Early dawn.

Before the rooster had even crowed, with a ground-shaking roar, the assault began.

“Waaah! Blood-Under-Heaven!”

“Blood-Under-Heaven!”

“Slaughter the Central Plains curs!”

A red tide surged in, flooding the whole area.

The warriors of the Murim Alliance and the Central Plains martial world stood upon the temporary earthen rampart raised before the Beast Palace.

It was to use that as a bulwark and block the Blood Cult warriors pressing in.

Because Hwa-eun, serving as our scout, had already warned at dawn that the enemy’s movements were suspicious, we were able to respond swiftly.

Even though the Beast Palace’s bottle-necked inner entrance would have been far easier to defend against a large army, the reason we did not fall back inside was water.

It was the dry season now, not a time when the springs were abundant.

In particular, the spring inside the Beast Palace did not yield much; if everyone holed up inside to withstand a siege, it was obvious we would soon run short of water.

So we had to fight with the river at our side, no matter what.

Also, if everyone went inside, we wouldn’t be able to work in concert with the spirit creatures.

The largest of the spirit creatures was the turtle spirit.

That child could only move along the river or crawl on land at a slow pace, and the Beast Palace entrance was too narrow to bring him in.

Therefore, since the spirit creatures were mainly deployed around him to guard him, if everyone conducted a siege inside the Beast Palace, people and spirit creatures would have to fight separately.

That is, if the Blood Cult bastards seized the Beast Palace entrance.

—Thud-thud-thud-thud.

The Blood Cult’s advance rumbled, shaking the earth.

The Murim Alliance and Central Plains masters stared ahead from atop the rampart with tense faces.

When the narrowing distance between both sides had dwindled to about a hundred jang, 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

the Blood Cult’s advance halted, and a Blood Cult master at the fore, bearing a banner, shouted at the warriors:

“The Blood Demon is watching! We’ll crush this trifling Beast Palace and the combined forces of the Murim Alliance within half a day! Then we’ll invade the Central Plains at once!”

“Blood-Under-Heaven!”

Just then, when all around were roaring “Blood-Under-Heaven” in answer to his words—

—Swiish.

“Guhk!”

An arrow bored into the bastard’s neck, and he collapsed on the spot.

The area fell silent for an instant.

The Blood Cultists froze, staring at the dead Thousand-man Captain; the Murim Alliance froze, staring at Gungbong, who had loosed the arrow.

Zhuge Cheon shouted at once.

“Gungbong! Didn’t the Alliance Leader tell you to wait!”

“Ah, no. Soto had a bow leveled, so I thought she was about to shoot...”

A sulky excuse came back.

Even at a moment like this, he must have left it to Soto and taken it easy, not knowing what she was doing, and simply let an arrow fly.

As Zhuge Cheon pressed his forehead and shook his head,

the Murim Alliance Leader chuckled at Gungbong’s excuse and said:

“Since it’s come to this anyway, just punch a few more holes in their heads.”

“Yes, understood!”

Feigning innocence, Gungbong sent arrows flying with a perfectly calm face.

—Swiish! Swiish!

“Keugh. K-keugh.”

When a few more fell to the arrows that came in rapid succession, as if that were a signal, the Blood Cult bastards began to charge.

“Uwaaaaa!”

“Kill them!”

“How dare they!”

Fifty-odd jang, ten-odd jang—and at the very moment the Blood Cult warriors sprang upward toward their enemies before the rampart—

—Thunk! Thunk!

“Keugh.”

“Ggghh...”

The warriors in the front rank widened their eyes at the sudden happening.

Long bamboo spears were stuck in their abdomens, legs, waists, heads when they looked down.

There had certainly been nothing like bamboo spears anywhere on this rampart.

They had launched themselves atop the rampart using body-lightening arts, yet every man of the front rank was impaled on long bamboo spears, groaning.

But the warriors following behind did not know it.

Only the impaled men saw and felt it; to the eyes of those behind, there was still only the rampart.

To their eyes, it merely looked as if the men in front had vanished in an instant.

In the end, several were threaded on a single spear, and their weight snapped the spear; only after men crowded in, the vista rippled, and they realized something was wrong did it dawn on them.

—Tssssss—

Then, as the vista rippled, glittering powder veiled their sight.

—ShaaAAAAH—

With a scraping sound, a gale of silver powder slammed into them.

“Gyaaaah!”

“S-save me!”

As the powder battered them mercilessly like a storm, those caught in it began to scatter as chunks of flesh.

The vanguard vanished as they were.

Hundreds of the vanguard dissolved into blood scraps and were gone.

When a large red butterfly briefly appeared in the sky and then vanished, the Blood Cultists understood.

The rampart was much farther back.

Whatever it was, what they had first thought was the rampart was a field planted with bamboo spears.

It was surely some sorcery the Murim Alliance bastards had worked.

Most of the vanguard Blood Cultists were rabble levied in Dai Viet; aside from Hundred-man Captains or Thousand-man Captains, their knowledge of spirit creatures was meager, so they could not tell what in the world had happened.

“S-sorcery!”

“Beware their sorcery!”

They hesitated for a moment, but the sorcery was gone.

Now nothing stood in the way.

As the Blood Cult warriors smashed through the field of bamboo spears and swiftly reached the far-off rampart in view—

from the two holes where the bamboo spears had been smashed aside, something red and black poked its heads out and began belching red and black poisonous smoke.

“Cough, cough—Kyaaaagh!”

“M-my eyes!”

“My eyes!”

“C-can’t—breathe!”

Those who inhaled the red miasma turned blue in the face and collapsed with their breath cut off; those bathed in the black miasma could not open their eyes.

It wasn’t a toxin that stole lives, but the acrid fumes kept eyes from opening.

The things that had spewed the poison had already vanished back into the holes.

With a commotion breaking out from behind, the vanguard milled about, unable to vault up to the rampart.

Into that mess came arrows and little needles.

—Swiish.

“Guhk.”

“K-keugh.”

A few vaulted upward, but even if only a handful made it up, they were fodder for the Murim Alliance warriors.

Palms caved in abdomens till they burst; blades took heads.

“W-water! T-to the river!”

At that instant, among the middle ranks, the troops drenched in black smoke bolted south toward the river and leapt into the water.

—Swaaash!

Suddenly the river surged.

As the river churned, it began to swallow the warriors.

“S-save me!”

“Gglrrrbb.”

The warriors screamed and tried to crawl out, but one by one they were dragged down into the water and vanished.

The last warrior in red martial garb thrashed and struggled with all his might, but when even he was sucked under, the river calmed and began to flow again.

Three thousand of the Blood Cult’s vanguard—annihilated.

A roar burst from the Murim Alliance lines.

“Waaah!”

“Waaahhhhh!”

Because the spearhead had been blunted.

War is a contest of momentum, and having blunted the spearhead, the enemy’s morale would falter.

***

The three thousand shoved in at the front vanished as they were.

Sitting on a chair made of congealed women, watching that sight, the Blood Demon smiled with an expression of amusement.

It was amusing to see them resist.

Isn’t it amusing to watch creatures flail to live?

Just like sucking the blood of those who shriek “Spare me,” to thrash about to survive was a delightful spectacle.

Tapping fingers on the thigh of the woman serving as an armrest, the Blood Demon rummaged through the memories of the body he had taken.

And he recalled the memories of spirit creatures within those memories.

Was it called the Five Venoms Sect?

Those base curs who raised insects possessed a rather useful knack.

It was the ability to make spirit creatures out of ordinary bugs.

“Spirit creatures, eh. Interesting. While I slept, interesting things came to be. We have a few ourselves, do we not? Send them. We cannot only sit here and be hit.”

“Yes, Blood Demon, sir!”

At the Blood Demon’s command, something was dragged out from the rear of their camp and rushed toward the rampart.

—Thud-thud-thud-thud!

“Now then, entertain me.”

The Blood Demon sank his teeth into the neck of one of the chairs and drank blood, an ecstatic look upon his face.

***

At first, I thought they were cavalry.

Something from the Blood Cult camp was racing this way in a plume of dust, and because of the dust its form was hard to make out.

Since it was the dry season near the Beast Palace, dust billowed thick.

“Hwa-eun! Hwa-eun! Those aren’t cavalry! Something else is charging!”

The first to sense the wrongness was Gungbong.

Because he was training his sighting method for archery, Gungbong had very keen vision over the flats, and he quickly noticed the strangeness of whatever was bursting out from the Blood Cult formation.

At Gungbong’s shout, Hwa-eun shot into the sky on Mother Hoja.

Hwa-eun, who had the recon duty, checked from the air what was charging within the dust.

“Th-those are—!”

Kicking up dust and sprinting at high speed were venomous things she remembered.

Two Wind Scorpions.

If I remember So-ryong’s words, they weren’t actually scorpions but ground spiders, weren’t they?

Those gigantic Wind Scorpions we had seen in Qinghai were barreling this way.

Not one—two of them.

“They’re ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) Wind Scorpions!”

With Hwa-eun’s cry, the two Wind Scorpions, before we knew it, had broken through the place that had been the field of bamboo spears.

In an instant, they rammed the rampart.

—KWA-BOOM!

Screams burst amid the spray of dirt.

“Gyaaaah!”

“M-my leg—my leg!”

The dirt pile exploded and several were swept up in it.

The beasts burst out of the dust and lunged at the people around them, biting and tearing mercilessly.

Their speed was tremendous.

“F-fall back!”

“Fall back and form ranks!”

Commanders shouted to fall back and re-form, but when Wind Scorpions larger by several times than elephants rampaged, the martial artists, seized by terror, could not re-form ranks.

Even the troops in the rear were retreating.

A collapsed rampart and broken formation.

To restore the formation, one of the Three Sovereigns, Geolhwang, the Leg Demon So Su-ryeon, and Xintu Galjihong, the Human Bullet Train, charged in.

“What the hell are these things! Draw its gaze!”

“Got it!”

At So Su-ryeon’s shout, the fleet-footed Galjihong drew its attention, and Geolhwang and So Su-ryeon pincer-attacked one from both sides.

—Bang!

So Su-ryeon’s leg struck the thing’s flank, but what she felt was tough hide.

The dented body sprang back out at once.

“W-what is this!?”

—KWA-CRASH!

Geolhwang’s palm art struck its head, but the beast didn’t so much as flinch.

Hwa-eun, looking down from the sky with a grave face, spoke.

“It’s grown even stronger than the last one.”

Just then,

Mother Hoja, the mount Hwa-eun was riding, cried out.

“Hold tight, child. I must go.”

“Yes!”

—Buuung!

Mother Hoja shot down like an arrow.

Right above the Wind Scorpion, Mother Hoja spread her wings wide.

A whoomph of wind blasted outward, and her body halted in midair.

—Buuuuung.

When her wings beat again, Mother Hoja began to move backward.

Her rump drew long and leveled, charged with a sharp sting.

From that, Hwa-eun’s body, seated on her back, was rocked sharply backward, and at the same time Mother Hoja’s sting stabbed down into the back of the Wind Scorpion whose gaze Geolhwang, So Su-ryeon, and Galjihong were drawing.

At the very instant the enraged beast was about to bite Galjihong with razor fangs,

Mother Hoja’s pointed sting slid in with a thunk at the back of the Wind Scorpion’s head and slid out.

—Tunk.

She darted back and pricked the nape lightly, and the thing whipped around, slashing its fangs madly.

But that was the end.

Its chattering fangs halted after a few clicks, its body shuddered, and it collapsed as it was.

—Kkiiiiiii.

The beast’s shriek rang out.

In the meantime, one had smashed the formation and bounded inward, but at the very moment it reached a great boulder—

—Thoom!

A gigantic venomous spike made of rock dropped onto the beast’s head.

It wasn’t a fake scorpion; the thing that moved on our side was a real scorpion.

—KWAJIK!

Its head shattered right there.

“Waaah!”

“Waaah!”

At the sight, everyone let out another cheer—but beyond the broken rampart the Wind Scorpions had smashed, the Blood Cult warriors began to surge in.