Under the guidance of Choi Jin-woo, the Chief of the Four Divine Guardians, I moved to the rooftop helipad where a military stealth helicopter waited for us in the pitch-black darkness. We boarded immediately, and the craft melted noiselessly into the night, heading north.
I’m not sure how long we flew. By the time we reached a mountain range so shrouded in darkness that all artificial light had vanished, the instruments inside the helicopter began to flicker manically. The pilot, drenching his uniform in cold sweat, barely maintained control of the bird as he whispered hoarsely.
“It’s too dangerous to approach any closer. From here… I will follow the King’s judgment.”
His voice carried a primal terror that no amount of elite training could suppress. As the side door slid open, a sight that did not belong to the mortal world unfolded before our eyes.
In the distance, over the region of Heaven Lake on Mt. Paektu, the sky had become the epicenter of a massive cataclysm. Clouds of sickly purple and oily black swirled, looking as if they had bored a jagged hole into the heavens. From the center of that vortex, black lightning lanced down toward the earth every few seconds. Space itself was shivering like a patient in the throes of a violent fever, and beneath it, I could see faint points of light flickering precariously, like candle flames before a typhoon.
Alice stared at the scene, her face pale. She instinctively gripped the hem of my coat. Her eyes were already glowing with a faint, ethereal light, piercing through the phenomena to see the essence that no ordinary human eye could perceive.
“My King… those lights are not merely resisting. They are sacrifices. Their souls and sorcerous energy… are being sucked in as fuel for that catastrophe.”
“Bring us closer.”
At my brief command, the pilot hesitated for a split second before steeling his resolve and maneuvering the helicopter right to the edge of the disaster zone. Without a moment's delay, Alice and I threw ourselves from the craft and descended to the ground.
The crushing pressure of Divine Qi grated against my skin. The ground beneath my feet had already been stripped of its vitality, turning into cracked, gray dust that crumbled with every step.
The mages of the Heavenly Fist Society were virtually wiped out. Most had already been drained of their life force, reduced to shriveled mummies with expressions of frozen terror, or had simply crumbled into ash. Those few who remained were little more than breathing corpses. At the center of this carnage lay Ryu Jin-kang, the leader of the society, bloodied and semi-conscious.
Turning her back on the gruesome sight, Alice fixed her gaze on the Bagua pattern etched into the sky, sinking deeper into her Spirit Vision. Her voice emerged with a mix of awe and dread, sounding like a bard reciting an epic from a forgotten age.
“My King… I can see it. A shard of the goddess who aided the Yellow Emperor in slaying Chiyou, the one who bestowed the arts of war and sorcery upon humanity…”
I remained silent for a moment, mulling over the revelation of her vision. The goddess who helped the Yellow Emperor strike down Chiyou. That was a name I knew all too well.
“The Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heavens…”
At my low murmur, Alice nodded.
“Yes, my King. Those fools attempted to sacrifice the Mountain Spirit of this land to overlay it with a celestial War God. It is as if they have poured divine poison into a sacred spring. It is… Mythic Syncretism.”
Syncretism, huh…
Alice’s words brought back memories of a past battle. The god sealed within Mt. Inwang, Jiha Daegukjeok. That creature had drawn upon Ravana, the Demon King of India with whom it shared mythological parallels, to synchronize their existences. It was the phenomenon where one godhood attracts another related divinity and mutates—Mythic Syncretism. The bastards of the Heavenly Fist Society had attempted the same thing. They tried to forcibly overlay the Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heavens, a Chinese War God, onto the native divinity of Mt. Paektu, the Mountain Spirit, to create a new disaster.
“The moment that Bagua Array is completed, the Mountain Spirit of this land will be annihilated. Taking that power as nourishment, a perfect ‘Goddess of War’ will descend. A high and haughty deity who serves no one on this earth and craves only conflict.”
I scanned the Bagua in the sky and the mummified remains on the ground. Then, I reached a cold conclusion.
“They’ve done something incredibly stupid. They didn’t wake a sleeping god; they ripped the lid off a coffin of calamity.”
It was a massive pain in the neck, but I could feel my dormant senses slowly awakening. My instincts as a Campione. Facing a powerful god, a boiling fighting spirit surged within me. This tension… I didn’t entirely hate it.
A nuisance, truly, but it’s a sensation I haven’t felt in a while.
Lately, my battles had mostly been squabbles with other Devil Kings. My meeting with that old wolf of Eastern Europe, Marquis Voban, a year ago had been the same. Standing against that aged Devil King beneath a storm-wracked sky. However, facing a god is fundamentally different from fighting another King. It was a chore, but it was a chore that had to be done. That was all.
Alice spoke urgently.
“We won’t last more than a few hours at this rate. The moment that Bagua Array shatters completely, the Goddess will descend.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to wait for a moment.”
I gave my cold ultimatum. Dealing with an incomplete phenomenon wasn’t my style. If I was going to handle this, it was my way to break them after they had descended as a complete deity.
Just then, Alice looked at the bloodied, fallen Ryu Jin-kang and spoke in a pitying tone.
“My King, this man… is still clinging to life. Among the others, there might be…”
Without reacting to her sentimentalism, I immediately gave orders to the Four Divine Guardians team waiting in the helicopter.
“Evacuate everyone collapsed down there. Every single one of them.”
At my command, rescue ropes were lowered from the helicopter, and the agents began to move with mechanical efficiency.
At the same time, in Lushan, China.
In a pavilion on a mist-shrouded mountain peak, a single woman sat alone, sipping tea. Around her, flowers of celestial beauty—plants not of the mortal realm—were in full bloom, and the air was clearer and more serene than anywhere else on earth. It had been a long time since anyone under heaven could even dream of being her match. The one known as Leader Luo, who ruled the martial world with terror and was hailed as the Cult Leader, was currently mired in deep boredom.
She suddenly set down her teacup and gazed toward the distant northeastern sky. To her senses, something felt like a drop of ink falling into a still pond—a very faint, yet incredibly pure and potent aura of conflict.
“Oh ho…”
A mesmerizing smile blossomed on her lips, like a flower blooming for the first time in decades. It was a pure joy at the realization that, after so long, someone who could make her heart beat had appeared.
“My instincts tell me… that the heavens are finally sending this Luo Hao a worthy rival.”
She rose from her seat and threw herself into the void without hesitation. Her body tread upon the clouds like a soaring phoenix, and she began to move toward Mt. Paektu.
Back at Mt. Paektu.
It was right after the last survivor of the Heavenly Fist Society had been airlifted by the helicopter.
CRACK-BOOM—!
Finally, the Bagua pattern in the sky tore open as if screaming in agony. An absolute silence descended, as if all the world's sound, wind, and even the flow of time had ground to a halt.
Then, in the next heartbeat, light exploded from the center of where the pattern had been. This light did not burn the world white; instead, it was an abyss of darkness that seemed to swallow all colors.
From within that darkness, a silhouette slowly emerged. Long, raven-black hair sparkled like the Milky Way in the night sky, and while the face possessed a perfect, symmetrical beauty, it bore an inorganic expression that betrayed no emotion. The figure was clad in a strange mix of ancient armor and soft silk, and behind her back, nine shining swords were fanned out like a halo of light.
She spoke her own name. Her voice was a bizarre melody, mixing the wisdom of the heavens with the resonance of the earth, vibrating directly into the listener's soul.
“I am the Mountain Spirit-Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heavens. I am the profound goddess who holds both the Authority of the Nine Heavens and the power of this Mountain Spirit.”
The memories of the Mountain Spirit Grandmother had been erased. Only the instincts of a Goddess of War remained. A new god had finally descended.
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