novelraw Chapter 13 : Chapter 13
Chapter 13 : Chapter 13
Chapter 13 - There Is No Such Thing as Moderation
Yunnan, a land full of mountains.
Among them, the western part of Yunnan was famous for being sparsely populated.
The mountain terrain was rugged, but if one went a little further to the left, a rather unpleasant place appeared.
Tibet.
It was a region that even Jianghu-ins who prided themselves on their strength were reluctant to encounter.
To the Murim, Tibet was always an unknown territory, and not only their speech but also their style of martial arts was completely different.
Even when the Diancang Sect was prosperous, the forces of Tibet coveted the territory of the Nine Sects One Union.
Sometimes they acted directly, and at other times, they secretly colluded with special forces.
25 years ago.
A group that would do anything for money in the shadows.
The Night Beauty Gang was one such force.
Although the largest force in Jianghu was the Lower Filth Sect, the Night Beauty Gang was also an organization that was rapidly expanding its power through collusion with Tibet.
The request they had accepted this time had been going smoothly until the halfway point.
However.
That was until they confirmed the disposition of the old man they had kidnapped from Yunnan.
“You parentless worm-like bastards who deserve to be fried in shit water! Untie this at once!”
“……Gag him again.”
“Yes.”
The figure who spewed venom while moving his protruding front teeth ceaselessly.
Hyeokri Chong, even while tied up, cursed the men before him with all his might.
“All of you will be plagued by disease and your bodies will be covered in bedsores, and that thing between your legs will… eup eup!!”
Even after his hair turned half-white and he passed early old age, there were more than a few people who shook their heads at his sharp tongue.
So it was, when he was younger, the extent of Hyeokri Chong’s temperament and venomous tongue was beyond words.
“He is a difficult old man to handle.”
The subordinate who gagged him ground his teeth and approached his leader.
Their leader, Dok Majin, the Dark Cunning Fox, stared at Hyeokri Chong with sunken eyes.
‘He hasn’t lost his nerve at all despite being dragged here.’
An unknown mountain on the border of Yunnan and Tibet.
No, it was a wild mountain that would soon be forgotten by people even if it had a name.
The deeply dug cave was teeming with martial artists from the Night Beauty Gang, and Hyeokri Chong was being tortured while bound.
They couldn’t inflict deep wounds since he had to make elixirs, but considering the situation of being kidnapped and the atmosphere, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to wet his pants.
But what was this display?
The more they tortured him, the more they threatened him, the more venomous Hyeokri Chong’s eyes and tongue became.
It was to the point where it was doubtful if he was really a person whose profession was saving lives.
“Eup eup! Eup eup eup!”
Even with the gag, Hyeokri Chong was puffing his cheeks and shouting something.
Undoubtedly, words that were hard to utter were pouring out.
“Old man.”
Dok Majin lifted a foot and gently pressed down on the top of Hyeokri Chong’s head.
“Eek…!”
“I don’t know if you know this. If it weren’t for your special ability, old man, your tongue would have been pulled out a dozen times already. It’s better to throw your tantrums while considering the time and place.”
Dok Majin’s foot rubbed Hyeokri Chong’s head as if extinguishing a fallen spark on the floor.
Hyeokri Chong’s eyes became completely bloodshot with rage and pain.
“If I take off the gag, you’ll just spew more shit, so let’s use fingers. If you cooperate with us now and tell us your hideout, we won’t kill you. But if you refuse this final request, I’ll cut off all your limbs and throw you to the wolves of Tibet.”
Dok Majin, called the Dark Cunning Fox for being particularly shrewd in matters of the underworld.
True to his title, his face was filled with a gloomy and dangerous atmosphere.
Especially his eye sockets, which were dark and deeply sunken, made anyone who saw him swallow their saliva.
“Draw a circle with your finger, and we’ll consider it as accepting our proposal. But if you show me anything else, I’ll gouge out your eyes on the spot.”
The subordinates looking at Dok Majin gulped.
They knew that when he spoke with such an expression, he would always follow through with his actions.
What Dok Majin demanded from Hyeokri Chong was the location of his hideout and the spirit pills he had made so far.
“………….”
Hyeokri Chong’s bindings were loosened, and Dok Majin’s foot returned to its place.
Did the threat work?
Hyeokri Chong lowered his bloodshot eyes and let out a low sigh.
Then he slowly raised his finger.
Just as Dok Majin was about to break into a triumphant smile,
“…………?”
His face contorted in a strange way.
Because Hyeokri Chong’s finger, which should have been drawing a circle, was stiffly raised straight up.
To be precise, only his middle finger.
“!”
“Th-that’s!!”
A flash of light glinted from Dok Majin’s sunken eye sockets.
“……Are you saying you want to see blood?”
Dok Majin drew his sword from his waist.
“I’ll pluck out one of your eyes with this. Let’s see if you can still move your finger carelessly then.”
The sharp, blue blade slowly moved towards Hyeokri Chong.
Hyeokri Chong was still shouting something with his gagged mouth.
Then, he suddenly burst into mad laughter.
“Heup! Heup! Heup! Heup! Heup! Heup!”
Had he finally gone mad with fear?
Dok Majin thought so and sneered.
Even as the sword in his hand came right before his eyes, Hyeokri Chong did not stop his mad laughter.
“Heup heup heup heup!”
At this point, even Dok Majin couldn’t suppress his curiosity.
With the tip of his sword fixed on Hyeokri Chong’s right eye, Dok Majin removed the gag.
“What’s so funny?”
“Heeheeheehee!”
As soon as the gag was removed, Hyeokri Chong laughed, revealing his madness.
Far from avoiding the sword before him, he faced the chillingly sharp blade head-on and bared his blood-stained teeth.
“Throw me to the wolves of Tibet? Heeheeheehee!”
“?”
“Compared to the mad wolf around here, the wolves of Tibet are no better than neighborhood dogs!”
“Mad… wolf?”
Dok Majin frowned for a moment, then gave a bitter smile.
“Hoping someone will come to help you, I see. You’d better wake up, old man. This place is installed with a mechanism formation that even the world’s greatest swordsman couldn't handle.”
“Heeheeheehee. The world’s greatest swordsman might have a hard time.”
“?”
“But he’s not the world’s greatest swordsman, he’s the
“World’s… Fastest Sword?”
“If you want to kill me, you’d better do it quickly and run. Because……”
Kugung…….
A faint vibration echoed through the cave.
Kugung……!!
Before the subordinates could sense anything strange, the vibration began to change, getting bigger and stronger.
“Once he goes crazy, that wolf has no such thing as moderation.”
Kwa-reu-reu-reu-reung!!
As if responding to Hyeokri Chong’s words, the entire cave began to shake with a loud roar.
“What?!”
“What’s happening!!”
Kwaang!!!
“Eu… Uwaaak!!!”
The martial artists guarding the entrance were sent flying into the cave walls, spitting blood.
Due to the shaking of the cave, only a few torches remained lit.
Through the dimness beyond, a single black silhouette was approaching with steady steps.
“You son of a bitch. You’re only coming now.”
Hyeokri Chong said so, but he grinned at the black silhouette.
The black silhouette retorted bluntly.
“Old man. I told you not to wander around alone. Do you have any idea how much trouble I went through?”
“Trouble, my ass. It’s a distance you could have found in half a day, but you, you slowpoke, were just dawdling.”
“Geez. Maybe I should just go back.”
The two casually exchanged jokes, but Dok Majin could not.
Even understanding the current situation was not easy for him.
“You’re telling me you broke through… that mechanism formation? And alone?”
It wasn’t just the mechanism formation.
Since the target they kidnapped this time was such a big shot, the Night Beauty Gang had mobilized all its forces.
Each and every one of them was an elite who could be considered a first-class master.
It was utterly unbelievable that they were taken down by a single intruder.
‘Who in the world is that guy…’
Flash.
The blade of the sword held by the intruder glinted as it caught the torchlight.
Along with it, the hawk wing emblem on the hilt was firmly imprinted in Dok Majin’s mind.
‘Diancang Sect!’
Hyeokri Chong had said that the ‘World’s Fastest Sword’ would storm this place.
A swordsman with a hawk wing emblem on his sword hilt.
And the World’s Fastest Sword.
‘In that case…’
A sound like a groan escaped from Dok Majin’s mouth.
“Yeongbi……!!”
A genius among geniuses who had mastered the Sun-Shooting Sword Art, the sect’s ultimate secret art, in his twenties.
The figure before him didn’t offer a particular response, but he didn’t seem to have any intention of denying it either.
It wasn't that they hadn’t expected the Diancang Sect to send a master.
But for him to invade so quickly, and alone at that, was something unexpected even for the Dark Cunning Fox.
“How did you find this place?”
“Draw your sword.”
“……!”
“I don’t particularly like to talk.”
Between the flickering torches, the black silhouette smirked.
Then he slowly massaged his neck with one arm.
His expression was smiling, but the intruder was furious to the core.
So much so that he had opened his killing precept for the first time in a while and lopped off the heads of numerous unorthodox path members.
“Do you keep your eyeballs hidden in your guts? I’m already holding a sword.”
“Ah, you’re right.”
At Hyeokri Chong’s words, the intruder scratched his head once and then took a stance.
A hazy aura began to form on the blade rising above the hawk’s wings, and soon it began to vibrate minutely, as if sucking in the surrounding air.
Bu-reu-reu…….
‘Vacuum Sword……!!’
Astonishment appeared in Dok Majin’s sunken eyes.
He had only heard about it in words; it was the first time he was seeing the Vacuum Sword with his own eyes.
Although Dok Majin was a first-class master, he had no confidence in facing the Vacuum Sword, which was said to slice through Ten-Thousand-Year Cold Iron as if it were a radish.
Dok Majin, the Dark Cunning Fox.
A man whose head spun quickly in dark places, who shone when weaving dirty conspiracies.
Dok Majin, who had racked his brain in a split second, called out to the master of the Vacuum Sword.
“Wait a moment. In this cave, there is something more valuable than Hyeokri Chong’s elixir……”
At that moment, the intruder’s form moved like a ray of light.
Chwa-aaaaaaak!
“Something… is…?”
Unfortunately, Dok Majin’s unfinished words became his last.
Without even realizing when the sword was swung, Dok Majin’s body was split in two diagonally.
‘When?’
Even as he was dying, Dok Majin couldn’t understand the situation.
The World’s Fastest Sword.
He had heard of the reputation, but this was too good for the expression ‘fast sword’.
Literally, a single flash.
What he could confirm after the light flickered once was his own body, crumbling as it sprayed blood like a fountain.
Thud.
Looking down at the futilely fallen Dok Majin, the intruder muttered softly.
“If you point a sword, you should clash, not talk so much.”
“Tsk tsk. What to do with that atrocious murderer. How can such a hooligan come from a Daoist sect…”
“This is all because you wandered around alone, old man!”
While Hyeokri Chong and the intruder bickered again, the remaining unorthodox path members began to back away slowly.
Their leader, Dok Majin, had been sliced up in an instant without being able to put up a fight.
There was no will to fight, no fighting spirit left.
All that remained was just cold fear and the instinct for survival.
‘We have to escape…!’
The unorthodox path members of the Night Beauty Gang, who had been twitching their feet inconspicuously, threw their bodies towards the entrance as if by agreement.
The intruder’s claim of having destroyed all the mechanism formations was indeed not a lie.
Just how fast was his sword that all these devices were shattered before they could even activate?
Even as they moved with all their might through the broken debris, the unorthodox path members couldn’t help but be dumbfounded.
Perhaps he had given up the chase because it was dark.
Fortunately, no movement was seen from where the intruder was.
“We made it…!”
It was just when a dazzling light from the cave entrance finally came into view.
Flash!!!
Kwaak!!
“Uh…?”
A large hole appeared in the chest of the unorthodox path member running at the very front.
For a moment, a light brighter than the sun had flashed, and in the blink of an eye, the intruder was blocking their path.
‘Dammit… since when!!!’
‘A ghost… it’s a ghost…!’
“Hiiieeeeeek!!”
Even though they knew there was no escape route if they went back, the terrified unorthodox path members ran for their lives in the opposite direction of the intruder.
But the mad wolf of the Diancang Sect had no intention of watching them.
Chwa-aaaaaaak!
In the dim cave, the dazzling quick sword flashed a couple of times, and with that, no breathing unorthodox path members remained.
The Night Beauty Gang, which had been rapidly expanding its power with Tibet at its back.
At the center of the incident where their fifteen best masters vanished in an instant, was the genius of the Diancang Sect.
“Don’t wander around alone from now on.”
The intruder warned Hyeokri Chong, who was approaching while spitting on the corpses, but he paid him no mind.
“You goddamn bastard. Isn’t this all happening because you guys don’t show up in the Murim often enough? If you keep cooped up in the mountains like you sold your parents, you’ll be more than enough to have your sect annihilated soon.”
“Annihilated? This old man, I’ve let him be, but has he gone senile!”
“What? Have you ever seen such a patricidal bastard!”
Hyeokri Chong, who had been kidnapped and escaped death’s door.
And the intruder who had sliced through the elites of the Night Beauty Gang like radishes.
Even after leaving the mountain, the two men’s bickering continued for quite a long time.
***
And again, 25 years later.
“……Come to think of it, back then, you were the only one who worried about the Diancang Sect’s destruction, old man.”
Countless complex emotions were contained in Biyoung’s face as he looked down.
Neither the signal from the Heaven-Shaking Divine Pill nor the hunger from starving all day could be emptier than Biyoung’s current feelings.
“I hoped that at least you would remain, old man……”
A not-so-large burial mound and delicately grown flower petals.
And a single gravestone with a name inscribed.
Looking at Hyeokri Chong's name written on the gravestone, Biyoung’s words trailed off.