As long as his heart kept beating in his chest, no one would ever stop him.
There, at the foot of the gorge, the dome burned over the ancient castle and his weakened, but still ready for battle, army was waiting in the wings. The fearless General was waiting too.
Chapter 177
As Hadjar had expected, the siege of the castle didn’t take more than half an hour. The black dome cracked and the cannonballs began to demolish the walls. The horn sounded and the Bear squad rushed to the East gate along with the cavalry. One of the greatest battles in the entire war began.
The Baliumians and the Moon army fought to finally win, while the sectarians were desperately trying to survive. The disciples and Masters alike understood that they had nowhere to retreat to and so they fought fiercely.
Hadjar felt like he was somehow wrong. A few years ago, he would’ve been standing shoulder to shoulder with Nero. They would be fighting together at the gate, throwing the bodies of their dead foes into the moat and not allowing them to leave the castle.
Instead, he was calmly walking in the direction of the burning front gate. The soldiers along the way saluted him. They were confident in their General and yet there was an air of cheerful hopelessness, like Hadjar was being buried alive.
It was a daunting prospect for a practitioner at the Transformation Stage to be expected to defeat a Heaven Soldier, a true cultivator. Especially when that cultivator was the Patriarch of an ancient sect and had managed to acquire a lot of wealth and knowledge in his life.
Hadjar paused in front of the castle gates for a moment. He wasn't afraid, he just wanted to remember them burning, pitiful and crumbling, before his eyes. The spectacle lifted his spirits.
He stepped boldly into the fire, going through the wall of flames by swinging his blade to part it. The courtyard of the castle, where the fireballs, cannonballs, and arrows were still coming down, was littered with dead bodies. They’d been torn apart by explosions and arrows, and they’d met their deaths terrified, desperate to get out.
They hadn't died as the brave soldiers had, but then, they hadn’t been fighting for more than their own lives. The only mistake of these ordinary disciples had been a desire to become stronger with the help of ‘The Black Gates’ sect.
Hadjar felt neither sympathy nor pity. This world was complicated.
If you choose a dangerous path, be prepared to meet someone dangerous as you travel along it.
A cannonball struck the ground near Hadjar. It distracted him from his thoughts slightly and he started walking a bit faster. The building itself wasn’t much different from the palaces he’d seen in the capital. There were some distinct features, however: the walls were much thicker and not covered with patterns or carvings; there were also tiled roofs and narrow windows rather than huge, stained glass ones.
It was a mixture of opulent elegance and military practicality.
Hadjar walked directly to the entrance of the main building. He found heavy, oaken doors with steel rivets there, ones that seemed to be starting to burn.
He didn't even have to open them. They opened on their own as if hinting that the Patriarch was waiting for him.
Hadjar went inside and all the sounds immediately seemed to disappear. The General was a little confused. After a day of getting used to continuous shouting, the whistling of arrows, ringing of steel, and endless explosions, such a silence was even slightly painful. The lack of light and the soft carpets made it look like the entrance to the abyss, designed to make souls that had accidentally wandered in let their guard down and become easier prey.
However, there were no demons there to tempt him.
Going down a series of long corridors (Lergon had somehow managed to get a detailed map of the Patriarch's castle), Hadjar could admire various statues. He also saw the famous ‘mounts’ of the dark sect along the way.
Lian had told him that they’d been used in the battles on the eastern front. They’d tried to demoralize the Moon army and failed. Maybe that's why the forces that had been at the eastern front had been the first to reach the castle of the Patriarch and begin the siege.
The farther Hadjar advanced, the louder the echo of his footsteps became. He heard it not just with his ears, but also his heart.
Dim, green lanterns illuminated the high ceiling of the underground corridors. They made the terrifying but skillfully made bas-reliefs easier to see. These often depicted demons eating children, men raping women, and women pulling the hearts out of men’s bodies.
Hadjar realized that the things he’d originally mistaken for columns were hideous statues. Some depicted figures intertwined in unnatural sexual positions, while others showed people trying to keep their entrails inside their bodies.
They all had one thing in common—they looked far too alive and stood as if they really felt the weight of the whole castle on their shoulders. Amidst the echo of his own footsteps, Hadjar sometimes felt as if he could hear the cries of these people. Maybe he wasn’t imagining it.
He moved carefully over the carpets as if they might be full of poisonous snakes or other similar creatures. The General turned away from some of the more gruesome statues and bas-reliefs he glimpsed along the way, not wanting to know what was depicted on them.
He walked for almost twenty minutes.
Nero and the cavalry were surely able to capture the East gate in that time. Perhaps the Moon army would be waiting at the main entrance, trying to predict whether the General would come out alive or the victorious Patriarch would carry out Hadjar’s head. If the former happened, victory would truly be theirs, and they would hold a funeral feast to honor the dead. If the latter happened… the funeral feast would be organized in their honor, but no one would be able to enjoy it.
Huge double doors appeared in front of Hadjar out of nowhere. They depicted a terrible demon literally rising up out of the stone to plunge its claws into the neck of an arrogant victim.
The General smiled and kicked the doors open. He’d dreamed of entering a room like this since his childhood, but, alas, such barbaric behavior hadn’t been very acceptable in the Palace.
The bright daylight blinded Hadjar for a moment, and when he opened his eyes again, he almost let out a cry of surprise. The things he had seen previously were terribly frightening, but at the same time, they’d been made with an amazing attention to detail.
Apparently, the castle had been built atop a cliff, because Hadjar could see the sky. It was a clean and blue sky that served as one of the walls of the room. Hadjar stood on one of five huge, round, iron platforms. They were joined together by black, melted bones, assembled to serve as bridges.
An underground corridor had led him to an underground cave.
A huge cave and a horrifying statue.
Five platforms, standing at different heights, surrounded this figure. Blue boilers hung along the walls ... or rather, they’d been blue once. The huge boilers, that surely had a capacity of tons, were covered in long, bloody tracks. Hadjar didn't want to know who’d been cooked in them and how terrible their screams had been.
A statue that was no less than 130 feet tall stood in the center. It looked like a predatory man-bird, a mixture between a harpy and a demon. It had hairy hooves instead of feet and black claws adorned with gold and amber instead of fingers. It had molten stone wings that were so light and graceful that it seemed like the statue would actually fly away at any moment.
Hadjar was very surprised when he saw not just one, but two figures standing on one of the platforms. The second figure, according to its aura, was clearly at the level of a Knight of the Spirit at the least.
“Damn,” Hadjar whispered.
Chapter 178
Hadjar had expected to see a lot of things: a decrepit old man, a psychopath holding a bloody scythe, some arrogant and scarred warrior… Everything but the well-groomed young man. He looked like he was barely twenty years old, even younger than Hadjar.
He had pale skin, thin cheekbones, his
nails were well cared for, and he wore expensive clothes made from black silk, velvet, and embroidered with gold threads. Hadjar was certain that this young man was the Patriarch.
The second person, the cultivator at the level of the Knight of the Spirit, was not so elegant. He was actually a little strange: wearing heavy armor, he wielded a huge sword shaped like a raven's beak. He wore a mask that also looked like a raven’s beak and concealed the upper part of his face. The black hood, like a cloak of feathers, made him appear even more similar to the above-mentioned bird.
However, the red-eyed Raven on the cultivator's shoulder meant a lot. Anyway, Hadjar didn’t really know much about the way of life of true cultivators, except for the tidbits he’d gotten from the fragmentary stories told to him by Serra and the Librarian.
“Venerable Raven Wing” the thousand-year-old Patriarch, who looked fifty times younger than he actually was, bowed.
He didn’t just nod as one would at a gala, but bowed, covering his fist with his hand as if he were talking to someone very powerful and far above him.
Hadjar figured that Raven Wing wasn’t the actual name of the second cultivator. It was his title.
According to the Librarian’ stories, every cultivator who became a Knight of the Spirit chose a title. Even if a person's parents gave them a name at birth, it was believed that a cultivator who had traveled so far along the path of cultivation should have the right to choose their own name. Moreover, no titles were ever repeated. Usually, they were chosen because they meant a lot to the Knight, personally.
“Grois,” the Knight nodded completely casually and without any interest.
To a Knight of the Spirit, a mere Heaven Soldier, even the Patriarch of a provincial sect, was no more important than a servant was to a master. If this Raven Wing wanted to, he could obliterate the Moon Army or destroy the entire plateau with a single touch to the hilt of his sword.
Okay, maybe a simple touch wouldn't be enough, but a Technique would surely do the trick.
“Are you so afraid of me, Grois, that you called for a Knight to help you?" Hadjar shouted.
He didn’t want to interfere in the affairs of cultivators, especially the Knights, but he’d cheered himself up with his little outburst. Bragging had never hurt anyone when they were already faced with a deadly threat.
But, as it turned out, he’d done so for no reason. The two cultivators, who had been talking peacefully about something, only noticed his presence after his shout. And as soon as Raven Wing looked into Hadjar’s blue eyes, the General was almost flattened to the ground. It seemed to him like the whole mountain range had fallen on his shoulders, so terrible was the weight of that gaze.
When Raven Wing squinted, Hadjar, fighting back against the pressure on his shoulders, was able to place his blade in front of him with difficulty. That was the only thing that saved him from being cut in two. He was saved only by his intention to draw his blade, rather than Techniques or by touching the sword itself.
May all his relatives turn into demons! The Knight who’d led the nomads at the Blue Wind ridge was no match for Raven Wing.
“Hmph,” the Knight either chuckled or snorted. “Your little rival is not so simple, Grois.”
The Patriarch, without straightening his back, could only strain against the force of Raven Wing’s aura.
“He’s an annoying fly and nothing more, my Lord.”
“That so-called fly has destroyed what you like to call your sect.”
The Knight's tone made it clear that he didn’t think much of ‘The Black Gates’ and its status as a sect.
“I’ll recruit new disciples, my Lord.”
Hadjar was still struggling under the pressure that was like the weight of a mountain, but luckily, no one else was trying to harm him. Raven Wing looked around the cave skeptically. He disliked the blue-red boilers most of all.
“Our great teacher warned you, Grois. If you can’t reach the Spirit Knight level within five hundred years, then you can forget about the Demon Parade.”
The Patriarch bowed even lower and raised his fist covered by his palm as high as possible. It looked utterly obsequious and humiliating.
“I'm close to making a Hundred Thousand Souls pill. It’ll help me level up.”
“Maybe,” the Knight agreed. “But all those pills are only good for mortals like our little fly here. If you take it, you’ll never be able to rise above the initial stage of the Spirit Knight.”
“It’ll be enough for me to participate in the Parade.”
Raven Wing seemed to feel more and more... soiled with every second he spent in this cave, as he was constantly tugging his cloak down, but making sure it didn’t touch the floor.
“That’s up to you, Grois. I'm only talking to you because our teacher asked me to. For some reason, he thinks you show promise. However, I must admit that you are quite good at translating old texts. A Hundred Thousand Souls pill... it seems like the last time one of those appeared on the market was at least fifty thousand years ago. The recipe was thought to have been lost.”
“As you know, my Lord, I’ve found only some of the ancient scrolls. They allowed me to start recreating it.”
Grois, without straightening his back, strode over to a secret niche and took out two bottles of the black substance that Hadjar was very familiar with.
“This is one of the byproducts of my research—Black Rock Smoke. If you break it in a crowded place, you’ll unleash a horrendous epidemic, and only I have an antidote for it.”
Raven Wing didn't even nod his head in gratitude. He just put the jars away in his cloak.
“I see you’re going to take part in a duel. I would, of course, stay to support you, Grois, but I’d start to feel sympathy for mortal women if I spent even another five minutes in this backwater.” Raven Wing said this with such disdain that it felt like he was talking about animals. “The last thing I wanted to warn you about is that the Blue Sky Clan is interested in your research. Especially if it bears fruit. You've been using your lair as a lab for a thousand years, and you haven't been found out yet. But now, if you come to the Parade, they'll suspect something's wrong.”
“The Parade will take place in twenty years.”
“Even two thousand years are nothing to the Blue Sky,” the Knight spoke irritably and Grois bent down even lower. “However, it’s up to you. If you take the chance, you might get a bounty placed on your head by the Blue Sky clan, and then you won’t be welcome in our group anymore.”
“Is that what the teacher said?”
“It’s what I’m saying,” the walls shook from Raven Wing’s voice; some of the cauldrons cracked. “I’ve told you everything. It’s all up to you now.”
The cultivator turned around and... stepped off the cliff. A moment later, he was up in the air, standing on the back of a giant crow. He took one last look at Hadjar and disappeared so quickly that he turned into a distant black dot in a second.
The pressure that had been trying to crush Hadjar immediately disappeared.
“I think you’ve heard something that strangers weren’t intended to hear,” Grois straightened up and his bearing was so arrogant that Hadjar was sickened by his duplicity. “I wouldn't have cared if you’d just taken all my pavilions.”
The Patriarch turned and started down the stairs. His clothes changed with each step he took. Velvet turned into steel and gold turned into flame.
“I wouldn't have cared if you’d burned down all the libraries. By the demons, how disgusting it looks when you mortals are ready to rip each other’s throats out for the pseudo-Techniques that are stored there.”
He kept walking. Long, steel shoes that looked like demonic paws covered his feet. The hem of his clothes curved and assumed the shape of sickles with snarling demons in the center.
“If you’d just killed all the people in the sect, I wouldn't have even looked in your general direction. Still, the pill is almost ready, and even cultivators such as Raven Wing will soon be for
ced to bow their heads to me,” his hair became steely and sharp. Weird claws grew out of his gloves, wrapping around his forearms. They looked almost like bats without any wings, “But you dared to come after me.”
He stopped in front of Hadjar. Long cuts appeared along the ground around them from the force of his aura, and Hadjar’s sword began to tremble as if he’d already been fighting someone for an hour.
“Pathetic mortal! You’re nothing but a practitioner! How dare you think that you can even stand next to a true cultivator! It's like you’re spitting in the face of the entire martial arts world! And it is my duty to send you to the depths of the abyss so that you’ll realize the full extent of your delusions!”
Despite feeling overwhelmed, Hadjar managed to offer a dry:
“It’s a deal.”
The roar of a dragon filled the cave and the Mad General rushed into battle.
Chapter 179
The iron platform from which Hadjar kicked off produced a metallic ringing that sounded like a gong being struck by a hammer. The clear outline of his feet appeared in the place where Hadjar had stood a moment ago.
The dragon’s roar merged with the iron clang, creating an echo of colossal vibration. The walls and the cauldrons started shaking. The liquid inside them began to spill out, covering the statue in the center in a viscous scarlet mixture.
Hadjar's blade shone with a pure steel radiance that took the form of a dragon. He’d cleaved the rider who had challenged Hadjar to avenge his beloved in half with such a strike and had killed Master Robarg with it. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he could actually injure the Shadow of the Immortal using this same attack.
Grois, standing half-turned toward his enemy, didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even raise an eyebrow. His clothes flew up into the black sickles with demonic visages in the middle.
[Starting processing the hostile object’s behavioral patterns]
One of these weapons was enough to stop Hadjar. His sword was trapped, as if in a vise, and the energy that ended up torn from the blade brushed against the shoulders and armor of the Patriarch like a gentle rain. It didn’t leave a single scratch on his body and simply dissolved into fog somewhere at the level of his legs.
Dragon Heart: Iron Will. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 2 Page 52