According to the original plan, the three armies were to advance swiftly along their assigned routes, liberating every city they passed on the way down to the southernmost edge of the Daewol Kingdom. The goal was to seize key cities one after another, push the Blood Cult forces to the far south, and annihilate them there in a final decisive battle.

But about eight days later, an urgent messenger arrived for each route—bringing word that the plan had changed.

“They say enemy troops have gathered in the capital?”

“Yes! Reports claim roughly ten thousand are stationed there, forming a solid line of defense.”

Ahead of every column, scouts skilled in light footwork and stealth had been reconnoitering. Yet from their reports came shocking news—the capital, once said to be empty, now held ten thousand men.

The message came from the strategist Zhuge Hu, chief tactician of this campaign. As a descendant of the famed Zhuge Wuhou and a trusted scion of the Zhuge family, he was granted overall command. He ordered all three armies to converge one day’s march from the capital.

Each moved swiftly to obey. Among them, the Second Army reached the assembly point first. The Third had the farthest distance to travel, and the First was moving along the coast, but the Second—advancing over flat land and the shortest path—arrived ahead of schedule.

There was another reason: the Second Army did not know it, but both the First and Third were being delayed by Blood Cult elders and Five Venoms Hall masters who had appeared to block their way.

“No contact from the others yet?”

“It seems we’re the first to arrive.”

“Then set up camp here.”

“Yes, sir!”

The other forces had not yet arrived, so the Second Army followed orders and built their encampment one day’s march from the Daewol capital. Supplies were plentiful. The Daewol cities were all but empty, as if their people had vanished, so every liberated city yielded overflowing granaries. Behind the Second Army, carts piled high with grain stretched endlessly.

The surviving citizens of Daewol, rescued by the soldiers, volunteered to assist with supply transport. Having witnessed their parents, children, and loved ones slaughtered before their eyes, helping the Central Plains army was the only form of revenge left to them.

That night, the first after the camp was raised, the attack came.

“Ambush! We’re under attack!”

From one side of the camp, cries erupted. The Second Army clashed with Blood Cult assassins in the dark.

“The Blood Cult’s attacking!”

“Light the torches! Stay calm and hold your lines!”

When dawn broke, they discovered that three hundred men had fallen. It was not a light loss, but not disastrous either. In fact, for a sudden night raid, they had withstood it well, and inflicted greater casualties in return. More than a thousand enemy heads lay scattered where ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) the fighting had taken place.

The Tang Clan’s poison supplies had played a key role. Even amid the chaos, their toxins drained the inner energy of the Blood Cult warriors, letting the soldiers cut them down with ease.

The ambushes continued for three nights. By the third, the defenders were ready, suffering almost no losses and slaying another five hundred foes. The Blood Cult’s repeated night raids had failed completely.

Yet on the morning after the third attack, General Gyu-baek of the Second Army was seething.

Bang!

“Those verminous bastards!”

The attacks themselves weren’t the issue. They’d taken precautions, and by the third night they had almost no casualties—nearly two thousand enemies slain in three days.

But one of his officers—his own adjutant—had lost an arm in the last raid.

That adjutant was his son.

“Zhongnan Sword Emperor! How long are we supposed to sit and wait!? My men keep taking wounds from these cowardly ambushes!”

“It’s the strategist’s order. What choice do we have?”

“They number barely ten thousand! In three days of fighting, we’ve already cut down two thousand. We should strike now, before they can regroup! Who knows how many reinforcements they have behind them?”

“But there may be a Blood Fiend among them...”

“That’s exactly why we shouldn’t delay! The longer we wait, the stronger that Blood Fiend becomes, or so they say. And you would give it time?”

Blinded by rage over his son’s injury, General Gyu-baek ignored every caution. He gave up trying to persuade the Sword Emperor and instead gathered his own seventeen thousand five hundred men.

“Slaughter those vile scum!”

The Second Army marched straight for the Daewol capital.

***

Boom!

The Imperial Guard shattered the north gate of the Daewol capital in a single strike.

Unable to stand by and see more soldiers die, the Zhongnan Sword Emperor himself had joined the assault to minimize losses.

Through the ruined gate poured wave after wave of troops, cutting down the fleeing cultists.

When Gyu-baek and the Sword Emperor reached the steps of the royal palace, a man in crimson robes—red as blood—appeared above them.

“Ha ha ha! Well, well... who do we have here? The great Zhongnan Sword Emperor himself!”

“The Blood Fiend...”

The Sword Emperor knew at once. The blood-red robes, the way every cultist fell prostrate before him—it could be no other.

“Blood Below Heaven!”

The chants of the cultists shook the air.

The Sword Emperor quickly summoned the nearby masters, forming a line to block the Fiend. He intended to urge Gyu-baek to retreat; with the two Flower Realm experts and ten top-level masters, they could hold the Fiend long enough to withdraw.

That was the entire reason for such an arrangement—should a Current Realm Blood Fiend appear, they could buy time to preserve the army.

Just as the Sword Emperor was about to send a sound transmission, he hesitated.

The Fiend’s aura didn’t match the tales. The strength he felt was nowhere near the Current Realm. At best, Equal Stage—perhaps even lower.

'Why?'

There was only one answer: the Fiend had not absorbed enough blood—he was incomplete.

Realizing this, the Sword Emperor barked a sharp order to the nearby masters and lunged. If the Fiend wasn’t whole, his sword could still kill him; once the leader fell, the cult would collapse.

At the palace gates, the Blood Cult elders and Fiend clashed with the Sword Emperor and the Imperial Guard’s masters.

“Strike! He’s not complete! End this cursed bloodline here!”

With his shout, battle erupted again.

Blood splashed, limbs flew. The fight raged on until the sun stood high overhead.

After one thousand two hundred fifty exchanges—

Thunk.

As the Sword Emperor predicted, the Blood Fiend’s head flew from his shoulders and rolled down the palace steps. Even headless, the Fiend remained standing.

“Waaahhh!”

A victorious roar rose from the soldiers and martial artists. But from among the cultists, a woman screamed,

“Fools! The Blood Fiend cannot die by the sword! He will rise again!”

The Sword Emperor sneered.

“He was hardly worthy of the name ‘Blood Fiend.’ Could such a man live without a head?”

Only a true Current Realm master, with regenerative power, could earn that title. The fact that one below that level had fallen to him was proof enough.

Then the corpse twitched.

At first, he thought it a death spasm—any body could move briefly after beheading. But as he watched, horror spread across the Sword Emperor’s face.

A vast, oppressive power surged from the stump of the neck—an energy he had never felt before.

Stunned, he swung his sword, but the headless corpse caught the blade in a crimson hand.

Crunch.

That blood-red grip—he recognized it. The Crimson Hand Poison Grip, a forbidden Blood Cult technique thought lost.

“Everyone, run!”

His voice, amplified with inner power, rang across the field—

but before anyone could react—

Shhhk.

From the severed neck, a new head began to grow.

Not the same face as before, but a woman’s—long-haired, red-eyed, lips the color of fresh blood.

Her crimson eyes gleamed with wicked light.

“Ah... finally, it’s mine. You did well, drugging this body’s original host and pushing him into battle for me.”

An enormous surge of energy burst from her body.

BOOOOM!

Every drop of spilled blood on the ground rose as if alive, surging outward like a crimson tide, sweeping everything away.

***

When I opened my eyes, it was night. My legs, still folded in meditation, ached with stiffness. My stomach growled in protest.

As I stirred, Hongbi immediately called out.

“So-ryong!”

“Hey. How long has it been?”

His tone carried shock—maybe he still hadn’t recovered from the inner world. But then Cheong-yu Sojeo ran up, her voice trembling.

“So-ryong!”

I turned; her eyes were brimming with tears. A bit too emotional just for coming back from an inner realm.

Then she said something unbelievable.

“So-ryong, contact Hwa-eun right now. Fifteen days have passed.”

“What!? Fifteen days!?”

So opening the Fifth Gate had taken far longer than expected. Even with my improved cultivation, I’d never spent this long inside before. But it seemed unlocking the final gate required it.

Panicking, I reached out through the shared channel.

“Hwa-eun! Hye-rin! Ji-ryeon!”

When I’d entered the inner world, the group link must have gone silent; except for those with telepathy, none of us could communicate.

Fifteen days—nearly a full month had passed since the allied army began its campaign against the Blood Cult. When I entered, it had been ten days after they crossed the border.

If a month had passed, who knew what had happened by now? Judging by my wives’ voices, things weren’t utterly ruined, but my heart still pounded.

“What about the Blood Cult? What’s happening!?”

Praying nothing disastrous had occurred, I asked—and froze at the reply.

“So-ryong, don’t panic. The Zhongnan Sword Emperor... fell in battle at the Daewol capital.”

“What!?”

The Sword Emperor—strongest of the Second Army, one of the Three Great Emperors, the greatest sword in the Central Plains—dead?

Before I could recover, another voice spoke, graver still.

“The Second Army’s twenty thousand men fell with him. The Blood Cult used a dark ritual to raise a force of one hundred and fifty thousand. They’re sweeping toward the Central Plains border even now.”

It was the worst possible news.