Chapter 229

“What is this…”

I never imagined we would face an assault on this peak.

Gakhae was a warrior who had dedicated two decades of his life to the Rakshasa Monk Corps.

A full half of that duration was spent leading from the absolute front.

The suppression of rebels south of Hangzhou, the eradication of an Evil Cult along the shores of the East Sea.

The fields of slaughter he had trodden upon were far too numerous to count on his fingers alone.

Because of that extensive experience, he understood the reality of this situation.

This particular deployment was meant to be a straightforward purge.

The surviving scattered forces of Hocheon numbered perhaps two or three hundred at the absolute most.

Furthermore, at least half of that remaining number were bound to be severely crippled.

It was an assignment that by all rights should have concluded before the sun reached its zenith.

To put it plainly, the intent was to provide Beopjong an occasion to grandly manifest the path of the Buddha.

Within the ranks of the Rakshasa Monk Corps, Beopjong was the Junior Brother most deeply cared for by Gakhae—indeed, by the vast majority of the monks belonging to the ‘Gak’ generation.

He stood apart from his peers within the ‘Beop’ generation.

It was not because his Bones and Sinews possessed extraordinary gifts, but rather due to the gentleness of his spirit; he was a youth who poured his entire soul into the holy intonations.

When he was initially presented with his Crescent Moon Saber, he found himself unable to consume food for two whole days.

Gakhae vividly recalled the very afternoon that youth first put the Buddhist Law into actual practice.

The palm that wavered for an eternity, even while pressing the edge of the Crescent Moon Saber against a captive bandit’s throat.

The limb that shuddered uncontrollably at its furthest extremity, despite him gripping the weapon with such ferocity that his knuckles paled to a stark white.

Only when Gakhae firmly rested a steadying hand upon his shoulder did the steel finally slice forward.

Following that pivotal moment, Beopjong’s sacred chanting acquired a significantly profound resonance.

It gained a spiritual gravity that can only be unlocked by a soul that has unreservedly delivered the path of the Buddha.

For that exact reason, this cleansing operation was designed to be an effortless endeavor.

It represented a flawless setting for Beopjong to manifest the path of the Buddha through his own actions against the broken survivors of Hocheon, the bulk of whom were already incapacitated.

Such had been the calculated arrangement, and it was meant to transpire precisely in that manner…

“Senior Brother Gakhae.”

Beopjong, keeping pace directly at his rear, spoke aloud to catch his attention.

“The vanguard has fallen completely silent.”

Gakhae’s gaze narrowed into slits.

A force of two hundred comprised that leading vanguard.

They had ascended into the upper trails roughly half a quarter of an hour prior.

While it was peculiar that no message regarding their engagement had been sent down, the rugged mountain environment was notorious for disrupting Sound Transmission, so it was not entirely unprecedented.

And yet.

The collective chanting of that vanguard had ceased entirely.

The resonant shudder that vibrated through the soil, created by hundreds of individual voices harmonizing as a singular entity, had been violently severed halfway up the slope.

The vocalizations of the main detachment advancing from the lower paths still filled the air, but the descending echoes of the vanguard that should have reverberated from above had completely vanished.

Chanting served as the literal life-force of a Rakshasa Monk.

For as long as breath remained within their lungs, their lips were bound to recite the holy verses.

This requirement was doubly absolute when they were actively manifesting the path of the Buddha…

For it to be extinguished instantly across the board implied— “The Sound Transmission is utterly unresponsive as well.”

A visibly shaken, pale Beopjong dragged his awareness back to the grim reality once more.

“…Are you stating that applies to every single one?”

“Yes, Senior Brother.”

Gakhae offered no reply.

He found himself incapable of formulating one.

The synchronized chanting of two hundred trained men could not simply stop at the exact same fraction of a second.

Even assuming they had walked directly into a massive trap, isolated skirmishes should still be playing out, and the muffled din of conflict would inevitably drift down.

To vanish all at once… It was a phenomenon completely beyond his comprehension, an impossibility that defied the natural order of warfare.

In that precise instant.

Kugugugu—

The very foundation of the peak shuddered.

The tremor did not originate from directly beneath his boots.

It was a massive vibration rolling down from the higher ridges, mimicking the sensation of some colossal entity stepping heavily upon the mountain itself.

Following that.

The weight of the atmosphere transformed.

The rhythmic pulse of the chanting pouring from hundreds of open mouths shattered into distortion simultaneously.

At the exact same moment, the very tongues delivering the holy verses froze stiff, and their jaws locked tight in paralysis.

Their collective respiration turned labored and heavy.

It ceased to feel like they were drawing oxygen in; instead, it felt as though the surrounding air was physically grinding down upon their ribcages.

‘An invisible, overwhelming presence is compressing the entirety of this mountain…’

Gakhae had never encountered a force resembling this in all his years.

This was distinct from the localized aura projected by an individual wielding massive Qi.

The fundamental space around them had been altered.

Every physical action became sluggish and heavy, as though they were moving while buried deep underwater, and the Internal Energy he attempted to channel outward through his Meridians was actively dissolving and evaporating into the open air.

He instantly endeavored to employ Sound Transmission to signal the entire host marching in his footsteps, but the technique failed entirely.

The fundamental Qi… the underlying Qi Wave was entirely incapable of generating audible vibration.

Within this warped territory.

Driven by absolute desperation, he forced a raw cry from his throat.

If a refined Qi Wave was rendered useless, he possessed no alternative but to rely on his unamplified vocal cords as a crude substitute.

“Hold the lines! Maintain your ground! Do not retreat!”

His shout, stripped of any stabilizing True Qi, sounded weaker than the passing mountain gale.

The frontline ranks were physically shunted backward, the rearguard stumbled blindly over those ahead of them, the fingers of his junior comrades gripping their Crescent Moon Sabers shook violently, and the iron tips of their long pikes wobbled uncontrollably.

A Rakshasa Monk severed from his sacred chanting is reduced to nothing more than an ordinary monastic wielding steel…

And in that identical split second.

A lone individual was descending the upper path toward them.

Moving at a deliberate pace.

Exhibiting not a shred of urgency.

“Namu Amitabha!”

The frontline Rakshasa Monk positioned at the absolute apex of their formation swung his Crescent Moon Saber forward, but.

Seogeok-.

A brilliant white seam was sketched across the empty air, and that leading Rakshasa Monk dropped lifelessly to the earth.

And the intruder’s subsequent stride followed immediately.

In frantic retaliation, a cluster of Rakshasa Monks rushed forward to overwhelm him, but their efforts proved entirely futile.

With the appearance of every single white seam, a dozen Rakshasa Monks were cleanly decapitated, cleaved entirely in two at the torso, their heads severed from their shoulders.

The traveler’s features remained utterly unreadable.

No traces of fury, no ripples of bloodlust, no spark of battle excitement could be detected upon his face whatsoever.

He merely maintained his rhythmic, unhurried advance directly through their ranks.

That was the entirety of his action, yet wherever his boots claimed a piece of ground, crimson-brown monastic robes collapsed to the soil like falling autumn foliage.

Was that the limit of the assault?

Seogeogeogeogeok!

“Ah, these damn shaved-headed bastards! They just keep swarming without end.”

From the immediate flank, razor-sharp Sword Qi sliced through the air in a ceaseless torrent.

The combatant who had materialized out of nowhere to cut through their lines was a female warrior.

Her elegant yet unmerciful blade focused exclusively and persistently on disabling the knees of her targets.

Three or four Rakshasa Monks were instantly rendered paralyzed from the waist down in rapid succession, collapsing into the dirt.

From the absolute rear of their column, blinding Lightning manifested.

Peo—eong!

Muscles violently spasmed and skeletal joints locked solid as the trailing ranks shattered into chaos.

The lightly protected monks tasked primarily with sustaining the vocal rhythm fell before all others, and as their bodies struck the ground, even the faint, lingering remnants of the chanting withered away completely.

‘Have we… been encircled?’

Hemmed in from three distinct directions, no less.

Gakhae woke to the horrifying realization that it was not the Hocheon survivors who were trapped, but rather their own Dark Rakshasa Way, just as the approaching figure closed the distance to a mere ten paces.

Yet.

A massive surge of power was beginning to ascend from the base of the peak.

Two distinct torrents of energy.

One manifested as a dense, heavy Qi that caused the mountain to tremble.

The other was a resonant, profound vibration that saturated the very climate.

Both of these signatures were vastly superior in purity and weight compared to the chaotic forces cluttering this localized theater of war.

Senior Brother Gakjin.

Senior Brother Beom-eum.

‘The formidable Eight Rakshasas are making their ascent. I am merely required to preserve our position until their arrival.’

A fierce warmth ignited within Gakhae’s chest.

He extended a swift hand to seize Beopjong’s shoulder, pulling the youth firmly to his side as he bellowed.

“Stand firm! Our Senior Brothers are entering the fray!”

Yet even as the unmistakable signatures of the Eight Rakshasas scaled the mountain trails, the stranger’s boots continued their steady, unyielding approach, gaining ground step by single step.

It was blindingly obvious that this individual would make contact with them long before the Eight Rakshasas could successfully bridge the distance to the mountainside.

‘One quarter of an hour.’

He was forced to withstand this onslaught for a quarter of an hour if he hoped for his Senior Brothers to reinforce them.

Gakhae clenched his teeth until they groaned.

He physically shoved Beopjong into the space behind his back and hoisted his Crescent Moon Saber aloft.

Wuuung-.

He directed every ounce of the Internal Energy he had meticulously refined over two decades of living by the blade of the Dark Rakshasa Way straight into the cold steel.

“Namu Amitabha!”

Accompanied by a solitary phrase of the holy verse, the Crescent Moon Saber erupted in a brilliant glow.

The legendary Dharma-Protecting Saber technique of the Rakshasa Monk Corps.

A discipline of combat that reaches absolute fulfillment only when the vocalized chant and the physical blade merge into a singular entity.

The roughly twelve Rakshasa Monks still left standing in his immediate vicinity managed to desperately pull their shattered focus together upon hearing Gakhae’s commanding roar.

Their collective chanting had been forcibly silenced, but they remained, at their core, hardened Rakshasa Monks.

Renewed strength flooded back into the fingers gripping their respective Crescent Moon Sabers.

“Deploy the Dharma-Protecting Formation!”

They aligned in cells of three.

Three separate Crescent Moon Sabers traced a singular, coordinated defensive arc, physically barricading the stranger’s advance.

For the very first time, the man’s forward momentum appeared to falter.

Or had it?

In truth, he did not seem to have actually stopped.

He was merely evaluating the synchronized trajectory of the three incoming weapons.

He did not even bother to lift his primary weapon in defense.

Then, a mere hairsbreadth before the combined arcs could impact his physical form.

Seogeok—.

His blade flashed a single time, yet all three Crescent Moon Sabers were violently wrenched from their wielders’ grasps simultaneously, sent spinning into the air.

One of the heavy blades snapped cleanly down the center, while the wrists of the remaining two combatants were violently twisted backward, compelling them to abandon their weapons in agony.

A solitary clash.

In the span of a single engagement, the renowned Dharma-Protecting Formation was utterly demolished.

“Our Senior Brothers are closing in!”

Gakhae bellowed at the top of his lungs, instantly lunging forward to plug the sudden vulnerability in their line.

He positioned his Crescent Moon Saber in a rigid vertical guard to directly catch the man’s impending counter-strike.

Kaang—!

A cataclysmic vibration, feeling as though the flesh of his palms gripping the hilt was being violently ripped apart, surged up his forearms and slammed directly into his shoulders.

The very marrow of his bones shuddered.

It represented a manifestation of sheer mass unlike anything he had ever confronted in his entire existence.

This was not merely concentrated Internal Energy; it was the physical compression of the surrounding space itself bearing down, generating a Heavy Sword technique so overwhelmingly massive that he could not even conceive of a method to oppose it.

Regardless, through sheer willpower, he managed to withstand the impact.

The solitary reality that his weapon had not been violently stripped from his hands marked his execution as far superior to the three who had comprised the failed Dharma-Protecting Formation.

Gakhae’s Crescent Moon Saber glided skillfully along the length of the stranger’s steel, redirecting the incoming momentum and carving a sweeping path for an immediate counter-offensive.

The Rakshasa Dharma-Protecting Saber First Form, recognized as the Demon-Subduing Horizontal Slash.

This constituted the foundational movement that every entering Rakshasa Monk was taught to master.

An execution capable of delivering lethal results even in the total absence of vocal chanting—the literal baseline technique Gakhae had acquired twenty years in the past.

Consequently, it was the specific motion most indelibly etched into his muscle memory.

Gakhae’s entire frame executed a rapid spin.

He was actively capturing the residual Internal Energy from the intruder’s initial strike, converting it into a perfectly mirrored, reversing kinetic force, and hurl it directly back at its source.

The radiantly glowing Crescent Moon Saber accumulated a terrifying amount of momentum as it sliced horizontally toward the stranger’s upper chest.

And yet.

Seupat—.

The man merely shifted his upper torso backward by a fraction of a handspan, causing the lethal edge to cut uselessly through empty atmosphere.

The untamed, errant Saber Qi generated by the swing flew onward, doing nothing more than pointlessly felling a dozen thick trees situated along the path before him.

In stark contrast, the stranger’s response was instantaneous.

Beontteuk—.

A stark white seam was drawn across the visual field.

Kaang—!

He barely succeeded in retracting his offensive momentum, hoisting his damaged Crescent Moon Saber just in time to intercept the opponent’s incoming Sword Qi out of mid-air.

However, the structural integrity of his weapon was completely ruined.

Jjeojeojeok—a spiderweb of deep fractures could be vividly seen snaking its way up the spine of his blade.

At that critical juncture.

Two separate Rakshasa Monks executed a synchronized leap, closing in from both the left and right flanks.

The formal architecture of the Dharma-Protecting Formation had been utterly discarded, but this represented a spontaneous, dual assault calculated to exploit the brief window while the intruder’s primary weapon was physically entangled with Gakhae’s defense.

And yet.

The stranger’s head simply snapped to the left, then executed a swift tilt to the right.

Seueut—.

Seueut—.

Two intersecting white lines sliced through the space, instantly cleaving their torsos apart.

“…This is impossible.”

The intruder was clamping a sword directly between his teeth.

A secondary weapon held in a firm reverse grip by his flawless white teeth.

While the primary sword remained firmly stationed within his right hand, a second blade, drawn from some unseen sheath, was clamped in his mouth, slaughtering the two flanking attackers with nothing more than a casual nod of his head.

Without so much as granting them a glance.

That mouth-held steel moved once more.

His skull tilted a final time, sketching yet another white line through the air.

Kwaang—!

Gakhae’s Crescent Moon Saber disintegrated entirely.

The jagged metal shrapnel exploded outward through the air, raining down mercilessly upon the surviving pocket of Rakshasa Monks.

Every single fragment transformed into a lethal missile, burying themselves deep into the crimson-brown monastic robes.

The traveler appeared to swallow the blade held within his jaws.

No, that might not be accurate.

I am uncertain if that phrasing properly captures the event.

The impression formed simply because the second sword, which had clearly been secured between his teeth a mere breath ago, had vanished into nothingness.

Now, only the ominous Nine Demon Annihilation Wheel Sword remained in his hand, resting exactly where it had been from the start.

All that remained within Gakhae’s bleeding palm was the useless hilt and a pathetic fraction of a handspan of jagged metal.

His skin had already split wide open, crimson fluids tracing paths down his wrists.

Even so, Gakhae refused to drop the ruined remnants of his Crescent Moon Saber.

There was absolutely nothing of substance he could accomplish with a mere sliver of steel remaining, but he maintained the absolute certainty that if he abandoned his grip, the struggle would reach its final conclusion.

If he surrendered his weapon, nothing whatsoever would remain to shield Beopjong.

From the space behind his shoulder, he could distinctly track Beopjong’s frantic, trembling respiration.

A desperate breath that repeatedly attempted to initiate the holy chanting, but the boy’s tongue was far too rigid with terror to articulate the required syllables.

“Past this exact mark… you will not be permitted a single additional step.”

Gakhae elevated the fractured hilt.

Dong Bongsu observed Gakhae in absolute silence, their gazes naturally locking onto one another.

Eyes that stubbornly refused to communicate a single shred of internal emotion.

Devoid of malice, devoid of clemency, devoid of scorn.

Stripped even of basic intent to kill.

To the entity known as Dong Bongsu, Gakhae represented nothing more than an inanimate obstruction along his path.

An ordinary, insignificant pebble that lacked the capacity to even cause him to stumble.

“Namu…”

The concluding syllable of his final verse was cut short before it could even reach its halfway point.

Seueut—.

A solitary line.

Gakhae’s entire field of vision tilted violently.

His knees collapsed beneath him first, causing the horizon to flip completely sideways.

A burning seam of agony pierced his torso clean through, traveling from his chest to his spine.

Cold earth rushed up to meet his cheek.

At the very periphery of his rapidly fading sight, he caught a final glimpse of Beopjong.

The youth was standing his ground, physically blocking the path of the advancing warrior, raising his own Crescent Moon Saber high above his head with both hands.

His entire frame was shuddering uncontrollably, mirroring the exact state he had been in on that long-ago afternoon when he first practiced the Buddhist Law.

He was squeezing the hilt with such desperate intensity that his knuckles showed a stark white.

The sole divergence from that past memory was that Gakhae’s comforting hand was no longer resting upon his shoulder.

Seueut—.

An additional line was sketched across the air.

Beopjong’s Crescent Moon Saber was cleanly bisected in mid-flight.

The youth’s slender neck was completely severed, and the horrific spectacle of his head and torso charting entirely separate trajectories through the air was permanently burned into Gakhae’s dying perception.

“Eu, geureureu…”

Gakhae’s fingers desperately clawed at the mud, but they failed to gain any purchase.

In truth, it was a completely impossible effort.

Because the nervous system of a decapitated body completely ceases to convey commands to the limbs.

The freshly separated head of Beopjong tumbled down, coming to rest directly atop his own ruined corpse.

Following that.

Dong Bongsu casually kicked the fallen bodies out of his trajectory one after the other, resuming his forward march.

Yet after covering a mere handful of paces, Dong Bongsu’s advance abruptly ground to a complete halt.

The forward movement that had failed to hesitate even a single time since he initially set foot upon this mountain trail had finally been arrested.

Wuuuuuuuuuung—!

A titanic manifestation of chanting saturated the entire mountain.

This vocalization existed on an entirely distinct tier of power compared to everything that had preceded it.

The previous chanting, which had proven incapable of fundamentally altering the mountain’s atmosphere even when bellowed by hundreds of combined throats, was currently causing the entire geological structure to vibrate in harmony with the voice of a single individual.

Foliage on the trees flipped inside out from the raw acoustic frequency, and the blood accumulating around the mounds of corpses began to ripple outward in perfect, concentric rings.

Minute fractures rippled like delicate spiderwebs across the flat surfaces of the surrounding boulders, and upon reaching a critical threshold, they violently shattered.

Dong Bongsu’s Super True Qi Field and the immense resonance of the new chanting smashed directly into one another halfway up the mountain slope.

Jjeong-!

The very air seemed to tear open, and the local atmosphere churned in violent instability.

Along the precise invisible frontier where these two titan forces locked horns, thick tree limbs split open down the middle and topsoil erupted skyward.

The crimson-brown monastic robes draping the vast field of the dead were cast high into the sky like loose leaves caught in a vortex.

And cleaving directly through that storm of garments, a solitary form descended from above like a falling meteor.

Kwang—!

A massive trident slammed with immense force into a boulder layered with the fallen.

A heavy polearm measuring significantly longer than the height of an exceptionally tall warrior.

It punched clean through the stone face of the mountainside, embedding its iron head deep within the rock.

The boulder was instantly reduced to jagged shards, and the accompanying shockwave swept fiercely across the field of corpses, propelling rock fragments in every conceivable direction.

Kurururururururu…

Only after a considerable delay did the billowing cloud of dust finally begin to disperse, slowly revealing a figure possessing the physical proportions of a mountain.

A monk standing a full eight feet in height, boasting shoulders that matched the width of a reinforced door, the thick musculature of the arm currently extracting the embedded trident swelling like jagged stones beneath his crimson-brown monastic robe.

And.

Directly behind his massive frame, an incredibly solemn chant was vibrating through the air.

A remarkably slender build.

Lids closed tightly over his eyes.

Slightly parted lips, visible beneath the folds of his loose-fitting monastic attire, were continuously and rapidly articulating the holy verses.

The vocalization of this single monk was causing the entire mountain to ring like a bell and the field of slaughter to shudder, locking in absolute opposition against Dong Bongsu’s Super True Qi Field.

The second elite of the Eight Rakshasas, Gakjin.

The fifth elite of the Eight Rakshasas, Beom-eum.

Gakjin’s intense gaze swept slowly across the scattered remains littered about his boots.

Across the entire mountainside carpeted in ruined crimson-brown monastic robes, there remained, predictably, not a single living Rakshasa Monk capable of standing.

Positioned directly in the epicenter of this devastation lay two freshly decapitated forms.

Gakhae and Beopjong.

They represented his most reliable brother-in-arms and his most cherished junior pupil.

Within the massive fist anchoring the trident, thick veins resembling burrowing earthworms erupted in sharp relief one after another.

“You absolute monster!”

One of the Seven Great Demonic Sects, the feared Dark Rakshasa Way.

Their core tenet dictates that Slaughter is Liberation.

Governed by the warped theological logic that both the perpetrator of murder and the victim of the blade find immediate salvation, the torrents of blood they have unleashed across this Central Plains throughout eight centuries of existence have accumulated into literal rivers and vast seas.

An order composed of zealots who sketch sacred mandalas using fresh blood and fashion esoteric Dharma Artifacts from harvested human bone.

And the Twelve Rakshasas represented the absolute, unadulterated distillation of that religious insanity.

If the Upper Four Rakshasas functioned as the absolute bulwark of the faith, the Lower Eight Rakshasas operated as its primary offensive sword.

Wherever the Dark Rakshasa Great Venerate directed his gaze, the lethal edge of the Eight Rakshasas would immediately descend.

Their most historical recent exploit involved the total eradication of five hundred elite swordsmen belonging to the Vast Heaven Infinite Sword Sect’s Branch Sword Corps in the span of a single evening, meaning any further elaboration on the terrifying gravity of their blade was completely redundant.

In this very moment, two entities of that legendary circle were initiating a direct charge straight toward Dong Bongsu.

Bang-!