Chapter 470
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 470
Chapter Title: One Guy Came Out
The walls had crumbled.
Wooden pillars lay toppled over.
The ruins were in such a state of utter devastation that it was impossible to even guess what kind of splendor the place had once enjoyed.
Ha Mu-baek watched the scene with a face full of emotion.
After all, he was the one who had reduced it to this.
He could still vividly remember that moment when rage had blinded him.
Everything—from where he started, the order in which he smashed things, to when he finally encountered the Extinction Corpses.
In the center of the ruins,
the largest wooden building had collapsed.
Its signboard lay shattered into pieces.
If you pieced those fragments together,
the words "Blood Demon Hall" would emerge.
The Blood Cult's object of worship and reverence—their god, the Blood Demon.
This was the grand hall dedicated to that Blood Demon.
The most important and central building in the entire Blood Cult.
It was also where the cult leader resided.
Of course,
this wasn't where Ha Mu-baek and Righteous Heaven Alliance Leader So Hwi-woong had fought their final battle against Blood Cult Leader Gae Hong-cheon.
At the time, Gae Hong-cheon had personally led the Blood Cult's forces from the vanguard.
Ha Mu-baek scanned his surroundings.
His senses extended toward the underground as well.
"Definitely..."
Countless presences emanated from below.
The problem was,
they weren't approaching the entrance. So he couldn't pinpoint where it was.
Ha Mu-baek looked around.
"Even so, they must have come up from underground not long ago."
The Extinction Corpses.
Those things had risen from underground to the surface.
So there had to be some trace left behind.
Ha Mu-baek surveyed the area before taking a step.
Step.
He placed his foot in midair.
Step.
He took another.
As if invisible stairs existed in the empty air,
Ha Mu-baek walked upward, one foot at a time.
Once he reached a height of about fifteen meters,
the overall lay of the land came into view.
Among it,
he searched for spots large enough for a person to pass through.
There were no visible openings.
No footprints either.
Just as Ha Mu-baek was about to furrow his brow,
Flutter, flutter.
a crow suddenly flew in from somewhere.
"Hm?"
A crow in these empty ruins?
"Ah."
Ha Mu-baek quickly realized its purpose and watched its movements intently.
The crow flew swiftly into the collapsed debris and vanished.
Its presence extended downward underground.
Ha Mu-baek landed back in front of the Blood Demon Hall.
"So it was here after all."
Ha Mu-baek grinned.
What a coincidence.
A messenger crow arriving right at this moment.
Ha Mu-baek raised his fist.
If the entrance wasn't visible,
he just needed to smash everything hiding it.
"Ugh... Just a bit more... Faster... Just a little more."
Il-no muttered with bloodshot eyes,
staring at Gae Hong-cheon lying before him.
It was the final stretch now.
Truly, just one tiny step away.
Completion was right around the corner.
That's why his desperation burned even hotter.
He had no idea when Ha Mu-baek,
that monster, might barge in.
Of course, there was no way that guy knew this location.
But the mere fact that he was in the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest
was enough to fill him with unease.
Hummm.
At that moment,
Gae Hong-cheon's body began to tremble with a low vibrational hum.
"Oh... Ooh... F-Finally!!"
Il-no's voice trembled with ecstasy.
A faint hope began to dawn on his face.
The Asura Blood Heaven Corpse.
With this,
he might actually be able to face that monster Ha Mu-baek.
A vague hope like that.
Flash.
In an instant,
Gae Hong-cheon's eyes snapped open,
and a fierce glint poured forth.
The rain-gray stone ceiling above the chamber
crumbled to powder with a hiss.
Gae Hong-cheon stared blankly up at the ceiling.
Blink.
He blinked a few times, and his fingers began to twitch faintly,
then moved little by little.
Soon,
Gae Hong-cheon slowly rose to his feet.
He looked around the unfamiliar surroundings.
He hadn't fully grasped the situation yet.
Into those eyes
entered the sight of Il-no trembling with rapture.
"Il-no?"
Il-no threw himself prostrate on the ground at the hoarse, cracked voice of Gae Hong-cheon.
"This lowly servant, First of the Blood Cult's Ten Elders, Il-no, pays respects to the Supreme Cult Leader!"
At his booming shout,
Gae Hong-cheon glanced up at the ceiling again for a moment.
His mind felt heavy, but it began to turn slowly.
He dredged up his final memory.
"This land shall remain the Blood Demon's territory forever..."
Ha Mu-baek, who had pierced a hole through his heart.
He had spat those words at that bastard, and then memory cut off.
He must have died.
Yet here he was, eyes open and moving.
Il-no was prostrated before him.
"So... I've become a corpse puppet?"
That was the only thought he could muster.
He looked down toward his heart.
Covered by his robes,
but he could still feel the piercing wound.
"What happened?"
Gae Hong-cheon turned to Il-no and asked.
"Did you have a way to turn me into one?"
He knew of their existence.
The Extinction Corpses, the Cult Guardian Gods.
A cult leader had to know.
But to become one required retaining one's own will and mastering a blood art.
Gae Hong-cheon hadn't done that; he'd simply met his end.
In that state, the highest puppet possible was obvious.
A Dull Iron Corpse.
That should have been the limit.
Yet the energy overflowing in his body now made even Dark Blood Corpses seem laughable.
"It's called the Asura Blood Heaven Corpse. Only those who have mastered the Cult Leader's Secret Art can achieve it."
Gae Hong-cheon furrowed his brow at Il-no's answer.
To think the Cult Leader's Secret Art held secrets even he, the cult leader, didn't know.
"Il-no. Are you the only one who knew?"
"Yes. Passed down secretly from Il-no to Il-no, generation after generation."
There had simply been no need to create an Asura Blood Heaven Corpse until now,
so even Gae Hong-cheon hadn't known.
But for him to become one himself...
"What happened?"
He had no choice but to ask.
He could tell the Blood Cult had fallen after his defeat.
But what on earth was this?
Il-no began his tale slowly.
After his death.
The shifting tides of war.
Defeat.
The collapse of the main base and days of hardship hiding underground.
And Ha Mu-baek's monstrous strength.
After hearing it all, Gae Hong-cheon could only frown.
"So all the corpse puppets are gone?"
"A few of the Four Corpses might remain scattered in the forest here and there, but..."
Aside from those pathetic creatures,
every true powerhouse corpse puppet of the Blood Cult had vanished.
Now, only the Asura Blood Heaven Corpse—Gae Hong-cheon himself—remained.
"Heh, heh heh heh."
He couldn't help but laugh.
He didn't even bellow that it was impossible to eliminate all the Extinction Corpses included.
The energy in his own body told him otherwise.
It was possible now—for him as well.
'I'm the cult leader, yet I didn't even know what the cult truly was.'
The thought suddenly struck him.
The Blood Cult's Ten Elders.
The ten pillars of the cult.
Perhaps they weren't under the cult leader, but above him.
The cult leader was just their puppet.
"What about Ino?"
"He died during the retreat."
They hadn't recovered the body.
No opportunity to do so.
Gae Hong-cheon scowled again.
"Then, what about Se-aak?"
His sole bloodline.
He had arranged for the boy to flee to the Blood Demon Hall's underground if he fell.
"C-Cult Leader..."
Il-no squeezed his eyes shut.
He couldn't bring himself to answer.
"Speak."
A frost-like aura surged up.
"H-He passed away... Yesterday..."
Sparks flew from Gae Hong-cheon's eyes.
"Ha Mu-baek's doing?"
"No... The place collapsed while he was in secluded training..."
Gae Hong-cheon planted his feet firmly on the ground.
"Lead the way."
His voice was emotionless, but brimming with rage.
Il-no rose from his prostration and cautiously guided him.
A cloth draped over Gae Hong-cheon's face, so no cultist recognized him.
They arrived before the cave-in.
Gae Hong-cheon gazed at it calmly.
'So he received the guidance of the Reverse Heaven Blood Flow Destruction Blood Art.'
As Gae Hong-cheon's aura softened slightly with a small nod,
flutter.
the faint sound of a crow landing in its designated spot reached them.
"Looks like news from outside."
"Let's go."
Il-no guided Gae Hong-cheon onward, still tense.
For Gae Hong-cheon, his son Se-aak's death held that weight.
His only bloodline.
After traversing the winding path for a while,
they entered a small room.
A perch stood there, with a crow perched on it.
Just as Il-no reached for the note tied to its leg,
Kaboom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!!
Rumble rumble rumble!!!
a massive explosion rocked them.
Grooooan.
The underground space shook violently.
Plink, plink.
Stone dust and dirt rained down.
"Wh-What is this?"
Il-no jumped in shock.
The impassive Gae Hong-cheon looked upward.
"Ha Mu-baek. That bastard's here."
Calm words.
Il-no's face paled at them.
No way.
To think he'd found this place already.
Impossible.
So he thought,
but reality
was the continuous
Kaboom! Rumble rumble boom!
thunderous roars.
'J-Just a little later...'
One more day,
and perhaps
the Asura Blood Heaven Corpse would have been incomplete, and they'd have all been wiped out by Ha Mu-baek.
The thought sent chills down Il-no's spine.
Gae Hong-cheon glanced at Il-no's increasingly ashen face.
"I'll go."
With those words,
his form vanished.
In an instant, he raced through the narrow, twisting passages.
Kaboom!
He burst through the floor into the air.
The debris of the Blood Demon Hall artfully concealing the entrance shattered and scattered everywhere.
"One guy came out."
Ha Mu-baek muttered calmly at the sight.
He stared at the figure soaring into the sky.
His senses hadn't detected countless people, had they?
Among them, one corpse puppet.
It didn't seem to carry any particular energy.
But the one that emerged now was that corpse puppet.
Probably
the Blood Cult's final one.
It had finally revealed itself.
Ha Mu-baek looked toward where Gae Hong-cheon had leaped from.
"So that's the spot."
He was almost there.
A bit more smashing and clearing,
and he would have found it.
"Long time no see."
Gae Hong-cheon, standing loftily in midair, looked down at Ha Mu-baek and said.
Ha Mu-baek met his gaze.
"I had my suspicions, but I didn't expect you'd really become a corpse puppet. Gae Hong-cheon."
"Neither did I. Heh heh."
As Gae Hong-cheon replied, an immense energy began to flow from his body.
It had no color or form.
Just an invisible, formless ki filling the space.
He hadn't sensed any energy until now,
yet suddenly this overwhelming power erupted.
As expected, he was different from the others.
The energy Gae Hong-cheon was now drawing forth
was the Reverse Heaven Blood Flow Destruction Blood Art.
"That damned blood art's been a while too."
Energy began surging from Ha Mu-baek's body as well.
Two powerhouses faced each other from sky and earth, drawing up their auras.
Hummm.
The atmosphere trembled and wailed under their energies.
Gae Hong-cheon extended his hand forward.
Then,
Bang!
a chunk of Blood Demon Hall debris exploded outward, and something flew toward his hand.
Gae Hong-cheon caught it effortlessly.
It was a blood-red sword.
Gae Hong-cheon smiled as he gripped it.
"Still here after all."
When he had marched out for the final battle,
he'd taken his saber.
Leaving behind his sword.
His two cherished weapons.
Heavenly Blood Saber and Earthly Blood Sword.
Sword force rose from his blade.
Blood-red, crimson sword gang.
Blood Gang.
Formed not from inner energy, but corpse puppet ki,
so it wasn't called sword gang,
but what Gae Hong-cheon displayed now
was unmistakably sword gang.
Utterly different from any corpse puppet he'd faced before.
A completely different existence.
"You really are a corpse puppet?"
He knew it was true, yet he had to ask.
He wielded martial arts no different from life.
With energy overwhelmingly more terrifying than in life.
"Asura Blood Heaven Corpse. That's me now. Heh heh."
"Il-no's handiwork?"
As Ha Mu-baek spoke, pure white sword gang rose from his sword.
Immense energy not inferior to Gae Hong-cheon's in the slightest.