Although the time originally calculated for the decisive battle had been tomorrow, everyone knew that tomorrow was merely a prediction. The war between Chonghua and Liao was like a cannon with its fuse already lit, and the thunder of war could explode at any moment.
Therefore, when Gu Mang summoned the army and called for them to gather urgently, no one was surprised. In fact, the moment some people saw the strange light in the sky, they had already come of their own accord to the training grounds.
They all knew that there would be no sleep tonight.
The first great battle would take place this very night.
If they could kill the Blood Demon Beast at the moment of its rebirth, the Liao army would naturally retreat.
If they could not…
“There is no ‘cannot.’”
That was what their commander, Gu Mang, said.
When he spoke those words, there was no hint of an order in them. They were a promise.
He was not particularly tall. The hardships of the past had already broken him down until he was far too thin, but beneath his fluttering helmet and armor, he still looked spirited.
He said to them,
“I once stood in this very place, fighting alongside my brothers through life and death. We fought thirty-nine battles, great and small. This is the fortieth.”
“Before every battle, I gave you the same promise. I said—I would bring you home.”
“I kept that promise thirty-eight times. The last time was at Fengming Mountain. I broke my word. I failed to keep it. Seventy thousand people were left behind by me at Fengming Mountain. I couldn’t even erect a memorial tablet for them without dragging my feet and arguing with His Majesty for half a damn day.”
As Gu Mang spoke these words, he stood with his hands behind his back.
His voice was full and powerful, deliberately carrying a little of the carefree boldness of someone who had already let the past remain in the past.
But Mo Xi stood beside him.
Murong Lian stood beside him too.
And both of them could see the tears shimmering in his eyes.
Gu Mang’s eyes were so bright.
He said,
“Thirty-eight times I kept my promise. Once I broke it.”
“Today is the fortieth time.”
“If you trust me, then come with me. Listen to my orders. Go with me and kill that little newborn puppy of a beast, and then—”
“I’ll take you home!”
I’ll take you home.
Together with the seventy thousand souls of the dead.
Together with peace that will last for ten thousand generations.
As long as you are willing to trust me one more time, I, Gu Mang, whether dead or alive, will fulfill my promise.
I will be worthy of you calling me “Marshal Gu” today.
I’ll take you home.
The soldiers below said nothing.
One face after another looked upward, silent and solemn as they gazed at the master of the Northern Frontier Army, the warriors of their empire, their battle-scarred commander.
Suddenly, the gleam of armor surged.
Blades and halberds struck the ground in unison.
That magnificent sound seemed to thunder up from the depths of their bellies, reverberating from millions of chests into heaven and earth—
“Live and die together!”
It surged forth like waves of snow, vast and mighty, spreading across the entire land of the Nine Provinces.
“Live and die together…”
When Mo Xi was young, because of the education he had received since childhood, he had once believed that if a state had no sovereign, then it could never function.
Yet now, with Chonghua having lost Murong Chen, everyone had instead become united like never before.
Calamity was like a dagger. It could make people feel the pain of flesh being torn apart, but it could also awaken many people who had deliberately remained asleep before, allowing them to see clearly the hearts of those around them whose goodness or wickedness they had once been unable to discern.
Weapons gleamed coldly.
Armor shone like clustered scales.
They set out for war.
One sword after another carried its rider into the air. One spirit horse after another carried its master upward from the ground.
These cultivators were like countless stars gathering into a Milky Way, growing broader and broader as they surged majestically toward the distant outskirts.
Suddenly, Murong Lian let out a quiet “Huh?” and said,
“What’s going on down there?”
Gu Mang lowered his head.
He saw the gates of Chonghua City thrown wide open.
Beneath their army of sword-riding cultivators, countless bamboo warriors and strange beasts were running under the command of their leaders, kicking up clouds of dust as they followed the main army toward the battlefield.
It was Yue Chenqing!
And there were also many cultivators who had never enlisted in Chonghua, nobles, commoners…
At this moment, under spontaneous orders issued throughout the city, the entire population was pouring out of the city and rushing toward the Liao army camp.
Gu Mang froze as he watched the unprecedented spectacle below.
This river of people had no distinction between one bank and the other.
There was no difference between rich and poor, noble and lowly.
They converged together, surging madly toward the enemy.
He murmured,
“I was wrong.”
Murong Lian: “About what?”
“This time, they don’t need me to take them home.”
Gu Mang’s eyes reddened slightly.
“Because this is our home.”
After saying this, his gaze turned toward the Fu River, neither too near nor too far away.
There, stretching across the land and protecting the capital of Chonghua, stood the greatest barrier of all—the Imperial Capital Barrier.
Behind that transparent barrier were hundreds of thousands of demonic cultivators from Liao, as well as the Blood Demon Beast that was about to break into the world and be reborn.
Gu Mang brought two fingers together and accelerated his sword, rushing toward the river where the decisive battle would take place.
In the night, they could see the Blood Demon Rebirth Formation of Liao more and more clearly.
At the opposite bank of the Fu River, it was absorbing the life force of the sacrifices while simultaneously erupting with increasingly intense light.
At the center of the formation, an enormous translucent phantom had already risen.
It towered like a strange mountain peak.
It was the Blood Demon Beast in the process of being reborn.
Gu Mang hovered at the edge of the Imperial Capital Barrier, his robes fluttering wildly in the wind as he looked up at the embryonic form of that enormous beast.
And at that very instant, pain struck the side of his head.
Before his eyes, the phantom of Chen Tang from a hundred years ago appeared once again.
Hundreds of years ago, it had likewise been a battle of life and death.
It had likewise taken place beside the water, at the riverbank.
Chen Tang’s sword-shaped brows were lowered, his gaze cold and severe as he stared down Hua Po’an.
“Your ambitions have gone too far. How could I possibly tolerate you?”
The intense pain at the side of his head caused Gu Mang to close his eyes.
But this time was different from the previous times.
Having recovered all of his memories and spiritual consciousness, he knew very clearly why he was able to see the figure of Chen Tang from a hundred years ago.
The root of this connection could be traced back five years.
He had been ordered to enter Liao to investigate the country’s black-magic secrets, particularly the forbidden techniques related to the Blood Demon Beast.
After spending a long time, he had finally gained the trust of the highest-ranking guardian of the Blood Demon Beast and established a private friendship with him.
During that period, he often went to observe the Blood Demon Beast’s remaining essence.
At the time, the Blood Demon Beast was still merely a fragmentary mass of silver mist. Its soul, power, memories…
None of them were complete.
But Gu Mang could still sense the extremely powerful and evil soul force contained within it.
“Heh heh, Brother Gu, just look. All these years, our nation has been trying every possible way to awaken it again. Once it returns to its full strength, the entire Nine Provinces will fall firmly into Great Liao’s grasp!”
Gu Mang stared at the mass of silver mist and smiled without revealing anything.
“Yes.”
The guard was absolutely right.
If the Blood Demon Beast were allowed to return to the world, it would inevitably bring about a tremendous catastrophe.
Even if all twenty-seven cultivation nations eventually joined forces to fight it, there would certainly be tens of thousands of casualties.
At that time, Gu Mang had not yet completely discovered his own sovereign’s true intentions.
But he had already vaguely felt that such a terrifying weapon of destruction as the Blood Demon Beast would be extremely dangerous no matter which nation—or which individual—possessed it.
He could temporarily trust his sovereign and help him find a way to seize the power of the Blood Demon Beast.
But he would not so easily hand such power over to Murong Chen.
In fact, from the very first time he had seen the silver mist of the Blood Demon Beast in the secret chamber of Liao, he had already been wondering whether there was a better method that could guarantee everything would remain completely under control.
Even if one day the Blood Demon Beast truly returned to the world, whether it was resurrected by Liao and pledged allegiance to Liao, or replicated by Chonghua and pledged allegiance to Chonghua, he would have a way to end it with the smallest possible sacrifice.
That was the most comprehensive solution.
During his days and nights in Liao, Gu Mang had made countless assumptions and deductions.
In the end, however, only one path remained before him.
Shared Heart.
Actually, there was nothing complicated about it.
It was not some extraordinary spell.
Speaking of it, the purpose for which he had originally created this spell had been extremely childish and innocent.
He had once harbored a beautiful fantasy.
Even knowing that the road ahead was uncertain and distant, he still hoped that he could spend his entire life with his little junior brother.
Just as they had once half-jokingly talked about—
Having a home.
Raising three or four cats and dogs.
Planting a peach tree in the courtyard.
Retiring from military life together.
Growing old together.
Dying together.
Although he knew it was absolutely impossible, Gu Mang still could not stop himself from secretly creating this Shared Heart technique.
Once activated, the technique allowed him to share his will with Mo Xi.
As long as both parties were willing, they could see the various experiences of each other’s lives, share each other’s memories, emotions, wishes…
Even their lives.
It was a spell that required boundless trust and intimacy from both parties.
Idealistic to the point of absurdity.
Gu Mang had originally thought it would never be used.
He had only created it for fun, to give himself a small place to entrust his beautiful fantasy.
But when he stood before the Blood Demon Beast’s spirit, he suddenly understood—
It turned out that fate had long since decided its destination.
The true purpose of the Shared Heart technique was not companionship.
It was separation.
In the end, while the Blood Demon Beast was weak, he secretly implanted this secret technique into its spirit.
The instant he activated Shared Heart, he felt an extremely demonic and evil torrent surge into his blood vessels.
The black-magic spell deep within his bones was stirred into restlessness by the Blood Demon Beast.
A massive amount of demonic qi flooded into his body.
That was the filthy life of the Blood Demon Beast.
The soul of a monstrous beast forged from countless sacrifices—
Butterfly-Bone Beauty Mats.
The lives of ordinary humans.
All of it became symbiotic within his body.
At that moment, it was as though he had become the Blood Demon Beast.
He saw how it had been refined by Hua Po’an.
A hundred years ago, a gorge had been used as the furnace, heavenly lightning as the fire, and tens of thousands of living people as sacrifices.
And in the end, this exceedingly vicious and bizarre beast had been tempered into existence.
Its roar shook the clouds.
He was it.
And it was him.
Through the Blood Demon Beast’s eyes, he saw countless scenes of the past.
He saw Hua Po’an standing before Demon-Refining Peak.
He saw that gloomy, sinister face from a hundred years ago.
—
“The ruler of Chonghua reduced me to a slave, elevated the Murong clan to nobility. Truly, what an absurd joke!”
Hua Po’an had once murmured these words to the Blood Demon Beast, which was still only beginning to take shape, pouring all of his hatred into it.
“Ever since I became capable of understanding things, I have always been extremely curious. Why was I born a lowly bastard meant to serve others, while some people were born rich and noble?”
“Those rotten old men told me that this was fate. That I was destined to live this way.”
“But was I really destined to live this way?”
“I was more diligent than those nobles. I was more talented than every one of them. What kind of fate was that?”
“Wasn’t it strange?”
Hua Po’an’s face was horribly twisted.
Only hatred like this could nourish such a monstrous beast.
He said to the Blood Demon Beast, which was still being nurtured,
“Jingchen, do you know… During those years I was a slave, I searched through books and records in Chonghua’s academy, digging little by little into the roots of this nation.”
“I wanted to know why those surnamed Murong were nobles, while people like us were servants…”
“And I actually found the reason.”
“But that reason made me so furious I could hardly stand it!”
“It turned out that when Chonghua was first founded, there were originally two brothers who served as commanders together. They led their troops, suppressed the foreign states, and established this nation.”
“They stripped the people of the states that refused to submit of their slave status, depriving them of the right to cultivate, so that these people would not be able to raise an army and overthrow the nation they had established in the future.”
“But the killing did not end there.”
“One mountain cannot contain two tigers.”
“After enjoying a brief period of stability, those brothers who had once shared life and death together fell into a deadlock over who would inherit supreme authority.”
“A struggle broke out within their ranks. Deception against deception.”
“In the end, the elder brother made a mistake and became the defeated commander.”
“So his younger brother slaughtered his entire family. His descendants were also reduced to the lowest form of slavery, their spiritual cores destroyed, slave marks branded upon them, never permitted to rise again.”
“I am a descendant of that branch.”
“Very unwilling, aren’t I?”
He sneered.
“The blood flowing through my veins is clearly the same as that of the Murong clan.”
“And yet, because of one person’s defeat, one person’s selfishness, and the struggle between two people, we fell so far that we were not even allowed to know our own surnames or names.”
Hua Po’an’s voice was dark and sinister.
“If you were me, could you remain calm?”
Inside the furnace, the Blood Demon Beast Jingchen exploded with a burst of flame, as though answering his question.
The firelight illuminated Hua Po’an’s eyes, making them shine even more brightly.
It seemed as though heaven and earth themselves were about to be destroyed within those crazed eyes.