Beast Fight (1)

Baek Gyu’s eyes flashed.

‘Yes!’

Of the forty-odd warriors who charged at Gong Cheong’s order, fewer than half were left now. The assassins the Second Young Master brought had the upper hand.

Skill was skill, but their morale collapsing was the bigger part. Ha Suk-heon and the masters he brought had all died, so it was only natural for them to waver.

‘We’re really winning.’

To be honest, he’d been worried. He also couldn’t understand why the First Young Master’s assassins, who had all knelt before that terrifying old man the Second Young Master brought, still weren’t joining the fight.

He didn’t know the reason, but now it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

‘That wandering bladesman spewing fire is insane too, but… the Second Young Master?!’

It was an overwhelming force.

He was giving off power like a heavenly general. Even watching from this far away, it was hard to properly track how the Second Young Master’s sword was moving.

‘Can someone become that strong in just a few months? At that level, it feels like even the Sichuan Eight Martial Houses’ heads wouldn’t be a match.’

Baek Gyu clicked his tongue without meaning to.

‘A monster. Don’t tell me he’d been learning martial arts since he was young, without us knowing?’

That was impossible.

He was the only Peak Realm master in the Divine Iron Merchant House. No matter how great the Second Young Master’s talent was, he couldn’t hide things like his gait or temperament at that age.

‘Don’t tell me… he learned a demonic art?’

If there was a way to become that strong in a few months, it had to be a demonic art.

If he’d mastered demonic arts, Demonic Qi would have seeped out. And even if it were a demonic art that kept Demonic Qi hidden, it still wouldn’t account for that unbelievable real-battle prowess.

While Baek Gyu watched Jin-hyeon as if bewitched.

‘?!’

Seureuk!

The fine hairs on his skin rose on their own.

Born unusually sensitive, Baek Gyu hurriedly looked around.

‘!!’

And he saw it. A young man dressed like a scholar, circling wide around the battlefield and charging in at terrifying speed.

Even as he closed the distance fast, there were no footsteps, not even a flutter of cloth. It was a concealment art even better than the assassins fighting over there.

‘A master!’

Baek Gyu realized it. That young man was after the First Young Master. And he realized something else. The martial arts he possessed were not inferior to his own.

There was no time to think. The squad members couldn’t stop him.

Pa-aak!

Baek Gyu vaulted over his men and drew his blade, swinging it.

Then, as if he’d been waiting, the young man reached into his robes and popped something.

Peopeopeong!

With a small blast, yellowish smoke rushed out with a fwoosh, and anyone could tell it was poison smoke. All kinds of poison bombs had been going off inside the Merchant House today.

Flash!

Driving explosive force into his swing, Baek Gyu shouted.

“Everyone, fall back! It’s poison!”

In that instant, the young man who had hidden in the poison smoke burst through it.

His left arm had been severed by Baek Gyu’s blade strike. Yet his face, full of rapture, didn’t change. It was like he couldn’t even feel pain.

‘You…!’

Kwaang!

A brutal punch drove Baek Gyu sideways.

That opening was enough. The young man surged like the wind, popping poison bombs one after another.

“No!”

It felt like even the squad members, and Gyeong Do-cheon too, were being sucked into the poison smoke.

It was a fatal mistake. He’d never made a single mistake as a guard warrior, yet he was bewitched by the battle inside the Merchant House and made his first.

And it happened while they were holding the clan’s traitor.

Paaaaang!

Baek Gyu poured out palm force like a madman. Not to harm the enemy, but to sweep away the poison smoke.

“Kuweeek!”

“Keuuk!”

When the poison smoke cleared, a shocking sight appeared.

More than seventy percent of the Iron King Squad members collapsed, retching. The remaining men gritted their teeth and drove blades into the young man’s back.

And the young man had a hand on Gyeong Do-cheon’s chest, drawing up internal energy. Pain was pain, but even with five blades stuck in his back, it looked like his circulation wasn’t affected at all.

Woooooong!

Internal energy flowing from the young man’s hand seeped into Gyeong Do-cheon’s body. Baek Gyu could see it clearly.

‘What is he doing?’

Even in this urgency, the question rose on its own.

It was then.

Jolt!

Gyeong Do-cheon’s body jolted hard, then began to tremble.

“Let go!”

Doo Gyeong, the veteran guard warrior, swung his blade again.

Peoeok!

The young man’s neck was cleanly severed.

Baek Gyu saw it. The young man was smiling, right up to the instant his head came off.

“Khuek! D-damn it!”

Guard warriors’ internal energy, and their resistance to poison, varied wildly.

Doo Gyeong, who had cut off the young man’s head, shouted.

“Everyone, get into the inner court and circulate! Jeong-gi, Mu-baek, tell the Head Physician about this—!”

“Doo Gyeong!”

Baek Gyu ran with a cry close to a scream, but it was already too late.

Peoeoeok!

“Huh?”

Doo Gyeong’s eyes bulged.

An arm had already punched through his chest. And in the hand that had pierced through…

His own beating heart was clenched.

Doo Gyeong’s eyes slid shut.

“Doo Gyeong!”

The one who killed Doo Gyeong was, unbelievably, Gyeong Do-cheon.

“Khuek! Khuek!”

Coughing wetly, Gyeong Do-cheon rose slowly and staggered again.

But he didn’t fall. If anything, it was like his mind was returning fast. He shook his head hard and drew a deep breath.

Saa-aak.

A chilling Ghost Qi began to seep from Gyeong Do-cheon’s body.

No, it wasn’t Ghost Qi. It was Yin, for sure, but it wasn’t ordinary Yin arts either.

It was stranger than Ghost Qi. Far more chilling, and though it was hot, it also felt damp and cold. Even as it flowed like fog, that eerie presence had already covered a radius of about nine meters.

Shiver.

Not only Baek Gyu, but all the Iron King Squad members trembled.

It was instinct. The bizarre aura Gyeong Do-cheon gave off burrowed into the bones and delivered a strange chill.

An alien aura no ordinary person would ever give off, even if they learned internal energy and became a master.

“…Demonic Qi.”

Baek Gyu shouted in a trembling voice.

“Demonic arts! It’s demonic arts!”

Flash!

Gyeong Do-cheon opened his eyes.

Surprisingly, his eyes didn’t hold that vicious light typical of someone who learned a demonic art.

He looked like the usual Gyeong Do-cheon. Only, as if Demonic Qi had stimulated something, the base desires he’d hidden so well were laid bare.

“What? Why am I here?”

He looked like he didn’t understand what had happened in that brief span.

Gyeong Do-cheon slowly touched his hands and face, then his eyes flashed.

One side of his face hurt like hell. From the pain alone, it felt like bone had broken.

His face, beaten by Jin-hyeon’s fists, had been ripped and bruised into a mess. One eye had even swollen shut so he couldn’t see properly.

But now, Gyeong Do-cheon’s face looked far more human than it had then. Bruise marks were still here and there, but the swollen eye had gone down, and the torn skin only held red lines. It looked like it had recovered to some degree.

It was a speed incomprehensible by internal energy alone. Unless your power reached the heavens, no internal energy method could show healing like that.

All except for one kind of martial art.

“Everyone, fall back!”

Baek Gyu’s eyes, filled with confusion, shock, rage, and self-reproach, now shone with clear will.

“The First Young Master learned demonic arts!”

The one most startled by that was Gyeong Do-cheon.

“What?”

Pa-aak!

No questions, no answers. Even if he couldn’t kill him right now, he had to make him combat-incapable. In truth, that was harder.

‘It can’t be helped.’

His own death was nothing. The problem was that if a demonic man who had refined a demonic art started rampaging, countless people could die.

One mistake was enough. Baek Gyu swung his blade without hesitation.

Flash!

It was like a bolt of lightning came down and struck.

Baek Gyu’s single slash, though not at the Sichuan Eight Martial Houses’ head level, was likely at an elder level beneath it.

“What is this?”

Gyeong Do-cheon, gone pale in shock, cocked his head.

Before he knew it, both hands were gripping Baek Gyu’s blade.

“Why is it so slow?”

It wasn’t taunting. He said it because he was genuinely puzzled.

Baek Gyu gritted his teeth.

“Haap!”

He poured all his strength into the blade, and the sword caught between the palms dropped straight down and hammered the ground.

Kwaang!

The ground shook from the single slash packed with explosive force.

But Gyeong Do-cheon wasn’t cut. Not just ‘not cut.’ He was fine. Startled, Baek Gyu stepped back, and a three-meter distance opened.

Gyeong Do-cheon’s face, staring at Baek Gyu with his mouth open, slowly twisted.

“…How dare you.”

There was no need to be shocked anymore, and he couldn’t afford to be.

Gyeong Do-cheon recalled everything that had happened to him. And in the middle of it, Baek Gyu, the Iron King Squad Leader, had attacked him in earnest.

“How dare you swing a blade at the next Patriarch?!”

“Shut up, you filially impious bastard!”

“You crazy bastard!”

In an instant, he blazed with madness. Gyeong Do-cheon lunged in and threw a punch.

Baek Gyu’s eyes shook.

Gyeong Do-cheon’s movement was too fast to dodge.

Jjeooong!

He raised his blade to block, but the impact was so great he had to roll about six meters. Thankfully, there was no internal injury, but his whole body hurt like it would break.

‘How can this be!’

It was absurd brute strength. No matter how demonic the art, this was too much.

When Baek Gyu hurriedly got up—

Peok! Peobeobeok! Peobeobeok!

There was no set pattern. To begin with, Gyeong Do-cheon had never properly trained sword or fist.

But destructive force was terrifying on its own. Under Gyeong Do-cheon’s rapid punches, the heads of fifteen staggering Iron King Squad members were smashed.

“Y-you bastard!”

Gyeong Do-cheon turned to Baek Gyu with eyes full of killing intent.

At that terrifying gaze, Baek Gyu almost shut his eyes without meaning to. The Demonic Qi pouring from his eyes was sharp like an arrow.

“Even tearing you apart won’t be enough…!”

It was then.

Flash!

From afar, an iron sword flew like a beam of light, aiming for Gyeong Do-cheon’s abdomen.

Startled, Gyeong Do-cheon instinctively swung a fist. It was too late to dodge.

Kwaang!

The iron sword was knocked away by an explosive force that came out on its own.

“Ghk!”

But Gyeong Do-cheon wasn’t fine either. The force packed into that iron sword was so fierce and intense that the fist that knocked it away was cut so deeply bone showed.

“Which bastard…!”

He couldn’t even finish the words before swallowing dryly.

The white-haired wolf was there, walking up step by step. Hair whipping in the wind spread like a lion’s mane, and rather than looking messy, it looked like the imposing presence of a king.

The blood on his pale face had dried black, and his clothes, torn and shredded here and there, looked like the flesh of a wounded beast.

And his eyes—

Flash! Flash!

His eyes flickering blue had turned like flame from his Heavenly Wolf Qi.

“Unbelievable. It felt familiar, and now I see why. Don’t tell me it was the Forbidden Soul Demonic Art?”

“W-what?”

Jin-hyeon smiled coldly.

“Don’t worry. Even if you learned a demonic art, there’s no problem tearing off your limbs.”

Gyeong Do-cheon’s face twisted again.

Rage surged to the top of his head, but he couldn’t charge someone with momentum like that. His wrist, which had latched on by reflex, still throbbed.

‘Damn it! Who the hell is that bastard?! And why does he look oddly like that lowborn—’

In an instant, Gyeong Do-cheon’s expression changed.

“…You?”

“Yeah. Looks like you finally came to your senses after taking a few hits.”

Hwaaak.

Terrifying killing intent poured from Jin-hyeon’s body.

A bright smile that didn’t match the killing intent. Over Jin-hyeon’s face, grinning wide enough to show white teeth, the illusion of a snarling wolf swept past.

But only for a moment.

“Weren’t you bored while I was gone?”

“Y-you?”

“…”

“…Don’t tell me it’s really?!”

“Open your eyes wide and look!”

An enormous lion’s roar burst from Jin-hyeon’s mouth.

“I am Gyeong Se-hwi! The Divine Iron Merchant House’s Second Young Master, Gyeong Se-hwi, stands here now!”