Chapter 197: I Will Become the Heavenly Demon
Chapter 197: I Will Become the Heavenly Demon
The moment the match results were confirmed, Chu Ga-o, the leader of the Black Path, immediately mobilized his subordinates.
Escape would have been impossible anyway, given the triple layers of surveillance surrounding the area, but the young Fist Demon waiting at Chu Ga-o’s residence was already prepared for death. If he weren't, he wouldn't have been able to utter such words the moment their eyes locked.
"Did you make a lot of money?"
Chu Ga-o’s rage reached its boiling point.
"You won't die a peaceful death."
He had suffered a staggering loss this time. It wasn't just his own wealth he had squandered; he had pulled in funds from other organizations as well. If he wasn't careful, his own life would be forfeit to his creditors.
To make matters worse, this green youth was twisting the knife in his gut.
"I already told the Manor Lord of the arena what happened. You know who his backer is, don't you?"
Chu Ga-o’s expression stiffened. It was out of fear for that backer—the Unorthodox Path Alliance—that he only secretly rigged matches during truly critical moments.
He had played the game well until now, but this time, he had stepped on a massive landmine. He had never encountered such a lunatic before. He knew the boy had a temper, but he never dreamed the kid would pull a stunt like this, especially after Chu Ga-o had left that massive scar on his chest as a warning.
"A brat like you doesn't know the value of his own life."
"It's your life that's so precious to you, isn't it?"
Through this ordeal, the Fist Demon had made a firm resolution: no matter what kind of life he led from now on, he would never make friends or have a family.
How liberating was it? Even in the face of the man's filthy threats, he could act exactly as his temper dictated.
Of course, it was a bit of a shame. Since he was likely going to die here today, he wouldn't be able to put that resolution into practice.
Chu Ga-o barked an order to his men.
"Make that bastard kneel before me."
Chu Ga-o had no intention of letting this damn brat die easily.
Upon receiving the command, dozens of Black Path thugs drew their weapons simultaneously. No matter how many consecutive wins the Fist Demon had racked up in the arena, there were simply too many of them for a man without internal energy to handle.
Despite the odds, the Fist Demon didn't lose his nerve.
"I'll fight with the mindset that every one of you I kill is one person I've saved."
The Fist Demon pulled a pair of gloves from his robe and slipped them on. Sharp, awl-like spikes were embedded in the knuckles.
"These are coated in a deadly poison. Even a graze will leave you bedridden, eating nothing but porridge for the rest of your life."
It was a lie. But he figured it would at least make them hesitate.
Among the gathered Black Path men, those who had fought the Fist Demon before flinched. The last time they clashed, they had ended up injured or unconscious even when he was bare-handed. Now his fists were poisoned?
"You cowardly bastard!" Chu Ga-o spat.
The Fist Demon shouted back, "Why? You lot are running wild with swords, so why can't I wear these? You Black Path trash! Come at me, all of you!"
Chu Ga-o roared, "Kill him! Three hundred taels to the man who takes his head!"
With a bounty that trumped all fear, the Black Path men swarmed forward, brandishing their blades.
The Fist Demon fled toward the back courtyard. The men in the lead, chasing him with greedy glee, suddenly plummeted downward.
"Aaaargh!"
He had dug a pitfall in the yard and lined the bottom with sharpened stakes.
The Fist Demon had come prepared for a real fight. He had no intention of relying only on his fists. His goal was to survive, and if he was to die, he intended to take as many of them with him as possible.
Though several men died in the trap, the rest of the Black Path thugs were veterans of many battles. Their opponent wasn't a martial arts master, but merely a youth without internal energy.
They clung to him tenaciously, swinging their swords. If they could just bury a blade in his body, that fortune of three hundred taels would be theirs. Crazed by greed, they charged like madmen.
The Fist Demon’s movements were incredibly swift. He ducked and weaved through the flying blades, throwing counter-punches with desperate precision.
Those pierced by his spiked gloves screamed in agony.
Curses flew from all directions as the Black Path men grew frantic. Even as they bled, they charged with guttural roars.
The Fist Demon rolled across the ground, narrowly avoiding the blades coming from every angle.
Springing up and running toward a wall, he spun around and hurled a dagger. It buried itself in the chest of a man pursuing him. He threw stones from the ground and even snatched up fallen swords to swing at them.
Chu Ga-o shouted, "You've abandoned the honor of a fighter!"
He was trying to provoke the youth into discarding his weapons, but the tactic failed utterly.
"I threw it away because of you! You're the one killing your own men!"
The Fist Demon fought exceptionally well. He struck, parried, rolled, and leaped into kicks. He raged like a wounded beast.
But there were too many of them. No matter how gifted his movements were, he was simply outnumbered.
Blood sprayed from the Fist Demon’s arm and side. He didn't even have the luxury to check the severity of his wounds. He swung his fists like a madman while dodging the steel flying from all sides.
Thwack!
Suddenly, a heavy kick sent the Fist Demon flying. He crashed into a pile of crates in the yard and collapsed.
It was a strike from Chu Ga-o, who had been waiting for an opening.
"Strip those gloves off him first!"
Men swarmed him, tearing the gloves from his hands. In the struggle, the Fist Demon bit into one man's throat. Blood geysered everywhere.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Fists rained down until the Fist Demon’s face was a bloody mess.
Chu Ga-o looked down at him. "I've never seen such a stubborn bastard."
Just as Chu Ga-o was clicking his tongue at his subordinates, the Fist Demon suddenly splashed liquid from a hidden bottle at him.
Chu Ga-o waved his hand to block it.
Sssssss!
The liquid scorched his sleeve instantly. It was Bone-Melting Acid.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
His eyes rolling back in fury, Chu Ga-o began to stomp on the Fist Demon. He had nearly had his face melted off.
The Fist Demon curled his body, trying to protect his vitals, but he sensed that this was the end.
I guess this life ends here.
Now that death was actually upon him, fear crept in. He also felt a bitter sense of injustice at dying to a man like this.
When the beating paused for a moment, the Fist Demon opened his eyes. Chu Ga-o was drawing a dagger.
"I won't let you die easily."
The Fist Demon raised his hollow eyes to look up at the night sky one last time. He wanted to see the stars or the moon before he went.
Huh?
Sitting on a tree branch behind Chu Ga-o’s shoulder, a man was looking down at him. Thinking it was a hallucination, the Fist Demon closed his eyes and opened them again.
But the man, sitting with the bright full moon at his back, was still there. He looked to be a few years older than the Fist Demon.
The Fist Demon’s eyes met his. He had never felt fear just by looking at a person, but the moment he saw this man's cold gaze, a chill ran down his spine.
Is he the Reaper come to take me?
The thought actually crossed his mind.
But he wasn't a Reaper. One of the Black Path thugs spotted him.
"Huh? There's someone over there!"
As everyone's attention shifted, the man lightly leaped down from the branch.
He had jumped from a considerable height, yet he landed without a sound. Both the Black Path thugs and the Fist Demon were stunned by such incredible movement technique.
The man walked slowly toward the Fist Demon. He didn't give the Black Path men so much as a glance.
He asked the Fist Demon, "Can you still fight?"
The Fist Demon nodded and forced himself up. His entire body felt like it was breaking, but he gritted his teeth.
"I can fight."
The man then turned his gaze to Chu Ga-o.
"It's poor form to be so cowardly against a fighter."
Given that he knew the youth was a fighter, he wasn't just a random passerby. The man seemed to already understand exactly why this situation was unfolding.
"Who might you be, sir?" Chu Ga-o asked, internally tense. He worried that a master from the Unorthodox Path Alliance had appeared because of the match-rigging.
Then, the young man said something completely unexpected.
"Fight fairly."
Whish!
Before he could even react, the man's Finger Wind suppressed Chu Ga-o’s internal energy. To neutralize an opponent's cultivation with a single flick of a finger was a level of mastery one only heard about in legends.
Startled, Chu Ga-o instinctively screamed, "Kill him! Kill this bastard too!"
But no one dared to charge. Even setting aside the skill he had just displayed, there was a certain majesty about him that commanded absolute obedience.
The man gestured for the Black Path thugs to stand in a circle. As if possessed, they formed a ring. A small, makeshift arena was created.
Standing up, the Fist Demon clenched his fists. He didn't know who the man helping him was, but he knew that if he missed this chance, he was dead.
Chu Ga-o also realized that he had to kill the Fist Demon to survive. Fortunately, while his internal energy was suppressed, his dagger and sword hadn't been taken away.
Then I still have a chance!
He didn't. Chu Ga-o swung his dagger only to lose it, then drew his sword, but eventually, even that was snatched away.
In the end, it became a fist-to-fist brawl, and Chu Ga-o could not handle an opponent he couldn't beat even with a blade.
Thud! Crack! Smash! Thwack!
The Fist Demon’s enraged fists slammed into his body.
"Why! Why do you torment people who are just trying to live! Why!"
Chu Ga-o’s jaw and ribs shattered.
Finally unable to endure any longer, Chu Ga-o collapsed, gasping for breath. The Fist Demon tore open his own shirt to reveal his scar.
"I told you to look at this scar whenever you had a stupid thought, didn't I? Well, you can stare at it all you want while you rot in hell."
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Under the rain of punches, Chu Ga-o’s breath finally ceased.
Gasping for air, the Fist Demon stood up and looked at the man.
At that moment, a sword rose into the air before the man.
Clatter-clatter-clatter!
In front of the young man, the sword seemed to multiply as sword-shaped qi manifested, and then they all ascended into the sky. Just as the Black Path men were looking up with wonder—
Swish-swish-swish-swish-swish!
The sword qi floating in the air rained down on the Black Path men like a storm.
Pierced through their heads, faces, and chests, the Black Path men collapsed all at once.
The man did not leave a single one of them alive.
*
Listening to the Fist Demon’s story, Geom Mu-geuk exclaimed, "Flying Heaven Sword Technique, Flowing Heaven Form! It was my father!"
"That's right. It was the Cult Leader."
Geom Mu-geuk was stunned. He hadn't known that the person who discovered the Fist Demon was his father.
"He was the Cult Leader back when he was your age. It was before he was even officially named the successor."
Geom Mu-geuk felt strangely moved by the fact that his father had saved the Fist Demon.
"Standing there amidst the corpses, the Cult Leader said to me: 'How about we turn those baby fists into the fists of a real man?'"
"Ah!"
Geom Mu-geuk finally understood where the "baby hands" comment the Fist Demon always made to him had originated.
"So, what did you say?"
"I said no. Why would I follow someone without knowing who they were? What if he was an assassin? Or a legendary villain? I told him I was truly grateful for saving my life, but no thank you."
Geom Mu-geuk thought the Fist Demon was impressive for saying no in that situation. The young Fist Demon seemed so full of life and fire. That same fire was still hidden within this man. Who would have guessed that the Fist Demon—who looked so stifling and old-fashioned as he watched over his subordinates' training in silence every day—had such a youth?
"So, what did my father say?"
"He just turned away without a word, his eyes saying 'suit yourself.' As I watched his back, it suddenly hit me that this wasn't right. If I didn't follow him, I'd never escape that arena for the rest of my life. I got lucky and survived this time, but someday I'd die in some other filthy mess like that."
The Fist Demon recalled that moment. His destiny had changed with a decision made in a split second.
"If the Cult Leader had tried to persuade me to come along, I might have stubbornly refused to the end. Back then, I thought being prickly and headstrong was cool. But seeing his back grow distant, my body moved instinctively. I ran after him. I told him I was sorry, that I'd changed my mind. That's when the Cult Leader looked at me and laughed. You know it, don't you? That look of his..."
"That smirk that makes it look like he's looking down on the whole world?"
"That's the one."
"My father is probably the person that smirk suits best in the entire world."
"To be honest, the Cult Leader was cool that day. He had a different kind of charm than you."
"Am I cool too?"
The Fist Demon ignored my question and continued his story.
"The Cult Leader brought me to the Main Cult and, without a single word of explanation, put me in the Eastern Fist Sect. After that, he never came to see me once."
"That sounds like my father."
"I rose from White Fist to Black Fist all on my own. I put in blood-soaked effort back then."
With his natural sense and talent for fist techniques, combined with that effort, the Fist Demon must have drawn everyone's attention.
"The day I became a Black Fist, the Cult Leader came to find me. It was as if he had been watching me all along, arriving exactly on that day. Do you know what he said to me then?"
"What did he say?"
The Fist Demon’s voice trembled slightly as he recalled that day.
"I will become the Heavenly Demon, so you become my Fist Demon."
The special bond between the two wasn't just because they were both obsessed with martial arts. It was because of this hidden past.
Geom Mu-geuk mimicked his father's voice and said, "I will also become the Heavenly Demon, so..."
"Too late. I'm already the Fist Demon."
"Ah! Right. I should probably say that to Cheon So-hui instead. Please wait a moment. I'll find a phrase that suits us."
The Fist Demon gazed at Geom Mu-geuk.
The image of the young Heavenly Demon, Geom Wu-jin, overlapped with Geom Mu-geuk’s appearance.
They were similar yet different. If Geom Mu-geuk was light, Geom Wu-jin was darkness. If one was so light he seemed ready to fly away, the other was so heavy he seemed destined to sink forever.
Yet, the Fist Demon felt it again. That this light and darkness were not so different. They were dark yet bright, and bright yet dark.
"The Cult Leader took me away from this place, but you brought me back here."
The Fist Demon had met both young Cult Leader candidates, bound by blood, in this very place. He felt this was some great destiny.
Then, Geom Mu-geuk looked at the Fist Demon calmly and said steadily:
"I will become your disciple, so please become my Master!"