Chapter 194
Chapter 194
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 194
Chapter Title: A Will Tougher Than Poison (1)
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Geum San-gyeong's pupils shook wildly.
Screams rampaged inside his mouth. But his voice failed to take form and spill out.
It was due to the iron grip sealing his mouth. A hand the size of a pot lid smothered his mouth and nose alike, refusing to allow even a single cry.
The man blocking his mouth seized his shoulder with his other hand.
Crunch!
“Gaaah!”
His shoulder crumbled in the man’s vise-like grip, as if crushed in a press.
The scream merely circled within his mouth, trapped by the man’s palm.
In agony beyond endurance, Geum San-gyeong wept.
His body shivered like an aspen leaf, every vein in his body bulging forth.
‘Who the hell are you?’
Geum San-gyeong demanded with his eyes. But in lieu of an answer, the man smashed his side.
Crack!
A thunderclap exploded in Geum San-gyeong’s skull.
His mind blanked out in a blaze of white.
He didn’t need to touch it to know—at least three or four ribs had snapped.
Geum San-gyeong retched up a gush of blood. The hand clamped over his mouth was dyed red as a result.
The man’s fist hammered his side once more. The few bones that had barely held shattered into fragments.
“Guhh! Stop… please…”
Geum San-gyeong pleaded. But the man ignored the desperate plea in his eyes.
The man was utterly terrifying.
Beneath his merciless violence, Geum San-gyeong crumbled.
Geum San-gyeong was no man to bend easily to brute force. Yet this silent onslaught of violence was dismantling his very spirit, root and stem.
Geum San-gyeong was so thoroughly broken he could no longer stand on his own power. Only then did the man peel away the hand from his mouth. And he asked.
“Who are you?”
“W-what?”
“Your master.”
The man was Damho. Geum San-gyeong was one of the poisoners who had scattered toxins across the village before fleeing.
Geum San-gyeong twitched the fingers hidden in his baggy sleeve. He meant to use the poison concealed there to envenom Damho.
In that instant, Damho’s gaze turned chilling.
“You still haven’t learned.”
He seized Geum San-gyeong’s fingers and squeezed.
Crunch!
“Arrrgh!”
Geum San-gyeong’s five fingers were mangled as if ground upon a millstone.
Damho kicked out at Geum San-gyeong’s leg. The iron-hard shinbone shattered like glass.
Geum San-gyeong’s body collapsed without strength.
Only then did he realize.
The man before him was no ordinary soul to be judged by common measure.
“I-I…”
Geum San-gyeong still hesitated, and Damho’s eyes grew yet more glacial. In that moment, Geum San-gyeong felt his heart plummet, his face draining of color.
“We serve Great Hero Sa U-yeon.”
“Sa U-yeon?”
“That’s right! Within the Divine Cult, they call him the Heavenly Poison Lord.”
The first words had been hard to utter, but once his mouth opened, everything spilled out with appalling ease.
In summary, Sa U-yeon wielded countless poisons with effortless mastery, and he himself was a peerless poisoner of the ages, forged entirely of venom.
“I’ve told you everything, so spare me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I told you…”
“Did I ever say I’d spare you?”
“N-no, you couldn’t mean…”
“I never break a promise. But I made none to you.”
“You… devil!”
“If you can kill others, you can be killed.”
“Eeeeek!”
Geum San-gyeong flung his broken body in a frenzy, gaping his jaws wide. With limbs shattered, he meant to tear into Damho’s throat with his teeth.
Just before his mouth reached Damho’s neck, something pale flickered in his vision.
Splatter!
His head burst apart. Damho’s Single Yang Strike had obliterated it.
Damho turned away without a glance at the falling corpse.
The hunting dogs numbered more than just Geum San-gyeong alone. Several more remained, making their way back to their master, Sa U-yeon.
They had tried to mask their tracks, but to Damho’s eyes, their trail stood out clear as day.
Damho pursued their footprints in reverse, hunting them down.
Sa U-yeon’s underlings were adept with poisons, but in raw martial prowess, they could not compare to Damho.
They were subdued before they could deploy their toxins. And they met gruesome ends.
Damho’s hands held not the slightest mercy. He culled Sa U-yeon’s underlings without quarter.
“Gaaah!”
Yet another poisoner breathed his last in Damho’s grasp.
Damho flung the corpse aside like a filthy rag and pressed onward.
Hiss!
In that moment, a sound so eerie it raised the hairs across his entire body echoed through the woods. Along with it came a nauseating stench that clawed at his senses.
Damho’s gaze deepened.
The mere scent throbbed pain through his skull.
It was poison fragrance.
Damho circulated his Dark Mist Heart Technique to seal out external energies and advanced. With every step, the poison fragrance grew thicker.
A normal man would have vomited blood and perished from the sniff alone—so virulent was its toxin.
Damho’s pace slowed. He was nearing the source.
The woods before him writhed.
Hiss!
They emitted threatening sounds. As if they were living beings.
‘Snakes?’
Damho discerned the truth of the writhing woods at a glance.
Thousands upon tens of thousands of serpents coiled as one. At their center sat a flat-nosed elder in lotus position.
Surrounded by uncountable snakes, the fiend’s expression was one of perfect calm. That very composure only heightened the grotesquery.
At that moment, a man standing at a distance from the elder cried out.
“That’s him! He slaughtered all our comrades!”
He was the final underling of Sa U-yeon to escape Damho’s pursuit.
At the man’s shout, the elder’s eyes snapped open. A horrific murderous aura erupted forth.
The snakes encircling the elder thrashed wildly. The elder’s killing intent washed over them. Overwhelmed, the serpents writhed in agony, desperate to flee him.
Sizzle!
The snakes engulfed in killing intent convulsed. In an instant, their flesh withered away, leaving only husks and bones. The poisons they harbored dispersed into the air—only to be drawn into the fiend through his pores.
In moments, snake corpses piled around the elder like a mountain.
“Hah!”
The elder drew a deep breath, absorbing every last wisp of poison lingering in the air.
The underling cried out to the elder once more.
“Milord! That fiend is a scourge upon our cult. Slay him swiftly to safeguard the Divine Cult!”
“Silence.”
The elder flicked his hand as if swatting a fly.
In that instant, the underling’s face went ashen.
“Guhk!”
His face blackened unto death. Eyes bulged bloodshot, foam bubbled from his lips. He had been poisoned in the blink of an eye.
“M-Milord…”
“A runaway mutt like you, making all this racket. Tsk.”
The elder spared him not even a glance.
The underling spasmed briefly before expiring. The casualness with which he snuffed out a life was chilling to the bone.
The elder’s gaze turned to Damho.
“Who are you?”
“Damho.”
“Hoh! The Fist Demon?”
“That’s me.”
“Judging by your reaction, you fancy yourself some bigwig. Tsk.”
The elder—Heavenly Poison Lord Sa U-yeon—clicked his tongue.
An evil gleam flickered in his eyes.
He had personally ended his underling’s life, yet not a trace of guilt marred his gaze.
He had merely passed on a smattering of poison arts out of necessity—they were no true disciples of his.
His poison arts were so vast and profound that scarce few could master them. In truth, Sa U-yeon himself had sought an heir, but found none with talent enough to impart his true legacy.
Such were the circumstances, and thus his pride in his poison arts was beyond words.
Sizzle!
Sa U-yeon swept his palm, whipping up a gale that swept away the surrounding snake corpses. They scattered as dust.
The ground lay bare, revealing what had been concealed beneath.
Corpses lay there, several in number—shriveled husks drained of all vitality, much like Sa U-yeon’s underlings.
The bodies were too mangled to identify, but Damho recognized them at once.
They were Yu Jin-mun, leader of the Golden Mist Squad, and his men.
The ones who had slunk from the village to save their own skins now lay here as worthless cadavers.
Sa U-yeon bared his yellowed teeth in a grin.
“What’s this? Do their deaths pain you?”
“No.”
“I thought as much. Fleeing and abandoning one’s comrades isn’t the way of a true warrior.”
“They weren’t my comrades.”
“Doesn’t matter either way. You’ll be dying here soon enough.”
Sa U-yeon’s eyes blackened over entirely.
A frigid killing intent poured from his whole body. It mingled with the poison qi, creeping to infest the entire area.
That was when it happened.
Thwack!
Sa U-yeon’s head snapped back. Damho’s Striking Air Palm had landed true upon it.
“Grraaah!”
Hair in disarray, Sa U-yeon whipped his head around to glare at Damho. Absurdity, shock, and rage warred across his face.
Had he not cloaked himself in Protective Poison Gang, that blow would have burst his skull.
“You bastard!”
“You talk too much.”
Where the Striking Air Palm had passed, the encroaching sea of poison qi parted to either side.
Damho advanced toward Sa U-yeon.
Slide! Thud!
The irregular footfalls set Sa U-yeon’s heart aflutter with unease.
No matter the renown of the Fist Demon moniker, to Sa U-yeon, he was little more than a cripple.
A cripple.
No defect in a man’s humanity. But for one who walked the martial path, it was a grievous flaw.
A martial artist pursued ultimate perfection.
Neither body nor mind could bear the slightest imperfection.
To ascend to the exalted realm, flesh and spirit must harmonize as one. Any imbalance doomed one to failure.
In that light, Damho was a profoundly anomalous existence.
A cripple whose balance was skewed had forged a fist school unto itself. Nay, more than that—he had attained heights that struck fear even into the hearts of the realm’s uppermost masters.
Enough to warrant study, given time.
The corner of Sa U-yeon’s mouth hooked upward.
A smile upon that man’s face was fearsome.
Whenever he grinned so, the land became a field of death.
Ruuuumble!
A thick miasma of poison qi billowed from his body.
“You won’t die prettily, I’ll see to that.”
The ancient poison lord unleashed his toxins in full. The poison qi surged toward Damho like a tidal wave.
In that instant, Damho slammed down his right foot with force.
Boom!
An earth-shaking stomp.
Damho’s body surged forward toward the towering bulwark that was Sa U-yeon.
Charging Step, and then Fortress-Shattering Strike unfolded.
Boom!