Chapter 176 : Killing Intent, Runs Wild

Chapter 176: Killing Intent, Runs Wild

Blood spattered from Lee Jaseung’s shoulder.

He failed to evade the First Lord’s sword as it slipped in through a gap.

Their movements were cleaner and more precise than before, which pleased him and made him want to keep fighting. That careless desire drew blood.

Lee Jaseung refocused on the fight.

Tsss!

Blood burst from his thigh again. This time he failed to dodge the Third Lord’s blade.

“He is collapsing. Press him hard!”

The First Lord shouted and drove in even more savagely.

Lee Jaseung twisted his body and barely slipped past the attacks. It was harder than before.

Their speed had not increased.

Why? Why did his movement suddenly slow down?

His inner Qi was ample, and he was not internally injured.

Yet his body felt heavy, like waterlogged cotton. He had never experienced this before.

Poison?

It was the first thought, but it was not poison. He would have noticed his body being poisoned.

Thud!

Struck in the chest by the First Lord’s blow, Lee Jaseung rolled across the ground.

Watching, the Elder Demon Lord’s lips curled in satisfaction. The unease in one corner of his heart vanished.

‘So of course. Your inner Qi finally ran out.’

But it did not.

The vast reservoir of inner Qi, worth two hundred forty years worth, still waited in his Dantian to be used.

His body had simply slowed at once.

Swish swish swish swish!

Lee Jaseung rolled over the ground to avoid the rain of strikes. Once he began to give ground, it became impossible to stop.

Why? Just why?

Even in the midst of it, he kept searching for the answer.

Under such fierce assault, he normally would not have been able to think of anything else. At that moment he was slipping past the First Lord and Third Lord’s attacks by the thinnest margin.

He could barely evade, so how could he think of anything else?

Yet he could.

That was because of one experience that no one else had ever lived.

Lee Jaseung had lived forty-seven years inside the Seven-Color Hidden Land. He had spent most of that life repeating cultivation and real combat to save Baek Seolyoung.

He had already seen many battlefields, but the experiences in the Seven-Color Hidden Land were truly diverse.

Those experiences were giving him the strength to overcome this crisis of Inner Demon. It was not a matter of will. It was the experience that was protecting him.

Even as a sword edge grazed his face, he kept thinking.

Where had it gone wrong? Why had those neat, razor-clean movements come apart like this.

He had only wanted to keep feeling that sensation, and yet… Ah!

Swish!

As another slash carved deep into his flank, he found the answer as if by magic.

The problem lay right there.

The thought that he wanted to keep that sensation.

Said another way, it meant this.

He wanted to keep fighting.

In other words… he wanted to keep killing people.

The desire had risen to slaughter them all, neatly and cleanly.

Inner Demon.

The Inner Demon had come in the form of a lust for killing.

The instant he recognized it as Inner Demon, his instincts rejected it. His attainment had reached a level where, in mind and in body, anything foul that tried to enter was rejected by instinct.

The problem arose there.

In the act of rejecting the Inner Demon, mind and body fell out of balance.

An ordinary person would not have suffered this.

But because his martial attainment was so high, this result had come.

Papapapap.

Dodging the blades that flew in, Lee Jaseung crawled along the ground.

The First Lord lunged with a stabbing thrust and rushed in fast. Having found an opening, they did not intend to lose it.

Swiish!

The First Lord’s sword drove straight for his heart. With his movement as it was, he could not evade.

If it continued, he would die!

At the last possible instant, Lee Jaseung spun like lightning and slipped past the blade. Flowing through into a chain of motion, he wrapped the First Lord up and slammed him into the floor.

Crunch!

A secret of the Ten Heavenly Secret Arts landed cleanly. The skull shattered and the First Lord died on the spot.

His movements had quickened again. He was even faster than at his peak a moment ago.

Seeing it, the Third Lord rushed in with madness pouring off him.

“This rat tricked us?”

The Third Lord decided that Lee Jaseung had been acting. Rage piled atop the shock of his three comrades dying, and he charged without thought.

Of course, an excited blade missed its mark.

Lee Jaseung’s strike did not.

Thud.

He spun like a tumbling acrobat. His foot smashed into the Third Lord’s jaw.

The Third Lord’s body lifted and then slammed to the ground.

Rising in one more soaring motion, Lee Jaseung brought his heel down with all his strength onto the Third Lord’s chest.

Crunch.

Ribs gave way. The Third Lord broke apart.

It was a strike as clean and crisp as one could wish. The chain of attacks even carried a dark grace.

Lee Jaseung turned slowly toward the Elder Demon Lord. Killing intent roared from him.

He had found the solution.

More precisely, his instincts had found an escape. The only way to survive.

“I only need to enjoy the killing.”

He smiled with a wicked curl of the lips.

His instincts had accepted the Inner Demon. He had no choice. If he had not accepted it, the First Lord’s blade would have taken his life moments ago.

Having lost the Four Demon Lords, the Elder Demon Lord’s fury blazed to the crown of his head. He had never imagined the remaining two would die as well.

What a disgrace. In the middle of that rising inferno, Lee Jaseung poured oil on the flames.

He lifted the dagger and crooked a finger to beckon him closer.

Demonic Qi erupted from the Elder Demon Lord’s body along with his rage.

“You mongrel of the Unorthodox Faction! I am the Vice Leader of the Demonic Cult!”

Huuuung.

An immense surge of Demonic Qi became wind and swept in every direction.

Lee Jaseung’s sleeves snapped and fluttered.

The Elder Demon Lord was in a different league than the Four Demon Lords.

Rumor had it that if the Four Demon Lords combined their strength they could match him, but the truth was nothing like the rumor. Simply by opening his channels and letting his aura surge, he proved he was far stronger.

“Heh heh heh.”

Lee Jaseung laughed in a note that bordered on a growl. He was not his usual self.

Earlier, his reason had been half swallowed by killing intent.

But when he directly felt the Elder Demon Lord’s Demonic Qi, that balance shifted even more. Eight parts out of ten were now ruled by the killing intent.

Instinct moved for survival. Ordinarily, that overwhelming aura would have allowed the killing intent to devour him.

Yet his will was so strong that some reason remained, fighting to keep the kill from swallowing him whole.

If the fight ended like this, he would return to himself. For the moment, though, the remaining two stood on a knife edge.

The foe before him was the Vice Leader of the Demonic Cult. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before the killing intent consumed him entirely.

Lee Jaseung moved first.

The Elder Demon Lord charged to meet him and swung a fist.

Boom!

Their fists collided in midair with an eardrum-tearing blast. The shock sent both skidding back.

They gave ground the same number of steps. It was a dead heat.

They rushed each other again.

Papapapapang!

Fists flew with blinding speed.

The Elder Demon Lord was fundamentally a fist master.

Northern Sea Demon Emperor Fist.

It was one of the Demonic Arts used by the Asura Demon Sect’s Cult Leader, a fist art personally passed down to him by Yao Hong.

Krooaaar!

A beast’s roar rang from his strikes. The power was tremendous, yet Lee Jaseung did not yield.

If anything, his momentum stood half a step higher.

Papapapapapang!

In the exchange, Lee Jaseung’s body slipped inside the Elder Demon Lord’s guard and drove into his chest.

Thuuud!

His shoulder smashed into the man’s sternum.

With a grunt, the Elder Demon Lord staggered back.

At the moment of impact, his protective body Qi shattered and the chest took the blow. Pain and surprise flashed across his face.

He felt power that could not be blocked by protective Qi alone.

“You worm of the Unorthodox!”

Lee Jaseung laughed coldly.

“All mouth and no bite, you Demonic cur!”

He was no longer his usual self. He was almost wholly engulfed by killing intent. Facing the Elder Demon Lord, he could not restrain it.

This time the Elder Demon Lord charged first.

Fists traded again. Then a sharp tearing in the air rang out.

Lee Jaseung sprang back and glanced down at his chest.

His robe hung in a long rip and a deep gash scored his chest.

The Elder Demon Lord’s nails had lengthened like a beast’s. He had fused the Northern Sea Demon Emperor Fist with his own secret art to forge a claw technique, the Demon Emperor Claw.

Shraaa.

The slashing rush was razor sharp. It shredded Lee Jaseung’s protective Qi without mercy.

He kept giving ground.

“Khahahaha! How long do you think you can keep running?”

Shraa. Shraaa. Shraa.

Space itself seemed to tear. Anything that met those strokes would be cut apart.

Lee Jaseung slipped past by a hair. The attacks were too strong to receive barehanded.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

He drew Asura and met the claws. Dagger and talon clashed with the ring of steel.

Even so, it was only a stopgap. The Elder Demon Lord’s attacks were blindingly fast and exquisitely precise.

Flash! Thunk!

Lee Jaseung’s protective Qi split and blood sprayed from his flank. Without that protection, the wound would have laid his ribs bare.

He pressed the acupoint at his side to staunch the flow. He had lost so much blood that his head reeled.

The Elder Demon Lord, in contrast, was unhurried. He knew time was on his side.

He licked the blood from his claw tips and smiled with malice.

At this rate, it was only a matter of time.

It was not a question of using close-combat technique or Yama’s Dagger Art.

His mind and body still would not come into harmony. The last ember of reason was holding the killing intent at bay.

His remaining reason endured the killing intent while wrestling with a single question.

What should he do?

Shraaa!

The Elder Demon Lord swept in even faster. The Demon Emperor Claw carved the air with strength that would sever anything it caught.

Shraa! Shak! Shraa!

His talons scythed down to rip open Lee Jaseung’s face.

It was too fast to block.

It was that moment.

Squeeze.

Lee Jaseung’s hand clamped around his wrist.

Astonishingly, he matched the Elder Demon Lord’s speed. He had become faster.

“You?”

In that instant of surprise.

Thud!

Lee Jaseung’s fist smashed into his face.

The Elder Demon Lord rolled and sprang up.

Voom! Crash!

Lee Jaseung’s body split the air and lashed out, kicking him without mercy.

Skrrrk.

Crossing his forearms to guard, the Elder Demon Lord slid back.

Lee Jaseung had regained his true level.

At the brink, when his face was about to be torn open, his reason gave up resisting the rule of the killing intent.

The killing intent took perfect hold of him, and in that instant the imbalance between mind and body was resolved.

Thanks to that, the crisis had passed, yet a grave problem remained.

The deep abyss that had once filled his eyes was gone. Only feral, unreasoning killing intent now poured from Lee Jaseung’s gaze.