[The Subjugation of Namgung]
-Shake, shake...
“...Wake up!”
Ugh...? Neri?
Wait, let me sleep a little longer. Honestly, yesterday was exhausting...
“...Wake up!”
“This man, he doesn’t touch wine or women, so what on earth is he doing all night that he can’t pull himself together?”
“That’s what I’m saying~ Especially when such a beautiful leader prepares a drinking table and visits every single day.”
“Gyu, Gyu-hwa, Dang-hoe. Regardless, to the Divine Emperor...”
Something, something was wrong.
First of all, Neri’s voice was never this rough and unrefined. And Neri, whose possessiveness skyrocketed whenever we shared a bed, would never let outsiders into our private quarters.
Yet, I could feel at least four people nearby. And these weren’t just ordinary people; each one was a high-level master with an extraordinary aura...
“Can’t be helped. Flip it!”
Flip? What, flip what?
““Heave!””
-Crash!
“Aaargh!”
Whether it was Demeter or Gaia who was angry, a scream erupted as the world suddenly turned upside down.
-Thud!
“Ugh!? W, what!?”
The bed, flipped without mercy, pinned me to the ground. Startled, I jumped up and scanned my surroundings.
“...You awake?”
“Gwak... Gwak Geo-jeong?”
A sturdy build and a simple, honest face that didn’t match it. On his waist hung a custom-made ghost mask meant to hide that honest face, and in his other hand was a massive, crude-looking battle axe.
Without a doubt, he was my Right General. Gwak Geo-jeong, who enjoyed both the reputation of the ‘Force-Striking Great Axe’ and the bloody infamy of the ‘Heavenly Demon’s Axe.’
“No, how did you get to Greece...”
“G, Greece? What’s that?”
“No, never mind, wait...”
“Lord, did you have some grain tea?”
“Oh my~ If you had told me, Gyu-hwa, I would have brought the drinking table myself~”
“T, this! The Divine Emperor is looking at the Lord, and I failed to notice! It is this subject’s negligence!”
The faces of the other three were also familiar.
A woman in light armor, looking so bewitching that the word ‘seductive’ came to mind, fanning herself with a strange fan that glinted with metallic light.
A middle-aged man with clear Arab lineage, sitting sulkily in the corner of the military tent, calmly maintaining his spear.
And a fresh-faced youth with a sword, looking like he was shouting with his whole body, “I’m a new recruit with strict discipline!”
They were all my people, the ones I had personally selected and with whom I had overcome crises. Just as Buddha led the Four Heavenly Kings, these were the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demonic Path led by the Heavenly Demon.
“It is natural for a man, whether god or demon, to long for a woman’s embrace. If you only say the word, I would offer myself as a snack along with the wine...”
“Lord, just give the order, and I will drive this iron-headed fool’s sanity right into her skull!”
“N, no! In the presence of the Divine Emperor, discord among the Four Heavenly Kings is...”
“...Sigh.”
Though it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that each of their martial arts could contend for the best in the world... how could this be the main camp of the sanctuary where the world’s greatest demonic masters and the Sect Leader of the Ten Thousand Demons resided? It was just a university club room.
“...I must have had a deep dream.”
The same pathetic yet familiar bickering of the Four Heavenly Kings. The massive banner of Asura hanging on the wall. The maps and military strategy books I had tossed and turned over all night. As I looked at them, the fog in my head felt like it was clearing.
This was the heart of the Central Plains. It was the front line of the holy war declared by the living god of the Heavenly Demon Divine Sect himself. And I was in the situation of having personally come to the front lines.
“Did you have a dream? Come to think of it, you seemed to be looking for some foreign name...”
“It is nothing. It’s just that it’s been a long time since I left the main sect. It seems fatigue has piled up.”
“True... the work must end quickly so the Lord can return to his beloved in the main sect.”
“...Thank you. Nang-hoe. That’s a thrust worthy of the best spear in the world.”
“Don’t mention it. Compared to the one who bestowed that spear upon me, it is nothing.”
“This is not the time for this!”
The old man, his temper hadn’t died down at all. As I chuckled and joked with Nang-hoe, the youngest, who couldn’t sit still, urged us on.
“...What time is it?”
“You should be heading out soon, Lord.”
“Ugh... I’m going crazy.”
“I will assist you! Oh, Divine Emperor!”
The clutter in the military tent subsided once more. I quickly finished dressing, checked to make sure nothing was missing, and stepped out of the tent. Then, a massive manor came into view.
No, could that really just be called a manor? A majestic fortress with walls at least 3 jang high, backed by a sheer mountain and securing a massive river as a moat and water source. Above its gate, the words ‘The World’s Greatest Family’ were engraved as grandly as a writhing dragon, a title that was well-deserved.
“Haha, crazy bastards. They built an entire city next to Anhui Province.”
A massive manor located in the valley of the Dabie Mountains, south of Hefei in Anhui. Changcheon Castle, the main base of the Namgung Family, the head of the Five Great Families, was our target today.
“It’s better this way. If they had holed up in the city like the Dang family and fought a guerrilla war, it would have been a real pain.”
“Force-Striking Great Axe, even so, compared to the power of our sect, isn’t it just a country shack?”
“The old man is right~ If the army had moved, it could have been annoying. But they say the Lord and the staff already took care of that.”
“This time, I will truly claim the name of the Central Plains’ Best Swordsman...!”
“Enough with the chatter.”
The Four Heavenly Kings chatted away as they followed me out of the tent, but from now on, I had to carry a bit of weight. Because there were more than a few eyes looking up at us.
“Heavenly Demon, Ten Thousand Years!”
“Demonic Path, Rule the World!”
The demonic soldiers in black armor, densely packed at the foot of the mountain overlooked by the splendid military tent I had set up, knelt on the ground and shouted their cheers. There were about 20,000 of them. Among them, the 500 commanders were high-level masters counted among the best in the Demonic Cult, and the thousand-man and hundred-man commanders were first- and second-rate demonic masters, respectively. And the soldiers under their command were all veterans who were at least second-rate masters.
Though their number was 20,000, their combat power was equivalent to a 100,000-strong army, a Great Demonic Army unprecedented in the history of the Central Plains. They were the elite of the elite, created by mobilizing all the wealth and medicinal herbs from the secret vaults and hidden realms of my master, the Ghost-Handed Thief. Their name was the Sura Jinchen Army.
Like Asuras roaring toward Indra, the demonic soldiers shouted their cheers at the top of their lungs, led by their commanders. But our military force did not end there.
Centered on the mountain peak where I had set up my tent, shouts mixed with demonic energy echoed from various parts of the mountain foothills (by the standards of the Heavenly Demon Divine Sect from the Divine Land). At this, the people in Changcheon Castle far away were startled, rang their bells, and fast light-footwork masters quickly dashed out into the Dabie Mountains.
“Shall we chase them? They probably sent a request for reinforcements to Anhui.”
“No need. It’s a useless struggle anyway.”
The Orthodox Murim had long since lost its potential. Those hollow masters who flocked to the Kunlun Mountains like moths chasing honor and merit. The strongest among them, the Five Great Masters, had looked down on me and attacked, only to be slaughtered, and the masters below them had all become ghosts at the hands of the Sura Jinchen Army that I, Ghost-Hyun, and the Four Heavenly Kings had painstakingly raised. In the end, there was only one place they could turn to: the government troops, whose inviolability they had so strongly insisted upon.
“But the government and the military will not move.”
“Stupid things. Do they not know how the power games they love so much will flow?”
This Anhui was originally the territory of the Namgung Family, and there was no place from the officials of the small towns to the governors of the province that the Namgung Family’s influence did not reach. Naturally, the Imperial Court had never been pleased that the power base of Anhui Province was left to a Murim family, and now that the Orthodox Murim itself was shaking at its roots, there was no need for the government and military to move for the sake of a Murim family.
“Ghost-Hyun has already contacted the nobles of Jinling and finished the negotiations long ago.”
At the beginning of the war, the Namgung Family made a very stupid choice. They rejected the Sichuan Tang Family’s request for rescue and subtly incited public opinion so that other families would not join in. It was natural, as the new masters of each sect, sent to build fame by colluding with the previous sect leader, had their heads cut off in an instant. The previous masters, eyes turned upside down by the deaths of their direct disciples and children, fought to the death in Sichuan Province, only to be killed or crippled. In an instant, the name of the Alliance fell to the ground, and each sect entered a state of survival.
“If they had gathered all their forces to resist, it would have been difficult for us too.”
“The cunning snakes of the Namgung Family and the divine strategy of the Zhuge Family probably thought like this. If we get caught up in the terrain of Sichuan and return, good. If the power of the Sichuan Three Rivers decreases due to mutual destruction, they can expand their influence, good. Even if they are broken through, they calculated that they could gather their remaining forces and defeat the weakened allies.”
“Yes, they must have thought everything was good!”
“Hehehe, they probably didn’t know that the crazy person leading us was truly a crazy person...”
“Hahaha... is that gold paint? Or is it shit?”
But they never imagined that I would break the Zhuge Family’s strategy with force, grab the crazy bitch of the Northern Ice Palace and send her back, and single-handedly crush half of the Emei and Qingcheng sects.
“Thanks to the Divine Emperor’s divine and great performance, our casualties were almost non-existent.”
“Thanks to that, I almost died from working inside and outside.”
-Waaaaah!!
Do the elite battalions named after Sura down there know? That the Four Heavenly Kings and the Heavenly Demon, whom they revere like gods, are solemnly gesturing to them while cracking silly jokes? I smiled bitterly as I gestured to them one by one with a dignified face.
“And the subsequent war was also easy once we broke through the Taehwang Cheonwi Army.”
The Taehwang Cheonwi Army. The Emperor’s blades raised solely to slaughter the Flower-Realm masters of the Murim. They were mad dogs dispatched to hunt me down after I was branded a traitor by the Zhuge Family’s schemer, who had even wagged his tongue at the Emperor and high officials of the Imperial Court. Dealing with the Emperor’s mad dogs, where the entire army was mobilized, not just a battalion, was quite a difficult task even for me.
But even that Cheonwi Army returned to the Imperial Capital as defeated soldiers at my hands, so the Emperor and his ministers had no choice but to change their thinking.
“Even without that, how could the Imperial Court look kindly on them acting all arrogant and playing power games while calling themselves the Orthodox Sect or a Family?”
But power is the bully. No matter how well-armed regular soldiers are, Murim families were monsters that could destroy battalion-level units single-handedly. The Imperial Court had been leaving them alone while biting their lips, but it turned out that the strong, crazy guy was actually quite weak?
“...Kick.”
When I had the captured Taehwang Cheonwi Army sit along the shores of Dongting Lake and was boating while waiting for the Emperor’s messenger, I was shocked by the appearance of the messenger who suddenly appeared. The absolute ruler above ten thousand people. I never imagined that the Emperor of the Great Ming Empire would personally make that precious journey from distant Jinling to Dongting Lake in Hunan to see me.
“Honestly, I was shocked too.”
For one night, the two leaders emptied a jar of wine in the middle of Dongting Lake while 5,000 prisoners and 10,000 soldiers watched, and the very next day, an Imperial Decree from the Emperor was spread throughout the Central Plains.
Gwan-mu-bul-ga-chim (Government and Murim do not invade each other). It was an Imperial Order that no matter how serious the matter, the blood and taxes of the common people should not flow into the disputes of Murim.
“Tsk... still, it’s a shame to give up the interests in the conquered territories...”
“What does it matter? Instead, the Demonic Path has been spread throughout the Central Plains. If we slowly train them like this, a force so large that those interests will become trivial will become ours.”
Now, I’m getting tired of war. Half of the Nine Sects and One Clan have already taken down their signboards or sealed their gates. Two of the Five Great Families have been destroyed at the hands of the demonic army. The remaining three are just relatively located in the east, so we haven’t touched them yet, but if we break the Namgung Family now, the Zhuge Family attached to the disconnected Imperial Capital, or the Hwangbo and Moyong families located on the outskirts, will have no choice but to submit or wither away.
“Then, let’s go in style.”
The flower of such large-scale battles is, of course, the duel. I climbed onto a black divine horse prepared just right, and slowly spurred it to jump down the mountain.
“The Four Heavenly Kings are coming out!!”
“The Divine Emperor is showing his divine power!”
-Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Every time I passed, the 20,000-strong army bowed with awe and faith, and the massive sound of drums shook the surroundings. Following behind me, the Four Heavenly Kings scattered a fierce demonic energy, unlike their earlier lethargic appearance.
Once again. It was a day that could not be better for the Heavenly Demon, who had jumped out of the 100,000 Great Mountains, to leave a mark on the history of Murim.