Chapter 260

“Cheong Young Hero. Young Hero Cheong, wake up.”

Smack! Smack!

“Umm…”

Cheongpung opened his eyes with a groan.

Someone was vigorously slapping his cheeks. It was fascinating in a way, since it was his first time being slapped, but strangely, it also felt rather unpleasant.

Ah. So this is why people hate being slapped.

With that small insight, Cheongpung opened his mouth.

“Excuse me.”

Smack! Smack!

“I’m aw—”

Smack! Smack!

“I’m awake…”

Smack!

Only after delivering one final blow did the hand finally stop.

A young man with a familiar face spoke with a stiff expression.

“You’re awake. Do you remember who I am?”

“It’s been a while, Warrior Hyuk Mujin.”

Hyuk Mujin sighed.

“So you do remember me.”

“Of course. I just never expected we’d meet like this.”

Cheongpung remembered Hyuk Mujin as a good person.

But when a good person he had not seen in a year was slapping him in the face, even Cheongpung could not help but feel wounded.

“I apologize if you were offended. I suddenly remembered the money I lost.”

“What?”

“No, the situation was so urgent that I committed a breach of etiquette.”

“Oh…”

If that was the reason, then Cheongpung could understand.

He nodded and looked around. Shouts rang out from every direction, and people were running about everywhere.

“Is this a festival?”

“……Does this look like a festival?”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

Hyuk Mujin answered firmly before explaining the general situation.

Dharma King Hong Dao had been found dead, and the culprit was none other than…

“Jongni Chu?”

“Yes. The Always-Victorious Sword, Jongni Chu. That bastard. His exact identity is unknown, but the prevailing opinion is that he was an assassin sent by the Demonic Cult.”

“The Demonic Cult…”

It was a name Cheongpung had heard countless times from his grandfather, the Sword Saint. The place where the fiends and vile murderers who had once stained the entire world with blood had gathered.

And Jongni Chu was an assassin from that very Demonic Cult.

Without realizing it, Cheongpung shook his head.

“No.”

“What do you mean…”

Hyuk Mujin continued with an incredulous expression.

“You were attacked by him yourself, and you still don’t understand? The shock must have been so great that you can’t remember, but you nearly died at his hands.”

No. Cheongpung remembered everything clearly.

The helplessness and fear he had felt against a master whose strength nothing could overcome. Even the final moment, when he had thought of death for the first time in his life.

I was scared. Truly scared.

Even thinking about it made the fine hairs on his body rise, and his palms grow damp.

But why?

Why did Jongni Chu’s face keep floating before his eyes—that face smiling brightly as he asked Cheongpung to become his friend?

After remaining tightly shut for a moment, Cheongpung’s lips parted.

“He’s my friend.”

“……What?”

“That man is my friend. He couldn’t have done it.”

“Young Hero Cheong!”

Hyuk Mujin was startled and anxiously glanced around.

Only after confirming that no one was paying attention to them did he speak in a hushed voice.

“Are you insane? Jongni Chu is already practically an enemy of the entire Murim. You’re calling someone like that your friend…”

He was an assassin who had murdered the Abbot of Shaolin Temple and fled. Merely being acquainted with Jongni Chu could be enough to earn Cheongpung a sound thrashing.

Even if he was the disciple the Sword Saint had raised like his own flesh and blood, people would still glare at him.

“Never mention him out loud again. Do you understand?”

“But…”

Cheongpung was about to say something, but he closed his mouth at the look in Hyuk Mujin’s eyes.

“He’s a demonic fiend. I don’t know what kind of underhanded trick he used to win your favor, but it was all an act intended to assassinate Master Hong Dao.”

“Are you certain? Did anyone see him kill him?”

“All the circumstances point to it. The pursuit party formed to capture him and the thousands of heroes who gathered to save Shaolin have finished preparing to depart.”

“Shaolin…”

“The Demonic Cult’s vile scheme has placed Shaolin in danger. Great Hero Jeok and the Captain already left ahead of us.”

Cheongpung slowly closed his eyes.

In the pitch-black darkness, the faces of Jin Taekyung and Jongni Chu flashed before him one after the other.

He did not deliberate for long.

“I’ll go ahead.”

“What?”

By the time Hyuk Mujin asked in a dazed voice, Cheongpung’s figure had already shot far into the distance.

The direction his toes pointed toward was Mount Song.

Mount Song was peaceful and beautiful enough to be counted among the Five Sacred Mountains.

But the place that should have been green and lovely was being stained with blood and screams.

“Aaaaaagh!”

“Kill every last one of them.”

Slash! Shhhhhhk!

Blood spurted from every direction whenever a flash of sword light gleamed.

On that peaceful Baekjung Day,¹ in broad daylight, hundreds of masked men appeared out of nowhere and continued their slaughter with emotionless eyes.

“Protect the pilgrims! Do not retreat!”

Shaolin martial monks with Buddhist precept seals carved into their foreheads stood in their way, but the situation did not improve easily.

The masked men were all exceptional masters, making them difficult enough to fight on their own. On top of that, the martial monks had to protect the untrained scholarly monks, the young novice monks, and the countless pilgrims.

“What in the—!”

“Kraaagh!”

No one had expected anything like this to happen today.

Who would dare invade Shaolin Temple’s grounds in the very heart of the Central Plains, at the temple of the Mount Tai and Northern Dipper of the Murim?

The monks were being driven back in a rout beneath the swords of the cruel and despicable masked men.

That was when—

“You bastards! Do you even know where you are?”

The one who appeared with a thunderous shout was a short old monk barely five feet tall.

The old monk glared at the masked men staining Shaolin Temple’s grounds with blood. Blue sparks flew from his eyes.

“Demonic martial arts! So you’re the demonic fiends of Tianshan!”

Palm force burst from the old monk’s hands and swept across the area.

Kwoooong!

The masked men, who had only belatedly noticed the old monk and were rushing toward him, were caught in the palm force and killed.

It was an overwhelming sight. More than ten masters were crushed by a single attack.

However…

“The Lord of Heaven has commanded us. Kill the enemy.”

“Follow Heaven’s command. Kill them all.”

The hundreds of masked men did not stop.

They possessed neither agitation nor hesitation. They merely muttered as though possessed by ghosts and swung their swords.

Slash. Slash. Slash.

The old monk’s expression hardened at the sight.

How ruthless…

Even when their limbs were severed and their intestines spilled out, they did not so much as twitch an eyebrow.

The sight of masked men carrying out slaughter without feeling pain or fear, then collapsing abruptly like puppets with their strings cut, sent a chill through him.

These things aren’t human. They’re demons in the flesh.

If even an old monk who had fought his way through the Great Faction War felt that way, how much worse must it have been for everyone else?

The more experienced middle-aged martial monks were struggling valiantly, but the young monks witnessing such carnage for the first time trembled with fear.

Even so, they did not retreat.

It was probably because of the sense of duty possessed by disciples of the Buddhist faith when standing before demons.

I never thought such a day would come.

The old monk lamented inwardly.

During the last Great Faction War, Shaolin had been at the forefront more than anyone and shed more blood than anyone.

It had been a noble sacrifice that saved the Murim, but Shaolin had lost many elders and much martial knowledge. And the sacrifices of that era had returned today as tragedy.

Of all times, this had to happen while my Senior Brother, the Abbot, was away!

There was no helping it. He was the only person capable of protecting Shaolin now.

The old monk, Hongcheon, clenched his teeth and let out a lion’s roar.

“This is Shaolin!”

Although his name had been overshadowed by that of his Senior Brother, Hong Dao, he too was a master at the Supreme Peak realm.

His abilities were unknown outside the temple, but thanks to his relentless dedication to martial arts, his martial prowess had already surpassed Hong Dao’s.

“Come at me, all of you!”

Kwoooong!

It was at that moment that his palm force, filled with powerful Buddhist internal energy, swept in every direction.

“Oh-ho. The Hundred-Step Divine Fist?”

“We get to see that damn martial art again.”

Two voices pierced Hongcheon’s ears.

Two men slowly entered the temple grounds and came into view. At the same time, the masked men lowered their swords and withdrew in perfect unison.

“Was it you bastards?”

At Hongcheon’s words, spat out between clenched teeth, the red-bearded old man picked his nose and answered.

“That’s right. This old man right here.”

“You’re the vile demonic fiends of Tianshan.”

“Tianshan’s demonic fiends? Well, half of that is right and half is wrong. But I’ll let it pass.”

Hongcheon paused.

“You’re not from the Demonic Cult?”

“What does that matter? All you need to know is that I’m the one who’ll grab your shiny pate and rip it off.”

The old man with the air of a great scholar answered with a quiet smile.

“Flame Tiger, are you going to handle him?”

“Naturally. Now that I’ve seen the Hundred-Step Divine Fist, I can’t just let it go.”

“I keep telling you to rein in your temper.”

“I’ll think about it later. Right now, I want to kill that bald monk more than I care about my temper.”

Hongcheon glared at the two old men in turn.

The name Flame Tiger.

And the overwhelming auras radiating from the two old men, whose atmospheres were complete opposites.

“Could you two be…”

Flame Tiger gave a ferocious laugh and nodded.

“You’re only realizing it now? You’re still a youngster. All the monks of the Beom generation have been dead for ages… Are you the Dharma King’s youngest Junior Brother?”

“……!”

“Judging by that reaction, I guess I’m right. Han Su, what was the name of the old monk you killed at the end?”

“Beomgong.”

At the Dharma name of the Martial Uncle who had died during the Great Faction War, Hongcheon’s fist trembled.

There’s no doubt about it. It’s them.

How could he not recognize the names Flame Tiger and Han Su?

Or the epithets of the villains who had killed countless Shaolin disciples?

“The Yin-Yang Twin Freaks.”

It was a story from the distant past.

The two demonic fiends had each ruled over the tropical rainforests of Nanman and the great snowy mountains of the north. They had come to the Central Plains and stained the world with blood, while the orthodox faction’s net over heaven and earth, spread to pursue them, had been torn apart by the Demonic Cult’s invasion.

The two fiends had barely survived, entered the service of the Demonic Cult, and earned a terrifying reputation during the Great Faction War.

“The Yin-Yang Twin Freaks… It’s been a long time since I heard that from someone else’s lips.”

“Those were good times. Few things have ever been as enjoyable.”

Flame Tiger shook his head as he smiled fondly at the horrible past.

“No, no. Still, I prefer things as they are now.”

“Of course. We couldn’t even come to Henan back then.”

“It was all because of that damned Martial God.”

“But the Martial God is gone now.”

“Hardly any of those so-called Ten Kings and Three Saints remain, either.”

Han Su watched Flame Tiger with a faint smile. Then he suddenly brought his palms together toward Hongcheon.

“Ah, come to think of it, I’d forgotten for a moment. Please accept my condolences.”

Hongcheon, who had stiffened at the appearance of the two old monsters, sensed something ominous and asked:

“Condolences? What are you talking about?”

“On our way here, we heard that someone had died. Dharma King Hong Dao—your Senior Brother.”

“……!”

Shock struck him, making the world before his eyes seem to go dim.

His Senior Brother, who should have been at the Murim Alliance, was dead?

That was impossible.

“Nonsense!”

Han Su gave a short laugh as he looked at the shaken Hongcheon.

“Whether it’s true or not is for you to decide. And…”

Flame Tiger’s heated voice continued.

“All the monks here, including you, will die. That’s our judgment.”

Rustle.

As if they had sensed their leader’s aura, the masked men took a step forward with emotionless eyes.

A deadly edge rising from hundreds of sword blades filled Shaolin Temple.

Hongcheon’s eyelids trembled as he watched.

Senior Brother… Is it true?

But the trembling soon subsided, and light returned to his eyes.

The old monk, who had devoted eighty years to martial arts, clenched his fists.

“I never thought I’d have to face the Yin-Yang Twin Freaks at the same time. Come, you damned old monsters.”

“Wahahaha! This friend has quite a foul mouth for a monk. I like that you’re still so full of youthful vigor.”

Flame Tiger burst into hearty laughter and stepped forward.

“Unfortunately, one old man is enough for you. Han Su has a more pressing matter to attend to.”

“A very pressing matter.”

Han Su smiled faintly and continued.

“So will you step aside? I have to go to the Face-Wall Cave.”

The Face-Wall Cave.

At that word from Han Su, Hongcheon felt as though his heart had dropped.

Unnamed was there. His Senior Brother’s only Disciple.

And…

The Green Jade Buddha Staff.

At last realizing the enemies’ objective, Hongcheon let out a lion’s roar.

“Stop them by whatever means necessary!”

“Stop us? That won’t be enough.”

The Yin-Yang Twin Freaks flicked their hands, dark smiles on their faces.

As though they had returned to the days of fifty years ago, horrifying killing intent surged from their entire bodies.

“Kill them all.”

Fwoooooosh!