Monster
When Han Yuhyeon stepped out through the market’s northern gate with Baekri-wan, Geom Jung-gun was already waiting, arms folded across his chest.
The moment he laid eyes on Han Yuhyeon, his face twisted into a scowl.
“You son of a bitch. What took you so long? I thought you’d run for it.”
“If I ran, you’d just leave us alone?”
“Exactly. I figured even you weren’t stupid enough to try.”
There was no escaping this, anyway. Geom Jung-gun already knew they belonged to the Baekun Sect. If he rallied every last thug from Socheong-chae and marched into Yeongil-ju, the whole mess would only explode. Settling it one-on-one here was the only half-reasonable option left.
“I don’t care what tricks you’ve cooked up. I haven’t been so lazy with my cultivation that I’d lose to some inner disciple from a Yeongil-ju sect.”
Geom Jung-gun’s eyes bulged as he drew a scythe from behind his waist—a long chain trailing from the handle.
“I’ll harvest that neck of yours with this West Wind Scythe.”
He gripped the chain and whirled the weapon overhead. The spinning blade kicked up a ferocious wind, driving sand and leaves outward from where he stood.
Whoosh!
Apparently deciding the warm-up was over, the West Wind Scythe came screaming toward Han Yuhyeon. It didn’t fly in a straight line; it undulated like a gliding snake, its path impossible to predict.
Han Yuhyeon drew his Flame Sword at once and kicked off the ground. His target wasn’t the scythe—it was Geom Jung-gun, the man swinging it. If you couldn’t read the trajectory, you forced the issue.
“Hah! So you do know how to fight!”
Geom Jung-gun roared and yanked the chain hard. The scythe that had been weaving through the air suddenly dove for Han Yuhyeon’s waist. Instead of dodging away, Han Yuhyeon cut straight into its path. The spinning blade and his body flashed past each other by a hair’s breadth.
“Hup!”
Veins bulged along both of Geom Jung-gun’s exposed forearms. The West Wind Scythe, which had been shooting forward, suddenly climbed and reversed course, chasing Han Yuhyeon from behind after they’d crossed.
Which was exactly what Han Yuhyeon wanted. The scythe hunted his back while he danced between chain and blade, slipping free with infuriating ease. Veins rose not only on Geom Jung-gun’s arms now, but at his temples.
“You little rat—!”
After baiting the West Wind Scythe past him several more times, Han Yuhyeon judged the moment ripe. He dropped into a crouch, then exploded upward. The scythe tried to follow—and stopped well short of his feet.
The chain had twisted and knotted itself into a uselessly short length. Only then did the leisure drain from Geom Jung-gun’s face, panic flooding in. He scrambled to untangle the West Wind Scythe, but Han Yuhyeon didn’t give him the chance.
Spinning hard in midair, Han Yuhyeon hurled the Flame Sword, its edge glowing cherry-red. With that added rotation, the blade tore through the air with a shriek as it flew at Geom Jung-gun.
Geom Jung-gun hauled on the chain and leapt backward, but the Flame Sword buried itself in the ground and immediately erupted in a wall of fire. Startled, he snapped his sleeve out to block the flames rushing toward him.
The wind caught the fire and forced it upward into a pillar of flame right in front of him.
“Haaah.”
Geom Jung-gun thought he’d bought a breath—until the real attack came. A small crescent-shaped dharma treasure punched straight through the fire column and lunged for him. The Hyeonwol-soin.
“Wha—!”
Caught completely off guard, Geom Jung-gun jerked his neck aside at the last instant. The Hyeonwol-soin left a thin burn across his throat. Hot blood welled as the skin split, and a chill raced down his spine. Half an inch deeper—no, a quarter of an inch—and he would have been dead.
“Tsk. Close.”
Han Yuhyeon caught the returning Hyeonwol-soin in his sleeve and clicked his tongue.
Hiding the Hyeonwol-soin right behind the Flame Sword and firing them as a linked strike—he’d thought it a pretty slick combo. But the gap in realm, it seemed, wasn’t something you bridged that easily.
“You don’t even look like late-stage Qi Condensation, yet your combat skill is impressive. I can’t make sense of it. You’re young, too. How does someone like you already fight with this kind of seasoned cunning?”
Geom Jung-gun sounded genuinely impressed. For a lower-realm cultivator to fool a superior about their true level was no simple feat.
Which was why Geom Jung-gun had already seen clean through Han Yuhyeon’s cultivation: Qi Condensation, eight-star. That was exactly why he’d looked down on him at the start. At Geom Jung-gun’s level, an eight-star Qi Condensation cultivator shouldn’t have been able to leave so much as a scratch.
And yet Han Yuhyeon had drawn blood cold enough to chill him. A little more carelessness, and his head would have been rolling across the dirt under the Hyeonwol-soin’s edge.
“I can’t afford to hold back any longer.”
“That’s inconvenient.”
Han Yuhyeon grumbled, but Geom Jung-gun ignored him and began drawing up his spiritual power in earnest.
Until now, Han Yuhyeon hadn’t known Geom Jung-gun’s exact realm. You couldn’t measure the strength of a cultivator higher than yourself.
He knew now—because he’d bought Geom Jung-gun’s information from the Mongan Hyeolseo. Geom Jung-gun stood at Qi Condensation Completion. Completion was fourteen stars. Han Yuhyeon was eight. A full six-star gap. By any reasonable measure, he had no chance of winning at all.
The only reason he could even scrap this hard was the mountain of stats he’d poured into himself through the Mongan Hyeolseo. The spiritual root he carried now was nothing like that of an ordinary eight-star Qi Condensation cultivator with a common root.
“Wouldn’t someone like me, as an inner disciple, count as a pretty serious threat?”
Sensing the shift, Han Yuhyeon spoke up fast. Geom Jung-gun nodded with grave sincerity.
“Without question. You’re a threat.”
“So we’re done here?”
“No. You’re more of a threat than I expected—so I think I’d better stamp out the sprout right now.”
“You filthy bastard.”
“How’d you know I skipped my bath today?”
“Those yellow teeth give it away, you asshole. I can smell your breath from here.”
Geom Jung-gun chuckled. Then, without warning, he thrust out his left palm and unleashed a fireball. Even without closing the distance, the heat was enough to sear. That was the power of Qi Condensation Completion.
Han Yuhyeon sidestepped at once and loosed the Hyeonwol-soin. The best defense was a good offense. If a Completion-stage cultivator was free to attack without restraint, Han Yuhyeon had no path to victory.
He closed on Geom Jung-gun in a rush. A fireball skimmed past his right side. It never even touched him, yet the fabric of his right sleeve and shoulder burst into flame, the skin beneath blistering and swelling.
Han Yuhyeon bit his lip against the pain, shook out the burning cloth, and fired the Hyeonwol-soin again. This time there was no pillar of fire for cover, and Geom Jung-gun was fully on guard.
The West Wind Scythe in Geom Jung-gun’s hand split the incoming Hyeonwol-soin cleanly in two. Han Yuhyeon felt the spiritual link sever. The little blade had served him well, and the loss stung—but there was no time for mourning.
“You son of a bitch!”
Han Yuhyeon shouted and leapt. Geom Jung-gun snorted and readied the West Wind Scythe for a cut.
“You should be creeping in unseen, yet you’re yelling and drawing every eye. That’s a shame.”
No matter how fast Han Yuhyeon moved, he was still only eight-star Qi Condensation. To a Completion cultivator, he looked slow.
Just before he met the West Wind Scythe, Han Yuhyeon played his hidden card. That was why he’d shouted—to seize every scrap of attention.
“Come out!”
“Kyaaaaang!”
Biyong, who had been clinging tight to Han Yuhyeon’s back, kicked off his shoulder and sprang into the air—all four legs and tail splayed wide.
“What—!”
Geom Jung-gun’s eyes flew open. Even then, Han Yuhyeon had been half-doubting the information he’d bought from the Mongan Hyeolseo.
The entry had listed the usual basics—height, weight, birthplace, parents, relatives, traits, spiritual root—along with a summary of personality and quirks. One line in particular had caught Han Yuhyeon’s eye.
Fatal weakness for anything cute.
Honestly, he hadn’t been able to believe it. The man was well over two meters tall, with a rough bandit’s face and muscles so grotesque they looked carved from rock. He was about as far from “cute” as a human being could get.
Still, Han Yuhyeon had decided to trust the Mongan Hyeolseo—and bet everything on the cutest living thing he owned: Biyong. Anyone who actually got a good look at Biyong would call the creature adorable. People just never noticed, because Biyong spent every day plastered to Han Yuhyeon’s calf or back, fast asleep.
When Biyong suddenly spread both front paws right in front of the West Wind Scythe, Geom Jung-gun’s eyes shook violently. The scythe couldn’t have cut Biyong in the first place—Biyong only looked like a raccoon-dog; the creature was a dragon. Taking a raccoon-dog form didn’t strip away that power.
But that only mattered to Han Yuhyeon, who knew the truth. To Geom Jung-gun, a suddenly airborne cute raccoon-dog was about to be sliced clean in half by his own scythe.
“Damn it!”
Amazingly, Geom Jung-gun jerked the chain long and reeled the scythe back in. The weakness for cute things was real.
And the stolen beat of the attack belonged to Han Yuhyeon. The Flame Sword spun and drove for Geom Jung-gun’s side. Even so, the gulf between their realms was no joke. For all how thoroughly Han Yuhyeon had rattled his stance, Geom Jung-gun still managed to shear the Flame Sword apart with the West Wind Scythe.
But Han Yuhyeon’s true strike was elsewhere. His fist, bristling with the sharp reverse scales of the Mountain-Breaking Dragon Scale Art, slammed into Geom Jung-gun’s opposite side.
A sound like bursting leather cracked through the air as Geom Jung-gun’s ribcage caved inward.
“Ghk!”
Han Yuhyeon wasn’t finished. He’d broken ribs, but in a fight between cultivators that still fell short of a finishing blow.
Sure enough, even with shattered ribs, Geom Jung-gun thrust a palm strike straight at Han Yuhyeon’s heart. Against a vital point like that, Han Yuhyeon should have blocked or dodged—yet he answered by thrusting his own opposite palm forward instead.
“You idiot!”
Geom Jung-gun’s palm was a hair from Han Yuhyeon’s chest when he saw the smile spreading across the younger man’s mouth. The instant he did, a freezing chill climbed his spine. He had the gut-deep sense that he’d walked into something—but he didn’t know what, and it was too late to pull the strike.
Boom!
When the palm struck, Geom Jung-gun frowned. The elasticity and resistance under his hand were nothing ordinary skin could produce. The force of the palm technique tore Han Yuhyeon’s clothes open—and the truth fell free.
Shards of a shattered shield clattered to the ground. It was the Wooden Scale Shield, the defensive dharma treasure Jeong Cheon-o had given him. Most people wore it on the forearm. Han Yuhyeon had used it to armor his heart.
Only then did Geom Jung-gun understand. Leaving his heart exposed had been a trap—an invitation. And an invitation like that was always followed by a killing blow.
Geom Jung-gun’s torso was now completely unguarded. Han Yuhyeon’s left palm drove hard into the upper half of his chest.
“Guhhhk!”
Blood sprayed from Geom Jung-gun’s mouth as he tumbled away and smashed into a massive tree.
Creeeak—
The impact was so violent that the great tree folded backward. When it crashed to the earth, it threw up a thunderous roar and a choking cloud of dust.
“Haa… haa…”
Han Yuhyeon gasped for breath. It had been a one-shot chance, and he had poured every last scrap of strength into it.
The dust that had risen toward the sky began to settle. Heart hammering, Han Yuhyeon stared into the haze, braced for Geom Jung-gun to come charging out at any second. With nothing left in the tank, even if the man did appear, there wouldn’t be much Han Yuhyeon could do about it.
He was still praying the man would stay down when a giant’s silhouette finally staggered out of the dust.
“…You goddamn bastard. What a filthy bag of tricks.”
Geom Jung-gun ground his teeth. Seasoned fighter or not, he had never dreamed his own weakness—cute living things—would walk onto the battlefield.
Han Yuhyeon did his best to look fine, shifting his weight onto one leg. Geom Jung-gun was clearly in no better shape; the blood pouring from his mouth had soaked the entire front of his robes.
“You should’ve just played dead. I’d have pretended not to notice.”
“Heh. I can tell you can’t even lift a finger right now.”
“Wrong. What makes you think that?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
The West Wind Scythe began to whirl again. It was slower and duller than before—and far more dangerous, because Han Yuhyeon couldn’t move.
“Enough. If you keep fighting here, you’ll only cripple each other.”
Baekri-wan stepped lightly between them. Geom Jung-gun’s brow furrowed.
“Out of the way, ugly woman. I’ve got some sympathy for how you look, but if you stand in my path, that’s another matter.”
“Check your dantian first. If you don’t treat those wounds now, you’ll never even dream of Foundation Establishment.”
Baekri-wan snapped. Geom Jung-gun flinched, then turned his awareness inward. Finding her words true, he stopped spinning the scythe.
“Both of you, use whatever spiritual stones you have and heal. I’ll stand guard.”
Geom Jung-gun followed her instructions at once, pulling out a spiritual stone and beginning to absorb it. That he would start recovering immediately—knowing full well she could still harm him—said everything about how desperate his condition was.
“What are you doing?”
Baekri-wan asked Han Yuhyeon, who was still standing there. He had dumped his spiritual power in a single surge; his dantian had to be reeling. This was no time to stand around. He looked at her with utter seriousness.
“Elder.”
“What?”
That grave expression made Baekri-wan tense. Han Yuhyeon’s mouth opened slowly.
“Could I borrow a spiritual stone?”
“You sold all those things earlier. You made spiritual stones off them.”
“I spent them all.”
“Already? When?”
“On the way to the latrine.”
“…”
Baekri-wan stared blankly for a moment, then fished a low-grade spiritual stone from her robes and tossed it to him. The instant he caught it, the solemnity melted off Han Yuhyeon’s face into a sheepish grin.
“Thank you, Elder.”
“Ugh.”
Baekri-wan shook her head and pressed her fingers to her temple. Han Yuhyeon sat down at once, floating the stone before his chest. It began to shine as its energy slowly poured into him through his seven orifices.
Some time later, Geom Jung-gun—who had begun healing first—finished absorbing every last thread of spiritual energy from his stone and opened his eyes.
“…I lose. Letting the enemy stand guard over my recovery leaves me with no excuses.”
“Indeed.”
His first words were a clean admission of defeat. Han Yuhyeon was still absorbing energy with his eyes closed and didn’t hear a word of it. Geom Jung-gun added one more line, sounding thoroughly aggrieved.
“Still—what the hell kind of monster is that guy? Don’t tell me every inner disciple of the Baekun Sect is at that level.”
“Of course not. If they were, the Baekun Sect wouldn’t still be stuck in Yeongil-ju.”
“Right. So he’s the special one.”
“I don’t know either. What kind of monster that boy really is.”
Watching Han Yuhyeon absorb spiritual energy with his eyes closed in concentration, Baekri-wan smiled.