Chapter 491 ·The Advance (2)

In the dead of the night, the sudden ringing of bells erupted without warning from the walls of Andkhoy. The residents who had finally fallen asleep while enjoying a hard-won peace were jolted awake by the commotion.

In an instant, an air of tension swept through the city.

"Oh, Allah."

Some reached for Allah out of habit while others called upon the name of a new god.

"The Heavenly Demon Descends. Ten Thousand Demons Obey. The Heavenly Demon Descends. Ten Thousand Demons Obey..."

"I've got peace like a river... I've got peace like a river..."

While the people of Andkhoy wrestled with their fear, the Hong Dynasty’s soldiers converged on the walls.

Il-mok was already perched on his post.

He watched the figures approaching from the distance, and a question quickly formed in his mind.

'If they're coming from the Amu River side, they shouldn't be enemies.'

As the advancing army approached the city,  Il-mok let out a tired sigh.

"Sigh. Send everyone back to bed except those on night watch. They're our reinforcements."

Under the moonlight, the flying banner carrying the character for [Hong] revealed itself alongside flags carrying characters for [Heavenly Demon]

Remembering how panicked the locals looked on his way up, he fired off one more order.

"And get anyone who speaks local to walk the streets and calm the civilians down before they have a collective panic attack."

With the situation handled, he leaned against the battlements and waited.

Before long, the Hong Dynasty reinforcements arrived at the base of Andkhoy's fortifications.

"BWAHAHAHA! Is the Grand Preceptor in there?!"

That voice was unmistakably that of a certain mad old man.

Il-mok stepped forward before any of the soldiers could respond.

"Right here, Grand Marshal!"

Of all the people they could have sent as the supreme commander, why did it have to be him?

"Open the gates."

With heavy creaks, the gates of Andkhoy opened for the massive army.

Il-mok examined them up close and spotted Dokgo Ryong riding at the forefront.

"It's been a while, Grand Marshal."

"Hahahaha! It certainly has, Grand Preceptor!"

"But why come at this ungodly hour? We're in hostile territory. Isn't a night march a little reckless?"

He worded it like concern, but the core of the question was,

Why the hell did you roll up in the middle of the night and give everyone a heart attack?

Dokgo Ryong simply laughed at the thinly veiled jab.

"Hahaha! To help you, obviously! You've been out here in the West for a while now, but seeing you stuck in this little town made me think you had a rough time! But don't you worry! Your Grand Marshal is here! I'll take the frontline and slaughter the whole lot of them!"

Help. Right.

Yeah, help your mother!

The man was just itching for a fight. That much was obvious.

"Haah."

Damn old bull.

But frankly speaking, the arrival of this mad old man wasn’t unwelcome.

He'd planned to advance once reinforcements arrived anyway.

Around noon the following day.

After allowing ample rest for the locals who had lost sleep over the previous night's commotion and the reinforcements who had marched late into the night, the army finally assembled. 

Before the gates of Andkhoy stood a massive army numbering close to seventy thousand.

The composition of this army was quite mixed.

First, there was his original army, which numbered thirty-four thousand after leaving the wounded and a garrison behind.

Then, there were the five thousand local Muslim soldiers who had been fighting the Empire before he got there. 

And finally, the thirty thousand fresh reinforcements that rolled in last night.

Il-mok swept his gaze across their ranks and couldn't help but mutter out loud.

"I couldn't even tell myself what country this army belongs to anymore."

The diversity of faces was staggering.

It wasn't just Han Chinese soldiers standing next to local Muslims.

Of the thirty thousand reinforcements Dokgo Ryong had brought, ten thousand of them were nomads who enlisted to elevate their social standing after Dokgo Ryong conquered the North.

And there were also about a thousand foreigners mixed in among them. These were the individuals the Central Plains people called the Colored-Eye People or the Black Foreigner.

They were slaves the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult had been steadily purchasing through its Western Region trade over the years.

The whole point was to save them from slavery. But unlike the locals or the nomads, the Divine Cult couldn't just put these guys on a boat and ship them back to their home countries.

So the Divine Cult took them to the main headquarters where the Missionary Hall taught them doctrine. Those who expressed willingness were even taught Demonic Arts, provided they demonstrated genuine commitment to the faith.

The earliest among them had been training for over five years now.

Thanks to the rapid progress that Demonic Arts afforded, they were already masters at what the Central Plains would call the Peak Realm.

And these were precisely the people Il-mok had requested as reinforcements.

Their numbers may be small, but every single one of them had trained in Demonic Arts for years, making them far deadlier than ordinary soldiers.

Il-mok had asked the Divine Cult to send them alongside a supplement of regular troops.

What he had not anticipated was Dokgo Ryong showing up as their commander.

Gazing out at the seventy-thousand-strong army, a stray thought crossed Il-mok's mind.

"A foreign legion."

It was a wild thought, but if the Hong Dynasty kept conquering land and the Divine Cult kept spreading its gospel, it wouldn’t be long before a truly multiethnic military force would be born.

While Il-mok was lost in that idle thought—

"All troops! ADVANCE!!"

Dokgo Ryong bellowed with unbridled glee, and seventy thousand soldiers surged forward.

Their destination was Mazar-i-Sharif.

The largest city in the region, and the one seized by the Khalas Empire’s forces that had attacked Andkhoy.

Taking it back was step one on the agenda.

To be precise, Il-mok intended to secure Mazar-i-Sharif and clear out the immediate surroundings of Andkhoy.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

War drums thundered in cadence with the march.

“GLO~RY! GLORY! O ’ DIVINE CULT!!”

And to that rhythm, seventy thousand voices rose in hymn.

Meanwhile, the white and black soldiers mixed in among the ranks were visibly tense.

They'd trained in martial arts for years, but this was their first time being deployed in war.

Forget war.

They'd never seen real combat at all.

During the Central Plains civil war, they had never been deployed to the battlefield. 

The Divine Cult’s justification for the war had been to drive out the corrupt Imperial Family and the Eastern Depot.

If a small army of foreigners suddenly showed up on the front lines, the locals would have completely freaked out and their entire war effort would go to waste.

Because of this political issue, they spent the entire civil war sitting on their hands back at headquarters.

"…Gulp."

The foreigners marching to the beat of the drums swallowed hard.

They'd never even fought a small skirmish, and now here they were in a war of tens of thousands.

The massive leap in scale made it hard for them to breathe.

It felt like someone had a hand around their throats.

They couldn't for the life of them understand what those lunatics up ahead found so thrilling that they belted out songs like that.

Right as panic started to set in, a fellow Westerner jogged over to them.

It was James.

"Hahaha. It's been a while, everyone."

He greeted them in the Central Plains tongue.

"I-It's good to see you, sir."

They instantly replied with respect.

It wasn't exactly a shock that they treated him like royalty.

When they'd first arrived as slaves, James was the guy who practically held their hands and helped them survive life in the Divine Cult.

Beyond that, his rank alone made casual speech unthinkable.

Maybe it’s because he was always hanging around titans like Il-mok and Jong-ri Chu, and he had the habit of sometimes looking like a background character, but his actual official rank in the Hong Dynasty’s government was that of a Senior Rank 3 position,

He served as the assistant to Vice Minister Jong-ri Chu of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

To every foreigner who had joined the Divine Cult, he was the literal embodiment of the ultimate rags-to-riches success story.

After chatting for a bit, James looked at their pale faces and laughed. "Hahaha! Guys, seriously, relax. As long as the Grand Preceptor is out here with us, losing isn't even on the table."

They just gave him polite and strained smiles.

Very few of them had actually seen what Il-mok was capable of on a battlefield. And even the ones who had seen him fight only remembered him from years ago, back when he was just running guard duty for the merchant caravans.

Seeing them still rigid despite his words, James let out a quiet chuckle.

It carried a strange echo of Il-mok's own wry smile.

"Well. You'll understand soon enough once the next fight starts."

He knew words alone wouldn't reach them, so he stayed by their side and kept their nerves calm with his constant talk.

Il-mok had specifically ordered him to keep a lid on their anxiety.

It was partly consideration for soldiers seeing battle for the first time.

But there was another reason.

Crack. Crack.

One man gnawed at his nails like he was possessed. Another already had eyes shot through with red. Another was mumbling to himself without pause.

Watching them rapidly lose their grip on reality, James broke into a cold sweat.

'P-please let the battle start soon.'

And this was the other reason; he was dealing with a walking time bomb. 

Every one of them had trained in Demonic Arts.

And the side effects of Demonic Arts grew fiercer the more unstable the mind became.

That aggression might prove useful when directed at enemies on a battlefield, but it would be a disaster if they snapped during the march.

James felt less like a commanding officer and more like a lion tamer trapped in a cage with starving demonic beasts.

He smiled on the outside, but every step felt like walking on thin ice.

After marching in this nerve-wracking state for some time, a low city wall finally came into view.

This was no Mazar-i-Sharif.

This was just a small city located along the route to their main destination.

The city was even smaller than Andkhoy.

Il-mok studied the walls and spoke. "Looks like the Empire has already occupied it."

"BWAHAHAHA!! Listen up, you dogs! Prepare for a siege!!"

The moment Dokgo Ryong issued the command, the rhythm of the war drums changed. The slow and steady tempo faded, replaced by a thundering and fast tempo that matched the soldiers’ paces.

"Glory to the Divine Cult!!"

The hymns picked up speed right along with it. The excitement and suffocating tension of impending war rapidly spread through the ranks.

James nervously glanced back at his pack of demonic cultists. They were now seconds away from going completely feral.

'Please. Hurry.'

Their psychotic symptoms were spiking so hard that James was legitimately terrified he was about to get ripped to shreds by his own men. 

James might hold a high rank, but he'd deliberately avoided training his Demonic Art to a high level due to his fear of the art’s side effects.

When they drew close enough to the walls, a figure shot skyward.

"The Grand Preceptor is making his move!! Behold his power!!"

Like a zookeeper throwing a steak to a pack of starving wolves, James desperately pointed at the sky to distract the almost feral pack of demonic cultists.

Their eyes followed his finger and found the Grand Preceptor airborne.

It was a scene straight out of a myth.

He sprinted through empty air like it was solid ground and drew his sword.

He did not use the World-Destroying Primordial Jade Palm this time. Blowing the wall apart entirely would make it impossible to defend later.

Besides, he didn't need it.

Slash!

Every time Il-mok swung the Ascension Sword through the air, dozens of Sword Qi blasts and clusters of Sword Force rained down on the soldiers manning the wall.

Down on the ground, the foreign rookies watched the carnage in silence.

From their perspective, it looked like a god of war had descended from the heavens to wipe the earth clean.

As they stared slack-jawed at the sky, a booming voice shattered their trance.

"Trying to hog all the fun, are you! ALL TROOPS!! ADVANCE!!"

Dokgo Ryong roared and drove his black horse toward the walls.

And then—

"RRAAAAGHHHH!!!"

The demonic cultists who had been pushed to the absolute brink of sanity exploded into motion. They launched themselves at full power with their lightness skill and charged toward the walls.

Some were literally foaming at the mouth, while others charged with psychotic smiles.

It was the moment the foreign legion trained in Demonic Arts revealed itself to the world.