The Mad Tiger Spirit Beast
There was nothing after that.
“What’s going on back there!”
The intervention of the Escort Captain sealed the hair-trigger conflict that had nearly exploded into open violence, and the mountain trek set out once more.
“….”
“What the hell? Why’s the atmosphere so damn murderous?”
In the clash between Gang Mu-jeong and Han Jung-mae, no loud voices had ever truly erupted. Only voices thick with suppressed rage had passed between them. Precisely because of that, the hastily sealed tension now hanging over the group was enough to make Sa Ha-yun, who had only stepped away for a moment, tilt her head in confusion.
“That, that fucking bastard. The second this trial’s over, I’ll… I’ll definitely….”
Gang Mu-jeong had slightly rearranged the order so he could walk side by side with Han Jung-mae, torch in hand, still grinding his teeth and unable to swallow his fury.
From behind, Han Jung-mae spoke.
“…Something’s off.”
“What now?!”
Gang Mu-jeong raised his voice, yet cut himself short at once, wary of drawing another rebuke from the Escort Captain.
Han Jung-mae cast a sidelong glance toward the very rear of the line.
“That bastard of a bastard son. When I first saw him at the training grounds, he still had this… ease about him. Like he was one of us, more or less.”
As Han Jung-mae kept stealing glances backward, a bead of sweat traced down his temple, following the heat of the midsummer night and the torch he held in one hand.
“But now? From some point on, there’s no ease left in his eyes. Something serious has changed around him.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?”
Gang Mu-jeong turned to look at him.
Han Jung-mae’s broad face had gone deathly pale.
“Did you see the shadow behind that guy just now? Right before Dang Sa-mun was about to step in front of us.”
“Han Jung-mae?”
Gang Mu-jeong stared at him.
Han Jung-mae’s large face remained ashen. He swallowed hard.
“G-Gang Mu-jeong. Can’t we just… stop paying attention to that guy from now on? Something… something about him is dangerous.”
“What the hell have you been babbling about all of a sudden?”
Han Jung-mae swallowed again.
“No. I definitely heard it. In the dark—a huge black beast muttering, ‘Winter is returning.’”
At those words Gang Mu-jeong turned around without thinking, then hastily faced forward again.
“…Wh-what the hell. That bastard.”
Moyong Bi was staring straight through them, eyes boring into their backs.
—Squeeeeeal!!!
A desperate boar’s cry tore through the forest.
Up ahead, Eul Mi-ye of the Mount Hua Sect was locked in a fierce struggle with a massive wild boar known as a spirit beast.
“You’re the disciple Moyong Bi? The one Instructor Lee Jasuo mentioned?”
The Escort Captain stood before Moyong Bi, list in hand.
“Yes.”
“You’re next. You’re the only one left for the trial.”
Sa Ha-yun, who had just finished her own trial, had stepped away to wash the blood and sweat from her body, finding it unbearable. The remaining disciples were watching Eul Mi-ye’s trial.
“The next spirit beast should be somewhere nearby, so stay ready to jump in at once if needed.”
Moyong Bi nodded and began checking his gear.
The Escort Captain looked him over slowly.
“Instructor Lee Jasuo is surprisingly soft-hearted and seems to be looking the other way, but you’ve been causing quite a bit of trouble all over the place, haven’t you?”
“….”
“I’m a professional. Earlier there were other young masters mixed up in it, so I pretended not to see. But the moment you pull that kind of shit in my jurisdiction, the Escort Captain’s authority means I won’t show you even a scrap of consideration. Understood? Anyone who treats the pride of Cheonsubaekryeonsa’s official trials like a joke—I’ll fail them without mercy. That’s my specialty.”
“….”
—Crack.
Moyong Bi said nothing and simply rolled his neck left and right.
At the sight, the Escort Captain ground his teeth.
“Fine. Looking confident, are we? Everyone starts out thinking it’s just a boar—and a juvenile at that—so they figure they can make up for everything. These things have been raised for over ten years on bedrock spring water. They’re tough enough that even a solid iron mace packed with internal energy straight to the skull won’t kill them instantly. Do your best.”
“Yes.”
The Escort Captain glanced at him.
“Weapon?”
“I’m fine.”
The Escort Captain clicked his tongue.
“Already given up on the trial, have you? See over there? Even that Mount Hua disciple whose main weapon is a sword took a ji as a backup. As a professional, I’d say you’re going to fail. Tsk tsk.”
“….”
In truth, the Escort Captain’s words were no exaggeration.
—BOOM!
From the start Eul Mi-ye of Mount Hua used the ji to drive the boar back, then mid-fight she discarded the polearm and switched to her sword, trying to overwhelm the beast as efficiently as possible.
She was not the only one who had chosen that approach.
Every disciple who had faced a spirit beast before her had brought not only their preferred weapon but also an unfamiliar secondary armament to cover their range.
That was how far beyond the Ha-mu-gwan disciples’ expectations the spirit beasts’ stamina truly was.
Throughout the fight she blended Mount Hua’s distinctive footwork with elegant sword techniques, dodging the boar’s reckless charges while unilaterally trampling it.
Yet that was all. She could not land a fatal wound.
It was like striking a massive boulder with a sword for all she was worth.
The boar’s charging speed never slowed.
At first Eul Mi-ye had been smug against the simple straight-line charges. As time dragged on she tired rapidly, and in the end the full weight of the boar’s charge slammed into her midsection.
“Aaagh!”
A martial artist whose internal energy had been completely drained was no longer superhuman.
And for the martial artists of the current jianghu who had neglected external training, once their internal energy bottomed out, their defense against external blows was practically nonexistent.
Eul Mi-ye’s ribs and the left arm holding her sword snapped; she blacked out.
The watching disciples screamed.
“Oh no—Miss Eul!”
“Nobody move! This office is the expert here, so there’s no danger! And strictly speaking this is a trial!”
The Escort Captain shouted.
“Safe return from the trial grounds all the way back to Cheonsubaekryeonsa after passing is also an official regulation of the regular trials! For any reason whatsoever, a disciple must prioritize their own safety first!”
The other disciples who had been about to rush forward froze.
The Escort Captain drew the sword from his back.
“Don’t worry too much. These things only react sensitively to moving objects. The next person waiting just needs to take down the next spirit beast the moment it appears and—”
The Escort Captain stopped mid-sentence.
—Tremble, tremble, tremble….
The boar that had rammed Eul Mi-ye, its tusks stained with blood, stood with its snout buried in the earth, shaking violently.
It drooled and even wet itself, eyes rolling so wildly they showed only the whites, unable to fix on any single point.
What the boar displayed was pure, extreme terror.
—Whoosh.
A metallic blood scent rode the wind.
It spread slowly yet thoroughly through the sticky, humid air of the summer night, filling every nostril to the brim.
At the end of that bloody reek came the rank stench of a beast.
The Escort Captain quietly planted his torch in the ground.
He gripped his sword with both hands.
He muttered,
“No wonder the rest of the boars were nowhere to be seen…. Don’t tell me.”
—Rustle.
The underbrush shook as a massive foot planted itself on the ground—a foot the size of a human head.
Weight settled onto it, and five silver claws sprang out as one. Each was so sharp it was less a claw than a weapon worthy of the name tiger claw.
—Huuuuk…. Huuuuk….
Something walked out of the darkness, a huge shadow swaying with every regular, scorching breath, something clamped in its jaws.
—Thud!
Whatever it had been holding dropped.
At its feet, looking relatively tiny, lay the corpse of a spirit-beast boar larger than a man.
Two yellow lanterns the size of human heads floated and bobbed in the air.
—Grrrrr…
It was a gigantic tiger.
Anyone could see it was a carnivore that had mutated after devouring a lower-tier spirit beast.
“A t-tiger spirit beast?!”
Gang Mu-jeong cried out.
“No. No, this isn’t something that simple.”
The Escort Captain muttered.
“This feeling… this feeling is…!”
The tiger fixed its gaze on them all.
It drew in a breath.
—KRAAAAAAWWWW!!!!!
It was no longer the roar of an ordinary tiger.
What tore from the tiger’s maw was a bizarre, desperate wail—the very cry of a ghost.
Black demonic qi erupted from its entire body.
“What the fuck?! A demonic spirit beast that should only exist in the Ten Thousand Mountains of the Demonic Cult—why is it here?!”
The Escort Captain spun and shouted behind him.
“Everyone fall ba—!”
The tiger charged like a mad thing, black demonic qi swirling around it.
Its mere shadow flipped an entire stretch of forest and tore boulders up by the roots, flinging them through the air.
“Uwaah!”
Disciples were kicked and sent tumbling in a tangled heap.
Injuries multiplied in an instant.
The Escort Captain’s face went paper-white.
He seemed to foresee that the situation had already ballooned far beyond anything he could handle.
And that there was no one here who could stop it.
By the time word reached the higher-ups, the entire catastrophe would already be over.
That was when it happened.
“So that thing is my next target spirit beast?”
A calm voice came from behind.
“For an official trial, the difficulty feels a bit too much like a lottery.”
“What?”
The Escort Captain whipped around.
—Whoosh.
Only a residual afterimage of wind remained where the speaker had been.
“Ugh….”
Eul Mi-ye, who had been struck by the boar, forced her eyes open amid the shaking earth.
“Wh-what….”
Right in front of her, the mad tiger pouring demonic qi from its eyes was already lunging.
Under its five claws the ground was being gouged open as if by pickaxes; every rock and stretch of hard earth shattered.
And beneath that next footfall lay her.
Tears welled in her eyes.
A massive shadow plummeted toward her head.
Stone fragments that had clung to the tiger’s sole rolled free and battered her face.
Eul Mi-ye screamed with every ounce of strength left in her.
“Kyaaaaah!!!”
The sole was about to crush her face, about to pulp it—
—Flutter.
Black martial robes billowed.
A pair of feet in black martial attire stopped right in front of Eul Mi-ye.
They looked like a dancing shadow trailing crimson afterimages.
—Thump.
A palm strike loaded with storm-like acceleration gently shoved the side of the tiger’s foreleg. The paw skimmed past Eul Mi-ye’s cheek. The foreleg smashed into the earth beside her, cratering the ground.
—Grit.
With the sound of grinding molars, a fist clenched and rose high into the sky before slamming down onto the tiger’s crown.
—CRAAAAAASH!!!!!
The tiger was driven into the earth as if its skull had been hammered straight down.
Its jaw punched into the ground first.
—KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA!!!
The earth collapsed in waves.
Trees toppled inward as if sucked into the crater.
Boulders pulverized.
Birds exploded into the sky all at once.
The heavens themselves seemed to shake.
The tiger’s fangs shattered.
Black blood mixed with demonic qi sprayed from all seven orifices.
“Th-th-that just dropped a demonic spirit beast in one hit?!”
The Escort Captain’s jaw hung so wide it looked ready to fall off.
“Bare-handed, no less?!”
“H-how…?”
Still sitting on the ground, Eul Mi-ye stared up at Moyong Bi.
“…Hmm.”
Watching the tiger stagger back to its feet, Moyong Bi said,
“If you can still move, get behind me.”
The tiger lurched upright in front of him.
“Unless you want to die.”
“Y-yes… yes!”
Eul Mi-ye found herself answering with formal respect and scrambled backward on unsteady legs.
“Can’t use internal energy properly. Can’t put real power into it. Hide’s thicker than I thought…. Meaning blunt force is going to be tricky.”
He glanced around.
Shocked faces filled his vision.
He noted the various objects near them.
“Hmm. Right. So that’s how it is.”
—Crack.
He rolled his neck.
The tiger shook its head vigorously.
It had already recovered from the impact.
In the tiger’s gleaming eyes the retreating figure of Eul Mi-ye was reflected.
Provoked by the sight of her daring to show her back, the mad tiger’s eyes flared.
—KRAAAWW!
The tiger charged.
Its pot-lid-sized forepaw came crashing down first on Moyong Bi, who stood closest.
—BOOM!
He did not give a single step. He caught the paw.
“Hrrrngh!”
The muscles of Moyong Bi’s back contracted and expanded in rapid succession as he held.
—Rumble-rumble-rumble…!!
Two deep furrows of footprints carved into the ground beneath him as he braced.
“G-good heavens!”
Everyone was stunned.
“He’s taking that head-on…?!”
“What am I even looking at right now.”
Gang Mu-jeong muttered in a trembling voice.
The Escort Captain shouted urgently.
“Stop this reckless bravado and fall back, Disciple Moyong Bi!”
From a distance it looked as though Moyong Bi, seemingly overwhelmed, tried to shove the tiger’s paw away—only to wrap both arms around it instead, as if embracing a pillar root.
“Even killing a boar is hard enough, and now a tiger that size?! Driving force through bones harder than steel, bones steeped in demonic qi—it’s impossible! You have to run!”
The Escort Captain adjusted his grip on his sword and shouted. Yet he himself only shuffled in place, unable to approach.
“Don’t stand there in front of a professional like me and do something stupid when you don’t even understa—”
“Hrrngh!!”
—CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!!!
The tiger’s foreleg twisted and snapped like a wrung-out rag.
The Escort Captain blinked.
“…Huh?”