Chapter 168: God is Great (5)

The murky, clouded pupils in Jeong Hyeon's eyes suddenly cleared up.

Her already heightened senses were flooded with way too much information from the battlefield around her.

Just when it looked like she was about to have another episode—

"Focus!!!"

Eun Ryeo's voice, the only person she could truly trust and rely on, barely managed to pull Jeong Hyeon's mind back from the brink of falling into that dark abyss again.

When Jeong Hyeon turned her head and looked at her with those clear eyes, Eun Ryeo repeated what she'd said moments before.

"Listen carefully! The people around you are not here to hurt you! They are here to protect you! Trust them! You must not be afraid, do you hear me?!”

Eun Ryeo was anxious.

Sure, Jeong Hyeon's eyes had cleared up, but her face was still deathly pale.

“So isn’t it your duty to protect them in return?!”

If Jeong Hyeon spaced out again, Eun Ryeo would have to make a hard choice. She couldn't afford to keep holding her back any longer.

‘Please! O, Heavenly Demon! Save this poor, fragile soul!’

Maybe her prayer got through.

Jeong Hyeon started raising her bow again.

Her face was still pale as a ghost, and blood was trickling down from her lips.

Eun Ryeo worried that Jeong Hyeon had suffered internal injuries, but that wasn't it.

‘This is no time to be weak.’

That blood came from Jeong Hyeon biting her own tongue.

“Aim for them!!”

As soon as Jeong Hyeon raised her bow, Eun Ryeo frantically shouted while pointing somewhere.

She was pointing at one of the fanatics who was chanting in some incomprehensible language while waving his staff around.

Jeong Hyeon, who was too overwhelmed to think for herself, just followed Eun Ryeo's instructions for now.

She nocked an arrow and aimed at the forehead of the staff-wielding fanatic.

Then, following the principles of the Ghostly Spirit Divine Bow, she channeled her internal energy.

Twang!

The bowstring, released from its tension, made a crisp sound.

Thunk!

The sorcerer with the arrow through his forehead collapsed with a smile on his face as he'd seen Allah welcoming him through his life flashing before his eyes.

Seeing Jeong Hyeon looking like she might collapse any second, Eun Ryeo quickly shouted, "I'll protect Jeong Hyeon! The rest of you go help them!!"

After giving orders to the nearby disciples, Eun Ryeo immediately gave Jeong Hyeon another target.

"Now aim for that one!"

Even though she felt like she might pass out any moment, Jeong Hyeon followed on Eun Ryeo's directions like a single candle flame in the darkness, drawing her bowstring and taking aim.

***

‘Phew.’

Gwak Sul quietly let out a sigh of relief that nobody else noticed.

Ever since Jeong Hyeon had snapped back to her senses and started targeting the sorcerers and commanders with her bow, their desperate situation had stabilized a bit.

But that relief only lasted a moment.

They were still in the middle of a battle, and everyone was fighting for their lives every single second.

That's why he shouted urgently.

With several sorcerers and commanders dead, cracks had appeared in the enemy formation. Now was the perfect chance to break through the escape route he'd been keeping an eye on.

"Break through on the right!!"

The direction he pointed to while shouting was completely different from where the Vice Leader and Chu Il-hwan had been leading the charge at the front.

Where Gwak Sul was pointing, Dokgo Pae was going wild with his Dokgo Nine Swords.

The escape route Gwak Sul had spotted was there from the beginning. To be precise, it was in the opposite direction from where Vice Leader and Chu Il-hwan were breaking through.

From the start, he'd known he needed to use Vice Leader and Chu Il-hwan as bait.

And even without him giving specific orders, Vice Leader and Chu Il-hwan had perfectly played their role as decoys.

They'd gone wild with their incredible martial arts, drawing the enemies' attention, and thanks to that, the enemy formation had no choice but to lean toward their side.

While the enemy formation that had been surrounding them on all sides was tilting to one side, Dokgo Pae and the Black Tiger Corps members were slowly punching through where the encirclement had thinned out. And Jeong Hyeon had started picking off the most threatening sorcerers.

Of course, using their two strongest fighters as bait when they were already outnumbered was basically a reckless gamble.

If any other part of their line had broken at any moment, they would have faced total annihilation.

The reason they'd managed to hold out so far was thanks to several factors.

Instructor Cheok Il-so and Xiao Hong were leading the assistant instructors and disciples to hold off the waves of fanatics, and surprisingly, Bang Mi-hwa was playing a huge role too.

As a practitioner of fan techniques, she was practically single-handedly blocking the flames the sorcerers created and the arrows shot from the rear, holding out until Jeong Hyeon could recover.

Even with her clothes turned to rags from the heat of the flames, half her hair burned off, and soot stains all over her face—

"Ohohoho!"

She laughed boldly while using her fan techniques to create wind.

Honestly, Gwak Sul had been looking at her like she was crazy bitch during their time at the Hall of the Demonic Way, but today that smile looked beautiful to him.

Like this, everyone was doing their part to hold on, but in Gwak Sul's opinion, someone else had played the biggest role.

‘…If Young Master Il-mok weren’t here, we would have been wiped out by now.’

Whenever cracks appeared in their formation, Il-mok showed up there.

He was there even before Gwak Sul could issue a command.

Unlike the instructors, assistant instructors, and wounded Black Tiger Corps members who were barely managing to look after the disciples around them, he was moving while reading the flow of the entire battlefield.

***

Slash!

Even as his neck was being cut, the fanatic laughed while seeking his God, his blood splattering across faces.

In this battlefield full of blood and screams, Il-mok's mind, pushed to its absolute limit, was reading the flow of the entire battle.

An overload of information was stimulating his brain, coming through his hearing, his sight, and above all, through his qi perception.

—West!!

—You're too slow! Move faster!

Before Il-mok could even fully process all that information, his other self was already telling him which direction to go.

He felt like he was going insane.

Everything on the battlefield was a raw stimulus to his overloaded senses.

The sweat pouring down like rain from the endless fighting. The clothes caked with the enemy's blood and the dust of the earth.

The shouts and screams of fanatics filling every direction.

—You need to be more perfect!

—Are you just going to let everyone die like this?

—Hehehe. If you're going to fight like this, why not just hand your body over to me?

And on top of that, his other self is constantly trying to steal control of his body.

‘Please.’

Hoping this horrible fight would end even a little sooner, Il-mok kept swinging his sword.

And as if to grant his wish, his overly sensitive qi perception found a gap that had opened somewhere in the enemy formation.

"Break through on the right!!"

At that exact moment, Gwak Sul's order echoed across the battlefield.

“Break through!”

The Demon Cult members, who had seemed like they were barely hanging on, all started charging in that direction at once.

Il-mok also used his lightness skill to help them.

Slash!

Amid the chilling sounds of tearing flesh and screams, the small gap Dokgo Pae had opened quickly widened, and just when Dokgo Pae finally broke through the encirclement—

Thud!

Someone landed on the ground with light steps, blocking the only escape route that had opened.

“Get out of my way!!”

Dokgo Pae, absorbed in his Dokgo Nine Swords, shouted boldly and fully utilized the insights he'd gained from this battle.

His internal energy raced through all his meridians, and his greatsword, filled with tremendous force, swung to cut the middle-aged man blocking his path in half.

"Ugh..."

And after just one exchange, Dokgo Pae was sent flying while letting out a faint groan as he coughed up blood.

"!!!"

"Junior Dokgo!!"

The Black Tiger Corps members who had been supporting him and clearing the path rushed at the man blocking their way with shocked faces, but they just kept getting pushed back by the scimitar he wielded.

The man who single-handedly blocked the escape route they had worked so hard to create moved in a bizarre fashion.

It wasn't just the martial arts he was using.

The man who had repelled the Black Tiger members right after Dokgo Pae did not just stand his ground and block the path.

Instead,

Whoosh!

"Do you really think you can escape (هل تعتقد أنه يمكنك الهروب)?!”

He suddenly charged at Il-mok, who had somehow made it near the escape route.

"Tch."

Il-mok, who miraculously managed to react to that surprise attack, let out a faint groan as he blocked the scimitar the middle-aged man swung at him.

With their sword and curved blade locked together, Il-mok could finally get a proper look at the man's face.

‘So it really was a trap aimed at me.’

The leader of the fanatics who had been calmly giving orders from the rear had finally made his move.

The bastard who had just leisurely watched as Chu Il-hwan and the Vice Leader slaughtered his men had now jumped into action the moment Il-mok himself tried to break free.

He had done it even at the cost of abandoning the very escape route he had just sealed.

But the strangest thing that bothered Il-mok was the man's eyes.

‘They're different.’

Unlike the other fanatics who welcomed even death with blind faith, flames were burning in this man's eyes.

Flames of rage and malice.

And that malice was blatantly directed at Il-mok himself.

Inexplicable hatred from someone he was meeting for the first time today.

But Il-mok wasn't even curious about the reason.

Clang!

"Ugh..."

He had more pressing concerns, like simply keeping himself in one piece.

Mukhtar Khan's scimitar flew at him in a bizarre trajectory that Il-mok had never experienced before.

Clang!

Il-mok managed to block it by following its path with his natural instincts, but the recoil transmitted through his sword when it clashed with the curved blade rippling with Saber Qi made his wrist and all his muscles feel twisted.

On top of that—

—What are you afraid of?

—You know it too, don't you? The more perfect sword path.

—Huhahaha. The body is nothing but a tool. To yearn for one flawless sword, even at the cost of your body... that is the definition of a martial artist!

In his mind, the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword kept whispering relentlessly.

"Shut the fuck up!!!"

Driven to rage, Il-mok roared as he swung his sword back.

Clang!

As sword and curved blade clashed and life and death hung in the balance, the noise coming from all sides, the sweat and blood covering his entire body, the disgusting feeling of the dirt and grime... That damn side effect of his Demonic Art and the searing pain that shot through his body with every single clash of their blades.

‘...Why do I have to go through this?’

Il-mok wanted to give up on everything.

He'd dreamed of a peaceful life where he could just work casually and have fun. What meaning could there possibly be in a life like this, a desperate struggle filled with nothing but pain?

Clang!!

Once again, Il-mok's sword and Mukhtar Khan's curved blade clashed, and Il-mok's stance, overwhelmed by the tremendous force, wavered.

"There is only one God in the world (لا يوجد سوى إله واحد في العالم )!" shouted Mukhtar Khan as he raised his scimitar.

Intense energy waves rippled around his body, and his continuously flowing internal energy formed Saber Qi that layered upon itself.

When Mukhtar Khan swung his scimitar at the defenseless Il-mok, the Saber Qi accumulated on his scimitar had already formed a constellation of stars.

Saber Qi Manifest Constellation (刀氣成罡).

Il-mok looked with a half-dazed expression at the brilliant constellation of stars that seemed ready to give him eternal rest.

Slash!

Blood splattered with a disgusting cutting sound and his vision shook, but strangely, he felt no pain.

It took Il-mok a moment to understand what had happened.

That cutting sound and blood weren't his own..

The woman who had thrown her entire body in front of him to save him was now lying on top of him as she bled.

Even with her deathly pale face, she still smiled like an idiot, "How about it, Young Master? Isn't this enough to pass as your attendant?"

"......"

Was it because of the sudden shock of falling to the ground? For a moment, Il-mok could only stare blankly, unable to process what had just happened.

Ju Seo-yeon spoke again.

"If we make it back alive, will you take me in as your attendant?"

Her determination to become his attendant even at the cost of her life brought expression back to Il-mok's face.

“Don’t you dare raise a death flag like that.”

Il-mok, back to his usual expression of finding everything bothersome, quickly moved his hands to press Ju Seo-yeon's pressure points.

After stopping her bleeding, Il-mok carefully stood up to avoid reopening her wounds and said, "You'll have to graduate from the Hall of the Demonic Way and become Lady Jin's junior, you know?"

At Il-mok's definitive answer, Ju Seo-yeon smiled brightly and passed out.

It was a smile that didn't belong on a battlefield.

And Il-mok, now fully standing, muttered in a low voice.

"Fine. I'll do as you want, you son of a bitch."

The veins on the back of the hand that gripped his sword bulged.

Whether his muscles were torn to shreds or his bones were broken. Whether his meridians were twisted, or the Demonic Art drove him insane—

“Let’s just see it, then. This ‘perfect sword path,’ or whatever the hell you call it. Let’s see this damned sword of yours.”

That was something future Il-mok would have to worry about. It had nothing to do with the him of right now.