Chapter 160

Chapter 160
Chapter: 160

Chapter Title: The Eighteen Blade Guests (4)

—

‘Inconceivable.’

Sanggwan Baek let out a dry, mirthless chuckle as he watched the flying blade he had just parried snap back into a new trajectory, redirected by the impact of a second projectile. He had failed to anticipate the maneuver because the remaining daggers were hounding him with such relentless ferocity.

Clang! Clang-clang!

A rapid succession of metallic shrieks filled the air as the blades targeting Sanggwan Baek were swatted aside. Finally grasping the logic behind the hits he had been forced to take, Sanggwan Baek refused to let the monk’s deceptive parlor tricks succeed any further.

The grim reality, however, was that he was already struggling with grievous trauma, and the momentum driving the daggers was intensifying. Every collision sent fresh sprays of crimson from his gashes, and unable to anchor himself against the sheer kinetic power, he was forced into a staggering retreat.

“Urgh!”

After being driven back nine full paces, Sanggwan Baek finally managed to brace his weight—only to collapse forward, retching up a violent torrent of blood.

The agonizing heaving persisted for a long moment before finally subsiding.

As Sanggwan Baek steadied his breathing with immense effort, the observing monk spoke with chilling arrogance.

“Sanggwan Baek, was it? A name hardly worth the effort of remembering.”

“Am I meant to feel honored?”

Sanggwan Baek flashed a weary, bitter grin while brushing the gore from his mouth.

“Let us conclude this.”

The nine daggers that had been hovering near the monk’s fingers took flight for their final excursion.

Traveling at velocities far beyond their previous attempts, they fanned out across the sky, zig-zagging with a frantic, sentient unpredictability as they closed in for the kill.

Though his skin was a map of lacerations and his limbs felt weighted with leaden fatigue, Sanggwan Baek refused to surrender.

Compelled by a grim obligation to endure for every possible second, he sharpened his instincts to a razor’s edge and lashed out with his blade. Yet, regardless of the iron strength of his resolve, his physical form had reached its breaking point.

He managed to deflect the initial wave of the assault, but his defenses soon crumbled. The most debilitating strikes were the daggers that sank deep into both of his thighs. With his mobility effectively neutralized, Sanggwan Baek’s reflexes plummeted, leaving him defenseless against the storm converging from every angle.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

To the sickening rhythm of steel piercing hide, the daggers began to bury themselves in Sanggwan Baek’s frame.

His flank, his shoulder, his gut.

Each time a blade bypassed his steel guard and bit into his anatomy, a strangled groan slipped from his throat, his features contorting in a mask of suffering.

“Gaaah!”

A harrowing scream of finality tore from Sanggwan Baek’s lungs.

His shaking fingers clawed toward his chest.

The weapon was lodged so deep within his torso that the hilt was nearly flush with his skin, but as he struggled to extract it, his hand lacked the necessary vitality.

‘Is this… the end…?’

His arm lost its tension and fell, and his frame began to sway precariously.

Through the encroaching shadows of his vision, he glimpsed his loyal retainers sprinting toward him, their cries of anguish echoing in the air.

The final image of his existence—for the esteemed great elder of Bi Cheon Jang, Sanggwan Baek—was the grief-stricken faces of his followers before he drew his last, quiet breath.

“Ugh!”

With a pained rasp, Hahu Hyo tumbled across the dirt and fought to get upright, using his fractured sword as a makeshift crutch.

Blood leaked from his eyes, nose, and ears; Hahu Hyo could scarcely maintain focus as he teetered on his feet. He no longer carried the semblance of a living being.

The Blood Radiance Martial Emperor stood motionless, staring at the steel protruding from his own side.

Hahu Hyo’s final, desperate gamble had managed to nick him in several places, though the majority were superficial.

This specific strike, however, was different.

That frantic, all-or-nothing lunge, which abandoned every shred of self-preservation for the sake of a mutual kill, had forced a momentary lapse in his perfection. Consequently, he had sustained a significant gash in his side.

Naturally, in exchange for that wound, he had dealt Hahu Hyo a lethal blow from which there was no recovery—but the injury still left him with a sense of lingering irritation.

“Brother!”

“Uncle!”

The specialists of the Hahu Clan raced frantically toward the fallen Hahu Hyo. Yet, because they were pinned down in a brutal struggle with the warriors of Myeong Wang Mun, only a handful could break away to reach him.

Threats converged from all sides.

The Blood Radiance Martial Emperor ignored the broken steel in his ribs and pivoted his weight.

Brandishing his obsidian blade, Ae-do, and the shimmering sword, Gwang-hwi, he tore through the fray like a cornered predator. Wherever his focus shifted, a fountain of blood inevitably followed, accompanied by the wails of the dying.

Only Hahu Myeong and Hahu Geun possessed enough skill to partially withstand the Blood Radiance Martial Emperor’s savage fury; most others were cut down before they could finish three exchanges, dying meaningless deaths.

Furthermore, with Dark Thunder Monk Chu Seung—having finished his business with Sanggwan Baek—now pivoting to slaughter the Hahu Clan, the body count began to skyrocket.

The Eighteen Blade Guests, having completely decimated Ja Ha Mun, transitioned toward the heart of the battlefield.

As they entered the fray in earnest, the equilibrium of the battle shattered, tilting heavily against the defenders.

“N-No! Hold the line! Fight on!”

Sanggwan Cheon sprinted across the blood-soaked earth, his voice cracking from his shouts, but he was powerless to stop the breach in the dam.

“Brother, we have to pull back.”

A blood-drenched Sanggwan Su seized Sanggwan Cheon’s shoulder and screamed over the din.

“What are you saying? Retreat to where?!”

“The left wing has been eradicated. The center is about to snap. If we linger any longer, we won’t even have a path to escape.”

“Silence. If death is our fate, we meet it here.”

Sanggwan Cheon wrenched his arm free and redoubled the intensity of his sword work. But despite his desperation, the momentum was beyond shifting.

The soldiers of the Heavenly Demon Cult, tasting the coming triumph, fought with soaring spirits, while the various lords who had rallied to Bi Cheon Jang felt their courage vanish. The pillar of Bi Cheon Jang, Sanggwan Baek, and the patriarch of the Hahu Clan, Hahu Hyo, had both fallen, along with the majority of the elite masters tasked with leading the coalition.

At the exact moment when the fate of the war was decided—when the line between life and death was thinnest—the howl of a wolf resonated from afar.

Though the tide had turned decisively for the Heavenly Demon Cult, the combat remained intense; few had the luxury of noticing a distant cry.

One specific group, however, reacted differently.

The warriors of Ghost Blade Hall, who had been fighting with a manic energy to honor their dead and claim glory, suddenly froze in unison.

“Th-That sound…”

Gok Seon, dragging his mutilated body at the head of his unit, snapped his head around in a panic. Caked in layers of gore, he resembled a demon from the underworld—yet his eyes were wide with genuine terror.

“They have arrived.”

Jo Geon-saeng, who had fought his way to Gok Seon’s side, spoke with a stony expression.

Drenched in a mixture of blood from both allies and enemies, he was a mirror image of Gok Seon’s carnage.

The men of Ghost Blade Hall, who had previously behaved like frenzied beasts, began to huddle together; the predatory confidence they had shown against the warlords had evaporated, replaced by faces drained of color.

While the Ghost Blade Hall warriors were gripped by dread, those of the Hahu Clan—particularly Hahu Yeon, who was close to Sima Geon—felt a spark of desperate optimism.

‘Black Wolf?’

Uncertain if the nearing howl truly belonged to the Black Wolf, she prayed with everything she had that it was. But in the middle of a slaughter, such a lapse in concentration carried a heavy price.

“Urgh!”

A pained hiss escaped Hahu Yeon’s teeth.

Agony flared in her sword-wielding arm.

In a duel this taxing, it was a catastrophic oversight.

“You dare look away?”

Pung Gae, a Hosea Leader from Man Sa Gok, lunged forward with eyes full of murder.

In an attempt to erase the embarrassment of being held at bay by a youth who looked barely twenty in front of his subordinates, he spat insults and roars, launching a relentless barrage of strikes.

Drained by the marathon of combat and crippled by the injury to her arm, Hahu Yeon could do nothing but retreat in a panic.

“Kuh!”

Another cry of pain broke from her.

Blood sprayed from the left side of her neck.

It was a terrifyingly close call; had she been a millisecond slower, her head would have been lopped off. The even more disastrous mistake was failing to see the corpse lying directly behind her heel.

Pung Gae seized the moment as Hahu Yeon stumbled backward, her balance completely gone.

His blade, backed by all his weight, whistled toward her.

Hahu Yeon tried to lift her steel in a final block, but with her center of gravity lost and her arm failing, she couldn’t find the strength to resist.

As Pung Gae watched her weapon get batted away and saw the blank horror in her eyes, his edge closed in on her face.

Hahu Yeon didn’t even try to move; she simply squeezed her eyes shut.

Then, a sudden, violent gale swept past her.

Feeling her hair whip and her robes flutter in the sudden draft, Hahu Yeon looked up. The first thing she saw was a massive form covered in fur as white as a mountain peak.

“Black… Wolf?”

As if in confirmation, the Black Wolf clamped its jaws onto Pung Gae’s forearm and wrenched its head with savage force.

Pung Gae’s entire body was whipped through the air—then his limb was torn away at the socket, and his torso was sent tumbling into the distance.

“Aaaaagh!”

Pung Gae’s scream was short-lived. The Black Wolf bridged the gap of five zhang in a single bound and crushed his skull with a heavy forepaw.

In a matter of breaths, it had traversed the field, pulled Hahu Yeon from the brink of death, and executed Pung Gae with a single motion—then it unleashed a roar of triumph.

The Black Wolf’s cry vibrated through the battlefield; the chaotic violence came to a standstill as if by a silent decree.

However, the Eighteen Blade Guests—who had just finished annihilating the Heavenly Martial Sword Formation of the Hyeong San Sect and were busy raking through the right flank—could not stop. A source of unfathomable peril was descending upon them.

“Look up!”

The Blood Radiance Martial Emperor’s frantic warning from across the field pulled the gaze of the Eighteen Blade Guests toward the sky.

A figure, silhouetted against the bright moon, had leaped high into the air and was drifting downward, sword in hand.

Even before the strike was fully formed, the Eighteen Blade Guests felt a crushing, impossible pressure.

“Formation!”

At Wang Heonji’s yell, eight members of the group gathered around him, mirroring his martial stance.

“Thunderclap, strike!”

Upon Wang Heonji’s signal, the Eighteen Blade Guests simultaneously triggered the pinnacle technique of their Mixed Origin Thunderclap Blade Art: Thunderclap Ocean Surge.

Nine columns of raw power surged toward the heavens, anchored by Wang Heonji’s sword aura!

With a low, rumbling growl of thunder, the combined energies coalesced into a titanic lightning bolt that seemed to split the firmament.

Witnesses shuddered at the sight of such colossal sword force. The warlords who had been struggling against the Eighteen Blade Guests trembled, while the Heavenly Demon Cult fighters roared in delight, certain that the battle was won.

But those who recognized the man descending from the sky did not celebrate.

Shhh!

A deep, bloody radiance bled from the Heavenly Demon Sword.

The scarlet mist thickened and swelled, swallowing the surrounding light in an instant—by the time it met the lightning bolt, the entire world had been dyed in shades of red.

The massive thunderbolt collided with the absolute territory of the Heavenly Demon Sword.

Boom rumble rumble!

With a thunderous crash, accompanied by shockwaves that rattled teeth, the lightning—smothered in crimson energy—was snuffed out in a flash.

“Hah!”

A sharp, low command rang out from the sky.

In that heartbeat, the red mist dominating the air fractured into hundreds, thousands of individual sword beams that rained down upon the earth.

A deluge of lethal energy saturated a radius of a dozen zhang around the Eighteen Blade Guests; nobody could flee. They could only look up in paralyzed shock.

Kaboom kaboom kaboom!

The very earth seemed to invert.

The air was filled with the sounds of simultaneous impacts, detonations, and dying screams.

Sima Geon, who had leveled everything in his path with a single motion, cut through the rising wall of dust—too dense to peer through—and touched down on the ground.

Seconds later, as the debris began to settle, gasps of pure horror rippled through the onlookers as they stared at Sima Geon.

Of the Eighteen Blade Guests who had been at the heart of the blast, only three, including Wang Heonji, remained standing; the others were nothing more than shredded remains.

Even the few survivors were so badly mutilated that their deaths were a certainty. Despite combining their strength after their initial failure, this was the outcome.

The Man Sa Gok warriors who had been caught in the periphery of the red sword storm were likewise reduced to a tragic state.

“Cough!”

Dong Chuk, the Lord of Man Sa Gok, doubled over as he spat out dark, clotted blood.

Looking down at the blood soaking the dirt and his shattered weapon, his eyes were glazed and empty. A single strike had eradicated half his command and left him with devastating internal trauma.

Cruelly, the catastrophe was not finished.

While everyone remained frozen in awe of Sima Geon’s god-like power, another figure moved across the field.

By the time Dong Chuk sensed his presence, it was far too late to react.

“Dammit!”

That single oath was his final word.

Splat!

With a wet, tearing sound, Dong Chuk’s head was obliterated.

Stepping over the falling body, the man—Cheol Woo—gave a wide grin and said,

“Long time no see, you old fools.”