Ch.856Did You Think I Was Your Dad?

– KWAAAANG!

Was the boast about summoning the Heavenly Demon from eight hundred years ago true?

The power of the jiangshi, now rampaging in earnest, was evenly matched with Hersella who maintained her Ominous Divine Form.

“Grrrrr!”

“Stop barking with my mother’s face-!”

The blade forged from a dragon’s reverse scale screams as it clashes like a gale.

Against Hersella who wielded two red blades like a storm, the jiangshi’s black sword blocked and deflected every single slash without retreating an inch.

Considering that Amin was the original owner of that body, it was truly unbelievable power.

“Grrrr!”

“…You are not my mother. Not at all. You’re just a monster created by digging up my mother’s corpse!”

Kicks and punches interspersed between their exchanges struck each other’s bodies with explosive sounds, but neither Hersella nor the jiangshi seemed to care as they calmly reset their stances and continued their sword attacks.

A clash of calamitous violence. The palace around the inner wall had already gone beyond ruins and was turning into a massive crater.

“The Heavenly Demon from eight hundred years ago? Yes. Certainly impressive power. To think you’re this strong even without reason!”

Thus, Hersella acknowledged that the being before her was indeed the first Heavenly Demon. It seemed slightly weaker than the legends that claimed it rivaled Carlos the Great, but she attributed that to the influence of Heaven’s Wall.

After all, an opponent that could match her current self even without reason couldn’t be anything but the Heavenly Demon.

“Kyaaaah!”

“Graaaak!”

The Black Moon and Red Moon crossed madly, devastating dozens of meters in all directions.

—-

‘…Something’s strange.’

Unlike Hersella who recognized the jiangshi’s power and acknowledged it as the Heavenly Demon, Meiharin, who was barely recovering her dying body at the riverside, watched their battle with suspicious eyes.

It was a peculiar reaction for someone whose prepared plan had succeeded, despite suffering considerable losses.

However, Meiharin couldn’t help but harbor doubts. Doubts that only she, who created the jiangshi, could have. An incomprehensible situation was unfolding before her.

“Graaaaaa!”

The jiangshi demonstrating surprisingly powerful strength and durability was engaged in a battle nearly equal to Hersella.

Judging by its power alone, it certainly looked like the legendary Heavenly Demon had returned, albeit as a jiangshi.

However.

‘Why is it fighting like that?’

The very way it was fighting was something Meiharin hadn’t anticipated.

Why, you ask?

‘…Where is the majesty of the Karma of Murder?’

It was because the jiangshi, which should have been possessed by the Heavenly Demon’s spirit through primitive regression sorcery, was fighting bare-handed instead of using the majesty of the Karma of Murder that a powerful Karma of Murder wielder would naturally use.

It made no sense. If it were truly the Karma of Murder from eight hundred years ago, it should be rampaging with nebula-like Karma of Murder enveloping its body, just like Hersella who was fighting it.

That was why she had gone through so much trouble to modify Amin’s body into a jiangshi. Because a completely lifeless jiangshi wouldn’t be able to use the power of Karma.

So why couldn’t she sense even a fragment of Karma of Murder from that jiangshi?

To understand the reason, Meiharin prepared the final sorcery she had learned while Hersella and the jiangshi were engaged in fierce battle.

Spirit Eye.

The sorcery that creates a third eye that grants her all kinds of powers.

—-

About three minutes passed like that.

Meiharin finally managed to roughly patch up her near-fatal injuries and unfold the Spirit Eye sorcery.

– Gooooo!

The mana in the air emitted a heavy rumble as it swirled toward the center of her forehead. Meiharin used her nearly shattered fingernail to draw a horizontal wound across her forehead.

Then.

– Squish.

Like suddenly opening wide-shut eyes, the middle of the long wound split open vertically, revealing what was inside.

Instead of the thin flesh covering the skull, a red iris with black blood vessels writhing and a snake-like vertical pointed pupil.

Spirit Eye.

The red eye that sees souls finally took in the world.

– Hwaaaak!

Vast mana overflowed like a whirlpool. Her tattered clothes were torn to shreds in the storm of mana, revealing her battered naked body.

Meiharin’s entire body glowed blue, and intricate patterns were densely engraved on her flesh-colored skin. A strange appearance as if her entire body had been plastered with tattoos.

Perhaps it was uncontrolled mana flowing out, but the two eyes beside her nose emitted blue light, while the Spirit Eye in the middle of her forehead emitted red light in contrast.

‘Spirit Eye. I managed to cast it somehow… but I can’t fight anymore in this body condition.’

If she had succeeded in activating the Spirit Eye in perfect physical condition, she might have stood a chance against Hersella, but now it was out of the question. After all, the Spirit Eye sorcery had no power related to recovery.

To begin with, she hadn’t opened it to fight again.

‘First, I need to check that…’

It was to confirm the state of the jiangshi with the first ability of the Spirit Eye, the sight that sees souls.

The eye on Meiharin’s forehead turned toward the jiangshi that was causing natural disasters while engaging with Hersella.

And.

“…Huh?”

Meiharin unconsciously let out a dumbfounded groan.

It wasn’t there. No matter how closely she looked, not a single fragment of the power of the Karma of Murder—the remnant of Vanirgand—dwelled within that jiangshi.

It made no sense magically. There had been no errors in her formula.

Using the bloodline of divine blood as the core, reinforcing it with blessed remains, and applying primitive regression sorcery to awaken the divine blood and summon its ancestor.

She had even added the condition of “the strongest ancestor from eight hundred years ago” to the primitive regression sorcery, just to be sure. The Heavenly Demon should have emerged.

Yet in the actual situation.

So, what was the reason? All the knowledge Meiharin had learned and mastered as a sorceress of the White Valley was mobilized to find the answer.

And finally, she reached the conclusion.

It was an answer that made her go limp. Her knees gave way and she collapsed onto the dirt.

“That crazy woman Dahamei…”

The reason why the ancestor that should have been summoned using divine blood didn’t appear. What could the answer be?

“She passed off a bastard as the Khan’s child? That insane whore…!”

…What else could it be?

The man she thought had divine bloodline never had a drop of divine blood mixed in him to begin with. There was no other explanation.

Yes. Amin was not Orhan’s son.

Dahamei, who had conceived another man’s seed, had simply lied that her child was Orhan’s son.

A secret of birth that no one in Clan Aishan knew, that only Dahamei had taken to her grave.

“What the…!”

Even for Meiharin, who had always regarded Orhan as an enemy and a tool to be used, it was astonishing.

It was so absurd that she almost lost her hard-won Spirit Eye.

‘My perfect plan, ruined by such a reason…!’

Meiharin clutched her temple with her one remaining arm and exhaled a sigh full of rage. Her blood pressure shot up so high that her head was spinning.

To think that her plan to eliminate the current Karma of Murder with the ancient Karma of Murder had been foiled, not by some grand reason, but merely because of a lustful woman’s infidelity.

It was truly bewildering and infuriating for her.

Moreover, even if she wanted to hold someone accountable, Dahamei, who was no different from the culprit, had met a miserable end long ago.

“Crazy woman… crazy woman…!”

In the end, Meiharin could only hurl futile curses at Dahamei, who would be floating in the sky in a coffin.

‘Wait, then who is that?’

In the midst of lamenting for a long time, a question suddenly arose.

If not the Heavenly Demon from eight hundred years ago, whose soul is possessing the jiangshi’s body and fighting now?

Even if it wasn’t the first Heavenly Demon, the fact that it was demonstrating such power meant it was undoubtedly an extraordinary being.

‘Who could it be to match that Karma of Murder woman…’

Just as Meiharin’s gaze, which had been looking only at the sky, turned back toward the jiangshi due to this new question—

———!

The remains of a pavilion that were silently and cleanly erased by the jiangshi’s sword strike revealed the identity of that being.

“Wait, this sword technique…?!”

Meiharin couldn’t immediately identify the soul dwelling in the jiangshi even after seeing that, but Hersella, who had been fighting the jiangshi, instantly realized that her opponent was not the Heavenly Demon.

Hersella exclaimed in shock and hurriedly distanced herself. Instead of the cleanly sliced Red Scale Sword, she drew Durandal, which had suddenly begun to vibrate wildly.

“A spell that summons the spirit of an ancestor… No way, could your identity be…!”

It was unmistakable. The identity of that powerful sword strike clearly remaining in her memory. That overwhelming power of destruction.

A slash that tears apart space itself.

Throughout eight hundred years of history, only two knights had ever been able to manifest this ultimate technique that reappeared in the world once more.

【 Sword of Severance 】

The founder of House Median. The Tale of Heros of Rotholandus, one of the Great’s Twelve Knights.