Chapter 328
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 328
Chapter Title: Damn It...
Ten figures appeared in an instant.
They were Tak Yo-beom's personal guards.
These were the ten strongest warriors of the Tak Clan.
They were always assigned to protect him.
Now was not the time to hold them back.
"Go. Cut off that bastard's head."
Tak Yo-beom issued the order, his eyes bloodshot.
"Understood."
With that short reply, the ten shadows slipped away silently.
They didn't make the mistake of charging straight at Ha Mu-baek.
He was clearly a master far stronger than they were, just by looking at him.
And right now, he was facing countless Tak Clan warriors.
They quietly slipped into the fray.
Biding their time for the perfect opening.
Tak Yo-beom watched them for a moment before turning away.
He had given the order, but he didn't expect them to succeed.
Still.
He just hoped they could buy him some time.
Tak Yo-beom entered his tent.
He grabbed the treasured sword hanging on the wall, then slashed through the opposite wall with it and slipped out.
Leaving his desperately fighting subordinates behind, Tak Yo-beom hurried on.
"I chose the wrong battlefield. If I'd known that damned bastard was here... I should have struck at the main house."
Tak Yo-beom trudged toward the Tak Clan lands.
His steps were incredibly swift.
He knew full well.
Time was of the essence.
If he couldn't get through this moment, neither the position of Palace Lord nor his advance into the Central Plains would matter.
So.
He had to use it now.
The siege around the Palace Lord's quarters had somehow lifted.
Instead, they had all converged on Ha Mu-baek.
They kept falling endlessly, yet charged in without respite.
Han Seol-bing sensed the entire scene.
She had extended her senses around the formation.
"It's done."
A calm word, laced with quiet joy.
Han Seol-bing released her hands from the Ice Dragon Hanseol Sword.
Swooooosh.
At the same moment, the icy fog began to gradually dissipate.
Following Han Seol-bing's lead, Bing Chwi-seol also ceased channeling the ice crystal's energy.
"Is it done?"
Han Seol-bing nodded at Bing Chwi-seol's question and rose from her seat.
The Ice Dragon Hanseol Sword smoothly returned to her hand.
"Yes. All the Tak Clan warriors are focused on the Corps Leader."
It was just as she said.
The icy fog slowly cleared, revealing the Palace Lord's quarters.
But no one turned their gaze that way.
They were fixated solely on Ha Mu-baek, rampaging with monstrous ferocity.
Yang Jeok-san had watched the changes at the Palace Lord's quarters clearly.
"This is a disaster."
His face crumpled even further, as if there were no dignity left to salvage.
With all of the Tak Clan's forces concentrated on Ha Mu-baek right now.
If the doors to the Palace Lord's quarters opened and the Bing Clan and Han Clan's forces attacked them from behind.
It would be utter annihilation, crushed between two fronts.
Yang Jeok-san bit his lip.
"Fuck. How did things turn out like this..."
Today.
He had thought they would topple the Palace Lord's quarters, and their Family Head would become the Lord of the Ice Heaven Palace.
But.
Now.
What the hell was this situation?
In just a few hours.
No, not even a few hours.
Since that damned bastard appeared, had even an hour passed?
"I need to pull some troops back to defend against attacks from the Palace Lord's quarters... Damn it."
The momentum of the assault on Ha Mu-baek would weaken.
But it had to be done.
Yang Jeok-san issued rapid orders.
With Tak Yo-beom in his tent, command of the battlefield had fallen to him.
He did his best.
Whether they did or not, Ha Mu-baek kept moving his hands and feet relentlessly.
Then.
The firmly shut main gates of the Palace Lord's quarters began to creak open.
And soon, they swung wide.
Two figures emerged.
Bing Chwi-seol and Han Seol-bing, their faces refreshed.
Looking out over the battlefield where the fight had ended, Bing Chwi-seol and Han Seol-bing slightly furrowed their brows.
The ringleader of the rebellion.
Tak Yo-beom was nowhere to be seen.
Ha Mu-baek, in the midst of toppling Tak Clan warriors, spotted Han Seol-bing's appearance.
"Handled it cleanly?"
His question directed at her.
Han Seol-bing just glared with fierce eyes and wrinkled her nose, saying nothing.
It wasn't something to chatter about amid all these warriors.
Ha Mu-baek chuckled at her reaction.
At that instant.
Frost-like energy targeted Ha Mu-baek from ten directions all at once.
Ten sword auras flying in simultaneously.
"You little rats..."
Ha Mu-baek tilted his head back and swung his hand.
He had already known about the ten who had hidden themselves.
He knew they would strike when he showed an opening.
And that moment was now.
A perfectly timed attack.
They weren't complete fools.
They had exquisitely read the moment when Ha Mu-baek, reacting to Han Seol-bing's appearance, had unconsciously let his momentum waver.
The ten sword auras grazed past Ha Mu-baek's body.
Then, Ha Mu-baek drew his sword.
With a single motion.
"Ugh."
"Kuh."
"Nngh..."
Ten groans echoed out.
And ten shadows crumpled to the ground.
A sword aura had passed right by Ha Mu-baek's left cheek.
It hadn't touched his body, but it was the closest strike any North Sea warrior had landed.
"Not bad."
Ha Mu-baek said it sincerely.
He hadn't expected their swords to come that close.
"Well then, shall we stop playing around and wrap this up?"
Since he'd already drawn his sword.
Ha Mu-baek decided it was time to end it quickly.
"Seol-bing."
"Yes, Corps Leader."
Ha Mu-baek, who had been fending off enemies, called to her.
There must be a reason, so Han Seol-bing answered.
"Watch closely. It's a pretty interesting move."
It was something he'd said back in the Hocheon Corps too.
Words he used when teaching his subordinates.
He called it interesting, but every time, he demonstrated moves of an unfathomably profound realm.
Han Seol-bing still hadn't reached the level of what she'd seen before.
The moment he confirmed Han Seol-bing was watching intently.
Ha Mu-baek gripped his sword in reverse.
At that instant.
A pitch-black ink-colored sword aura gathered on Ha Mu-baek's blade.
"You've all done well."
He slammed the sword straight into the ground.
The sword aura spread through the earth like spiderwebs in all directions.
BOOOOOOM!!!!!
A massive explosion erupted.
The ground shook and split and burst as if an earthquake had struck.
Most of the Tak Clan warriors were swept up in the blast.
It was inevitable.
They had surrounded Ha Mu-baek in layers.
"Wha-what the...?"
"Wh-what... what is...?"
Yang Jeok-san was utterly dumbfounded.
And it wasn't just the Tak Clan's reaction.
The Bing Clan and Han Clan members stared at the scene before them with slack-jawed faces, their souls seemingly fled.
Bing Chwi-seol was no different.
She had heard all the information about the warrior named Ha Mu-baek.
But hearing and seeing it firsthand were worlds apart.
Just look at the spectacle unfolding before her eyes.
Was this something a human could achieve?
Only Han Seol-bing was different from the others.
Having fought alongside Ha Mu-baek, she was somewhat accustomed to his inhuman feats.
Even so, her mouth hung wide open.
A move like that.
It was the first technique Ha Mu-baek had ever shown her.
It was certainly an interesting move worthy of the name.
'Can I learn it before I die?'
But first came that distant despair.
How the hell was she supposed to learn something like that?
Whiiiish~.
A sharp wind blew, sweeping away the dust.
The revealed scene was gruesome.
Almost none of the Tak Clan warriors remained standing on the ground.
The only ones left intact were those behind Yang Jeok-san.
And even they numbered less than thirty.
It was over.
A complete defeat.
Even without Ha Mu-baek now.
The Bing Clan and Han Clan's forces alone could easily subdue the Tak Clan.
Yang Jeok-san slowly came back to his senses.
Despair settled slowly into his eyes.
"There were no stories like this..."
Who was he talking to?
Yang Jeok-san murmured lowly.
"There were no tales of a monster like that existing in the current world. And no one said that monster was a man named Ha Mu-baek..."
He thought he had calculated perfectly, accounting for every variable.
He was wrong.
A natural disaster.
A calamity.
Such a being existed plain as day.
And it was here to aid the Palace Lord, connected through ties to Han Seol-bing.
"Damn it..."
Moisture gathered in his reddened eyes.
He felt wronged.
Truly, deeply wronged.
Wasn't the intervention of such a being just plain cheating?
"Martial World's rumors really can't be trusted..."
Information on Ha Mu-baek's true power, which he couldn't access.
The divine feats Ha Mu-baek had shown in the Pang Clan and Namgung Clan.
Only the high ranks of the Righteous Heaven Alliance had access to that intel.
The envoy dispatched from the Ice Heaven Palace to the Righteous Heaven Alliance was from the Bing Clan, so even the Tak Family Head couldn't obtain the same information.
What Tak Yo-beom had focused on was intelligence about the northern Central Plains factions.
The lands he would eventually advance into after becoming Palace Lord.
That had been his fatal mistake.
He knew Ha Mu-baek was an incredible warrior, a monster.
But he never imagined such a terrifying monster beyond all comprehension.
That's why he harbored that ridiculous delusion of overwhelming him with sheer numbers.
"Family Head... I'm sorry... It's because I was lacking..."
Yang Jeok-san glanced at Tak Yo-beom's intact tent and muttered.
"I truly had no idea he was such a monster. To face a monster like that, only another monster could..."
His muttering cut off abruptly.
He had spotted one wall of the tent flapping in the wind.
Sliced cleanly by a sword.
Yang Jeok-san whipped around and rushed to Tak Yo-beom's tent.
He was gone.
The tent was empty.
"Ha, haha, hahaha."
A hollow laugh escaped him.
To think he was that kind of man.
All this time, he had devoted his loyalty to such a person?
Suddenly, everything felt meaningless.
"Listen up, people of the Tak Clan."
Bing Chwi-seol's voice rang out.
"The price for your rebellion. Now is the time to pay it."
Her voice, cold yet beautifully resonant like jade, echoed everywhere.
Those words descended as despair upon the Tak Clan warriors.
With most already incapacitated from battle.
Seeing that monster in the enemy ranks.
Not even the will to fight remained.
Ha Mu-baek looked around, furrowing his brow.
"What's wrong?"
"Too easy?"
Ha Mu-baek replied to Han Seol-bing's response.
"You're the one who created this absurd scene."
"Even so. For a rebellion, it ended too anticlimactically. More importantly, aren't you going to catch the enemy leader?"
Han Seol-bing scowled at Ha Mu-baek's question.
"The rat's already slipped away."
In front of the Family Head's tent stood only Yang Jeok-san, slumped in despair.
"He's that way."
Ha Mu-baek had already sensed his movement with his energy sense.
He'd let him go since he was just a rat in a trap anyway.
There was nothing he could do alone.
Han Seol-bing, looking where Ha Mu-baek pointed, murmured.
"The Tak Clan lands..."
Indeed.
The direction of the Tak Clan's territory within the Ice Heaven Palace.
Bing Chwi-seol approached the two.
She had overheard their conversation.
"Has Tak Yo-beom fled to the Tak Clan lands?"
Ha Mu-baek nodded.
"He's the ringleader of the rebellion. We can't let anyone else go, but that bastard must be caught and beheaded for sure."
Anger filled Bing Chwi-seol's voice as she spoke.
Yang Jeok-san was already bound by Bing Clan warriors and thrown to the ground.
His eyes were lifeless, as if he no longer cared what happened.
Not because of the rebellion's failure.
Because he felt betrayed by his lord.
Abandoning his desperately fighting subordinates and fleeing alone from this place.
It was futile and empty.
"We must behead him alongside that one and hang their heads."
Her voice was breathtakingly beautiful, yet the words were brutal.
Ha Mu-baek's gaze turned to Han Seol-bing.
She nodded.
"Then let's go catch the last one."
Ha Mu-baek headed toward where he sensed the presence.
Bing Chwi-seol, Han Seol-bing, and a few Bing Clan warriors followed.
Ha Mu-baek tilted his head.
Tak Yo-beom's presence kept descending underground.
'What scheme is this?'
Ha Mu-baek extended his energy sense deep into the earth.
He felt a powerful, alien sorcerous energy.
"Looks like he's up to something."
Ha Mu-baek quickened his pace.
"Fuck..."
Tak Yo-beom spat curses.
His eyes were coldly sunken.
"To think I'd have to use this so soon."
It was meant to be his trump card for when the advance into the Central Plains hit a wall.
Tak Yo-beom raced down the tunnel.
The product of his efforts over the past several years.
No one knew of this place.
It was a path he had carved out alone.
Thus, Tak Yo-beom once again stood before the being he had painstakingly connected with after years of grueling labor.