Item Power
Han Yuhyeon charged straight at Jin Myeong-un. By feel alone, Jin Myeong-un's realm seemed a shade lower than Yun Il-hae's — and in a situation like this, you always went for the weaker one first.
"Where do you think you're going!"
Jin Myeong-un flung both sleeves wide and whipped a gale into being before him. This was no ordinary wind. Step into it, and you would be shredded to ribbons.
Fortunately, Han Yuhyeon had the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword — a dharma treasure of such quality it was rare even in So-ui-ju. There was a reason it had cost a full mid-grade spirit stone.
He brought the blade down through the heart of the wind. The gale split left and right and smashed the walls apart.
"Aaaagh!"
The scream belonged to none of the three combatants. It was Dang Ji-sang. Watching a Dang Clan building get blown to pieces in a cultivators' brawl was doubtless a bitter sight, but there was nothing he could do to stop them.
Han Yuhyeon took Dang Ji-sang's shriek as his signal and shot forward until he was close enough to see Jin Myeong-un's lips clamp tight. Jin Myeong-un threw both palms out, forming a wall of force; Han Yuhyeon carved a diagonal slash across it. The wall took the blow with a scrape of damage but refused to split open.
In that same instant Yun Il-hae hurled a fireball from behind, and Han Yuhyeon abandoned any thought of pressing the spiritual barrier further, leaping cleanly back.
One successful defense was all the two of them needed to recover their composure.
These Pesu had spent at least several times longer in cultivation than Han Yuhyeon. Even if they were fugitives who had retired from the cultivation world, that history was not something to dismiss.
"Die!"
"For old-timers, your one-liners are pretty outdated."
"Shut your mouth!"
Goaded past endurance by Han Yuhyeon's sneer, Jin Myeong-un drove a fist forward. Compressed fist-qi, heavy with force, rocketed toward him.
"Hup!"
Han Yuhyeon knocked it aside with the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword. The diverted fist-qi punched straight through the reception hall's ceiling. Wood rained down in a cascade, and through the falling timber came the wind-blades Yun Il-hae had shaped. Han Yuhyeon retreated step by step, batting every last one of them away.
He had already suspected it from the spiritual shield earlier: Jin Myeong-un's primary root was a Gold Spiritual Root. Of all the roots, gold hit the hardest and held the firmest. That was why even the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword could only rebound the fist-qi instead of cutting clean through it. His hand was still tingling long after the block.
"That bastard's only strong because of his dharma treasure! He's no better a cultivator than we are!"
Yun Il-hae shouted it — and the assessment was accurate. They stood at the tenth and eleventh stars of Qi Condensation respectively, while Han Yuhyeon was still stuck at the eighth. No matter how many stats he had padded out through the Mongan Hyeolseo, the raw gains from realm breakthroughs were still too much for him to overwhelm.
Having roughly gauged his level, Jin Myeong-un and Yun Il-hae began a coordinated assault. Fist-winds came from the left; a crescent-shaped dharma technique from Yun Il-hae on the right.
Han Yuhyeon batted both aside with his sword and kicked a toppled chair toward Jin Myeong-un. Yun Il-hae cut the flying chair down with a palm-wind from the side.
Had they been running together since before they descended to the lower realm? Their coordination was uncomfortably solid. One-on-one, Han Yuhyeon was confident he could steam them alive. Together like this, they were a genuine problem.
"This little shit — he only looks like eighth or ninth star Qi Condensation."
Once a fight dragged on, a cultivator's realm was bound to show. Jin Myeong-un and Yun Il-hae grew bolder, their pressure climbing higher and higher.
As Pesu, none of their individual arts were especially sharp or refined — but the two of them locked together so tightly that all Han Yuhyeon could do for the moment was keep cutting everything down with the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword.
"Heh. Even if we left the cultivation world behind, some Yeongil-ju cultivator still thinks he can look down on us. How little must he have thought of us."
Jin Myeong-un laughed low in his throat. Watching him start running his mouth, it was clear he believed the fight was already theirs.
"Hey. You Dang Clan parasite. Did you call us here knowing this would happen?"
Yun Il-hae fixed Dang Ji-sang with a freezing stare. Dang Ji-sang, who had been staring at the ruined building behind him with the face of a man who had lost his country, startled violently.
"No, sir! This cultivator simply said he wished to meet you! I truly had no idea it would come to this!"
"Even the trouble you've put us through is a crime too great to wash away. You will make this up to us — handsomely."
"I'm sorry! I've committed a grave discourtesy! I never knew he was this kind of cultivator!"
At Dang Ji-sang's cry, Han Yuhyeon glanced casually over his shoulder.
"'This kind of cultivator' — what's that supposed to mean? What kind of cultivator am I?"
"Th-that's…"
Dang Ji-sang's eyes rolled wildly. Jin Myeong-un and Yun Il-hae both smiled with interest.
"Go on. Speak your mind, you Dang Clan mortal. What sort of cultivator does the man who summoned us look like to you?"
Suddenly Dang Ji-sang had a choice forced on him. Jin Myeong-un's question had a very clear intent: pick a side. Han Yuhyeon tilted his head and looked at him too.
He had just been fighting the two of them, but watching a mortal get toyed with was still something hard for a cultivator to sit through.
"Surely you aren't going to disappoint us with some spineless answer about how we're both fine cultivators."
Yun Il-hae said it. In the end Dang Ji-sang squeezed his eyes shut and shouted.
"He's a worthless, spoiled brat of a cultivator! Doesn't know his place, and that face of his is covered in scales like a fish head — if you cut that neck off and threw it in a spicy stew, it'd come out good and fiery! The first thing I thought when I saw him was Sichuan boiled fish!"
"Is that so."
Jin Myeong-un and Yun Il-hae turned to Han Yuhyeon with smiles. They knew exactly how humiliating it was for a cultivator to be cursed by a mortal, and they wanted to see his reaction. In truth, Han Yuhyeon's pride was not particularly bruised. Whether these people were mortals or cultivators, they were all NPCs when you got down to it. He just found Dang Ji-sang's choice deeply unpleasant.
"Hmm. So that's really how you felt. What a piece of shit."
"Sh-shut up! If you hadn't picked this fight in the first place, none of this trouble would have happened!"
Having already crossed the line, Dang Ji-sang seemed determined to dump out every word he had been holding back. It was not entirely unsympathetic. The momentum of the fight really had swung toward the other two.
Of course, even if the choice had been forced, the boiled-fish line was a bit much. There was no need to go so far as to insult a man by saying you wanted to cook his head into spicy stew. And so Dang Ji-sang's fate was sealed as well.
"Haha. We'll have to think carefully about what to demand from this Dang Clan dog."
"Don't take it personally. You handed us the pretext yourself. Even we cultivators have never laid a hand on your kind without cause, have we?"
Jin Myeong-un and Yun Il-hae snickered. Han Yuhyeon snorted.
"You're only behaving because Song Inmun oversees this place. Don't act like you're doing anyone a favor."
"You shut up. We'll be boiling your neck into Sichuan fish soon enough."
The two of them had clearly decided they had already won. With higher realms and superior numbers, treating him like a fish already in the net was not entirely unreasonable.
"We'll be back in ten days. Have ten people ready. We'll pay, of course."
"Honored cultivators, ten is far too many. The Dang Clan's numbers—"
"Silence. Do you not see that we are burning spiritual energy right now because of you?"
Yun Il-hae barked, and Dang Ji-sang trembled as he bowed his head at once. Han Yuhyeon whistled under his breath. New information.
"So you two do human trafficking too?"
"Human trafficking? You're a cultivator — you should know. Cultivators need mortals to handle the grunt work for them."
"Didn't know that, actually."
"Then you're an idiot."
Han Yuhyeon had dropped into the world of Yeonhwa Seonrok less than a year ago. On top of that, the stories and dealings of Pesu like these never even appeared in the game, so there was no way he could have known.
"So you're middlemen. You kidnap the mortals cultivators need and sell them off."
"And what are you going to do about it? Every cultivator in the lower realm does this."
"Yeah, that tracks. Fairness never stood a chance."
"Fairness? What is that supposed to mean?"
"Don't know it? Then you're an idiot."
Han Yuhyeon shut Jin Myeong-un up and turned his eyes on Dang Ji-sang. Time for reasonable suspicion.
"Did you sell Old Man Dang?"
"I—I wouldn't know anything about that."
Dang Ji-sang stammered and tried to dodge the answer. The transparent reaction told him everything. Han Yuhyeon nodded as if he had expected it all along.
Dang Ga-hye was the current clan head, which meant Old Man Dang had been the previous one — and this so-called younger brother had sold him. Whether he had used a mind-muddling poison or a cultivation-dissipating poison hardly mattered.
"Why'd you do it? No. Never mind. Not like it matters."
He was curious, but not curious enough to ask. Han Yuhyeon had no real connection to the Sichuan Dang Clan anyway.
What mattered was dealing with the two pieces of Pesu trash standing in front of him.
"I was going to hold off because it was going to hurt, but oh well."
Han Yuhyeon gripped the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword by the lower half of the blade. Without hesitation he dragged his palm down the edge. Blood burst from the cut, and the sword's pure white steel vanished under a coat of vivid red.
The Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword grew stronger the more blood it drank — and the owner's blood was no exception. Whether it was pleased by the meal or not, a rough pulse ran through the weapon, and a sword-cry like the wail of a ghostly valley poured out of it.
"This dharma treasure only really works once you feed it blood."
As the sword throbbed, the flow of spiritual energy reversed. Until now Han Yuhyeon had been pouring energy into the blade; now the sword's blood-red spiritual energy poured back into his body. A dharma treasure that radiated spiritual energy on its own — that was the mark of a high-grade treasure.
"I don't know much, but that is a treasure. Far too good for some Yeongil-ju cultivator to be carrying around."
Of course they recognized it. They were cultivators too. Greed began to pool in eyes that had held only killing intent. They wanted the Blood Shadow Nine Nights Sword.
"You've just given us one more reason to kill you!"
Jin Myeong-un and Yun Il-hae rushed him from left and right at the same time. Han Yuhyeon grinned. They flinched at the smile, but momentum would not let them stop.
"You filthy Pesu bastards. If you're going to aim at something, aim right. Treasures already have owners, you idiots."
Han Yuhyeon bent his waist as far back as it would go, then twisted through a full rotation and carved the sword toward the charging Jin Myeong-un. Along the arc of the swing, space itself seemed to split open, and blood erupted from the wound in the air. The sword-qi that followed was on another level entirely — overwhelming in both destructive power and scale.
"What—what is this…!"
Jin Myeong-un's eyes flew wide. The last thing he saw was a tidal wave made of blood. When that crushing surge crashed down, it swallowed him whole — shield of Gold Spiritual Root and all.
"Air's nice."
Han Yuhyeon drew a breath. Using the swing of his sword as the dividing line, fully half the reception hall had simply ceased to exist. Where the blood-tide had fallen, everything was buried under rubble so fine that even the dust had settled.
"…No."
Naturally, Yun Il-hae — who had only been standing beside that sword-qi — had one entire arm torn away. He had not even taken a direct hit, and the force had still been enough to erase a limb. That was the power of gear.
Leaving Yun Il-hae standing there in a daze, not even registering that his own arm was gone, Han Yuhyeon woke the Biyong clinging to his calf.
"Biyong. Time to work for once. How do you sleep through a fight like that?"
Biyong stretched, yawned, then bounded out and soon returned from the wreckage with Jin Myeong-un's storage pouch in tow.
"Tsk. Completely cleaned out."
He dug through the storage pouch, but true to form for a Pesu, there was nothing of real value. The only salvage worth mentioning was about twenty lower-grade spirit stones.
"All right. Shall we try talking again?"
Finished with the loot, Han Yuhyeon tossed Jin Myeong-un's storage pouch over his shoulder and clapped his hands. Yun Il-hae and Dang Ji-sang both went white as death.