The Black Demon Gang's Demise
As the members of the Black Wind Squad began entering the Haedong Merchant Group, even Yi Sang-woo—the group's Supreme Leader—could no longer afford to sit idle.
“Escorts are different from ordinary martial artists,” he told them.
He spoke at length about the duties of an escort, the principles they must uphold, and the proper way to deal with people.
“An escort is the face of their merchant group. That’s why, whenever an escort behaves improperly, the leader of the group must always take responsibility.”
“We will keep that in mind.”
In the mornings, the Black Wind Squad climbed the mountain to train in the Nine Hell Forms that Cheonhwa had given them. During the late morning, they studied and practiced everything an escort of the merchant group needed to know.
In the afternoons, they were given personal time, but the squad members used even that to train in martial arts.
Yi Sang-woo provided them with a separate residence so they could practice comfortably, and in its courtyard, they could train without worrying about prying eyes.
Cheonhwa was equally busy. He spent his mornings training the Black Wind Squad, the late mornings teaching the children, and the afternoons instructing the New Wind Squad.
At night, he gathered information from the Haomun and raided secret smuggling sites, art dealings, and antique transactions connected to the Jiangsu merchant groups. He also drained their funds at gambling dens, slowly irritating their nerves. The results were proving far more effective than expected.
“It’s that young bastard.”
In the darkness, several men watched Cheonhwa as he left a gambling house and spoke among themselves.
“Upon investigation, that young bastard turned out to be the escort warrior the Baemyeong Merchant Group mentioned.”
“Really? Then if we take care of him, we can fulfill both the request from Wolyeongmun and the one from Baemyeong Merchant Group at the same time?”
“That’s correct, Hall Leader.”
The men watching Cheonhwa from the shadows were warriors from the Black Demon Gang, a heretical sect that had established itself in Jiangsu Province.
The Black Demon Gang was a second-rate sect. Only their leader, Seok Bong-man, had reached first-rate, while the vice leader, hall leaders, and regular warriors were second-rate or third-rate.
“Then finish this quickly and send his corpse to the Baemyeong Merchant Group.”
“Understood.”
Cheonhwa was walking down the street when they emerged from the darkness and moved behind him.
They charged forward, thrusting their swords straight at his heart.
Cheonhwa stepped sideways as if he had eyes in the back of his head, easily dodging the blade aimed at him from behind.
As the attacker, unable to stop his momentum, rushed past Cheonhwa’s side, a faint clicking sound echoed in the air.
The man who had charged past him suddenly collapsed and never rose again.
Cheonhwa turned around slowly with a relaxed expression and looked at the people standing behind him.
“Have you finished discussing your little conspiracy?”
Upon hearing his words, they realized their plan had been exposed and exchanged glances.
“I was starting to get a crick in my neck from waiting.”
Cheonhwa had been listening to their whispered conversation in the dark and waiting for them to make their move.
“Kill him!”
The warriors of the Black Demon Gang charged at Cheonhwa all at once. Knowing he was a trained martial artist, they intended to overwhelm him together, crush his momentum, and then kill him. But when Cheonhwa saw their approach, he simply grinned.
Srrrrng!
The clear sound of a blade leaving its sheath rang through the darkness. The pure white sword body created the illusion that it was emitting its own light.
Cheonhwa slipped into the midst of those rushing toward him and moved his sword.
His movements were as smooth and natural as a flowing river, without the slightest obstruction.
Like water slipping through, he simply passed between them.
Slice… Slice… Slice…
In the silence, only the sound of flesh being cut could be heard. No screams followed.
By the time Cheonhwa had passed through all of them and stood before Yeok So, the hall leader of the Black Demon Gang, not a single one of the gang’s warriors remained standing on the road.
“Where did you come from?” Cheonhwa asked.
Yeok So felt a chill run down his spine.
In all his years operating in the murim, he had never encountered anything like this. Even though he was only a second-rate warrior and didn’t fully understand the aura of true experts or their battles, his body instinctively realized that the person before him was an opponent far beyond what he—or the entire Black Demon Gang—could handle.
He knew that lying to such an opponent would only bring him more pain.
“We are from the Black Demon Gang.”
“Ah, the Black Demon Gang! That heretical sect in Jiangsu Province, right? So Wolyeongmun ordered you to kill me.”
“That is correct.”
There was no coercion in his voice, yet Yeok So answered like a docile lamb.
“But why does Wolyeongmun want me dead?”
“That is something we cannot know. We are merely in the position of subordinates. We simply carry out orders from above. We have no right to choose.”
“I see. Still, I heard that the Baemyeong Merchant Group also ordered my death.”
“The second son of the Baemyeong Merchant Group, Bae Jae-man, suffered a humiliating defeat at the Wulin Alliance… his teeth were completely shattered by the young master…”
Only then did Cheonhwa recall Bae Jae-man’s face. He nodded.
“So that’s how it is. Thank you for telling the truth. Now you may die comfortably.”
As soon as Cheonhwa finished speaking, Yeok So—looking as if he had fallen under a soul-stealing technique—slammed both palms violently against his own temples and ended his own life.
Cheonhwa stared down at the dead men for a moment, then sighed and dragged all the bodies to one side.
“Contact Haomun and have them clean this up. After we destroy the Black Demon Gang, we’ll see what kind of reaction comes from it. I hope they don’t disappoint me.”
BOOOOM!
At dawn, when even the starlight seemed to hold its breath, a massive explosion tore through the air. The main gate of a large residence was blasted into pieces and scattered in every direction.
The plaque above the gate that read Black Demon Gang fell to the ground, shattered into fragments, and rolled across the dirt.
A young man stepped into the residence and slowly looked around. Startled by the sudden commotion, the warriors of the Black Demon Gang rushed out into the courtyard one by one and stared at the intruder with wary eyes.
“Who are you!”
“Good morning, everyone. Sorry for visiting so early and causing a disturbance. My name is Cheonhwa.”
Cheonhwa spoke as casually as a neighbor who had moved in next door and was handing out rice cakes. The warriors of the Black Demon Gang frowned at his relaxed demeanor.
They exchanged glances and whispered among themselves. They seemed to be asking whether the uninvited guest had any companions, but clearly, only one person stood in the courtyard.
“Why are you causing such a ruckus here?”
“A little while ago, some people came to kill me. They said they were from here. They claimed they had accepted a request from Wolyeongmun to kill me.”
At those words, the warriors flinched.
“What about them?”
“I killed them all. I’m not kind enough to spare people who point swords at me. My father always told me the same thing. But since none of you have drawn your swords yet, I’ll spare your lives for now.”
Saying he had killed people with such a bright smile left the Black Demon Gang warriors unable to tell whether they should believe him.
“It’s true, but it looks like you don’t believe me. Well, I suppose there’s nothing I can do about that.”
The warriors even began to wonder if he was insane.
“By the way, I don’t see your leader anywhere.”
The moment Cheonhwa finished speaking, three men walked out from behind the crowd—the leader, vice leader, and an elder of the Black Demon Gang.
“Who are you to come here and cause such a disturbance?”
When Nam Hong, the leader of the Black Demon Gang, asked, Cheonhwa introduced himself once again.
“The people who came to kill me said they had accepted requests from both Wolyeongmun and the Baemyeong Merchant Group. So I came to visit. You must be the leader.”
“What? Then what about them?”
“You’re making me repeat myself. I killed them all. Do you usually spare people who come to kill you, mister?”
His playful tone made them doubt their ears.
“And please don’t feel too wronged. I’ll be sending Wolyeongmun and the Baemyeong Merchant Group to join you soon. It’ll just take a little more time.”
“This madman. Get rid of him.”
At his command, the warriors of the Black Demon Gang drew their swords.
“I already told you. I don’t spare those who point their swords at me.”
At that moment, Cheonhwa’s aura changed, but unfortunately, none of them had the keen senses to notice it.
“You arrogant brat!”
One warrior swung his sword at Cheonhwa.
It was the form Horizontal Sweep Across the Sky, a technique every martial artist knew.
Cheonhwa drew the sword at his left hip and blocked the blade aimed at his waist.
Clang!
Sparks flew as the two swords collided. Immediately afterward, a scream erupted from the attacker’s mouth.
“Aaaargh!”
Cheonhwa’s sword had already sliced through the man’s chest.
If the sword hanging at Cheonhwa’s right hip was the Baekma Sword—one of the Demonic Cult’s sacred artifacts—then the sword at his left hip was the Wolgwang Sword, the blade that symbolized Yi Hwarin, the former Great Princess of the Wulin Alliance and the Divine Sword of Heaven.
It was said that the Wolgwang Sword would glow on its own beneath moonlight, but on this predawn hour when even the moonlight was swallowed by deep darkness, it looked like an ordinary blade to everyone’s eyes.
Having witnessed their comrade’s death, the warriors of the Black Demon Gang charged at Cheonhwa all at once.
A powerful vortex of energy surged around Cheonhwa, enveloping his entire body. With a thunderous BOOM, it sent the charging warriors flying as if they had been repelled.
“Ugh!”
The force was so overwhelming that the warriors couldn’t regain their balance. They flew in every direction and crashed to the ground, each of them coughing up a mouthful of blood from severe internal injuries.
Nam Hong, the leader of the Black Demon Gang, watched with wide, shocked eyes. The vice leader and elder beside him also stared back and forth between Cheonhwa and their fallen subordinates in disbelief.
“I suppose I look too young. None of you martial artists seem to be on guard at all. The murim people my father and mother told me about weren’t like this.”
Cheonhwa moved his sword.
“Huuuuh!”
Nam Hong collapsed to the ground in shock, while the two men beside him hurriedly tried to move.
Shiiiiing!
A sharp cutting sound rang out, followed by a powerful surge of energy that seemed to brush over their heads. Their heads instinctively turned backward.
Crack!
The building behind them could not withstand the force of Cheonhwa’s swing and collapsed completely.
“Hah… hah…”
The warriors of the Black Demon Gang who witnessed this finally realized they had chosen the wrong opponent.
“How can someone like you…”
Destroying a building with sword energy was no easy feat. To topple an entire structure with a single strike meant the young man before them was far from ordinary.
A master who has returned to youth…
While Nam Hong was thinking this, Cheonhwa moved toward the vice leader and elder who had dodged to the side.
His figure moving through the darkness was like a ghost.
“Gh… ghost…”
Watching Cheonhwa’s movements, Nam Hong recalled a master from the unorthodox faction who had disappeared three hundred years ago.
No, that can’t be. How could a person live for three hundred years?
The master had already been quite old when he vanished. Most in the murim believed he had sensed his own death approaching and gone to some unknown place to pass away quietly.
“Ugh!”
While Nam Hong was lost in thought, the elder sprayed blood and collapsed.
“Spare me!”
Nam San—the vice leader of the Black Demon Gang and Nam Hong’s younger brother—begged for his life as Cheonhwa approached. But Cheonhwa simply swung his sword down.
Nam San couldn’t even scream. He collapsed, spraying blood.
“You vicious bastard!”
Seeing this, Nam Hong roared at Cheonhwa in fury. Cheonhwa simply replied indifferently.
“That’s strange. Don’t you do the same when you target someone else’s life?”
Nam Hong was rendered speechless.
“And when you aim for someone’s life, have you never considered that you might be the one who ends up dying by bad luck? People get cut by rusty blades or stray swords and die all the time. Have you really never experienced that before?”
“Aren’t you a master we cannot possibly handle?”
“What does gender, age, master, or beginner matter when it comes to killing? If someone tries to kill me, shouldn’t I kill them to survive? Do masters have to just stand there and let beginners swing at them every time?”
“Y-you…”
“You’ve lived that way all this time, yet you ask me for mercy? There’s no reason why it should be allowed for you but not for me. Besides, you were the ones who targeted my life first. I didn’t come after you first.”
Even as he spoke, Cheonhwa went around killing the injured warriors of the Black Demon Gang one by one.
“Stop… stop it!”
Watching the scene, Nam Hong shouted for him to stop, but Cheonhwa continued killing the fallen warriors without pause.
After killing every last one of them, he finally approached the seated Nam Hong.
“How can you kill people who can’t even resist…”
“Have you never killed people who couldn’t resist? Resistance doesn’t only apply to those who can’t move. You’ve spent your lives tormenting the weak, taking what belonged to them. Did they ever resist you?”
Nam Hong trembled with rage at Cheonhwa’s words.
“I’m sure you laughed and mocked them when they cried and begged for their lives, when they pleaded for you to let them go just this once. You humiliated them, didn’t you?”
“Y-you…”
“You shouldn’t be angry. This is exactly what you’ve been doing all along. The only difference today is that someone slightly stronger than you is killing the warriors of the Black Demon Gang. Isn’t that right?”
Nam Hong could say nothing.
“They say the winner of a war claims the spoils.”
Nam Hong looked at Cheonhwa.
“From today onward, I will take control of all the Black Demon Gang’s assets and businesses.”
“You…”
As Nam Hong tried to speak, he saw Cheonhwa’s sword begin to glow on its own.
“W-Wolgwang… Sword…”
A streak of light fell upon his head. Contrary to his thoughts, the world turned to darkness.
“I’ll be returning to my maternal family. Begin absorbing the Black Demon Gang’s assets. And please take care of cleaning up the surroundings.”
As Cheonhwa’s figure vanished like smoke, more than twenty people appeared in the courtyard of the Black Demon Gang.