The Blade-Wielding Legend

The cold wind felt like blades, painfully cutting into faces.

Huge snowfall, whipped up by the fierce wind, danced chaotically between heaven and earth, covering the mountains and fields near the Goryeo border with a thick, deathly silent layer of silver white.

The visibility was desperately low, difficult to discern shapes from over ten paces away.

A squad of twenty elite soldiers from Great Xuan struggled through the snow fields, their steps deep and shallow.

They wore heavy woolen cloaks, with regulation cotton armor beneath, Yanling Sabers or hand axes strapped to their waists, and new-style flintlock guns slung across their backs.

In the middle of the team, three cultivators clad in indigo or gray-brown Daoist robes stood out prominently. One holding a bronze compass, the needle trembling slightly; another cradled a peach wood sword, scanning the swirling snow around with sharp eyes; the third occasionally took out a few Copper Coins from the pouch at his waist, rubbing them in his palm for sensing.

This kind of equipment was born from bloody lessons learned.

The enemy’s elite small units frequently crossed the border for sneak attacks. Two patrol squads had already been ambushed before, with only remnants found, hence each team was now accompanied by Mystical Sect Cultivators.

"Damn this ghostly weather!"

The leading Hundred Households spat, his thick beard crusted with ice shards, "This damned place, it’s as if the day is like the underworld!"

"Isn’t it..."

Beside him, an old soldier tightened his collar, looking at those around, his voice muffled within his neck wrap, "Heard from Liu Mazi from the third camp, they explored five miles in with Daoist Wang the day before, now that’s eerie!"

Seeing others’ attention drawn, he tutted, "Midday, the sun like covered in oily paper, dim and chilling without a hint of warmth."

"Step by step, the shadow of comrades near just faded, not responding even to calls, reaching out to touch, icy cold! When you return to your senses, you’re just circling in place, the shadow returns, but half the soul is scared away!"

"Yin Yang inversion, a dead zone for the living!"

The young cultivator holding the peach wood sword sighed, named Zhao Ming, from the outer courtyard of Dragon and Tiger Mountain, "Ordinary soldiers entering, without protective spells, yang energy easily eroded by the pervasive Yin Sha Ghost Energy, mildly causing loss of clarity, severely... directly becoming nourishment for those ghostly things."

"Or worse, transformed by evil skills into new Ghost Soldiers."

As he spoke, he unconsciously touched the vermillion rope wrapped around his sword handle.

"Frustrating!" Another soldier angrily pounded the frozen chest armor, "Our cannons and firearms, on the battlefield, can blast those pirates and Rakshasas to tears, but in that ghost fog, only exerting three-tenths of their full strength!"

"Getting ambushed by those ghostly things, dying unclear and unjustly!"

The atmosphere among the team was both oppressive and agitated.

Everyone was simmering with rage, hoping those true experts back home would quickly break the "Yin Yang Inversion Array" enveloping the Korea Peninsula.

As soon as that damned evil realm breaks, the army’s iron hooves can charge straight in, using steel and gunpowder to sweep those evil spirits along with their masters clean!

"Silence!"

The cultivator holding the bronze compass suddenly shouted low, his expression abruptly changing.

The compass needle swayed frantically left and right, finally fixating tightly toward a sloping area ahead obscured by the snowstorm.

"Something’s not right! Sha Qi is gathering, something is approaching!"

"Watch the snow!"

Before the words finished, mutation abruptly arose!

Woo—!

A piercing, rhythmically cold wailing sound pierced through the snowstorm, seemingly able to freeze one’s very marrow.

The surrounding snowstorm instantly intensified tenfold!

The wind no longer blew sideways, but whirled, carrying densely packed snow like stones from all directions, compressing inwards, plunging the vision entirely into a chaotic white.

The biting cold was no longer just physically chilling, it felt like a sinister curse trying to seep into everyone’s bones.

"Form up! Back to back!" The experienced Centurion shouted hoarsely.

The soldiers reacted swiftly, quickly tightening formation, the gunners on the outskirts half-kneeled with raised guns, sword and shield soldiers held up their shields to protect the flanks, and the three cultivators immediately began mantra incantations, emitting a faint protective spiritual light.

Zhao Ming’s peach wood sword hummed and vibrated, its tip glowing faintly, demonstrating the Sword Qi Technique of Shushan True Sect.

However, it was still too late.

Just as the wind and snow obscured vision, and the cold penetrated perception, silent shadows "floated" up from the depths of the snow.

They did not break through the snow, more like "seeping" directly from the shadows of the frozen ground and accumulated snow.

Numbering a full three or forty!

These "human" creatures, their skin either showed a corpse-like pale gray, or a burn-like dark red, muscles knotted and bulging, nearly bursting their tattered armor.

On their faces grew twisted fangs, singular horns stained with foul blood jutted from their foreheads, devoid of any spark of life in their eyes, only a cloudy, brutish, and hungry dark red.

In their movements, carried both nonhuman stiffness and explosive rapidity, a nauseating, blood-soaked and earth-rotten cold Evil Qi wafted around.

Constructed by the Jianmu Organization using evil skills, these were "Ghost Soldiers," forcefully mutating living humans or killed soldiers!

They appeared too eerily, too suddenly, using the snowstorm and strange wailing as cover, they pounced upon the formation instantly.

Splurch! Ah—!

Screams erupted immediately.

An outer sword and shield soldier just raised his shield, but was torn apart, shield and all, by a giant claw from a Ghost Soldier covered in Bone Spikes, blood and viscera scattered everywhere.

Another gunner pulled the trigger, the lead bullet striking a blue-faced Ghost Soldier’s chest, only to spray dark blood and decayed flesh, yet unable to halt its charge, as its fangs promptly bite through his throat.

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