The Hubei Catastrophe
Ryeong arrived near the stronghold of the Demon Blood Divine Cult well ahead of the main force. Jin Yeong remained glued to her side. Maintaining their lightness skills at such a grueling pace had burned through a fair amount of stamina, but it was a choice they had made willingly.
Strictly speaking, there was no pressing need to act on their own before the army converged. No one knew how many masters lurked inside that demonic den. If she launched an ill-prepared raid and got repelled, catastrophe would follow.
The demonic qi is far denser than when I scouted this place a few days ago.
It meant an immense host of cultists had gathered. A combined allied force of three thousand might not even be enough to guarantee victory. She had known the cult possessed formidable strength, but she hadn’t expected it to reach this scale.
“Young Lady, there’s an ill omen hanging in the air. Are you sure about this?”
“Now that I’m seeing it in person, I’m having second thoughts myself. But there’s no turning back. When we clash, either both sides wipe each other out, or only one walks away alive.”
Jin Yeong swallowed hard at her expression. It was the face she wore only when things turned dead serious. Usually, whenever Ryeong looked like that, matters spiraled wildly out of control.
Hard-earned experience had taught him that much. This battle wouldn’t be won easily, and he needed to keep his body in peak condition before the vanguard arrived.
Jin Yeong swallowed a mass-produced Poison Sky Pill. A true Poison Sky Pill was his absolute last resort—a vital lifeline kept in reserve for when death stared him directly in the face. Unless an arm flew off, he had no intention of touching the real thing.
“Rendezvous with the main force and brief them on what’s happening here,” Ryeong instructed. “Tell the high command to stay on their toes.”
“And what about you, Young Lady?”
“Once the distance between them and us narrows enough, I’m going in to stir up some chaos.”
Having acquired the Taiji Heavenly Tablet, Ryeong’s mastery over assassination arts had grown explosively. As she stood now, given the right conditions, she was fully capable of assassinating even an expert of the Profound Realm.
With her internal energy efficiency tripled, detecting her stealth was nigh impossible even for someone who had reached the pinnacle of the Extreme Demonic Realm. And so, she devised a plan to dismantle their trump cards one by one.
First on the list was the bizarre formation they were preparing. Having already pinpointed its location, she would shatter it at just the right moment to sow chaos, drawing their attention, shattering their morale, and buying time for the main force to launch a surprise assault. There was no guarantee everything would go according to plan, but failure was never an option she entertained.
Trusting Ryeong, Jin Yeong swallowed the Tracking Incense pill. Its scent would fade over long distances, but once they closed within range, its trace would become clear. Ryeong intended to time her strike to that exact moment and teach the cult a harsh lesson.
Some time passed. Just as the Demon Blood Divine Cult’s stronghold began to stir with activity, the scent of the Tracking Incense drifted into her senses. It was proof that Jin Yeong and the vanguard had arrived nearby.
“Time to begin.”
Stretching as she stood, Ryeong effortlessly pushed the Heaven-Killing Art to its utmost peak. Her presence faded until it was thinner than a speck of dust dancing in the breeze.
Whoosh.
With light, fluid steps, she slipped swiftly into the stronghold. Void of any presence, her movements escaped the notice of the demonic sentries entirely. The moment she breached the perimeter, she made straight for the center of the formation. Naturally, security was airtight—so densely guarded that ordinary infiltration arts could never slip through.
And so, the method she chose was patience.
“Yaaawn.”
“Yawning while on sacred duty? Do you have a death wish?”
“H-hik! Forgive me! Please have mercy!”
She observed their patterns until an opening presented itself. They, too, were an organization bound by a hierarchy, and watching them revealed that the guards protecting the formation weren’t particularly high-caliber.
“Guhk!”
From then on, it went like clockwork. To stifle even their dying gasps, she drove throwing daggers straight through their lungs. Imbued with the inner force of the Transformative Realm, the strikes dropped the cultists before they could even utter a scream.
Sweeping her gaze across the area, Ryeong stepped into the formation’s core axis. The problem was that the formation masters stationed there detected her presence. Her Heaven-Killing Art was functioning flawlessly, but formation masters possessed their own peculiar methods of reading environmental shifts. The saving grace was that before they could raise an alarm, she threw up an energy barrier to seal in all sound.
“An energy barrier?!”
“Quickly! Inform the Fifth Blood King that an intruder has arrived—urk!”
“Sorry, but that’s not happening. Barring the unexpected appearance of a Profound Realm master, no one here can stop me from doing whatever I want.”
Ryeong cut off their escape routes. Her movement was so blindingly fast that none of them even registered the shift. Her confidence was well-earned.
Cheonsal had never been wicked enough in character to truly warrant the title of one of the Four Great Evils. Yet because she could never be caught no matter the trap, slipping through every snare imaginable, the world looked upon her with a blend of helpless awe and blistering fury. Thus was born her epithet: Cheonsal, Heavenly Slaughter—a death ordained by the heavens, impossible to escape.
Once Ryeong marked a target for extermination, it was already over. High or low, mighty or humble, they died without exception. Such was the absolute might of the realm’s supreme assassin.
Slaughtering the formation masters took barely any time at all. Lacking martial cultivation, they dropped dead at the slightest touch. Evidently, they had poured the lion’s share of their inner force into maintaining the formation, and convinced no intruder could reach them, they hadn’t bothered stationing proper bodyguards inside.
As a result:
“T-the formation... it’s collapsing?!”
“Intruder! An intruder has breached the stronghold!”
“To think they dismantled the formation first!”
The barrier enveloping the cult’s stronghold shattered, throwing the cultists into sheer panic. Deep within the sanctum, sensing the disruption, the Fifth Blood King, Geuk Pyeong, murmured:
“Amusing. It seems our enemies have a capable assassin among them.”
“Allow me to eliminate them,” a subordinate offered.
“No. Your destination is Mount Wudang. You must bring the Taiji Heavenly Tablet before my eyes without fail.”
“By your command.”
The man, his eyes covered by a blindfold, nodded before fading into the shadows without a trace. Geuk Pyeong understood that the intruder’s appearance signaled the imminent arrival of the enemy vanguard. As planned, he dispatched his chosen elites on a detour to raid Wudang, leaving roughly ten masters of the Extreme Demonic Realm and above behind at the fortress.
According to reports, the enemy possessed only five masters of the Transformative Realm. With more than double their number in top-tier combatants, what chance was there of defeat? Losing the formation was hardly a mortal blow. It had merely been a tool to disorient the enemy; he was confident they could crush the invaders through sheer martial force alone.
“Whoever you are, things won’t go your way.”
The intruder’s skill was formidable. If the goal was to sow chaos before the main force arrived, he could magnanimously grant that it was a success. However...
“As of today, Hubei shall be wiped from the Central Plains.”
Geuk Pyeong was already certain of victory. Only later would he realize that such confidence was nothing more than blind arrogance.
“Catch the bastard!”
“They must be hiding nearby! The formation masters are all dead!”
“One, two, or a dozen—let none leave alive!”
In the wake of the formation’s destruction, the cultists swarmed in a frenzy. From a safe vantage point, Ryeong observed their movements: how their chain of command was structured, what roles each unit performed, and what weapons they primarily wielded. To an assassin, gleaning such details was paramount. When the enemy outmatched your allies in raw power, you had to strike at their vulnerabilities.
Having trained rigorously since childhood, Ryeong was confident her keen eye surpassed anyone else’s.
It would be great if the leader here had the Myriad Poison Ring, but...
The odds of that were absurdly low. If the sacred relic was that vital to the cult, they would have long sent it back to their headquarters. Right now, what mattered wasn’t looting treasures, but securing victory.
Bit by bit, the distance between her and Jin Yeong shrank. The Tracking Incense was drawing nearer.
I should take out at least one more master before I fall back.
Narrowing her eyes, Ryeong melted into the shadows. Having gathered the necessary intel, she decided to sever the head of an Extreme Demonic Realm expert before withdrawing.
“The Remnant Blood Squad shall immediately—”
“Peekaboo.”
“What?!”
The moment Ryeong materialized before the man who appeared to be the captain of the so-called Remnant Blood Squad, he reflexively unleashed a palm strike. But executing the Art of Displacing Forms, she instantly claimed his blind spot behind him and drove daggers into his waist and head.
Thwack!
“Argh!”
“Missed the skull. Still, not bad.”
The dagger aimed at his head had strayed off-mark. The ambush was only a partial success.
“How dare you, wretched wench—!”
As an expert of the Extreme Demonic Realm, the captain was not so easily dispatched. Even so, the dagger lodged deeply into his lower back temporarily paralyzed his legs. Drawing the Red Cloud Divine Sword, Ryeong severed his right arm in a clean, red arc.
“Aaaaaargh!”
“That’s one down.”
Delivering a savage kick to the wailing captain’s solar plexus, Ryeong looked up to find the cultists had already formed a tight ring around her. She was surrounded. Yet the faint smirk never left the corners of her lips.
“You know...”
Back in the day, she was someone who had broken through the Murim Alliance’s Inescapable Net single-handedly.
“You lot aren’t nearly enough.”
Fwhoooosh!
The instant Ryeong unleashed her Vermilion Bird Killing Qi, the surrounding cultists shrank back in terror. Sensing several Extreme Demonic Realm masters closing in during that brief hesitation, Ryeong smiled.
“See you later.”
BOOOM!
Spreading massive wings of flame, she soared away in the opposite direction.
Shattering their formation and crippling an Extreme Demonic Realm expert in a single ambush—wasn’t that a damn good trade?