By Zephyria 
In the next moment, Peng Do-hwan kicked off the rock wall and descended like a shot arrow.
Kwang-!
Just before hitting the ground, Peng Do-hwan swung his greatsword, utilizing the momentum of his fall. Paeng Oe-cheol was standing right there.
“Urgh! What are you doing! It’s me! I am your uncle!”
Paeng Oe-cheol, who had narrowly avoided a powerful strike that gouged the earth, shouted in bewilderment. However, Peng Do-hwan pulled his sword from the ground indifferently, as if he heard nothing.
Then, he lunged at his uncle once again.
“Why are you doing this! Those bastards… Urgh! What did they do to you?”
A killing sword that showed absolutely no consideration for the opponent continued to rain down.
The others watched them with blank stares for a moment, caught off guard by the unexpected situation, but they snapped back to their senses as enemies began descending the cliff.
“Cover me! I will enter inside with the Young Family Head!”
“Yes, Family Head!”
Jegal Yeom-gang was the first to regain his composure and shout. He didn’t know what was wrong with Peng Do-hwan, but at the very least, the other side had found the person they were looking for. Since there was no longer a reason to enter the abandoned mine, he filled the vacancy with his own man.
“How can you do that! Are you ignoring us, Jegal Yeom-gang!”
Il-gwang immediately protested. However, the Black Shadow Unit was no longer as composed as before, as the assault of dozens of Demonic humans joined the lethal debris pouring down from above.
Having already lost many subordinates during the fight in the streets of Lanzhou, the Black Shadow Unit was inevitably pushed into a numerical disadvantage.
“Follow if you can!”
Jegal Yeom-gang ignored them and kicked off the ground. His body soared vertically. The Demonic humans waiting on the rock wall spotted the enemy rising to their eye level and launched themselves like cannonballs.
“Get out of the way, you bastards!”
With a thunderous roar, Jegal Yeom-gang violently swung his folding fan. A crescent-shaped blade of energy flew out, slashing and striking the enemies.
Kwagwang-!
With a loud boom, fragments of the rock wall, unable to withstand the impact, splattered in all directions.
Tung!
Jegal Yeom-gang kicked the air and flew toward the rock wall.
Gang Woong, who happened to witness this, gasped. Though it was only once, he had performed Void Walking, a technique corresponding to the highest realm of light body skills. Just by showing a level of skill that momentarily surpassed his own, it was clear how desperate Jegal Yeom-gang was.
“Wait… your uncle is coming to save you!”
Jegal Yeom-gang muttered through gritted teeth as he dug the toe of his leather shoe into the rock wall. An unprecedented, intense passion flickered in his eyes. Jegal Un followed behind, using his light body skill to climb the cliff.
“Do-hwan! Wake up!”
On one side, a bloody battle between family members unfolded. Despite having learned the same sword techniques and mental cultivation, Paeng Oe-cheol and the Paeng family martial artists seemed to be struggling, unable to handle the sword of a single young successor.
“Jegal Yeom-gang!”
On the other side, Il-gwang poured out every kind of curse at Jegal Yeom-gang, his face flushed a deep red. It was because Jegal Yeom-gang had abandoned him, taking advantage of the confusion and his lack of trust in Il-gwang. Even if he wanted to follow Jegal Yeom-gang, he was too busy fending off the enemy’s assault to find a way out.
Gang Woong also shut his mouth and focused, facing the momentum of the enemies who were sharply striking and retreating from all sides.
After a while, Gang Woong noticed that the Demonic humans were subtly pretending to be cautious while slowly backing away.
Looking at it now, it seemed the enemies hadn’t completely changed their plan, but rather intended to lure them inside since they weren’t entering on their own.
As if to prove this suspicion, Peng Do-hwan, who had been fiercely pressing the Paeng family, suddenly leaped back and clung diagonally to the rock wall.
“Do-hwan! Where are you going!”
Paeng Oe-cheol urgently leaped up after his nephew. He barely managed to find a groove in the wall to hook his fingers and hang on.
“Do-hwan!”
Peng Do-hwan looked down blankly at his uncle, who had climbed up to his feet, then kicked off the wall again to ascend several more yards.
“Don’t go! It’s a trap!”
“Do-hwan, come here! You’ve fallen for their wicked tricks! I will cure you!”
“I shouldn’t have trusted that Jegal bastard! Cover me! I’m going inside!”
No one listened to Gang Woong’s shouts. Gradually, the number of people clinging to the wall and trying to enter Demon Subjugation Valley increased.
“You must not forget the strategy!”
This was the limit of a hastily formed alliance. As the saying goes, ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’; even though there was a strategy that was feasible, albeit clumsy, everyone was too busy looking at the trees rather than the forest, focusing only on their own goals.
It was the downside of lacking a leader with absolute command. They were blinded by their own objectives, regardless of what happened to the rescue party.
At this rate, the operation would fail.
This was the conclusion reached by Gang Woong, who was able to observe the whole scene from a distance thanks to being unintentionally pushed to the rear.
Everyone was too desperate.
Their reason was paralyzed because the goals they absolutely had to achieve blocked their vision.
The martial alliance, built around the Nine Great Sects and the five great families, had protected the peace of the martial world for a long time. When disaster struck, they would grant appropriate authority to the appropriate power and deploy them accordingly to solve the problem.
No one thought their own way of thinking was wrong. However, once authority was granted, they had no choice but to follow, no matter how much they disliked it.
Command or obey.
Those two things had maintained the peace of the martial world for a long time.
In the process, each family and sect had forgotten how to gain the cooperation of others and lead a situation to their advantage.
Here, there was no martial alliance to coordinate the various forces. Furthermore, their arch-enemy, the Demonic Cult, was included. They only valued what was theirs.
Such thoughts hindered cooperation.
This was also the reason why the orthodox sects fell rapidly to the Demonic Cult in the not-so-distant future when the martial alliance failed to perform its role.
“Come back! You must not leave your positions! You’ll fall into their hands!”
Only Gang Woong shouted desperately.
But as expected, no one listened to the cries of a small boy.
Jegal Yeom-gang was already one leap away from the entrance of Demon Subjugation Valley.
“You must not go in!”
They had explosives prepared. This wasn’t a ‘gap’ created by everyone joining forces, but a ‘trap’ they had lured them into. The action of entering was the same, but the meaning was completely different.
The enemies might have judged that it wouldn’t be a loss to collapse the mine tunnel just to take out Jegal Yeom-gang, who had shown remarkable martial arts.
Even if not, there were too many eyes watching his approach.
There was plenty of time to decide whether to detonate the explosives…
“Father! Please come back!”
Only then did Jegal Un seem to realize the fact, stopping mid-climb. But Jegal Yeom-gang, thinking his nephew was close enough to touch, was already in a state where he heard nothing.
To fall for such an obvious trick…
Knowing that carelessness and excitement are factors that make anyone make absurd mistakes, falling for it could not be called a mere mistake.
It was a blunder brought about by arrogance.
Jegal Yeom-gang kicked off the cliff. It was the moment his body soared and touched the edge of the hollowed-out cave in the rock wall.
“Huh?”
Gang Woong, who had been watching the top of the cliff with his neck tilted back, tilted his head. It was hard to see because the sky had already turned pitch black…
“Look over there.”
Gang Woong said to Bang Gyeom, who was nearby.
Something whitish, difficult to distinguish from the clouds in the night sky, drifted out of the mine tunnel and scattered into the air.
Most of the people, sensing the anomaly, stopped fighting for a moment and looked up.
“Is that… smoke?”
At that moment, faint sounds of chaotic screaming seemed to echo, and people began pouring out of the mine tunnel.
“Fire! There’s a fire!”
People rushing out of the tunnel with pale faces didn’t care that there was a thousand-foot precipice right in front of them; they tumbled down.
“Uh, uh!”
Jegal Yeom-gang, who had just stepped into the entrance, tried to hold onto the protrusions and endure as much as possible, but he was soon swept away by the crowd and began to roll down. Fortunately, as befitting the Family Head of a clan, he managed to support himself shortly after, avoiding the disgrace of slamming face-first into the ground.
The drifting smoke soon covered the sky in pitch black.
“…Young master Seong Mu-yeon?”
Within the scattering smoke, Gang Woong could somehow feel Seong Mu-yeon’s touch.
“Cough, cough! Blegh!”
“Aaaagh!”
The Demonic humans, streaming with tears and snot, plummeted to the ground just to survive. Still, being martial artists, they didn’t die. Though they bled from scrapes and fractures, they survived and breathed in the fresh air.
“…Tsk.”
Peng Yuan-jin, watching the scene from a high vantage point, frowned and clicked his tongue shortly.
Coincidentally, a fire broke out at just the right time?
It was obviously the work of the Seven Sons.
Peng Do-hwan was also clinging tightly to the wall to avoid the wave of people pouring out. Feeling Peng Yuan-jin’s gaze, he looked up and gave a short nod. Then, he launched himself toward the enemy again.
“Seven Sons…”
He shouldn’t have been left alone. Originally, he would have taken measures to ensure he couldn’t lift a single finger, but the fact that the Sixth Young Master had rebelled was the root of the problem.
In the end, he knew he would interfere.
Peng Yuan-jin dusted off his sleeve with a look of displeasure and turned abruptly to go inside.