Monochrome Sovereign [EN]: Chapter 1193

“There are so many of them.”

When did it start?

It must have been after he awakened the Yellow Dragon. Even then, his resolve to stop the Three Teachings hadn’t changed, but the blind rage and fury he felt towards them had greatly diminished.

Of course, it wasn’t as if he had started to view the followers of the Three Teachings favorably.

To Yeon Ho-Jeong, the Three Teachings were still the enemy trying to destroy his homeland, his foundation. Furthermore, if his people were to die at their hands, his life, already dedicated to defeating them, would transform into one that would burn their souls even in the afterlife.

In the past, now, and even in the uncertain future after the war, the Three Teachings were his enemy.

Yet, his eyes were calm.

‘Master.’

He thought of his teacher.

With the greatest martial arts and enlightenment of all time, he had ascended to a semi-divine realm, living far beyond the time allotted to humans, for more than three centuries before ascending to the heavens.

‘I am no longer consumed by hatred and killing intent.’

The future is unknown, but if he had found his true self now, then even if some event were to occur in the future that would cause him to succumb to madness, he would be able to regain his original self.

‘If it weren’t for Master, I would still be scattering killing intent across the world.’

Yeon Ho-Jeong closed his eyes for a moment.

Then, his teacher’s face became clear.

When looking at the world, he forgets the face of his benefactor, and only when he turns away from the world does he regain the face of his benefactor.

And the teacher in his memory and heart was smiling brightly, just like the thought he had when he first awakened the Yellow Dragon.

‘Master, Master.’

A kind smile on his teacher’s face.

‘Honestly, I’m a little tired.’

He desperately hoped that this war would end as soon as possible, that it would end quickly without any more sacrifices.

Surprisingly, even though the war hadn’t been going on for very long, it felt as if several years had passed.

Yeon Ho-Jeong knew that the mental fatigue he was feeling was due to his long experience, not from this life, but from his past as the Dark Emperor.

How many allies and enemies had died in Gansu, Shaanxi, and Hebei? Tens of thousands of people had died in the initial battles alone, and if he included his time as the Dark Emperor, how many lives had been lost?

Having witnessed that hellish scene, it was no wonder he was exhausted. If he hadn’t burned with such hatred and anger, he would have given up long ago. It was a truly overwhelming weight of death.

‘What I said to Hu Gae was ultimately what I was saying to myself. But unlike Hu Gae, I cannot afford to be tired. I cannot make a wrong decision. So…’

Flash!

Yeon Ho-Jeong opened his eyes.

‘Give me strength.’

It was the first time. It was the first time he had ever asked someone for strength like this.

He wasn’t ashamed because the person he was asking was his teacher.

Clang!

The chain connecting the Azure Dragon Spear and the Dragon Binding Chain made a cold metallic sound, stirring up his fighting spirit.

It was then.

“Excellent.”

Yeon Ho-Jeong’s eyes, filled with fighting spirit, wavered.

‘Master?’

He looked around.

His teacher was nowhere to be seen.

‘Is it a hallucination?’

Then, he heard his teacher’s voice again.

“You have laid down the weight of hatred and resentment, but you were not yet a true military commander. You only introduced yourself as one.”

Yeon Ho-Jeong swallowed unconsciously.

This was a hallucination. But it didn’t sound like a hallucination at all.

He couldn’t tell if it was just a voice his heart had conjured, or if it was the spirit of his teacher, who had ascended to the heavens, defying the heavenly order to come down and watch over him.

His teacher’s words continued.

“However, my one and only disciple has now become a true Four Divine Generals, so how can I, as his teacher, not be pleased?”

Yeon Ho-Jeong’s eyes blurred.

He muttered unconsciously.

“I was just tired, just struggling, and that makes me a general?”

“Look around you.”

Yeon Ho-Jeong looked around again.

His teacher was still not there. All he could see was the dark sky and the approaching massive demonic energy.

What was there that made him tell him to look around?

Puzzled, Yeon Ho-Jeong turned around for a moment.

There were the old Beggar Clan members.

“Do you see them?”

The old masters of the Beggar Clan, burning with fighting spirit.

Their comical appearance was nowhere to be seen. Each of them had their cudgels on their shoulders, their spirits burning. They looked like soldiers who had accepted their deaths.

Yeon Ho-Jeong, who had been staring blankly at them, suddenly realized that he could see someone else far away. It wasn’t a sight he could see with his eyes, but a scene he could see with his heart.

‘The Tang Clan.’

He wondered how that was possible, but Yeon Ho-Jeong could tell that hundreds of Tang Clan members dispatched from Chengdu had entered the vicinity of Mount Ak.

It was incredibly fast. It was clear that Tang Gwan had dispatched troops immediately after receiving the message.

“A person cannot live alone. If they do, they are no longer human. This teacher was like that.”

The legend of the past, who had lived alone for over three hundred years after the Blood Demon Sect incident.

His teacher, who was born a human and reached the realm of a demigod, could not withstand the weight of that immense time and lost himself.

“You are the same. You have been struggling for a long time, but there have always been people around you. You acknowledged them, but you always tried to do everything alone. Even though you knew it wasn’t the best way.”

Looking back, it was true.

When he led the Righteous Army to eliminate the demonic forces, and later when he rebuilt the Black Emperor Fortress and called for them to move forward together, he was afraid that his allies would get hurt, so he tried to handle most of the work alone.

And he thought that was the right thing to do as a leader.

But.

‘Clan Leader Tang.’

Tang Gwan did not come here.

He dispatched troops, but he did not come himself. The person who would have wanted to come here more than anyone else had stayed behind with his clan.

He was now someone who valued the organization as much as he did, so why didn’t he come with them?

‘He knows.’

The hand holding the Azure Dragon Spear tightened.

‘He knows that he has to stay with the clan and protect the center. That’s why he didn’t come.’

And one more thing.

‘He believes.’

He believed in the dispatched troops, in the strength of the old Beggar Clan members, the Old Nine Hall.

And in the abilities of the Black Emperor Fortress Lord, the Black and White Supreme.

“You are also human. You can be tired and struggle. When that happens, don’t rely on this teacher who has disappeared from this world, but borrow strength from everyone who lives in this era with you.”

Woo-oong.

A golden aura began to surge from Yeon Ho-Jeong’s body.

“A Four Divine General is one who stands at the forefront of war. And the forefront is just the very front, there are countless people behind it. You are a general who faces the enemy on behalf of them, but you cannot face all the enemies alone.”

Zhiiiiiing!!

The Divine King Energy soared to its peak.

The mental fatigue was gradually disappearing.

It was a fact he had always known, but it was also a truth he had tried to ignore. As he faced the enemy’s massive army and looked back at the truth, the fatigue in his mind and body vanished like snow melting.

“You struggled to stop the Three Teachings, but countless people have begun to move with you. That is the quality of a general. But a lone wolf can never be a great general.”

“……”

“If you have been moving alone until now, from now on, you will be together.”

Yeon Ho-Jeong’s eyes blazed.

At the same time, a chilling light flashed in the demonic eyes of the Black Blood Demon.

Hee hee hee hee hee!

The cry it let out was reminiscent of a dragon’s roar.

The sound was so immense that it shook the mountains and forests, but surprisingly, it did not harm the ears of the Old Nine Hall members.

Whoooosh!

Rather, their momentum was amplified. They roared, inheriting Yeon Ho-Jeong’s general’s aura, and the Old Nine Hall members’ momentum began to surge fiercely with their powerful cries.

Although the internal energy cultivation methods they had learned were different, their will to fight against the enemy was the same. People with completely different temperaments had gathered together, but they had become one.

Flap.

Yeon Ho-Jeong, riding the Black Blood Demon, slowly advanced.

Then, as if they had been waiting, the Old Nine Hall members followed behind him. They advanced, deploying the massive formations, the Beggar Clan’s secret techniques, the Dragon Tiger Cudgel Formation and the Wind Cloud Cudgel Formation.

The two formations firmly supported Yeon Ho-Jeong’s back as he moved forward. Feeling the soldiers’ will, Yeon Ho-Jeong’s Yellow Dragon Energy pulsed even more intensely, amplifying his aura to its limit.

Kwarurururung!!

Thunder rumbled in the sky.

Kurururung.

The thousand demons, divided into four units, had approached within five hundred yards.

It was an incredibly fast speed. They had run all the way from that far away, but they didn’t seem very tired.

But Yeon Ho-Jeong could tell. Their condition was slightly different from usual.

They had rushed here, not knowing how hard it was because they were immersed in fanaticism, but in the end, they were also human, so there was a limit to their mental strength.

‘I can see it.’

The Divine King Energy, which had been writhing erratically, gradually descended to the middle dantian [energy center in the body].

The Yellow Dragon Energy, which symbolized the energy of nature itself, also extended upwards to the upper dantian, following the line that the Divine King Energy had descended.

Woo-woo-woo-oong!!

The two energies mixed and descended to the lower dantian, the field, and his whole body was filled with power.

Yeon Ho-Jeong’s eyes widened as if they would tear.

The upper, middle, and lower dantians began to resonate more strongly.

One and three, three and one. The realm he had already stepped through was once again shouting loudly in front of him, asking what the true meaning of martial arts was.

‘Ah!’

It was natural that he had forgotten the forms and formulas of the Four Divine Martial Arts after awakening the Yellow Dragon.

He had awakened the Yellow Dragon by combining the Four Divine Energies into one, but he had only trained the Yellow Dragon and the Divine King in their original forms, and had not made them truly one.

He was training the strongest martial art of all time, and while knowing that this martial art symbolized the pinnacle of martial arts, he treated it with the same ordinary standards as other martial arts.

If the quality of the vessel had changed, he had to increase its size accordingly. But Yeon Ho-Jeong had not done that.

There was no room for the Four Divine Martial Arts in a vessel that was already struggling to contain the Yellow Dragon and the Divine King, so it was natural that they would be forgotten.

‘Just like how if your innate talent is small, you develop by increasing the size of that talent.’

Yeon Ji-Pyeong, Muk Bi, and Jin Yang were born geniuses.

But Gang Ryang was different. He was also worthy of being called a genius, but his talent was not enough to make him this strong at his age.

And it was the same for himself.

Increasing the size of talent itself was like expanding the vessel. If you weren’t born with it, you just had to struggle harder and learn more, and if you grew big enough to contain the world, that was enough.

‘The Yellow Dragon Divine King Art is the enlightenment of the extreme. In the end, this training created by humans is based on understanding humans.’

Not dictatorship, but peace, not alone, but everyone.

Not completing it alone, but hoping to complete it with everyone.

Flash!

It was as if a streak of golden lightning had poured down from the sky.

It was truly like tasting the true Yellow Dragon Divine King Energy. He remembered his teacher, who had remained as a thought in the past, saying that he would have to work hard to even enter the gate.

That’s right. This is the entry point of the Yellow Dragon Divine King Energy.

The energy that was created by dividing the Yellow Dragon and the Divine King, which were originally one, burning the power of the body and will, and melting the realization that everyone is one, is the true entry point of the Yellow Dragon Divine King Art.

This entry process, which his teacher, who was a genius of his time, would have realized in an instant, was only just beginning for Yeon Ho-Jeong.

But Yeon Ho-Jeong was not disappointed.

If he had realized that he had to expand his vessel, if the entry had now begun.

From this moment on, he could follow the path left by the greatest Four Directional Supreme of all time.

The path to becoming the strongest in the world.

“All troops.”

The dignified voice of the great general made the fighting spirit of the Old Nine Hall members reach the sky.

Yeon Ho-Jeong pointed the Azure Dragon Spear at the demons.

“Advance.”

Kwarurururung!!

The Dragon Tiger Wind Cloud Cudgel Formation rushed past Yeon Ho-Jeong towards the thousand demons.