The Tragedy of That Day
Kang Hyun watched the kid’s back as he bolted out, promising to report the request for a professorship right away, then tipped the rest of the whiskey down his throat.
Gulp, gulp!
“Haaah.”
The harsh alcohol scorched its way down his esophagus, dulling the stabbing pain in his dantian just enough to make it bearable.
They have no idea.
Why he reached for the bottle. Why he lived like a wreck.
Asura’s toxic qi.
To explain that, he had to go back to the day of that horrific tragedy twenty years ago.
Thirteen years old, abandoned at an orphanage. Without warning, a dimensional gate yawned open in front of young Kang Hyun.
When he came to his senses, he stood in Murim—a world crawling with sword-wielding lunatics who lived by the blade.
A place where turning your head meant watching severed necks roll across the dirt. Steal a rice ball because you were starving and they chopped off your wrist. Beg for your life and they cut your throat for sport. A brutal neighborhood.
My dream was simple.
I want to live. I want to survive and go home.
Whether luck was good or bad, the ones who snatched him up by the scruff while he crouched trembling on the roadside were a pack of eccentric old men.
“Kwahaha! You’re here! The Heavenly Martial Physique!”
“He even carries the Heavenly Martial Star, born under heaven’s martial fortune! This child can summon the Heavenly God!”
They whooped with joy and dragged Kang Hyun into a cave deep in the layered mountains.
Hell began that day.
They called it training. From Kang Hyun’s perspective it was pure torture. And every last one of them was unhinged.
A sword maniac. A man who had poured his entire life into a single palm technique. A physician who treated human bodies like sacks of medicinal ingredients. Strip away the martial arts and they were all madmen.
Still, thanks to them his skill skyrocketed at a terrifying pace.
Sword arts, footwork, internal energy methods, medicine, sound arts, palm techniques, formations—honestly, it felt like he had learned every martial discipline a human being could possibly master.
Fall short of their standards even a little? They beat him until bones broke.
Kang Hyun had no idea why. He simply learned with savage desperation just to stay alive.
One of the old men even deployed a bizarre art that warped the flow of time, stretching a single day outside into four days inside the cave. Claiming they had no time, they threw Kang Hyun into the heart of that formation and forced him to devour every martial art they knew.
Only after years had passed did he understand.
Even if the Blood Cult, the Demonic Cult, and the Murim Alliance all gathered together, they could not defeat a single one of the old men standing before him.
Those absolute powerhouses had a favorite refrain for Kang Hyun:
“You must summon the Heavenly God into your body atop the formation we lay.”
“Only then can we stop the Demon God Asura who is about to descend.”
Twenty years passed.
And just as they had prophesied, the sky tore open in crimson and the Demon God Asura descended.
The world felt like it was collapsing. No—half of Murim was literally reduced to dust.
The seven old men immediately raised their formation. Kang Hyun coughed blood and circulated the Cheonsingyeong exactly as he had been taught.
The Cheonsingyeong was a forbidden martial art that melted every discipline of Murim into one and drew down the power of the Heavenly God. That was why the old men had driven him like a beast and taught him with such manic intensity.
To save the world—no, simply to live—Kang Hyun wrenched every scrap of energy upward and fought that monster for a full month.
The heavens split. The earth screamed. Even those mighty old men fell one by one, vomiting blood.
“Don’t stop!”
“Pierce its heart!”
Their desperate final cries shoved him forward from behind. Stepping over the sacrifice of his seven masters, he unleashed a single strike that contained the pure essence of every martial art he had ever learned.
KRAAAAAANG!
A roar that seemed to erase every sound in the world. The energy in Kang Hyun’s hand punched clean through the Demon God Asura’s heart.
“KRAAAAAAAAH!”
The catastrophe that had seemed unbreakable staggered, spewing blood. But it did not die quietly.
“You.”
An unpleasant metallic voice leaked between its lips.
“These lowly insects dared to drag in a being from another world.”
Asura threw its head back in mad laughter and seized Kang Hyun’s arm. At the same instant, the lethal poison bursting from its heart snaked into his dantian like a serpent.
“Wait for me. I am the incarnation of vengeance. My legions… will force their way into your world no matter what.”
Hissssss!
With that ominous curse, the Demon God vanished without a trace.
That was the end.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the blue sky of the Republic of Korea he had left twenty years earlier.
What I saw then was just a garden snake.
Something called Leviathan. Compared to Asura it was an earthworm, so he popped it with a single gesture.
That was why the government had handed him a house and kept delivering booze of their own accord.
Honestly, it left a bitter taste.
He had thought returning would make him happy. Earth, the place he had dreamed of. His modest dream had been to never work a day in his life, eat whatever he wanted, and roll around reading webtoons.
Reality, however…
Damn it.
Asura’s poison still gnawed relentlessly at his life force, and now he also had to prepare for Asura’s eventual return.
Just when I thought I could finally live my own life…
They wanted him to fight that nightmare again. The one silver lining was that the Cheonsingyeong that could wreck the thing already lived in his head.
The problem was the prerequisite: the Chilyojin, the Seven Star Array. The old men who could cast it were gone. It had to be laid by others.
That was why he wanted to go to the Academy.
I can’t stop it alone. I need talent that can replace the old men.
A month of research on the phone the government had given him showed that the place where the most talent gathered was that academy.
It’s almost funny.
He had broken bones and coughed blood learning just to survive, and now the roles were reversed—he was fated to teach others until they nearly died.
Honestly, the worry was mountain-high. He had no social skills and had never formed a proper relationship with anyone. After twenty years of nothing but beatings from old men, how was he supposed to have learned that?
Those geezers hadn’t raised Kang Hyun as a person. They had forged him into a blade meant to be driven into Asura’s heart. Thanks to that, his martial arts were second to none.
By the end even those old men couldn’t match me, so that says it all.
And he had killed a lot of people. Too many. He had walked the martial world several times to broaden his knowledge of every art, and he had left not a single one of the bastards who tried to kill him alive.
With humanity this dried-out, he was supposed to teach someone?
Kang Hyun let out a hollow snort, rolled the empty whiskey bottle carelessly across the floor, and sank deep into the sofa.
Ah, whatever.
What did that matter? First he had to stop that damned Asura. Otherwise the place he needed to eat and live would be gone.
He closed his eyes calmly. The pain in his dantian still had not faded.
Outside the safe house, Lee Se-ah hurriedly pulled out her smartphone and hit the call button. Direct line to the Director.
“Ah, Agent Lee. How did it go?”
“Director. Black set a condition.”
“A condition? He set a condition?”
Color flooded Kim Hyung-seok’s voice. No wonder—until now Black had refused all communication.
“Aigoo, he finally opened his mouth! So? What does he want? Money? Identity laundering? Or maybe he wants us to set him up with a distillery?”
“Well… he wants to be placed in the National Academy.”
“What?”
“As a professor.”
“A professor? Why suddenly a professorship? Is he drunk?”
“…”
He did seem drunk. He had complained of a headache and had emptied an entire bottle of whiskey.
“Hmm. Even if Black’s skill is the real deal, a professor is a different matter… Honestly he’s an alcoholic. Control will be difficult.”
The National Academy gathered the absolute elite of South Korea. Children of chaebol families, the prime minister, masters of major guilds—they swarmed the place. What would happen if a drunkard walked in was obvious without looking.
“There isn’t even an open slot, is there?”
“Correct. For the twentieth anniversary they locked in the entire faculty lineup ages ago. It’s already been in the press.”
A brief silence.
“Should we just refuse?”
“Hold on. Agent Lee, why so hasty?”
A groan of consideration followed. The risk was large, but the situation was equally attractive.
“Haa, fine. If Black is asking, we make a seat even if one doesn’t exist. Agent Lee, I’ll handle it somehow—tell Black we accept. But nail down that he has to take care of the Leviathan corpse in the East Sea.”
“Yes, sir!”
Click!
When Lee Se-ah came back in, Kang Hyun opened his eyes.
“Did they accept?”
“They did. On the condition that you dispose of the Leviathan corpse floating in the East Sea. Is that all right?”
“Leviathan? That garden snake from before? There’s still a corpse?”
“Yes.”
“Guide me.”
It was simple work, so he headed straight outside. After about two hours in Lee Se-ah’s car, the coastal waters of the East Sea came into view.
“Ugh!”
Association staff controlling the scene were wearing gas masks and protective suits, dry-heaving.
When he reached for the car door, Lee Se-ah hurriedly stopped him.
“Um, Mr. Kang Hyun.”
“Yeah.”
“You absolutely must not approach bare-skinned. Even S-rank hunter Yoon Tae-seong got close and his skin melted—”
“Wait here.”
“M-Mr. Kang Hyun?”
Lee Se-ah cried out urgently, but he ignored her and stepped out.
This is poison?
A snort escaped him. One thing he could thank the old geezers for was that poison no longer felt like poison. He might not be completely immune to all toxins, but he had resistance to most of them—and compared to Asura’s venom, this stuff was practically refreshing.
Ssshk.
Walking across the sea as if on solid ground, Kang Hyun looked down at the mountain-sized corpse of Leviathan.
“Rotten to the core.”
No grand martial art was needed. He simply drew a handful of the energy knotted in his dantian and gathered it in his palm.
Flames bloomed in his palm.
He threw it. Moments later the corpse vanished cleanly, leaving not even ash behind.
Then it happened. From the empty air where the corpse had been, a small cluster of light sparkled and fell.
This is…?
He drew it through the void. An old manual settled into his hand.
◈ First-rate footwork technique
◈ Upper volume of the three-part series
Kill a monster and a martial manual drops?
It was written in classical Chinese characters, but he could read it easily enough.
I know this art.
It had existed in the Murim he once lived in. A first-rate footwork technique practiced by those with decent talent. Divided into upper, middle, and lower volumes—this was the first. Of course Kang Hyun had already mastered it to perfection. How long had full mastery taken him? About two days?
He approached with the manual in hand. The kid came running.
“Are you all right?”
She was still trying to calm her racing heart.
“I should be the one asking you that. You okay?”
“I think I need a moment to collect myself. Hoo… hoo!”
A quick glance around showed the place in complete chaos. The corpse that had been impossible to dispose of had vanished in an instant, so confusion was inevitable.
“Not coming?”
“I should… wait, what’s that book? Don’t tell me—”
Her eyes went round as rabbits’ when she saw the characters written on it.
“A-a secret manual?”
“Looks like it.”
“Congratulations!”
“For what.”
Whoosh!
Kang Hyun tossed the manual to the kid.
“Take it.”
“Wh-what?”
Lee Se-ah caught the secret manual by reflex, mouth hanging open. In this industry a single secret manual was enough to buy a building in Gangnam.
“N-no! I-I didn’t ask for it! If you just register it with the Association the ownership stays entirely with you, Mr. Kang Hyun…!”
“Enough.”
Kang Hyun waved a hand as if it were a bother and turned on his heel.
“Call it even for a month of freeloading in an expensive house and all the booze.”
“Th-that’s…”
Lee Se-ah wore an expression of pure disbelief.
“What hunter in the world pays rent with a secret manual?”
“If you’re really grateful, just buy me more whiskey. The good stuff.”