The Ruler of Darkness

Book 2: Chapter 9

Just moments ago, this place was nothing short of a small battlefield.

Frantic commands and reports were exchanged, shouts to boost morale clashed with military drums, and screams and groans filled the air to the point of madness.

However, when the Sovereign of Dark Heavens appeared, he swept everything away like a tidal wave.

It was as if they had gone back to a time before all this happened.

Only the occasional groans of the wounded and the whispered conversations of the messengers and officers broke the silence.

There had been those who fought, those who bled, and those who died, but no traces of the enemy remained.

No bodies, no bloodstains, nothing.

It was an unreal spectacle.

Stepping into this abnormality, Se-ah momentarily felt dizzy.

“Leader.”

The field commander’s report snapped her back to reality.

“Measures are being taken for the casualties, and we are also reorganizing to continue the blockade of the streets.”

“I see.”

Giving a brief reply, Se-ah turned to the field commander.

“Does this spectacle seem strange to you, too? Having stood in so many battlefields, it must be, right?”

Her rhetorical question made the field commander stop in his tracks.

He looked around; everyone was engrossed in their duties, paying no attention to this conversation.

He sighed briefly, removed his leather helmet, and tucked it under his arm.

Sweat and hot steam rose from his head.

“It is incredibly strange, as you say.”

He scratched his graying beard.

“It’s also ominous and unsettling. It feels as if we are enchanted by something.”

Surprisingly candid, he flashed a bland smile at Se-ah’s surprised expression.

“But strange things often happen on battlefields. Events we neither understand nor can understand at the time.”

He tried to explain further, but eventually relied on his terse military vernacular.

“Forget it.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tunnel vision is common on battlefields. Focusing on abnormalities can ruin operations.”

Se-ah nodded slowly in agreement.

“Later on, with the passage of time, things somehow make sense and can be reasonably explained. You see things you couldn’t see at the time.”

“I suppose so…”

He looked around again and gave Se-ah a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“So for now, just forget about it, Leader.”

Se-ah nodded her head.

“Your advice reflects your extensive experience on the battlefield.”

He put his helmet back on and cracked a bitter smile.

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“Of course, whether this bizarre experience can be explained with time, I don’t know.”

That was a valid point.

However, their conversation had been effective.

Se-ah returned her attention to the matter at hand.

“Have we located the Sovereign of Dark Heavens and Geumju yet?”

The Sovereign of Dark Heavens had wiped out all martial artists and disappeared just a little while ago.

“That is…”

Gyu, who had been quietly waiting in the background, interrupted. 

“Geumju appeared briefly when the Sovereign of Dark Heavens revealed himself and soon vanished. And the Sovereign of Dark Heavens…”

She cast a sharp gaze toward the front.

“His aura is distinctly palpable. I can’t pinpoint his exact location, but…”

Her voice trailed off as her mouth went dry.

“He is definitely still somewhere on this street.”

Se-ah nodded.

Just as she was about to issue her next command,

“Then…”

A massive explosion reverberated, and a powerful shockwave hit them.

Gyu, who had protected Se-ah more swiftly than anyone else, yelled out.

“Over there!”

Emerging from the debris of a demolished building at the epicenter of the explosion was a woman in red armor, Geumju.

“How dare you! How dare you! How do you know my name?!”

Her voice roared menacingly.

And then the Sovereign of Dark Heavens’s laughter, characterized by a coarse metallic sound, ominously echoed throughout the street.

* * * 

The dust cloud swiftly dispersed at the sound of his laughter, revealing the figure of the Sovereign of Dark Heavens.

Geumju, who had landed on the opposite building, interrogated him once more.

“From whom did you hear my name?! Tell me right now!”

In that instant, his laughter abruptly ceased.

Twisting his neck to look up at her, the Sovereign of Dark Heavens spoke.

“Did you think that no matter what you do, no matter where you are, I would not know your name?”

Along with his question, a dark ghostly fire flared above the unbroken eye-holes of his white mask.

“Don’t joke around!”

He was certainly standing below, looking up at her on the roof.

Yet for some reason, it felt as if he was the one looking down at her from a high place.

“You thought hiding your name would also hide your evil deeds?”

The eyes of the Sovereign of Dark Heavens, aflame with ghostly fire, saw a different scene compared to others.

[Se Yuhwa! Return my brother! Give back our family!]

A woman with bloodshot eyes, bleeding from her eye sockets, clutched Geumju’s hair and wailed (哭).

[Yuhwa you wench! For a mere twenty coins, how could you do this to me who raised you?]

A middle-aged man, with his intestines dragged out from his belly, clung to one of Geumju’s legs.

[Lady Se Yuhwa! My children are hungry and crying! Please give back my breasts!]

A woman, her upper body soaked in blood, showed her three crying children to Geumju.

The headless children wailed mightily through their neck holes.

[You thought you could survive after taking an arm from someone who can only labor hard like me?]

[Give me back my hand!]

At first, there were only a few.

As time passed, their numbers gradually increased, surrounding Geumju.

Beyond that, the line of vengeful spirits was endless.

Their suppressed complaints and wails, even as spirits unable to do anything, caused an unbearable cacophony.

As time passed, their increasingly loud voices became an immense shriek that was indecipherable.

[What crime did my only daughter commit that you took her away?! Why did you make a flower-like child die so miserably? How can a father’s sins be attributed to his children! How can I face my daughter in the afterlife?!]

[I will tear you apart! Even if my bones turn to ash, and I roll in the pits of hell for eons, I will curse and tear you to death!]

Behind his white mask, Yeon So-Hyeon’s face distorted immensely.

Their injustice, their grievances, their resentment, and anger penetrated his heart vividly.

The Dark Heavens Scripture was thus forcefully embedding these stories and memories into him.

The ghostly fire rising from the mask reacted to his anger, blazing even more fiercely.

With trembling hands, he covered his mask.

However, his vision was not obscured at all.

He couldn’t avoid it even when he bowed his head.

The raging ghostly fire was showing him everything, unbidden.

Before he knew it, blood flowed from the corners of his clenched mouth.

“…Shut up! Stop muttering nonsense like that!”

Geumju yelled at him.

“Just answer the question I’m asking…!”

As he suddenly lifted his bowed head, Geumju instinctively retreated a few steps.

Yeon So-Hyeon roared like thunder.

[Se Yuhwa!]

Black magical energy surged from his body.

[Resist with all your might! Unleash everything you have! You’ll suffer for an eternity, unable to quell this hatred even in death!]

The magical energy imbued in that voice was so intense that the surrounding buildings quivered, and the accumulated dust was flung into the air.

“Shut up!”

Geumju’s reflexively created qi barrier violently vibrated against the thunderous shout of the Sovereign of Dark Heavens.

“Who are you to judge me as you please?”

Raising her energy to the extreme, Geumju’s face darkened as veins bulged out menacingly.

The overwhelming aura she emanated radiated in all directions.

“Enjoy your pathetic heroics in death!”

As she swung her arms like lightning, the area around the Sovereign of Dark Heavens exploded.

The cacophony was deafening, but a voice made of metallic tones penetrated sharply into Geumju’s ears.

“Firstly, one.”

“What nonsense are you spouting now?”

Confused by the incomprehensible words, Geumju raised her hands and extended her nails.

And then, she realized that her right ring finger had disappeared.

“…?!”

Blood spurted out from where the finger had been.

“When did my finger…!”

The Sovereign of Dark Heavens’s ominous laughter resounded.

“You, who so easily destroyed others’ lives, are so shocked by the loss of a single finger?”

As the dust settled, the Sovereign of Dark Heavens was revealed to be holding her finger.

“How dare you! How dare you!”

Stomping her foot, Geumju caused the ground to collapse around her.

The atmosphere was terrifying, but the Sovereign of Dark Heavens seemed not to care at all.

While the ground shook, he calmly maintained his balance and threw her finger into the air.

And then, Geumju’s finger fell into his widely opened mouth.

Chomp, chomp—the sound of him chewing the bone was eerily clear.

“An acquired taste.”

His long tongue licked up the dripping blood from his lips.

“Did the flesh of the kid next door, the first you ever tasted, also taste like this?”

“Shut up!”

Geumju’s psychic spear aimed straight for the Sovereign of Dark Heavens.

He tried to slide back out of her range like a ghost, but she had already anticipated his movements.

Her arms whipped through the air, tearing it asunder, and flew in irregular trajectories.

Strikes as fast as beams of light pummeled his torso.

Along with the successive sounds of rupturing, his body was brutally shaken.

“Dieee!”

She screamed as she pierced her inner qigong strike into his body, filled with her internal energy.

The strike burst the surrounding layer of air, sending him flying, crumpled and shapeless.

With a tremendous roar, he penetrated the outer wall of a building, only to come out of the opposite outer wall.

Several walls were penetrated before he finally got stuck in a building’s outer wall.

One by one, the buildings with giant holes in them collapsed.

The building he was stuck in was the last to fall, crushing his body.

“Is that all you’ve got?! Was all your arrogance based on just this?!”

As Geumju yelled in a shrill voice, a voice that shouldn’t have been there reached her ears.

“Two.”