Chapter 1962 - Return of The Mount Hua Sect

Chapter 1962. Let’s Die. Mount Hua. (2)

The pressure was different.

He’d known that from the beginning. Hadn’t he already experienced it in the North Sea and in Hangzhou? It was just that.......

“Keuaaaaaaaah!”

Jo Geol, who had blocked a Demonic Cultist’s claws with his sword, unconsciously clenched his teeth.

‘Something…..’

As he tried to push his enemy back, Jo Geol suddenly sensed danger and launched his body backward. The spot where he had been standing was instantly covered in pitch-black demonic qi.

Jo Geol pointed his sword straight ahead. It wasn’t an action with any particular intention behind it. Instinct, or perhaps something closer to habit. If one avoided an opponent’s attack while simultaneously pointing a sword at them, the opponent would first hesitate to pursue.

A natural sword style that Jo Geol had carved into his body through countless fights and experiences.

Anyone who was human had no choice but to be wary of a sword pointed at them. It was an instinct unrelated to the level of one’s martial ability.

But now, the sword style Jo Geol had built up through countless battles meant nothing against the Demonic Cultists.

“Kaaaaaaaaah!”

One Demonic Cultist charged straight at him. Without a moment’s hesitation, without even the slightest trace of wariness.

Bewilderment rose in Jo Geol’s eyes.

The enemy was running toward exactly where he wanted him to come. If he thrust his sword now, he could pierce him.

Then it should’ve been a good thing. So why was he this bewildered?

“Keuk!”

Jo Geol couldn’t thrust his sword and instead flung his body backward again.

In that instant, the black claws of the Demonic Cultist dug into his exposed chest.

Seogeok!

At that moment, Tang Soso’s sword, flying in like a bolt of lightning, lodged itself in the Demonic Cultist’s neck.

Kwaduk!

The Demonic Cultist, whose neck had been pierced halfway through, staggered and stepped backward. But only for a moment. Soon, he charged toward Jo Geol again with another grotesque scream.

Puuuuuuuk!

What stopped that Demonic Cultist was Hye Yeon’s fist, which came flying through the air without hesitation.

“Siju.”

“.......”

Jo Geol silently bit his lower lip. It wasn’t even a situation serious enough to make him this flustered, yet he couldn’t understand himself for shrinking back this much.

“Damn it!”

He knew that they charged forward without regard for their own lives. He knew they wouldn’t retreat from ordinary wounds. He even knew that what ruled them wasn’t reason, but a fanaticism he could never understand.

But…..

Jo Geol’s sword shot out irritably.

The pressure carried by the name Demonic Cult meant nothing now. He hadn’t been overwhelmed by the Demonic Cult itself. He had simply been unable to handle a single Demonic Cultist standing before his eyes.

His insides roiled like lava. Unrefined anger wrapped around his sword and poured out wildly like flames that had only just begun to burn.

Jo Geol’s sword shadow was sucked into the Demonic Cultists, black as pitch. Faced with the sight, Jo Geol unconsciously clenched his teeth.

Kwaddeuk! Kwaduk!

The sword pierced the enemy’s body without falsehood. The sensation was so tough and solid that it was hard to believe he was piercing through a human body. It felt like trying to stab through layer upon layer of tanned leather with an awl.

It gets through.

This sensation, which had given him nothing but despair in Hangzhou in the past. No, this very sensation, which he had desperately tried to cover over by squeezing out composure so that he wouldn’t be swallowed by despair, now came to him in a completely different way.

His sword was piercing the Demonic Cultists. As though proving that the time he had accumulated hadn’t been in vain.

“Kuhaaaaaaaah!”

The Demonic Cultists whose bodies had been pierced charged toward Jo Geol as though scrambling over one another to kill him, spraying streams of blood from their eyes.

Spattering blood that was less like flowing and more like something thick and viscous, stretching as it fell.

Jo Geol pierced through the Demonic Cultists once again. There was no carelessness to be found in a single attack, then another. No wasted movement either.

And yet his feet kept retreating, hesitating backward.

He couldn’t advance. He couldn’t go forward. He could feel a pressure so great that if he took even one more step forward, his body would be torn to pieces. With things like this, even Jo Geol of all people had no choice but to retreat.

“Geol-ah!”

Yoon Jong desperately thrust his sword out to support Jo Geol. Yoo Iseol and Tang Soso’s swords also cut mercilessly through the charging Demonic Cultists, spewing red plum blossom sword qi.

“Sahyung!”

“Huuk…..”

Jo Geol exhaled a rough breath. His face was already drenched in sweat. He fixed his wavering gaze forward once more.

“Kuhaaaaaah!”

A Demonic Cultist was howling. Like evil spirits howling in the underworld. Watching the scene with his expression stiffened to the utmost, Jo Geol muttered as though groaning.

“.....Different.”

“What?”

“.....Something’s different. Those fucking bastards.”

“What are you talking about? We’ve already fought Demonic Cultists before.”

“Exactly!”

Jo Geol shouted as though vomiting the words out.

“I don’t know what it is, but I’m telling you, they’re different from the bastards we knew!”

The tip of Jo Geol’s sword trembled slightly. But everyone knew. That trembling had absolutely nothing to do with fear.

They were Demonic Cultists all the same. Even just looking at the ominous demonic qi they used, there was no denying it. And yet, they could clearly feel it. There was definitely a difference between these people and the Demonic Cultists they had encountered before.

A little more viscous, a little more…..

“Like monsters.”

At Tang Soso’s words, Baek Cheon subtly furrowed his brow.

“Rather than being like monsters, it might be more accurate to say they don’t seem human.”

Something was missing from them, something that ought to belong to a human being. Far more than in the Demonic Cultists they had encountered before.

Those Cultists had seemed, from the beginning, like a kind who had filled the parts they ought to possess as humans with something else. But these people had gone beyond that. It was enough to make one wonder whether the condition of being human could even be said to apply to them.

“Kaha!”

Watching the Demonic Cultists roar roughly as though boiling over, Baek Cheon thought.

What was different? What, exactly?

“Barren land.”

At the voice that came to them, their gazes moved of their own accord. Yoo Iseol had lowered her sword and was murmuring as she looked at the Demonic Cultists.

“They kept losing it. Continuously. There.”

Baek Cheon’s shoulders twitched slightly.

‘So that’s why..…?’

The ones who had attacked Hangzhou in the past had been those who could no longer endure that barren land. Those who could no longer bear it and headed for the forbidden land of the Central Plains.

But the Demonic Cultists before them were different. They had chosen to endure to the very end in that land. From the moment the Heavenly Demon fell until now, they had simply endured that long, long stretch of time.

‘An absurdly long time.’

Of course, not all of them could have lived for more than a hundred years. But what difference did that make? A life in which, from the moment they were born until now, they were permitted nothing but to hold their breath and endure…..

‘That’s not something an ordinary person can bear.’

Their beginning may have been ordinary, but to endure the entire process, something that couldn’t even be fully expressed by the word asceticism, they must have had to choose.

“Overcome it….. or throw it away.”

A chill suddenly ran down his spine.

It was painfully obvious what these people had chosen. Because overcoming it wasn’t something that could be accomplished simply through a choice.

‘Did they follow the Heavenly Demon even to the point of throwing themselves away like that?’

Even to the point of becoming things whose appearance could no longer be treated as human? Just what was the Heavenly Demon to them?

“.....Damn.”

It felt as though his insides were turning over. An inexplicable nausea and a terrible sense of disgust filled him.

It wasn’t because of malice toward the Demonic Cult, the ‘enemy’. This was something much closer to a far more overt and vivid anger.

‘Was this why Cheong Myeong went into such a fit whenever he even heard the name Demonic Cult?’

A Taoist pursues the Tao. But the Way each person pursues is different. No matter how much they train in the same sect and undergo the same cultivation, it means that the point they seek to reach is different for each of them.

Perhaps that was why Baek Cheon couldn’t understand it. More than being incomprehensible, it was so unpleasant that it made him feel sick.

Could a person really follow some vague something with such fervor, even at the cost of losing themselves? Was that simply what humans were like?

And the result of that, the result of abusing themselves so terribly…..

“Is this all it amounts to? Becoming monsters like these?”

The hand gripping the sword tightened as hard as it could. A surge of rage came rushing in until his mind seemed to turn white.

“I don’t know how this is going to sound......”

Baek Cheon clenched his teeth with all his strength.

“But I don’t think we can ever lose to those fucking dog-like things.”

A rare, harsh curse slipped from Baek Cheon’s mouth.

Even so, not a single person was surprised. Everyone’s insides were boiling just the same.

Only after facing them did they understand. It felt as though they were finally confronting the very source of the ominous feeling that had continued to lurk in the back of their minds.

Not the Heavenly Demon. The Demonic Cult.

Yes, the Demonic Cult. They deny them simply by their existence.

Unlike them, who had devoted their entire lives to surpassing themselves, these people had thrown their lives away in complete submission. Unlike them, who willingly chose hardship in order to realize things for themselves, these people endured suffering solely to follow those who were superior.

The result was the sight now before their eyes.

Beings who could not even uphold what must be upheld as human beings, doing nothing but howl.

If they were right, then what did the lives of the Mount Hua disciples become?

They could not be right. They must not be right. No, a way of life like that must not be acknowledged. It must not exist.

Baek Cheon’s sword trembled violently.

He poured into his sword all the energy he could, filled with a revulsion and nausea that words could not fully express. He unleashed a sword far more violent than usual.

The Demonic Cultists charging toward Baek Cheon were cut apart by that sword, spraying blood in every direction.

“Kahaaaaaaaaa!”

The Demonic Cultists howled. Out of pain? Or out of rage?

He couldn’t know. They no longer spoke in human language, nor did they express themselves in a human way. A beast would have been easier to understand.

‘How far do they intend to fall?’

Even more incomprehensible was the fact that they had chosen that path themselves.

Why? Why?

The Demonic Cultists were strong. It was true that demonic arts could make a person strong with ease, but even so, martial arts were ultimately martial arts. The martial prowess they had built up meant that they had achieved it through effort.

And yet.....

“Is this the only ending you chose with all that strength, you fucking bastards!”

Baek Cheon, bursting with pent-up anguish, surged forward and thrust out his sword.

Kaaaaang!

But that sword was blocked by a dao that suddenly shot out from somewhere. Baek Cheon widened his eyes slightly in surprise.

A dao?

Among the Demonic Cultists.....

“Don’t babble so smugly.”

“.....You?”

The man who crossed blades with Baek Cheon using a dao had his eyes half-covered by his fallen bangs, making for a striking appearance. Twisting his darkened lips, the man growled.

“You bastards who don’t know even a single thing about us..... when you run your mouths like that, it turns my insides.”

Kwaang!

Then, Baek Cheon’s body was violently blasted backward like a cannonball.

“Sasuk!”

Jo Geol and Yoon Jong reflexively caught Baek Cheon from behind.

Baek Cheon remained frozen in the stance in which he held his sword, staring at the man standing before him.

Hadn’t he said that to endure the impossibly long and grueling years in that barren land, they must have had to choose one of two things?

One was..... yes. To throw it away, like those ordinary Demonic Cultists.

And the other?

“…..The one who surpassed it, then.”

“You guys are unlucky.”

The man who raised his great dao grinned.

“Because I really fucking hate Taoists.”

A vivid blue light glimmered in Baek Cheon’s eyes.

Next Chapter

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