The Butcher of Liaodong
KWAANG!
Ping! Piiing!
With a thunderous explosion, steel balls scattered and tore through the air, leaving a bone-chilling whistle in their wake.
Exactly twenty-two!
At Mumyeong’s shout I shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
More than half are first-rate who can use sword qi. Disordered as they are, they’re still running a formation—by my estimate, the pride of the Moyong: the form of the Eight Trigrams Suppression Formation!
Clank.
I clenched my left fist.
Wuum, wuuuum!
The immortal energy of the gauntlet surged up from my dantian like a bursting dam, forcing its way through my meridians and wrapping my entire body. With a sound of grinding steel the fingers of the Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet locked together, scattering sparks.
I passed the martial artists whose upper bodies had already been blown away. Beyond them stood others, eardrums ruptured by the blast, staring blankly into space.
“Oh no!”
They shoved the corpses aside, spotted me too late, and hurriedly raised their swords. My gauntleted fist rose high toward the sky.
Whoosh!
Crunch! Boom! Crack!
My fists swung without discrimination. Martial artists flew through the air amid sprays of blood.
“Kyaaaah!”
The weight of the steel made every blow feel like swinging a solid iron lump. When they blocked with a sword, the sword and the arm behind it were crushed together. There were no techniques. Nothing flashy. Just raw, primitive violence that sent chunks of meat flying. The moment anyone tried to form a stance, a single straight punch drove straight into the heart of that form. They snapped and burst like dry reeds.
“Where the hell did a master like this come from?!”
“We can’t stop him!”
Heads exploded. A downward fist drove a man’s entire neck into his own torso.
“You bastard!”
“Surround him! There’s only one of him!”
Just as Mumyeong had said, the form of the Eight Trigrams Suppression Formation had not completely collapsed. Martial artists seized every direction around me, blades flashing densely from all sides. Red light flared in my eyes as I spread the fingers of the Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet and swept them through the milky-white sword paths that covered my body.
Kakakakang!!!
Dozens of sparks erupted. Every blade that came at me from every direction was knocked away. One martial artist stared at his ruined, toothless sword and muttered,
“Crazy… who the hell blocks blades with their fingers…”
Thud!
My fist punched straight into his open mouth.
“Uup—uuuup!”
I tensed my core with a shout and lifted the man bodily by the fist buried in his face, then slammed him into the floor.
Thud.
I shook the broken teeth free from my knuckles and shot my hand out like lightning.
“Hik!”
My palm spread like a net and seized a fistful of hair from the man behind me. My right elbow whipped around. His cheek burst; his neck twisted. The hair tore free in my grip.
Thud-thud.
I shook the handful of hair loose and swung the gauntlet again.
Boom!
Another martial artist’s body spun like a firework and flew. With a half-step I slipped the sword coming from my left past my ribs, clamped the wielder’s arm under my armpit, and stood him upright. My knee drove up and shattered his elbow.
“Kyaaaah!”
He screamed. I lifted the dangling, sword-clutching arm by its broken joint, seized his waist with my free hand, and heaved him bodily into the air—then drove him down like a stake into the nape of the man beside him. Both fists clenched, I charged forward.
“He’s coming! He’s coming!”
“Stay away!”
They screamed in raw terror. Straight punches hammered down. Legs scythed. Corpses flew. One man smashed through the mill’s side boards head-first. Another crashed into a ceiling beam and stuck. A third was snatched by the shoulder like prey taken by a hawk and hurled through a wooden pillar. From the opposite side I snatched a charging man’s face in my bare hand and squeezed.
“Uwaaaak!!”
He thrashed and screamed as my five fingers dug into his features. I hurled the struggling body away.
“Keok!”
He tumbled into a sunken stone base.
Whirrr!
The waterwheel turned. With the clack of a released latch, the heavy pestle—raised high by the water’s power at exactly the right moment—came crashing down with a roar.
“…No!”
Blood sprayed as yet another man died instantly beneath it. In that same instant a spear stabbed toward my side.
Kagagak!
I brought the gauntlet across and deflected it, then clamped the shaft under my arm, seized the man’s collar, and grabbed the spear blade itself. His eyes flew wide.
“Uh… uhh?”
He stared at my bare hand closed around the tempered steel. The blade began to tremble.
Kigik… kigigigi…
The spearhead started to scream. Disbelief cracked his voice.
“No way… n-no way… that’s impossible…”
Guguguguk…
The iron tip bent slowly, as limply as a soft sword, until the point aimed straight back at the man holding the shaft.
“We’re martial artists who trained too,” he whispered in horror. “Where the hell did this absurd monster bastard come from?”
“Curious?”
I released the fully curved blade and spoke in a hoarse voice.
“It’s the work of that very master you serve. You son of a bitch.”
Puhuk!
My knee drove the bent spearhead upward. It punched clean through his heart. I was a black wolf rampaging through a flock of sheep in a storm. In the blink of an eye, dozens of corpses littered the floor.
“This isn’t how martial artists fight.”
They hesitated and backed away.
“We’ve never heard of or seen anything like this.”
In the usual way of the Jianghu, arrogant, flashy techniques and forms were exchanged until someone was cleanly cut down—one strike, one kill, a painless death. That was what people pictured when they thought of a fight between masters. Everything unfolding before their eyes was something else entirely.
“Uh… uuuuh…”
A man torn apart by the storm of steel balls groaned as he died. Looted jewelry belonging to women and children spilled from his robes. One dangled from the ceiling with his neck impaled. Another was smashed into a wall. One had been skewered by his own spear and stood leaning on the shaft like a collapsed tent. Countless others lay grotesquely twisted by the steel gauntlet as if they had been blown apart by powder. Mournful groans rose from every direction. In the middle of it all, I stood.
“A… a butcher.”
Someone muttered as if the word had just come to him.
“The Butcher of Liaodong written in the Wi Family’s letter…!”
The formation was completely shattered. The surviving Moyong Family martial artists had split into two groups and huddled in opposite corners. Then a desperate cry rang through the mill.
“You evil-ghost bastard!”
A martial artist standing far off on one side of the mill wailed with a face twisted by terror.
“Do you really think you can stand in our way and walk away unharmed no matter where you crawled out of?!”
“What the hell are you—unorthodox? No… outer forces, the Blood Cult? A savage who fights like you can’t possibly be from the orthodox path!”
“Ha.”
I let out a short breath. For the first time my ceaseless motion stopped. I caught my breath and scratched my head.
“These days even beast bastards talk like people.”
“…!”
The man’s face across the distance flushed crimson.
“Fine. Let’s finish this! To punish you who dared stand in the way of Moyong Jinryong-nim—in his place!”
He rummaged in his robes and pulled out a square thunderbolt bomb.
“…Hmm?!”
My eyes widened. At the same moment the remaining Moyong martial artists went pale with horror.
“N-no! Don’t light it!”
“That much will kill us too! There are still more than ten of us left…!”
He lit the fuse without hesitation, raised the bomb high, and screamed,
“This one body—burn like dry grass—!”
KWARUNG!!
Thunder tore the air.
“Cr…azy…”
He stared at me as I appeared in front of him amid black lightning, muttering in disbelief.
“It was easily twenty paces…”
The Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet swung. With a wet crunch the hand holding the bomb was sheared clean off. I snatched the thunderbolt bomb out of the air.
Bawung!
My palm strike stuffed the swelling, about-to-detonate bomb straight into the man’s mouth. I seized his collar and hurled him toward the group huddled farthest away—the ones on the left.
“…Ah?”
The gazes of the flying man with the bomb in his mouth and the martial artists packed into the corner crossed in midair.
KWAANG!
A massive explosion ripped the mill apart.
Kugugugu…
The huge waterwheel began to tilt. I threw myself toward the last remnants still standing on the right. Flames roared out in every direction. Under the scorching fire my fists swung, cutting them down like rice straw.
“It’s a demon.”
One man muttered as his head burst.
“An evil demon has arrived.”
One wall gone, the mill slowly collapsed with a grinding roar. Even beneath the falling debris the black shadow never stopped—necks were wrenched free, bodies crushed.
“Something that only happens in the tales of third-rate street storytellers…”
A man whose lungs had been shattered by my front kick trembled, bloody foam on his lips. In his dying eyes he saw the last martial artist swing a mace only to have it stolen and used to crush him instead.
“So helplessly… We were elites in our own right. How… how…!”
Kiiiiii…!
With a final roar of flame the mill came down.
From the burning wreckage I shoved aside a flaming log and stood. Amid the flames I picked up my outer robe, shook it out, and put it on. I stored the remaining weapons across my back.
“Impressive.”
I raised my head. In front of me a man of massive build, wearing a black iron mask, had formed an encirclement with dozens of martial artists.
“I don’t know the details since it happened inside the mill, but seeing you walk out alone alive, you must be a master.”
The iron-masked man spoke in a low voice.
“Which side’s master are you?”
“Even after Jegal Sea mentioned it, I half-doubted to the end that we shared the same blood…”
I answered as if muttering to myself.
“These days the Moyong Family has no shame left, does it? Even the Demon Cult would cry and leave.”
“….”
The man’s aura shifted in an instant.
“You already know who we are.”
Clank.
A heavy weight dropped from Cha Ryu-ja’s hand, chain rattling.
“My name is Cha Ryu-ja. What is yours?”
I blinked my red eyes.
“Not even funny. A bastard who commits a massacre and wears an iron mask so he won’t be recognized is the first to give his name?”
“Well.”
In his other hand a sickle connected to the chain rose, glinting.
“Because with those words just now, I’ve decided to kill you no matter what it takes.”
“Ah. Is that so.”
I gave a short smile. Cha Ryu-ja continued,
“Besides, no one in the Jianghu will ever know what happened here today. Consider the name of the martial artist who takes your head a parting gift for the road to the underworld.”
I smacked my lips, rested a hand on my waist, and tapped the ground with my toes.
“Really? I like that. In the plan I have in mind, the truth about me still can’t spread openly either.”
I nodded, drew a deep breath, and let it out. Then I raised a finger and pointed straight at Cha Ryu-ja’s face.
“And coincidentally, for the activities I intend to carry out from now on, that iron mask you’re wearing looks like it’ll come in handy.”
“What…?”
I spoke each word clearly and deliberately.
“Listen carefully and report this well to your lord, you bastard. And take it as an honor. You seem to hold some kind of position, so somehow you’ve become the first among the members of the same family to hear this.”
Cha Ryu-ja’s eyebrows twitched.
“…Same family?”
“The report is this.”
I wiped the blood that had spattered across my mouth.
“The fourth son of the Moyong Family—the bastard Moyong Bi. Not dead. Preparing, step by step, to take the first brother’s neck.”
“….”
Cha Ryu-ja’s eyes blinked. I smiled quietly.
“Is that enough? Cha Ryu-ja.”
His pupils darted left and right as if they had nowhere to land.
“…Moyong… Bi?”
His mouth opened, then closed. A moment later his eyes flew wide in pure shock.
“Moyong Bi…? Could it be that Moyong Bi?! That trash bastard born from a lowly concubine?!”
“Yeah.”
I nodded.
“You know of me.”
Cha Ryu-ja stammered in disbelief.
“H-how…! This is impossible—you should have been expelled even from Cheonsubaekryeonsa and still be crawling at the bottom without anything close to this kind of skill…!!”
“That’s exactly why I’m telling you to report it clearly to your lord. Even your brother probably never dreamed the little prank he pulled would end like this. Ah, of course.”
I adjusted my grip on the Seven Sects Black Pearl Gauntlet, then flicked my hand downward. Myeolseom slid free. I raised the blade and pointed it at Cha Ryu-ja. The gauntlet’s concentrated immortal energy flowed along the weapon.
Kugugugu…!
The air itself trembled. Beyond the edge of Myeolseom I spoke with eyes as cold as frost.
“I don’t know whether the first brother has the talent to understand even the words of a ghost… but still.”