Devastating Losses

A master suddenly appeared, immediately bearing down on the strongest enemy and fighting him hard. He brought a glimmer of hope to the Hua Shan side, which had already been plunged into despair.

Soon afterward, the Huashan disciples in the rear joined the fight. They were all greenhorns, but they were fresh troops all the same.

The most immediate benefit of the hot-blooded youths' arrival was that the gap in numbers between the two sides disappeared. The one-sided battle gradually reached a stalemate.

Seeing that they had steadied their position, Li Mu breathed a sigh of relief. This was Mount Hua, after all. The longer they dragged things out, the better it was for them.

Although the Mount Hua Sect had sent out all its main forces, that didn't mean it was powerless. There were plenty of retired Mount Hua disciples in the Huayin region. Now that trouble had struck the mountain, they naturally couldn't sit idly by.

There were also escort agencies, martial arts schools, and martial families in Guanzhong, most of which had ties to the Mount Hua Sect.

The Mount Hua Sect hadn't fallen into decline yet. If these people didn't want to uproot their families and flee to the Demonic Cult, they had to come to the rescue. Otherwise, they'd pay dearly when the reckoning came.

If they couldn't end the fight quickly, these Demonic Cult fiends were doomed to be wiped out.

With his worries cast aside, Li Mu fought with even greater ease. The Nurturing Self Sword Technique was only average in its offensive power, but in his hands it roared like a tiger and surged with a boundless, righteous spirit, cutting a swath through the battlefield.

Elder Jia, clad in purple, was starting to panic. If he'd known there was such a troublesome opponent on the mountain, he never would have taken this risk.

Li Mu was clearly several minor realms below him, yet he was still being suppressed. It defied everything Elder Jia knew, and made him think at once of Feng Qingyang.

Just hearing that name sent a chill through him. Feng Qingyang had earned his reputation as the Sword Saint largely by trampling the Sun Moon Divine Cult.

To eliminate this rising star of the Mount Hua Sect, they had acted more than once. In the end, though, Feng Qingyang had soared to greatness, while the masters who took part in the ambush suffered heavy casualties.

It was too late for regrets. Li Mu had set his sights on him. No matter where Elder Jia ran, Li Mu pursued him relentlessly, still finding time to kill a few Demonic Cult underlings along the way.

In their earlier exchanges, at least thirty Demonic Cult followers had been taken out by Li Mu in passing. Elder Jia had been so unnerved that he no longer dared face him head-on.

He kept dodging left and right across the battlefield, trying to bait Li Mu into unleashing his big moves, hoping to wear him down with his own deep reserves of inner strength.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as he'd hoped. Li Mu did unleash plenty of big moves over the better part of the day, but showed no signs of fatigue. Elder Jia, meanwhile, was left in a sorry state, with several new cuts on his body.

Li Mu had the clear advantage, but the others weren't so lucky. The veteran elders holding the mountain were all advanced in years. They had plenty of combat experience, but their stamina was nowhere near what it had been in their youth.

By now, many were utterly exhausted, holding on through sheer willpower.

The disciples' fight was even more brutal. As the casualties mounted, many young disciples lost their heads, trading wounds for wounds and lives for lives, completely forgetting Li Mu's earlier warning.

"Reinforcements are here!"

Someone shouted, and the situation on the battlefield changed in an instant.

The Demonic Cult's elite troops could still hold on, but the followers from the Guanzhong Branch broke down. Having lived in the Guanzhong region for years, they had always feared the Mount Hua Sect deeply. If the Demonic Cult's rules hadn't been so strict, with no retreat allowed, they would have quit long ago.

They had already been uneasy about ambushing Mount Hua. Now the battle was going badly, and the enemy had reinforcements. It was hard for their morale not to collapse.

No matter how strict the Demonic Cult's rules were, they couldn't stop people from wanting to live. They didn't have the Three Corpse Brain-Spirit Pill yet, and still clung to a sliver of hope.

The martial world was vast. They could hide somewhere no one knew them, and the cult might never find them.

Besides, being hunted by the cult was a problem for the future. If they didn't run, they'd die today. The choice was obvious.

Seeing that the battle was lost, Elder Jia stopped tangling with Li Mu, abandoned his followers, and turned to flee.

Li Mu was about to chase him, but then thought of his fellow disciples still fighting desperately. He immediately let go of the tempting idea and turned back to join the battle.

Hunting down the Demonic Cult's leader was important, but compared with the lives of his fellow disciples, the latter mattered more.

The Mount Hua Sect had already suffered devastating losses in this battle. It might look as though they had driven off the Demonic Cult, but the Mount Hua Sect had still lost.

They had traded the future of their sect for the Demonic Cult's hastily assembled cannon fodder. From the very beginning, the Mount Hua Sect had been destined to lose.

Just by sight, more than a hundred disciples had fallen in this battle. The actual casualties could only be higher.

Li Mu didn't dare imagine how furious the sect's senior leaders would be when they heard the terrible news. He wouldn't be surprised if this sparked a war between the orthodox and demonic factions.

And this was with him having turned the tide in the moment. Without this butterfly effect, the Mount Hua Sect's losses would have been even worse; they might even have been wiped out.

Thinking it through this way also resolved one of the mysteries in the original story.

The younger martial brothers and sisters had been nearly wiped out in the Demonic Cult's surprise attack, those above them had perished in the Sword-Qi conflict, and the disciples outside the mountain gate had been ambushed by their enemies. It now made sense why only Yue Buqun and Ning Zhongze remained in the Qi Sect.

The Demonic Cult's surprise attack might even have been one of the sparks that ignited the Sword-Qi conflict. After all, so many disciples had died, and someone had to take responsibility.

The sect's expansion had failed, and its foundations had been severely weakened. Ning Qingyu, who had led the plan, was sure to lose much of his standing, and might even have his position as sect leader threatened.

If someone kept fanning the flames from behind the scenes, the Sword Sect would surely seize the opportunity to make trouble, worsening the infighting within the sect.

In the original story, Yue Buqun had always been extremely sensitive about this issue. Clearly, the Qi Sect had a dark history of its own in all this. Otherwise, Feng Buping and the others wouldn't have held a grudge for decades.

As he pieced things together, Li Mu also hunted down the Demonic Cult followers who were a step too slow to react. He managed both without neglecting either.

At that moment, he truly understood why the Five Mountains Sword Sects and the Demonic Cult were said to have a "blood feud as deep as the sea." Any Mount Hua disciple who had lived through this battle would have only one word for the Demonic Cult in the future: kill!

After watching so many fellow disciples fall, even Li Mu had only one thought: butcher those bastards and avenge them. And this was only one blood feud between the Five Mountains Sword Sects and the Demonic Cult.

Telling them to let go of their hatred was pure armchair talk. By this point, there was no chance of reconciliation between the two sides unless one was utterly destroyed.

After killing the last enemy, Li Mu went to the only surviving elder of the sect and was about to use his inner strength to help treat his wounds.

"Don't waste your inner strength. This old man won't die just yet. The Demonic Cult members are sinister and crafty. Who knows if they'll come back for another attack?

"You'll have to oversee the sect's affairs from here on. No matter what it takes, you must find the traitor as soon as possible."