You’ve Been Waiting a Long Time, Haven’t You? (2)
The vanguard of the assault was thrashing and straining with everything they had, desperate to run.
But there was nowhere to retreat. The formation had already closed in so tightly from their reckless charge that it left them no room to flee.
“Aaaagh! Move! Get the hell out of the way, you bastards!”
“I said move!”
Those seized by terror could no longer see anything in front of them.
They grabbed at the shoulders of their comrades and shoved them toward the Demonic Sect, trampled over the panicked bodies beneath their feet, and leaped over heads in a frenzy.
Those who had been about to charge.
Those who had frozen in confusion.
Those who, in sheer panic, had turned and tried to run back.
The army that had moved as one toward a single purpose twisted violently in an instant, collapsing into a tangled, chaotic mass.
“C-calm down! Get a grip! What the hell do you think you’re doing!”
“Don’t turn around! Damn it, I said don’t turn!”
The unit leaders scattered throughout the formation shouted themselves hoarse, trying desperately to restore order. But it was useless against men who had come face-to-face with a terror they had never imagined in their lives.
“Get out of my way, you sons of bitches!”
“Aaaahhh!”
They cursed and clawed and shoved one another aside. Some even turned the blades meant for the enemy against their own allies.
It was sheer pandemonium.
There was no other way to describe it.
The fear spread like wildfire from those who had seen that sight with their own eyes. Even those at the rear, who had not witnessed it directly, turned ghostly white at the terror spilling out from their comrades.
And into that mass of men, who had lost all sense of what to do and were tearing at one another in panic, the Demonic Sect’s claws plunged mercilessly.
Ratatatatat!
With the sword still in his hand, the body of a man split and tore apart.
They could not have handled these monsters head-on to begin with; once they turned their backs on them, the result was all too obvious.
The eyes of the Demonic Sect disciples gleamed with madness. There was not the slightest hesitation as they drove their claw-like energy into the spines of those who had turned away from them, then thrust their blackened hands straight through hearts.
And all the while, the low chants they kept murmuring without pause only deepened and fed the Ice Palace warriors’ terror. It felt as though that chilling voice was whispering from every direction at once.
“H-hiik!”
A warrior of the Ice Palace collapsed where he stood.
In the black hand jutting from a comrade’s chest was a freshly torn heart, still twitching in his grip.
“…….”
Blood from the heart, steaming with white frost, splashed across his face.
“Ah…. Ah….”
Anyone who held a sword walked hand in hand with death.
He had lived his life believing he, too, had been prepared to die. But the raw death right before his eyes made him realize just how loose and flimsy that conviction had been.
“…….”
Warm wetness spread down his trouser legs.
These things aren’t human.
Humans couldn’t do this. Unless they were asuras crawling up from the path of slaughter, no person could kill others so brutally.
“Hhe… hheee….”
Crack!
But fortunately or unfortunately, he would not have to suffer fear for long. A man whose head had been crushed into pulp could not feel terror anymore.
The Demonic Sect disciple who had smashed the Ice Palace warrior’s head apart grinned at the others, who were too terrified even to breathe.
The moment they saw those blood-soaked teeth, the hearts of the men in front of him seemed to stop dead in their chests.
“Heavenly Demon descends….”
A chant so small it could barely be heard unless one leaned in close slipped from his lips.
“May the Ten Thousand Demons rejoice.”
The disciple wiped his face with one hand.
It was impossible to tell whether he was brushing blood from his face or smearing the blood on his hand across it.
The Ice Palace warriors could neither understand nor interpret his actions.
They belonged to the realm of the unknown.
And anything incomprehensible bred fear.
“There is no land on which unbelievers may live and breathe. It is our mission to purify the land where the Great One will descend.”
His eyes flashed, and then, with a booming laugh, he lunged at the Ice Palace warriors at terrifying speed.
Yeo Sa-hon trembled, his eyes wide with shock.
Because he stood at the very back of the formation, he could not see the slaughter taking place up front in detail.
But he could understand it. He had no choice but to understand.
The white army, symbol of the Ice Palace, had charged like a vast wave surging toward a shore.
But the moment it crashed against the sand that was the Demonic Sect, black-red foam began to spray. Blood mist flew, and the white wave was shattered pitifully, stained red as it broke apart.
“Th-this….”
His beard trembled.
It felt as though his blood had gone cold.
More than ten times their number?
That was a lie. At least in this moment, it meant nothing.
No matter how many sheep there were, they could do nothing to a wolf that slipped among them.
Right now, the Ice Palace warriors were nothing but sheep, while those Demonic Sect disciples were wolves — no, something even more unknown than that.
This is the Demonic Sect…
He had understood nothing.
Though he had faced them more than once, he had never truly understood what the Demonic Sect was, or just how insane its disciples could be.
Of course, that was not Yeo Sa-hon’s fault.
Who could have imagined that those gloomy, silent people would bare their teeth and change into this?
The Demonic Sect.
Terrifying. A thing that summoned fear.
Only now did Yeo Sa-hon understand why all stories of them had always been passed down in such vague, shallow language.
This was not a sight that could be put into words.
No eloquent speaker, no historian, could ever fully explain what those people were through words on a page.
Not knowing that had been Yeo Sa-hon’s mistake — and the Ice Palace’s.
Now Yeo Sa-hon was shaking like a leaf.
His mind had gone blank, and the world before him spun.
“Ah….”
His eyes wavered wildly, a mess of fear and confusion.
“E-Elder!”
“…….”
“Elder! Give the order! We have to do something! Elder!”
As the situation plunged into utter disaster, more and more voices began calling out to Yeo Sa-hon. But he stood frozen like a stone statue, unable to say a word.
His lips, white as snow, opened and closed without sound.
“Elder! Snap out of it! Elder!”
True courage reveals itself when everything is already collapsing.
Though the Ice Palace had nearly lost the reason it had once possessed, there were still those within its ranks who had kept the soul of a warrior.
“Move! I said move, you goddamn bastards!”
“Huaaagh! Aaaagh!”
They forced their way through comrades surging back at them like a mad tide and pushed forward. Mangled corpses, torn apart into pieces, were flung aside before their eyes.
Grrrk.
Blood streamed from lips bitten raw.
These devilish bastards.
Words are useless.
Those who have once lost their courage will not be calmed by any amount of speech. The only way to bring them back is to show them that resistance is possible.
Thud!
Their shoulders crashed into one another again and again.
Grinding his teeth, the Ice Palace warrior who had stepped forward poured every ounce of his inner power into his sword.
“Huaaaaaah!”
And then, taking advantage of the moment when a comrade fell, he drove in a desperate strike with all his might.
Thud!
The warrior’s eyes flew wide open.
The sword he had thrust into the Demonic Sect disciple’s body had punched straight into the man’s abdomen.
He had not expected to land the attack so easily, and that only made him more flustered.
But in that very instant.
The blackened hand slowly lifted, and the Demonic Sect disciple grabbed the blade buried in his belly with complete ease.
Then he raised his head and stared straight at the Ice Palace warrior.
…Smiling?
The face twisted like a demon’s was hideous and uncanny, but what was spreading across it was unmistakably… a smile.
Clang!
The blade caught in the Demonic Sect disciple’s hand snapped cleanly in two.
The Ice Palace warrior, who had been pouring all his strength into forcing the sword deeper, staggered from the recoil.
Then the hand came for him.
It clamped around his throat with a vicious grip.
“Khk!”
The hand tightened, as though it meant to crush his neck at any moment, and the Ice Palace warrior’s struggling body gradually stiffened.
The disciple stared coldly at the Ice Palace warrior in his grasp, then slowly yanked out the sword blade still lodged in his own gut with his other hand.
“A maggot like you….”
Thud!
And drove it straight into the warrior’s chest.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
The dozen slashes that followed in an instant ripped the upper half of the Ice Palace warrior to shreds, reducing him to a bloody rag. The Demonic Sect disciple hurled the body away the moment the last breath left it, then stamped down on the skull.
Crack-crack-crunch!
The scene was too horrific to bear.
The Ice Palace warrior’s courage had undoubtedly been admirable. But in the end, that courage only made his comrades even more terrified.
The Demonic Sect disciple ran his fingers through the blood streaming from the wound in his belly. Sticky red clung to his fingertips.
He slowly lifted his hand as if to make everyone look at the blood, then turned his gaze forward again as though nothing had happened. And with the same relentless momentum he had possessed before being wounded, he began slaughtering the Ice Palace warriors once more.
Even after being wounded, nothing changed. Though red blood was flowing from him, he was still a human being.
And what that fact brought to the Ice Palace was despair, pure and simple.
It was collapsing.
The black clouds brought by the Demonic Sect were staining the white fortress dark.
“…….”
No one could bring themselves to speak easily.
Mount Hua’s disciples, looking down through the two narrow windows, had frozen stiff with shock, and only the occasional sound of tense breathing echoed faintly around them.
Drip.
Sweat fell from the tip of Baek Cheon’s chin and soaked into the ground.
He was not the only one sweating.
They had prided themselves on having already crossed many hells, but they had never seen a hell like this. The faces of Mount Hua’s disciples had gone as white as sheets of paper.
“S-Sasuk….”
“…….”
When Dang Soso finally managed to speak, Baek Cheon said nothing, only biting down hard on his lip.
So this is the Demonic Sect…
Only now did he understand.
Only now did he grasp what Chung Myung had meant.
Truly, this was something one could never understand without seeing it for oneself. It was only natural that this was not something a person could comprehend without feeling it with their own body.
They’re not human.
This had nothing to do with strong or weak.
Even if the Demonic Sect disciples’ martial prowess had been low enough for Baek Cheon to cut them down with a single sword stroke, the cold dread clinging to his chest would not have lessened in the slightest.
Chung Myung had said the Demonic Sect bastards were all crazy.
That was not wrong in the least. No — even those words were not enough to describe them.
“Amitabha… Amitabha. Amitabha…!”
Hye Yeon kept reciting the Buddha’s name over and over. At first it had been the sound of unease and bewilderment, but by the end, anger had seeped into the prayer.
With his face drained white and his eyes squeezed shut, he looked so pitiful it was painful to watch.
“How… how can a human being…!”
Yoon Jong, too, was grinding his teeth in visible rage.
“Sahyeong. Calm yourself.”
Jo Gul seized Yoon Jong’s shoulder tightly and tried to steady him. But Yoon Jong’s fury would not die down so easily.
“…A person can’t do that. People shouldn’t be like that!”
And it was true — the butchered corpses of the Ice Palace warriors kept piling up before their eyes.
There were barely fifty of them.
A paltry number of Demonic Sect disciples was ravaging and laying waste to the Ice Palace, which had stood for centuries, as though it were nothing at all.
Only now did they understand clearly why the orthodox and unorthodox factions alike, and even the northern tribes beyond the passes, had once had to join forces to stop the Demonic Sect, which had been nothing more than a mere religion.
Only now did they understand why Chung Myung had shuddered so violently every time the name Demonic Sect was mentioned.
The screams of those fleeing in terror.
The final, dying shrieks of bodies being torn apart.
How could this possibly be anything other than the sounds of hell?
“Amitabha.”
Hye Yeon pressed his palms together and recited the Buddha’s name.
“Such a hell should never unfold in the mortal world. Things like this must not happen. This….”
He seemed about to continue, but then shut his mouth tightly. The storm of emotion churning inside him looked difficult to bear.
“Sahyeong.”
At that moment, Yu I-seol, who had been silent until now, spoke.
“They’re breaking.”
“…….”
That was true. Baek Cheon could see it clearly now as well.
The Ice Palace warriors, stripped of all fighting spirit, were fleeing in terror.
“What do we do?”
At Dang Soso’s question, Baek Cheon abruptly turned his head toward Chung Myung.
Not yet?
Of course. He had not been in seclusion for very long.
“...For now, a little longer. Let’s wait just a little longer.”
The words had barely left Baek Cheon’s lips when a figure was seen leaping gracefully from atop the wall.
A battlefield with nothing left but blood and death.
Across the ground stained black-red by torn corpses and spilled blood, a man wrapped in a black wind cloak walked lightly, almost as if taking a stroll.
Like a asura strolling across a devil’s land.