Chapter 4

The deep, ink-black ocean overflowed, drowning the northern plains beneath a deluge of pitch-black water.
Horses were swept away in the inky tide. Beloved wives and precious children vanished beneath the currents. Their steeds, essentially their entire livelihoods and fortunes, were mercilessly swallowed.

“No!”

Utterly helpless, the northern tribal warrior clawed at his own face and screamed in despair.

However…

Ruuuuuumble!

“Urgh!”

Accompanied by a deafening, thunderous roar, the overflowing black ocean soon swept the warrior away as well.

Gurgle!

Had the land itself become the ocean? This sea possessed no bottom. Helplessly, the warrior was sucked down into the violent maelstrom of the abyss.

As his consciousness began to fade in what he believed to be his final moments, he unleashed a bloodcurdling death cry.

“Oh, Tengri—!”

At first, he could not comprehend how a scream could possibly tear from his throat while submerged underwater.

Splash, drip.

Still kneeling, the warrior watched as a bucketful of pitch-black water poured out from inside his helmet. The inky fluid splashed onto the ground and immediately seeped into the earth, disappearing without a single trace as if it had never existed.

Just moments ago, he had been drowning in a fathomless, pitch-black ocean. Yet, as he collapsed forward, his grasping hands clutched dry dirt. His body was firmly planted against the solid, unyielding embrace of Mother Earth.

Ruuuuuuumble!

Hearing a sound like the sky itself collapsing, the warrior jerked his head upward.

“……”

Through eyes clouded entirely by confusion, he witnessed the pitch-black heavens literally shattering and caving in.

KABOOM!

“…T-the sky?!”

It was the majestic collapse of the Demonic Cult’s barrier, the massive reality-warping array that had dominated the battlefield and distorted the perceptions of every living soul within it.

However…

“…What in the world is going on?”

There was no possible way a mere rank-and-file northern martial artist could comprehend the magnitude of what had just occurred.

“Please look after your descendants, ancestors…!”

“Who is it?! Who cast this wicked sorcery upon me?! Show yourself!”

As the Demonic Cult’s barrier completely lifted from the earth, the entirety of the battlefield was plunged into extreme, paralyzing chaos.

“…Mother?”

“Sun-i! Where are you?! Where did you go, Sun-i?!”

The martial artists of the Luoyang Sword Clan’s War Department were not exempt from the psychological whiplash. The battlefield, previously a chaotic meat grinder where friend and foe slaughtered one another indiscriminately, suddenly fell into an unavoidable, eerie lull.

However, not everyone remained trapped by confusion and delusion.

“…Rest in peace.”

The most prominent exception was Gam Woo-hyeon, the Mount Hua Sword Dragon and Head Disciple of the Huashan Sect, who had been standing in close proximity to the Venerable One of Dark Heavens.

He closed his eyes, tilting his head toward the real sky. He could feel his hand—the very hand that gripped the sword which had just decapitated his junior martial brother—trembling violently. He wanted to abandon everything. He wanted to scoop up his junior’s severed head and flee straight back home, back to Mount Hua, right this very second.

Get a grip, Gam Woo-hyeon…!

Through sheer force of will, he barely managed to rein himself in. Utilizing formidable patience and willpower, he suppressed the chaotic tempest of intensely heightened, conflicting emotions raging inside his mind.

“…Huuu.”

Eventually, when he reopened his eyes, a profound sorrow still lingered within his gaze. However, that pain and agony had been clearly reeled back into the boundaries of reason, securely locked away for the moment.

“…Grand Young Master.”

Lowering his gaze from the sky, Gam Woo-hyeon addressed the figure standing opposite him—Grand Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.

“I definitely heard you.”

The northern forces and the Grand Young Master’s troops remained in the exact, chaotically intertwined state they had been in just before the flesh-golem’s appearance. Yet not a single one of those soldiers had fully regained their sanity.

Ignoring that bizarre, unsettling tableau, the Grand Young Master stood with his hands casually clasped behind his back.

“What did you hear?” he asked leisurely.

How could the Grand Young Master remain so terrifyingly relaxed in a situation like this? How much did he actually know about the Demonic Cult and their current predicament?

Shoving all those questions aside, the very first words that spilled from the Mount Hua Sword Dragon’s lips were an accusation.

“You clearly stated that I would be the one to succumb to the Demonic Cult’s whispers.”

Gam Woo-hyeon remembered it vividly.

“I was absolutely certain that you would be the one to succumb to the Demonic Cult’s temptation.”

Those were the exact words the Grand Young Master, acting as the Venerable One of Dark Heavens, had directed at Gam Woo-hyeon when he first appeared.

“Grand Young Master, did you…” Gam Woo-hyeon’s eyes narrowed dangerously, his grip tightening around his sword hilt. “Did you intentionally let our Mount Hua vanguard unit go during the previous battle in Shenyang so that we would fall prey to the Demonic Cult here…?”

As his voice trembled with surging emotion, the corners of Gam Woo-hyeon’s eyes quivered.

“Did you use us as bait?”

The old man blinked.

He felt as though he had just been standing in the middle of a cataclysm where the earth melted away and the sky collapsed. Yet, at the same time, he felt as though he had just seen his family coming out to greet him at his estate in Luoyang.

“Son! Welcome home!”

“Welcome back!”

“Elder Brother! This younger brother sincerely congratulates you on your victory and safe return!”

Strangely, among the family members rushing out to greet him was his father—who had passed away many years ago—as well as his brothers. The old man vaguely sensed something was wrong, but his addled mind could not clearly pinpoint the discrepancy.

Why was he holding a massive throwing spear? Where was he, and why was he stripped to the waist?

Having experienced an overwhelming deluge of hallucinations in an incredibly short span, his brain simply could not properly process reality.

“…One.”

Amidst the mental fog, the old man unconsciously muttered a procedure someone had earnestly drilled into him.

“Fingers. Check fingers.”

Planting his spear into the ground, the old man grabbed his own finger and forcefully bent it backward. It did not snap back to touch the back of his hand.

“…Two.”

The old man pinched his nose shut.

“Check breathing.”

He took a massive, deep breath. Because his nose was pinched, no air entered his lungs.

“…Three!”

Having completed the first two steps, he executed the third procedure with far greater speed and precision.

“Check memories.”

This time, the old man meticulously retraced the memories that had led him to this exact location.

“…I absolutely did not march toward Shenyang, where the Grand Young Master is stationed. I mobilized my troops and advanced straight to this battlefield in a single breath.”

That was right. He remembered now.

Grand Young Master. Grand Young Master. Grand Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.

The man who had taught him how to counteract this exact situation was Grand Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.

“And I commanded the troops to launch a surprise attack on the enemy…”

He recalled the exact words the Grand Young Master had spoken to him back in Luoyang.

“This is a method devised by Daoists and sorcerers of the unorthodox left-hand path to rapidly break free from the aftereffects of illusion arts.”

The Grand Young Master had called it the Reality Verification Procedure.

“Sword Clan Armed General Eulogist Scholar led the elite vanguard and drove deep into the enemy encampment…”

As the old man took a deep, shuddering breath, a chaotic mixture of scents deeply permeated his lungs.

Huuuup!

The smell of crushed grass trampled by horses and men. The metallic stench of blood and iron. The heavy scent of oil generously slathered over armor.

“I scattered the respective units, tearing the enemy’s internal formation to shreds…”

As he progressed through the Reality Verification Procedure, the confirmed reality rapidly pushed out the lingering fragments of hallucinations and delusions. His sense of reality fully returned.

“Right… that’s right…”

Having completely regained the sharp, rational gleam in his eyes, the old man—the War Department Chief of the Sword Clan—reached out and powerfully gripped his throwing spear.

“Huuuup…!”

A moment later, like a streak of lightning, something violently cleaved across the paralyzed battlefield.

Guh…?!

A northern tribal general, who had still been swimming blindly on the ground, was instantly skewered to death by the spear that struck him like a thunderbolt.

And simultaneously…

“Warriors of the War Department—!”

Following the lightning came the deafening crack of thunder.

Saturated with profound internal energy and ferocious fighting spirit, the War Department Chief’s voice rang with crystal clarity in the ears of the Luoyang Sword Clan warriors.

“Our war is not over yet—!”

“…This voice?!”

“…Where are we?!”

As if reacting to the familiar internal energy of the Luoyang Sword Clan, the warriors of the War Department began to snap out of their daze, lifting their heads as the mental clarity rippled outward like a wave.

“Three…!”

“Check memories…! Check memories…!”

They rapidly executed the Reality Verification Procedure, a routine they had sung and memorized like a marching cadence during their long journey to the North.

And then…

Once their sanity returned, the sight that greeted them was—

“A giant… there was a giant…!”

“It’s Tengri’s curse! Tengri has cursed our tribe…!”

The enemy forces were still completely out of their minds, unable to distinguish reality from the lingering aftershocks of the hallucinations.

“Slaughter the enemy to the last man!”

In that singular moment, the battlefield, which had been trapped in a brief lull, violently lurched back into motion like raging rapids.

Though the Grand Young Master’s forces were elites, they were an absolute minority. Yet they were now unilaterally massacring the northern tribal army, which possessed overwhelmingly superior numbers.

“…Speak.”

Standing tall amidst the carnage, Gam Woo-hyeon did not spare a single glance at the slaughter unfolding around him. Channeling even more internal energy into the blade leveled at the Grand Young Master, he roared.

“Answer me, Grand Young Master…!”

The Demonic Cult’s illusion arts had long since dissipated, yet a profound turmoil raged within Gam Woo-hyeon’s eyes as he glared at Yeon So-hyeon.

“To draw out the Demonic Cult…! Did you intentionally use us as bait…?!”

The memory of the deeply compassionate expression the Grand Young Master had worn the moment Ju-ho was decapitated flashed through Gam Woo-hyeon’s mind.

“I remember the sword strikes of a heroine who, even when completely isolated and fighting utterly alone, continued to thrust her blade forward until her very last breath.”

The image of the Grand Young Master honorably recounting the final moments of his deceased junior sister, the Full Blossom Sword Phoenix Mae Ok, also surfaced in his thoughts.

Were those expressions and words a lie?

“Grand Young Master…!” Gam Woo-hyeon screamed in a voice bordering on a wail, his cry echoing across the battlefield where the tide of war had completely shifted. “What in the world are you plotting in this war?! What is your true objective?!”

Gam Woo-hyeon currently had his sword pointed directly at the Grand Young Master. However, he knew the truth perfectly well.

The martial prowess the Grand Young Master had demonstrated—the sheer might of a true Grandmaster. The transcendent feats he had displayed as the Venerable One of Dark Heavens, actions that utterly eclipsed human imagination.

Those overwhelming displays had engraved a bone-deep realization into Gam Woo-hyeon: even though he was revered as the Mount Hua Sword Dragon, he would not last a single exchange against the Grand Young Master.

“Grand Young Master—!”

“Have you never considered it bizarre?”

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice cleanly severed Gam Woo-hyeon’s second furious shout.

“What is bizarre—?”

Anticipating the exact question, So-hyeon cut him off again, answering his own inquiry.

“The previous Emperor, who opened a new era for the Central Plains by declaring the Port Opening Decree, suddenly contracted a severe illness and passed away.”

Why on earth was he suddenly bringing up a long-dead Emperor in the middle of a battlefield?

“Consequently, the young current Emperor, who was entirely unprepared, was hastily placed upon the throne. Naturally, it paved the way for factions like the Sixteen Imperial Families of the Imperial Capital to seize power.”

Regardless of Gam Woo-hyeon’s confusion, the Grand Young Master continued his explanation.

“Following that, there was a man who acted in place of the Imperial Capital, which was paralyzed by power struggles. He conquered Jiangnan—a region that had experienced explosive, short-term growth due to the Port Opening Decree and was attempting to secede from the Central Plains’ rule…”

Warriors from the Sword Clan’s War Department rushed past the Grand Young Master, yet not a single one dared to graze even the hem of his robes.

“That man was my father. The Greatest Sword under the Heavens, and the current Patriarch of the Luoyang Sword Clan.”

“What are you trying to say—”

“One day, my father also collapsed suddenly. And…” Grand Young Master Yeon So-hyeon extended his hand, pointing at the ground beneath his feet—the northern lands. “The Northern Great General, who had staunchly supported the Central Plains during the Northern War—a conflict that could have easily destroyed the empire—also collapsed.”

As a result, a massive power vacuum had formed in the North, birthing the Dread King.

“What… are you trying to say?”

Gam Woo-hyeon asked the question, but his voice trembled with mounting tension. He instinctively sensed a terrifying, colossal truth lurking within the Grand Young Master’s narrative.

“And today,” So-hyeon said, pointing at the corpse of the first-generation disciple, “I was able to explicitly confirm the presence of the Demonic Cult here in the North as well.”

What did that imply?

The Grand Young Master was suggesting that the previous Emperor’s death, the Luoyang Patriarch’s collapse, and the Northern Great General being replaced by an acting commander—the very birth of the Dread King…

“All of it?! The Demonic Cult?!” Gam Woo-hyeon yelled, waving his sword in sheer disbelief. “Are you claiming the Demonic Cult has been pulling the strings behind everything?!”

As if completely understanding his reaction, the Grand Young Master offered a slight shrug and smiled.

“Surrender.”

What was this sudden demand for surrender?

“What are you—”

Now that he thought about it… Gam Woo-hyeon had regained his sanity precisely because he was standing near the Venerable One of Dark Heavens.

And earlier, he certainly had not been the only one standing near the Venerable.

“…?!”

Struck by a sudden realization, Gam Woo-hyeon hastily turned his head.

“…Vanguard Captain.”

“…I apologize.”

Standing right behind him was Eulogist Scholar, who had moved with blinding speed to completely bind and capture every single disciple of the Mount Hua vanguard.

“What will you do?” So-hyeon asked.

Clang.

The sword slipped from Gam Woo-hyeon’s grasp, clattering against the earth.

Thud.

Falling to his knees and raising both hands in the air, Gam Woo-hyeon gritted his teeth and shouted at the Grand Young Master.

“I surrender…!”