tsssss—
The condensed blue light released from the tip of her index finger and poured in a stream toward Dong Bong-soo's feet.
The earth of the slope where the light touched hardened on the spot into solid ice crystals rising upward, and atop those crystals yet more crystals surged up in succession. The slope area transformed into a massive ice wall in an instant, its height soaring well past fifteen meters, towering high above Dong Bong-soo's head.
Ice Rigid Energy.
A Rigid Energy of crystals that sought to pin everything it touched permanently in place.
Crackzap—!
At the same time, Vajra-Rakshasa's giant frame kicked off the slope's earth.
Craaaash—!
The dirt floor sank a full meter under the giant's weight, and blood-red true energy erupted from both shoulders like a burst. That true energy flowed into the two black Vajra rods in his hands, coating them thickly with jet-black Rigid Energy, and another branch of the blood-dark Rigid Energy released from his shoulder wound entirely around the bone chain.
The chain was not something swung by hand. The giant's will flowed directly from his shoulders into each link of the chain, and the chain itself moved autonomously like a blood-red snake, sweeping toward Dong Bong-soo's flank.
Extension of the Rigid Energy into the body.
The giant's two shoulders and two hands, the two Vajra rods, and the chain released from his shoulders were all bound together as one, charging at Dong Bong-soo.
Vajra Rigid Energy.
Chain Rigid Energy.
Crackcrackcrack—!
Ice Rigid Energy at the feet, Chain Rigid Energy at the flank, Vajra Rigid Energy at the front.
With Dong Bong-soo's form pinned in the center of the narrow midslope, a combined assault aimed to freeze, shatter, and crush everything all around into explosion all at once.
……In the dead center of that combined assault.
Dong Bong-soo's two hands moved simultaneously.
Whiiirrrrr—
The jet-black in his left hand drew diagonally toward Mandala-Rakshasa's Ice Rigid Energy.
The sword's surface—that single one line.
From the mark drawn, the entire massive ice wall standing three meters tall began bending wholesale toward that sharp line.
It had not been cut.
The massive ice wall that had been surging upward, still in that same posture of surging upward; the ice wall that had been driving down, still carrying that same momentum of driving down—was being sucked in toward the blade of the Demon-Expelling Annihilation Wheel Sword.
Even the crystal granules contracted toward that line and vanished wholesale into the inside of the blade, and the slope's earth that had been trying to rise lost the weight of the ice binding and wavered, collapsing in large scale.
Krrrrrrrr……
The stream of blue condensation that had been pouring from the tip of Mandala-Rakshasa's index finger was severed in an instant and scattered in all directions.
Upon the jet-black blade, darkness settled even more densely. To the point where not even light could leak out beyond that sword.
It was as though the sword itself had become a sharp abyss driven into the universe.
It was.
What Dong Bong-soo had used to grind a single blade of grass to a point and swallow it—a manifestation with his enlightenment elevated by yet another level.
Ultra Black Hole Sword Rigid Energy.
—A single line devours all things.
Mandala-Rakshasa's pupils shook greatly for the first time.
Vajra-Rakshasa's giant frame stepped back greatly for the first time in his life.
From the very spot that received that shaking and stepping back head-on.
One corner of Dong Bong-soo's mouth tilted faintly at an angle.
Not Kim Rae-won's sly grin, not the Guild Master's dignity—it was a smile cast directly upon the true self.
His essence.
Predation.
Devouring.
Dong Bong-soo is a greater gourmet than anyone.
For the first time, after passing through two Martial Worlds, he was satisfied.
A martial art that aligned with his own grain this precisely—
"You……are good."
The low, rumbling chuckle that followed.
Heh, hehehehehe—
That spine-chilling laughter carved through the stillness of the midslope and drove low and sharp into the ears of the two Four Rakshasas.
There was no hero there, no chivalrous warrior.
Only a gourmet starved for blood, slaughter, and strength existed, and right now in his hands was a sharp gifting knife capable of slicing through everything.