Paradise for Whom? (2)
The Third Elder’s eyes gleamed.
He turned his gaze toward the wall of his office.
Embedded in the wall was a long, transparent pipe that stretched halfway across the surface. It was filled with milky-white smoke, making it look like nothing more than a decorative pattern on the wall under normal circumstances.
Now, that thick pipe was rippling violently.
Gurgle.
Smoke itself had no weight. However, when the pipe opened, the complex hydraulic mechanisms hidden within would activate with tremendous force, flooding the entire first-floor annex with the vapor.
And the true identity of that vapor was the Elysium Fragrance.
Whoosh!
The Third Elder moved swiftly toward the passage leading outside.
The floor had already returned to its original position. It had sealed itself again after the Fifth Elder left.
The Third Elder strode up the stairs with long, urgent steps.
At the top of the stairs, in front of the passage, he opened a round tube embedded in the wall and pressed his ear against it.
“……?!”
He heard footsteps.
This tube was a listening device connected to the surface, designed to amplify sounds from above.
Even so, it was remarkably discreet.
The footsteps were incredibly light and quiet. There seemed to be at least four or five people moving with such stealth.
The Third Elder’s eyes trembled. ‘Masters?!’
Anyone capable of suppressing their footsteps to this degree would almost certainly be an expert who had broken through the wall of martial enlightenment.
Sheer internal energy alone could not produce footsteps like these. The body itself had to be disassembled and reassembled after shattering the barrier of comprehension. Only then could one achieve such refined silence.
‘Why can’t I hear anything else? Where did the Fifth Elder go? Why aren’t the guards making any noise…?’
That was when it happened.
“Hoh.”
A voice laced with clear interest.
“Would you look at this? They’ve done all sorts of dirty things to this fine piece of land, haven’t they?”
Who was that? Whose voice was it?
In that instant, a bone-chilling sensation crawled down the Third Elder’s spine. ‘Killing intent!!’
He instinctively pulled his ear away from the tube and stepped back.
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
The thick floor of the passage collapsed entirely.
That wasn’t all. The spear-like penetrating force had pulverized not only the passage floor but also a portion of the stairs connected to it, turning them into fine powder.
‘Insane!’
The Third Elder’s eyes filled with shock.
Through the gaping hole in the dust-choked passage, bright sunlight poured in. Along with that light, an arm suddenly appeared, glowing with a faint white radiance.
It was a white true energy that inspired instinctive terror, carrying the savage madness of a wild beast.
The voice belonging to the owner of that arm echoed from above the hole.
“Pretty good senses.”
Whoosh!
The Third Elder didn’t even look back. He sprinted toward the opposite side. ‘Intruders!’
And not just any intruders.
These were terrifying masters who had destroyed the thick secret passage with a single punch and followed it up by shattering the stairs with the resulting shockwave.
The passage floor wasn’t just thick—it had been reinforced with layers of white-forged steel plates sandwiched between earth and stone.
Yet this expert had destroyed both the thick bedrock and the steel plates with a single fist.
The Third Elder could have done the same if he tried. But to achieve that level of power, he would have needed a brief moment to gather his internal energy to its maximum output.
This person had shown no such delay. The moment killing intent surged, he had destroyed everything with a punch. It meant that a single strike delivered in the blink of an eye carried power equal to the Third Elder’s full-force attack.
A master. Stronger than himself.
Perhaps even capable of standing toe-to-toe with the First Elder. A true supreme expert had infiltrated Paradise Haven.
The ability to instantly gauge the gap in martial prowess between himself and his opponent with a single exchange proved that the Third Elder was no ordinary master either.
In the span of a single breath, the Third Elder crossed the long underground corridor and yanked down the iron chain hanging from the central ceiling with all his strength.
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiing!
A grotesquely alien and skin-crawling sound reverberated throughout the entire underground complex.
“Huk!”
“W-what the hell?!”
“What’s with all this noise…?”
Voices ranging from startled cries to languid complaints erupted from all directions.
The sounds came from the fifty private rooms. They belonged to the patrons of Paradise Haven.
The Third Elder shouted.
“This is an emergency! Everyone in the rooms, proceed immediately to the evacuation passages!”
Ooooooooong!!
His voice penetrated every corner of the underground space. The depth of his internal energy was evident from his voice alone.
“T-this…!”
“Is this for real?”
“Please save me! Somebody save me!”
“You bitch! Where do you think you’re going?!”
“Waaaah! Mommy!”
“Looks like something really happened. Hey, grab some of that poppy paste while you’re at it.”
“Kyaaaaah!”
It was absolute pandemonium.
Voices of men, women, young and old filled the air. Some were angry, some relaxed, some terrified, and some simply irritated.
The Third Elder’s face twisted. ‘These bastards…!’
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
At that moment, a tremendous explosion accompanied by a powerful shockwave swept through the entire basement.
This impact was even greater and more violent than the previous one. The entire underground facility seemed on the verge of collapse. For a second, he wondered if the intruders truly intended to bury the whole place.
‘Crazy! Are they really planning to collapse everything? Was destruction their goal all along?!’
Swish, swish, swish!
The Third Elder’s eyes widened.
Several men had appeared above the destroyed secret passage.
Hwaaaaaaaaah!
The aura radiating from them even at this distance was overwhelming. The moment they revealed themselves, the entire basement became saturated with a murderous killing intent, as if the entire space had fallen under their domain.
‘These…!’
The Third Elder hurled himself diagonally across the corridor. ‘…No choice.’
Bang!
As he burst through the iron door, his eyes fell on two massive iron pipes running along both walls.
At first glance, they looked like ordinary decorations. In truth, these two pipes were the most dangerous devices in this branch of Paradise Haven.
They were detonators.
While the explosive power of the mechanisms themselves wasn’t overwhelming, the moment they activated, every explosive charge planted throughout the area would detonate, causing the entire foundation to sink.
And it wouldn’t stop there. Surrounding the gunpowder beneath the basement rooms was the Tang Family’s White Flame Incineration—a substance that, once ignited, would never be extinguished.
Hellish flames would erupt from below, consuming everything, while an immeasurable weight of earth and stone would rain down from above.
The ventilation shafts installed in each room would continue supplying air until the very end. The fire would never go out.
This was the culmination of the Tang Family’s deadly mechanisms installed throughout every branch of Paradise Haven.
Even if someone investigated the site later, no one would be able to identify the charred and crushed corpses.
‘I don’t know who they are, but the Fifth Elder has probably already been killed.’
It was certain.
Even if that weren’t the case, these people clearly harbored hostile intent. Whatever their goal, he could not allow this place to remain intact.
The Third Elder grabbed the red lever attached to the right pillar.
For a brief moment, the faces of the members indulging their desires in every room flashed through his mind. ‘This is something you brought upon yourselves.’
A few of them had likely already entered the evacuation passages connected to their rooms. Crawling roughly fifty yards through those tunnels would allow them to escape safely.
But judging from the chaotic screams coming from all directions, most of them still didn’t fully understand the situation.
‘Fools.’
When one became a member of Paradise Haven, they received training on how to behave during emergencies and signed a document stating that any failure to follow evacuation procedures would be entirely their own responsibility.
In other words, those who died because they didn’t evacuate had only themselves to blame.
The Third Elder pulled the lever upward with force.
Kiiiiiiiiiiiik! Rumble!
The massive mechanism began to move.
One lever wasn’t enough. Both iron pipes had to be activated for the detonator to engage.
And once triggered, the device would explode before one could count to thirty.
‘Good.’
That was when it happened.
Hwaaah!
Had the explosives detonated even though the detonator hadn’t been fully activated yet?
The Third Elder suddenly felt a terrifying killing intent surge from behind him. It was so intense that it felt like a storm of flames was rushing toward him.
His eyes shook. ‘It’s him!’
It was undoubtedly the monster who had destroyed the secret passage with a single punch.
‘Insane! He’s already here?!’
The Third Elder urgently reached for the remaining detonator mechanism.
Whoosh!
“……?!”
Shock spread across the Third Elder’s face.
His outstretched hand, his stepping foot, and his forward-leaning body all froze in place.
His entire body seemed to fall under someone else’s control. In an instant, his movements slowed dramatically, as if trapped in something far denser than water—more like thick mud.
‘This is…’
He didn’t know how many times he had been shocked in such a short time.
‘Empty Space Manipulation?!’
That was exactly what it was—the art of controlling objects through the empty air.
But the Third Elder had never imagined there could be someone in the world capable of using Empty Space Manipulation over such an absurdly wide range.
‘Damn it!’
Ooooooooong!
He pushed his internal energy to its absolute limit. Only then did his nearly paralyzed body begin to move again at a decent speed.
At that moment, a sharp flash of light streaked forward.
Thud!
“Aaaargh!”
A scream burst from the Third Elder’s mouth. The streak of light had completely pierced through his shoulder.
His shoulder was left in tatters. Bones, joints, and parts of the muscle were shattered and severed. The mangled flesh barely clinging to his body made recovery impossible.
“Senior.”
“Don’t worry.”
Whoosh!
The one who closed the distance in an instant was a middle-aged man holding a three-foot spear and a short, thick, oddly-shaped sword.
Surprisingly, this man’s martial prowess was not significantly inferior to his own.
The man—Pae Yul—spoke in a chilling voice.
“You piece of trash.”
Thump!
The Third Elder’s eyes turned bloodshot. Before he knew it, the spear had buried itself in his abdomen.
Hissssssss!
A pale smoke rose from the Third Elder’s body.
The true energy that had filled his body was evaporating at a terrifying rate. The destroyed vital point could no longer contain his internal energy, so it was all escaping through his forty-eight thousand pores.
‘Damn it…’
Blood flowed from the Third Elder’s nose and mouth.
It was absurd. He had been in charge of managing Paradise Haven, yet he had never imagined he would die so pathetically because of it.
Fssssss.
The Third Elder’s hair gradually turned white. Deep wrinkles formed on his once-taut skin, and his clear, profound eyes lost their light, becoming as dull as the eyes of a rotting fish.
‘So this is how I die.’
Thud!
“Keuk!”
The Third Elder’s body was lifted into the air.
A young man had grabbed him by the throat.
The Third Elder looked down at the youth. ‘……!!’
Despite having no strength or spirit left, he felt an extreme, primal terror.
It wasn’t the fear of imminent death. The terror he felt was a fundamental dread born from the presence of the young man—no, the evil god—staring up at him.
A man whose overwhelming presence could make one forget even the fear of death.
“Does it feel unfair?”
The evil god’s voice was brutally dry.
Like parched, cracked earth in a drought.
“You people don’t have the right to feel that way.”
Hrrrrrrrr!
A blood-red flame blazed in the evil god’s left hand.
It wasn’t actual fire. It was an optical illusion created by condensed fire qi.
Of course, the power it contained was no different from real flames.
The hand wrapped in fire qi lightly tapped the Third Elder’s abdomen.
In that instant, the Third Elder’s eyes bulged as if they would burst.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
Hissssssss!
White smoke poured from the Third Elder’s seven orifices. The fire qi that had penetrated his body was literally cooking his internal organs alive.
The evil god—Yeon Hojeong—released the Third Elder’s throat.
The Third Elder collapsed to the floor, twitched a few times, and then went completely limp.
Yeon Hojeong spoke coldly.
“Be grateful that you died so easily.”