A thing used to kill people.

Some ask.

Isn’t that something any blade can do?

A farmer’s sickle can do it. A cook’s cleaver can do it.

But a blacksmith would answer like this.

A sword is honed solely to kill people.

It isn’t like a sickle or a cleaver—something that can also kill people.

A sword is made for killing people, and for that purpose alone.

That’s why people watch someone wearing a sword more carefully than someone holding a sickle or a cleaver.

Because it means the person has the will to kill.

And the Sura Unit Commander knew that, too.

An old man with thick white hair.

Back in the War of the Righteous and Demonic, when he was a young man of thirty, the Alliance had called him this—

Sword Ghost.

He was the disciple of the Sword Demon: Sword Ghost Danya.

“The Shandong Ak Family has lost its strength, Commander.”

“Looks like this old devil’s blade still cuts. Keh-heh-heh…”

He was one of the few who could call himself an old devil.

And that kind of man called a person his blade.

That was why the righteous sects despised the Demonic Cult and the unorthodox.

They used even people as tools for killing people.

But who could punish him?

His swordsmanship had followed his master, the Sword Demon, right up to the edge of his chin.

Only the wall of the Transformation Realm remained.

One step.

Just one step from reaching the realm of the Sword Demon, the previous Sura Unit Commander.

All he had to do was break that wall and cross it.

Of course, it might be something he could never manage for the rest of his life…

But he’d gained an insight lately.

“And Yacha Blood Gate’s movements are exactly as you predicted as well, sir.”

“Yeah… that side will be getting ready to flare up, too. And they won’t know I’m here.”

“Yes, sir.”

The one kneeling before Sura Unit Commander Danya and reporting—

Was a woman in her fifties.

The Deputy Commander, Dan Honga.

The Commander’s daughter.

“This time, we’ll finally be able to cut off the Ak bastards’ bloodline.”

“…Yes, Father.”

And they, too, had someone they’d lost to the Ak Family.

Demonic energy boiled inside the father and daughter’s lower abdomens.

People who had bowed before the Heavenly Demon and accepted a fragment of him.

They were the true Demonic Cult—survivors of the War of the Righteous and Demonic.

*****

The Shandong Ak Family main house, with every light extinguished.

Ash swirled thick through the air.

The clan’s wealth was still intact.

Silver and gold didn’t melt away and vanish just because a house burned.

Of course, some of it had been carried off by traitorous relatives who ran…

But that wasn’t the “real wealth.”

The real wealth was the countless businesses the Shandong Ak Family held.

The funds needed to rebuild the clan would be replenished in no time.

The problem was human capital.

Among those who fled were people who had held critical posts.

Now that those people were dead—or had left with information…

For a while, the Shandong Ak Family could only be weak.

Especially vulnerable to the schemes of unorthodox forces that had been lying in wait.

Ak Taegyu looked at the Clan Head’s Inner Hall, burned down to bare ruin, and let out a sigh.

Now every remaining family member would have to live in the annex building the clan had prepared to receive guests.

He ordered every Ak Family martial artist to sleep outside.

He himself was no exception.

Those who hadn’t trained in martial arts would be harmed if they slept under the dew.

It would be unfair to inflict that harshness on non-martial family members with frail bodies.

“What’s the situation?”

A voice from behind.

Ak Taegyu rose from his seat.

And turned.

As expected, it was Cheon Soyak.

“There’s something I’m curious about.”

“Ask.”

“How old are you?”

Cheon Soyak blinked.

She knew this was the kind of question that would drag the conversation somewhere that wouldn’t help either of them.

Even so, what benefit was there in dodging it?

“I’m fourteen.”

“Do you not think you’re being cruel to yourself?”

“Cruel to myself…”

Soyak lowered her eyes to her hands for a moment.

Calluses were embedded in her grip.

The backs of her hands were smooth and pale…

Yeah.

The inside had split and roughened, like her own heart.

She knew how to turn it back.

It was the same as how calluses disappeared.

She could put down the sword and hold a teacup instead.

But she had no intention of living like that.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have someone I need to take revenge on, too.”

Ak Taegyu narrowed his eyes.

A target of revenge?

For a fourteen-year-old girl?

“I see…”

“I’ll only say this much—it’s my parents’ enemy.”

“Right. Then that makes sense.”

Learning the sword to avenge your parents.

Driving yourself without end, hammering and tempering yourself into shape.

Ak Taegyu had seen it.

The Sword Qi blooming from that girl’s sword.

It was still incomplete, but it wouldn’t take long.

Crossing the wall was difficult—

But to a monster like that, it was nothing more than a staircase.

Something you reached just by walking.

“You asked how things are going?”

“Yes.”

“First, I reorganized the clan’s internal intelligence network and started scraping together information from everywhere around us. From what I’ve heard…”

Ak Taegyu drew a breath.

“The ones who stepped into the open are the Demonic Cult—more specifically, remnants of the Sura Unit. And I hear Yacha Blood Gate is helping them.”

“Sura Unit and Yacha Blood Gate…”

“Yeah. You probably haven’t even heard of them.”

Cheon Soyak nodded.

She still didn’t know much about what was happening out in the world.

“Yacha Blood Gate is an unorthodox sect that’s fought the Ak Family for hegemony in southern Shandong since a very long time ago. I’ve heard that right up until the War of the Righteous and Demonic, the struggle was pretty evenly matched. But they declined after the war.”

“Why?”

“Because they supported the Demonic Cult. After the Demonic Cult collapsed, those bastards collapsed with it. The Alliance sent the One-Under-Heaven Corps and smashed them, and we even teamed up with the Hwangbo Clan—who we’d been fighting over Shandong’s hegemony—and beat them down.”

The Hwangbo Clan and the Shandong Ak Family.

Both great houses with the stature to claim Shandong’s hegemony.

Those two joining forces—

And the Alliance right after the War of the Righteous and Demonic.

Back then, the Alliance had been a sharpened blade, gathering and stockpiling its full strength to purge the remnants.

Power an ordinary unorthodox sect could never withstand.

“They were smart. They ran.”

“They ran.”

“Yeah. In southern Shandong, there’s a huge mountain called Mount Meng. In Shandong, it’s the biggest mountain after Mount Tai.”

Mount Meng.

A famous mountain of Shandong—clean scenery, majestic views.

But what did “majestic views” mean across the Central Plains?

It meant a steep mountain made of bizarre peaks and jagged rock.

And in this era, there was no place better for suspicious people to hide than somewhere like that.

“What is the Sura Unit?”

“A Demonic Cult armed group whose Commander used to be the Sword Demon. He’s dead now.”

“The Sword Demon…”

Cheon Soyak had never heard the name.

It was a name that had shaken the Alliance’s authority fifty years ago.

In this generation, it was a forgotten name.

Even those who still remembered…

Now exaggerated the blood-soaked karma the Sword Demon had piled up as mere bragging.

But Ak Taegyu had grown up hearing stories about the Sword Demon until his ears rang.

“He was a master of a demonic art called the Shura Blood-Heaven Sword.”

“That’s a vicious-sounding art.”

“It is. I’ve also heard that the Sword Demon took a look at their spear techniques as the price for Yacha Blood Gate helping them.”

A swordsman looking at spear techniques?

It was bizarre.

Cheon Soyak narrowed her eyes and asked back.

“A sword and a spear are different weapons.”

“In the end, they’re both cold weapons with a grip and a blade. The principles are similar. But…”

“But?”

“After that, Yacha Blood Gate’s spears supposedly changed until the blade and the handle were the same length.”

A spear with a blade and a shaft the same length.

A strange weapon, plain and simple.

And they’d learned demonic arts on top of that.

It didn’t line up with Soyak’s common sense in more than one way.

“…Demonic arts.”

“You mean the Heaven-Toppling cultivation that uses demonic energy? That’s right.”

“Then how…”

“Who knows. That’s something we’ll only learn by catching them and beating it out of them.”

That was true.

No matter how much they talked right now, it was still just a pile of rumors.

Soyak nodded quietly.

“Southern Shandong Province, Mount Meng’s valley. When do you plan to move?”

“Tomorrow morning. I’ve already finished speaking with the Martial Alliance’s Shandong branch.”

“…Will they help?”

Ak Taegyu nodded.

“They say they’ll send the One-Under-Heaven Corps’ Seventh Unit.”

“One-Under-Heaven Corps…”

One Under Heaven.

Putting the world under one roof.

Words that lined up with the Alliance’s declaration that it would control the entire martial world of the Central Plains.

From the First Unit to the Thirteenth Unit.

A group formed by gathering experts who pledged loyalty to the Alliance.

Soyak lowered her gaze to her hand for a moment.

The blood of Ak Seowon, the Thirteenth Unit Commander, would still be on it.

He, too, had been blood of the Shandong Ak Family.

And the son of Ak Jupae—the Flame-Saber Lord—one of Soyak’s enemies.

“Still, I’m not sure they’re reliable.”

“What do you mean?”

“By rule, they only elevate someone who’s reached at least Transcendent Apex to Commander, but…”

Ak Taegyu clicked his tongue.

“I heard the Thirteenth Unit Commander was from the branch family line.”

“…Ah.”

“And he’s dead. I heard he’d just stepped into Transcendent Apex, but they found him as an unidentified corpse in some backwater village.”

Chapter 75

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