Perfected Jami Gongryun
A leg snapped out, loaded with torque and charging force, whipping straight toward Gong Ryun.
The kick closed in on his face.
And in that split second, Jamiseong whispered.
"Child. Use the martial art you're most confident in. The one you've used the most."
Jamiseong amplified a user's skill in proportion to their talent. So what would happen if he used the technique with the highest mastery of all?
The first martial art he had ever learned. The one he had hammered away at for three straight years. By now he had reinterpreted it so thoroughly that it had long since left the original behind, customized and etched into his body as his own.
"Golden Seize."
A palm that seizes — and nothing else.
His hand shot forward.
As if it possessed a personality of its own. As if it were a fully independent living thing.
That separate organ — a palm whose performance dwarfed even the body it belonged to — launched itself as though it had a will of its own.
Seize.
A martial art that used that single concept alone.
Toward the kick hurtling into his face.
Like the primordial shape of a beast clamping down on prey.
He caught it.
— THUD!!!!!!!!!!!
No matter how much the Boss had held back her power, a direct hit from that kick would have broken bones in about twenty places.
The impact felt like being rammed by a bulldozer. Gong Ryun was driven backward. Every muscle and organ in his body tore in even measure.
But at the same time, his hand had the foot. His palm had absorbed a massive share of the shock.
To funnel that colossal impact into the hand alone was the kind of madness that would have shattered an ordinary person's hand into pieces.
Gong Ryun's palm took the full blow cleanly. And was still fine. More than fine — it clamped down on the foot with a crushing grip.
"???"
Even the Boss was a little thrown.
An art born from taking a basic technique like Golden Seize and pushing control to its absolute limit. Golden Seize wasn't even a defensive martial art to begin with.
Was this the seasoned mastery of a star? Hardware barely at Hyeon-gyeong, and yet sheer software excellence alone was pulling off a stunt of this caliber.
But that was all.
It was like loading quantum-computer software onto a machine built in the twentieth century.
No matter how brilliant the software, what could it do with hardware that pathetic? Lag, at best.
The free pass was over. The Boss moved to yank her leg free and deliver the next strike.
— CRUNCH.
Except the grip was so ferocious she couldn't pull free.
Well, Golden Seize was a technique for clamping down hard in the first place. And with Jamiseong's boost on top of that, maybe it would be a little strong.
The Boss snorted and put a little more force into it, yanking her foot free.
It didn't come free.
"…?"
Why was it this tight?
While the Boss was still processing the absurdity of it, Jami Gongryun used a martial art.
This time, the one Jamiseong was most confident in.
"Jamiheupgong."
Qi absorption through hands as temporary batteries — filter, store, and channel.
— CRRREEEAAAK!!!!!!!!!!!
With Golden Seize still locked, the absorption began.
Internal Qi moved.
From a body where Qi was massively condensed, into a body that was relatively empty.
Like osmosis.
Because the gap in total Qi reserves was so vast, the efficiency actually improved.
That was why absorption techniques grew stronger against the strong.
In less than a second, a volume of Qi several times Gong Ryun's entire reserve poured out with ease. The drained power flowed through Gong Ryun's hands.
At that, the Succubus was startled all over again.
Qi far exceeding one's total capacity was something the body simply could not handle. Swallow too much and the organs bloated and burst.
Qi deviation was the minimum guaranteed outcome.
"It doesn't burst."
But Jami Gongryun threw his dantian wide open instead and took in that enormous volume of Qi in full.
The power that surged in like a raging current made a single circuit of the dantian — and then began to scatter at terrifying speed.
The dispersing Qi leaked out of the dantian, out of the body itself.
Qi that left the body reverted into natural energy, pure nature's force, and drifted away like smoke.
Dispersing the Qi.
Sangong.
A dantian formed of Sangongdok's poisonous internal energy released every scrap of Qi that should have been stored.
Like pouring water into a bottomless jar.
What should have overflowed, swollen, and ruptured was all let go — and so it became bearable.
By nature, the limit of absorption was the body itself.
You could only drink in as much Qi as the flesh could hold.
But a dantian with a hole punched through it… deleted that limit.
Unlimited absorption.
Every second, every instant, swallowing prey larger than its own body.
"What."
This kind of application? The Succubus's face flooded with horror. Even a Boss who had lived this long had never seen or heard of anything like it.
She had to get her foot free.
She tried wrenching it free with force, but the grip strength in that hand was anything but ordinary.
And even while that was happening, her internal power was draining in real time. What the hell was the force of this absorption? He'd really pulled this off with a Hyeon-gyeong body? Was a twentieth-century computer actually running quantum software right now?
The escaping Qi dispersed into the air as Sangong and spread like mist. Hazy. All of it had come from the Boss's body.
The Boss finally lifted her foot high.
Then, in a kicking stance, she slammed it down as if driving it into the earth.
Gong Ryun's body, still gripping the foot, was dragged with it and crashed into the ground.
— BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A boom so loud it was almost eerie rang out.
Gong Ryun did not let go.
That right-hand grip holding the foot kept doing its job without the slightest concern for the body that had been reduced to a wreck by the impact.
The Succubus lifted her foot again and slammed him down in a continuous flurry.
— BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— CRUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gong Ryun's body was thrashed this way and that. It was like threshing rice, not fighting a person.
Every impact gouged deep pits into the ground.
A considerable amount of force.
Gong Ryun's protective Qi aura had limits on how much shock it could absorb, so he was battered and broken all over.
Contusions, abrasions, fractures, joint damage, bleeding, and a concussion across his entire body.
But Gong Ryun did not let go.
Jamiseong was blocking every sensation of pain.
In that state, Gong Ryun's unconsciousness was performing a single action to absolute perfection: seize.
Even if the arm hung limp, that one grip was harder than anything else in the world.
By this point, the Boss's skin was crawling.
What the hell was this.
Every time she loaded Qi into her leg to slam him down, that Qi got absorbed, which only increased the leakage.
With power held in check, this was her best. There was also the option of dropping the restraint entirely and slamming him with a massive load of Qi. But that would be close to full power.
Deploy full power?
A Ji-chul-gyeong's full power was comparable to a literal meteor impact. The entire area would be wiped out. Absolutely not. Her son was right nearby.
Counter-absorption?
No. She couldn't swallow that kind of poisonous Qi.
Ordinarily, when one absorption user faced another, they both used absorption and entered a kind of Qi tug-of-war — but in this case, only one side could absorb at all.
What was the right move?
No — whatever she did, she had to do it fast.
Her Qi was draining. Even for a Boss with relatively vast reserves, real-time leakage like this took a toll. Every second that passed, her Qi was vanishing in chunks.
Even a high-level master was still a martial artist — sensitive to their Qi by nature. The Boss's unconsciousness was sounding the alarm.
One more slam, then?
— CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not a chance. His skull was cracked open and blood was pouring freely, and the grip strength hadn't changed at all.
If anything, that one force — pure grip — was growing stronger with time.
Even if Sangong was dispersing it, he was still drinking in Qi continuously, so the power kept climbing.
She was certain he wouldn't let go no matter how many times she slammed him.
He would die before he released. Only when his breath stopped would he fall. What kind of obsession was this.
At last the Succubus raised a knife-hand.
Hssssss. Shining Qi coated the edge of her hand like a blade.
Cut it off?
Severing an arm should be fine, right?
She could just buy him a nice mechanical one.
In that instant, Jami Gongryun opened his mouth.
"You should have done it faster."
No matter how much had leaked into the air, an unimaginable volume of Qi had still surged through Gong Ryun's body. A quantity of power a Hyeon-gyeong could never experience under normal circumstances.
Qi was meant to flow. The reason martial artists practiced Qi circulation breathing was to send Qi swirling through the body, sweeping through it.
The perforated dantian had created that flow. A one-way current that began at the hands and ended at the dantian. Not the usual circulating loop, but a flow all the same.
It might even be better. Instead of spinning the same Qi around the body again and again, it kept receiving fresh Qi — flow, leak, discard, take in new Qi, flow, leak, discard, over and over. Like chewing something once, wringing out the juice, spitting it out, and repeating.
Jamiseong took hold of that fresh current of Qi piercing the entire body.
With delicate control over the flow, it redesigned the pathways of energy. Like using the force of a running river to reshape the land itself.
A kind of Conception Vessel breakthrough.
The way a master, when teaching a heart method, places a hand on a disciple's dantian and pours power in to develop it.
Jamiseong used the absorbed power as a sacrifice and directly piloted Gong Ryun's body to evolve it.
While Gong Ryun was being slammed around, Jamiseong completed the process.
Ordinarily, external impact would make something like this sensitive and difficult. But a star was a star, even as a fragment. That superior intelligence shone. It was skill on the level of performing surgery while getting hit.
Gong Ryun's body, remodeled entirely to Jamiseong's taste.
So what happened next.
"KHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Jamiseong laughed like a villain.
"I've now become completely familiar with this body. Do you know what that means?"
Jami Gongryun stopped the absorption.
And used a different martial art.
One Gong Ryun did not know.
"Suseo Magong."
A high-tier hand technique that turns the hands into indestructible weapons — and forces the dantian's energy into the enemy.
Power began to pour from his hands.
Suseo Magong was a martial art that drove the cold of the dantian through the hands and into an opponent's body.
The reason it was "cold" was that most practitioners of Suseo Magong were ice-technique specialists who stored cold-natured Qi in their dantians.
In other words, Suseo Magong was a technique for forcibly injecting the dantian's energy into the opponent. Its texture was similar to poison arts.
So what Qi was currently in Gong Ryun's dantian?
Sangongdok's poisonous internal energy invaded the Succubus's body.
One of the highest techniques in the hand-method lineage. Suseo Magong.
Though limited by a Hyeon-gyeong body, he had succeeded in reproducing at least a portion of it.
"Guhhk!!!!!!"
The Succubus took internal damage.
Sangongdok came flooding into her system. It had been decades since she'd last been hit by a poison art.
She could not believe this situation.
What had been going on this whole time. Even with a star possessing him, he was putting out this much power? Had she been too careless? Had she underestimated the star too much?
No. That wasn't it. If possession by a master's spirit produced this kind of performance for just anyone, then Jamiseong — who could generate infinite clones — would already rule the galaxy.
This wasn't the power of software. It was the power of hardware. Hardware that could realize even a fraction of a star's performance. That was what Jamiseong had believed in from the start.
Why had Jamiseong so abruptly decided to take Gong Ryun's body? Because Gong Ryun's body was worth that much. Limited to the hands, but a computer of unlimited performance that could run any software. A star that could be copied.
The Boss instinctively kicked her foot free.
Using Suseo Magong had released Golden Seize.
— THUD-CRASH!!!!!!!!!!
Jami Gongryun was flung away and rolled across the ground.
Gong Ryun was a wreck — but he rose slowly, and with absolute confidence.
"Did I not call it a divine vessel. A body that can use my martial arts."
A martial artist consumed by a conch shell could only use the arts they themselves knew.
Jamiseong's domination did not mean every martial art became usable. That was as absurd as claiming a brain chip could teach martial arts. Impossible.
But this perfect body made it possible.
Even if Gong Ryun did not know Suseo Magong, he could use Suseo Magong.
More precisely, it was "teaching in real time."
Frame by frame, second by second, the martial art was taught inside the mind.
Then Gong Ryun's unconscious learned it.
Possible only for martial arts related to the hands.
And tentacles counted as hands. Tentacles were treated as hands.
It meant a second Jamiseong had been born.
One with a Sangongdok dantian.
For Jamiseong alone, this was the greatest treasure in the galaxy. Truly a Heavenly Demon Sword.
"That was entertaining, Succubus. Now let's see the end of it."
Jami Gongryun, body a ruin, prepared a form.
His body was not whole, and the opponent was Ji-chul-gyeong.
But it was over. This one thing would finish it completely.
Gong Ryun raised a hand. Only one hand.
He extended his fingers.
Like the finger in the painting of the Creation of the World.
One finger aimed, loosely.
"What…….?"
The Succubus stared with a face that had lost all grip on reality.
That stance was the most famous opening form in the galaxy.
The first planet-destroying martial art,
an unstoppable guaranteed-kill technique,
and the martial art that opened the beginning of the Space Heavenly Demon Sect.
The Succubus's voice carried disbelief. That was…
"…Heavenly Demon Finger Flicking Art?"
In the common tongue, they called it the Heavenly Demon Death Beam.
The legacy the First Heavenly Demon left to the Demonic Cult,
the art that once allowed the Demonic Cult to drive the galaxy into terror,
the most certain martial art for killing a star.
Condenses the user's entire life, Qi, and life force into a single point — and fires a devastating beam from a finger, mimicking a supernova.
An impossible miracle was unfolding.