Chapter 401

Chapter 401: Holy War (1)

Boom!!!

Immediately following the colossal blast that bleached the entire horizon with blinding radiance, Il-mok gradually regained his senses. As his vision cleared and his hearing returned, he unsheathed his Ascendant Sword and roared at the top of his lungs.

“All divisions! Onward!!”

Deep down, however, his internal thoughts were drifting in a completely different direction.

Whew. It is a relief that all those hours of practice did not go to waste.

During his time remaining in Nanzhou to manage the rear security, Il-mok had done far more than merely drown in administrative duties. Once or twice a day, he would secretly slip away from Nanzhou to find an isolated clearing, practicing the execution of the World-Destroying Soul Jade Palm. Because he had delegated all active field operations to his subordinates anyway, he possessed an abundance of free time to dedicate to his martial arts.

Owing to those rigorous sessions, he no longer sustained crippling internal wounds merely from activating the technique. Of course, it still required an agonizingly long preparation time, and it completely drained an entire cycle of his internal energy in a single instant, leaving him utterly spent. That aspect remained unchanged.

Sprinting at the absolute front of the formation, Il-mok observed the opposing army falling into utter disarray.

At least that demonstration of raw power succeeded in shaking them. What a stroke of luck.

It was unfortunate that the Provincial Commander had refused to fall for the provocation, but they had managed to avert a worst-case scenario. From the very beginning, Il-mok and the maidservants had crossed over with this precise tactical outcome in mind. The technique took far too long to manifest, and since it was an incomplete martial art that could not differentiate between ally and adversary, it would be completely useless once the chaotic melee commenced.

It was a far better strategy to detonate a massive explosion right at the opening bell to shatter the enemy’s fighting spirit. Furthermore…

“The Heavenly Demon has descended!!”

“Ten thousand demons, arise!!!”

“Wipe out the opposition!!!”

“The Divine Presence walks with us!!!”

It acted as a massive catalyst to ignite the spirits of their own men.

This ought to give us a legitimate chance at winning.

A clash pitting fifty thousand against eighty thousand. On paper, because the discrepancy in numbers was not astronomically wide, it appeared to be a perfectly winnable engagement.

Yet the underlying truth was vastly different. The opposing forces consisted of eighty thousand elite border regulars, forged through relentless military maneuvers. Conversely, more than half of their own ranks comprised reservists hastily dragged from their quiet civilian lives. Without this sudden surge of morale, the ordinary citizens who had volunteered to assist the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult would have marched straight into a meaningless slaughter.

“The Divine Presence walks with us,” is it…

Arriving at the threshold of the opposing vanguard, Il-mok let out a subtle, ironic smile upon hearing the frantic cheers echoing from behind him. He had never been particularly enthusiastic about masquerading as a religious figurehead. Yet, if assuming that mantle allowed them to conquer their terror and place their faith in him—and if it ultimately meant securing a victory while minimizing casualties among his followers—he would willingly play the role of a messiah at a moment’s notice.

Having finally shaken off their initial stupor, frantic cries began to erupt from various pockets of the imperial lines, accompanied by the blare of signaling horns and the rhythmic pounding of war drums.

None of that mattered anymore. Il-mok had already breached their perimeter.

As the gap dissolved to nothing, his field of vision was consumed entirely by the mass of enemy combatants directly ahead. His gaze locked onto a particular soldier standing right in his path. The man’s eyes were completely consumed by raw panic.

Even so, as a member of an elite vanguard, his instincts overrode his terror; he instinctively raised his heavy shield to intercept Il-mok’s advance.

Slash!

The heavy shield and the soldier behind it were instantly cleaved in two.

Immediately after, a pikeman positioned just behind the fallen shield-bearer thrust his weapon forward with textbook precision. However, the iron tip never came close to touching Il-mok.

Slash!

Il-mok lunged into the gap and swung his blade, cleanly severing the pikeman’s head from his shoulders.

With incredibly compressed, efficient motions, Il-mok wielded his weapon; with every silver arc traced through the air, another head rolled onto the dirt. Fluid and elegant, reminiscent of a ritualistic sword dance, his precise movements began to carve a narrow path of crimson through the sea of armor.

Whoosh!

Three female figures bounded forward right behind him, throwing themselves into the thick of the enemy formation. They were Jin Ha-yeon, Hyeok-ryeon Seon-a, and Ju Seo-yeon.

Slash! Crunch!

With every swipe of Hyeok-ryeon Seon-a’s lethal nails or the thrust of Ju Seo-yeon’s short spear, bodies were violently perforated amidst sickening, wet impacts.

Meanwhile, a faint line of crimson dripped down the side of Jin Ha-yeon’s lips. She had sustained internal trauma while shielding the inner circle from the destructive shockwave of the World-Destroying Soul Jade Palm. Even though she had merely blocked the residual energy at the outer edges rather than enduring the epicenter, the blast had still rattled her core.

Yet, a minor affliction of this caliber was nowhere near enough to halt her momentum. With every graceful, sweeping motion of her arms, the imperial soldiers in her vicinity froze solid into blocks of ice before shattering into death.

The trio of women rapidly widened the bloody corridor carved by Il-mok, yet in comparison to the sheer density of the imperial numbers, their progress resembled a mere scratch on a massive wall. Before long, the four of them had penetrated deep into the heart of the enemy lines, completely enveloped by hostile forces.

Had they been fighting this war entirely on their own, their charge would have ended right then and there.

However…

“Defend the Young Master!!”

“Carve open a passage!!”

An imperial officer roared at the top of his lungs, unleashing a massive barrage of arrows toward the approaching cultists. Yet, the descending storm of arrows only minutely disrupted the speed of their advance.

The elite cult warriors easily swatted the projectiles aside using their concentrated qi barriers, or effortlessly slipped through the gaps using advanced lightness skills. Out of the entire vanguard of a thousand, only a meager handful were actually struck.

“Loose another volley!!”

By the time the third wave of arrows left the bows, the cultists had already collided heavily with the frontline shield-bearers. The narrow breach initially forced open by Il-mok and the maidservants expanded exponentially the moment the main vanguard arrived.

Right then, a thunderous voice reverberated from the center of the imperial army.

“Maintain the formation!!”

It was the Provincial Commander, firmly entrenched midway through the battlefield. While the cult warriors pressed forward with the velocity of heavy cavalry, the Gansu infantry advanced with a frantic, belief-driven desperation.

“Shield wall, lock shields!!!”

The Provincial Commander channeled his inner energy into a non-stop barrage of orders, desperate to control the hysteria of his troops and preserve their tactical alignment. Spurred by his commands, low-ranking officers across various regiments mimicked his cries, passing the directives down to the rank-and-file.

Screeeeech!!

Yet another mass of arrows rained down from above to break the momentum of the charging zealots.

Ting ting ting!!

The iron tips clattered against raised iron shields like heavy hail.

Thud!

Inevitably, some projectiles slipped through the minute cracks in the defense, tearing into exposed flesh. Yet, even as arrows plummeted from the heavens and the gruesome sounds of impalement echoed across the field, their steady march did not falter for a second.

Thud. Thud.

The advance pressed onward ruthlessly.

“We must support the envoy of the Divine!!”

“Move forward!!”

Under normal circumstances, a collision between hardened border regulars and a disorganized rabble of part-time reservists would yield the exact opposite result. But the rules of engagement had changed entirely.

“Heavenly Demon Divine Cult!!!”

Fanatics with eyes clouded by pure zealotry unleashed vengeful roars, sprinting directly through the hail of arrows and the thunder of artillery. At this moment, it was the imperial soldiers who resembled a terrified, disorganized rabble.

“Charge!!!”

“Waaaaah!!!”

They viewed themselves as holy warriors participating in a divine crusade. There was no longer any room left for fear.

Boom!!!

A violent explosion suddenly erupted from the rear of the imperial lines. The soldiers initially assumed it was the envoy of the Divine unleashing another miraculous technique—unaware that his previous display was a singular, unrepeatable feat for the day.

In reality, it was the imperial forces firing their heavy artillery. Massive, man-sized iron cannonballs sliced through the air, slamming violently down into the advancing cultist ranks. The shield-bearers raised their defenses just as they had against the arrows.

Crunch.

The immense kinetic weight effortlessly pulverized both the metal shields and the men holding them, burying itself into the earth. The solid iron spheres did not detonate upon impact; they simply mangled human bodies before rolling forward on pure momentum, shattering the legs of anyone in their path.

Even for the most devoted, witnessing a comrade beside them instantly turned into a pulp of flesh was an absolute nightmare.

“Gulp….”

Tavernkeeper Kang, who had miraculously avoided being crushed by a hair’s breadth, swallowed hard as he stared at the mangled remains right next to his feet. The terror he believed he had conquered began to swell within his chest once more.

The Divine Presence walks with us.

Without realizing it, the internal thought spilled from his lips.

“F-Fellow brethren purified of transgression, let us strike down the wicked…”

His trembling, whispered chant immediately caught the ears of the men surrounding him.

“B-Boldly confront those monstrous imperial soldiers…”

Their desperate murmurs caught on like a raging wildfire.

Thud. Thud.

“Heavenly Demon Divine Cult!”

Within moments, the entire regiment began chanting the sacred hymns in unison, forcing their paralyzed legs to take step after step forward.

How long had they marched forward engulfed in this spiritual frenzy? Eventually, they had closed the distance enough to discern the individual features of the imperial troops. Tavernkeeper Kang could see nothing but pure, unadulterated horror reflecting in the eyes of his enemies.

Meanwhile, at the absolute center of the Western Army Command headquarters, a piercing, high-pitched scream from an elderly man cut through the tension.

“What in God’s name are you people doing?! The enemy numbers a mere fifty thousand! Fifty thousand untrained peasants, and over half of them are raw conscripts!!”

The speaker was none other than a Gong eunuch, a political military supervisor dispatched by the Grand Eunuch themselves to oversee operations and enforce imperial decrees.

Unable to contain his boiling frustration any longer, the Deputy Commander snapped.

“Shut your damn mouth!!!”

“What did you just say to me!?!”

Even when confronting a rank-one Deputy Commander, the Gong eunuch glared back with homicidal intent. Before their verbal altercation could spiral out of hand, the Supreme Commander bellowed at the eunuch first.

“If you have enough breath to waste on screeching, then take your Eastern Depot assassins and block their advance!”

He gestured aggressively toward the sector where Il-mok and the maidservants were currently running amok, mercilessly butchering the imperial infantry. They had successfully penetrated the interlocking shield and spear walls, embedding themselves deeply within the archer battalions. Thanks to the absolute chaos they were generating, the one thousand elite cult warriors trailing closely behind were rapidly closing the distance to the archers.

“I will personally ensure you answer for this insolence at a later date!”

The political supervisor spat out the threat, cast a venomous glare at the Commander and his inner circle, and spun around to depart.

“Eastern Depot, on me!!”

The Supreme Commander watched grimly as the eunuch utilized advanced lightness skills to leap toward the frontline melee. He possessed a deep, visceral hatred for the eunuch caste. It was not merely because they acted as spies and judges over military officials through the network of the Depot agents; it was because the Grand Eunuch had entirely usurped control of the empire itself.

Suppressing his burning resentment, the Commander carefully evaluated the broader layout of the battlefield. They had temporarily lost the tactical initiative due to a shocking, unpredicted technique unleashed by some random youth, resulting in unexpected resistance, but he remained entirely unconcerned. His forces consisted of border veterans who had survived years of brutal combat. They were eighty thousand strong.

Even if the cult warriors were successfully sowing chaos, they amounted to nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

“Order the archers to fall back immediately! Deploy the reserve shield-bearers and pikemen alongside the Eastern Depot units to buy us time!! Left and right flanks, initiate a pincer movement and wipe out the enemy’s core body!!”

The strategy of the peasant rabble was painfully simplistic. They were merely charging forward in a straight, undisciplined line. Fifty thousand men was a substantial crowd, but they were incapable of striking the imperial lines simultaneously. By stretching themselves out in a narrow column targeting his center, they were exposing their flanks. He could easily utilize his left and right wings to envelope their idiotic advance and crush them to pieces.

The plan was to obliterate the peasant center first, then systematically mop up the elite cult remnants currently causing a ruckus within his primary lines. Once deprived of their massive infantry cushion, the cultists would be reduced to a mere thousand men. No matter how peerless their martial arts might be, their internal qi reserves and physical endurance were bound to run dry eventually.

As the officers rapidly disseminated the Commander’s strategic directives, the imperial legions shifted with mechanical synchronicity. The forty-thousand-strong main center shifted its weight, forming a massive defensive anvil designed to absorb the brunt of the fanatic charge. Concurrently, the twenty-thousand-strong left and right divisions swept outward in an inverse arc, positioning themselves to hammer the unprotected flanks of the zealots.

Just as the entire commanding staff began to visualize an effortless triumph…

“Commander!!”

An officer cried out frantically, pointing a trembling finger toward their own rear.

“The northern barbarians are launching a charge from behind us!!”

In that direction, thousands of mounted cavalrymen were kicking up immense clouds of desert sand, their approach sounding like rolling thunder. Riding at the absolute forefront of the cavalry, an elderly martial artist mounted on a colossal black charger bellowed with a terrifying display of internal energy.

“Uwahahahaha! If any of you imperial dogs possess a shred of talent, step forward!! Come and test your mettle against me!!”

It was none other than Dokgo Ryong.