Chapter 74: The Master of the Demon-Warding Halberd (6)

Deep in Yacha Valley on Mount Meng, south of Shandong Province.

The stronghold of the Yacha Blood Gate.

Gate Lord Sa Heegwang was skimming the information his subordinate had brought.

One item made his brow furrow.

A word he didn’t like the look of.

The Demonic Cult.

“They’ve started running wild?”

“Yes. It wasn’t done by the main mountain at the Ten Thousand Mountains, but...”

This time, it wasn’t just his brow—his face twisted.

Cold sweat slid down the back of the intelligence officer standing in front of the desk.

Sa Heegwang slammed the desk with a bang.

“Even so, it’s just remnants ‘calling themselves’ resurgent. Do they want to die?”

“...They cut the Shandong Ak Family down to half.”

“What?”

Sa Heegwang’s eyes filled with startled disbelief.

But only for a moment.

He was quick at calculating.

It was thanks to that that he had seized Shandong’s underworld without the Shandong Ak Family noticing.

More than anything, he was the one who had financed those Demonic Cult bastards.

“I only helped them enough that even if they failed, it wouldn’t matter much. This worked out nicely.”

All they had asked for was about twenty silver ingots.

A big sum.

But was it big even to Sa Heegwang, who had taken over every night street in Shandong?

It was the Demonic Cult.

To Sa Heegwang, a dark-faction master in his thirties, the Demonic Cult was another word for opportunity.

If they burst out and gnawed away even a third of the Shandong Ak Family...

then he could pour in everything he had and flip Shandong over.

The Alliance?

You just had to finish taking it all before the One-Under-Heaven Corps arrived.

From the very center of the Central Plain where the Alliance sat, Shandong was far.

It took half a month just for information to travel.

That was enough time.

By the moment the news reached them that the dark faction had toppled the Ak Family in Shandong,

they would already have Shandong entirely in their hands.

And more than anything...

the Yacha Blood Gate had exchanged with the Demonic Cult before.

Back in the days of his grandfather, the Gate Lord two generations prior—Sa Pyogak.

In the era when they truly ruled Shandong by half.

Back when the Ak Family couldn’t even put “Shandong” in front of its name.

In exchange for guaranteeing the Demonic Cult’s activities in Shandong...

they had been taught part of the Demonic Cult’s martial arts.

Techniques that came with Heaven-Toppling cultivation as a condition because of demonic energy.

But that overwhelming power, that exceptional effect, had drawn the eyes of dark-faction martial artists.

The Yacha Blood Gate was no different.

Gate Lord Sa Pyogak had dug into and analyzed the Demonic Cult martial arts they received.

Then he began grafting them onto his own arts.

And what was completed that way—the supreme martial art inherited by the Gate Lord of the Yacha Blood Gate—

was the Yacha Blood Ghost Spear.

Its signature was a bloodlike crimson aura.

Yacha Blood Gate’s Gate Lord, Sa Heegwang, rose from his seat.

In both fists clenched tight, red energy surged and swelled.

“Blood Sword Commander, listen.”

“Yes, sir!!!”

“The Yacha Blood Gate rises today to become the master of Shandong once again.”

It was time to end this tiresome life in the underground world.

Yacha Valley was wide, and its scenery was magnificent—

but how could it compare to the sight of human beings bowing under his rule?

*****

After things had settled down to a degree.

The Shandong Ak Family, an annex building.

A structure originally used to receive guests.

But now, the annex was the only intact place left in the main house.

Everything else was burned through by the blaze—completely, or halfway.

The family head and the remaining household members huddled together, discussing what to do next.

“...You said the Mount Hua Sect came to return the Demon-Warding Halberd.”

Family Head Ak Taegyu repeated it, wearing an expression that said he couldn’t believe it.

Cheonjeong nodded and stepped forward.

Then he held out the wrapped cloth bundle at his waist.

“Clearly—clearly it was said to have been lost in the last War of the Righteous and Demonic...”

“It seems a Mount Hua Daoist was keeping it. And it seems the story was cut off when even that Daoist ascended during the war.”

It wasn’t something Mount Hua needed to apologize for.

They had their reasons for not passing it along.

If they hadn’t even known it was sitting in their storage, what could they have done?

Even so, Ak Taegyu had no choice but to clench his fist.

There were two clans that traced their roots back to the military.

One was the Shandong Ak Family.

The other was the Divine Spear Yang Family.

Within the Divine Spear Yang Family’s spear art, there was a divine relic left behind by their founder, Yang Myojin.

The Pear-Blossom Hundred-Li Spear.

But what did the Shandong Ak Family have?

Their founder’s divine relic had been lost long ago, in the war of the previous generation.

He had grown up watching his grandfather and father lose to the Yang Family head.

The Demon-Warding Halberd.

It was the Ak Family’s long-held wish—its lost divine relic.

Between martial artists of similar level, the presence of a cherished weapon and a divine relic mattered.

And the Yang Family head and the Ak Family head had always possessed spear arts of roughly equal skill.

The reason for defeat had been the absence of a divine relic.

Only that.

“...Only now. Only now, after all this time...”

But what did it matter now?

Even if he beat the Divine Spear Yang Family head now—

would the Ak Family become the Divine Spear Ak Family, and the Yang Family become the Shaanxi Yang Family?

Half the family was gone.

A quarter of the lower servants had fallen for the Demonic Cult’s temptation.

His most talented eldest daughter had corrupted herself.

And she died.

“...Is this the only reason the Mount Hua disciples came all the way here?”

“Yes. Originally, that was the case, but...”

Cheonjeong looked around.

Halls blackened, collapsed, burnt through.

Even this annex had all the paper lining the doorframes burned away, leaving the outside wide open.

Everywhere was smoke and ruins.

“Would it be all right if we helped a little?”

“Help. Do you say that knowing what I intend to do?”

“Well...”

Cheonjeong was about to say they could rebuild the family, but he stopped.

He’d sensed that wasn’t the right answer.

To ask a question like that meant...

Yes. It meant the smell of blood would soon sweep through.

“Revenge?”

Soyak spoke quietly.

Family Head Ak Taegyu nodded and rose from his seat.

He had to take revenge.

On the ones who had tempted his eldest daughter.

On the ones who had burned his family.

On the ones who had murdered his household.

He had to.

Sword Qi unfolded along the edge of his hand.

Not like Soyak’s—this was completed Sword Qi, fully hardened into a finished form.

With it, he cut off the head of the spear he had originally carried.

SCHK.

Thunk. Ting. Thud.

The spear blade at the end fell and rolled across the floor.

The thing that had pierced his eldest daughter’s chest and pinned her into the wall.

Grinding his teeth, Ak Taegyu grabbed the Demon-Warding Halberd inside the cloth bundle.

A Black-Ironwood shaft, made by soaking it in brine again and again, drying it, and feeding it oil.

Now—after fifty years—the Demon-Warding Halberd was fitted onto its end once more.

When he pushed his internal power into it, the Demon-Warding Halberd greedily swallowed his strength.

A spear blade that had slept for a long time flashed awake again.

A solidified aura shining as it wrapped the Demon-Warding Halberd.

Cheonjeong and Cheongak realized he was a master who had passed into mid-Transcendent Apex.

“Yes. Revenge. Can you help me?”

“Who is that revenge aimed at?”

“The vile Demonic Cult remnants. And every piece of trash that helped them.”

As expected.

Soyak nodded.

Then she looked up at Cheonjeong.

In truth, the choice belonged to Soyak.

Even if Cheonjeong was the Head Senior—

this Roaming Pillar Journey was Soyak’s.

And Roaming Pillar Journey, by nature, meant going out into the world and becoming a Daoist useful to the mortal realm.

“What will you do, Head Senior.”

“Soyak.”

“Yes.”

“You decide. Whatever it is, we’ll help.”

Soyak fell into thought.

If it were only her—

she would help.

She didn’t want to go back and be ashamed in front of her master.

She didn’t want to be called someone who turned away with the Demonic Cult right in front of her.

Someone who, like her, had made revenge their goal.

Someone who had lost blood relatives and people...

she didn’t want to look away.

But Cheongak and Cheonjeong were not as strong as she was.

More than that—

they had never killed anyone.

Soyak was weighing it.

Even with that young head, she knew she wasn’t normal.

Even if someone came to kill her as an assassin...

carving that person to pieces was something else.

“...I did it without hesitation.”

And she hadn’t felt any guilt or sense of sin at all.

She had seen the bloodstains and corpses, vividly spread out in front of her.

A horror made by her own hands.

And still she hadn’t even felt discomfort.

Not only that—

A Demonic Beast that had once been a woman.

A beast whose human hide twisted, boiled, burst, and ran.

Anyone would be right to panic when they faced that.

But she hadn’t.

The moment she recognized it as something that had to be put down—

her mind cleared to a shocking degree.

The revulsion at its shape, the misery that it had once been human...

as if she’d forgotten all of it.

If she hesitated for even a moment, she would have died.

And Cheonjeong and Cheongak...

they would hesitate.

“Soyak.”

Cheonjeong called her softly.

The way he looked back at her—

small height, thin frame, black hair...

He could never send her alone.

“What is a sword used for?”

A riddle, spoken by the Head Senior.

Soyak thought quietly, then gave her answer.

“It’s a thing used to kill people.”

“We all wear swords, Soyak. Me too. Cheongak too. It’s the same.”

He was asking her, at minimum, not to choose the option of leaving them behind.

No matter that this Roaming Pillar Journey was Soyak’s—

they were her seniors. Her Head Senior.

“...All right.”

“Then will Mount Hua help the Shandong Ak Family’s revenge?”

The family head rose from his seat.

The spear shaft with the Demon-Warding Halberd fixed at its end shone sharply.

The implication was singular.

The Ak Family would mark their help as a debt of gratitude.

“Yes. Mount Hua will help the Shandong Ak Family’s revenge, punish the Demonic Cult remnants, and set chivalry right again.”

A clean, composed sentence—hard to believe it had come from a child.

A smile spread at the corner of Family Head Ak Taegyu’s mouth.

“Good. I accept. This debt will not be forgotten.”