The Heavenly Killing Star's Vision
The red flag in the judge's hand at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering sliced through the air and fluttered hard.
It was the signal that the match had begun.
As the two martial artists closed the distance, the spectator stands began to stir.
"Diamond Fist! Hye Seung!"
"We're counting on you, Shaolin Temple!"
Fists clenched. Excited shouts and cheers poured onto the stage, heat rising with every yell.
Even through that racket, one woman's sharp voice drilled straight into my ear.
"Boss! Booooss!"
Ilhong was cheering for me at the top of her lungs.
Pride and fondness tugged at me; the corner of my mouth twitched up on its own—then the smile melted right back down at the line that followed.
"I put my entire fortune on you, Boss! So you have to! You absolutely must! Win!"
Ilhong had turned into a gambling fiend.
She knew my real skill better than anyone, buried as it was under the nickname, and the absurdly high odds had clearly short-circuited her brain.
"Honestly. They say a late-blooming thief is the scariest."
I shook my head and leveled the tip of my staff at the Shaolin fighter whose shaved scalp gleamed under the light.
The monk answered with a bowed head and pressed palms.
"Namu Amitabha. I look forward to a splendid match."
I was starving for real combat. I needed every scrap of fighting spirit I could scrape together—and of course I drew a monk walking the Buddhist path.
So much for a match that felt like the real thing. My enthusiasm deflated on the spot.
"That is a curiously shaped staff, however. Might I ask its name?"
He had clearly seen past the ordinary exterior to the true worth of the weapon.
Calling it a Dog-Beating Staff would have been the same as announcing I was a Beggar Sect successor, so I already had a temporary name ready.
"Jiokchammabong. The Hell Demon-Slaying Staff."
"...An odd name."
I thought it sounded cool. Everyone else kept calling it strange and bizarre.
Central Plains people really had no sense of romance.
"This humble monk is Hye Seung of the Diamond Fist. Would Benefactor be Young Hero Dan Mujin of the Unchilsamhyeop—the one who captured the Blood-Eating Ghost?"
In the preliminaries, people usually tossed out a brief introduction and started swinging. This monk was weirdly determined to keep flapping his mouth before the fight.
"That's right. Why do you ask?"
"No special reason. Merely that he was a villain this humble monk had been pursuing."
"Ah."
The bastard had done enormous harm not only to martial artists but to ordinary civilians, so it made sense a Shaolin monk would be after him.
"He used heretical arts and stood at the Peak Realm, so capturing him was quite the struggle. How did you force him to submit?"
"We did it the righteous way—three of us jumped him."
"...."
Heretical arts or not, quantity has a quality all its own. People don't grow eyes on the back of their heads; ganging up is still the most efficient way to take a master down.
"Is that not a little underhanded? Three against one, and one of them Peak Realm at that."
"Not really? Why should I fight fair against a bastard who butchered powerless civilians?"
"Hoh."
And I meant every word.
After facing so many scumbags as a troubleshooter, it had hardened into something like an iron rule for me.
"...Did he say anything else before he died? Anything strange?"
"Yeah, well. He ranted about blood arts and some great cause or whatever."
It was exactly the kind of line a shadowy mastermind would drop, so I had remembered it.
The bizarre heretical art of spraying blood around like fertilizer, plus everything else—he hadn't felt like a simple demonic practitioner.
"Did you report that anywhere?"
"Yeah. I told the Myeolmade the moment I handed over the body."
Their reaction had been lukewarm. The clerk probably had no idea what I was talking about.
And me? As long as the coin landed in my pocket, I didn't care what happened next.
"...Is that so?"
The second I answered, the monk's expression turned cold for a fraction of a second.
He began wrapping both hands in a thick, pale aura.
"Young hero, your lips are rather loose."
He slowly lifted his previously bowed head as he spoke.
"Look at the way you're talking. Just call it a strong sense of civic duty."
Something was off about this guy.
In my line of work digging into people, I was good at catching this kind of creepy feeling.
"And this monk does not care for people with loose lips. Rather dislikes them, in fact."
So I immediately flared open the Heavenly Killing Eyes. My head throbbed, but it was the unique vision of the Heavenly Killing Star that laid a person's true nature bare.
"...Hey. Are you actually a real monk?"
Then I saw it clearly with both eyes. The bald monk in front of me was smiling with his face, yet murderous intent was swirling furiously inside his chest.
"Indeed I am. This humble monk is Hye Seung of Shaolin Temple."
On top of that, the karmic weight of slaughter he had piled up over his life was considerable. A horrific stench vibrated so hard it nearly paralyzed my nose.
His face also carried an artificial quality, as if a layer of skin had been pasted on.
Finally, this monk who introduced himself as the Diamond Fist was condensing clear qi on both hands.
Ilhong had told me his realm was only First-class.
"However, against you today, I may have to get a little rough."
His lips twisted coldly. No matter how I looked at it, this did not feel like a friendly spar.
He clenched both fists, thick with fist qi, and launched into a killing technique completely unbefitting a monk.
"Haaat!"
Martial masters, through long training, often reach the peak of their ability to handle qi.
Such people freely manipulated the qi inside their bodies even outside them. Infused into a sword, it became sword qi that sliced steel like tofu. Used for defense, it became protective qi. Blown into a fist, it became fist qi that shattered boulders and crushed iron shields.
Crack!
So perhaps it was only natural that the tip of my Dog-Beating Staff, which had just blocked a Peak Realm expert's fist qi, burst apart like glass.
Until now no blade had ever managed to cut it—but against an opponent who swung qi itself like a weapon, there was nothing to be done.
"Huff, huff."
Blood droplets trickled down my forehead. Scratches left by flying wood splinters.
"Your Hell Demon-Slaying Staff is already half-destroyed."
My poor successor Dog-Beating Staff.
I had carved the characters for Jiokchammabong into it with a dagger, but "Hell Demon-Slaying" had just flown off and left me with plain "Demon Staff."
"Fuck, my Demon Staff!"
Hye Seung smiled thinly and kicked off the ground again, launching fist techniques.
Red trajectories began to be drawn ceaselessly before my eyes.
Outwardly they looked like ordinary straight punches, but I alone perceived the murderous intent and penetrating force packed inside them.
"Heup!"
I dodged every attack by a hair's breadth. I didn't even mind rolling across the floor—I twisted my entire body to evade.
Each time, the ignorant spectators roared with laughter, but I had no energy left to answer them.
As I read the trajectories of the killing intent and executed evasive maneuvers unworthy of my realm, the bastard called Hye Seung stamped the floor in frustration.
"You rat bastard...! Are you just going to keep dodging? If you're a martial artist, stand and fight!"
Easy for him to say.
Martial arts originally meant exchanging the first form, and if that failed, deploying the next. But the moment anything touched me, both weapon and body were blowing apart—how was I supposed to clash head-on?
"Peak Realm is fucking bullshit!"
And why the hell was this guy doing this to me in the first place?
Because I stole his credit first? Or maybe that demonic practitioner turned out to be his secret blood relative?
"Keuk!"
In that moment, while my head was spinning, a lightning-fast kick technique exploded into my side.
A single blow that made my consciousness fade the instant it landed. I had been so focused on his hands that I missed the attack shooting up from below like a swift sword.
"This is the end!"
Then a palm technique pounded my abdomen as if it were the finishing blow.
I rolled all the way to the edge of the arena from the tremendous shock that pierced my entire body and vomited blood.
The moment that violent energy, capable of shattering rock, struck my body twice—
"Huff, finally dead..."
"Grrk, fuck."
So this is what they mean by hovering between life and death.
I felt the breath that had been blocked finally return, one sip at a time, after dozens of seconds.
"That... fucking hurt, you bastard."
I shook my head hard and rose again from the edge of the arena stage.
The spectators who had already decided it was over, along with the so-called murder monk, gaped with open mouths.
"You.... How did you stand up? That blow just now would have dropped a bear in one hit."
He meant that the secretly injected penetrating force should have pulverized my organs—staying alive made no sense?
But I had already been hit by something similar, and even survived falling off a cliff in that state.
Of course I had no intention of answering him honestly.
"Hey, is that what your Buddha teaches? To beat people to death on the arena stage?"
At my provocation, thick veins rose across the gleaming shaved head of the murder monk.
But that last hit really had felt like I had dipped a toe into the underworld and come back.
A few more of those fist techniques and even I wouldn't be getting up again.
And perhaps that sense of crisis awakened the dormant nature of the Heavenly Killing Star—
Above the pure white surging energy of the Star Cloud Divine Art, the power of the Heavenly Killing Star began to rise as well.
Not just red trajectories—this sensation of my entire field of vision being dyed with red paint.
"What are these things?"
What is qi in this world?
It is the origin of life, the medium that resonates with all things under heaven and earth.
Yet because it cannot be seen with the eyes, touched with the hands, or heard with the ears, everyone yearns for it and spends their entire lives trying to understand it.
But today, with death right before my eyes, as the Heavenly Killing Star overlapped with my vision, for some reason—
I began to vaguely perceive the existence and flow of that qi which should not be seen.
The small clue of enlightenment I had gained when awakening Jo Harang to the Peak Realm now felt truly right in front of my nose.
One thing was certain: my destiny was to grow stronger only by fighting for my life.
"Hey. That penetrating whatever from earlier. Hit me with one more."
At my taunt, the bastard's face twisted hard.
He glared at me with eyes flashing with murderous light.
"I was going to disguise it as an accidental death during a spar... but that won't do. This seat shall open the Killing Realm today."
Suddenly he was calling himself "this seat." I had felt it with the Soul-Seizing Demon Lord too—not a single person who uses that word is normal.
"I shall kill you!"
He coated both fists with blood-red energy like gore and charged at me.
Then the movement of qi became clearly visible. I read with my eyes every flow of qi that traveled from his dantian and overlaid his fists.
I had always wondered about the principle whenever I instinctively learned martial arts after getting beaten by Hwang Geolgae.
Was the Heavenly Killing Star looking into this kind of vision every time?
Different from me.
The Peak Realm expert displayed the movement of qi as bare as his face.
I observed that movement, chewed on it, and then reverse-engineered it to unfold with my own body.
And the result—
Thwack—!
My half-staff blocked the terrifying momentum of the fist qi head-on.
"What...?!"
"Ah, that's the one I saw under the moon that night."
A single technique that flowed smooth as water and perfectly stopped a domineering attack.
Jo Harang recognized the method she had seen beneath the starlight at a glance and let out a short gasp of admiration.
Then Dan Mujin, who had been on the defensive, seemed to grasp something and began driving the Peak Realm expert back.
Excitement erupted from the spectator stands at the reversal and counterattack.
"That's it, Boss! I believed in you! I'm rich now!"
Ilhong, who had been nervously biting her nails moments ago, now cheered as if she had believed from the start.
"Hahat! Young Hero Ilhong was right! That one's a real piece of work!"
Beside her, Clan Leader Jo and his party, who had bet on someone they knew and hit the jackpot, were shouting with joy.
And there was someone cheering harder than anyone even though he hadn't bet a single coin.
"Kheup! As expected, the Dragon Head Sect Leader never abandoned our Beggar Sect. To think he would discover and send us such a priceless talent!"
The man who had been suspiciously following Dan Mujin around throughout the escort.
At the sight of him even shedding a tear of joy, Jo Harang flinched.
"Who the hell is that uncle......"