Chapter 233 — The Price of Eight Hundred Thousand Lives

The crimson blade descended, and for an instant, the world collapsed into a blinding sea of white.

A thunderous explosion tore through the heart of the encampment. The earth fractured, spitting up jagged plates of stone as a crescent of violent, blood-red energy cleaved through the command grounds. Tents vaporized into ash, heavy supply wagons shattered into splintered rain, and iron-reinforced barricades folded like parchment. The sheer pressure launched bodies into the air—ragdolls caught in a localized tempest—before slamming them back into the churning dirt.

When the initial blast wave rolled outward, it snapped heavy oak banner posts like twigs. Down wind, timber watchtowers swayed, groaned, and collapsed into the inferno spreading across the camp. Billowing pillars of greasy black smoke climbed into the afternoon sky, blotting out the sun and leaving the once-impenetrable headquarters of the Black Iron Mercenary Group a blackened crater.

Through the veil of rising ash, a silhouette skidded backward.

Elder Hang’s iron-shod boots carved two ragged, smoking trenches through the bedrock before his back shattered the main support beam of a ruined pavilion. Canvas, iron fittings, and snapped timber rained around him as his momentum carried him another thirty meters across the courtyard.

He slammed to a halt, bent double, and coughed. A thick glob of crimson splattered across the scorched stone.

Planting a trembling palm against the earth, he tried to steady the violent heave of his ribs. His embroidered silk robes, once pristine, hung in charred, blood-soaked rags. Deep, jagged lacerations crisscrossed his arms and shoulders, but the real threat lay across his sternum—a broad, searing furrow where the flesh had been cooked black.

Beneath his skin, his spiritual aura flickered erratically, choking on its own disrupted meridians.

His vision blurred, dark spots dancing at the edges of his sight. He bit the inside of his cheek until the metallic sting of fresh blood forced his focus back, and he pushed himself up. Every nerve along his spine screamed in protest.

Behind him, the survivors of the Cloud Peak Sect were scattered like broken dolls. A few senior disciples knelt in the dirt, using their swords as crutches while binding the severed limbs of their juniors. Others slumped against overturned supply carts, their faces ash-pale, coughing up dark clots of stagnant blood.

The sect elders who had formed the defensive barrier looked hollowed out, their dantians completely drained from shielding the younger disciples from that single, monstrous strike.

No one cheered that they were alive. No one spoke. Every eye remained locked on the wall of dust and smoke settling over the eastern perimeter.

Then came the metal.

Screech—

It was a slow, deliberate sound. Heavy iron dragging over fractured granite. The friction sent an icy vibration through the soles of their feet, rattling the teeth in their jaws.

Step.

Screech—

The curtain of smoke split open.

Commander Liu Tong stepped into the light.

His scarlet plate armor bore only faint, blackened scorch marks where the combined array of the Cloud Peak Sect had detonated against his chest. The wild, blood-crazed frenzy that had possessed him moments ago had vanished entirely, replaced by something far worse: a frigid, unyielding stillness. His eyes, dark as clotted blood, stared straight ahead without a single flicker of emotion.

Right hand trailing behind him, he hauled a battle axe nearly as tall as a man.

The broad head gouged a deep trench into the stone, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. With every stride, the sheer weight of his domain pressed downward, causing the loose gravel around his feet to grind itself into fine powder.

Two young disciples near the front line took an involuntary step back, their knees buckling under the sheer atmospheric weight. They couldn’t even draw breath into their lungs.

Elder Hang dragged himself forward, placing his body between the commander and the surviving disciples. His breath whistled through a punctured lung, but his eyes remained locked on the approaching juggernaut.

"Commander Liu..." His voice scraped out of his throat, raw and dry. "I beg you... listen to me."

Liu Tong did not slow. The scraping of the axe maintained its rhythmic pace.

"My Cloud Peak Sect had no part in this tragedy," Hang pressed on, his fists trembling at his sides. "We knew nothing of the poison. We knew nothing of Elder Xu’s double-tongued treason. He used our banners to cover his tracks. The Celestial Sword Sect engineered this entire slaughter to turn you against our Sect."

He took another agonizing step forward, exposing his unprotected chest, his gaze burning with desperation. "Everything Elder Xu said was a engineered lie."

The commander stopped twelve paces away.

For five agonizing seconds, the wind died down. The burning wreckage crackled, but between the two men, there was only silence.

Then, the air cracked.

A sonic boom shattered the surrounding silence as the earth beneath Liu Tong’s boots caved inward. His form didn’t shift; it simply ceased to exist in the visual spectrum.

Elder Hang’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. Too fast. His senses screamed a warning, but his damaged meridians refused to conduct the energy required to lift his arms. The air in front of him rippled, displacing the heat haze, and Liu Tong materialized out of thin air, the massive axe head already swooping down in a brutal, vertical arc meant to split him from crown to base.

His body froze, trapped in the path of the falling mountain.

"Elder!"

A blur of blue robes slammed into Hang’s hip. The impact knocked the old man sideways, tumbling him across the dirt.

The young disciple who had thrown himself into the gap never even had time to raise his sword. The crimson edge passed through his shoulder, slid through his sternum, and exited his opposite hip without losing a fraction of its momentum.

For a fraction of a second, the boy remained suspended in place. He turned his head slightly, locking eyes with Hang, his lips curving into a faint, reassuring smile.

Then a line of bright red sprayed across the air. His upper torso sloughed off his waist, hitting the dirt with a wet thud, followed a moment later by his legs.

Warm blood splattered across Elder Hang’s cheek. He lay in the dust, his breath trapped in his chest, staring at the lifeless face mere inches from his own.

"...Qing..."

The name died in his throat.

Liu Tong rotated his wrist, clearing the blade with a sharp flick that painted the stone in a red arc. He turned his head slowly, his gaze settling back onto the fallen elder. It was like looking into a well with no bottom.

"If the Celestial Sword Sect plotted against me..." Liu Tong’s voice was remarkably smooth, devoid of anger, devoid of life. "...then why are you still breathing?"

The words fell heavier than the axe.

The commander took another step, his heavy greave crushing a discarded Cloud Peak crest beneath his heel. "My eight hundred thousand men lie rotting in the lower valleys. Every commander slaughtered in their sleep. Every physician poisoned at their cauldrons. Every formation master burned in their towers."

He leaned forward slightly, his crimson eyes locking onto Hang’s shivering pupils. "And yet... your sect stands on my command grounds, intact enough to offer excuses."

He paused, the silence stretching long and thin. "Do you take me for a fool?"

Elder Hang’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. The realization hit him with the cold clarity of ice water: the corpses of an army lay behind this man, and the only survivors left in the valley were wearing blue robes. Proof meant nothing. Logic meant nothing. In the wake of an absolute massacre, the only thing left was the debt of blood.

Slowly, Elder Hang closed his eyes.

When he opened them a second later, the desperation, the grief, and the plea for reason had all been burned away. He drew a long, rattling breath, drawing deep from the bottom of his fractured dantian.

Azure spiritual energy roared to life, violently forcing its way through his shattered meridians, causing his skin to rupture in tiny red beads as his Nascent Soul Cultivation burned its remaining essence.

He dropped his weight, coiling his legs beneath him, his right fist pulling back until the surrounding air began to warp around his knuckles.

"If words cannot reach you..." Hang’s voice dropped an octave, deep and resonant. "...then I will tear your path down myself."

He drove his foot into the ground, shattering the stone beneath him, and propelled himself forward. The azure aura condensed into a solid, blinding lance around his fist, screaming through the atmosphere as he poured his life force into a final, suicidal strike.

BOOM!

The fist connected flush against the center of Liu Tong’s breastplate.

A spherical shockwave erupted from the point of impact, tearing away the surrounding fires, stripping the bark from burning trees, and blasting the dust outward in a fifty-meter ring.

The sheer force shook the mountain foundation itself, burying both men in a dense cloud of pulverized rock and white heat.

A heartbeat passed. The wind died down, clearing the haze.

Elder Hang remained lunged forward, his arm fully extended, his fist buried deep into the blackened iron of the chest piece.

Liu Tong stood firmly in the crater, his legs planted, his posture unchanged. He had not yielded an inch.

Liu Tong’s heavy left palm slammed into Elder Hang’s sternum before the old man could retract his fist.

The impact sounded like a iron hammer striking a hollow barrel. The azure aura surrounding Hang’s body shattered instantly, scattering like dying sparks. The kinetic force traveled straight through his chest, snapping ribs and tearing open his already damaged meridians.

Hang flew backward across the shattered stone, tumbling multiple times before slamming hard into the cracked base of an overturned watchtower.

He lay collapsed in the dust, his chest caving inward with every ragged attempt to draw air. A thick torrent of black-red blood welled up from his throat, spilling over his lips and dripping down his chin into the dirt.

Across the crater, Liu Tong stood still.

The corners of his blood-stained mouth twitched upward, pulling his lips back to expose red-stained teeth.

The silent curvature of his mouth broadened until his throat vibrated, sending a low, rasping rumble through his chest that rose into a full, resonant laugh echoing over the silent, burning ruins.

Hang dug his fingers into the fractured stone, his knuckles turning white as he forced his elbows under his body. His arms trembled violently, skin tearing further as fresh blood seeped through his sleeves. He dragged his knees forward, fighting to lift his head, but his strength gave out halfway and his forehead thudded against the dirt.

Liu Tong took a slow step forward, the iron greaves of his armor crunching through the gravel. He looked down at the shivering elder, his laughter cutting off into a flat, icy stillness.

"Return to your peak," Liu Tong said, his voice carrying clearly through the smoke. "Tell your sect leader what you witnessed here today."

He rested the heavy butt of his battle axe against the earth, the iron head gleam in the firelight.

"Tell her that when I cross your gates, I will leave no one alive to bury the dead, and no stone standing to mark where your sect once sat."

To Be Continued.....