Chapter 245

Waaaaaaah!

The deafening roar of tens of thousands of martial artists made my ears ring.

Carrying dreams of rising to prominence, they had gathered here to attend the Star-Array Grand Banquet and were unleashing an endless wave of cheers.

The noise, which seemed as though it would never end, gradually died down the moment Dharma King Hong Dao raised his hand.

In that hand was the Green Jade Buddha Staff, a symbol of a thousand years of Shaolin. Shaolin Temple—the supreme authority of the Murim. Faced with its formidable prestige, the crowd fell silent.

Then the deep, resonant voice of the old monk, infused with powerful internal energy, spread across the grounds.

“I often look up at the sky. Over the years, I have seen, read, and watched countless stars.”

I had heard this before, at some point.

They said the greatest reason Dharma King Hong Dao had been able to become the Abbot of Shaolin was not his formidable martial arts, but his learning and wisdom.

“The Star-Array Grand Banquet. If you wish to become the brightest star at this banquet, think brightly and act brightly.”

After a brief silence, he added one short sentence.

“That is how one survives even in darkness.”

A congratulatory speech was better the shorter it was. It was even better if it contained a hint of profound wisdom, and better still if the person delivering it was the Abbot of Shaolin.

Another roar of cheers and applause erupted.

“Waaaaaaah!”

As I watched, I suddenly wondered how many of the tens of thousands gathered here had actually understood what he meant.

Probably one in ten.

No, not even one in a hundred.

But I understood. I knew what Hong Dao’s words were referring to.

Dark Heaven.

The training in the Fire Gate Cavern had been harsher than everything I had experienced up to that point combined.

Jeok Cheongang had pushed me relentlessly, to the point where he no longer seemed merely impatient. He looked downright anxious.

At first, I had thought it was because of his infirmities of old age.

But not long afterward, Jeok Cheongang finally revealed something after much deliberation. Only then did I understand the reason for his urgency.

Dark Heaven. A powerful enemy that had not yet fully revealed itself.

We don’t have much time. Keep training and preparing. That is the best thing you can do.

I looked at the old man standing to Hong Dao’s right.

His small frame was noticeably different from Hong Dao’s, yet he gave off an overwhelming presence. Jeok Cheongang somehow spotted me and flashed a crooked grin.

He was visibly older than he had been a year ago. My chest churned before I knew it.

You’d better know that you’ll die if you don’t win.

“……”

Especially if you run into some bastard with the surname Peng, beat the shit out of him. Break him and tear him apart!

A cold wind swept through my queasy chest.

One dose of the Fire King’s motion-sickness medicine delivered through Sound Transmission had cured me completely. I quietly averted my gaze.

Until I arrived, I had been fairly confident. But after seeing the enormous number of martial artists in person, I began to think that guaranteeing victory would be difficult.

I’d better not answer. If I give him a definite answer and then lose, he’ll ride my ass even more.

In any case, the opening ceremony was over, so the preliminaries would begin soon.

Like a salmon swimming upstream against a flowing river, I pushed my way through the tightly packed martial artists toward the back. Then I spotted a familiar face.

“Huh?”

What was that guy’s name again?

Oh, right. Jongni Chu of Yunnan. The man with the self-styled epithet Always-Victorious Sword.

I had wondered why he had come all the way here from some remote backwater. Apparently, he had come to attend the Star-Array Grand Banquet after all.

With that level of skill, he should make it pretty far.

I considered saying hello, but decided against it. It seemed like it would only become a hassle.

Instead, I sent a greeting to the guy standing blankly and looking around, one he could not hear.

Yeah, you too. Good luck.

And prayed that, if possible, he wouldn’t run into me.

“I like duels. There are only winners and losers, and no draws. How clear-cut is that?”

The middle-aged man muttered in a relaxed voice.

A pair of glasses imported from the Western Regions rested on his nose. They had the marvelous ability to make objects appear several times larger, which naturally made them extremely expensive.

“That’s why people bet money on them. The result is certain.”

One of the things that could not be left out of the Star-Array Grand Banquet was gambling.

From the preliminaries, which filtered out the unqualified among tens of thousands of applicants, all the way to the finals, there would be hundreds of duels.

For that reason, the Star-Array Grand Banquet was not only a feast for the martial artists of the world. It was also the greatest season of the year for gamblers across the continent.

“So, who would you like to bet on, and how much?”

The bald man sitting across from the middle-aged man asked the question. At a glance, he looked like someone with one foot in the underworld, but his manner was polite.

“You’re still as impatient as ever.”

“There are a lot of customers waiting.”

“I see. Well, let’s see…”

After pausing for a moment, the middle-aged man pulled a money pouch from inside his robes and tossed it onto the table.

Unable to withstand the weight, the pouch opened, and gleaming silver yuanbao spilled across the tabletop with a clatter.

“A thousand silver nyang on the Iron-Water Divine Dragon of the Yangtze River Channel League.”

“……”

It was an enormous sum.

Even more so considering that the preliminaries had not yet begun.

The middle-aged man clearly had nerve to spare.

The bald man’s eyelids trembled as he stared at the silver yuanbao.

“Are you betting on the Iron-Water Divine Dragon to win the whole thing?”

“Not at all. Cheol Soo may be one of the Ten Dragons and Phoenixes, but he’s not in that league yet. His Master, the Seafaring King, would be another matter.”

“Then…?”

“I’m betting that he’ll take first place in the preliminaries.”

“Hmm.”

The bald man let out a low groan.

The preliminaries of the Star-Array Grand Banquet were known as a “sieve.” There were so many applicants that the unqualified had to be filtered out.

Naturally, with tens of thousands of applicants being judged, there were countless possible outcomes at this stage.

And that meant the odds would be enormous.

“That’s different from what you said earlier.”

“What is?”

“You said you liked duels because there were only winners and losers, and the result was clear-cut.”

“You really shouldn’t gamble.”

The middle-aged man laughed heartily before continuing.

“That’s the kind of thing only third-rate gamblers do. All or nothing. Since one of the two sides is bound to win, the amount you can earn is limited. But who am I?”

“Dogon.”

“Exactly. That’s why I like duels. People want to take the easy road. They don’t want to take the difficult one.”

“Oh.”

A gambler among gamblers. A gambler who had reached the Peak of his craft was called a Dogon.

The middle-aged man before him had come armed with a conclusion reached through meticulous research and calculation.

The bald man bowed deeply, his respect showing clearly.

“I’ve learned a great deal, Great Hero Kwak.”

“If you’ve learned something, you should pay the tuition.”

“What would you like?”

“Keep your mouth shut. Just as you have until now.”

“Of course.”

“Then that’s enough. Let’s see… The preliminaries should be starting soon. I’ll have a drink and come back to collect my money.”

He was completely confident that his prediction would turn out exactly as expected.

That was a Dogon for you.

The middle-aged man pushed up his glasses and left.

A swordsman guarding the door asked in a voice full of curiosity.

“Boss, who was that man?”

“That gentleman? A Dogon.”

“Gasp! A Dogon?”

“And one of the most famous Dogons in the world.”

“Is he really that incredible?”

“There are exactly three legendary Dogons.”

The bald man spread three fingers.

“A-Gwi in Sichuan. Jjak-Gwi in Guangdong. And the last one…”

One of his fingers folded down.

“On a continental scale, that gentleman there. Kwak Cheolyung.”

“Kwak Cheolyung…!”

“So go keep an eye on the Iron-Water Divine Dragon. Now that I think about it, that rookie’s gotten pretty damn cocky.”

Whack!

The bald man kicked the swordsman in the shin.

A short while later, he welcomed his next customer. This one was rather strange, with a mask pulled up over his nose.

“Where would you like to place your bet?”

“Is this confidential?”

The masked man asked in an anxious voice.

He flinched like someone who got beaten whenever an opportunity arose. Anyone could see that he was a Third Rate martial artist.

The area around his eye is all purple. Wherever he got beaten, it must have been nasty. Well, as long as I get paid, that’s all that matters to me.

A gentle smile spread across the bald man’s lips.

It was his own professional smile, the kind that appeared automatically whenever he saw a sucker.

“Of course. Go ahead.”

The masked man looked around nervously before pulling out a money pouch.

“A hundred silver nyang on Jin Taekyung, the Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi, taking first place in the preliminaries.”

“Those from there to here. Follow me.”

There were so many participants in the Star-Array Grand Banquet that there were hundreds of supervisors, and the test grounds had been divided into multiple sections.

The hundred-plus applicants began walking after their assigned supervisor. Naturally, I was among them.

There really are a lot of people.

Not only were there many of them, they were incredibly diverse.

There were skinny people and fat people, fresh-faced youths with downy hair and wandering martial artists who looked as though they had been through every hardship imaginable. There were women who immediately drew the eye and handsome men with flawlessly smooth features.

It was a perfect example of how a hundred people could have a hundred different appearances.

Among them, one massive man who looked like the definition of a real man stood out in particular. Judging by our eye levels, he was at least a head taller than me.

Fuck, is this the continent or Norway?

He was over two meters tall. His forearms were so swollen with muscle that they looked ready to burst, and a salmon pierced by a harpoon had been tattooed across one of them.

His features were strangely Western as well. He looked so much like a Norwegian that I began to wonder if he really was one.

I stole another sideways glance at him, and our eyes met.

“……”

“……”

I carefully opened my mouth.

“A-Aim fine, thank you. And you?”

“……?”

That wasn’t right. What was it again?

I had stopped studying English after the red pen workbooks of elementary school, so the words barely came out because I was nervous.

“Ah! Where are you from?”

Norway answered.

“You fucking asshole, what are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“You little shit, are you picking a fight with me right now?”

A hearty string of curses and the gazes of the surrounding people came flying at me.

Just as I was about to answer, the supervisor shouted in a stern voice.

“Anyone who causes trouble will be forcibly disqualified!”

Norway, who had been opening and closing his mouth like a salmon, glared at me.

The transmitted words came with a rough aura and killing intent as sharp as a harpoon.

I’ll make you regret this.

Talk about vicious. A true descendant of the Vikings.

But whatever. I was in the wrong.

I bowed my head in apology and continued walking. A powerful snort sounded from behind me, but I pretended not to hear it.

He’s pretty strong, though.

He looked to be in his twenties, and my heart fluttered at the thought that I had encountered such a formidable opponent right from the start.

The world really is wide.

If the preliminaries were already this intense, genuine monsters might come crawling out during the main event. Remembering Jeok Cheongang’s warning, I steeled my resolve.

“The first thing we will assess is your fists and feet.”

The place we reached after following the supervisor was an unnamed cliff.

I did not need to ask how the test would be conducted.

Other people were already taking it.

Whack! Crack!

“Graaagh!”

A foolish martial artist with his wrist twisted rolled across the ground. The supervisor sighed and broke a bamboo marker.

“Jangyu of the Butterfly Sect, eliminated. Next!”

The next martial artist stepped forward and threw one punch at the cliff.

Boom!

This martial artist was around the First Rate level. At least he knew how to put internal energy behind his strike.

A clear mark appeared on the cliff, which was a hard-packed mixture of roughly equal parts rock and soil.

The supervisor measured the mark’s depth and width, then nodded.

“Gobul of the Sodang Sect, passed. Next!”

Those who passed stepped aside, while the Third Rate martial artists whose punches left weak marks or whose hands hurt after a single strike were eliminated in droves.

“You can probably tell how this works by now. Then let’s begin. Now, let’s see…”

The supervisor pulled out a bamboo marker.

Then a name rang out.

“Jin Taekyung of the Jin Family of Taiyuan.”

As the gazes of the people around me turned toward me, a System notification rang out.

Ding.

System

• Quest: Star-Array Grand Banquet has been created.