I Am the Heavenly Demon
"The opponent is a master! Don't give him open space!"
"We have to drive him from front and back!"
The black-path men charged in, roaring and cursing.
"Kyaaak! Uwaaak!"
The courtesans and guests who had been enjoying wine, song, and dance screamed and fled. But the corridors were limited, and in that killing field thick with murderous intent and madness, countless of them were slashed apart by blades and collapsed.
The sticky space that had been filled with music and the sweet haze of opium smoke transformed into a spine-chilling scene of slaughter. A dense, oppressive tension flooded every direction.
With me at the center, the black-path men began to move in coordinated waves.
"Well now?"
I narrowed my eyes. Before they had even taken a few steps, I grasped their intent. They were no fools. Perhaps because of the terror-stricken reactions of those who had recognized me unarmed, there was no longer any carelessness in their eyes.
They tried to shift to the sides, but before they could take two full steps the corridor walls pressed against their shoulders.
[The left-right width is extremely narrow. Will you be alright?]
Mumyeong advised swiftly.
"These bastards are using their heads a bit, aren't they?"
[They too must have clawed their way up from the bottom through desperate struggles. Running a pleasure district like Unwol Jiju, they could not have avoided frequent encounters with martial artists stronger than themselves—especially those of the orthodox path. Judging by their unflustered, confident movements, they have likely used this kind of rabbit-drive to kill even overwhelmingly powerful martial artists before.]
Even at the cost of some strain, they sealed my escape routes and poured in from front and back, their will clear: they meant to finish me here no matter what. What they drew from their robes were not ordinary long swords, but blades only a hand-and-a-half long, suited for free swings in such a cramped space.
"Any ordinary martial artist would have been thoroughly rattled by this situation."
They knew it as well. No matter how profound the footwork based on superior martial arts, the body still needed physical space in which to move. A master could exploit even the slightest gap to move like a phantom and ravage enemies several times their number. But put another way, if there was no space to move at all, footwork itself became useless.
They pressed in from both ends of an extremely narrow, elongated corridor. They had judged that simultaneously crushing me from front and rear to smother me was more likely to succeed than surrounding me all at once in a wide open space that would give me room to maneuver.
[Will you be alright? There is the option of using a powerful technique to sweep one section in a single blow, but I do not recommend it. As you know, we are underground and it could collapse—.]
"Doesn't matter."
I concentrated internal energy into the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap on my left hand.
—Kwaaang.
The five rings Yunjin had given me and the Chiljong-heukjusa-gap triggered a chain reaction, wrapping my body in an extremely thin protective qi.
"Besides, every fight I've been through so far has been nine parts dirty brawling rather than the clean, overwhelming evasion of a proper martial artist."
I focused internal energy into the wooden chopsticks in my right hand. I had once been so crude in energy control that I would burst even iron swords. Asura had drilled into me the fine control needed to grasp dandelion seeds that would scatter at a mere breath. When I finally passed his last training, I had held dandelion seeds that remained intact no matter how hard I shook my hand up and down.
—Wuuung.
The wooden chopsticks in my grip grew faintly rough as their hardness rose. Suppressing the quickened breathing of excitement, I began to move.
The black-path men swarming front and back charged at full power.
[From the way reinforcements keep pouring in from the rightward bend of the front corridor as well, there must be something that way!]
With a sharp whistle of air I reversed my grip on the wooden chopsticks and shouted.
"Rightward at the end of the front corridor, is it!"
"Kill hi—!"
The wooden chopsticks flew from my hand like throwing stars.
—Ppeogeok!
The chopsticks that shot from my hand like shuriken pierced the skull of the charging martial artist and still had force enough to skewer the heads of the three men behind him in succession.
—Teong!
The chopsticks buried themselves in a wooden pillar with a solid thud as blood sprayed in every direction. At the same instant the enemies surged in like a black tidal wave, thrusting dense thickets of blades.
—Pajik!
—Kwang! Ujik! Wadeudeuk!
I blocked the blade descending toward my head. Caught it and redirected it. Seized an enemy's arm and ripped it free. Twisted a neck. Stabbed an eye.
—Uuuuung!
The protective qi sheathing my body brightened with blue light and grew denser, as if responding to my racing heartbeat under the threat of death. It was a lower-level protection than the constant-strength protective hard qi, yet it had clear advantages. Protective hard qi was fundamentally stronger than ordinary protective qi, but like a shield already cooled and hardened it could not be made any denser no matter how abundant one's internal energy. Protective qi, though inefficient, could freely shift its strength—from thin paper to hard steel—according to the energy consumed, the caster's emotions, and their focus.
—Jjeong! Jjeoeoeong!
Sparks flew from my entire body as blades began to bounce away. Except for truly critical moments, I abandoned defense.
After finishing training with Asura, Eun Seollyeong had observed my methods from a third-person perspective and said this:
'Every attack and judgment of yours—even down to a single breath—is composed of pure killing techniques aimed at one-strike certain death. Moreover, nearly every martial artist in the jianghu trains under the assumption of one-on-one sparring or life-and-death duels. Normally one perfects a defense and then seeks the attack, yet you go to the extreme of abandoning even slight defense in favor of explosive, overwhelming slaughter as the absolute priority. The very fact that such behavior has been drilled into your body until it is second nature is not normal. It means one-versus-many is your baseline. Truly, you are Asura itself.'
At first I had not understood what she meant. But those words gave me a chance to rethink how my body moved when I acted without thought.
My eyes sharpened to a blue edge. I lowered the already small proportion of defense even further. I focused solely on attack. My hands grew bolder and faster, and the surroundings began to be painted in blood by the shattering bodies of enemies.
"Uwaak!"
"Aaak! My arm! My arm!!!"
"Someone save me!"
I caught, smashed, and broke the blades stabbing at me from every direction at speeds the eye could not follow, blades that covered my entire body.
—Kwajik!
A black-path man's body I hurled into the ceiling crushed, then dropped again.
—Kwaang!
A black-path man struck by my fist bounced away and smashed through the side corridor wall.
—Wajangchang! Kwajik!
Guests enjoying wine and song in private rooms screamed as the corpse of a black-path man came crashing through the wall.
"Crazy! How is there a monster like this!"
"It's like a tiger running wild!"
"This isn't even a matter of martial strength anymore!"
As I advanced, the black-path men before and behind me flew in every direction as if gored by a bull's horns.
"We drove him in! We drove him in, I tell you! So why—!"
One side kick of mine snapped a waist.
"Why won't he die!!"
The Chiljong-heukjusa-gap I slammed down burst an enemy's skull. I kicked over a drinking table.
—Tdadadang!
Food and dishes scattered as throwing daggers embedded themselves in the upright table. I kicked the table again.
"Uwaaaak!"
Four black-path men were swept up in the shattering wooden shards and went down. I leapt onto them.
—Pabababat!
My heels stamped down into their cheeks and twisted their necks.
—Kwaung! Kwajik! Ujikkeun!
Walls shattered, ceilings shattered; necks were driven into the floor, limbs were ripped free, every joint was crushed and broken.
Then it happened.
"Die!"
One black-path man who had been hiding in the gaps between corpses lunged in a sudden ambush.
"…Hm?!"
Faint energy was concentrated on his short blade.
[This—! Weak, but it is clearly sword qi!]
Before Mumyeong finished speaking, the black-path man put his full body weight into driving the short sword into my abdomen.
—Peogeok.
The protective qi was pierced. My ceaselessly moving body paused for an instant.
"H-how… It was a surprise attack with everything I had…"
There was no cheer from the black-path man who had succeeded in stabbing me. His voice trembled with disbelief and terror.
—Ttok… ttok….
Red blood dripped drop by drop. The blade had clearly touched my skin, if only the slightest bit. The protective qi had been breached. Yet that blade was caught between two of my fingers, snatched with lightning speed.
The fact that an all-out thrust with his entire body weight was held by two of the opponent's fingers was more than enough to strip the black-path man of every shred of fighting spirit.
"Sh-shit. This dog-like monster bastard. How is grip strength like this even possible…"
—Ppaak!!!
Before his eyes could even blink, that black-path man's face exploded under a single punch from me and he collapsed.
—Wajik.
A sweeping high kick twisted the necks of two more black-path men at once and dropped them. Toward the blades flying at my abdomen and chest—
I drove a knee up into an enemy's gut, stepped on his shoulder, and leapt. I seized a ceiling beam. The beam was so thick that my thumb and little finger had to stretch to their absolute limit just to barely grasp it.
"Good heavens!"
But that was enough. My hands clamped onto the beam like iron tongs and I scuttled across it like a spider, leaping over the enemies' heads.
—Cheojeok.
The space where I landed was the end of the corridor—the intersection where passages branched right and left.
"Ah."
The black-path men who had driven me into the center of the corridor like dogs chasing a chicken and been tightening the noose now faltered and began to turn around.
—Kkiik-kkiik…
The red lanterns hanging from the ceiling swayed, making everyone's shadows dance. The brothel, shattered as if a typhoon had swept through, lay at the feet of the black-path men turning back toward me. Corpses hung from the walls all around, bodies embedded whole. The black-path corpses with limbs torn, broken, and ripped free looked less like men killed by a human and more like prey thrown into a cage for a wild beast.
"A-ah, no."
A black-path man muttered in a voice of despair.
—Cheoeok.
I spread both arms wide to the sides. I swung my palms. Blood scattered across the carpet on the floor. This was the crossroads of corridors branching right and left. No wall touched my fingertips. After swinging my arms this way and that and folding them in, I spoke.
"Hmm. Finally, space."
For a martial artist, securing space to move freely forward and back meant only one thing. Despair spread across the faces of the black-path men who realized it.
"Aaaah!"
—Gulleong.
My body lowered. My arms moved. Following the shifting silhouette of my form, the distinctive crimson afterimages of Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong began to scatter outward.
Faint lightning-flame began to seethe from my body. My breathing grew hazy. The sight was that of a great tiger, white breath streaming, every hair standing on end as it crouched just before a full-power charge.
—Pajik.
"S-someone… save…"
Several black-path men sank to the floor and wet themselves.
"The level is different. Completely different from any martial artist we've met so far. That bastard is… just what the hell…!"
A few black-path men slipped in the blood while backing away and fell. Even so they scrambled desperately to put distance between us.
"What the hell is he!!!"
Dozens fled for their lives from the presence of a single man. Some black-path men thrashed through the brain matter of skull-burst corpses as they tried to escape.
"It was fun, wasn't it? Driving me in like a rabbit hunt and swinging your blades one-sidedly?"
I whispered.
"Then now it's my turn."
—Pyut.
Like a candle flame snuffed by a breath, my body vanished. My form, approaching by skimming the walls and ceiling on every side like the shadow of a spider, was grotesque beyond compare.
—Hudeudeuk.
Blood beaded and dripped from the red lanterns hanging from the ceiling. It took only an instant for the black-path men of the First Branch who had filled the brothel corridors to be annihilated.
A few surviving guests huddled in corners, trembling violently amid the chaos. I flicked the blood from my hands, ignored them, and advanced toward the end of the corridor.
At the right-hand end stood a massive iron door. I seized it and pulled it open.
"Kyaaaaak!"
Courtesans who were nearly half-naked screamed and bolted out the moment the door opened. After watching the five courtesans escape, I stepped inside.
Within was a room decorated with brilliant jewels and gold, the very peak of the Pool of Wine and Forest of Meat. In the center stood a wide rectangular drinking table of marble. Upon it were laid every kind of mountain and sea delicacy. Four people seated around the table stared at me with stiff faces.
I wiped the blood spattered on my face with one hand.
"I have only one question."
After adjusting the dark-red face covering that hid my lower face, now stuck with blood, I spoke in a hoarse voice.
"Which among you is Ha Hu-gang, one of the Cheongma Oryun and branch lord of Yukrim's First Branch?"
The man seated in the place of honor—a man with sagging jowls like a wild boar—spoke in a voice that shook violently.
"To do something like this so openly—are you out of your mind? Whose orders are you under? Whose protection lets you commit such bold acts! Even the black path has its own strict rules! To ignore all of that and run around committing these atrocities without hesitation—are you even human?!"
"…."
In a corner of the secret chamber sat children whose faces were swollen blue-black and burst, legs gone limp, blinking blankly. They were only breathing. Their clothes were torn. I stopped thinking about what had happened in this small space.
"Human?"
I quietly regarded the children who, even meeting the eyes of blood-soaked me, only blinked with expressions as if their souls had died. I opened my mouth.
"Ah, so rather, you lot are the ones asking me if I'm human…"
I nodded with a short sigh.
"Well, the Blood Cult bastards said the same thing when they died."
"Wait, bl— Blood Cult? What are you? Who are you!"
I muttered.
"If ordinary commoners do wrong, they receive punishment through officials. Do wrong, receive punishment—that's the principle of Heaven, they say. But this place is a lawless zone. No one is paying attention. Even if you commit crimes, there is no one to deliver punishment. That's what it means."
I took hold of the open iron door behind me and slowly closed it.
—Kiiiiiik…. Cheolkeong.
I shut it. Locked it firmly. At the steel boom of the secret chamber sealing, the four flinched.
—Huuu….
I drew a deep breath.
"So I will do it myself from now on. Yes—trash should be cleaned up by trash. You asked who I am?"
Crimson light began to scatter from both my eyes. Breathing out air mixed with the metallic scent of blood, I spoke quietly and clearly.
"…What?"
"The Demon who descended from Heaven to punish you lot. In short, Heavenly Demon."
Toward the people who had forgotten even to breathe as they stared at me, I spoke with bloodshot eyes.
"From this moment that Demon will deliver the punishment. Do not expect mercy. You sons of bitches."