Chapter 683

BOOM!

Scorching heat tore through the Great Snow Fiend’s chest.

KRRRUNCH!

An immense impact swept through his entire body like a wave.

He coughed, and dark-red blood burst between his parted lips. His vision, clear a moment ago, grew hazy. It had been a long time since he had felt pain like this.

But as he crashed through a massive ten-thousand-geun¹ boulder, what tormented him most was neither the pain nor his internal injuries.

He saw through my move? That brat?

He had defeated countless powerful enemies to reach this point. Now a young man barely twenty had outmaneuvered him. The thought made his head spin.

My judgment should have been correct.

He muttered the words blankly inside his mind, then shook his head.

No. It had been correct.

His formidable martial arts were not the only reason he had survived this insane Murim and its countless brushes with death.

Hide yourself. Know your opponent.

If his Supreme Peak martial arts were a sharp sword, his unwavering composure and cold judgment were both shield and hidden weapon.

But this was a first.

An opponent who did not fall to his sword, could not be stopped by his shield, and was untouched even by his hidden weapon. Someone who defied every judgment he had made.

How?

The Great Snow Fiend lifted his trembling eyelids and looked ahead.

FWOOSH.

The fierce snow wind subsided. Frost melted from the ground, and bitter heat mingled with the white breath spilling into the air.

At the center of it all stood one man.

Step.

Footsteps sounded in the silence. A figure emerged through the hazy steam, and the Great Snow Fiend saw a young man drenched in blood from head to toe.

In stark contrast, his eyes were clear and bright.

As the young man approached, the Great Snow Fiend pushed himself upright. Stone fragments pattered from his body, each one bringing a fresh stab of pain. He clenched his teeth, suppressed his internal injuries, and spat out a name.

“…Jin Taekyung.”

His voice was as cold as his thoughts were muddled. Jin Taekyung’s reply was perfectly calm.

“I’m surprised. I thought you wouldn’t be able to move after that.”

“What?”

“You’ve still got plenty of energy for an old man. But that’s no good in a situation like this. It’ll only make things more painful.”

The Great Snow Fiend’s eyebrow twitched as he realized something.

“…You.”

“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it. I think someone said something like that to me earlier, so I repeated it. Couldn’t have been more than… fifteen minutes ago. Can’t remember which fucking idiot was running his mouth, though.”

“Early-onset dementia?” Jin muttered. He glanced over his shoulder and sighed. “Ah, this is going to keep me up tonight. That old man lying over there might know. Mind if I go ask him?”

“……!”

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

It was utter nonsense. There was no asking a corpse with a crushed heart a question, much less getting an answer.

Blatant mockery, not worth listening to.

Yet the Great Snow Fiend bit his lip before he knew it. Normally, such drivel would not have drawn the slightest reaction from him. Now he could not help being shaken.

“Just what… are you?”

He genuinely wanted to know. How was Jin Taekyung still standing on his own two feet? Why had he not fallen with the Black Hand Fist Demon?

“I saw it with my own eyes. It was no illusion, no clumsy act. How… how did you do it?”

Every word was true.

Powerful Yin-Cold Qi had thrown Jin Taekyung’s qi and blood into chaos, and the Force-wreathed twin wheels had cut him. That was why the Great Snow Fiend had remained certain until the final moment that his ice sword would kill both the wounded beast and the hunting dog.

Even his decision to kill the Black Hand Fist Demon had come from an experienced hunter’s caution. There was no telling what a beast driven to the edge of a cliff might do.

But he had been wrong. No—everything had been turned upside down.

The hunter had failed to kill the beast. The beast had sunk its teeth into the hunting dog’s neck and clawed the hunter’s chest.

Something that could not happen, should not happen, had happened.

Jin Taekyung watched the Great Snow Fiend’s uncomprehending face and murmured as if to himself.

“Yeah. Maybe it was.”

The Great Snow Fiend could not know what he meant. It was a gamble only one person in this world could have made.

Level Up.

One move that could overturn an overwhelmingly unfavorable battle.

Jin Taekyung had staked everything on it. He had willingly offered up his flesh to make his enemies lower their guard, and at last he had taken their bones.

If the EXP from the Black Hand Fist Demon hadn’t leveled me up… I’d be the one lying there.

But his gamble had paid off.

On the way to Ailao Mountain, he had fought more than ten battles. Breaking through the Poisonblood Grounds, he had killed hundreds of venomous beasts. Little by little, the EXP had accumulated.

Then he had added the Black Hand Fist Demon to it.

And I still had the ten points I got escaping the underground prison, plus the Fire Dragon Armor.

The Great Snow Fiend’s unexpected move had left him with internal injuries first, but that had meant he could bring those advantages out at the moment they mattered most.

It had been close. The result was what counted.

The punch Jin Taekyung had thrown with every ounce of his strength had taken the Black Hand Fist Demon’s life faster than the ice sword could, while the Great Snow Fiend’s ice sword had failed to pierce the Fire Dragon Armor completely.

Jin Taekyung suddenly remembered something he had heard long ago from a man who loved Go. Every time the man lost a game, he would shout, “Japs out! Chinks out!”

“Son, there’s a saying in Go: a large group doesn’t die easily.”

“Dad. Is that Buddhist?”

“No, no. A large group—a big formation of stones—is hard to kill.”

“Oh, I see. But Dad, why did you lose this game?”

“Because the large group died… Honey! Please take Taekyung away! Honey!”

A quiet laugh escaped him.

His father had been right. A large group did not die easily.

After a run of bad moves, one brilliant move could make it larger than any other stone and give it command of the board.

Just like now.

“Black Hand’s already gone ahead. Time for our Santa Claus to go see his parents, too. Just so you know, I don’t offer people a chance to surrender.”

SHING.

In his blood-soaked hand, White Flame’s spearhead leveled at the Great Snow Fiend.

The old man stared back through bloodshot eyes.

“Do not spout nonsense. You have gained a slight advantage, nothing more. This is not over.”

Jin Taekyung did not bother arguing. At least the damned old man was right about one thing: it was not over.

Sacrifice flesh to break bone.

The flesh he had given up had served its purpose, but a single level-up had not been enough to heal his earlier internal injuries and the wounds left by the twin wheels.

And just as he had risen again after taking the first attack, the Great Snow Fiend still had plenty of strength left.

“You will die, and this old man will live. That is the natural order, the mandate granted by Heaven.”

FSSSSSH.

Cold spread around them with his icy voice.

Even a full-strength blow from the Flame-Extinguishing Divine Fist had not put the old monster down. Jin Taekyung roused the fire dragon filling his lower dantian once more.

“Well, I can understand an old man becoming senile…”

FWOOSH.

Blue-white flames spread over the transparent spearhead, driving back the cold. Fire rose in his faintly warm eyes.

“But if some bastard from Dark Heaven starts talking about Heaven’s mandate, you won’t even get to see your parents after you die.”

At that moment—

POP!

The space between them vanished. Flame and cold collided.

KWAANG!

The world shook. The fire spear and ice sword met with a tremendous roar.

A shock wave that seemed to shake earth and sky swept outward. The explosion hurled both figures back, but neither yielded an inch before stepping toward the other again.

SHWIK!

One step. That was all the Great Snow Fiend needed. He shot forward in an instant and flicked his blood-soaked sleeve.

BOOM!

Cold fierce enough to freeze the air swept over a thousand-geun² boulder embedded deep in the ground.

A rock?

The Great Snow Fiend looked up the moment he understood.

Half a beat ahead of him, Jin Taekyung had stepped on empty air as though climbing an invisible stair. Now he was falling, body and spear as one.

Fire Dragon Divine Spear.

Second Form.

Heavenly Strike.

KRAAAAA!

There was no time to think. The Great Snow Fiend swung his ice sword upward on instinct.

A streak of flame descended like a meteor and struck the blade.

KWAANG!

Fifteen minutes earlier, he could have blocked it without difficulty. Not now.

With his internal energy fully restored, Jin Taekyung’s attack was heavier and sharper than before. The Great Snow Fiend’s own internal injuries were no small matter, either.

Hngh.

Blood surged into his mouth. He swallowed it with a groan and turned his ice sword, sending the flames sliding into the ground, where they exploded.

The deafening blast flung him backward. Through his spinning vision, he sent the ice sword shooting toward the figure ahead of him as though he had thrown it.

SHWAAK! KWAANG!

Jin Taekyung knocked aside the ice sword hurtling at him faster than sound. Without hesitating, he drove his foot against the rock frozen by Yin-Cold Qi.

FSSSH. KRRRUNCH.

The ice melted. Web-like cracks spread across the hard stone.

Then a streak of flame rose.

KRAAAAA!

Flamefire Path.

Wrapped in blue-white fire, Jin Taekyung charged at the Great Snow Fiend—the old monster who dared defy the natural order while invoking Heaven’s mandate.

I can do this.

It was neither certainty nor complacency. He simply trusted himself.

Holding his breath, he cut through the space between them, took the spear shaft in a reverse grip, and sent it forward.

SHWAAAAAAK!

The flame-wreathed spearhead grazed past in an instant. It split the wind. It burned the air.

And at the end of its path stood a man.

“Ha!”

Too fast.

With a roar, the Great Snow Fiend gathered Yin-Cold Qi in both hands. White Force that seemed capable of freezing the world itself shot toward the spearhead.

No. It should have.

SHWIK! SLASH!

Pain struck his back.

Something trailing white fur and leaving a burning sting flashed across his vision. It raced onward without slowing, while the old monster’s judgment faltered.

Damn it. Baek…

The Great Snow Fiend swallowed the curse rising in his throat and thrust both palms with all his strength toward the blue-white hellfire filling his vision.

KWAAAAANG!

RRRRUMBLE!

A roar like the sky splitting apart shook the world.