Chapter 403 : Holy War (3)

Right around the time Il-mok was busy tearing the enemy camp apart with the other girls, there was one maid who hadn't followed him into the fray.

‘Why... why did I have to be the only one left behind?’

Left so far behind in the rear that she couldn't even catch a glimpse of Il-mok's back, Jeong Hyeon thought this to herself as she nocked another arrow and drew the bowstring taut.

In her head, she fully understood the reason why she was the only one excluded from the vanguard. 

She was an archer.

Her role wasn't to pierce through enemy lines at the vanguard but to hang back with the main army and pick off targets from afar.

So when Il-mok unleashed the World-Destroying Primordial Jade Palm and charged forward with the other maids, Jeong Hyeon had no choice but to stand still and wait.

Only when the warriors of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult finally drove deep into the enemy formation did she move at all, blending into the surge and advancing alongside them.

In the middle of a chaotic brawl where friends and foes were hopelessly tangled together, she let her arrows fly.

THWIP!

THWACK!

The arrow shaved just past the ear of a Cult martial artist and buried itself directly into an enemy's forehead.

Her marksmanship was practically borderline divine.

But even though she was racking up kills in the melee, and even though she logically understood why she couldn't be with Il-mok, there was a very simple reason why she was so grumpy.

She’s sad for not being able to stand beside the one she longed for.

That thought would have been a romantic one if not for the lunatics beside her.

"Hahahaha! Witness this godlike technique of mine!"

"Behold the Hundred Flower Demonic Art of the Baek Family!!"

"Come! Look at me! Admire my elegance!”

Her awful mood was entirely due to the backup squad chucking hidden weapons right next to her, the drama queens of the Baek Family.

‘Th-there are f-four Senior Baek Cheons right next to me...’

This unhinged father-and-son combo suffered from a terminal illness where they would literally go insane if they weren't the center of attention, and that stands true even in the middle of a warzone.

What was puzzling was that Baek Un-hak, who had already reached Transcendence, was behaving the same way as the rest of his family.

Jeong Hyeon had zero desire to dig into that particular mystery.

‘P-please. S-Save me, Young Master...’

Her introverted little heart wasn’t robust enough to comprehend the King of the Drama Queens that is Baek Un-hak.

Although she hadn't sustained a single internal injury, the sheer social stress made her feel as though she were on the verge of succumbing to a Qi Deviation just from nearing them.

But regardless of her face turning paler by the second, the Divine Cult's martial artists were ruthlessly carving their way forward in an unstoppable offensive. 

The enemy's forty-thousand-strong main army was nothing but a massive flock of sheep, and the Cultists were the savage wolves ripping them to shreds.

But apparently, the shepherds had no intention of watching their flock die without doing something about it.

SHING!

"Guh...!"

The shepherds had finally unleashed their hounds onto the battlefield.

Hounds known as the Eastern Depot’s eunuchs.

"Slaughter those filthy Demonic Cult dogs!"

"Kyaaaa!"

Among them, the old hound charging at the very front moved with exceptional ferocity.

Every time that old eunuch swung his blade, blood sprayed from another Cult warrior's body.

"Gaaagh!"

With her sharpened senses, Jeong Hyeon caught the distant screams of her allies without missing a beat.

She snapped her head around with her arrows ready and forced herself to stay calm as she read the situation.

‘Th-there's only about t-two hundred of them.’

The hounds weren't many in number.

The problem was the wall of enemies clogging every path the Cult warriors tried to push through.

What had once been prey that fell with every strike had turned into a living barricade of obstacles.

Creak.

Wanting to help the Cult warriors fighting in the distance, Jeong Hyeon drew the bowstring back as far as it would go and poured her full concentration into the shot.

That familiar sensation of the world standing still washed over her.

Creak!

The very moment she let the bowstring slip...

TWANG!

The arrow ripped through the air, screaming toward the old hound at the vanguard.

CLANG!

"How dare you!!"

The old eunuch barely managed to bat aside her surprise attack with a frantic sword swipe and let out a furious shriek.

She recognized that voice.

‘Oh, that's the eunuch who barged in when the commander was trying to negotiate.’

She was certain of it. He was the one who had interrupted the Provincial Military Commander during the attempt to persuade the enemy.

"You insolent little bitch!"

Across the distance of the battlefield, the old eunuch glared daggers at her.

But Jeong Hyeon didn't shrink under his gaze.

She could barely function when people got too close, but distance was a different matter. As long as she was standing far enough away, she honestly couldn't care less if a legendary master was trying to kill her with a look.

Ignoring his furious glare entirely, Jeong Hyeon just calmly loaded another arrow.

TWANG!

With that same crisp sound, the arrow split the air and flew.

"Hmph!"

The old hound tried to dodge it casually, clearly treating it as no real threat.

"!!!"

But right as it reached his face, the arrow's flight path completely warped, making him flinch hard and frantically swing his sword to block it at the last second.

"Grrk!!"

The old eunuch snarled like he wanted to tear her limb from limb.

Jeong Hyeon didn't care that her trick had failed. She just nocked another arrow and kept firing at the old eunuch like clockwork.

From the very beginning, she had instantly realized that her opponent's martial arts realm was far higher than her own.

All she wanted was to keep him from cutting down any more of her allies.

So she kept firing at the old eunuch in rapid succession, squeezing in two more partial uses of her Qi Arrow Technique in between.

A  throbbing ache was spreading through her skull, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of Jeong Hyeon's lips.

Because while she'd been buying time, Baek Un-hak had already closed the distance on the old eunuch using his lightness skill.

"Hahahaha! You mangy imperial mutt! Who gave a eunuch with no balls the right to bark in my presence?!"

Baek Un-hak's colorful profanity sent sparks flying in the old eunuch's eyes.

You had to hand it to him; as a professional drama queen and attention-whore, he certainly knew how to grab someone's full attention and hostility.

"I will rip you limb from limb!!"

The enraged old eunuch lunged at Baek Un-hak, who just laughed loudly in return.

"Haha! I've heard Eastern Depot men have a taste for other men. Figures you'd lose your head over my looks! But sorry, old man, I'm not into guys, so kindly back off!"

The second the trash talk left his mouth, Baek Un-hak launched a sudden double palm strike, and a fierce wave of palm force exploded outward as if to blow the old eunuch clean off his feet.

And to make it even nastier, he had secretly hidden a volley of poisoned needles right inside the wind pressure.

Clang!

"Filthy tricks worthy of a Demonic Cult lackey!"

But the eunuch was a formidable fighter in his own right. He anchored himself with his Qi and powered through the palm wind while simultaneously raising a Sword Barrier that deflected the hidden needles without much trouble.

"I wouldn't look twice at a face as ugly as yours! As the Brush-Holding Eunuch of the Eastern Depot, I will personally tear you apart!"

The eunuch had gone straight for a personal insult about his looks, but to an attention-whore, even getting cursed at was a win.

"Haha! They say you lose your shame as you get older, but clearly you're just embarrassed!"

The Brush-Holding Eunuch’s jabs just rolled right off Baek Un-hak without leaving a scratch.

Through his astounding footwork and hidden weapon arts, Baek Un-hak engaged in a relentless game of cat-and-mouse with the old eunuch.

Anyone with a deeper understanding of martial arts, or anyone who knew the particular characteristics of Baek Un-hak's Demonic Art, would have found the fight even more remarkable.

Despite being a hidden weapon specialist, Baek Un-hak wasn't trying to widen the gap between himself and the eunuch at all.

If anything, he was deliberately keeping the distance fixed at just about three meters between them. If he had widened the distance too much, there was a risk that the enemy might either ignore his provocations entirely or unfairly take his anger out on the martial artists of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult instead. 

From the outside, Baek Un-hak looked like a lunatic driven mad by his need for attention, but he was actually executing a carefully thought-out plan even in the middle of the battlefield.

Since he had lived as a drama queen for decades, the old habits naturally lingered even after he achieved Transcendence, but he was no longer a slave to those impulses. 

Reaching Transcendence and breaking free from the demonic influence didn't erase what you'd left behind. The only difference was that the compulsion was gone.

It was the same for Baek Un-hak.

Meanwhile, Jeong Hyeon breathed a quiet sigh of relief as she watched Baek Un-hak draw the eunuch’s attention.

Soon after, the rest of the Baek Family joined the fray against the Eastern Depot troops, and Jeong Hyeon let out another quiet sigh of relief.

"Haa..."

Part of it was relief that the Cult warriors were safer now that they'd stepped in.

"M-maybe it'll finally quiet down a little...?"

But the rest was from her social anxiety finally settling down now that the insufferably loud Baek men had wandered far enough away from her.

***

Unlike Jeong Hyeon, who sighed without a second thought, the Western Army Commander couldn't afford the luxury of a sigh.

The battle was drifting in an unsettling direction, and if the highest commander let out even one visible sigh, it risked tanking the morale of every officer around him.

Those four who had charged in first were still pressing forward without any sign of slowing down.

The number of people who had fallen at their hands was probably well into the hundreds by now. And if you counted the cavalry that had been swept away by that terrifying technique the young man used at the very start, the total might have already crossed a thousand.

But surprisingly, those four weren't the ones currently making the Western Military Commander's blood boil. Losing a thousand men was barely a scratch when he had a massive army of eighty thousand at his command.

‘Why the hell are nomadic cavalry showing up here?!’

Watching the nomadic horsemen tear through his left flank made him feel like he was about to start crying blood.

The way things were trending, it was only a matter of time before the entire left flank collapsed altogether, with twenty thousand of his men being cut down like stalks of grain under a harvest scythe.

At this point, his right flank was the only glimmer of hope left on the board.

Because unlike the left, there were no surprise reinforcements keeping that flank pinned down.

And yet, for some bizarre reason, the enemy lines—which were supposed to be nothing but a ragtag militia—were refusing to break. 

It didn't take long for the Western Military Commander to figure out exactly how a bunch of untrained peasants was holding out against his elite troops.

“GLO~RY! GLORY! O ’ DIVINE CULT!!”

These lunatics were holding the line like cornered beasts, all while howling a bizarre hymn.

His veteran soldiers were caving in skulls and running blades through hearts, but even as their comrades' corpses piled up at their feet, the Divine Cult soldiers didn't run.

They didn't flinch. They just kept howling their hymn at the top of their lungs with shields raised and spears thrusting forward.

More often than not, it was the Western Military Commander's own men who were being rattled by the sight.

"God-damned brainwashed cultist freaks..."

Unable to hold himself back, the Western Military Commander spat out a curse before turning his head to inspect his main army. 

After being shaken by a surprise attack from barely a thousand men, his main army was now locked in a brutal dogfight with the Lanzhou main forces that had crashed into them shortly after.

But out of everything happening, the most glaring sight was the Brush-Holding Eunuch picking a fight with some random Cultist throwing hidden weapons. 

The Western Military Commander gritted his teeth and swallowed the next sigh.

"I gave orders to hold the front line."

The Brush-Holding Eunuch and the Eastern Depot operatives had intentionally completely dodged the four monsters leading the charge, choosing to safely pick off easier enemies in the backlines instead.

Their cowardly motive was so blatantly obvious that the Western Military Commander felt his blood pressure spike at that instant. 

The officers around him seemed to have read the situation just the same, clicking their tongues as they took turns talking trash.

"They must have turned tail after seeing that Divine Art the young man unleashed at the start."

"Probably waiting for the boy to burn through his internal energy, then planning to swoop in at the last moment and claim the credit."

The Eastern Depot's underhanded ways were nothing new. The Western Military Commander had thought the same thing, but he had no time to stand around trading gossip.

"Prepare the Thunder Bombs immediately!"

"The Thunder Bombs, sir?! Our forces are completely mixed together in melee! We'll end up blowing our own men to shreds, Commander!"

One of his officers pushed back hard, and the Western Military Commander clenched his jaw.

He knew that, and it was precisely why he'd been holding off on using them this entire time.

But the time for restraint had passed.

"We're already losing control of the battlefield! Does it look like we have the luxury to worry about friendly fire?!"

If the nomadic cavalry hadn't been tearing his left flank to pieces, he never would have entertained the insane notion of dropping Thunder Bombs on top of his own soldiers.

"Yes, sir! Orders received!"

As his officers finally scrambled to ready the explosives, something bizarre caught the Commander's eye.

"When did they...?"

Those four who had charged in first had closed to within one hundred meters of the command platform without him ever noticing.

For a skilled martial artist, that distance could be crossed in an instant with a lightness skill. But they were in the middle of a battlefield with thousands of soldiers in formation standing between those hundred meters.

But for a reason he couldn't name, the Western Military Commander couldn't tear his eyes away from them.

Leading the pack, the young man who had unleashed that apocalyptic Divine Art earlier casually sliced through a soldier blocking his path.

Then he smirked.

Staring eyes to eyes with the Commander, the corners of the young man's mouth curled up into a chilling smile.

"Now, you are within my reach."

Despite the deafening roar of the battlefield raging all around them, the Commander somehow didn't miss a single movement of those lips.

"Don't tell me...?!"

Only then did the Commander finally realize the truth.

That young man's mad charge hadn't been about throwing the enemy into chaos. And it hadn't been about raising his own side's morale, either.

What the unstoppable spear had been aiming for from the very beginning—

‘He was hunting me this whole time?’

—Had been the Western Military Commander’s head.

Pat!

The young man launched himself into the air with a sudden burst of his lightness skill.

"He's airborne!"

"Now's our chance! Kill him!!"

Thinking he was a sitting duck in midair, the imperial soldiers wildly swung their polearms and hurled their weapons at him, but not a single blade even grazed his clothes.

The young man moved like there were invisible footholds built into the sky itself, his feet working in fluid motions as he shot across the air at breathtaking speed.

Walking through empty air, he closed the entire distance to the command platform in a single heartbeat.

One of the officers standing beside the Commander rushed forward with a desperate saber slash.

"Die, you bastard!!"

The saber carried Saber Force, but...

Slick!

It came apart with a clean and almost anticlimactic sound, along with the officer who had swung it.

The Western Army Commander watched the scene with his mind half-blank.

Then came the soft sound of the young man landing on the command platform.

Thud.

It was a surreal scene.

The battlefield was an uproar, with screams and war cries tearing through the air from every direction.

But somehow, a dreadful silence had settled over just this one spot.

Thud.

The bisected body crumpled to the floor, soaking the command platform red.

Gulp.

In that silence, the sound of someone dry-swallowing echoed exceptionally loud.