The Blood Demon let out a hollow laugh.
“Were you planning to commit suicide together with me?”
Sohwa, who had been quietly staring at the Blood Demon, said something inexplicable.
“The biggest mistake you made was failing to kill me.”
The Blood Demon laughed loudly.
“No, keeping you alive is the best thing I’ve done in the last few years.”
Suddenly, the Blood Demon twisted his body.
Kwooooom.
The metal that had been descending toward his back scattered in all directions. And someone who had halted in midair, blood dripping from their mouth, glared at him.
“Khuk.”
Tang Ji-ha, whose stomach had been pierced, was hanging from the Blood Demon’s arm. He tried to pull away, but he could not break free from the hand gripping him.
Twisting his head at an odd angle, the Blood Demon stared at Sohwa.
Even if he did not open his mouth, she understood what was happening.
The Blood Demon’s hand was at Tang Ji-ha’s lower abdomen. The spot where his lower dantian should be.
Even without placing his hand there, he could have fully absorbed the Clan Head’s energy. But the Blood Demon moved by instinct in order to show her.
Whoosh.
At that moment, a blade curved to avoid the Clan Head and flew in.
It seemed meant to sever the Blood Demon’s arm, but he was faster.
Without even looking, the Blood Demon moved his arm and used the Clan Head’s body to receive the concealed weapon.
Whoosh.
Fortunately, the concealed weapon quickly withdrew before it could touch the Clan Head’s body.
Because the Clan Head had acted recklessly, those outside could not push further.
If the clash had already ended, any elder could have temporarily patched the Clan Head’s internal injuries. Then, if they escorted him to the Divine Physician, the Clan Head could have survived.
But they were in the middle of a battle, and if they provoked the Blood Demon and Tang Ji-ha’s upper and lower body were separated, there would be no going back.
When a fleeting opening appeared, the Blood Demon did not miss it.
Sohwa watched the scene unfolding right before her eyes.
Others might think they were merely in a standoff, but to her eyes, the Blood Demon was creating a blood channel.
In that short time, he had been poisoned by the freshly kindled poison smoke.
The energy that had formed a small ring in his middle dantian began to stretch out like a thread.
The energy that had traced the blood channel made a Small Heavenly Circuit and spread wide.
The smile on his face clearly revealed his intent.
Once he obtained a new energy, he would make a grand experiment on the bodies of the Tang clan.
There was no way not to know who the first subject would be.
Sohwa’s jaw muscles twitched violently.
The energy passed along the Blood Demon’s blood channel and filled his lower dantian.
He opened acupoints and drew several types of energy into the newly formed blood channel.
Watching that, Sohwa opened her mouth.
“Didn’t I tell you that I had taken your blood into myself? But those words, in reverse, also sounded to me like your blood and mine share the same nature.”
At her incomprehensible words, the Blood Demon let out a hollow laugh, and Sohwa added,
“And so, today you will die at my hands.”
Because it sounded like nonsense, the Blood Demon did not take it seriously.
He thought she was just trying to draw his attention in order to save the Clan Head.
Sohwa wanted to bluff more to keep his focus on her, but her stiffened body could not feign anything. So she brought out the truth.
A voice that could not hide its fear, anxiety, and disgust reached the Blood Demon.
“How do you think I detoxified your Dokgo?”
When she put into words the matter that had provoked him the most, the Blood Demon reacted.
Sohwa mentioned the contents of the secret letter.
“Didn’t you consider yourself above everyone? You said superior blood erases inferior blood and rules the host’s will.”
Sohwa let out a derisive laugh.
“But do you remember? The first day we met at Geumeunsan, you tried to put your blood into me, yet you could not dominate me.”
“Yes. That day feels like a lifetime ago now.”
When the Blood Demon spoke in a sneering tone, Sohwa continued coldly,
“So I wondered if, as you put it, I might be the one with more superior blood.”
“Ha ha, what an arrogant thought.”
Instead of getting angry, the Blood Demon laughed it off.
She understood why he reacted that way.
He, too, must have been curious about Sohwa’s blood. Superiority and inferiority—he was the one who had thought of that first, so he would have reached that idea even before Sohwa did.
But just as the Blood Demon had failed to exert any influence on Sohwa that day, Sohwa’s blood had not affected the Blood Demon either.
So he must have decided it was not a question of superiority and inferiority.
He had likely dismissed it as a matter of his blood being too thickly contained to react.
Like scratching at him, Sohwa once again said what he hated to hear.
“You think yourself a god, but you are nothing more than a human like us. Perhaps because you’re not the superior existence you imagine, erasing your will was not so difficult.”
Kwooooom.
The Blood Demon’s hand clamped around Sohwa’s neck.
With an explosive burst of energy, her clothes tore and her skin split.
Even as she held the Blood Demon in her gaze, Sohwa curled her hand into a fist.
The pain of her own skin splitting was nothing compared to the sight of the Tang warriors who had rushed in to save the Clan Head and her being shredded by the blast of qi. That weighed far heavier on her.
Tang Hak, who had crashed to the ground, spat blood and rose.
But Sohwa behaved as if she could not see any of it.
“You said I remembered that you tried to feed me your blood.”
She wanted to pretend she was fine, but because her throat was being squeezed, only a very small sound leaked out.
“Even though our wounds touched, you could not dominate me, and I could not kill you either.”
Struggling to breathe, Sohwa grabbed the Blood Demon’s arm. Even so, he did not lessen the strength in his arm.
“Erasing your blood and making it mine when it’s in another’s body was something I could do......”
The Blood Demon’s arm, torn open by her earlier blast of qi, was slick with blood. Sohwa’s hand, drenched in blood from her own wounds, slid down over it.
From her fingertips, which drooped toward the ground, a dark red liquid formed by the mingled blood of Sohwa and the Blood Demon dripped down.
“And so...... I became curious.”
Drip. Drip.
Her faint voice, nearly swallowed up by the sound of blood dripping, tickled the Blood Demon’s eardrums.
“If the fact that you could not die was the variable that day......”
Using the last of her strength, her hand grabbed the Blood Demon’s arm again. Sohwa drove her fingernails into his open wound and squeezed her eyes shut from the pain.
“......then if you became someone who could die, couldn’t I erase your blood like I do with other hosts?”
The Blood Demon understood the Dokgo of blood more than anyone. He had created the Dokgo art; of course he did.
So he could sharply sense the changes occurring in his body.
The Blood Demon’s gaze dropped to his own arm.
Around the wound where Sohwa’s fingernails were buried, veins were bulging like a spiderweb.
He noticed a purple hue seeping into the color of the veins.
As his frightened gaze jerked upward, Sohwa, eyes closed as if her breath might stop at any moment, spoke.
“Die......”
Understanding that word, the Blood Demon squeezed her neck with all his strength. The sound of bones crushing rang out.
He cut off Tang Sohwa’s breath before she could complete her words, but he could not release his hand and kept applying force.
The Blood Demon had never seen the world after his own death. Thus he could not be certain whether will would be extinguished by death.
The unknowable future filled him with fear.
Kwooooom.
When the blazing firestorm swept over them, the Blood Demon let go of Tang Sohwa and staggered back. More precisely, he did not retreat by his own will—his arm had been cut off.
Flash.
The Crimson Blood Hall Lord snatched Sohwa up, immediately flung the severed arm into the flames, and dashed out of the pavilion.
The Blood Demon, his face ashen, started to follow the Crimson Blood Hall Lord out but stopped. Something had gripped his heart.
“Keheuk!”
His breath caught, and his mind reeled.
Though the Blood Demon was accustomed to pain, he could not hide the panic on his face as he pressed a hand to his chest.
Because he knew what this pain meant, he felt fear for the first time.
Shraaaak.
His roughly torn front placket exposed his bare skin. A black line writhing in his upper dantian was growing darker and darker. Soon, blood began to spill from his eyes and mouth.
“Kraaaagh!”
The rampaging Blood Demon raked at his own body with his remaining hand and screamed.
Flash.
At that moment, the White Tiger Unit Lord caught the falling Clan Head and vanished. At the same time, the Lords of the three Tiger Units charged at the Blood Demon.
Thud. Thud.
The Blood Demon could not fend off the pouring concealed weapons. No—he could not spare them any attention.
He clutched his throat, then clawed at his body, writhing in agony.
“Uaaaaargh!”
He let the metal pierce his entire body and collapsed to the ground. He did not care in the least about spear wounds or anything of the sort.
The Blood Demon desperately refused death.
The inner energy shredding his organs and the blades slicing densely through his skin still could not crush his windpipe.
He continued to feel the horrific pain. Being burned in fire seemed like it would be easier.
A ghastly pain went on and on, as if each and every vein were being gnawed on by insects.
Thud.
Then, a concealed weapon lodged itself in one of the Blood Demon’s eyes.
His vision, which had already been blurring, grew even more murky.
Covering his remaining eye with his hand and lowering his head, the Blood Demon noticed someone lying on the ground.
Namgung Hyun was looking up at him with bloodshot eyes.
In that instant, the Blood Demon felt goosebumps run down his spine.
As if heaven had granted him an opportunity, his body trembled with joy.
Flash.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the Blood Demon dashed toward the sorcerer. It was astonishing he still had that kind of strength left.
His ferocious will to live drove his chaotic energies down into his fingertips to protect their master.
Just as his sharply honed fingernails were about to unleash energy at the man, an explosive sound rang out.
Kwooooom.
The Blood Demon lost his sight completely in the burst of white light.
“Keuheuheu......”
A strange sound leaked from his lips. It should have been laughter, but with his mouth full of blood, it bubbled and boiled into something grotesque.
Soon, the Blood Demon sensed that something was off.
Little by little, his vision was returning.
Like eyes that had grown used to darkness suddenly losing sight in a flood of light and then slowly adjusting, his eyes began to make out the scene again as they grew accustomed to the brilliance.
The flames had vanished. More than half the pavilion had been cleaved away and blown backward, and the fire had been swept up in that storm as well.
Before the sinister energy could touch his second son, the Emperor’s sword form had cut off the Blood Demon’s path.
Rumble.
The remaining pavilion, having lost its center, toppled backward. Because of that, the Blood Demon’s body tilted. But, at his limits, he could not move.
For the previous him, it would not have been a threatening situation in the slightest, but now he was straining with all his might just to keep his body from being dragged toward the open window.
Sluuurp.
But he could not put strength into his body. Unable to hold out, he rolled toward the window, spilling blood.
Rolling over and over, missing an arm, he looked like a crawling grub. It was a sight no one could have imagined from the Blood Demon.
Once Namgung An had carried his second son out before the Blood Demon could sink his teeth into him, the others hurried as well.
Flash.
Grabbing the Blood Demon by the hair, the Tang clan’s Grand Elder leaped and shot out through the window.
Kwoooom.
The remaining pavilion crashed to the ground and shattered to pieces.
The Blood Demon barely escaped with his life.
But it was not a situation that could be called fortunate.
On the dark blue grass soaked in Tang clan blood, the Blood Demon’s body was thrown down.
Thud.
At that slight impact, the Blood Demon writhed in agony.
“Kheuh......”
He could not even scream properly. His throat, seared by smoke, still had not recovered.
In a body layered with injuries, pain overlapped pain.
The Dokgo gnawing meticulously at even the tiniest veins was what he felt most intensely. It was horrific. It was a kind of pain he was experiencing for the first time.
He even found himself wishing that the man standing right in front of him would hurry up and cut off his breath.
The Green Frog, who had always taken the lead in Tang clan affairs, grabbed the Blood Demon’s hair and hauled his head up.
Yet Heukcheon Amgui did nothing.
Nor did the Tang warriors and the other sects’ warriors surrounding him move closer.
The frantic sounds of people treating those whose lives were in danger mingled with a quiet hostility.
The Blood Demon wanted to see it all with his eyes. But because his vision was layered over itself several times, he could not properly grasp the situation.
He could not know what that arrogant Tang brat was waiting for.
At that moment, a small voice was heard.
“[I have heard a great deal about you.]”
The heavy sky began to pour rain.
Ssshhhh.
Yet the sound of the downpour could not erase that chilling voice.
“[That the Dokgo of the Blood Cult is your blood, and that the one who scraped away your blood is Sohwa’s blood.]”
The Blood Demon was surprised that the man knew that fact.
Had Tang Sohwa spoken with her own mouth about her blood?
“[According to Sohwa, your Dokgo inflicts truly horrific pain on its host. It turns itself into a tiny insect, blocks the host’s blood vessels, and drives them into intense agony all the way until the moment they die.]”
The Blood Demon’s bloodshot eyes rolled to the side. Meeting that gaze, Tang Min spoke aloud.
“I am known throughout the Central Plains as a merciful man, but there is no mercy I intend to grant you. So do your utmost to feel every bit of the pain before you go.”
His words, mixed with the sound of rain, bored into the Blood Demon’s eardrums.
Those absurd words were not a spell of any sort, yet the Blood Demon’s body began to squirm.
“Kkeuaaaaah......”
For someone regarded as a supreme being, his scream was so frivolous it was hard to believe.
But just hearing it made one’s skin crawl.
Those watching could not even begin to imagine what kind of agony the host was going through.
