Settling It in Person (4)
'T-This cannot be...!'
Geumjang could not believe what was unfolding before his very eyes. A blood-dyed palm, effortlessly halted by a single slender finger. A delicate digit that looked as though it would snap under the slightest pressure had stopped his crushing palm strike without breaking a sweat. Unless the disparity in their martial prowess was astronomically vast, such a feat was utterly impossible. Which meant the chasm between this woman's martial might and his own was as wide as heaven and earth.
"...Haaah!"
Yet Geumjang refused to surrender. In sheer denial of reality, he struck again. It was said that supreme masters could gauge the gap between them without ever clashing blades, yet he felt absolutely nothing radiating from this woman. To all outward senses, she seemed like an ordinary civilian. Geumjang, on the other hand, had attained the Transformative Realm—and not merely its threshold, but its mid-stage. Having undergone Physical Rebirth, he commanded complete mastery over an internal energy that had once run wild like an untamed mustang.
Besides, what was the state of the contemporary Murim? Thanks to the Blood Demon's bloody rampage decades ago, the realm's overall standard had plummeted. His recent slaughter of the local martial artists had proven that this was no mere rumor, but hard truth. Thus, emotionally and rationally, Geumjang could not help but reject the absurdity of his predicament. To do otherwise would mean conceding that the woman before him was vastly superior to himself.
Sssshhhk!
His blood-soaked palm shot toward the woman's face once more, tearing through the air with a piercing shriek. Yet beneath the rim of her bamboo hat, the woman's faint smile never wavered as she shifted her hand.
Tap.
Just like before, she met his bloody palm with only her index finger. But this time, she did not simply hold it in place. She flicked her finger slightly to the side—a mere twitch, strictly speaking from her perspective.
Shwaaang!
Geumjang's hand sliced helplessly past her cheek. Nor did it end there. Whether undone by his own momentum or by some incomprehensible deflection on her part—
Crash!
Geumjang tumbled to the ground in thoroughly disgraceful fashion. Falling far past dropping to his knees, he hit the dirt on all fours, hands planted flat against the soil.
While Geumjang reeled in shock, struggling to process this impossible reality, the woman peered calmly down at him.
"This lady commanded you to kneel. I never told you to crawl like a dog."
"..."
"Rise again. And offer your knees with due reverence to the sky—"
Whoosh!
Her command was cut short. Still prone on the ground, Geumjang whipped his leg around in a vicious back-spin kick. He let out no furious roar this time; instead, his face had hardened into cold, calculating resolve. It was a sudden ambush even she hadn't anticipated, and she tilted her head back just an inch, letting the kick brush harmlessly past. In that fleeting fraction of a second, Geumjang sprang off the dirt and vaulted backward, putting distance between them.
"Arrogant wench. Though I see you have reason for such conceit," Geumjang spoke, his voice far steadier than before. The woman tilted her head slightly, as if finding his composure unexpected. Beneath her bamboo veil, though her eyes were hidden, the edge of her lips curled wryly.
"There are fools who believe martial depth is the entirety of martial arts," Geumjang sneered. "That presumption will be your undoing."
Geumjang was a veteran who had survived the Righteous-Blood War, a cataclysm that had devoured countless supreme masters. There was only one reason he had lived through that meat grinder: cold objectivity. If an opponent's martial prowess surpassed his own, he conceded the point instantly. After all, when a monster like the Blood Demon stood perched at the pinnacle of the world, swallowing one's pride was child's play. Armed with that unyielding pragmatism, Geumjang's specialty lay in finding any means necessary—no matter how underhanded—to bring a stronger foe down. From time immemorial, it was never the strong who survived, but those who survived that were strong. As a veteran of the Righteous-Blood War, Geumjang was the very embodiment of that maxim.
"You prattle on far too much," she murmured softly. "First..."
Swish.
She raised her slender hand. At the gesture, tension tightened across Geumjang's face. Then, she stepped forward. Literally taking a single step, and yet—
Fwump!
"...!!!"
Geumjang's eyes bulged in shock. With merely one stride, she had materialized right in front of his nose. An overwhelming display of martial arts that completely defied the confines of space.
'S-Shrinking the Earth?!'
While he stood paralyzed in disbelief, she slowly extended her raised hand.
"I shall start by ripping out that tongue of yours by its root."
Her words snapped Geumjang back to his senses, jolting him into action. A cornered rat would bite even a cat. Without even realizing that he had just likened himself to a rat, Geumjang whipped his leg out like a scythe, aiming to shatter her footing and open a window of opportunity.
Fwoooosh!
His leg swept toward her ankle at blinding speed. Up until the very instant of impact, she hadn't made a single move. Just as Geumjang felt a surge of triumph, thinking she had fallen for the sweep—
Thud.
The woman effortlessly raised her foot, blocking his shin dead in its tracks. In that same breath, the hand she had extended thrust directly toward Geumjang's mouth. Having anticipated that this sweep might fail, Geumjang sprang backward in retreat.
Scrrrtch!
The moment he touched down, he dragged his heel through the dirt, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust. Cowardly? What meaning did cowardice hold in a fight for survival? If there was fair play, there was also brazen cunning. After all, the strong did not survive; those who survived were strong.
KABOOM!
Taking advantage of the visual cover, Geumjang unleashed a palm strike. This time, instead of a physical blow, he projected raw internal energy. A colossal palm of qi surged forward toward where she stood. True to the moniker of the Blood Hand, the palm-shaped blast shone a vivid, blood-red crimson.
CRUUUUNCH!
The energy-laden blast ripped straight through the woman's position and blew apart the stone buildings behind her. Just like the gorilla suspected to be the Blood Demon's successor had done earlier, it cleaved an entirely new avenue through the ruins. Yet Geumjang cared only about whether the woman had survived. As he strained his eyes toward the rubble—
"Are you quite finished?"
"!!!"
The voice drifted from right behind him. Jolted by terror, Geumjang instinctively wheeled around to strike.
Snatch!
"Kh-urk?!"
Too late. Before he could even launch an attack, something forced its way into his mouth, firmly pinching his tongue. Horrified, Geumjang stared at the figure before him.
The shockwave from his palm strike had blown away her bamboo hat, revealing her face in its entirety. While the line of her jaw had hinted at breathtaking grace, her unveiled beauty vastly exceeded any imagination. An incomparable peerless beauty—a transcendent flower blooming in the highest heavens. Yet Geumjang had scarcely a second to be dazzled by her unearthly grace and nobility before he noticed his own condition.
'M-My internal energy...!'
His acupoints hadn't even been struck, yet his internal energy refused to stir. All she had done was clamp his tongue between two fingers. Bewilderment paralyzed him.
"You appear astonished," she said coolly. "A natural reaction, I suppose, given that you can no longer muster your internal energy."
"Mmh-ghh...!"
"Now. I shall impart to you the one and only path by which you might live."
The woman—the Heavenly Demon—commanded once more.
"Kneel."
"..."
"If you kneel, I shall grant you your miserable life."
Geumjang's answer was already decided. The fact that his internal energy was locked did not matter. His dantian remained intact. He still held the secret technique he had saved for the absolute direst moment. Even if his meridians were sealed, it made no difference; this esoteric art bypassed them entirely.
"Kh-hehehe..."
"Hm. It seems you have something to say."
Hearing his smothered chuckle, the Heavenly Demon lightly released her grip on his tongue. Free to speak once more, Geumjang curled his lips into a sinister sneer.
"As arrogant as ever. That is precisely why the cat ends up mauled by the rat."
"..."
"Blood Cult, remember this day! For this sovereign shall stain this soil with his very blood!"
Geumjang bellowed with tragic fervor, funneling every shred of his being into his dantian. He would turn his total reserves of qi into gunpowder, using his dantian as the detonator. Under ordinary circumstances, an apocalyptic blast would have wiped out more than half of Shaanxi. Yes—under ordinary circumstances.
"...?"
Geumjang blinked. Why hadn't the secret technique triggered? He had clearly focused his energy into his dantian for the detonation, yet he could no longer feel it.
"Is this your dantian? It is as red as blood. Or perhaps it is merely stained in real blood?"
"...Ah?"
In place of the explosion, an agonizing spasm of pain tore through his lower abdomen. Geumjang stared blankly at her left hand. Even he had never seen a person's dantian with his own eyes; by nature, a dantian was an intangible vortex of concentrated essence. Yet held in the Heavenly Demon's hand was a pulsating cluster of crimson qi. And what of his own stomach? When he looked down through the blinding agony, a gaping hole had been pierced clean through his lower abdomen.
Crunch!
The Heavenly Demon closed her fist, casually crushing the dantian to dust. The sight drained the last drop of blood from Geumjang's face. His greatest virtue, as well as his greatest flaw, was his objectivity. Having absorbed the reality before him, he knew. No attack, no defense, no dying struggle would ever touch her. She was, quite literally, the sky above the sky.
"Did you call yourself a rat?" she murmured, a gentle smile gracing her lips. To Geumjang, that smile looked no different from that of an emissary from the underworld. Reaching out, she grasped his neck. "This lady sees nothing of the sort."
"..."
"Merely a wretched, unsightly insect." Her voice carried absolute finality. "And this lady has no interest in insects that bite humans."
The Heavenly Demon, Yu Sowol, proclaimed:
"Only in exterminating them."
Snap!
Geumjang's neck broke at a sickening right angle.
Yu Sowol tossed aside the corpse of the thoroughly outmatched Geumjang. With a wet squelch, his limp body rolled onto the blood-soaked earth. She swept her gaze across the surroundings. Having realized the slaughter was over, martial artists and onlookers who had hidden in the ruins began creeping out from the shadows. Their eyes were painted with terror, dread, and awe.
"..."
Without a word, Yu Sowol turned her back on them. As if nothing of consequence had transpired, she vanished from the spot in the blink of an eye, leaving behind only the bamboo hat resting on the dirt.
Once Yu Sowol had vanished into thin air, the stunned survivors stammered in trembling voices.
"Wh-What in the world did I just witness...?"
"I... I have no idea."
The situation had unfolded in such chaotic, bewildering fashion that everyone began clamoring for answers. Under normal circumstances, they would have huddled together to debate the matter, but...
"A-A post just went up on the Gallery! Someone recorded a video!"
"I-Is that true?!"
"It is! Hurry and check it!"
This was a world connected to the Gallery. People promptly scrambled to log on and scrutinize the Heavenly Demon's martial prowess for themselves.
"Good heavens...! To possess such transcendent power...!"
"Is that peerless beauty truly the Heavenly Demon?"
"Wait, so the Fixed Nick Heavenly Demon was the real deal all along?"
"Talk sense! She clearly showed up to hunt down the imposter!"
A monumental drama topic had just been dropped into the Gallery.
Yu Sowol had actually followed Wi Seolak's advice for this real-life showdown. His counsel had gone roughly like this:
Yu Sowol would go not as the forum's Fixed Nick Heavenly Demon, but as the authentic, sovereign Heavenly Demon. Once there, she would seek out whoever had dared to defile the Heavenly Demon's sacred name. If the challenger failed to show, so be it; if he did, all the better. Whether the opponent appeared or not was irrelevant, for she possessed the ironclad pretext of executing divine retribution against one who had tarnished her moniker. Even so, Wi Seolak had noted that if the culprit truly was a remnant of the Blood Cult, things would become far simpler: she could eliminate the remnant with her own hands and proudly declare her supremacy to the world.
And what would become of the Fixed Nick Heavenly Demon on the forum?
Wi Seolak hadn't offered a word of advice on that front. From his perspective, an insolent fool brazenly masquerading under the Heavenly Demon's name was better off dead anyway. Yu Sowol had tacitly acknowledged the logic behind that omission and hadn't pressed the issue.
'He clearly didn't suspect in the slightest that I was the one behind the screen name,' she had thought.
Of course, contrary to Yu Sowol's assumptions, the razor-sharp strategist Wi Seolak had figured it out from the start. Precisely because he knew, he had intentionally refrained from offering any advice about the user account. Having weighed her options, Yu Sowol had settled on her own resolution. In essence, this entire duel had been a staged play co-authored by Yu Sowol and Wi Seolak. The only hiccup was that the opponent had never agreed to be an actor in their farce...
'Not that it matters.'
Least of all when dealing with scum who treated human lives like worthless bugs.
Though she proclaimed herself the Heavenly Demon and possessed an arrogant temperament, she was nonetheless a sovereign who valued life. Even when mocked on the Gallery for sounding like an archaic martial arts boomer, she laughed it off with generous tolerance. As someone had once put it, she was simply a little starved for attention; deep down, her innate nature leaned decidedly toward righteousness.
And above all else—this glorious attention! Just look at the drama topic setting the entire Gallery ablaze! As the Heavenly Demon Yu Sowol, and simply as the human Yu Sowol, she could not have been more delighted. Ordinarily, she ought to post an official statement or clarification, but... why bother? She could simply sit back and enjoy the show, deleting rule-breaking posts along the way. If questioned, she could always claim that fulfilling her duties as Deputy Moderator had delayed her response.
On top of that, there was Grylls's unexpected cover fire. Yu Sowol found herself thoroughly pleased with every bit of it.
'Truly satisfying.'
Of course...
"Pretty sure that really is the Heavenly Demon, isn't it? Is she that bored? And she's surprisingly young... must be because of her martial realm, right?"
Grylls, a man shaped by an infinitely more advanced internet culture from a modern world, had already figured it out to a fair degree.