A sound like that rang in Heuk-am’s ear.
The cavern where he and the Heavenly Demon had been clashing was almost no different from ruins.
The Heavenly Demon, who had fulfilled his vow and gained ‘Transcendence’ temporarily, was overwhelmingly powerful.
Even with War God Chiyou as his opponent, he didn’t fall behind.
Moreover, the Heavenly Demon didn’t spare his body in the slightest. If a demon god manifested, would it look like that?
The Heavenly Demon, his entire body dyed pitch-black as he gave off a halo.
Perhaps the transcendence the Yellow Emperor and his lords once desired looked just like that.
The Heavenly Demon had attained transcendence by a completely different method from them.
Even if that transcendence could not last and was only temporary, it was dazzlingly beautiful.
How beautiful it was to clash with an opponent like that?
Was it his fighting instinct? Heuk-am felt like he wanted to fight the Heavenly Demon forever.
But Heuk-am stopped his hands.
He suddenly retreated back.
For Heuk-am, something more important than battle still remained.
Wasn’t that why he had endured uglily, repeating endless reincarnations until now?
“What are you doing?”
Of course, the Heavenly Demon had no intention of stopping the fight.
Wary of Heuk-am who had suddenly pulled back, he formed an Aura Qi Compression Sphere in his hand again.
But Heuk-am prepared neither defense nor attack.
He only stared at the Heavenly Demon with a strange look.
“It was a long wait.”
Something very absurd happened to the Heavenly Demon.
Heuk-am’s eyes unfocused, and something whitish rose out of the top of his head.
Chiyou’s soul, aged for thousands of years, held vast and powerful strength.
The Heavenly Demon watched the sight in shock.
Heuk-am’s soul that had slipped out flew toward the direction Yi-gang had headed.
The body left behind was truly nothing but a husk.
Heuk-am’s corpse fell.
The powerful strength was gone, and all that remained was a pitiful, shriveled body.
“Y-you bastard!”
The Heavenly Demon’s furious shout rang out hollowly.
The same thing did not happen only to Heuk-am.
Ha-jun, who had been fighting Mang-hon outside, went through something similar.
Ha-jun’s entire body was also stained pitch-black.
The hole that had been pierced through his back had grown to nearly the size of a bowl.
If he drew on Demonic Qi any more, it would reach a point of no return.
At the moment Ha-jun was about to go berserk and die.
Mang-hon’s movements, scattered into tens of thousands of insects, all stopped at once.
The insects flying in all directions hovered motionless in place.
Mang-hon’s face that had been floating in the middle.
That face broke into a bright smile.
“Done! Now it’s done!”
“Spouting nonsense all of a sudden…”
“Now, I can turn everything back!”
Mang-hon was self-willed to the very end, blurting only what he wanted to say.
Something whitish slipped out of him.
Mang-hon’s soul was sucked into the main base building like an arrow.
The insects that made up his body…
All lost life at once and fell to the ground.
It was like a rain of insects.
Ha-jun stared at the piled-up insects with an empty expression.
Likewise, at the place where Dam Hyun and Gwi-ryeong had been fighting.
Gwi-ryeong sharply lifted her head.
Of her countless snake tails, over half had been crushed or cut off.
It was the result Dam Hyun and Bodhidharma had achieved.
Dam Hyun used Nezha’s treasures beyond his own capacity.
In exchange, he suffered severe internal injuries, and his internal organs were already a complete wreck.
Dam Hyun’s complexion, as he wiped a nosebleed that simply wouldn’t stop, was paler than even Yi-gang’s.
“What the hell are you doing, you bastard!”
He shouted boldly at Gwi-ryeong, who had stopped dead.
But Gwi-ryeong glanced at Dam Hyun and only replied quietly.
“I’m sorry.”
“S-sorry?”
Then, like Heuk-am and Mang-hon, she collapsed.
The snake tails that had been writhing without end stiffened rigidly.
Gwi-ryeong died.
Because a soul visible to the naked eye slid out from the top of her head.
The soul left the cavern in an instant.
Dam Hyun stood still, trying to grasp what was happening.
Before him, Gwi-ryeong’s corpse, whom he had just been fighting, only rolled coldly across the floor.
“She said… sorry?”
Veins bulged on Dam Hyun’s forehead.
The treasures circling his whole body emitted light with a metallic ring.
All of Gwi-ryeong’s tails and even her body shattered to pieces in a single instant.
It meant she had lost the cursed power that, when she was alive, perfectly defended against the treasures.
Aimless anger and emptiness exploded, and Dam Hyun screamed until he felt his insides would burst.
The Cardinals.
Ancient lords who once ruled the Central Plains, the old humanity.
At the resurrected Yellow Emperor’s signal, they realized at last that the time had come.
Then without a shred of lingering attachment, they offered up their lives, their souls.
Something only those standing at the end of a long desire could do.
With no attachment to life at all.
Something only those who had nothing left but ancient longing and stubborn obsession could do.
The Yellow Emperor received the lords’ souls into his body.
All of them were those who had been loyal to him.
The soul of Dochul, Mang-hon, flowed in.
He was the cruelest and most selfish in his methods.
That was why, when he first took him in, he considered killing him.
The Yellow Emperor back then did not expect that he would remain by his side until the end, even after thousands of years.
Among the Four Perils, Taowu and Hundun had long ago given up reincarnation and dropped out.
The soul of Qiongqi, Gwi-ryeong, entered.
She served at the Yellow Emperor’s side as a strategist.
Without her, it would likely have been impossible to subdue Chiyou even on the plains of Zhuolu.
And lastly, the soul of Chiyou, Heuk-am, flowed into his body.
This time, it was a soul of overwhelming size even compared to before.
Chiyou was the Yellow Emperor’s archenemy.
How much of a blessing it is to have an archenemy?
He never imagined he could win over Chiyou without killing him.
Chiyou, once an archenemy, pushed past countless lords and remained by the Yellow Emperor’s side until the end.
Power filled his entire body.
If he swung his fist, mountains would crumble, and if he stomped his foot, a lake would form.
Even if heavenly gods like the Great Sage Equal to Heaven all rushed him, he could beat them to death in a single move.
But it was precious power that couldn’t be wasted on such paltry things.
This had to be used for his vow and the lords’ vow.
Hadn’t they sworn?
Those corpses, preserved and hardened under this building even now.
Dochul’s people.
Qiongqi’s people.
Chiyou’s people.
And the Yellow Emperor’s people.
Family.
Power that must be used for them.
The lords who offered their souls would want that too.
The Yellow Emperor slightly spread both hands.
A ring of light spread out centered on his body.
The earth began to tremble.
“What did you do?”
Yi-gang was within that range.
The Yellow Emperor remembered he had not killed Yi-gang yet.
“I took the souls of my subordinates.”
Since he had left him alive, he even answered him.
“Will you try it too?”
“You called yourselves Guardian Gate, didn’t you. Will you eat their souls, swell your power, and oppose me?”
“What nonsense are you spouting!”
Take the Azure Forest disciples’ souls to gain strength?
Yi-gang’s face twisted.
But the Yellow Emperor seemed to find that reaction strange.
“Isn’t that something you did as easily as eating. Even by what I remember, it’s been more than five times.”
“…Azure Forest did that?”
“Yes, because I taught them the method.”
Yi-gang couldn’t understand the Yellow Emperor’s words.
Seeing Yi-gang’s confused expression, the Yellow Emperor realized something too.
He did not know the Azure Forest Sect’s past and origins in detail.
So he told him.
“Guardian Gate was founded by lords who betrayed me and left.”
“Less than three hundred years after swearing to share the same cause, they split off. In the end, Chiyou hunted down and killed all those lords. That must be why the old story wasn’t passed down.”
This meant the Azure Forest Sect’s founders were the Yellow Emperor’s vassals.
Those like Mang-hon, Gwi-ryeong, and Heuk-am.
It was a shocking fact.
Even Yu Jeong-shin and even the late Forest Lord didn’t seem to know that fact.
“What great thing can the weak accomplish by gathering together. It’s remarkable you’ve survived until now, but…”
The Yellow Emperor brought his spread hands down as if clasping them together.
“It’s already too late.”
And from the Yellow Emperor’s hands, a ring of light spread out once more.
The entire building began to shake.
A thunderous roar rang out as if an earthquake had struck.
Geugeugeugeung-!
In that shock as if heaven and earth were flipping over, the Yellow Emperor recalled old days.
Nüwa, whom he had killed, spat out a curse.
Her curse came true.
When Nüwa died, the greatest of the great gods were enraged.
In particular, the fury of Taihao Fuxi, her husband and elder brother, truly seemed like it would bring the world down.
The sky collapsed and the earth split.
Hundreds of millions of people all died.
Only the strongest lords, including the Yellow Emperor, and their households survived by hiding.
They could do that because Nüwa’s head was still alive.
Because of that, Taihao Fuxi couldn’t sink the entire world beneath water.
The Yellow Emperor tightly sealed Nüwa’s head.
Using meteorite iron and the technology of Shang civilization, he made a box.
Sealing Box. The name, a box that seals a god, was given like that.
In the end, Taihao Fuxi couldn’t completely destroy the world and withdrew into his own abode.
But the sun didn’t rise, and the world froze.
The Divinity the Yellow Emperor and the lords had amassed was exhausted, and humanity’s extinction was right at hand.
After that, the Yellow Emperor and the lords prepared a grand plan.
A grand plan of salvation to endure thousands of years and save humanity again.
It was a horrific, desperate plan that required repeating reincarnation hundreds of times, but the lords stayed by the Yellow Emperor’s side.
At first, the number of lords was close to a hundred.
But what remained until the end, including the Yellow Emperor, was only four.
Many betrayed, and the rest gave up.
And those who remained until the end would surely receive their reward.
“What on earth are you plotting?”
Yi-gang barely managed to ask amid the shaking ground.
To Yi-gang, who couldn’t even keep his balance, the Yellow Emperor told him.
“I will use Nüwa’s Divinity to turn back time.”
That was the Yellow Emperor and the lords’ goal.
“To when I had not committed sin. To before the world fell. To when Shang had not collapsed. To when true humans still lived.”
Turn back time.
It was the only way to solve everything.
It was certainly possible.
If only he had thousands of years and the preparation.
Though the Sealing Box had been seized by traitors along the way, in the end the Yellow Emperor did it.
“All sin will vanish, and all death will be repaid purely.”
Instead of answering, Yi-gang fumbled with his hand.
It was a swordsman’s instinct to find his blade.
Of course, Shooting Star Fang was shattered to pieces and was gone.
Watching Yi-gang writhing like a worm, the Yellow Emperor spoke.
“Do not worry. You too, and your comrades outside, will not suffer pain, and your souls will be safe.”
And the ground rose.
By the Yellow Emperor’s overwhelming telekinesis, the entire floor was being torn up and lifted.
With the ceiling blocked, what would rising even do?
That wasn’t something to worry about.
The Yellow Emperor lightly waved his hand.
The building’s ceiling flew away.
The revealed stars in the night sky looked like they might pour down.
Beneath moonlight and starlight, Yi-gang and the Yellow Emperor rose higher and higher.
“You must have lived only here, in the Central Plains.”
Yi-gang looked down below.
In front of the cliff, the Azure Forest disciples and the Evil Cultists were staring up this way, blankly.
It was a sight that shocking.
“So you won’t know. How much of a hell this world is now.”
They rose so high that the humans on the ground looked like ants.
Caught in the cold wind, it was dizzying, like he might fall.
“I will show you. The world that has fallen into ruin.”
