Chapter 9: A Transcendent Talent Slave Snatched Away
Lee Kang let himself be carried along by the fleeing crowd and was shoved out of the auction house. Someone’s shoulder slammed into him, someone’s elbow brushed his side, but he didn’t bother to dodge.
Right now, being swept along naturally was the safest option.
“Move!”
“The Sa-do Alliance is blocking us!”
“Cut over there!”
Screams and shouts tangled together. Outside the auction house, chaos had broken out in an instant. The market, which had only moments ago been selling and buying things in orderly fashion, showed its true face after one explosion.
Lee Kang twisted slightly between the people. He looked as though he was simply fleeing with everyone else, then immediately changed direction toward the alley by the slave quarter.
Now.
The slave market seemed not to have fully grasped the situation yet. But the confusion was spreading fast. At first, everyone had merely been murmuring and looking back toward the auction house.
Then someone realized the Sa-do Alliance fighters had left their posts. From that moment on, the mood changed.
Hands shot out in front of an herb stall. Before the merchant could even shout, another customer snatched up a box of pills beside him. Someone rummaged at the shackles around a bound slave’s ankles, and someone else picked up a dropped geongunnang pouch and tucked it into their robes.
One person moved, then two. Two moved, and the whole market began to shake.
“Grab it!”
“That’s mine!”
“Run before the Sa-do Alliance bastards come back!”
Lee Kang’s pace quickened.
At first he pretended to be running normally. But as he neared the slave quarter, he could no longer afford to waste motion. He killed his breathing and put force into the tips of his feet.
Black Moon Night Walk Step.
As though blending into a shadow, he stepped only where the crowd’s eyes left gaps. He avoided scraps of cloth strewn on the ground, lightly touched down on a toppled wooden crate, and slipped through the bodies shoving against one another by folding himself thin.
If I’m late, it’ll be dangerous.
Lee Kang clenched his teeth. More people were looting than he’d expected.
Then, in the distance, he saw the cage section. And a man standing in front of it.
He was gaunt, wearing a shabby dark robe that was almost black, with his hair roughly tied back. A bundle of keys hung from one hand.
He was already opening one of the cages.
Inside it, Lee Kang could see a girl covered in black mud.
Shit.
Lee Kang’s mind went cold.
Too late.
No, not completely too late.
The gaunt man had opened the cage, but he hadn’t yet dragged the girl all the way out. Crouched low, she was backing away. Her posture said she was ready to run.
Lee Kang immediately lowered his voice.
“That’s a rules violation. What do you think you’re doing?”
He made it as firm as possible.
Like a fighter from the Sa-do Alliance.
Like someone enforcing the law of this place.
The gaunt man’s shoulders jerked.
He turned toward Lee Kang reflexively, looking startled at first. But once his eyes ran over Lee Kang’s clothes, build, and bearing, his expression changed.
He didn’t look afraid.
He was smiling.
“Impersonating a Sa-do Alliance fighter? Bold of you.”
The gaunt man’s mouth curled.
“Lee Kang, leader of the Black Moon Sect.”
Lee Kang narrowed his eyes.
The other man knew him.
At that, a memory surfaced.
A small sect based around Hapjeong Station. The Hiphop Sect. Even the name made people uneasy.
In the Gallery, there had occasionally been guys who wrote in half-baked rhyme, and among them was a notorious longtime poster who bit at the Black Moon Sect more viciously than the rest.
Hiphop Sect leader Seok Yuha.
They had never met in person. But he was the guy who mocked Lee Kang’s Black Moon Sect in the Gallery as a third-rate righteous sect, the trash sect of Mangwon Market, and even sneered that it wasn’t the Black Moon Sect but the Black Cow Sect.
Of all people, it had to be him.
Lee Kang swallowed his curse.
Seok Yuha shook the keys in his hand.
“I claimed this one first. So get lost, Black Moon Sect leader.”
“Do you even know what that slave is before you touch her?”
“Do I need to know? In this mess, the first one to grab the cornered slave owns her.”
With that, Seok Yuha yanked the cage door fully open.
Clank.
The moment the iron door swung wide, the girl caked in black mud tried to bolt. Her body was small, frail-looking, but her reflexes were quick. The way she kicked off the floor was not the movement of an ordinary slave.
But Seok Yuha was faster.
He shot out a thin arm and snatched her wrist.
“Going somewhere?”
The girl’s body was dragged forward. She made no sound. Instead, she twisted hard, trying to slip free.
Lee Kang shouted at once.
“Bite him!”
Seok Yuha looked at him as if he’d gone crazy.
“What the hell are you—”
That was the moment.
The girl lowered her head, and she sank her teeth straight into the back of Seok Yuha’s hand.
“Aagh!”
His scream tore out of him. The girl clenched her jaw and did not let go. Under the mud-coated face, the only visible thing was her eyes, gleaming with a frightening edge.
Lee Kang didn’t waste the opening. His hand slipped inside his sleeve.
Short needle sword.
Night Moon Killing Sword - Black Moon Needle.
The needle sword sprang from within his sleeve. From the tip of his fingers, Lee Kang launched it out.
Seok Yuha’s eyes widened. Startled, he reflexively twisted his body, judging it to be an attack aimed at a vital point.
That was the reaction Lee Kang had wanted.
From the start, Black Moon Needle had not been aimed at the throat or the heart.
The trajectory of the needle sword bent subtly in midair.
Thud.
It stabbed into Seok Yuha’s right arm, the one the girl had bitten.
“Gaaah!”
Seok Yuha screamed.
First his bitten hand, then his forearm had been pierced. His grip loosened for an instant.
The girl seized that gap and twisted free. She kicked off the floor and sprang backward out of Seok Yuha’s grasp.
“You bastard!”
Seok Yuha’s face twisted.
He immediately drew a short sword from his waist and swung it at Lee Kang.
Lee Kang retreated.
Whiiish!
The sword tip swept past his nose by a hair.
Fast.
A chill ran down Lee Kang’s spine.
Even with his arm wounded, Seok Yuha’s movements were sharp. He wasn’t at full strength because of the injury, but he was still dangerous.
Lee Kang lowered his voice.
“If you don’t want to die, back off.”
“What a joke!”
Seok Yuha ground his teeth and stamped his foot.
“Hiphop Divine Art.”
Lee Kang’s brow twitched.
The names, seriously.
Of course, the martial art Seok Yuha used wasn’t actually called the Hiphop Divine Art. There was no way a technique would really have a name like that. It wasn’t even something he had created himself. He merely renamed existing techniques however he pleased.
“Rhyme Chain Illusion!”
Seok Yuha’s body shot forward. At the same time, a rapid series of kicks came flying at Lee Kang.
The first targeted the thigh. The second aimed for the side. The third went for the jaw.
Because it had been unleashed in such a rush, the path of the technique was not completely refined. But its speed was not something he could ignore.
Lee Kang clenched his teeth and twisted his body.
He barely dodged the first kick. The second brushed his robe. The third he barely deflected by throwing his head back.
The tip of the foot skimmed under his jaw.
If he had been a beat slower, it would have landed.
Third-class.
Lee Kang judged it instantly.
Seok Yuha was a third-class martial artist.
He was stronger than Lee Kang.
Outwardly, Lee Kang also passed for a third-class martial artist, but in truth he was not. He was merely propping himself up on bluster with a handful of grappling techniques under his belt.
If they fought head-on for long, he would be at a disadvantage.
Seok Yuha seemed to know that too, because the corner of his mouth warped upward.
“What’s this? You call yourself the Black Moon Sect leader, but why do you move like that?”
Lee Kang didn’t answer. He couldn’t spare the time to trade words.
Instead, he immediately flicked his gaze to the side.
The girl.
The mud-covered girl was already getting away.
Her small body was slipping quickly between the people. It wasn’t proper light-footwork. But she knew how to run.
Seok Yuha saw her back and spat a curse.
“Ah, that little bitch!”
He tried to chase after her. Lee Kang immediately gripped the needle sword again.
But Seok Yuha no longer seemed interested in fighting him.
“Hiphop Divine Art, Burst Dash.”
In an instant, Seok Yuha shot forward. His injured right arm dangled uselessly, but his legs were fine. Every time his feet struck the ground, his body surged ahead as though sliding in a thin streak.
Lee Kang immediately stepped into Black Moon Night Walk Step as well.
But the difference was clear.
Black Moon Night Walk Step was not a martial art for straight-line speed. It was a light-foot art for moving quietly through darkness, stepping into the gaps left by other people’s gaze.
By contrast, Burst Dash was laughable only in name; in raw sprinting power, it was solid enough.
And there was a gap in cultivation level too.
Damn it.
Lee Kang gritted his teeth.
The distance between him and Seok Yuha slowly widened.
That didn’t mean he could force himself to move faster. If he squeezed out more internal energy here, it wouldn’t last long. From the start, Lee Kang wasn’t the kind to catch someone by charging straight after them.
If I waste my strength, I’m the one who loses.
So Lee Kang deliberately slowed himself a little.
He gave up on catching Seok Yuha immediately. Instead, he kept only enough distance to avoid losing sight of him. He quickly mapped the girl’s escape route, Seok Yuha’s pursuit line, and the surrounding alley layout in his mind.
The mud-covered girl was small.
And being small became an advantage in a chaos like this.
She slipped under stalls, veered around overturned crates, and rather than cutting straight through the crowd, she deliberately chose the narrow gaps between cages and tents.
She knew how to escape.
Each time, Seok Yuha spat out another curse.
“Hey! Stop!”
The girl did not stop.
She cut left into an alley, then slipped right between two awnings. The iron chain locked around her wrist rattled, but even that sound was drowned out by the market’s uproar.
That little rat—!
Seok Yuha’s face grew ever more ferocious.
Still, there was a limit to what speed could overcome.
The girl had not yet learned any real martial arts. No matter how quick she was, she couldn’t keep it up forever.
At last, Seok Yuha slammed his foot hard into the ground.
Thump!
His body sprang up in a short leap.
“Got you!”
Seok Yuha’s left hand seized the girl’s shoulder.
Her body lurched.
“Let go of me!”
For the first time, the girl’s voice burst out.
It was small and rough, her throat worn raw, but her eyes were still alive.
The girl twisted, trying to slip from Seok Yuha’s grip. But Seok Yuha clenched his teeth and held on harder.
“I’m not falling for that twice.”
He twisted her wrist and tried to wrench her arm.
The girl bared her teeth. Then she lowered her head again, trying once more to bite the back of Seok Yuha’s hand.
“Trying to bite me again?”
Seok Yuha ground his teeth and tried to pull his hand away.