#37: Kinds Of Power (3) — The Patriarch of Sichuan

Puh-uhng!

At the moment she lunged, something went whoom and burst.

“Hup!”

Fine powder particles filled the room.

“Poison?!”

She ingested a minute amount of the powder.

She hurriedly held her breath and swung the dagger. As if he had expected her charge, Abyss Kill instantly lowered his stance and dodged.

Covering her face with a wet sleeve, the woman rushed for the door.

Kwaduk!

The doorframe broke.

The moment she smashed the door, she slashed her dagger in all directions, to attack the assassins outside.

The assassins did not panic and opened distance.

As the woman burst outside, chill-laden raindrops seeped into her body.

At the moment she tried to leap onto the nearest wall—

“?”

Her foot pushing off the ground was heavy.

No—her whole body was heavy. The feeling in her hands and feet was gradually fading.

“Kh!”

It wasn’t that high a wall, but she couldn’t clear it in one go.

Hanging from the top edge, she clenched her teeth and tried to pull herself up, but strength wouldn’t go into her arms or abdomen. She tried to push up with her feet on the wall, but even that wouldn’t work.

Her senses dulled and strength drained from her body.

Even her internal energy dulled. She tried to spread it through her body to awaken sensation, but the movement was too slow.

“Poison… is it poison?”

Just from inhaling a little, she had become numb and weak already.

This was no ordinary poison. She had encountered many poisons during training, but this was the first of its kind.

Her strength finally failing, the woman fell to the ground.

Having come close before she knew it, Abyss Kill spoke in a voice with a hint of a laugh.

“Curious, isn’t it? It’s a slight modification of the poison killers use for suicide. Perfect for work use.”

The word “for work” sounded eerie.

Crouching, Abyss Kill flicked the woman’s nose bridge with a finger.

“Lives like ours, never knowing when we’ll die—we should enjoy this and that as we live. Don’t you think?”

“You…”

Slap!

The woman’s cheek swelled up.

Abyss Kill smiled. The mask hid it, but it seemed so.

“You and I are both bottom-of-the-barrel lives. So what makes you so great that you go around holding your head up high?”

“Spit!”

“In a way you’re much filthier. We only dig into killing, but you—if the Hall Master orders, you even gulp down sewage. Ah, did you not perhaps even serve the Hall Master at night?”

“…Kill me.”

“True, that man barely even talks to lowly things, so would he have any interest in a wench like you?”

“Just kill me quickly.”

“Of course I’ll kill you—it’s an order. But you don’t have the right to decide when you die.”

By then, Abyss Kill’s subordinates had walked out from the room.

Though they lived by assassination, their snickering made them no different from third-rate wastrels.

“Think of it the easy way. A life spent doing filthy things—can it go cleanly when it goes?”

Abyss Kill grabbed the woman’s ankle and walked toward the room. Humming as he went, he was like a fisherman returning with a full catch.

Dragged along leaving a long trail on the wet ground, the woman’s face turned empty again.

“Not even clean when I go?”

That was true.

The day after she first chopped up a corpse, she saw the faces of the family searching for the man listed as missing. She couldn’t drink a single sip of water for three days.

On the day she killed the woman who had had an affair with Gwan Hong, she even killed the husband who rushed in at the sound. Gwan Hong praised her for doing well, but she couldn’t sleep for over two nights.

She even stole, and committed arson. Sometimes the targets were villains fit to die, but she also trampled the lives of people who had lived diligently.

One year passed, two years passed.

By the third year, she could eat beside a corpse and sleep beside a wailing family.

“I’m not normal.”

How miserable a life she had lived meant nothing. She had taken countless people’s happiness and given them despair and death.

Even if a person dies, sin remains.

“Filthy.”

Those bastards are filthy, and so am I.

No—I am filthier.

While they do not think what they do is sin, she did them knowing she was a sinner.

Bile rose with disgust. She was ashamed and wretched. She wished to die at once and fall into hell.

Guilt soon became tears.

Even as they scattered in the rain, the ceaselessly welling tears reddened her eyes.

Facing a miserable death, she was horrified by her own hypocrisy—feeling genuine remorse for the people she’d wronged only now, at the very end.

Even if she lived, there were almost no victims left to whom she could convey this regret. That drove her even madder.

“I am a sinner…”

One assassin spoke.

“Ugh, it’s cold. Let’s hurry in, boss. We’ll freeze to death like this.”

“Cold, my ass.”

“I’m telling you it’s really cold. Was it this chilly?”

“This bastard and his whining… Hm, it is a bit chilly, isn’t it?”

Just then—

Kwaduk!

With the sound of the gate breaking, someone rushed in.

Abyss Kill instinctively let go of the woman’s ankle, drew a dagger from his chest, and slashed.

A nimble move, an excellent response. From the reaction alone, one could tell he was a first-rate assassin.

But his attack failed.

That single failure decided Abyss Kill’s fate.

Ududuk! Kwaduk!

“Aaagh!”

His right knee broke. A white bone pierced through the back of the knee and jutted out. At the same time, the elbow of the arm that had slashed the dagger snapped sideways.

A kick broke the knee, and at the same time the slashing arm was blocked and broken as-is. The attack was so natural and fast it was as if it was prearranged.

Abyss Kill collapsed, frothing.

The man who had suddenly attacked grabbed Abyss Kill’s left arm and stamped his chest with a foot.

Dududuk!

Abyss Kill’s eyes rolled back.

His left shoulder, elbow, and wrist dislocated in order.

It was pain beyond screaming. Abyss Kill writhed and rolled on the wet ground.

Saaaak!

A pale heat-haze shimmered from the man’s body.

It was internal energy completed on the basis of Tianshan martial arts. Its eerie force dropped the already cool area’s temperature.

Black hair covered the right side of his face, and hair turned white clung to the left.

The same face, the same expression—yet it was as if two people coexisted.

Jin-hyeon smiled at the seven assassins.

Shiver!

Even seeing their leader’s limbs broken and rolling in an instant, they did not dare move.

The sequence had been too fast, but more than that, the murderous aura pouring from Jin-hyeon’s body suppressed their very reaction.

One assassin cried out in a fit.

“Y-you, what are you!”

Then Jin-hyeon’s foot kicked the woman’s dagger lying on the ground.

Puk!

The dagger flew at tremendous speed and stuck in the forehead of the assassin who had opened his mouth.

He collapsed where he stood, his body shuddering. It was instant death.

“It’s raining and the day is cold.”

Ududuk.

A grim sound rang from the slowly rotating wrists and opening-and-closing fingers.

“Die quickly.”

Only then did the assassins each draw their daggers.

Just then—

Seogeok.

With a chilling sound, the two on the right lost their heads.

The assassins were startled. Two comrades had just died without a sound or a trace.

The moment their startled eyes turned, Jin-hyeon moved.

Huk.

Moving in a crescent arc, Jin-hyeon seized the throat of the assassin at the end.

Ududuk!

Brutal gripping strength. The assassin’s neck snapped at once and bloody foam rose at his lips.

The Eight Wastes Alliance Leader had encountered and created countless martial arts, perfecting his own martial path through relentless inquiry. The technique Jin-hyeon was using now was also one of the final martial arts the Alliance Leader had perfected.

Ten-Finger Soul-Slaughter Art.

A martial art that develops barehanded gripping power to the extreme, it is a foundational art forming the basis of several arts created by the Alliance Leader.

Strong grip produces a strong hold. It is common sense that a weapon grasped hard and swung is more dangerous than one held loosely and swung.

Furthermore, the Ten-Finger Soul-Slaughter Art scratches and rips with claw techniques, seizes and breaks, and with that gripping force the clenched fist becomes like an iron hammer, transforming even into a peerless fist art.

The technique that just broke the assassin’s neck was the Ten-Finger Soul-Slaughter Art’s Serpent-Shark Hand.

“Kill him!”

Two assassins slashed their daggers at Jin-hyeon.

Papang!

They were sharp attacks, but Jin-hyeon’s reaction speed far exceeded theirs. He knocked aside the daggers with both hands, aiming precisely at their wrists.

They dropped their daggers and even their stances reeled.

With a hand-blade he broke one man’s neck vertebra, then instantly coiled an arm around the other’s neck and twisted his upper body to snap it.

Then, another assassin’s head was cut off.

A blade swung from out of sight. One of the Gold Pillar’s bodyguards who had tailed the woman was striking them together with Jin-hyeon.

Peok!

Jin-hyeon burst the remaining assassin’s groin with a kick, yanked his head back, and smashed his neck with a level fist, then shook out his hand.

All the assassins except Abyss Kill lost their lives in an instant.

“Huh-uk!”

Seeing his underlings die in a moment, Abyss Kill’s face was etched with abject terror.

Drenched in fear, he turned his body and crawled toward the main gate. His left arm couldn’t move, so he worked his broken right arm hard. Thinking only of getting away, he didn’t even feel the pain.

But—

Puk!

“Kuaaa… kurk!”

The bodyguard drove a dagger through his right hand and wrapped his neck with a wet cloth.

“Don’t kill him.”

Crouching beside the woman, Jin-hyeon spoke.

“If we can’t detox the poison, we have to interrogate him. Just gag him.”

The bodyguard silently loosened the cloth from his neck and gagged his mouth.

Jin-hyeon grasped the woman’s wrist and closed his eyes.

Woooong.

The Body-Refining Qi within Jin-hyeon had possessed outstanding quality since his awakening. Advancing to sixty percent mastery had raised its quality further and increased his internal energy.

Now his internal energy neared Seol So-ha’s. In quality, there was no comparison.

Chiiiiiik!

A pale haze rose from the woman’s body.

The Body-Refining Qi primarily brings the caster’s body to its best state. If mastered together with the Soul-Refining Art, one attains Blade-and-Sword Impenetrability, and ordinary poisons do not affect them.

Driving poison from another’s body is another matter, but fortunately the assassins’ poison was not a lethal toxin.

The residual poison that had seeped into her body was cleanly expelled.

She looked up at Jin-hyeon with her characteristically blank face.

Jin-hyeon smiled and said,

“Mission failed. How do you feel?”

“…Why?”

“Your master is too arrogant, so I got a bit spiteful.”

“Arrogant, how?”

“I don’t like it. If he wants to see me, he should come himself. He shouldn’t be ordering people to come and go at this hour. Don’t you think so?”

“……”

“Thanks to that, you lived, didn’t you. Don’t glare at me like that.”

“I’m not glaring.”

“Sure you aren’t.”

“……”

“Quit acting pitiful and get up. I drew out all the poison.”

The woman swayed and raised her upper body.

Jin-hyeon picked up a dagger from the ground and handed it to her.

“Finish it and come out.”

“…Finish what?”

Jin-hyeon pointed with his chin at Abyss Kill.

“You should put a blade in his heart, are you going to just leave him be?”

“Why.”

“What do you mean why? He tried to kill you. Won’t you take revenge?”

“Why are you doing this for me?”

“If you don’t want to kill him, hand it over.”

Jin-hyeon reached to take the dagger from her hand. She naturally drew it back.

“Acting coy when you’ll do it anyway. Finish it and come out.”

“I should have died.”

“Hmm?”

With a hollow look, the woman said,

“I’m a woman of many sins. I should die like this.”

“Then kill that bastard and yourself too.”

“!!”

“I’ve no intention of hearing your shabby past and no meddling urge to stop someone from ending their life. Just putting the dagger in your hand — that’s all the duty I owed today.”

“……”

“But remember this. Today you incurred a debt to me. Don’t run without repaying and make me a creditor.”

Jin-hyeon left the house with the bodyguard.

After a moment—

“Grrr…!”

A horrible groan came out.

Leaning against the wall by the gate, Jin-hyeon asked the bodyguard,

“Got any tobacco?”

“It’s raining, the fire won’t catch.”

“Ah, right.”

“You smoke?”

“Sometimes when it rains.”