Chapter 52
Chapter 52
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Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 52
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But the truly shocking event occurred when the police identified the suspect in the 400-unit gap-investment mother-and-daughter murder case as a man named Choi Pil-su, and issued a nationwide wanted notice for him after he fled.
"Hey! You fu~ucking bastards!"
A man, his face flushed red with alcohol, drove a truck straight into the National Assembly building. After the now-legendary National Assembly terrorist Lee Kyung-wan, they'd installed concrete barricades on the sidewalks as a precaution, but those could only stop sedans or small cars. Against the sheer momentum of a dump truck, they might as well have been paper.
"Emergency! Emergency!"
The main gate guards, faced with yet another situation that would require them to file another incident report, panicked and sounded the emergency alarm. Armed personnel rushed out. They had not forgotten the lesson from the last incident Lee Kyung-wan had caused.
Well, nine-tenths of it was because the National Assembly members had become paranoid about their own safety, but still, in the chaos, the truck rumbled up the stairs and rammed into the newly repaired front gate, smashing it to pieces again.
And from the truck that burst through the gate, a middle-aged man with drunken, unfocused eyes climbed down, holding a bottle of soju in one hand.
"Hands up!"
"Fuck! Off!"
Crunch!
"Get back!"
"Uwah!"
An unbelievable sight unfolded.
The man tore off the car door with one hand and threw it at the guards holding guns. It looked like he was tossing a piece of Styrofoam, but the door was absolutely not made of Styrofoam, and the guard who took the door hit square in the chest screamed and collapsed unconscious. If you could get hit by a flying slab of metal and stay fine, that would mean you were a superhuman.
The man who had thrown the door chugged the rest of the soju bottle in one go, then ripped off the truck bed’s side panel and began wildly swinging that long steel plate.
The heavy metal whipped through the air with a whoosh-whoosh, the murderous wind pressure alone enough to make the guards unable even to think of pulling their triggers. They scrambled only to dodge, and one by one, they were knocked down by the sweeping steel.
"Get lost, all of you!"
As he rampaged inward, the man spotted National Assembly members rushing outside to escape.
A roar burst from his mouth.
"You motherfuuuckers!"
"Kyaaa!"
"Aaah!"
He hurled the long metal panel at the people exiting the building, then charged at anyone wearing a National Assembly member badge.
"You shitty bastards!"
Thud!
"Gahk!"
One punch crushed a congressman’s jaw.
"You said you'd fix housing prices!"
Wham!
"Ggeuk!"
His next punch landed square on another congressman’s cheekbone, sinking it in.
"But instead of abolishing landlord tax benefits, you kept them?!"
Thud!
"Urgh!"
A congressman kicked in the solar plexus flew like he'd been hit by a car.
"You fuucking bastards! Do you seriously have ANY intention of stabilizing home prices?!"
In his frenzy, the man suddenly spotted a familiar face often seen on the news and charged toward him.
"You useless bastard who only babbles about 'stern measures' every day! Taste my stern fist!"
The moment the man's fist struck his face, a prominent presidential hopeful was eliminated from the race in an instant. With his jaw shattered to the point where nobody could be sure he'd ever chew solid food again, how could he possibly continue a presidential campaign?
The man’s rampage continued for a few moments longer, injuring several more Assembly members, before it finally ended. Had the guards not finally regained their senses and risked stray bullets hitting lawmakers in order to shoot, the casualties would have been worse.
Soon, the man was subdued, and his identity quickly revealed: he was none other than Choi Pil-su, the very suspect wanted for murdering the 400-unit gap-investor mother and daughter.
= = = = =
The country was thrown into chaos once more. Multiple issues flared simultaneously: the 400-unit gap-investment scam and the resulting mass deposit theft, the severe injuries sustained by several Assembly members, and finally, the culprit’s physically inexplicable display of brute strength.
Had even one of these elements been absent, he would have been dismissed merely as a violent criminal who assaulted lawmakers and disrupted national order. But sensitive political issues tangled together with an element that defied physics, the fire refused to die down.
"Tsk tsk tsk. What a doomed age."
Kyung-wan clicked his tongue as he browsed the articles dominating every major news portal. People were so obsessed that it was hard to find any news unrelated to this incident.
But the comments were comical, everyone agreed that housing prices should fall, yet everyone also wanted their own house price to rise, and anyone who made their house price drop instantly became an enemy to kill. When it came to real estate, hypocrisy was practically a national specialty.
It might be understandable for ordinary citizens, like the aunties who colluded to inflate apartment prices. But high-ranking government officials working in the Blue House, who quit instead of selling off their multiple homes, were something else. Public corporation employees tasked with stabilizing housing supply had used inside information for land speculation and real estate profiteering.
Where had everything gone so wrong?
One thing was certain: ever since the dawn of real estate speculation in the Republic of Korea, not once in history had there been a fully executed, uncompromised policy that genuinely crushed speculators.
Any attempt always met resistance from vested interests, watered down into useless half-measures that were worse than nothing. Even if the people at the top had the right intentions, the public officials responsible for carrying them out were a nightmare, how could real estate policy ever succeed?
And the lawmakers who were supposed to create these policies? They quietly withdrew reform bills whenever it threatened their spouses’ or relatives’ multi-property holdings. If not that, then they were counting on inflated property values to secure reelection.
Kyung-wan had long since grown used to the disgusting nature of humanity. Gap-investment? Lawmaker assaults? None of that interested him as much as the culprit’s strange ability.
What bothered him was why the suspect’s abnormal, superhuman strength suddenly manifested now, after all this time.
He recalled the sensations he experienced during meditation, the sixth sense beyond human perception. The feeling of something being there.
He had previously dismissed it as synesthetic distortions caused by deep meditative focus, illusions, nothing more.
But maybe it wasn't.
What if the inexplicable sensation he felt was related to that man's monstrous strength?
He had no proof, none whatsoever.
But without that explanation, there was no reasonable way to justify why a superhuman had suddenly appeared in his era.
Of course, it might all be coincidence. And if someone heard his theory, they'd mock him for being delusional, saying the world didn't revolve around him.
But from Kyung-wan’s perspective, it was worth suspecting.
A singularity.
As an infinitely reincarnating being, Kyung-wan himself was undeniably a singularity. And perhaps the depth and level of meditation he reached were realms no human in history had ever touched. Deep enough to nudge something in nature that had long existed in a quasi-stable state.
What if his meditation had opened a floodgate to that reservoir of energy? What if that man had tapped into the overflow?
Still, without certainty, Kyung-wan concluded that the only way to test his hypothesis was to investigate, through the sixth sense, what that "something" was, and whether it could influence the physical world.
And even aside from theoretical curiosity, it was practical.
Who knew? The human trash he had beaten senseless before might gain superpowers and come for revenge.
Firearms didn’t discriminate between police and criminals; strength likewise had no inherent morality. Good and evil were simply human conventions.
Kyung-wan felt the need to build strength in advance, in case those arrogant piles of shit ever came for him bolstered by newfound power. The most likely method right now: investigate that unknown sensation felt through his sixth sense.
Conveniently, he was in solitary confinement, no one to disturb him. Kyung-wan began meditating, observing and probing whatever lay beyond the five senses.
Several days passed.
And Kyung-wan’s faint premonition, that someone might come seeking revenge, turned out to be completely true.
Skreeee! Crunch! Boom!
Something crashed, toppled, collapsed. Here and there, guards yelled at others to get out of the way.
Through the chaos, Kyung-wan heard someone shouting his name.
"You fucking bastard, come out! Lee Kyung-wan, you son of a bitch!"
What the hell?
Kyung-wan slid open the small window on his door and shouted back:
"I'm right here!"
"You fucker!"
Almost as if answering Kyung-wan’s clear, ringing call, a man sprinted down the corridor and stopped in front of the cell door. He grunted, strained, and the reinforced metal door shrieked as it bent, tore, and ripped clean off.
In its place stood a hulking, muscular man, half a Hulk, his prison uniform stretched tight as if ready to burst. He was clearly an inmate, but Kyung-wan didn’t recognize him.
"Who are you?"
"You don't know me, you bastard?!"
The man yelled so loudly the solitary cell echoed painfully.
Kyung-wan covered his ears, frowned, and nodded.
"Never seen you."
The man screamed in outrage.
"You don't remember the guy you beat the shit out of?!"
"I've beaten so many people I can't possibly remember them all."
Obviously, some inmate who mouthed off to a guard, got thrown in solitary, and then ran into Kyung-wan. Why would Kyung-wan memorize every trash face he’d smashed?
"You piece of shit!"
Infuriated, the man swung a punch without warning. His fist sliced the air with a whoosh, carrying enough force to break bones on impact.
Kyung-wan calmly slapped the fist aside with his palm. It barely altered the punch’s trajectory, but that wasn’t the point, he used the force to move his own body lightly, evading the strike like a feather.
The redirected punch slammed into the wall.
Smack!
"Aaagh!"
The man screamed. Blood dripped from the wall, his knuckles had clearly broken.
"Idiot."
Kyung-wan muttered, too quietly for the man to hear, or perhaps the man was too shocked to register it. Whether from pain, surprise that Kyung-wan had dodged, or something else entirely, he roared:
"You, you! How?!"
"How what?"
Kyung-wan tilted his head like he genuinely didn’t understand.
The man narrowed his eyes and threw a cautious punch. Then another. And another. He raised both fists like a boxer and kept launching straight punches, careful not to risk hitting the wall again.
His fists cut through the air with heavy whoomphs, even one hit would have snapped bones. But Kyung-wan, in the tiny cell, dodged each blow with movements that were sometimes casual, sometimes acrobatic. It was almost like watching a dance, one so clean it bordered on the supernatural.
Five minutes passed.
The man was drenched in sweat, panting, exhausted. Even attacking took a toll.
But more importantly, his Hulk-like body had begun shrinking. Slowly deflating. His uniform, which had looked on the verge of tearing, now hung loose.
The man stared in confusion.
Kyung-wan watched him with a gentle smile, swaying his shoulders rhythmically as he hummed…