novelraw Chapter 258 : A Father Knows His Child Best (1)
Chapter 258 : A Father Knows His Child Best (1)
Chapter 258: A Father Knows His Child Best (1)
A great calamity erupted.
This was not merely a simple disturbance of the martial world, nor a conflict among martial artists.
Overnight, an enormous catastrophe called the Blood Cult invaded the entire Central Plains.
They did not attack only the Orthodox Path, nor did they target only the Unorthodox Path.
Their objective was singular.
Not the annihilation of the martial world, but the absolute extermination of the entire Central Plains.
“Kill them all!!”
“Offer your deaths to our Lord!!”
“Sacrificial offerings! Embrace death with joy!!”
“P-Please, spare only our children……!!”
“Graaah! My arm……!”
“S-Spare me! Please spare me!!”
Villages burned to the ground, and cities were dyed in blood.
The screams of the people continued without end, and every desperate cry scattered into hollow echoes beneath a blood-dyed sky.
Beneath banners marked with the character for blood, the evil ghosts of the Blood Cult began slaughtering people indiscriminately.
Demonic lords who had once vanished after breaking the taboos of the martial world revealed themselves, and countless new Demonic Practitioners who followed them carried out frenzied massacres.
All they desired was a world drenched in blood.
Truly, the end of the mortal realm had begun.
The Imperial Court grasped the situation immediately.
The principle of non-interference was shattered at once, and the Emperor, furious, ordered the Royal Guards and the commanders to suppress the rebellion.
However, the Emperor paid dearly for underestimating his enemy.
The Blood Cult was massacring even the Imperial Army without hesitation.
In the end, when the commanding officer who led the Royal Guards met a gruesome death at the hands of the Blood Cult’s Vice Cult Leader, the Sword Demon, and his severed head was returned—
Only then did the Crown Prince, Juyudo, belatedly lead the Eastern Depot and step onto the front lines himself.
Thus, the military forces and the sects of each province formed an alliance and fought desperately to hold the line, but it was not enough.
The Demonic Practitioners of the Blood Cult possessed horrifying power that defied all human understanding.
It was not merely Demonic Arts they wielded.
Armed with countless bizarre and heretical spells bestowed by the Blood Demon, their power caused the Central Plains to collapse helplessly.
Yet the greatest reason such a catastrophic situation was unfolding lay elsewhere.
The Mount Hua Catastrophe.
The shockwaves of that earth-shattering event had yet to fade.
Mount Hua Sect, along with the entirety of Huayin County, was burned into ruins.
And the utterly unbelievable truth—that Yoo Jinhak, the Sword Emperor, the world’s strongest man of his era and the Murim Alliance Leader, had met a horrific death at the hands of the Blood Demon, master of the Blood Cult—struck the martial world like the collapse of the heavens themselves.
“The Alliance Leader…… the Alliance Leader has passed away? That’s a lie!”
“There’s no way!!”
“Kgh… Master Yoo…… how… how could this be……”
“Has heaven truly abandoned us……!”
The Orthodox Path martial artists screamed in disbelief, shedding bitter tears.
Having lost in an instant the beacon and hope of the Orthodox martial world, they could not help but fall into profound despair.
Moreover, the shockwaves spread not only through the Orthodox Path, but also into the Unorthodox Path.
Even the Unorthodox martial artists were seized by confusion and fear.
They too knew that Yoo Jinhak’s existence was the final counterweight maintaining balance in the martial world, and that because of the Mount Hua Catastrophe, everything within the martial world was being violently overturned.
“They say the Sect Leader of Mount Hua died and the sect was exterminated.”
“W-What? You mean True Person Myeong Iljin?”
“Yes. Apparently the Great Disciple barely escaped, leading the surviving remnants.”
“T-This is even worse than during the Demonic Cult era!”
Upon hearing of his master’s death only after the fact, Do Yecheon, the Great Disciple of Mount Hua, had no time to even process his grief.
The moment the Blood Demon departed, the Blood Cult’s hidden evil ghosts swarmed forth.
Leading the few remaining survivors of Mount Hua Sect, he embarked on a desperate flight toward the Tang Clan of Sichuan.
The Murim Alliance was thrown into complete upheaval.
Shaken by the loss of their Alliance Leader and burning with rage, they immediately declared vengeance—but could not carry it out.
Before they could even move, the Blood Cult launched a full-scale invasion of the Central Plains on all fronts.
Qinghai. Shanxi. Shaanxi.
From three directions, the Blood Cult’s Demonic Practitioners relentlessly carved their way into the heart of the Central Plains.
In Qinghai, Gale Sands, who had annihilated the Kunlun Sect, invaded Gansu.
The Demonic Practitioners of the North Sea Ice Palace crossed Shanxi and stained Hebei with blood.
Shaanxi, where Mount Hua had fallen, was seized entirely by the enemy.
As this collapse continued, the Murim Alliance hastily elected the Subduing Tiger Divine Physician of the Mount Emei Sect as the new Alliance Leader.
But there was no reversal.
Centered around her, the remaining sects of the Murim Alliance continued an exceedingly arduous struggle.
Despite the Subduing Tiger Divine Physician’s outstanding medical skill and strategic acumen, they were helpless before the devastating military power the Blood Cult had stockpiled.
The damage was not limited to the Murim Alliance alone.
In truth, the faction suffering the greatest losses was the White Path Union.
When Hebei was invaded, their allied clan, the Jinju Eon Clan, was the first to be exterminated.
The Peng Clan of Hebei, thanks to the swift judgment of its Young Clan Head Peng Daeho, saved most of its members and fled south.
They then joined forces in Henan to aid Shaolin Temple.
Though the Peng Clan belonged to the Murim Alliance and Shaolin belonged to the White Path Union, such cooperation was possible only because the White Path Union’s internal situation was in complete disarray.
“No—where in the world is the Union Leader at a time like this?!”
“Is it enough for him to stay safe in Anhui by himself? Such shamelessness!!”
“Namgung Myeong is unfit to be the Union Leader!!”
After the Clan Head of the Namgung Clan, Namgung Myeong, was caught up in the Mount Hua Catastrophe, news spread that he had gone into seclusion for unknown reasons.
As a result, the White Path Union lost its center and fell into turmoil.
The Unorthodox martial world was no different.
After it became known that Jin Yeonghwa of Moonlit Night, the leader of the Demonic Alliance, had also perished in the Mount Hua Catastrophe—
“From now on, I am the master of the Demonic Alliance!”
“Spout that nonsense again, you traitorous bastard!”
“Ridiculous! The only one who can inherit Moonlit Night’s will is me!”
Having lost its master, the Demonic Alliance plunged into even deeper chaos, fracturing again and again.
The remnants of the Five Evils sought to devour one another’s power, and the Demonic Alliance descended into uncontrollable disorder.
Amidst all this, the Blood Cult—the root of every calamity—mocked the chaos and leisurely trampled the Central Plains.
As everything in the martial world collapsed into utter turmoil, people cried out, desperately seeking a faint thread of hope.
And the one existence they longed for the most was singular.
A man from whom no news had come, for reasons unknown.
Tang Sewoon, the Dark Heaven Evil Sovereign.
It felt as though he was sinking endlessly into cold, sticky water. His breath was choked off, and pain surged through him as if every blood vessel in his body were about to burst.
A suffocating darkness engulfed everything.
Yet in an instant, that darkness transformed into the blood-dyed night sky of Huayin County.
And a single beam of light illuminated the fading figure of one man.
‘Alliance Leader—!!!’
Sewoon’s scream reverberated through the hollow darkness like an echo.
He reached out his hand, but there was nothing for his fingers to grasp.
Psssh!
Yoo Jinhak’s very existence crumbled into a handful of dust and scattered into empty space.
He could not catch it. He could not hold on to it.
That harrowing moment pressed down endlessly upon Sewoon’s consciousness.
What followed was the hollow gaze of the Blood Demon.
[“I wish to take your power at once.”]
[“But regrettably, you have not yet fully ripened.”]
The low voice burrowed into his mind.
Like a voice rising from a deep abyss, it denied Sewoon’s very existence.
Those words were not merely a declaration of defeat.
They overlapped with the horrific memories of that despair before regression, when he had lost everything and suffered beneath the Blood Demon’s feet.
Heh heh, you will fail!
Even if you regress like a miracle, nothing will change!
In the end, you will lose everything once again!
Countless voices whispered within the darkness.
Filled with mockery, contempt, and malice, the owner of those voices was none other than himself.
‘Ah…’
Yoo Jinhak’s final moments, which he had failed to protect, overlapped with the images of those who had sacrificed their lives for him before the regression.
The resentment of those he could not save swirled and seemed to tear Sewoon’s soul apart.
I changed nothing.
Then what have I been doing all this time?
That horrifying realization crushed Sewoon’s heart.
Kwarururung!!
The Golden Heaven Harmonizing Qi surged violently, as if it had gone berserk.
He had not deliberately drawn it out.
Overwhelming despair and self-reproach caused all the energy in his body to spiral out of control.
As if everything were about to collapse, Sewoon trembled violently amid unbearable agony.
Like a drowning man struggling desperately to break through the surface, he thrashed about, fighting to escape the darkness.
And finally, his eyes snapped open.
“Haaah! Haaah!”
“Sewoon!”
Sewoon’s ragged breathing filled the room.
His entire body was soaked with cold sweat, and his heart pounded like it had gone mad.
As he gasped for air and barely regained his senses, what came into view was his elder sister, Tang Serin, and the familiar interior of the room.
This was his own quarters attached to the Tang Clan’s annex.
‘Was it… a nightmare.’
He wanted to believe that.
But their deaths were reality.
The spike-like pain lodged in his chest grew even sharper.
At that moment, he felt a gentle warmth tightly holding his hand.
“Sewoon, are you all right?”
A low, warm voice.
Tang Serin’s complexion looked terrible, as if she had not slept properly.
Her reddened, bloodshot eyes were filled only with deep concern for Sewoon.
“You finally opened your eyes… thank goodness, truly.”
“I… I… I couldn’t stop it…”
Like someone who had gone a long time without water, Sewoon’s voice cracked.
The siblings embraced each other and shed hot tears together.
After some time, once he had calmed down a little, Sewoon asked Serin,
“Elder Sister, how much time has passed?”
“…More than ten days. Since Huayin County… since the battle with him.”
Ten days.
At that short phrase, Sewoon felt as if his heart dropped once more.
“Master Do gathered you up and brought you here.”
“…!”
At the mention that Do Yecheon had come here, Sewoon’s expression stiffened.
What must have happened afterward unfolded in his mind all at once.
After the Blood Demon departed, the Demonic Practitioners of the Blood Cult would have attacked Mount Hua Sect and Shaanxi.
And amid his master’s death, Do Yecheon must have retrieved Sewoon as well and fled here.
‘If only I had arrived a little sooner, I might have been able to save True Person Myeong Iljin as well…’
Sorrow and regret settled into Sewoon’s eyes.
Seeing her younger brother sunk into despair she had never seen before, Tang Serin could not bring herself to say a single word.
His body had recovered, but his soul seemed to be falling endlessly.
He had failed to protect them.
Just like before the regression, the precious people in his life.
The image of his own weakness overlapped—standing helplessly by as those he loved sacrificed themselves before his eyes.
Anger and self-reproach surged like a raging storm.
Heh heh, you will fail in the end! Once again!
The voice from the nightmare dominated his mind once more.
The brutal reality before his eyes was proving those words to be true.
Without realizing it, Sewoon clenched his teeth.
Ssss—
Within him, Inner Demons began to cast a dark shadow.
Yoo Jinhak’s death had left an indelible scar in Sewoon’s heart.
Creek.
“…!”
At that moment, the door that had been quietly shut slowly opened.
Sewoon and Tang Serin’s gazes turned toward it at the same time.
When the door fully opened, a man revealed himself in silence.
A middle-aged man with a rigid, imposing frame and a presence more dignified than anyone else.
“Have you awakened?”
It was Sewoon’s father.
Tang Muyeol.