So? Did Someone Force You to Become the Heavenly Demon?
Chapter 440 : Awe (2)While the four maids and Jong-ri Chu held off the Mierqi warriors, and Ohalak and James trembled where they stood, Il-mok simply kept swinging his sword as he marched forward.
No one could block his sword strikes wreathed in Sword Force. Whenever the warriors nearby flinched back in fear, Il-mok happily swung his sword in a wide arc.
Each time he did, the Sword Force coiled around his blade stretched out like ribbons and swept through the area like a whip. A single strike like that could wipe out five or six warriors at once.
After slaughtering his way through a stretch of Mierqi warriors and carving out a bloody path, Il-mok soon managed to reach the spot where Jong-ri Chu and the others were.
"Good work, everyone."
He said it with a faint smile, clearly trying to put the people there at ease. Then he turned right back around to face the way he'd come.
A perfectly straight path had been carved through the horde. It was a path stained red with the blood Il-mok had spilled to make it. But because he'd carved through in one direction, there were far more enemies he'd left alive than dead behind him.
And now hundreds of surviving warriors had formed an encirclement around Il-mok and his group.
The only reason they weren't charging in already was that they'd been stunned by the sheer absurdity of his strength.
That's when Namguru's roar tore across the battlefield.
"Spread out and surround them! Wipe them out!"
As expected of the elite warriors who had conquered the northern steppes.
The moment Namguru's order rang out, the Mierqi warriors moved with impeccable discipline even while controlling their horses.
Though Il-mok didn't speak a word of their language, one look at their shifting formation told him everything he needed to know.
He immediately swept his sword outward.
Slash!
A burst of Sword Force shot out along his blade and tore through the bodies of the retreating Mierqi warriors, and the sound of flesh being shredded rang out one after another.
Taking their cue from Il-mok, the rest of the group noticed the Mierqi forces starting to scatter and unleashed their own martial arts to strike them down.
That cut down a few dozen more warriors, but the mounted Mierqi warriors managed to pull back to a distance of over a hundred meters in the meantime.
Right after that, the nomadic warriors began doing what they were famous for.
Mounted archery.
They formed a wide circle around Il-mok's group and rained arrows down from horseback.
To make matters worse, their kiting tactics were flawless. If Il-mok and the others charged forward, the vanguard would simply pull their horses back, while the archers on their flanks and rear would rapidly close the distance, raining arrows into their backs.
Clang!
After swatting a barrage of arrows out of the sky with the Ascension Sword, Il-mok clicked his tongue in annoyance and suddenly hurled his blade like a javelin straight at a Mierqi warrior ahead of him.
Although it was straight ahead, the target was easily over thirty meters away from him.
Surging with Il-mok's internal energy, the Ascension Sword crossed the gap at a terrifying speed.
"Hruk!"
Startled, the Mierqi warrior twisted his body in an acrobatic maneuver on his horse. He locked his legs around the horse's body to keep himself anchored, then bent his upper body almost completely sideways to basically hang off the horse's flank.
The warrior believed that should be more than enough to dodge, and his face had just settled into relief when the Ascension Sword suddenly veered off course and went straight to his exposed neck.
"!?"
Slick!
After slicing through the Mierqi warrior's neck, the Ascension Sword arced through the air and changed direction again to look for a new prey.
Il-mok kept his left hand moving with the Hand-Controlled Sword to effortlessly snipe the cavalrymen out of their saddles.
"Loose your arrows!"
"Kill that monster!!"
Dozens of arrows came raining down on Il-mok all at once.
But not a single one touched him.
Jin Hayeon and Hyeokryeon Seon-ah had moved up beside him while he was busy keeping the sword aloft, and they used their Demonic Arts to knock every arrow out of the air.
With the two of them covering him, Il-mok kept his fingers moving and continued slaughtering Mierqi warriors with the Hand-Controlled Sword.
And the Ascension Sword wasn't the only thing giving the Mierqi warriors trouble.
SWISH!
Thwack!
Every time that sharp whistling sound rang out, another Mierqi warrior dropped from his horse and rolled across the ground.
And every fallen warrior had an arrow buried in their vital spot.
It was the handiwork of Jeong Hyeon.
Guarded by Ju Seo-yeon, Jong-ri Chu, and five Heavenly Demon Divine Cult warriors who'd come with Il-mok, she kept firing arrow after arrow without rest.
"Hiiik!"
"P-please spare us!"
"D-Don't cling to me!!"
All while bickering with Ohalak and James, who were scared out of their minds by the constant rain of arrows from the sky.
While Jeong Hyeon's arrows and Il-mok's Ascension Sword kept the warriors steadily dropping, Namguru could do nothing but grit his teeth so hard they nearly cracked.
He kept nocking arrow after arrow as he glared murderously at Il-mok’s group.
He never once let the word retreat leave his mouth since he believed that victory would still be theirs despite their numbers dwindling fast.
"Their internal energy and arrows aren't infinite!! Push them a little harder!"
If the glory of heavy cavalry lay in devastating charges that shattered enemy lines, the essence of nomadic warfare was the slow war of attrition.
And just as he'd predicted, the arrows in Jeong Hyeon's quiver were running low.
But there was no shortage of replacements lying around.
"P-Please pick up some arrows for me."
Thanks to the nomads' relentless volleys, thousands of usable arrows were now stuck in the dirt all around them.
"O-ones that aren't broken, please."
Heeding her polite request, Ju Seo-yeon and Jong-ri Chu shifted their priority and began picking intact arrows. The rest of the Divine Cult’s warriors follow suit.
But the moment they started walking toward Jeong Hyeon to hand them over, she nearly had a panic attack.
"J-just throw them, please."
With James and Ohalak already clinging to her, adding seven more people felt like she was going to genuinely suffer from a Qi Deviation.
"A-As you wish."
Flustered by her reaction, the Divine Cult’s warriors awkwardly backed away and began tossing the arrows to her from a distance.
Clang!
Naturally, they did this while effortlessly batting away the continuous rain of enemy arrows.
Whenever they had a spare moment, they started snatching the arrows straight out of the air instead of just deflecting them and then handing them over to Jeong Hyeon.
With an essentially unlimited supply of arrows now, Jeong Hyeon nocked each one she received and fired it back at the enemy.
For the first few shots, her aim was slightly off.
The weight and shape of these arrows were slightly different from the ones she normally used.
But her skill was still her skill. After a few shots, she found her rhythm again and was soon back to hitting everything she aimed at.
Far from running out of arrows, she somehow ended up with more than before, and Namguru cursed at the sight of her.
"Damn it..."
But what scared him even more than her was Il-mok.
'I was told that utilizing Sword Kinesis drains an unimaginable amount of internal energy. Does this monster possess a bottomless well of Qi...?'
The Khan he served was a master who'd reached a lofty level of cultivation himself, more than capable of wielding the Hand-Controlled Sword. But to sustain the technique for this long without collapsing was something he just couldn't wrap his head around.
And more than that.
'Why the hell does he keep calling the sword back just to stab the dead bodies?'
The young man executing the Hand-Controlled Sword would occasionally recall the sword he'd been controlling with his mind and then plunge it into the body of a nearby dead Mierqi warrior.
Namguru had no way of knowing that this was Il-mok’s method of replenishing his internal energy via absorbing Blood Qi.
Namguru looked back and forth between Jeong Hyeon, who showed no sign of running out of arrows, and Il-mok, who showed no sign of stopping running out of internal energy and gritted his teeth.
"These sons of bitches..."
He'd planned to wear the enemy down until their strength gave out. But before he knew it, the ground around them was already littered with the corpses of his own warriors.
Of the roughly thousand warriors they'd started with, only about a third remained.
Click.
He reached into his quiver and found it was nearly empty too.
"Retreat! Retreat! Scatter and head back to the tribe!"
Realizing there was no hope left, Namguru shouted the order and yanked his horse's reins around to flee.
With him leading the way, the surviving Mierqi warriors scattered in every direction on horseback, and the maids and Heavenly Demon Divine Cult warriors moved to chase after them.
"Stop."
They would have pursued them, had it not been for Il-mok's command.
"They've scattered in every direction, so chasing them down won't get us much. Better to rest up a bit and head back."
Though no one complained out loud, every single one of them was exhausted.
"Huu..."
The moment he let out a light breath, a foul smell hit his nose. The repulsive odor of bowels releasing from hundreds of corpses and the pungent smell of blood almost choked him.
Il-mok let out a soft sigh.
"Guess a bath's gonna have to wait until we're back at the border."
Ever since he achieved Transcendence, his crippling OCD had been cured. But just because he achieved Transcendence does not mean the habit he carried for years has vanished. Il-mok still preferred to stay clean.
Just then, James who'd been scared stiff this whole time overheard Il-mok's mutter and spoke.
"I-If you're looking for a place to wash, there's a lake near the way back. I-I heard the Mierqi guys talking about it when we passed by there."
As he said it, James pointed off into the distance.
Fortunately, it was in the direction of the border. Just a slight detour.
"Good to hear. There's no point sticking around here if we can't even rest properly, so let's head to that lake first. We will take a breather, then make our way back to the fortress."
With that, they mounted up and rode toward the lake James had pointed out.
While their original horses had all been killed in the crossfire, there were plenty of surviving horses from the Mierqi tribe.
After riding for about two hours, a vast expanse of water finally revealed itself on the horizon.
It’s far too big be called a lake.
"Huh."
Il-mok let out a short laugh, and then a question occurred to him.
"A body of water this massive, yet not a single nomadic tribe has set up camp along its shores. How peculiar."
Nomads lived and died by their access to food and water. Finding a reliable water source on the steppes usually meant an entire tribe would immediately put down roots there.
Hearing Il-mok's muttering, James quickly piped up with the intel he'd gathered while held captive.
"They said that the lake's water isn't drinkable, sir. It's a saltwater lake. They said drinking it will only dehydrate you faster and drive you mad."
Il-mok let out another short laugh.
'Not only is it big enough to look like the sea, but it's also actually salty like the sea too.'
It was a strange thing to hear, no matter how he looked at it.
"Tch. Guess we won't be quenching our thirst here. Let's just rinse off the blood and sweat and do some breathing exercises before heading back."
Following Il-mok's order, everyone efficiently divided their tasks.
Some plopped down right where they stood and began their breathing exercises, while others stood guard or washed up first instead of meditating.
Il-mok also made his way into the lake.
Maybe because winter was approaching, or maybe it was just how the lake always was, the water temperature felt like ice.
After lightly washing off the blood and sweat, Il-mok found a spot where the water only came up to his knees and sat down cross-legged.
'Might as well use this chance to build up a bit more Yin Qi.'
After months of fighting through the war, the Yang Qi in his middle dantian had built up considerably, thanks to the properties of the Ascension Sword.
His Yin Qi, on the other hand, hadn't really changed much from when he'd first started cultivating the White Hand Demonic Art.
He'd kept up his breathing exercises consistently, but there was no way to gain decades' worth of cultivation in just a few months.
"Heup..."
He took a deep breath in and out, repeating it several times as he absorbed the Yin Qi from the lake according to the principles of the White Hand Demonic Art.
It was then that his famously perceptive Qi perception picked up on something strange.
It was a faint sensation, like a tiny thread brushing against his skin.
Curious, Il-mok focused his senses and traced the flow of that energy.
Before long, his eyes snapped open and he stared intently at the center of the lake.
Surprisingly, that faint pulse of energy was coming from somewhere in the middle of the lake.
'If I can sense it from this far away...'
Once that thought crossed his mind, the corner of Il-mok's mouth curled up slightly.
'We have a jackpot.'
He couldn't tell what it was.
But one thing is for sure, it was holding onto a massive amount of Yin Qi.
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