Chapter 283

BANG!

The air in the office vibrated with a sharp hum.

Park Jihoon’s forehead smashed through the table and slammed into the floor. With a sharp crack, spiderweb fractures spread across the ground.

“Guh.”

I pressed my knee into his back, applying the principles of the Thousand-Catty Drop.

I stared at the back of his head in surprise.

Huh. Look at this bastard.

Modern Hunters had no concept of martial arts.

Even among close-combat types, it was extremely rare to find someone like Im Yeongjun, a Black Hunter who focused primarily on hand-to-hand combat. Most concentrated on weapons.

Because that was the better way to improve their survival rate.

But Park Jihoon was different. Though it had lasted only an instant, the movements he had shown were comparable to those of a Peak master from Murim.

It was a little clumsy, but it was almost like a grappling technique wielded by someone who had reached a higher realm.

I had underestimated him and been caught off guard. The fight had ended almost immediately, but the fact that he had exchanged moves with me five times already put his ability far beyond what I had expected.

Has this level of hand-to-hand combat survived into the modern era? Why hasn’t anyone heard of it?

With those questions in mind, I asked.

“You. Where did you learn that just now?”

Park Jihoon answered in a strained voice.

“Let go right now, before you regret it.”

“I see. Still full of energy, are you?”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Once. Twice. Three times.

Every time I grabbed his hair and slammed his head down, a muffled groan escaped him. Blood spattered across the office floor, which had been spotless only moments ago.

As his body went limp, Park Tae Seop, who had been observing the situation, suddenly spoke.

“That’s enough.”

“Is this bastard your son, Guild Master?”

“Would he be my son?”

“Then is he your daughter?”

“Obviously not that, either.”

“Then this isn’t your problem. If you cross the line here, I can’t guarantee what I’ll do.”

Park Tae Seop’s eyebrow twitched.

“You’ve got quite a spicy tongue.”

“My hands are even spicier. My old nickname was the Haengsin-dong Fire-Chicken Stir-Fried Hand.¹… Want a taste?”

“I have a reputation to uphold. I have no intention of fighting someone as young and green as you.”

Park Tae Seop uncrossed his arms and continued.

“But if that fellow is seriously injured, it will put me in a difficult position. He’s an important business partner.”

“He’s a manager sent by your business partner, isn’t he? No, seeing how he pushes you around, it’s embarrassing to even call you partners. You’re practically a figurehead. Does he have something on you?”

I must have struck a nerve, because he made a show of frowning.

“You’re more perceptive than I expected. Though I heard you weren’t very bright.”

I didn’t need to ask which bastard had said that.

I grabbed Park Jihoon’s wax-stiffened hair even more roughly and answered.

“I’m a slow learner. But once I learn something, I don’t forget it.”

“He learned his lesson properly this time, so let him go now.”

“I was planning to do that anyway.”

As I lifted Park Jihoon by the hair, Park Tae Seop gave a small nod.

“Good thinking…”

I drove the fistful of hair back down with all my strength.

BANG!

One more time.

CRUNCH!

The floor shattered beneath the deafening impact. As Park Jihoon flopped around like a raw fish, I drove my toe into his solar plexus.

THUD!

He flew backward and slid all the way to the door.

“Ghk!”

The impact jolted him awake. He trembled violently and spat out a mouthful of blood.

“……”

Park Tae Seop was unable to continue speaking, so I addressed him.

“I let him go. There. Happy?”

“You… You’re quite something.”

“Am I really as bad as the bastard who cuts people’s arms off and calls it a warning?”

“I don’t particularly like that fellow myself, but you would’ve been better off taking my advice.”

His expression and voice had turned rigid.

He was serious.

Rather than feeling afraid, I became curious. Who was this person that even Park Tae Seop—a war hero of the Great Cataclysm and one of Korea’s top rankers—was wary of?

I asked with a questioning look.

“Who is it? That bastard only called him ‘that person.’”

“I can’t tell you. Even if I did, you’d only resent me later.”

“Why make such a big deal out of it? Is that person Asmodeus or something?”

“If you made him your enemy, you’d be better off facing the Demon King. At least then, the whole world would fight alongside you… But what are you doing right now?”

Park Tae Seop stared at me wide-eyed.

Or, to be precise, at the phone in my hand.

“I’m looking at this phone.”

“Suddenly?”

“Yes.”

He had the exact expression of a man wondering what kind of lunatic he was dealing with.

Completely baffled, Park Tae Seop asked, “What are you doing with it?”

“What do you think? Since you won’t tell me, I’m trying to find his number myself.”

“His number?”

“Yes. That person’s number.”

“Wait. Is that…?”

“That’s right. I took it from that bastard’s pocket earlier.”

Park Tae Seop’s eyes widened. Park Jihoon, who had been coughing up blood, shouted as though he had forgotten his pain.

“Give it back right now!”

“Nope. Can’t.”

I toyed with the mysterious phone, whose make I couldn’t identify.

It looked completely different from the phone I had seen when I visited his officetel² last time. There was no way he had replaced it in the past few days, so it was probably a separate phone he kept for secret communications.

It wasn’t that strange. Even people secretly cheating on their partners carried two or three phones.

He has so many secrets, after all.

When I touched the screen, two messages appeared alongside a lock icon. One asked for a fingerprint, and the other for an iris scan.

I could understand the fingerprint part, but what the hell was with the iris scan?

I beckoned to Park Jihoon, who was staggering to his feet.

“Hey. Come here. Let it scan your fingerprint and iris.”

“Jin Taekyung, you crazy bastard. Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Yeah, I know. So get over here and put your eye and finger against it before I rip them out.”

“Don’t rush me. I was planning to do that without you telling me.”

Park Jihoon ground his teeth with a crunch and wiped at the corner of his mouth.

But unlike before, when he had been gasping for breath, he was now brimming with strength.

Aside from the blood covering him here and there, his cracked forehead and broken nose had already healed completely. His stamina was as good as new.

Only then did I notice a small reinforced-glass vial rolling around by his feet.

“A potion?”

“When there’s an enemy in front of you, never let your attention wander until the very end. Didn’t they teach you that at the training center?”

He must have taken out the hidden potion and gulped it down during the brief moment I was looking at my phone. I shrugged.

“That only matters when the two sides are evenly matched. That’s not the case here, is it?”

“What?”

“I don’t know where you learned that or who taught you, but…”

As I circulated my qi according to the formula of the Fire Gate Divine Technique, the fire dragon coiled within my dantian awakened.

I fixed Park Jihoon with glowing, reddish eyes.

“You and I are in different classes, you fucking scrub.”

The next moment, the fire dragon formed from a jiazi’s³ worth of Scorching Yang Qi scattered into hundreds of streams. As they dispersed, they awakened my acupoints and raced forward without restraint.

The internal energy met again at a single destination and merged into one.

Disperse, compress. And…

Release.

WHOOSH!

Early winter was already setting in, but the frigid office transformed into the sweltering heat of midsummer beneath a blazing sun. An enormous burst of fiery qi erupted in an instant and surged through the room.

“Hah.”

I exhaled a scorching breath.

Beyond the wavering heat haze, I saw a man whose face was filled with shock. His expression had gone rigid, and turbulent waves churned in his eyes.

“You… You…”

Park Jihoon’s voice emerged as a groan.

“How?”

“I told you. We’re different.”

As though someone had doused him in ice water, he shuddered and bit down on his lip. He bit so hard that the flesh split at once and blood began to flow.

“This… This is impossible. How could you…?”

The man muttered with a twisted expression, then abruptly opened his mouth.

“I’m going to need your help.”

There was no question who he was addressing.

Park Tae Seop, Guild Master of Myeongdong Guild, had been watching me with astonishment. He answered in a heavy voice.

“Is there any way for me to refuse that proposal?”

“No.”

“And if I refuse anyway?”

“Guaranteed rewards and punishments according to the choice you make. You know how ‘that person’ operates, Guild Master.”

“……I’m sick to death of this.”

Park Tae Seop sighed and pulled a sixty-centimeter-long⁴ rod from his waist. When he stroked the Magic Gem attached to its end, a snow-white blade surged upward.

HSSSSSS!

“Don’t blame me.”

With that bitter remark, he pointed the sword at me. Blue aura engulfed its blade.

My opponent was a hero of the Great Cataclysm and one of Korea’s top ten rankers. An immense aura rose from his body to confront my Scorching Yang Qi.

With a powerful ally at his side, Park Jihoon smiled coldly.

“You’re finished.”

“Finished?”

I laughed aloud.

Since I had heard he went to Hankuk University,⁵ I had assumed he was at least somewhat intelligent. But it seemed he had completely forgotten what I’d told him last time.

“I’m the one who decides whether this ends, you fucking idiot.”

Park Jihoon had forced me onto the starting line and pulled the trigger to signal the beginning of the race. But he had failed to anticipate the most important thing.

This race had no finish line.

And that wherever I stopped was the finish line.

Open Inventory.

Summon White Flame.

FWOOSH!

I stepped forward amid the flames.

Blue fire streamed along the spearhead, scorching everything around it as it surged toward the enemy.

“Haah!”

With a powerful battle cry, a massive greatsword came flying at me. The blue aura gathered at its tip was denser and longer than anything I had ever seen in reality.

As expected of one of Korea’s top rankers.

Internal energy and mana.

The names were different, but their essence was the same. In that sense, the energy Park Tae Seop possessed exceeded mine.

But…

That’s as far as it goes.

At the thought, I sprang upward.

My hair narrowly grazed the ceiling as the blade sweeping toward my waist cut through empty air.

WHOOM! CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

The tremendous pressure wave swept everything away. The reinforced glass covering one side of the office shattered and plummeted toward the ground.

Before the screams from below could reach me, I brought the spearhead down toward the crown of Park Tae Seop’s head.

WHOOSH! BANG!

With a deafening roar, Park Tae Seop’s knee struck the floor.

His eyes widened in shock as he hurriedly blocked the attack with the shield in his other hand.

“What is this?”

By now, he must have felt as though a massive boulder weighing ten thousand geun⁶ was crushing him.

That was partly the difference in our physical abilities and partly the gap created by the way we used our energy.

Hunters really aren’t very efficient.

In contrast, Murim cultivation techniques explosively increased the efficiency of internal energy. That was why renowned great powers like the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Families were so strong.

Superior internal cultivation techniques formed the heart of the martial arts they wielded.

Only when all those tiny gears meshed together with perfect precision could an art truly be called divine.

Disperse, compress, release.

Internal energy was like a scarce resource. You had to draw it out only when absolutely necessary and use it to maximum effect.

Even Park Tae Seop, one of Korea’s top rankers, had not completely escaped that limitation.

BANG! BANG! BOOM!

The instant Park Tae Seop’s shield split in half after blocking a total of four attacks, a flash streaked toward my side.

“Die!”

The wielder of the thin, sharp rapier could only be Park Jihoon.

Just as I thought I had dodged it, the aura extending from the blade’s tip suddenly lengthened and grazed my side.

SIZZLE!

Disappointment flashed across Park Jihoon’s face.

His aura had only cut through my clothes and passed by.

I checked my uninjured side and licked my lips.

“……This is pretty interesting.”

“Interesting? You’re not afraid?”

“Did the guy you call ‘that person’ or whatever teach you?”

“Shut your mouth. You’re not worthy of even speaking of that person.”

“Huh. So I was right. This isn’t some kind of cult, is it?”

“You son of a—!”

WHOOM! SHH-SHH-SHHK!

Park Tae Seop’s greatsword came from the right, while Park Jihoon’s rapier flew in from the left.

Watching the two men tear through the space between us, I thrust out both arms.

BANG! BOOM!

I blocked Park Tae Seop’s greatsword with White Flame and Park Jihoon’s rapier with the dagger I had just summoned, then smoothly rotated my wrists.

KRRRANG!

The four blades, locked in a tense clash, tangled around one another.

I remembered my duel with Sword Saint Mae Jonghak.

His sword, which had let everything flow past.

His movements.

And I put them into practice.

Flow.

Sliiide.

The spearhead and dagger slipped forward like snakes. Neither the massive greatsword nor the slender rapier could block their path.

A moment later, the keen edges of my two weapons touched their throats.

Swish.

“Drop your weapons.”

“……!”

“……!”

Two shocked gazes turned toward me.

Park Jihoon spoke in a voice filled with rage and despair.

“How could you…?”

“You didn’t hear me, did you?”

CRACK!

There was no hesitation.

I raised my foot and drove it down onto his knee. Cartilage shattered, and a scream burst from him.

“Aaaaargh!”

“We’re down two arms on our side. One leg doesn’t balance the books.”

I was about to crush his remaining knee when—

“I think that should be enough.”

An unfamiliar voice pierced my ears.

It was impossibly deep and low. A chill ran down my spine, and every fine hair on my body stood on end.

This was…

A Supreme Peak master?