The Assault Rifle Is the People's Friend
Gong Ryun staggered backward under the communists' storm of gunfire, the sheer force of the impact throwing him off his feet.
Thud!
Sprawled on the ground, he thought:
Yeah. That was fair.
Dozens of hits had landed—but none of them had punched through. That was enough.
The struck places throbbed like nails driven into flesh. Bruise-level damage, but the kind that hurt like hell. Filthy, grinding pain.
Strangely, there were no actual bullets. What they were firing was formless internal energy shaped into rounds—the same way a swordsman loosed sword-qi, or a palm master hurled shockwaves.
Impressive. There's a technique like this? Gong Ryun marveled.
Stronger than bullets—and probably cheaper, too. No ammunition costs, after all.
"Keep firing!!! He didn't get pierced!! Don't stop the barrage!!!"
As if answering them, Gong Ryun rolled and came back to his feet. The instant he rose, he unleashed Parangjang.
A broad shockwave shield blooms outward, batting the rounds aside.
But the form's duration was short.
One second passed.
Two seconds passed.
The shield vanished. His growing mastery had stretched it to two full seconds—and the moment it fell away—
—TRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!!!
The barrage slammed into his body. Gong Ryun twisted sideways to shrink his silhouette and threw his arms up to guard his head and throat.
"Urgh…!!!"
It hurt. The damage was stacking. Each hit packed so much force that he'd already burned through half his internal energy just maintaining his protective qi. Every round landed like a hard fist. It felt like dozens of hammers swinging into him at once. Childhood memories of being shot rose, vivid and raw. He felt like he was going to die from the pain.
And yet, surprisingly, he could endure it. There was a psychological factor at work. He'd braced for penetration, steeling himself for the worst—but it wasn't that extreme after all. And more than anything, dozens of these "bullets" still hurt less than the kick from the tteokbokki shop auntie. That had felt like being split clean in half. Even getting beaten, it seemed, converted into experience of a sort.
Turning his side to reduce the hit zone hadn't been a bad call—except it left his ribs fully exposed, and that side hurt so much he could barely breathe when the bone took a direct hit. Next time, he'd guard there too. Knowledge gained.
Gong Ryun waited for his moment. This barrage couldn't last forever. No way something like that had infinite supply.
—Click. Click.
The assault rifles dry-fired.
Reload time.
Calling it a "reload" when there were no bullets sounded odd, but these "internal energy projectors" needed an energy battery. They drew power from a storage cell that held internal energy and discharged it as formless energy rounds.
And of course, they weren't going to stand there gawking while they reloaded.
This was where it actually began.
"Tough little bastard—way tougher than he looks!! Switching to three-two formation!!!"
Three of the five, including the captain-comrade, stowed their assault rifles and drew sidearms: one-handed axes of solid special alloy, weapons that, alongside the assault rifle, were called arms of the people. Then they charged straight at him.
The remaining two, who hadn't drawn sidearms, reloaded. They switched their assault rifles from full-auto to sniper mode—a heavily customized single-shot configuration that gutted the fire rate in exchange for packing far more power into each charged shot.
Three on the front line for close combat. Two in the rear for sniping.
The practiced motion of men used to fighting as a unit.
This was how communists fought. Not the strength of individuals, but the strength of the collective—squeezing every drop from the mineral wealth and endless population of the galactic core.
A martial art that leaned closer to official doctrine than personal heroism.
At the front, the captain-comrade poured internal energy into his axe until it thrummed with brutal weight. On top of that, he activated an assistive mechanical suit that amplified his arm strength to the limit. He raised the weapon overhead, ready to bring it down like a guillotine.
Flanking him like a pair of wings, his two comrades did the same—loading their axes with internal energy and swinging in from both sides, outside to in, the blades closing like a vise.
Gong Ryun watched it all unfold.
Now he would answer. He forced his pain-locked body to move.
First, assess. Of the three, which blow was the most dangerous? He had to pick one and pour his defense into it.
He prepared a form. Waited for the distance to be right.
And then—
Two waves meet and play — dual palms launch Form 3's Blue Wave Rampart at precise angles and strengths, forcing the shockwaves to collide at a single point. Where the wavelengths overlay exactly, the force multiplies several times over in an instant—like the triangular wave that rises where ocean swells cross, sharp enough to sink a ship.
—BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Parangjang, focused and amplified into a single point, slammed into the captain-comrade's torso. It inverted the usual nature of palm techniques—power that normally spread and weakened with distance—instead concentrating its firepower on a remote pinpoint.
Strictly speaking, Form 5 was just the dual-handed version of Form 3, so the proficiency correction he'd earned training under Jamiseong still applied. The force was considerable.
The captain's body went flying backward. Parangjang excelled at shoving—he rocketed away like a soccer ball kicked with full force.
"What the…!!?"
The captain gaped mid-flight, clearly never expecting power like that. Hadn't they said he was only Hwa-gyeong? Those Hao Sect bastards—had they fed them false intel again? Of course. Puppets of capitalism!!!
In truth, Gong Ryun had only recently stepped into Hyeon-gyeong, and so few people knew that the information simply hadn't been updated. Still, even for Hyeon-gyeong the output was strange—the kind of polished mastery you'd expect from someone who'd spent a lifetime refining nothing but palm techniques. No wonder Sergei had gone down so hard.
The airborne captain-comrade crashed into one of the two comrades preparing long-range snipes in the rear. The one he hit was the young sniper who had tried to shoot Sowol earlier.
"Ghk!!!!!!"
The sniper swallowed a groan. Tangled together, they needed time to get back on their feet.
Still, taking the impact with his body had cut the captain's damage. They could just resume the pincer attack after that. The sniper himself might be briefly neutralized, but there was still one more man in the rear line. His other comrade would take the shot and put a hole through the enemy.
But no gunshot came.
The young sniper turned his head toward his rear-line partner—the one who should already have fired.
The goggled comrade was staring at the enemy with a face split between rage and pure shock. He couldn't shoot.
Only then did the young sniper look toward Gong Ryun. And he was just as stunned.
Gong Ryun was holding two shields.
That was why his comrade couldn't fire.
Those shields were made of a material you simply could not shoot through.
The material known as living communists.
Just moments earlier—
When the captain-comrade had been blasted away by that enormous shockwave, the two axe-wielding vanguard at his sides had taken residual impact as well. The force of their charge faltered for an instant.
Their axes came in a little weaker than intended.
Gong Ryun tracked their trajectories.
Downward. They were going for the legs.
They were support attackers by design. While the enemy blocked the captain's primary strike, their job was to land reliable, meaningful damage. The torso and head had a high chance of being guarded—so they aimed to catch him off-balance and deal certain injury.
Hence the legs.
Wound a man's legs and he couldn't move fast. Lightness skills and footwork sealed. Loss of mobility in a fight was as good as death.
Ignore it!
And Gong Ryun decided to take the blow head-on.
They'd misread him. Legs. Those were basically decorative organs on him.
He couldn't use lightness skills or footwork in the first place. If Gong Ryun wanted to move, he had to run on pure muscle—and he had never planned on running mid-fight anyway. Sprinting at that sluggish pace with no technique would only expose more openings.
Under normal circumstances, the communists' approach was textbook. In a frantic five-on-one, crippling mobility was a sure way to gut the enemy's odds of winning.
But not against Gong Ryun. Taking a function that already converged on zero and setting it to zero cost him almost nothing.
—Thuk!!!
—Thuk!!!
The axes bit into his body.
Both thighs. Not deep enough to nick an artery or crack bone—but deep enough to crater the flesh. Serious wounds.
Gong Ryun's mobility was sealed.
Don't need it!
The instant the axes sank into his thighs, Gong Ryun thrust both hands out, forcibly ignoring the pain of the blades buried in him. One hand for each axe-wielding warrior.
Fingernails that pierce the belly.
An organ-piercing claw technique that bypasses external defenses and seizes what lies within.
—Psshk!!!!!!!!
—Psshk!!!!!!!!
Gong Ryun's hands punched into the two communists' abdomens.
Their eyes flew wide. They had solid protective qi of their own. They never imagined it would be torn through so easily. And usually you used a blade for that sort of thing, didn't you…? What kind of martial art punched through with bare hands? Unarmed arts were supposed to be fist and palm—striking styles, not this.
For the record, Gong Ryun could now use claw techniques without artificial nails, mimicking the method Jamiseong had used. It made him look a little more monstrous.
Gwanbokjo: drive the hand through the belly and in. He'd only ever used it on beasts before, so the full horror hadn't registered—but against a human, it was a thoroughly nightmarish technique.
This was the first time he'd used it on people. He hadn't wanted to put it into a human body.
But Gong Ryun was no fool.
In a life-or-death five-on-one, holding back techniques was insanity. He knew perfectly well that against opponents stronger than himself, you used everything you had.
No guilt. They'd come here to kill him. What conscience did he owe people who showed up out of nowhere, sprayed him with gunfire, and tried to gang-chop him with axes?
Gong Ryun had been carving his way through slaughterhouses since he was a child. A man with the sheer nerve to stand against gun-toting adults before his growth plates even closed. The day after getting shot, he'd bound his wounds and calmly worked twelve-hour shifts. Slaves didn't get days off.
Something like this wasn't going to shake him.
So he didn't hesitate.
Hands already inside their bellies—and then, on top of that:
Gut twisting.
Both of them were martial artists, so their protective qi kept their organs somewhat physically durable. One of protective qi's great strengths was that it could shield the internal organs directly from shock—an art no beast could imitate. A beast's guts had only bone and flesh for armor.
But it still hurt like hell.
"………!!!!!!!!!!"
"………!!!!!!!!!! …!!! …!!!!!!!"
The two men screamed without sound.
Making noise meant moving the diaphragm—and with their organs under torture, that part of the body was not available for use. Tears streamed. Mouths hung open, drool spilling. They thrashed.
They couldn't muster the strength to counterattack. A wounded thigh and a gut being wrung out weren't even in the same category of pain—comparing them would have been rude. Going into shock wouldn't have been surprising.
Gong Ryun shifted his hands and moved their bodies. As a rule, a body tends to follow wherever its organs go, so they drifted without resistance in the direction of his hands.
He stood them side by side in front of him, turning them into living shields against the enemy gunfire.
A bit cruel?
Gong Ryun admitted it. …No. But five-on-one gunfire was crueler…
He decided to keep going.
—You devil bastard!!!!!!!!!!!!
The shout came from the enemy sniper's direction.
And in that state—
He drinks their internal energy through his hands.
Using it directly on people was, he thought, a first.
Along with a strange, uncanny sensation, the two communists' abundant internal energy began to flow into Gong Ryun's hands.