Even without using internal energy—and though I’d held back—I had already far surpassed human limits through pure physical strength alone.
Boom!
My fist struck him square in the face, and the Dongting Fisherman’s entire body jerked. To him, it must have felt like being hit with an iron club.
His pitch-black pupils trembled. Blood-soaked yellow teeth tumbled from his gaping mouth.
One more.
Thud!
The Dongting Fisherman, blood pouring from his mouth and nose like a waterfall, staggered and waved his hand.
It was only a small movement, but my sharpened senses took in everything happening around me with perfect clarity.
Swish!
Something sliced faintly but sharply through the air, aiming for my back.
I already knew what it was.
The Heavenly Silkworm Thread.
Instead of dodging, I twisted the wrist of the hand gripping the Dongting Fisherman’s black-wood fishing rod.
Crack!
His bones broke. The black-wood fishing rod slipped from his powerless grasp, and the Force-infused Heavenly Silkworm Thread fluttered limply through the air.
“What the fuck are you trying to pull, you son of a bitch? Who do you take me for, a sucker?”
The answer that came back was a heavy sound splitting the air.
Whoom!
The Dongting Fisherman’s palm strike shot toward me with terrifying momentum. But I was already prepared. Without hesitation, I thrust out my own palm to meet it.
Boom!
The swift, concise first form of the Flame Divine Palm.
Two Forces—one white, one blue—collided in midair, sending razor-sharp winds whipping around us.
Through my wildly tossing hair, I stared coldly at the Dongting Fisherman.
“What are you doing, you bald bastard?”
“……!”
I didn’t need an answer.
I already knew what I had to do, and the tip of my foot was already lashing out at the Dongting Fisherman’s knee with lightning speed.
Thud!
His bones crunched. His body staggered, and blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
The heavy impact momentarily disrupted the flow of his internal energy, and the Palm Force gathered in the palm still pressed against mine began to fade.
“All right. As of today, we’re officially a thing.”
The scales had already tipped in my favor. I laced my fingers tightly through his, then twisted with all my strength.
Crack!
Sibu-leol.1 I’d never even held a woman’s hand in my life, yet here in Murim, I’d interlocked fingers with enough men to fill a truck.
Of course, an affectionate finger-lock fueled by the pent-up rage of a man who’d been single all his life never failed to deliver.
Just like now.
“Gyaaaaaaah!”
A scream of agony finally burst from the Dongting Fisherman’s mouth.
I clenched my fist and punched him again and again as he stared at me with his pitch-black eyes wide open.
Thud! Thud! Thud-thud-thud!
Under the unceasing rain of fists and palms, the Dongting Fisherman’s movements slowly weakened.
Or so I thought.
“Gueeeeeegh!”
What was it?
Had I let my guard down because I thought victory was assured? Had I grown too confident that I could capture him alive?
Whatever the reason, I hadn’t been thorough.
And that created an opening.
Splaaash!
My vision turned completely red.
The sticky blood the Dongting Fisherman vomited drenched my face and froze my body for an instant.
And the counterattack of a Supreme Peak master fighting for his life was fiercer than I’d expected.
Boom!
With a sound like compressed air exploding, a stream of internal energy seemed to pass straight through the surface of the Fire Dragon Armor and slammed into my upper body.
My vision blurred.
As the scenery flashed past, a thought crossed my mind.
Damn it. Inner-Family Heavy Hand.
He still had this much strength left?
I swallowed the blood surging up my throat and drew on my internal energy.
I’d taken an unexpected blow, but compared to the Dongting Fisherman’s condition, this was nothing.
That I had suffered only a minor internal injury despite being caught off guard by the Inner-Family Heavy Hand was proof enough.
Whoooosh!
I sent the flow of internal energy, interrupted for only an instant, coursing through every limb and acupoint in my body.
The acupoints damaged by the Inner-Family Heavy Hand throbbed slightly, but that was all.
A carp didn’t die just because someone scooped a bowlful of water from its pond.
Neither would I.
I’ll finish this.
I twisted around in midair while hurtling backward. The opposite wall of the cave rushed toward me. I planted my foot against it lightly, then detonated the internal energy flowing through my toes.
Boom!
With a roar like the sky splitting apart, the unyielding rocks in the wall exploded.
Hundreds—thousands—of fragments tore through the air in every direction, but I was already gone.
Whoooooosh!
Heavier than a rock, faster than the wind.
My entire body cleaved through the air several times faster than when I’d been thrown back, carrying the weight of ten thousand geun.2
“Dongting Fisherman!”
My shout shook the vast cavern. Several jiazi3 of Scorching Yang Qi carried in my voice pressed down the water and pushed the rocks aside.
And at the end of it all stood one man.
“……!”
The Dongting Fisherman had just pulled White Flame from his shoulder and the rock wall behind him when he spotted me. His eyes flew wide.
His blackened pupils trembled, flashing a sliver of white.
His mouth quivered open, and his one remaining front tooth trembled pitifully.
“D-d-d-don’t…”
Don’t come any closer?
Fuck off.
I had no idea why the man who’d been acting like a lunatic only moments ago was suddenly trembling like that, but my mind was already made up.
I was going to bring you back in one piece if possible… but that’s not happening now.
It was too late for regret. The Dongting Fisherman should have regretted his actions long ago.
Before joining hands with Dark Heaven. Before brutally slaughtering innocent commoners and children.
That was when he should have regretted his actions and repented.
Now that we’d come this far, there was no need for repentance.
All that remained was punishment for his crimes.
You’re fucking dead.
I didn’t care if I crushed all four of his limbs. As long as he kept breathing, I could tear out every last strand of hair and every tooth, then drive a stalactite up his ass.
I would take his life only after he’d spat out everything he knew about Dark Heaven.
I’d leave him just alive enough to breathe.
Only until my anger at what he had done had diminished, even slightly.
With exactly that much force behind me, I shot toward him and extended my fist through the slowed world.
Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist.
Whoooooosh!
Fiercely blazing blue-white hellfire swallowed the palm strike the Dongting Fisherman thrust out with his broken hand.
His Palm Force, now as murky as muddy water, shattered and evaporated beneath the Scorching Yang Qi. Beyond the ceaseless whirlwind and flashes of light, my flame-wreathed fist smashed through the Body-Protecting Qi surrounding him.
Crack! Booooom!
Every blood vessel in the Dongting Fisherman’s bulging eyes burst. He vomited blood as he was driven into the wall.
Fine, spiderweb-like cracks spread across the hard rock of the cavern wall. Soon, they widened into a massive fissure that reached all the way to the ceiling.
Rumble. Rumble-rumble-rumble!
The ceiling collapsed, and the ground split apart.
The rocks that had endured tremendous water pressure deep beneath the vast freshwater lake of Dongting Lake began collapsing one after another. Streams of water surged up from every direction.
Collapse.
This space, created at some unknown point in the past, would soon come crashing down.
Just like its owner, who would never return to his secret refuge.
I have to hurry.
Rattle-rattle!
I pressed the Dongting Fisherman’s acupoints to stop the bleeding. Then, in case anything happened, I sealed him with Pressure-Point Strikes so he could not move even a hair.
I hoisted the small old man onto my back, then punched forward without hesitation.
Boom! Rumble-rumble-rumble!
A raging current was visible through the sinkhole-like opening in the floor.
I took a deep breath and leaped into the violent water.
Splash!
Cold water closed around my body, and a familiar message rang in my ears.
System
Title effect activated: Water Rescue Worker
Special Skill embedded in the Title applied.
Water Rescue Worker’s Webbed Feet generated.
Water Rescue Worker’s Gills generated.
Remaining duration: 18 hours, 43 minutes, 32 seconds
I had plenty of time.
I moved my body powerfully with the current.
Before long, I noticed the Dongting Fisherman constantly blowing bubbles from his mouth and nose. The sight reminded me of something I’d momentarily overlooked.
What the… Ah.
Even a master of water arts needed enough internal energy and awareness to use those techniques.
He didn’t breathe through gills like I did. If he remained underwater too long, he might die.
Wait. If that’s the case…
A flash of insight struck me.
At the same time, I began swimming with all my strength.
Interlocking fingers was one thing, but I wasn’t about to give up my first kiss too.
Especially not to a crazy old man who was nearly a hundred!
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
A vibration that began somewhere deep underwater grew so powerful that it reached the people on the surface.
At the sudden anomaly, the old boatman shrank into himself with fear in his eyes, while the other three men’s faces stiffened.
“Um, I think…”
“It seems it’s finally begun. Or perhaps it has already ended.”
Gung Gibang answered Cheongpung’s murmur in a grave voice.
Hyuk Mujin, who had been anxiously watching the trembling cliff and river, abruptly spoke.
“We have to go.”
Gung Gibang furrowed his brow.
“What?”
“It’s certain that something happened to our Captain. I have a bad feeling.”
“But Jin Taekyung, that bastard…”
“He told us not to move and to wait here. I know.”
“Then why?”
“I’ve always been terrible at listening to people.”
“Damn. You sound proud of it.”
“Isn’t it better than sitting here sucking our fingers?”
At Hyuk Mujin’s words, Gung Gibang gnawed at his lower lip.
He, too, had been uneasy for some time.
He didn’t know exactly when it had begun, but his heart was pounding violently, and every one of his senses was on edge.
What’s wrong with me? Did something really happen to that bastard?
A face flashed before his eyes.
The Sleeping Dragon of Shanxi.
No—the Blazing Flame Divine Dragon, Jin Taekyung.
The kind of bastard who looked capable of crawling back alive even if he were thrown into the deepest pit of the underworld. More vicious than A-Gwi4 and strong enough to beat Yama5 himself into the ground.
I’ve never once imagined that bastard dying… But nothing is absolute. Surely not?
Gung Gibang hadn’t dismissed what Jin Taekyung had said before entering the river. After traveling with him for so long, he knew there was always a reason behind the man’s words and actions.
But this time, he couldn’t help wavering.
Goddammit. The weather’s gone completely to shit too. What the hell am I supposed to do?
Rumble. Crash!
Just as the old boatman had warned a couple of shichen6 earlier, even calling the current weather on Dongting Lake the worst imaginable would have been an understatement.
A raging storm. Lightning crashing down from the sky.
Gung Gibang looked around with conflicted eyes and finally opened his mouth.
Or rather, he was just about to when—
“It’s all right.”
“Huh?”
“What?”
Gung Gibang and Hyuk Mujin turned their heads at the same time.
Someone was smiling brightly in their field of view.
At the edge of the small island where they stood, Cheongpung had been lying facedown, listening to something. He brushed the sand from his ear and grinned.
“Benefactor is coming.”
And then—
Splaaash!
A figure shot from the water atop a towering spray and landed heavily on the sandy shore.
A muscular young man with a small old man slung over his back.
It was Jin Taekyung.
“Captain!”
“You’re back!”
“Benefactooor!”
“Stay back, you dickheads. If any of you tries to hug me, all three of you are getting murdered today.”
After stopping the three men charging toward him with cries of joy, Jin Taekyung continued in a grave voice.
“We don’t have time, so I’ll get straight to the point. Raise your hand if you’ve ever kissed someone. Or if you want to try it. Hands up.”
Two of them caught on quickly.
One was hopelessly oblivious.
As Gung Gibang and Hyuk Mujin quietly backed away, one hand shot into the air amid a bright, innocent shout.
“Me! Me! I’ve never kissed anyone before!”
“Fuck. Thank God.”
“Huh?”
Beaming from ear to ear, Jin Taekyung held the Dongting Fisherman out toward the bewildered Cheongpung.
“Your wish just came true.”
Rumble. Crash!
Thunder and lightning shook the entire world.
Footnotes
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Sibu-leol is a colloquial Korean curse, roughly equivalent to “fuck.” ↩
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Geun is a Korean unit of weight: one geun is 600 g (1.32 lb). Ten thousand geun is about 6,000 kg (13,200 lb). ↩
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A jiazi is a traditional sixty-year cycle, used here to measure accumulated internal energy. ↩
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A-Gwi is a legendary Dogon from Sichuan, invoked here as a measure of ferocity. ↩
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Yama is the Buddhist lord of the underworld. ↩
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A shichen is a traditional time unit of approximately two hours; a couple of shichen is about four hours. ↩
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