The Ascending Dragon Sect members huddled close together like pangolins.
WHOOOM, WHOOOM, WHOOOM...
A resonant hum rang out without pause.
A shield of sword screen forged from immense inner power.
It was the Heaven-Revolving Mighty Path.
CLANG, SCREEECH...
The sound of grinding metal burst out from every direction.
Showers of sparks flew whenever sword energies collided.
“There is not much left. We will erase the Ascending Dragon Sect here.”
“RAAAH....”
As if unwilling to let go of the advantage they had seized, the Orthodox Allied Forces’ assault grew even fiercer.
Seeing that the Ascending Dragon Sect could not even launch a proper counterattack only further inflamed them.
‘What is this? Their defense is clearly weaker than before. It must be because that bastard is absent. Where did he go in a situation like this?’
Moyong Yang was puzzled.
He had ordered an all-out attack, but he was not certain whether it would truly succeed.
Above all, was there not a man who had repeatedly stopped the Orthodox Allied Forces head-on for the past three years?
The man called Hegemon Fortress’s Shield.
‘Was his name Ja Cheon-gwang?’
Though he was not a leading figure of the unorthodox faction, Moyong Yang knew his name.
For nearly three years, Ja Cheon-gwang had been the most famous man in this area.
And he was a young man who had only just passed twenty.
‘The Ascending Dragon Sect’s strongest fighting force is absent? That cannot be. Was he not there until daytime? Could it be...?’
The Moyong Family had been attacked.
Though its fortunes had waned, it was still not a place that mediocre martial artists could breach.
‘There is no doubt. That bastard must be involved. Otherwise, the family could not have fallen so easily. The fact that he is not here is proof.’
It felt as though his blood were flowing backward.
The image of his wife, Yeon Byeok-hwa, still lingered before his eyes.
He also did not know where the Sacred Relic was.
His youngest son had fled with it, but he did not even know whether he was alive.
“You bastards. Were you truly the root of all this? You filthy unorthodox bastards.”
Once his thoughts reached that point, his eyes turned wild.
Moyong Yang drew out even more of his strength.
Like a man who had no tomorrow.
“The Commander is leading the charge! What are the martial artists of Orthodoxy doing? Follow him at once!”
“Attack the Ascending Dragon Sect!”
Moyong Yang’s valiant stand rapidly raised the Orthodox Allied Forces’ morale.
The sight of his aged body in action was more than enough to stir the young martial artists.
They did not know why he had suddenly ordered an all-out attack.
Perhaps they believed that the exchanges until now had been feints and misdirection.
But it no longer mattered.
Moyong Yang’s fierce advance was enough to silence such doubts.
SCREEECH...
The sound of metal grinding continued.
The Heaven-Revolving Mighty Path remained powerful.
However, Moyong Yang did not care.
His gaze was already no different from that of a madman.
***
“Moyong Yang. Why is that old man suddenly acting like that?”
He was not a man who usually stepped onto the front lines.
Even during fierce battles, he had always stayed one step back and given orders.
Jang Woo-geun gritted his teeth.
“One thing is certain. This is not one of their meticulous plans. Something must have happened within their ranks, and they are trying to seize complete control of the battle because of it.”
If this had truly been a planned operation, Moyong Yang would not have stepped forward like that.
His eldest son, Moyong Jeong-cheon, was there as well.
There was no reason for the aged Moyong Yang to personally lead the vanguard.
“It is clear. Neither Moyong Jeong-cheon nor Moyong Jeong-hyeon is in sight. I do not know what happened, but this is an opportunity for us as well. If reinforcements arrive in time....”
That was his judgment.
However, the side that reached its limit first was the Ascending Dragon Sect.
The sword screen remained firm.
Yet its force was visibly weakening.
No matter how strong a shield was, it could not endure the Orthodox Allied Forces’ relentless assault forever.
The enemy numbered close to two thousand.
In contrast, the Ascending Dragon Sect had only a little over a hundred men left.
“Ghk!”
At last, a member of the Golden Dragon Corps fell out of formation.
His inner arts had run dry.
“Pwah!”
“Urgh!”
Cracks appeared among the Silver Dragon Corps and Iron Dragon Corps members who supported the Golden Dragon Corps as well.
They had been passing along inner arts through the Transmission Art, but even that had reached its limit.
“What are you doing? Fill the gaps! Do not show them any openings! If we endure a little longer, they will be the ones to collapse. Hold on!”
Jang Woo-geun shouted until his throat nearly burst.
But without inner arts behind it, their Heaven-Revolving Mighty Path was merely sword-spinning.
Nothing more than a sluggish top.
Eventually, a clearly exposed gap appeared.
A sword slipped through an opening in the Heaven-Revolving Mighty Path.
Then it pierced a Golden Dragon Corps member’s shoulder.
THRUST.
“AAARGH!”
“It is over now. Crush them!”
Seeing the battle line collapse one by one, the Orthodox Allied Forces’ momentum surged even higher.
In contrast, casualties among the Ascending Dragon Sect rapidly increased.
They could collapse at any moment.
The enormous circular formation had already shrunk to roughly half its former size.
“The wounded, move inside. Recover your strength.”
The idea was that they could somehow endure if they recovered enough inner arts.
However—
‘Can we truly not hold out? Why are those bastards taking so long?’
Inside the circular formation, the ground was already crowded with the dead and severely wounded.
BOOM, BOOM... The piercing sounds of sword energies colliding.
CLANG, CLANG, SCREEECH... The friction of metal crashing together.
Even the members’ screams tore at their eardrums.
Jang Woo-geun personally used the Transmission Art to pass his inner arts to the Golden Dragon Corps members.
As the Second Elder, he possessed an enormous amount of inner arts in his qi center.
But he, too, was gradually reaching his limit.
‘Ja Cheon-gwang... If only that bastard were here... Damn it, this is the end.’
The strength was slowly leaving his eyes.
Then, at that very moment—
WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, THUD...
Axes and swords flew in like a storm from behind the Ascending Dragon Sect.
“RAAAH!”
The closest unorthodox group to the Ascending Dragon Sect.
One of Hegemon Fortress’s shields, the Ironblood Hall, had finally arrived.
They hurled weapons at the Orthodox Allied Forces and charged forward with savage cries.
“What is that? Why is the Ascending Dragon Sect like this?”
“More importantly, what is wrong with those orthodox bastards? Did they climb all the way here in the middle of the night just to fight?”
“To hell with it, I do not know. Throw the weapons first.”
It was not only the Ironblood Hall.
Other sects emerged from all throughout the forest.
Following the Ironblood Hall came the Heavenly Pivot Fortress and the Death Spirit Sect, and even groups of bandits.
‘They have come. They have finally come.’
They were bastards he normally could not stand to look at.
Why did they seem so dependable now?
Color returned to Jang Woo-geun’s face.
“It is done. If we endure a little longer, victory is ours.”
The Ascending Dragon Sect members also seemed to hear the reinforcements’ shouts.
They squeezed out their remaining inner arts and reinforced the defensive wall.
The wavering sword screen gathered together once more.
In the end, pushed back by the suddenly arriving reinforcements of the Hegemon Fortress Alliance, the Orthodox Allied Forces had no choice but to withdraw one step.
***
Hiding was never easy.
Especially when the opponents were martial artists.
Their senses were extraordinarily developed.
Ja Cheon-gwang hid behind a boulder and suppressed his aura to its utmost limit.
In an instant, his immense inner power was completely concealed.
‘There must not even be a trace of my presence. I cannot leave behind even a hint of life force.’
The pain surging from the wound pierced by the sword.
Whenever his attention drifted to it, erasing his presence became even more difficult.
The same was true of his left hand, where flesh had been torn away.
‘Even so, I have to hide if I want to live. If I fight now... I might really die.’
Had he barely made it in time?
Just as his aura blended so completely with the boulder’s aura that they were nearly indistinguishable—
“Young Family Head, we have found the Third Young Master.”
People gathered in one place.
At the spot where Moyong Jeong-gi lay.
“Jeong-gi. What happened to you?”
A familiar voice.
‘Moyong Jeong-cheon? That bastard clearly left the front line and descended during the day. As expected, something happened to his family. There is a dead Moyong Family bastard here, along with those mysterious black-clad men.’
Behind the boulder, he could not see them.
So he opened his ears wide.
Thud.
He could hear even the sound of Moyong Jeong-cheon dropping to his knees.
“Why... Why are you lying here?”
Moyong Jeong-cheon placed his fingers against Moyong Jeong-gi’s neck.
The body did not twitch.
His chest did not rise or fall.
Even its warmth had vanished.
“Jeong-gi... My youngest brother. How could you die in a place like this?”
Moyong Jeong-cheon tightly embraced his younger brother.
He could not conceal the sobs that burst from him.
The crying continued for a while.
But soon, his mind cleared.
There was still work that had to be done.
“We must discover who did this. Resume the search, everyone.”
“Yes, Young Family Head.”
Moyong Jeong-cheon roughly wiped away his tears.
Blood seeped from between his tightly clenched lips.
“Young Family Head, there are black-clad men’s corpses here.”
“There are two.”
However...
The Moyong Family martial artists felt something was strange.
The men were certainly dead, but the condition of the corpses was unusual.
‘What is this? These are not traces of Dipper Shifts, Stars Move. Does that mean the Third Young Master did not do this?’
‘One of them had his neck cleanly cut off. That is no ordinary skill. And this one....’
One corpse had its head smashed to a gruesome pulp.
No matter how they looked at it, it was difficult to believe that Moyong Jeong-gi had done this.
None of the corpses they had found on their way here bore such marks.
Considering that Moyong Jeong-gi had died here, he must have already exhausted his strength.
There was no way he could have displayed such monstrous power in that state.
“Search their bodies. Something must reveal their identities.”
They thoroughly searched the two corpses with different causes of death.
But the result was nothing.
Nothing was found on them.
They were like assassins who had intended to conceal their identities from the beginning.
“You suffered greatly. I am sorry.”
Moyong Jeong-cheon carefully lowered Moyong Jeong-gi’s corpse to the ground.
There was another task entrusted to him.
To fulfill the family’s mission, he began searching Moyong Jeong-gi’s clothes.
‘The Sacred Relic... Where is the Sacred Relic?’
But no matter how much he searched, there was no trace of it.
“Did the other men have anything on them?”
“No, Young Family Head. We found nothing.”
It felt as though the sky had fallen.
He had finally found his younger brother, but Moyong Jeong-gi had crossed into the afterlife.
Even the Sacred Relic was gone.
He searched his younger brother’s body once again, but could not find even a shadow of the Sacred Relic.
“The Sacred Relic....”
Moyong Jeong-cheon’s pupils shook violently.
He hurriedly called for his son, Moyong Sang.
A man of a similar age to Ja Cheon-gwang, who had only recently passed twenty.
“You called for me, Father?”
“Sang. Go report to the Family Head immediately. Tell him your uncle Jeong-gi is dead.”
After closing his mouth, he spoke again.
His voice was low, so that the others would not hear.
“And... tell him that the Heavenly Spirit Jewel is nowhere to be found.”
“Yes, Father.”
Moyong Sang was a direct descendant of the Moyong Family.
He was one of the few people who knew the Sacred Relic’s true nature.
However, the others nearby were merely family retainers.
They did not know about the Sacred Relic.
Nor could they be allowed to know.
Having received his orders, Moyong Sang immediately ran toward the plains of Scattered Gorge Mountain, where his grandfather Moyong Yang was.
Meanwhile, several martial artists approached Moyong Jeong-cheon.
This was something that had to be reported.
“Young Family Head, we believe you should personally inspect the corpses. The marks are different from the Third Young Master’s methods.”
“The skills are different? That cannot be. He fought continuously, so his strength must have faded and caused his sword paths to deviate somewhat.”
Moyong Jeong-cheon muttered without taking his eyes from his younger brother’s corpse.
The martial artists called to him again.
“None of the marks... can be considered the Moyong Family’s martial arts.”
Silence fell for a moment.
“I understand. I will see for myself.”
Moyong Jeong-cheon rose and examined the black-clad men’s corpses.
Soon, he frowned.
One thing was certain.
The marks on the corpses were not Moyong Jeong-gi’s work.
The decapitated corpse was one thing, but he could not understand the corpse with the smashed head at all.
“Was this done with a blunt weapon?”
“For now... that is what it appears to be.”
The corpse looked as though it had been crushed by a massive lump of iron.
Moyong Jeong-cheon grimaced at the revolting sight.
‘These are definitely not traces of the Moyong Family’s martial arts. Another person must have intervened. What in the world is happening? Could it be infighting among those bastards? If so...’
“Search the surrounding area at once. There must be other traces.”
“Yes, Young Family Head.”
Moyong Jeong-cheon walked over to Moyong Jeong-gi’s corpse.
Then he took his hand.
“I am sorry, Jeong-gi. I will surely avenge you. But there is something I must do first. Forgive your older brother.”
WHEEE!
At that moment, a whistle sounded from a mountain some distance away.
WHEEE! WHEEE! WHEEE!
The signals sounded one after another.
Something seemed to have happened.
They were urgent calls to come quickly.
There was not even time to mourn Moyong Jeong-gi’s death.
Moyong Jeong-cheon bit down hard on his lips.
“Recover Jeong-gi’s body. I will continue the search.”
Leaving his younger brother’s corpse behind, Moyong Jeong-cheon headed up the mountain.
It was the direction from which Ja Cheon-gwang had come.
‘Sacred Relic? Heavenly Spirit Jewel?’
After Moyong Jeong-cheon’s aura had moved away, Ja Cheon-gwang took the wooden case from his clothes.
Click.
When he opened the lid, a red bead the size of an egg yolk peeked out.
‘Is this... the Heavenly Spirit Jewel, the Sacred Relic?’
At a glance, it did not look remarkable.
It was only a red bead.
It looked like the sort of thing that would make an ordinary woman’s eyes light up.
‘I do not know what the Heavenly Spirit Jewel is, but I will take it for now. It may lessen my responsibility for killing my fellow disciples. Or... if it really is the Sacred Relic, I may be able to negotiate with the Moyong Family.’
Ja Cheon-gwang tucked the wooden case deep into his clothes again.
It was the Sacred Relic that the Moyong Family was desperately searching for.
That alone was an enormous gain.
In any case, now that he could not sense Moyong Jeong-cheon’s aura nearby, this was his only chance to escape.
His body swayed as though he might collapse at any moment, but Ja Cheon-gwang gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand.
If he encountered the Moyong Family here, there would be no way to preserve his life.
He went in the opposite direction from Moyong Jeong-cheon.
Then he quietly slipped away.