One Against Twenty
“Are you insane?!”
It was a servant sent by Jegal Sea.
“We can’t even guarantee victory against So Jeongmun alone, yet you’re calling for one against twenty including him?! Do you think you’re some celebrated hero of the jianghu?!”
He stood below the arena platform, veins bulging in his neck as he shouted up at me.
“Even recklessness has its limits! Come to your senses and retract that declaration at once—!”
“One against twenty!”
I cut him off cold and turned toward the raised seats, my voice raw and edged with blood as I roared the words.
“I formally request a one-against-twenty match, with no restrictions on weapons!”
I looked at the head of the Hwangbo Clan.
I looked at So Cheonpa of Unwol Jiju.
I looked at So Jeongmun.
Sparks leapt between them and me.
“….”
The head of the Hwangbo Clan gazed down at me without expression.
His chin dipped a fraction.
So Cheonpa, representative of Unwol Jiju, confirmed the signal. The corner of his mouth curled into a thin smile.
“That request…”
So Cheonpa’s hand rose slowly.
“I accept with pleasure.”
He struck the air.
“Including Vice Commander So Jeongmun, send up eleven men of Unwol Jiju’s nine districts—decachief rank and above!”
“As ordered!”
—Kwadudu!
A black wave scrambled onto the arena platform, jostling for position.
So Cheonpa continued without pause.
“From Unwol Jiju’s sub-districts—Bangmu, Daetacheon, Sangni, Iwol, and Dangsamjeong—add five more of centurion rank, and four more of overall command grade. Climb!”
“As ordered!”
—Kwadudu!
From every direction the black-path throng shed their masks of decency and surged upward like a black tide.
“….”
So Jeongmun followed them onto the platform, his massive frame rolling under dark skin. His ponytail swayed. They took their places at the far edge of the arena.
So Jeongmun fixed me with burning eyes.
“We’ll answer your recklessness in kind. Judging by how you wrecked Lee Eultak, you’re a fist specialist.”
He gestured.
—Urururu!
Black-path fighters ringed me in an instant.
So Jeongmun glanced at the weapon racks bristling along the side of the arena and pointed.
“We won’t use weapons either. Bare hands. But—”
His face was perfectly blank.
“Today you—”
Not a single one of the faces surrounding me showed a flicker of carelessness.
“—won’t leave this place on two good legs.”
The head of the Hwangbo Clan watched in silence. So Cheonpa watched with all humor gone from his face. The Jegal Clan and every martial artist of Shaanxi watched.
Wind stirred.
—Flutter…
The frayed hem of my old black martial uniform lifted and fell.
I remembered the conversation I had had with Eun Seollyeong on the way into Shaanxi.
‘Unlike ordinary people, you have treated every fight as a death match. From your stance onward, every technique has been nothing but pure killing intent taken to the extreme.’
The sky above was blue. A single vast cloud drifted across it, slowly veiling the sun, and the world darkened by degrees.
‘No one in the jianghu yet knows that a monster beyond all measure has crawled up from the very bottom. Namely—’
The bangs that had been hanging over my eyes swayed.
‘—the monster called you.’
Around me the black-path fighters’ eyelids flickered.
—Huu…
Damp breath ghosted out from beneath my dark-crimson mask.
Leaves trembled.
—Gulp.
I saw the throats of the Unwol Jiju experts bob as they swallowed.
So Jeongmun had taken a single step back and was studying every twitch of my body without blinking.
—Flutter.
I lightly dusted my hands, then raised them.
Still-wet red blood that had beaded on my palms and knuckles ran down. A thin crimson thread traced the pale wrist hidden under my sleeve and slid all the way to the elbow.
I slowly rolled the flapping cuffs of my uniform up past my wrists, brought my blood-smeared fists together in front of me, and pressed fist to palm.
—Chak.
I offered the martial salute and whispered,
“Come.”
“Uwaaaah!!”
Twenty men charged as one.
A black-path fighter kicked for my waist.
—Kwag!
I lifted a leg to block and in the same motion seized his arm, then tore it clean out of the socket.
“Uwaaak!”
He thrashed with a raw scream.
—Baung!
I slapped aside a fist flying for my face, blocked an elbow, and smashed my own elbow down onto a rising knee.
“Gkeuk!”
The fighter’s kneecap shattered; he crumpled, clutching it.
From every compass point black-path men settled into stances and leapt. A foot shot for my shin. I kicked it away and drove a roundhouse into the exposed ribs.
—Wajik.
Ribs cracked with a single scream.
—Kwagak.
Another knife-hand chopped for the side of my neck. I batted the hand aside, caught wrist and elbow, and twisted until bone snapped.
“Uwaaaak!”
I kicked the thrashing man away; two or three more tangled and went down with him. I seized a hand stabbing for my eyes and wrenched it broken in one motion. A punch for my solar plexus I deflected sideways, then drove my palm up under the chin and stomped the hip joint. The pelvis shattered and the leg twisted grotesquely.
Like water seeping through cracks, I slipped free of the encirclement.
—Jjeojeojeong!
Lightning-fast side kicks shattered the tailbones of two men. They collapsed clutching their lower backs.
I sprinted. A black-path fighter saw me coming and screamed,
“N-no!”
—Kwaang!
I kicked the seated man’s face, then drove my heel into the cheek of the one sprawled beside him.
—Kwadudu!
Fists and kicks closed in from every side. I scattered crimson afterimages and red light from my eyes, and avoided every one.
“What the hell—!”
“This is impossible—how has he not been hit even once?!”
They flailed arms and legs in desperation and howled,
“Why can’t we land a single blow?!”
—Wajik! Kwajik! Wadududuk!
Everything broke. Everything burst. Everything tore.
“He’s… not even using internal energy, right?”
“Then that is pure human physical power?”
The crowd began to murmur.
In the jianghu the greatest distinction between a death match and a spar was the use of internal force—kept so that sparring could remain practical yet avoid meaningless slaughter. Everyone on the platform was clearly not using internal energy. Yet the injuries of the black-path men scattered across the boards looked as though a great beast had merely brushed past them.
It was a single black storm.
The movements of the hands were bold. The fingertips were knotted with killing intent. There was not a shred of hesitation. In those tyrannical, cruel hands there existed none of the tiny pauses or moments of human reluctance that should have been there.
That was my life.
That was the road I had walked.
This—exactly this—was the entirety of an existence that had crawled up from the nightmare hell at the bottom of Asura’s pit, filling every confrontation with nothing but death matches to a degree those people could never imagine!
—Pit!
“Ah?”
I seized a man’s nose and wrenched.
—Waddeuk!
“Gkeuk!”
I jammed my fingers into his gaping jaw and ripped it free. I smashed the throat of the next black-path fighter who charged.
“Kehek! Kek!”
—Kwaak!
I grabbed a fistful of hair and began to hammer with my fist.
—Kwang! Kwangkwangkwangkwang!
I did not stop. The black-path fighter’s face came apart under my knuckles.
—Hududuk!
Blood spattered my face. Flesh flew. The thrashing arms went limp and dangled. I flung the rag-doll body aside and front-kicked the man behind him.
—Wajak.
The jaw shattered; the body half-lifted into the air before tumbling across the boards.
“Y-you bastard!”
I kicked the face of a man trying to rise with everything I had.
“Keoeok!”
His eyes rolled back and he collapsed. Spinning, I whipped my leg like a lash from the elastic power of my waist and scythed the space behind me.
—Waddeuk!
Two necks twisted; the bodies spun like tops and dropped.
—Pabat, pababat!
I slapped away every fist thrust at me with open palms and stepped back.
“You son of a bitch!”
A black-path fighter hurled his whole body forward and drove a full-power punch at me. I opened my palm toward the fist.
—Paang!!
A faint shockwave, and the fist stopped dead against my palm. The black-path fighter stared at the hand that had blocked him and cried out,
“W-what kind of human hand—?!”
Shock flooded his face at the sight of fingers ruined by countless hellish trainings.
—Kwag.
My fingers closed around his fist.
“Uh, uhhh?!”
He tried to yank free. Too late. My fingers dug in.
—Wajijijik!!
The trained fist was crushed whole, as though wrung by sheer grip strength.
“Euaak—!!”
—Jjaung!
Before the scream could finish, the same fist that had once shattered granite smashed his teeth and buried itself in his face. His body flipped entirely in midair and slammed face-first into the floor.
—Teolseok.
Several high officials of peaceful Shaanxi felt their legs give out at the brutality and sank to the ground.
“They can’t even touch him.”
So Cheonpa clenched his teeth. Far across the arena, the ones flying with limbs shattered amid endless screams were Unwol Jiju’s black-path elites. Not a fingertip had grazed me. Not a single solid blow had landed. It looked like dozens of children flailing at a berserk bear.
“Where did a monster like this come from…? We’re Unwol Jiju’s elite forces—how?! Impossible. This is power even the Oho-samhwa couldn’t match…!”
Already only half of Unwol Jiju’s black-path fighters remained.
“Eoeok… eok…”
This was the same arena where, not long before, the peasants had been crushed by Lee Eultak and had fallen moaning. Now it was littered with black-path fighters so thoroughly broken and burst that they could no longer even manage proper groans—half-corpses.
“….”
I wiped the blood from my cheek and pushed sweat-soaked bangs back from my forehead. I looked at the survivors. Everyone whose eyes met mine flinched.
—Jeobeok.
I took one step forward.
—Juchum.
As one, the black-path fighters took one step back. Pupils shaking, they muttered over one another,
“M-monster…”
“This can’t be happening in reality. How can a person… We’re martial artists too…”
Terror began to crush them all. At the very rear, So Jeongmun’s face twisted as he watched the disaster unfold. He looked to So Cheonpa as though asking what to do.
“Eeik.”
So Cheonpa clenched his fist. Things were not going as planned, and he was more than a little rattled.
Then—
“So Cheonpa! How long do you intend to stand there gawking?!”
“…!”
The thunderous shout spun So Cheonpa around. Behind him, the head of the Hwangbo Clan had come all the way down to the railing of the special seats. His jowls trembled with rage as he glared.
“…Keuk!”
Conscious of the surrounding eyes, the head of the Hwangbo Clan only stared daggers at So Cheonpa and offered no further words. Yet that murderous gaze, together with the clear displeasure and humiliation coloring his face at a situation that refused to follow his design, was more eloquent than a hundred sentences. So Cheonpa’s complexion turned the color of dirt.
He gritted his teeth, clenched a fist toward the arena, and roared,
“Do not retreat! Anyone who defiles Unwol Jiju’s honor will be dealt with strictly—by our methods, not those of the light!”
“…!”
Fear flooded the black-path fighters’ eyes. Coming from one of their own, the threat was more vivid than any ordinary intimidation. So Cheonpa drove the spike home with a shriek of pure malice.
“You went out representing the black path—so stop holding back on methods! If you’re going to lose, then kill him! Kill him, I said!”
“U-uuu…!”
Goaded by their superior, the black-path fighters went mad with terror and began to thrash.
“Eeik!”
—Buung, buung!
—Cheolgeureok!
They frantically snatched weapons from the racks on either side of the platform. They discarded the clumsy empty-handed arts every martial artist learns as basics. The weapons Unwol Jiju’s black-path men chose were staves and three-section staffs.
Only a fool would claim bare hands were better than weapons. Even without blades, solid striking weapons carved from hard birch could easily kill an ordinary adult.
In this choking atmosphere that straddled the line between death match and spar, there was no one present who would stop the fight.
I murmured quietly,
“You’re drawing weapons?”
—Uduk.
I cracked my neck.
“Uwaaak!!!”
Screaming, a black-path fighter raised a staff and charged.
Occupying all eight directions, the staff whipped up a storm of wind as if to crush my skull.
—Kiiiing…!
Blazing crimson light poured from both of my eyes.
—Gulleong.
I slipped past the frantically swinging staff.
“You ghost-like bastard!”
Four more staff-wielders who had been watching charged. In moments empty-handed me and five black-path men with staves were locked in a tangled exchange.
“Dieee!”
I was not overwhelming them with absolute internal force and Sura-dae-myeol-geop-jin. From the standpoint of pure body technique and forms alone, the difference between having a weapon and not having one was enormous. The atmosphere of complete domination began to tilt, little by little. Things that had not been able to graze even a fingertip now brushed—faintly—against my hair and collar.
A thread of hope revived on the black-path fighters’ faces.
“Uha, uhahaha!”
They swung their staves like madmen and shouted,
“You’re resisting the longest-reach staffs with bare hands right now?! Arrogant!”
“Bare hands? Bare hands, is it.”
I murmured as I slipped another descending staff.
—Gulleong.
With a swaying black afterimage I launched myself straight into the faces of the roaring, staff-swinging black-path men.
—Jjaung!
Ribs shattered under my fist and one fighter bounced away.
—Hwirik.
I snatched the staff that had risen into the air.
“W-what?”
The black-path fighters froze in confusion as I gripped the staff and leapt backward to open distance.
“Ha. Ahaha. So even you know bare hands are a disadvantage?”
They sneered with stiff smiles.
“What do you think you’ll do with a staff you’re not even used to, at this point? Keuheuheu, you’re finished. You should have known when to stop clowning while we were still playing along with empty hands—”
—Bauuuuung!!!
From my hands the staff roared out a gale several times more powerful, as though I had trained with it for decades.
“Uh…?”
Their words died. The staff art unfolding from my grip was endlessly familiar to their eyes—yet, powered by an overwhelmingly tempered body, it displayed force of an entirely different dimension.
The black-path fighters blinked stupidly.
“C-could it be—”
—Baung!
After sweeping the staff through all eight directions, I rolled up my sleeves and re-gripped the weapon.
—Paseuseu…
The Heavenly Demon’s authority. As the Namsang Samadhi ended, blazing red eye-light scattered through the air. Amid the swirling dust the crimson radiance flared.
I whispered toward them,
“Is this how you do the Eight Directions Wind-Striking Staff Method?”
The Heavenly Demon copies martial arts.