Beast Fight (3)

Gyeong Hang closed his eyes.

That wasn’t all. Every blacksmith gathered here either turned their head away or shut their eyes tight. Head Physician Lee Jung-myeong even turned his body, and a few apprentice physicians with weak stomachs retched.

But no one could stop Jin-hyeon.

Because the Patriarch who was glaring at Gyeong Do-cheon with bloodshot eyes was silent.

“Kyaaaah!”

Uduk. Uduk.

The sound of bones breaking rang louder than the scream.

Jin-hyeon was breaking Gyeong Do-cheon’s bones, step by step.

As he stomped upward, slowly climbing from left foot to ankle to shin to knee, Heavenly Wolf Qi was spent without restraint.

At this point, it wasn’t breaking. It was crushing. Even a vicious man would foam and pass out, and it wouldn’t be strange for the heart to stop from shock.

But Jin-hyeon was sure Gyeong Do-cheon wouldn’t die, or pass out.

And his certainty became reality.

Udeudeuk! Uduk!

“Kh-heh-heh-heh.”

At that uncanny groan that was neither laughter nor crying, even the falling snow swirled around the two and veered away.

Tears of blood ran from Gyeong Do-cheon’s eyes.

He wanted to lose consciousness instead. He didn’t care if he woke up again to see his whole body crushed. Truly, feeling his body being smashed from the toes up while fully conscious was indescribably horrific.

And even in this state, he wasn’t afraid. Rage kept surging. Even inside rage that felt like it would drive him mad, the fact that he could get even angrier made him furious to the point of shock.

“Y-you lowborn bastard! How dare you touch my body— Kyaaaah!”

Ududududuk!

“Kyaaak!”

He’d screamed so much his throat was hoarse.

After calmly wrecking his left leg, Jin-hyeon split the skin at the ankle with his fingers. He forced his way in and tore it open.

Ddudududuk.

A shocking recovery speed.

Inside the split skin and muscle, bone could be seen. And bones that should have been crushed were already clustered together. They weren’t fused yet, but they were trying to restore themselves.

This wasn’t power from demonic art alone. The demonic art was using ‘something’ as well, and that was why it healed like this.

And Jin-hyeon was deeply satisfied by that.

“Good.”

“Ghk! You son of a bitch! You fucking bastard! No matter what happens, I’ll make sure you, at least—!”

Ududududuk!

“Kaaak!”

Gyeong Do-cheon thrashed. Not that it amounted to much.

The thigh pinned by a sword driven deep was firmly fixed to the ground. Naturally, he couldn’t be allowed to die of blood loss, so the sword had avoided the femoral artery by a hair and only severed bone and muscle.

His upper body also only heaved and couldn’t move much, because his demonic acupoints had been sealed only halfway. It wasn’t fully sealed in case recovery might fail beyond a certain point.

It was the truth only Han Cheol-sang knew. None of the Merchant House people watching did.

‘Terrifying.’

Han Cheol-sang looked at Jin-hyeon with trembling eyes.

With his back turned, Jin-hyeon started over again, breaking Gyeong Do-cheon’s bones from the beginning. He looked beyond leisurely. He almost looked as if he found it bothersome.

But Han Cheol-sang knew. Right now, Jin-hyeon was as careful as he was when training martial arts.

If he crushed him carelessly, no demonic art would be able to restore it. Unless he directly operated Demonic Qi with intent.

Jin-hyeon gave Gyeong Do-cheon no gap to operate Demonic Qi, and he stomped with just enough force that even when bones were crushed, they didn’t burst out of the body.

There was no intent to kill in the act. If anything, Jin-hyeon was thoroughly sealing his own killing intent toward Gyeong Do-cheon.

The will to never let him die easily could be felt.

‘It makes sense, but…’

Han Cheol-sang suddenly recalled a conversation he’d once had with Jin-hyeon.

‘If you receive a kindness, even if you can’t repay it twice over, you can’t forget it. But grudges matter more than kindness. If you can’t repay it tenfold or more, it’s better to forget revenge and carve out your future.’

‘Why?’

‘If I face them clumsily without that much venom, I’ll die, and my people will die too.’

If he held a grudge, he repaid it tenfold.

Such words were easy to say, but almost no one actually keeps that vow. You had to be diligent and smart for it.

Jin-hyeon was different.

He was smart enough to repay a grudge tenfold, no, a hundredfold. His drive to act was second to none. And he had a vicious nature that didn’t let go of that resolve.

‘Truly vicious.’

Again, he thought his Patriarch was terrifying.

‘Being vicious isn’t enough. You have to know how to hide it and control it.’

In that sense, there was no one as frightening as Jin-hyeon.

If he hated someone that much, just hearing those three syllables of their name should make killing intent pour out. But until he faced Gyeong Do-cheon, Jin-hyeon had never shown it.

Once he decided to do it, he did it. A will that, for that single objective, ignored everyone’s eyes and focused completely.

‘It can’t be only because he lived the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader’s life.’

Han Cheol-sang’s eyes deepened.

‘Those who are originally kind are scarier when they get angry.’

How much time passed like that.

Demonic Qi was still vigorous, but Gyeong Do-cheon’s strength had run dry, and now he could only pant, unable to even scream. Even then, his eyes, streaming tears of blood, were full of poisonous malice.

Jin-hyeon drew a big breath.

“That was a good warm-up.”

A chill ran through them!

Everyone’s hearts dropped at his words. Gyeong Do-cheon was no exception.

Jin-hyeon slowly knelt and placed his hand on Gyeong Do-cheon’s thigh.

Gyeong Do-cheon felt goosebumps. Not only because his sensation was still intact even after all this, but because Jin-hyeon’s hand, fingers neatly aligned, looked like a blade.

“W-what are you—!”

Buuk.

“Kreureuk.”

A hand tore in along the grain of muscle, then pulled right back out.

Most of the blacksmiths retched at the sight of that hand. Even Gyeong In-geol’s complexion turned pale.

In Jin-hyeon’s blood-soaked hand were broken bone fragments. All together, it was easily the amount of two finger joints.

Jin-hyeon stared at the fragments, then pried Gyeong Do-cheon’s jaw open and shoved them inside.

“Uup!”

Jin-hyeon lifted his jaw so he couldn’t spit, and raised his fist.

“The moment your mouth opens, I’ll pluck your eyes first.”

Gyeong Do-cheon’s face drained white.

His tightly sealed lips twitched. Only now did fear show in his shuddering body.

That fear wasn’t aimed at Jin-hyeon. It was an instinctive fear of bodily loss.

“Bite down.”

Peok!

One punch made Gyeong Do-cheon groan.

Even without internal energy, Jin-hyeon’s body was trained by the Body-Refining Art. That one punch broke teeth and tore cheek.

Even so, Gyeong Do-cheon couldn’t open his mouth. Bones breaking was horrific, but eyes being plucked was a different level.

Jin-hyeon swung his fist coldly.

Peok! Peok! Peok!

With each hit, Gyeong Do-cheon’s face reddened. Teeth and bone fragments rolled around inside his mouth, cutting everything up.

He wanted to spit right away, but he couldn’t. The moment he spit, his eyes would be plucked.

That meant he’d have to swallow in the end, and that was truly madness.

Whether he knew or not, Jin-hyeon kept punching.

Peok! Peok! Kwaduk!

Even Demonic Qi’s protection had limits. At last, a crack ran through Gyeong Do-cheon’s jaw.

“Keoheok!”

Bone fragments, teeth, and thick blood sprayed out of his opened mouth.

Then a blacksmith shouted with his eyes closed.

“Second Young Master! P-please stop!”

Peok!

“Ueeeooh!”

Gyeong Do-cheon, his tongue ruined too, let out an uncanny scream.

Jin-hyeon plucked out the right eye as if he’d been waiting for it, wiped blood from his face, and turned to the blacksmith.

“My apologies. I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

It wasn’t a threat. He truly hadn’t heard. His polite expression, different from when he looked at Gyeong Do-cheon, proved it.

That politeness drove everyone’s fear mad.

Jang Gyeong, the most senior under Ok Jin, the ironworks’ second-in-command who had built a friendship with Gyeong Se-hwi that transcended age, swallowed dryly and called him.

“Second Young Master.”

“Speak.”

“Isn’t it… enough now?”

He nearly blurted out that it was too much. It was that horrific.

But the Patriarch had been poisoned by Gyeong Do-cheon’s hand, and the Second Young Master had nearly died too. Thinking calmly, it wasn’t ‘too much’ exactly. In Jang Gyeong’s honest heart, he wanted to beat him to death himself.

What Jang Gyeong worried about was Jin-hyeon.

That wasn’t all. All the blacksmiths had liked Jin-hyeon back when he was the Second Young Master. He had been that gentle, that kind, that good-natured.

And now that man had become a white-haired ghost, doing something only a demon would do. It was frightening, and it was sorrowful.

Jin-hyeon stared at him for a moment, then calmly shook his head.

“My apologies. This is karma between the two of us, so I can’t end it at this level.”

“Second Young Master!”

“And I’m not the Second Young Master.”

Jin-hyeon set his foot on Gyeong Do-cheon’s right arm.

“I’m Jin-hyeon.”

Udeudeuk!

The horrific torture began again.

It couldn’t be stopped now. The will to do it was felt painfully. Every blacksmith except Ok Jin and Jang Gyeong turned their body away.

Udeudeuk! Udeudeuk!

“S-stop…”

Ududududuk!

“Please stop…”

Jin-hyeon even clasped his hands behind his back and focused on his work with leisure.

No matter how great the demonic art was, recovery had to drop once it reached this point.

Chiiik.

A pale haze rose from all over Gyeong Do-cheon’s body.

Jin-hyeon’s foot stopped.

‘Now it starts.’

Forbidden Soul Demonic Art.

Back in the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader’s days, it was a terrifying demonic art shown by the unorthodox group Savage Ghost Unit, hired on commission by the Nine Great Sects.

Its power was tremendous, but the truly frightening part was that the moment you began to learn it, it drew out the source of life itself, Primordial Essence Qi, and spent it.

Using life that should be spent gradually over decades to strengthen internal energy and blood channels, achievement could only be unbelievably fast.

Even if you replenish some of the lost life with internal energy, your stamina drops in bursts. But with a single circulation, you gain clear rationality, powerful stamina, and internal energy beyond abundant.

It couldn’t explode one’s potential in an instant to gain ghostlike strength, but given that it shaved off lifespan to gain power, it was clearly a vicious demonic art.

A hundred ‘ghosts’ of the Savage Ghost Unit came to assassinate the Eight Wastes Alliance Leader. He killed them all, then stormed the Savage Ghost Unit himself and tore it out by the roots.

The white smoke rising from Gyeong Do-cheon now was the sign that Primordial Essence Qi consumed by the Forbidden Soul Demonic Art had hit its first limit.

“That’s enough venting my anger on your body.”

Seureuk.

“Kyaaak!”

When the iron sword was pulled out, Gyeong Do-cheon screamed. The feeling of muscle that had been clamped around a sharp blade being cut again was more painful and more chilling than bones breaking.

Jin-hyeon quietly gauged his recovery.

Then, after confirming he’d recovered to a degree, he stepped on his dantian.

Peok!

“Keok!”

He vomited blood, and at the same time, dark energy seeped out of his body.

“N-no!”

The overflowing power was disappearing. Despair settled on Gyeong Do-cheon’s face.

Jin-hyeon looked at Gyeong In-geol.

Gyeong In-geol was glaring at Gyeong Do-cheon with bloodshot eyes. He was still full of rage, but sorrow and pity flickered through it.

He was a once-in-an-age filially impious bastard who tried to kill him and even vowed to blow up his mother’s grave, but he was still his child. He couldn’t feel exhilaration watching that son, hard to describe even as “wretched,” being tortured.

“Patriarch.”

Gyeong In-geol looked at Jin-hyeon.

“Give it to me.”

After staring at Jin-hyeon for a long time, Gyeong In-geol silently took out a letter and handed it over.

Holding the letter, Jin-hyeon walked back to Gyeong Do-cheon.

It was then.

“Are things proceeding well?”

A middle-aged man who leapt straight over the inner court wall, not the outer court, looked at Jin-hyeon. It was Mun Jung.

Jin-hyeon slowly crouched and looked down at Gyeong Do-cheon.

“I’ve ground down your body enough. Now I’ll grind down your soul too.”