“I was never willing to live a life like that. So I had already calculated everything from the moment my spiritual core first went berserk. I knew that foolish Shen Tang was softhearted. He definitely wouldn’t have the heart to kill me. He might even take pity on how obedient and pitiful I was, plead with His Majesty on my behalf, and allow me to become a cultivator as an exception.”
The flames of Demon-Refining Mountain were like the tongues of vengeful ghosts, bursting forth from hell and dancing madly. They illuminated the face of Hua Po’an from those years ago—desire, hatred, ambition…
Gu Mang saw that this was the Blood Demon Beast’s earliest impression of the human world, the impression Hua Po’an had poured into it.
“Jingchen, I refined you because I want you to help me take Chonghua back.”
“I can become the ruler of this nation as well!”
It was a monstrous beast forged from hatred and desire. The flesh and blood of the dead became its flesh and blood, while Hua Po’an’s ambition became its ambition. Now, it shared in Gu Mang’s emotions, and Gu Mang was almost crushed beneath that horrifying bloodshed, as though he were falling into the depths of the endless hell.
Gu Mang was utterly sickened.
Yet he still persisted in maintaining the Shared Heart with it.
Only for the sake of…
The horns sounded, and war drums thundered.
Gu Mang turned his head and looked toward Chonghua’s vast and mighty army—his brothers-in-arms, those who had once shared life and death with him, those he had once promised to bring home, those who called him Marshal Gu.
Sparks of fire drifted across the battlefield that was about to ignite. His heart surged as he held a secret that no one else knew—
Of course he could win. Of course he could prevail.
In this world, who could understand the Blood Demon Beast better than he did?
Even Hua Po’an himself was merely its master. He had never shared a soul with it, nor shared a life.
“Imperial Guards, reinforce the Imperial Capital Barrier on both wings. Have the healers of each unit serve as the formation cores. The Flying Horse Battalion will strike the northern camp of the Liao army and disrupt the supporting formations. The Northern Frontier Army follows me.”
“Yes!”
Gu Mang narrowed his eyes and looked down upon the Liao army’s continuous camps, their swords and blades reflecting the moonlight.
Across a magnificent, surging river and a barrier that reached from earth to sky, the armies of Chonghua and Liao faced one another.
Liao had long since prepared for Chonghua to attack at any moment, so their mobilization was not slow in the slightest. Looking at the fish-scale-like armor surging below, Gu Mang understood that as soon as they led their army through this barrier, the slaughter would begin.
He drew a deep breath beneath the bright moon hanging overhead and commanded sternly,
“Through the barrier!”
“Yes!!”
With that command, Chonghua’s cultivators swooped down from the sky like hunting birds blotting out the heavens and earth. The instant they passed through the barrier, the black-magic spells of the attacking cultivators on the opposite side shot toward them like a rain of arrows.
Countless tamed black demonic beasts were released from the beast-taming camps. Corpse hounds with black wings and demonic falcons whose beaks were coated in poison surged wildly toward the Chonghua cultivators like a barrage of arrows.
On the ground, the bamboo warriors led by Yue Chenqing were like migrating herds of horses traversing the grasslands. They crossed the surging Fu River that protected the city and charged wildly toward the Liao army’s formation on the opposite bank.
Chonghua’s vanguard was like a sharp blade, ruthlessly hurled against the shield of the Liao army. Blade and shield scraped against one another, bursting into showers of sparks as the blade stabbed toward the heart of the formation.
Then, weapons suddenly thrust out from behind the shield—
The counterattack of Liao’s attacking cultivators.
For a time, roars shook the heavens, while blood and fire flew everywhere.
“Kill—!”
It was like countless meteors crashing to earth, like fireworks that existed for only an instant. Though this was such a brutal battle, beneath the velvet-like night sky, it somehow gave rise to a magnificent, grand, and dazzling beauty.
The corpses soon soaked the banks of the Fu River until they were dyed the color of rouge.
Gu Mang used a bayonet to kill a demonic bird that swooped toward him and shouted,
“Don’t get bogged down here. Follow me to the Blood Demon Beast’s refining site!”
Beside the Blood Demon Beast’s refining site was an enormous sacrificial cage. Inside, countless Butterfly-Bone Beauty Mats captured and bred by Liao over the years were packed tightly together.
One after another, the Liao people forced them toward the central Demon-Refining Furnace. They were treated like iron ore, cloudstone… or any other lifeless material used for refining swords, forcibly thrown into the furnace to become the source of power for the Blood Demon Beast’s resurrection.
“Wah… Mother…”
“I don’t want to die… I don’t want to die…”
The human sacrifices wailed and cried out in grief, but the Liao people showed not the slightest trace of compassion toward their desperate pleas.
They had already seen the embryonic form of the Blood Demon Beast and knew what kind of monstrous beast capable of changing heaven and earth it would become.
They shouted, shoved, and urged them forward, continuously sending these living people, whose bodies contained traces of ancient demonic blood, into the boiling furnace.
A woman of exceptionally beautiful and delicate features saw that her turn was almost here. Large tears rolled down her face.
Because of her bloodline, her tears were golden in color—this was also the greatest identifying mark the Liao people had used in their years of hunting the Beauty Mats:
They possessed demonic blood, and their eyes shed golden tears.
“Please, let me go!”
She suddenly collapsed and grabbed hold of a Liao cultivator.
“I’m pregnant! I want my child to live… Please… please…”
What answered her was the Liao cultivator’s loud laughter.
“Even better if you’re pregnant! Pregnant women have even stronger demonic qi! Hahahahaha!”
The woman’s eyes were filled with tears. Just as she was about to fall into despair, a streak of blue light suddenly crashed down from the sky.
A powerful barrier rose brilliantly from the ground, enveloping all the remaining Beauty Mats behind it.
The woman was both startled and overjoyed. She looked up and saw a group of Chonghua cultivators riding swords through the sky.
At their head was a commander clad in silver armor and black boots, his eyes glowing with an azure light, the red tassel atop his helmet streaming wildly in the wind.
Beneath his forehead was worn, perfectly straight, the blue-and-gold silk sash representing the blood of the heroes.
It was the son of Wangshu, the master of the Northern Frontier Army—
Gu Mang.
Beside him was Lord Xihe, Mo Xi, dressed in black with gold trim, his robes flying in the wind, as well as Lord Wangshu, Murong Lian, dressed in blue with gold trim, his face carrying its usual reckless arrogance.
“Using living people to refine a demonic beast is disgusting enough,” Murong Lian clicked his tongue. “Even more depraved than me. I’m impressed, I’m impressed.”
Mo Xi, meanwhile, summoned Suiran.
The Teng Snake soared into the sky, coiling heavily around the black-magic cage imprisoning the human sacrifices before violently shaking it apart into fragments!
“Run.”
He lowered his dark eyes and spoke to the terrified and bewildered sacrifices.
The sacrifices stood stunned for quite some time before suddenly realizing what had happened. Like schools of fish in a pond, they began surging anxiously in every direction.
Some clasped their hands together, bowing to heaven and earth as they wailed loudly.
Mo Xi ordered a squad of Imperial Guards to protect them as they retreated to safety. For a time, all that could be heard was the sound of these people crying so hard that their faces were drenched in tears and mucus as they shouted,
“Thank you… Thank you, Immortal Lords…”
The pregnant Beauty Mat repeatedly bowed to them. The Chonghua Imperial Guard urged her to leave quickly, and only then did she wipe away her tears, turn back to look at them one last time, and leave.
However, just as Gu Mang used overwhelming force to suppress this contingent of Liao soldiers and release the human sacrifices, a sharp, piercing musical note suddenly rang out from the sky—
A sound so mournful that it seemed capable of splitting the heavens.
Gu Mang was the fastest of everyone to react to that sound. He was startled and abruptly raised his head.
“Fengbo?!”
A half-illusory figure swept closer from the distance, also riding a sword and standing high in the sky.
The man wore white robes, his collar casually and recklessly open. In his hand was a rust-bronze-colored divine weapon, white silk streaming from it in the wind.
He lifted his face.
It was an exceptionally handsome and refined face, his dark eyes shining brilliantly, his smile wild and unrestrained.
This time, even Mo Xi and Murong Lian were stunned.
“Gu Mang?!!”
The half-transparent figure standing upon the sword was actually Gu Mang!!
And it was a young Gu Mang—dashing and heroic, untouched by any black-magic tempering!
“What… what is going on?” Murong Lian exclaimed.
But after only an instant of stunned silence, Mo Xi immediately understood.
His eyes reddened slightly as he stared fixedly at the figure of that old friend. His voice was hoarse.
“The Nine-Eyed Qin…”
“What?”
“The National Preceptor of Liao’s Nine-Eyed Qin,” Mo Xi said. “There are nine eyes hidden inside the qin. Each eye contains the power of a cultivator.”
As he spoke, his fingertips trembled slightly and dug into his palm.
His voice, weighed down by deep hatred, was pressed until it was almost inaudible.
“This one was refined from the Chonghua techniques that were stripped away from Gu Mang.”
Murong Lian: “!!!”
He turned to look at Gu Mang.
But Gu Mang showed little expression, as though the word “stripped away”—with all its bloodshed and suffering, the agony of being skinned and having his bones hacked apart in a prison, his spiritual power forcibly ripped out—had nothing to do with him.
Gu Mang merely stared at that half-illusory version of himself, the one capable of using Chonghua techniques and summoning the divine weapon Fengbo.
After a moment, he said with extraordinary calm,
“Looks like although the National Preceptor is manipulating the Blood Demon Beast’s resurrection ritual from the shadows, he can’t sit still anymore. He actually sent me to deal with myself.”
“…”
“I guess I was pretty handsome.”
“…” Murong Lian said, “Average. Just a little worse than me.”
Gu Mang laughed. He was just about to say something when he saw his “self” raise the suona again.
The way his fingers pressed against the suona’s holes was something Gu Mang knew all too well.
He immediately raised his brows and shouted,
“Everyone, activate your sound barriers!”
The cultivators behind him hurriedly followed his order.
But not everyone was that fast. The formations had only been activated halfway when “Gu Mang” had already begun playing.
“Ah—!”
Though the sound of the suona was thin, it pierced through the clouds and sunlight, instantly sweeping across the entire military formation.
Those who had not had time to activate their barrier formations let out screams one after another. They fell from their swords and crashed to the ground.
Some were forced to bleed from all seven orifices by the sound of the divine weapon, while others could not hold on for even a moment before collapsing unconscious.
Gu Mang cursed inwardly.
Although his consciousness had recovered, his spiritual power had ultimately not returned. The only weapon he could summon was the demonic dagger.
Though the dagger was formidable in single combat, before a military formation, it was completely incomparable to the sound of Fengbo.
In an instant, the battlefield descended into chaos.
And just then, the Liao demonic cultivators who had previously been suppressed suddenly erupted into a counterattack.
The tide of battle immediately reversed from one-sided suppression.
Some Liao cultivators caught up with the human sacrifices who had fallen behind and seized the screaming Butterfly-Bone Beauty Mats one after another, throwing them back into the spiritual-power furnace.
The molten flow inside the furnace was already glowing intensely.
Not far away, within the resurrection formation, the phantom of the Blood Demon Beast was becoming increasingly distinct.
“Capture more! Capture some more!”
A high-ranking Liao cultivator shouted almost frantically.
“It’s almost resurrected! It’s almost resurrected! We’re just a little short!”
Mo Xi wanted to summon Tuntian into existence, but Tuntian’s strength was simply too formidable. There were only a few times each year he could summon it, and he had already reached his limit.
Moreover, after its previous confrontation with Murong Chen, Tuntian had suffered excessive damage. At this moment, it unexpectedly could not be summoned smoothly in a single attempt.
Yet at this critical moment, Mo Xi suddenly heard another sound of a formation-shattering melody coming from behind him.
He abruptly turned his head.
Gu Mang also turned back in astonishment.
The person playing the formation-breaking melody was…
Murong Lian?!!!