In the end, the Blood Sword Unit was completely broken.

Corpses lay strewn everywhere.

Ownerless arms and legs rolled down the mountainside.

But no one grieved over the carnage.

They were swept onward only by distant vengeance and rising exhilaration, climbing higher, ever higher.

They pushed up through Yacha Valley.

Far in the distance stood a red gate.

The main gate of the Yacha Blood Gate.

“Drag the Gate Lord out! Drag him out and make him kneel!”

At Ak Taegyu’s order, the hired martial vagrants charged in without hesitation.

Unfortunately for the martial artists guarding the inside, they were a level below even the Blood Sword Unit.

“…Doesn’t this seem strange?”

Soyak spoke quietly.

Both Ak Taegyu and Hwangbo Gyeong turned to look at her.

“What are you thinking, Young Hero Soyak?”

“How should I put it… it feels like this is going too easily.”

“Hoh… that’s a fair point, Family Head. They must have known we were coming and made preparations, so there’s no way they should be collapsing this easily.”

Ak Taegyu raised his brows.

“Still, Young Hero Hwangbo Gyeong. Didn’t they suddenly lose the Blood Sword Commander?”

“That only makes it more suspicious. If that were the case, they should have emptied out the sect and fled long ago.”

“That’s true enough. But damage on this scale is hard to call a trick.”

He gestured around them with the Demon-Warding Halberd he held at an angle.

The total annihilation of the Blood Sword Unit.

The destruction of a major military force was not the kind of damage one could simply recover from.

It was like having the right arm of a sect severed off.

“…I don’t think this is a trick by the Yacha Blood Gate.”

“Then what is it?”

“That leaves only…”

The Sura Unit.

The remnants of the Demonic Cult.

But the time to launch an attack had already passed.

At the very least, if they had wanted to fall on them…

they should have done it while the Blood Sword Unit was still alive.

What would happen if you swung a hammer without an anvil beneath it?

Without the Blood Sword Unit, the Yacha Blood Gate could no longer serve as that anvil.

No matter how strong a hammer the Sura Unit might be.

“Then what remains is the Sura Unit.”

“…The Sura Unit would come to help? At a time like this?”

Hwangbo Gyeong grasped the answer first.

But Ak Taegyu shook his head.

Because he had been thinking the same thing Soyak had.

“The Family Head is right. It’s already too late…”

“Exactly, Young Hero Hwangbo Gyeong. Those bastards have no one left but the Gate Lord.”

They were unorthodox wretches who had hidden deep in the mountains of Shandong.

Long ago, they might have fought over southern Shandong.

But that age had ended a very long time ago.

Even so, it was impressive that they had managed to form a force of nearly fifty Apex and First-Rate martial artists together.

And their leader had even reached the entrance to the Transcendent Apex.

If they had the backing of the Demonic Cult, they had been strong enough to strike at the Ak Family.

“That’s enough. Don’t worry too much. We have the Black Eagle Unit here as well.”

The Black Eagle Unit.

The Shandong Ak Family’s main armed force.

Since most jobs that required putting lives on the line had been left to hired martial vagrants, their strength remained intact.

Of course, not all of them were Apex.

There was a mix of First-Rate and Apex martial artists…

but the ratio was incomparably better than that of the Blood Sword Unit.

Almost half of them were Apex, and the remaining half at First-Rate effectively learned under them.

Other than the secret forms that only the Family Head and his bloodline could learn,

they were all properly trained in the Ak Family Spear Art.

And because the Ak Family Spear Art was a military art, its effectiveness only increased the more people used it together.

“…That does make me feel somewhat reassured.”

Hwangbo Gyeong nodded as he looked toward the Black Eagle Unit.

It was regrettable that their commander had died.

To think he had been stabbed to death by an Ak Family maid he had chosen and married himself.

It had not even been a full year since the two of them had married.

Perhaps she had deliberately seduced the Black Eagle Unit Commander from the start.

But what was the use of discussing that now?

The dead had already all been buried away…

and they had come here for vengeance.

“It looks like the inside is being cleared out as well, Family Head.”

“No, Young Hero Hwangbo Gyeong. Look. It will come out soon.”

“It will come out soon…”

At that moment, Soyak brought the sword she had let hang at her side sharply upright.

Because she had felt a fierce and sinister presence.

A strange internal force spreading into the thick stench of blood trembling through heaven and earth in all directions.

It had to be the Gate Lord, Blood Yacha Sa Heegwang.

*****

A flock of sheep led by a wolf.

And a pack of wolves led by a sheep.

Which of the two would be stronger?

The old saying gave its answer plainly.

The head had to be a wolf.

But the Blood Sword Unit, as it stood now, had no head.

Deep inside Mount Meng, in Yacha Valley.

At the Yacha Blood Gate stronghold.

The Gate Lord, Blood Yacha Sa Heegwang, clutched at his head.

“Why!!!!”

At that furious roar, the objects inside the Gate Lord’s chamber went flying in all directions.

Sheets of paper fluttered down as they scattered.

“Why, why are they not coming!!!”

His startled subordinates could do nothing but press themselves against the door and watch his mood.

Outside, every kind of noise battered at their ears.

The clash of blades and spears.

The shouts of men forcing up their internal energy.

The howls of those facing death.

The screams of those dying.

“SURA UNIT!!!!”

The Sword Ghost, who had promised to help, was nowhere to be seen.

Blood Yacha Sa Heegwang seized a spear forged from black iron.

Then, in a single burst, he smashed through the wall.

Now it was his turn to step in.

The spear in Sa Heegwang’s hand, containing the forms of the Yacha Blood-Ghost Spear, gave a resonant cry.

Then it began to shine.

A surging aura…

It was no different from proving to the world that his realm was the Transcendent Apex.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!!”

Yacha Blood-Ghost Spear, Second Form.

Blood Heaven Falls and Ruins.

The spearhead, filled to the brim with crimson Sword Qi, flew straight at the two martial vagrants charging him.

The two martial vagrants hired by the Ak Family were split in half instantly.

Their swords were shattered and blown away as well.

“So you’ve finally come out, Sa Heegwang!!”

Ak Taegyu leveled the Demon-Warding Halberd and charged in at once.

Then he collided head-on with Sa Heegwang at full force.

Both men were masters nearing the middle stage of the Transcendent Apex.

Unless each was prepared to lose an arm, neither could cut the other’s throat.

“You think you can kill me, Ak Taegyu?!”

“Why wouldn’t I? The Demonic Cult you colluded with turned my daughter into that thing!!”

“You have proof? Do you have any proof?!”

Sa Heegwang shrieked as he swung his spear wildly.

He was afraid.

Truly afraid that Ak Taegyu, as a martial artist, would really give up the right arm worth as much as his life just to take his head.

Because of that, Sa Heegwang only kept drawing on forms devoted entirely to defense.

If he tried to seize the offensive even a little…

Ak Taegyu would gladly sacrifice his own arm to receive it and drive a strike through his throat.

Between masters of equal level, there was no way to avoid a blow from someone willing to disregard his own body.

Soyak quietly walked into the front yard of the Yacha Blood Gate.

Cutting down every man who charged at her in a single slash.

Her snow-white martial uniform was soaked with blood once again.

Every now and then blood splashed onto her cheek, and she wiped it away with her sleeve.

But clearly, clearly…

Soyak had been standing at the front with Hwangbo Gyeong.

Their role was to open the path.

Everyone had realized that the swordsman before them was a young girl.

And yet none of them could deny that she was a Transcendent Apex master.

Because the tip of the spear that broke open the way always belonged to the strongest.

So then, had the resistance all but died away?

All that remained now was the life-or-death duel between Sa Heegwang and Ak Taegyu.

The Yacha Blood Gate was as good as ruined.

Even if Sa Heegwang somehow survived and escaped, what of it?

He would have no one left but himself anyway.

The Black Eagle Unit moved exactly as the Family Head had ordered beforehand.

They set fire to the buildings throughout the Yacha Blood Gate.

Just as those bastards had done before.

Then they began carrying off the wealth piled everywhere.

Boxes filled with silver.

Priceless hanging scrolls painted by Master Myeonghwaek.

Warehouses full of fine weapons.

For a moment, it seemed as if everything were coming to an end like that.

“Young Hero, please take a look at this.”

It was the moment Soyak turned toward the Black Eagle Unit member who had spoken to her.

That bastard’s eyes gleamed with something unnatural.

And by the time she sensed something was wrong, it was already too late.

“…Ah.”

THUD—!!

A man disguised as an ordinary Black Eagle Unit member.

A man who had quietly killed one person during the battle with the Blood Sword Unit and stolen his clothes.

And even so, a figure capable of escaping the notice of Hwangbo Gyeong, Cheon Soyak, and Ak Taegyu alike.

A master standing at the very end of the Transcendent Apex.

The old demon who commanded the Sura Unit.

The Sword Ghost, Danya.

He tore off and cast aside the human-skin mask he had used to disguise himself as a young man.

Soyak’s small, slender body was blasted several yards away.

Her whole body throbbed from the rough roll across the ground.

But more fatal than that…

was the single palm strike driven into the area beneath her solar plexus.

“…Hhh, ah, hhngh.”

She could barely breathe.

Dense, violent Demonic Energy was jammed deep into her solar plexus.

The internal energy of the Harmonization Scripture was pushing it out and erasing it, but it was too much, too fierce.

And that was not all.

It was a palm technique unleashed by a powerful master.

She had taken it head-on.

Even putting the Demonic Energy aside, the sheer impact alone was enough that it would not have been strange for her to black out on the spot.

“Soyak!!!”

“What a goddamn mess!!!”

Cheongak and Cheonjeong immediately ran toward Soyak.

More precisely, they tried to.

But—

the moment Danya drew his sword, all of them froze.

They could not even properly breathe under that pressure.

That was the oppressive force of one standing just before the Transformation Realm.

“I will tell you this old demon’s name.”

Demonic Energy began leaking out in wisps from all over the place.

From places where, until just moments ago, nothing at all had been felt.

The Sura Unit had already surrounded Yacha Valley.

But their target was not the Ak Family, and even less the Ak Family Head.

It was Cheon Soyak.

The commander and leader, the Sword Ghost.

The final remaining sacrifice for the Heaven Yin Blood-Siphon Scripture that would guide him into the Transformation Realm.

What he wanted was Soyak’s heart, while she was still alive.

“This old demon is the Sword Ghost, Danya! Disciple of the Sword Demon, and a martial artist who has completed the realm of the Transcendent Apex.”

He pointed the tip of his sword at Soyak, curled on the ground and drawing ragged breaths.

Ak Taegyu could not spare attention for this side.

Because the instant Sa Heegwang learned of the Sword Ghost and the Sura Unit’s appearance, he had switched over to an all-out offensive.

“To attain the Transformation Realm, I will have to take your heart.”

The Sword Ghost’s blade was wrapped in pitch-black Sword Qi.

It was Sword Qi made from Demonic Energy, and so close to Sword Force it was almost indistinguishable.

Chapter 85

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