Chapter 374: Who Is the Villain Here? (4)
While the Orthodox Faction warriors ca charging in with a battle cry and the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult mbers steeled themselves for the clash ahead, one particular figure suddenly launched himself into the air
This was because he was one of the biggest show-offs in the recent history of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.
"This is payback for ruining my big show!"
Suspended in midair, he swung both arms around like a complete lunatic, and from his sleeves poured a relentless stream of hidden weapons.
It was a sight so overwhelming it rivaled the fad Myriad Flowers Rain of the Tang family of Sichuan.
Thwack!
"AAAAARGH!!"
Orthodox Faction warriors hit by his projectiles scread and crumpled to the ground left and right.
"Bwahahaha! The Baek Family's weapon arts are number one in the world!"
Landing back on the ground, the man kept hurling hidden weapons and bellowing at the top of his lungs without pause.
‘Hehehe. Everyone's looking at .’
That man is none other than Baek Cheon, the Young Master of the Baek Family who had spent years in Pinglian County igniting a renaissance of the arts. Thanks to his shaless and borderline obsessive tendency to hoard people’s attention, he had driven the Hundred Flowers Demonic Art all the way to Extremity at the ripe age of only twenty-five.
To put it another way, he was right on the edge of the Peak Realm despite being deed young among the martial artists.
If this were the Central Plains, they'd have slapped a nickna with "Dragon (龍)" on him, sothing they only do for the best of the best young fighters.
And just as his skills had grown at a crazy pace, so had his addiction to the spotlight. Then again, the number one attention-whore in the whole cult was actually his old man, so it was understandable.
That fact aside, Baek Cheon kept firing hidden weapons at the recklessly charging Orthodox warriors, and they kept dropping like flies.
"Bwahahahahaha!"
He cackled like a madman and stopped until one distinct sound reached his ears.
Clang!
Soone deflected his hidden weapon and closed the distance in an instant. The culprit of that sound was a middle-aged martial artist.
"Tch."
As good as Baek Cheon was for his age, the Central Plains was crawling with masters who were way beyond the Peak Realm, so this was bound to happen.
The saber master’s technique was so sharp and relentless that Baek Cheon was instantly cornered and scrambling to dodge in every direction.
"Damn it~!!!"
As Baek Cheon roared in fury at his own unsightly appearance, the saber master's blade shot toward his vital points.
Clang!
But a young woman appeared out of nowhere and blocked the strike. She used nothing but her fingers wreathed in deep crimson Qi to block the lethal attack.
"Please fall back, Young Master Baek."
Hyeokryeon Seon-ah spoke in a voice that was all business, then turned to face the middle-aged saber master with a completely blank expression.
The saber master who had been pressing Baek Cheon so hard had a difficult ti hiding his surprise. He was a powerful master at the early stage of the Supre Peak Realm and was also known as the corps leader of the Fierce Tiger Corps of the Martial Alliance.
‘No matter how I look at it, she can't be older than twenty.’
Her level of cultivation was just ridiculous for soone her age.
The young man he'd been fighting before could've been called a Dragon back in the Central Plains, but the young woman in front of him had already left the realm of rising talents entirely.
‘So this is the terror of Demonic Arts.’
Reaffirming his conviction that the Demonic Cult had to be destroyed, the Fierce Tiger Corps Leader swung his blade with fierce intensity.
His saber and Hyeokryeon Seon-ah's crimson nails clashed with thunderous impact, and she weaved around his follow-up strikes with movents as fluid and strange as a cat's before hitting back with a sharp counter.
After trading several exchanges like that, the commander found his opening and swung at her when sothing ca streaking toward him at incredible speed.
‘An arrow!?’
Startled, he shifted the trajectory of his strike to try to deflect it.
"!?"
But the arrow subtly curved just before it t his blade and buried itself in his shoulder. It was supposed to go right through his heart, but he'd managed a last-second twist to save his life.
"Ugh..."
As the throbbing pain from his shoulder pulled a short groan out of him—
"Hah!"
A red-haired girl was already on him and unleashed a relentless twin-fist barrage.
***
"Phew."
Jeong Hyeon watched Hyeokryeon Seon-ah push the middle-aged saber master onto the back foot and exhaled a quiet breath of relief before nocking another arrow.
From her position watching over the battlefield at the rear, what she saw was pure chaos.
In terms of average skill, the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had the edge. Demonic Arts were inherently faster to master, and the mbers assembled here had been hand-selected as a special detachnt, all of them at a decent level of cultivation and martial arts masteries.
But numbers don't lie and that was the big problem.
The enemy outnumbered them by at least five to one, and the Central Plains was not without its own powerful masters like the saber master who had been pushing both Hyeokryeon Seon-ah and Baek Cheon to their limits until monts ago.
Jeong Hyeon's job was to keep those guys pinned down, firing arrows all over the place. But then, her eyes locked onto one particular spot and she couldn’t move.
It started with a small sound.
Slick.
The chilling sound of at being cut clean suddenly reached her sharp ears.
She turned toward where it had co from and felt goosebumps crawl across every inch of her skin.
Slick.
With that second sound, a Heavenly Demon Divine Cult warrior was split pathetically in two by the hand of a middle-aged man who wore a look of utter boredom as he swung a noticeably heavy-looking sword.
The man was dressed in a martial robe bearing the inscription of Azure Heaven.
Slick.
Every single ti that man swung his heavy sword, another Heavenly Demon Divine Cult mber was cut in two along with whatever weapon they'd been wielding.
"Gulp."
Jeong Hyeon swallowed hard at the horrifying sight and aid her bow at him. But right then—
Clang!
For the first ti, soone appeared who had managed actually to block that middle-aged man's sword.
"Oh?"
The man dropped his bored expression and looked at the woman in front of him with sothing resembling genuine interest.
"So the Demonic Cult does have capable won after all."
In response to the words of Namgung Jin, the woman kept her expression blank and began drawing up the Yin Qi gathered in her dantian.
Watching her hands turn ghostly white, Namgung Jin smirked.
"The White Hand Demonic Art. This might actually be a little fun."
The mont the words left his mouth, Namgung Jin swung his sword at Jin Hayeon. It was the Sword Form of the Emperor, the signature sword art of the Namgung Family.
The strike was loaded with imnse internal energy, and it was the very essence of what a heavy sword could be.
BOOM!!!
Jin Hayeon had drawn up every scrap of Yin Qi she had and ford a barrier of it to block the blow, but even so, she was forced three full steps backward.
Blood was already seeping from the corner of her lips.
Swosh!!
Seizing the mont while Namgung Jin was still committed to his swing, Jeong Hyeon loosed an arrow at him.
But Namgung Jin swatted it away like a fly, his expression nothing but mild annoyance.
Clang.
"Oh?"
Only after deflecting the arrow did Namgung Jin look up with curious eyes and fix his gaze directly on Jeong Hyeon through the crowd.
He'd found the arrow's mid-flight course correction to be interesting. And yet, the fact that he had deflected it cleanly even then was enough to make Jeong Hyeon's skin crawl.
"Hahahaha! So this is what Demonic Arts are all about. You people have all sorts of fun little toys!"
Namgung Jin laughed arrogantly, then ignored Jeong Hyeon and swung at Jin Hayeon again and Jin Hayeon gathered her power in response to the strike.
Right before his sword t her palms—
"Hup!"
Contrary to all the arrogance he'd displayed up to this point, Namgung Jin's expression snapped into sothing startled and he let out a sharp grunt as he threw himself sideways.
Slick.
A faint cutting sound rang out at the sa mont, and blood began seeping through Namgung Jin's robe.
Seo Wan-pyeong popped out of Namgung Jin's shadow, and Jin Hayeon gave him a quick grateful nod. But despite having successfully landed a surprise strike on Namgung Jin, Seo Wan-pyeong's expression was far from bright.
"Tch."
Because Namgung Jin had reacted at the last second, the killing blow had been dodged.
"How dare a lowly assassin—!"
Furious, Namgung Jin staunched the wound on his side in an instant and fixed Seo Wan-pyeong with a murderous glare.
Seo Wan-pyeong t that glare head-on and gave a short instruction to Jin Hayeon.
"I'll hold this one. Go help the others."
Jin Hayeon gave another nod and launched herself toward the rest of the battlefield.
"Ha. You think an assassin of your level can actually handle ?"
At Namgung Jin's contemptuous words, Seo Wan-pyeong said nothing and just gave him a steady gaze. Seo Wan-pyeong himself knew that taking out soone hailed as the Sword Venerable all by himself would be impossible.
"I'll send you to the King of Hell!"
Despite the fury in his face, Namgung Jin's attacks were clean and simple as he started pressing on Seo Wan-pyeong. But those simple-looking moves were packed with ridiculous power.
BOOM!
"Ugh."
After twisting and leaping in every direction to avoid the blows, Seo Wan-pyeong finally had to take one head-on, and the impact made him grunt in pain.
‘Just as I thought.’
If the first ambush had finished the job, that would've been one thing. But an assassin trying to fight a swordsman head-on was always going to be an uphill battle.
On top of that, he himself was only at the early stage of the Realm of Truth while the man in front of him was several levels above that.
He knew all of this perfectly well, but he stepped up for two reasons.
First, if he didn't, this monster would wipe out dozens of their people without breaking a sweat
And the second was, ‘I just have to buy ti. That's what I have to do in this battle.’
He was sure that if he could keep this man busy, they would win in the end.
‘I just have to hold on until the Youngest gets back from killing the Alliance Leader!’
Because it was none other than Il-mok who was here on this battlefield with them.
***
Rewind to fifteen minutes earlier, when the fight was just kicking off.
Baek Cheon had been hoping to beco the star of the show, but in reality, everyone's eyes were glued on soone else entirely.
His hidden weapon display had drawn eyes for only a brief mont before being ignored in favor of the clash at the rear.
Slick.
Slick.
There, a young swordsman was cutting down Orthodox Faction warriors with a look of complete indifference on his face.
Naturally, Cheok Pae-myeong noticed him right away.
‘The Incarnation of Maitreya.’
An opponent he had crossed blades with twice before.
The first ti they clashed, the kid was way weaker than him that calling him an opponent would be an insult to him. And yet, in just a few short years, the one who stood before him is a monster of an unknown caliber.
"To think he'd be this young."
If not for the swordplay he was using and the faintly sinister energy radiating from the sword in his hand, Cheok Pae-myeong might never have made the connection.
That was why the Alliance Leader imdiately charged straight for that young man.
Seeing the Alliance Leader throw himself into the thick of the battlefield, Gongsun Hyeon called out in alarm.
"Alliance Leader!"
It wasn't simply a concern for his safety. Their objective was to make sure as many people as possible died. On top of that, the Zhuge Family was still hanging back in the rear, watching the battle play out.
If the Alliance Leader jumped in this early, there was a real risk that the battle would end without doing aningful damage to the Orthodox Faction side.
But the Alliance Leader's mind was sowhere else entirely.
‘I have to kill this one here and now.’
It was a gut feeling, one he'd learned to trust after decades in the martial world.
A feeling that told him if he didn't kill this kid now, he'd beco their biggest nightmare later.
"Haaah!"
Cheok Pae-myeong drove into the heart of the battlefield in an instant and swung his saber at the young man.
Clang!!
Il-mok swung the Ascension Sword as well, blocking the Alliance Leader's surprise attack.
Sparks flew as their blades crashed, and their eyes locked onto each other.
"Pay the price for making a mockery of innocent civilians, you young demon!!"
Hearing Cheok Pae-myeong's shout, Il-mok pulled one corner of his mouth up into a mocking smile.
"Long ti no see, Alliance Leader. Or should I call you dog of the Imperial Family?”
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