Chapter 465

Boom!

The impact knocked White Flame’s spearhead aside.

The streak of light that had flown in along a bizarre trajectory writhed like a living creature, then rained down over my head.

Shh-shh-shh-shing!

A downpour of Force.

As that destructive power lit the dark cave in an instant, I twisted smoothly out of its path.

Swish. Boom-boom-boom!

My shoulder, neck, waist, chest…

The streak of light swept within a hair’s breadth of the vital acupoints throughout my body before piercing and smashing through the solid cave floor.

Had I reacted even a moment later, the attack would have killed me instantly.

But the Dongting Fisherman’s attack failed to touch even a single hair on my body, and that moment of danger turned into an opportunity.

Just like now.

Whoom!

White Flame’s spearhead, knocked off course by the earlier impact, changed direction sharply in midair and swept toward the Dongting Fisherman’s throat.

His grayish-white eyes widened as he turned, and the snow-white streak hurriedly moved to block the spearhead.

But…

That won’t be enough.

If the Dongting Fisherman was an old monster who had accumulated enormous internal energy over his long life, then I was a monster who had surpassed those long years through System rewards and countless battles on the edge of death.

Even if our internal energy was equal, my body held the strength of a giant who had surpassed the limits of humanity.

Boom!

The instant the blue-white flames struck the streak of light, a thunderous crash rang out as though the sky itself had split apart, and the Dongting Fisherman was sent flying.

The small old man smashed through solid rock and crashed into the wall. The cave shook, and enormous stalactites came tumbling down.

I glared into the grayish-white eyes visible beyond the falling debris and enunciated every word.

“Get up. Drop the pathetic act.”

Crack-crack-crack.

His limbs, limp as a corpse’s only moments ago, moved with sudden vigor.

The Dongting Fisherman pulled himself from the hollow his body had left in the wall and cracked his neck from side to side.

Bones ground against one another as he started forward. A long fishing rod had somehow appeared in his wrinkled hand.

The black-wood fishing rod.

It could not compare to Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron, but this was the Dongting Fisherman’s signature weapon, said to be as strong as meteorite iron and extraordinarily flexible.

Despite being partially damaged, it was still one zhang¹ long. A fishing line and hook with a faint sheen hung from its tip.

That’s…

I had never seen it before, but I had heard of it.

Heavenly Silkworm Thread—a rare treasure said to rival the Sichuan Tang Clan’s Soul-Severing Thread.

It was strange enough that a mere silkworm cocoon was treated as a spiritual creature, as though the grand name Heavenly Silkworm were not enough. But even that was less astonishing than the thread itself, which was said to be so tough and sharp that not even steel could cut it.

The line attached to the black-wood fishing rod was that very Heavenly Silkworm Thread.

I’ll have to be careful.

Caution couldn’t hurt. Even if the Fire Dragon Armor was a divine weapon, it wasn’t invincible armor capable of blocking everything.

I opened my mouth while staring at the Dongting Fisherman, who had stopped three zhang¹ away.

“You have two choices. First, you die by my hand right here. Second, you tell me everything you know without leaving out a single detail, then atone to your victims. Which will it be?”

“……”

Instead of answering, he stared blankly at me through hazy grayish-white eyes.

There was no emotion in that gaze. A chill ran up my spine as I looked into eyes I could hardly believe belonged to a human being.

…What is this feeling?

Everyone had emotions.

But the Dongting Fisherman was different. He was clearly breathing, and I could sense life within him, yet he seemed like an empty object.

What the hell is this…?

I had no time to dwell on it. The next moment, I flinched and tightened my grip on the spear shaft.

A nameless fish had suddenly moved only a few steps away.

Its bones were exposed, and the flesh around its belly had been torn away. It thrashed several times, then went still.

Clear teeth marks scarred its body where someone had bitten into it.

No way.

I narrowed my eyes at the Dongting Fisherman.

Red blood and glinting scales clung to the wrinkles around his mouth.

Only then did I realize what had made the sounds I’d heard on my way here—and what he had been doing until moments ago.

He was ripping into it and eating it raw. While it was still alive.

What kind of lunatic old man was this?

A classic fantasy movie that cable channels used to rerun whenever they had an empty time slot suddenly flashed through my mind.

Now that I looked at him, he did resemble the monster from that movie. The small frame, the hunched back, even the sparse hair.

I clicked my tongue softly and addressed the Dongting Fisherman.

“This changes the genre… The divine artifact you people are looking for isn’t a ring,² is it?”

“……”

“Fine, don’t answer. I was planning to question you while plucking out the few hairs you have left, one by one.”

“Guh.”

“Oh, shit. What was that?”

My eyes widened at the Dongting Fisherman’s sudden reaction.

I’d just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Had I actually hit a balding man’s sore spot?

But I couldn’t tell whether the Dongting Fisherman had reacted to the threat against his hair roots or for some other reason.

Before I could say another word, his old grayish-white eyes bulged, and a tremendous roar burst from his throat.

“GRAAAAAH!”

Rumble-rumble-rumble!

This was no shout from the old man who screamed on the hill behind the neighborhood every morning at dawn.

The roar, infused with immense internal energy, traveled through the air and hammered the cavern. Everything around us shook and burst apart—the floor, the walls, everything.

And before the shock wave could even spread, the Dongting Fisherman shot toward me, leaving a pale afterimage behind.

Whoooooosh!

His eyes had turned pitch-black.

As he charged alongside that streak of light, I spoke in a low, heavy voice.

“Turn down the volume, you fucking bastard.”

Fwoosh! Boom!

Blue-white flames enveloped the transparent spearhead as I stepped forward.

Pop!

Three zhang¹ was by no means a short distance.

But the Dongting Fisherman and I were superhumans who had set foot in the realm of Supreme Peak. The moment we shot toward each other, distance lost all meaning. The gap vanished, and the air exploded.

White Flame’s spearhead, carrying unimaginable heat, and the Heavenly Silkworm Thread, writhing like a living creature as it carried several jiazi³ of internal energy, tore through space.

Shh-shh-shh-shh-shing!

The speed deserved to be called extreme swiftness.

The Heavenly Silkworm Thread extending from the tip of the black-wood fishing rod surged like a wave.

Its bizarre, unfathomable movements were unlike anything I had encountered among the countless weapons I’d faced.

The scars left on the countless corpses scattered throughout Donghu Stronghold flashed before my eyes.

He used this martial art to kill weak, innocent commoners.

I wasn’t especially sensitive, nor was I a junzi.⁴ I had no reason to defend the bandits of the Yangtze River Channel League. They were river bandits who had gathered to plunder, and they had undoubtedly taken other people’s lives and property.

It might seem as though I had taken lives too, but the difference between me and them was that they had not killed to survive. They had done it because it served their purposes.

But…

People should never have died like that.

Hundreds had been trampled like ants and cut down like livestock. Hundreds more had been drowned in the middle of Dongting Lake.

And most of them hadn’t been martial artists. They were commoners who didn’t know so much as a single form of martial arts. There had even been children who couldn’t write their own names.

People like that should never have died that way.

No human being should kill another like that.

“You get it, you son of a bitch?”

In the slowed world, my voice vanished beneath the raging wind.

Power flooded the hand gripping the spear shaft. As the mighty Scorching Yang Qi boiled throughout my body, I brought the spearhead down at an angle.

Fwoosh. Shhk!

A single tongue of flame blossomed in the air.

At the same moment, the streak of light scattered.

A section of the Heavenly Silkworm Thread, severed along the path of my spearhead, fluttered away.

The Dongting Fisherman, whose form had been countered so easily, let out a strange scream and swung the black-wood fishing rod again.

Shing. Shh-shh-shh-shh-shing!

Streaks of light split the air in every direction.

The Heavenly Silkworm Thread, filled with Force, sliced through space, piercing and cutting everything in its path.

But I evaded every attack and silently swung my spear.

Shhk! Shhk! Shhk!

I could see it all clearly.

I could tell where that strange fishing-rod weapon would move and how the Heavenly Silkworm Thread attached to it would come for me.

My half-lidded eyes took in every detail, and my wide-open senses read each attack before it came.

If this had been me before my Middle Dantian opened, I would’ve struggled.

When the place where you stand changes, the scenery you see changes as well.

Opening my Middle Dantian had expanded my senses and granted me a new field of vision I hadn’t even known existed. The results were unfolding before my eyes.

Here it comes.

Unusual weapons like the black-wood fishing rod were difficult to master. But once their advantages were fully exploited and paired with the proper martial arts, they became extremely troublesome to face.

Even so, I predicted the oncoming trajectory with perfect accuracy and swung my spear.

Shhk!

“GRAAAAAAAH!”

Another fast, razor-sharp strike severed the Heavenly Silkworm Thread.

The line had once stretched five zhang¹, but I’d reduced it by nearly half without allowing it to inflict any meaningful damage. An even more ferocious aura erupted from the Dongting Fisherman’s entire body.

“Now that’s more like a person.”

But martial arts displayed greater power when the mind and body were stable.

When the mind wavered, the body lost its balance. Movements grew wider and rougher.

And finding a gap in that loosened net wasn’t difficult for me.

Whoooooosh!

Flamefire Path.

A single streak of fire raced across the damp cave floor.

Its internal energy consumption was tremendous and its trajectory simple, but like most of the Fire Gate Clan’s martial arts, Flamefire Path had two great advantages.

It’s fast and destructive.

Boom!

The air grew scorching hot, and every trace of moisture around us evaporated.

I stepped onto the ground, now dry and crumbly as desert sand, and shot forward like an arrow.

Swish!

I turned my head, and the Heavenly Silkworm Thread aimed at the back of my neck swept past.

Having missed, the Dongting Fisherman hurriedly redirected the thread and tried to wrap it around my entire body.

But I kicked off the ground half a beat faster.

Boom! Shhk!

Something as cold as ice traveled through the tip of my foot, then quickly turned hot as fire.

The flesh at the tip of my bare big toe had been sliced clean away.

The pain was severe enough to make an ordinary person scream, but I accepted it without a flicker.

This is nothing.

I’d endured countless injuries and unimaginable pain while traveling between the modern world and Murim.

There had been times when I writhed in agony as though every bundle of nerves in my body were being severed, times when I had genuinely wanted to die.

Compared to that, an injury like this was nothing.

No—it was an absurdly cheap toll.

In exchange for losing only part of my big toe, I’d gained an opportunity to decide the outcome of this life-and-death duel.

Now!

My hands and feet obeyed the command from my brain, moving like flowing water.

Faster and cleaner than ever, without the slightest wasted motion.

I drew back the spear shaft, then hurled it forward with all my strength.

Whoooooosh—thud!

A strike like a flash of lightning.

White Flame left my hand, smashed through the Dongting Fisherman’s shoulder as he sensed the danger and tried to retreat, then buried itself deep in the wall.

“GRAAAAAAAH!”

As his scream of pain filled the cave, I raised my fist toward him.

“I told you to turn down the volume.”

“……!”

Thud!