Chapter 73: The Master of the Demon-Warding Halberd (5)

The commander of the Black Eagle Unit, the family’s armed force, was stabbed to death by the maid he had met in the family and married.

The director of the Finance Pavilion, who had been in overall charge of managing the estate’s wealth, had his head taken off by his own son.

The gatekeeper who guarded the signboard...

had his heart torn out by his daughter.

Since when?

Since when had there been so many Demonic Cult people inside the Shandong Ak Family?

Since when...

had even the Ak Family’s own blood fallen for the Demonic Cult’s temptation?

But Ak Taegyu, the family head, couldn’t produce an answer.

Until ten years ago, he was the man who had skewered and killed countless Demonic Cult remnants across Shandong with a single spear.

To the point he’d earned the sobriquet, Light-Halberd That Drives Out Evil.

He had believed that if nowhere else, then at least the Shandong Ak Family would be free of the Demonic Cult.

He was wrong.

The more you stomp on bugs, the deeper they hide.

If that was true even of tiny vermin,

what about a pack of fanatics who had once turned the world upside down?

At that moment, someone smashed down the door to the inner quarters and barged in.

His daughter, a Demonic Cult lackey, his mother’s murderer...

his eldest daughter, Ak Hyewon.

“So you were here, Father? Big brother and Hyenan are here too?”

You’d have to tear your mouth open to smile like that.

A chill shot up Ak Taegyu’s spine.

Ak Taegyu had heard stories about the Heavenly Demon.

And it was hard to dismiss them as mere rumor or exaggeration...

because he had seen things as a child.

He was fifty-two now.

The Demonic Cult purge had ended more than fifty years ago.

When he was two.

But he had grown up seeing the scars the world still carried.

A hero who fought the Demonic Cult, had his mind shattered, stopped eating and drinking, and withered to death.

A martial artist who discovered a Demonic Cult remnant among his own blood—and had his head taken without ever getting to use a single formidable technique.

Still, he never imagined it would become his problem.

“...Hyewon. If it’s now, you can still turn back.”

“That’s why you’re the problem, Father. Heeheehee...”

Even for a woman, she was tall and thick-boned.

At twenty-seven, she had already reached the very end of Apex.

If the family headship didn’t follow a male-only inheritance custom, Ak Hyewon would likely have become the branch young lord.

But the Shandong Ak Family’s head could only be a man.

Her older brother—who had reached mid-Apex at thirty—was the branch young lord.

Was that the trigger? Or was it something else?

The family head dug through his memories as hard as he could.

“You talk like my killing Mother is something that can be undone. Right?”

Eyes flashing with madness and killing intent.

Then, from his daughter’s hands, the Ak Family spear technique came alive.

A form he had taught her.

A form he had refined for her.

Ak Family Spear, First Form.

Army-Breaking Single Thrust.

One thrust that breaks a crowd.

“Everyone get behind me!”

Ak Taegyu’s eyes went wide.

He steadied his heart.

The woman before him was no longer his daughter.

Not his daughter!

“HRAAAAH!!!”

The same move.

Ak Family Spear’s First Form, Army-Breaking Single Thrust, unfurled from his hands.

The two spearheads crashed together.

The outcome was obvious.

KRA-KRA-KRAK!!!

Ak Hyewon watched her right arm burst and fly off.

And then she started giggling.

“See?! Father was always like this! Whether I got hurt, whether Mother got hurt, whether Hyenan got hurt!!!”

“No!”

“Only Brother Paseong!!!”

Two voices, both crazed with rage.

In Ak Hyewon’s eyes, a flood of red light swelled.

From her entire body—especially from her exploded right shoulder stump—black demonic energy began to seep out in thick, crawling strands.

Bones made a sickening creak.

Her body twisted and re-aligned itself.

“I’m going to kill you, I’ll kill you, I’m killing you...”

He’d heard of it.

Those who took in more demonic energy than their “vessel” could hold.

Normally, you only took and used as much as your core could endure...

But those who broke that taboo—

they became beasts soaked in demonic energy, losing selfhood and reason.

The Martial Alliance didn’t call them Demonic Humans.

They called them Demonic Beasts.

“Hyewon... please. No, Hyewon...!”

He was seeing it with his own eyes.

A Demonic Human abandoning even the last shred of being human—

becoming an animal.

His daughter turning into a Demonic Beast.

Once you returned to being a beast, you couldn’t go back.

Even if you were stained by demonic energy, a person had to choose, on their own, to remain a person.

To abandon that choice was irreversible.

From the severed shoulder stump, an arm sprouted again.

The skin boiled like porridge as flesh swelled into place...

and a grotesquely twisted, enormous arm revealed itself.

The skin had already turned black.

A master at the Apex Realm had become a Demonic Beast.

That hide wouldn’t be cut unless it was Sword Light.

“...Hyewon...”

Ak Taegyu let out a pained sound.

Even if he hadn’t given her the position of branch young lord, she had been the child he’d expected most from.

A twenty-seven-year-old master racing along the very end of Apex.

He’d believed she would reach Transcendent Apex before she turned thirty.

Strength drained from his hands on its own.

But at that moment—

someone smashed through the ceiling and dropped in.

“...Are you the family head, Elder Ak Taegyu?”

Black hair whipping in the heat of the blaze.

A small height—like she’d fall short of five feet by half a handspan.

Thin shoulders that would still be swallowed even if a man hugged her with one arm.

And the eyes looking at him.

Pitch-black, empty eyes that reflected no light at all—

even as the flames roared red and glossy around them.

“You are...?”

“Let me introduce myself. I am Cheon Soyak, a Third Generation disciple of the Mount Hua Sect.”

Soyak drew her sword and leveled it at the Demonic Beast.

At the beast that had once been his eldest daughter.

GRRRR...

Because it had abandoned being human and become an animal, it could no longer speak.

Reason, intellect—gone...

All it could do was growl by instinct.

“Why is the Mount Hua Sect...?!”

“I came to return the Demon-Warding Halberd to you, Family Head.”

At that moment, the Demonic Beast lunged at Soyak.

Ak Taegyu instinctively stumbled backward.

Because the beast was stronger?

No.

Because it was the first time he had ever seen something like it.

A horrific shape, like human flesh had been twisted and stretched over something else.

Limbs warped, moving like a four-legged animal—an unnatural gait.

Skin blackened in discoloration...

and his daughter’s face.

“...It became a beast.”

Soyak muttered low, then swung Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge.

The blade split the heat and rays of the firelight, scattering them.

Then, along the sword’s body, a glow spread.

That shimmering light, wavering and taking shape like a mirage—

was unmistakably Sword Qi.

SSSAAAK—!!

A blade carrying Sword Qi sliced through air stuffed with heat.

The Demonic Beast that had once been the family head’s eldest daughter seemed to sense, by instinct, how dangerous it was.

It sprang away in a quick leap, trying to dodge.

But Soyak stepped in accordance with the movement principle of Lightness Arts, and chased it down in an instant.

Incomplete as it was, Sword Qi.

It was superior to Sword Light.

Even that much was already enough to cut Black Iron, Dark Iron, and cold iron—

So in the end, the sword’s tip caught one of the beast’s ankles.

SCHK.

With a chilling sound, the Demonic Beast rolled across the burning floor.

“KYA-AHHH!!!! KRAAAAHHHH!!!!!”

A roar that would make an ordinary person lose consciousness.

A kind of sound technique, loaded with vile demonic energy.

But Soyak commanded the black qilin, formed from the Harmonization Scripture’s internal power.

Meaning, it was useless.

SCHK.

The surging Sword Qi at the blade’s tip cut through the beast’s throat.

About a third of the neck was severed, air hissing out—so it could no longer scream.

Ak Taegyu stared blankly at the sight.

Could he do that?

He wasn’t talking about martial strength.

Could he subdue a human-shaped monster he’d never seen before, that calmly?

With that small body?

Without even blinking...?

“As expected. I’ve heard that when you’re eroded by demonic energy, you don’t die easily.”

Soyak murmured, watching the beast stagger.

The torn flesh at its severed ankle was already boiling.

It was trying to create a new foot.

But once it had lost mobility, it was already defeated.

Falling Blossom Tranquil Edge flared with blazing Sword Qi and severed the Demonic Beast’s neck.

It couldn’t evade.

Thud.

Roll, roll...

A head that should have fallen and rolled away—

But Soyak saw something she never could have imagined.

It grabbed its own head with its hand...

and slapped it right back onto the severed neck.

“...Ah.”

An action beyond all imagination—beyond prediction.

Even Soyak was shaken.

And in the instant she lost a breath like that—

the beast, having regenerated both feet, charged at Soyak again.

Then—

Ak Taegyu, snapping back to himself, shouted.

“Duck!!!”

Soyak immediately lowered her body.

And above her head passed a savage, intense sound of something tearing the air.

PWAAANG—!!!

A spear flashed past, whipping her hair with its terrifying speed.

It drove through the Demonic Beast’s chest and pinned it into the wall.

Now it thrashed there, suspended.

Black blood streamed down the wall.

“Kheuk... kuhuk, k-RAAAH...!!!”

The wall was already an offering to the blaze.

The beast began burning alive.

The stench of burning human flesh stabbed into the nose.

For a moment, Soyak felt a dull, distant headache.

...Because it was a smell she’d smelled before.

A smell she could never forget—thick, rancid, lingering through the ruins of the Flower-Halo Sect.

“...I hate that smell.”

Soyak swung her sword and smashed the wall on the other side.

An escape route.