The Heavenly Demon Cult's Shadow
Clang! Clang! Clang-a-lang!
“Hup!”
“Hah!”
Baekri Hyeong and Dan Gang-cheol traded blows in a precarious dance, each attack met with a precise defense as their exchange continued. Having mastered the Four Sacred Beasts to the point where he could freely transform his energy beyond the Peak Realm, Baekri Hyeong targeted vital points with the Vermilion Bird Killing Sword while using the Black Tortoise Shield Sword for defense, scattering sword qi with its indestructible properties. Whenever the battle lulled, he inevitably invoked the Azure Dragon Water Qi. Since it carried the essence of water, it replenished the moisture his body lacked through breathing, restoring vitality, while also aiding the liver in expelling accumulated toxins. When he reentered the fray, he employed the White Tiger True Sword to ensure his recovered body suffered no strain. The Vermilion Bird Killing Sword and Black Tortoise Shield Sword placed a heavy burden on the body, so Baekri Hyeong, whose strategy was simply to endure, mixed the White Tiger Wood Qi and Azure Dragon Water Qi as needed.
Thanks to this, the one growing impatient was Dan Gang-cheol. He had expected an easy victory over Baekri Hyeong, yet he was struggling. He wanted to crush the boy with overwhelming force, but he had to remain mindful of Han Seol-eun’s gaze. Having recovered somewhat during her brief rest, she hurled Ice Flowers whenever an opening appeared. No matter how small the power of a single Ice Flower, it was no attack to be ignored. In effect, Dan Gang-cheol was fighting two opponents at once.
“Damn orthodox martial artists! Resorting to combined attacks instead of facing me fairly!”
“Fair? Don’t make me laugh.”
With a sharp hiss, the Vermilion Bird Killing Sword, infused with Vermilion Bird Fire Qi, left a long gash across Dan Gang-cheol’s side. Fury clouded his reason for an instant, and Baekri Hyeong did not miss the moment. If provoked further, Dan Gang-cheol would lose all reason and transform into a monster consumed by demonic energy. Endure until then, and victory would be his.
“You and your demonic cult started this fight in the first place. You invade without honor, yet dare to speak of fairness?”
“You little—!”
“You’re hopeless.”
Boom! Baekri Hyeong stomped the ground with the White Tiger Wood Qi, executing White Tiger Phantom Steps. A ferocious white tiger radiating the presence of a great tree bared its dripping maw and glared at Dan Gang-cheol. Under normal circumstances, he would never have seen such a sight, but Dan Gang-cheol, already half-devoured by demonic energy and no longer fully human, had his eyes stolen by the illusion formed from Baekri Hyeong’s manifested aura. The colossal tiger, reminiscent of a mountain, raised its forepaw as if to shatter the earth. The resulting wind pressure and sacred energy stole Dan Gang-cheol’s breath. Using that momentum, Baekri Hyeong withdrew all Four Sacred Beasts qi and poured the inner energy of the Hundred Heavens Divine Art into his sword.
“Huuuup!”
At the same time, he reversed his grip on the blade, confirmed his target with both eyes, gathered strength once more in his right foot that had triggered the true step, and leaped high. When the white tiger illusion filling his vision vanished, Dan Gang-cheol wore a bewildered expression. Yet before he could fully regain his senses—
Slash!
“Krrk, kuh-heoook!”
Baekri Hyeong’s second form of the Hundred Heavens Three Stances, Annihilation, cleaved through Dan Gang-cheol’s neck in the blink of an eye. It was Baekri Hyeong’s victory.
“Haa… haa. Mother, are you all right?”
“You’ve grown. Well done, my son.”
With the battle over, Baekri Hyeong tossed his sword aside and rushed to support Han Seol-eun. Her assistance had been crucial to this victory. Whenever an opening appeared while Baekri Hyeong exchanged blows, Han Seol-eun’s Ice Flowers had covered his vulnerabilities. Without the aid of Han Seol-eun, who had reached the Hyeongyeong realm, the one whose head might have been severed could easily have been Baekri Hyeong himself. Just as they thought everything had ended—
Whoosh!
A massive surge of black energy erupted skyward from Dan Gang-cheol’s headless corpse. Startled by the sight he had never witnessed before, Baekri Hyeong seized the nearest sword and assumed a middle guard. Since he did not yet know its nature, attacking was forbidden. The methods of the demonic cult were cruel and treacherous; carelessly provoking an explosion would be disastrous. Yet Baekri Hyeong soon realized that before overwhelming martial might, nothing else mattered. After all, it was one of the two people he respected most in this world demonstrating their sword art. He was captivated by its fierce and beautiful destructive power.
Boom!
Appearing out of nowhere, Sword Sovereign Baekri Hyeok unleashed the first form of the Hundred Heavens Three Stances, World Severance. The power of World Severance, carrying inner energy on a completely different level from Baekri Hyeong’s—and even launched as sword gang—scattered the black energy before it could properly stabilize. But the more astonishing feat followed.
“Hah, again!?”
Baekri Hyeok assumed the stance for World Severance once more and, in less than a second, swung his sword to release an identical strike. It was a level of power Baekri Hyeong could not even imagine. Before such overwhelming might, awe surged within him toward his father. Yes, that was the Sword Sovereign. The undisputed strongest in the current murim, standing at its pinnacle with a single sword. As long as Baekri Hyeok’s Baekri Clan remained, it would never fall, no matter what happened. Watching Baekri Hyeok’s air-walking technique while covered in wounds, Baekri Hyeong became certain that the future could be changed from his previous life. The Baekri Clan would not fall. The Baekri Clan was strong.
After Baekri Hyeok erased the black energy, the situation resolved quickly. With the elite forces of the Heavenly Demon Cult’s special unit, the Dragon Demon Squad, annihilated, the remaining warriors of the Heaven-Splitting Fist Sect fled in panic. Though the Baekri Clan could not pursue them, Gongson Ryong, already enraged by the Dragon Demon Squad’s harassment, chased them to the end. Moreover, the Zhuge Clan’s Guijin Unit joined midway and struck down the Heaven-Splitting Fist Sect’s warriors. In less than an hour, the joint operation between the Heaven-Splitting Fist Sect and the Black Tiger Sword Sect ended in failure. The fame of the Baekri Clan and the Hubei Alliance, who had repelled the attack, soared to the heavens.
Yet contrary to the good news, after the situation calmed, Baekri Hyeok delivered shocking words. The organization that had planned and executed the raid on the Baekri Clan was none other than the Heavenly Demon Cult. Indeed, it was the terrifying revelation that the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult of the Heavenly Mountains had once again begun to stir in the murim.
“They were wiped out?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying, Gu Yang-rin. If you were going to cast an illusion, you should have used a proper one to restrain the Sword Sovereign’s movements.”
“Are you insane? To cast a high-level illusion, I would have had to reveal myself and take the risk. And if I reveal myself, dying to the Sword Sovereign is the obvious outcome, isn’t it?”
“The Dragon Demon Squad has been annihilated. We also lost the forces of the Fierce Tiger Army, the Heaven-Splitting Fist Sect, and the Black Tiger Sword Sect. All because we failed to hold back even one Baekri Hyeok!”
Rumble. When Sword Demon Sect Leader Mun Tae-sik revealed his displeasure, Illusion Demon Sect Leader Gu Yang-rin bit her lip. In truth, the failure of this operation was a grave mistake on her part. She had mobilized the assassins of the Killing Demon Sect and even personally revealed herself as the Illusion Demon Sect Leader to support the Dragon Demon Squad. That alone might have been tolerable, but the Fist King, who had been operating in the shadows of the murim under the alias of one of the Ten Great Masters, had been slain by the Sword Sovereign. The massive factions of the Black Tiger Sword Sect and the Heaven-Splitting Fist Sect had also been destroyed. There had been various variables, but the sole cause of this defeat was failing to properly restrain Sword Sovereign Baekri Hyeok’s movements.
“I didn’t expect it to turn out like this either. We tried to take down the Baekri Clan with one expert on the verge of Transcendent Demon, three experts at the Extreme Demon level, and over a hundred Transcendent Peak experts—how does it make sense that we were stopped by a single Sword Sovereign!?”
“Your miscalculation cost us so many experts. The murim’s Five Sovereigns have already reached the pinnacle of Transcendent Demon and stand on the threshold of the Heavenly Demon Realm.”
The Heavenly Demon Realm. In the murim, it was the absolute realm known as the Life-and-Death Realm that transcended the Hyeongyeong realm. In the history of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s founding, only the founding Heavenly Demon, the first cult leader, had ever reached the Heavenly Demon Realm. Likewise, in the murim, only the founding masters of the current Nine Great Sects and the first patriarchs of the Five Great Clans had attained it. Since then, not a single expert of the Heavenly Demon Realm had appeared—until now. A new Heavenly Demon had been born within the cult, and the cult had changed. His heaven-bestowed destiny was one that could surpass even the Heavenly Demon Realm. The future Heavenly Demon, the Young Cult Leader who would soon come of age, already possessed the rare talent to glimpse the Transcendent Demon realm. The time when the cult would display the power it had long suppressed upon the murim was not far off.
“We must prepare the next step thoroughly.”
“What exactly are we supposed to do?”
“I’ll have to go myself. And we must uproot every sprout of hope that exists in the murim.”
Mun Tae-sik looked down upon the future of the murim with a wicked smile. At the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering that would soon take place, Sword Demon Sect Leader Mun Tae-sik, one of the cult’s highest experts, would appear and sweep away all the promising juniors. What a delightful scene that would be.
“Send word to the other sect leaders.”
“I don’t like taking orders, but since I’m at fault, I’ll listen. What should I tell them?”
“Tell them that the Sword Demon Sect Leader will enter seclusion for a year, so please look after the Sword Demon Sect.”