Chapter 643: Even If Heaven Forsakes Me

After the red energy poured down from the sky, the battlefield below underwent a drastic change.

RUUUUMBLE!

The wide plain transforming into a volcanic wasteland full of jagged rocks and bizarre stone formations was only the beginning.

“With your blood, I shall open the heavens.”

The moment the Blood Demon’s voice rang out like a resounding echo, his fanatical followers—all practitioners of demonic arts—began howling like wolves calling to the moon.

““KYAAAAAAAH!””

““GAWOOOOOOO!””

Grotesque monsters unlike anything ever seen before materialized from beyond the mist, or clawed their way up through the earth’s crust.

“What in the world...!?”

“It’s the Blood Cult’s evil sorcery! They’re just illusions! Do not panic, Disciples!”

“T-They’re not illusions! Those monsters are real!”

“The sky! Look up at the sky!”

Amid the chaos, some of the martial artists looked up at the sky. Most of them bitterly regretted it.

RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!

As the night sky swirled in a colossal vortex, unfamiliar stars poured down their light.

““...!””

Even martial artists who had danced between life and death on the edge of a blade countless times were gripped by terror at the sight of that indescribable phenomenon.

Artist Pung Wol, who had been supporting the battlefield from the rear with the other sorcerers, sighed in a daze. “That’s... a Dimensional Fracture... Is that the Blood Demon’s goal...?”

He nearly lost consciousness on the spot, but managed to hold on to it by a thread. Still, his artist’s eyes captured the breathtaking hellscape—a sight he would never see again—on the canvas of his mind.

The overpowering stench of sulfur. The suffocating heat. The land saturated with viscous demonic qi.

A vision of hell enough to completely turn the tide of battle.

“Kuhahahaha! I’m overflowing with power!”

“This is a blessing bestowed by the Supreme Lord! Tear all the jianghu scum to shreds!”

“Kneel, all demons! The Blood Demon returns! He who shall cleanse the world with blood!”

Until now, the Orthodox-Unorthodox Alliance had been fighting well and holding the upper hand. Now, however, the balance shifted in favor of the Blood Cultists, who practiced demonic arts.

The Blood Cult began their aggressive advance.

“...At last, the Supreme Lord has returned to this land,” Ju Ilcheon announced, leading the charge. “The entire murim shall prostrate itself before the Blood Demon and beg for mercy!”

The demonic master who had reached the pinnacle of the Purple Lightning Demonic Art slaughtered the Orthodox-Unorthodox Alliance’s martial artists, purple light bursting from his eyes. Since most of the alliance’s supreme masters were tied up by the Apostles, dozens of Nine Sects One Gang masters had to throw themselves at him in waves just to hold him back.

Even then, they resembled moths flying into a flame, headed for certain doom.

“Kuhahaha! How utterly pathetic!”

As the chaos on the battlefield spiraled toward its peak, few noticed that the Blood Cult’s Fourth Apostle had suddenly fled in the middle of a life-or-death battle.

“Bow Phantom, why did you just let him go?” So Jigwang asked, his eyes trailing after the man who had already vanished from sight. Without inner qi, all he could make out was the direction in which his opponent had disappeared.

The Blood Cult’s Fourth Apostle had literally turned tail and fled, and it wasn’t because he was losing. On the contrary, he was single-handedly overpowering the Unorthodox Alliance’s finest elites, breaking their limbs left and right... though surprisingly, very few had actually died.

Regardless, So Jigwang wasn’t really curious about why the Fourth Apostle had fled. He was more interested in the Bow Phantom’s response to the giant’s actions.

“Him running away seems like a stroke of luck for us, but... you just let an enemy who showed you his back walk away? That’s not like the Bow Phantom I know.”

The Soul Hunting Bow Phantom was a peerless master who had claimed a seat among the Ten Supremes with nothing but a single bow. Turning one’s back on her meant being prepared to have a hole punched in one’s body.

And yet, she did not draw her bowstring when the Blood Cult’s Apostle turned his back in a fight he was winning.

“Because he asked for help,” the Soul Hunting Bow Phantom replied, shrugging nonchalantly.

“...Help with what?”

The Soul Hunting Bow Phantom had trained her eyesight techniques to a level that put her among the very best of the Ten Supremes. Even in the heat of battle, she had not missed Sagon mouthing the words ‘Please help me.’

He didn’t speak, and I’m no master at reading lips... but it seemed like he had to go save someone. Throughout our entire battle, he never once tried to kill me. He just kept breaking my arrows one after another with a desperate look in his eyes. Right from the start of the fight.”

“Hmm...” So Jigwang crossed his arms and fell into deep thought.

He knew next to nothing about the Blood Cult’s Fourth Apostle. At the unorthodox gathering on Mount Heng, he had focused solely on his life-or-death duel with the Third Apostle.

But what if the Third Apostle had made the same request of me?

“I had almost reached it... Why must you drag me down again?”

So Jigwang recalled the enemy bladesman who had stared blankly for a moment at his own chest where he had been grazed.

“...I hope he manages to save them, then,” he finally said.

“I don’t care what he does. If it means we have one less enemy, that’s good enough for me,” the pragmatic Soul Hunting Bow Phantom snorted. Turning around, she barked an order at the Black Snake Alliance martial artists, who were catching their breath. “From now on, we’re backing up those floundering orthodox weaklings! If you’re done resting, move out!”

Under the influence of the Samsara Hell Annihilation Formation, the Blood Cultists grew even stronger, while monsters and Soulless that had appeared from nowhere joined the battle.

The Soul Hunting Bow Phantom and So Jigwang were among the few who strode through the battlefield unflinchingly. Having grown up in the Black Snake Alliance, they were no strangers to bloody battlefields.

“This is pretty gruesome. If hell came to the mortal world, would it look like this?” the Soul Hunting Bow Phantom sighed.