Nothing Happened
Both hands thrust out past the chest. Like a tiger cresting a mountain ridge in a single unbroken line, the muscles of the legs drew taut, ready to spring at any instant.
A fierce-beast martial art, devised after beholding the majesty of the valiant Mountain Lord—the tiger.
The Fierce Tiger Fist.
Holding the Fierce Tiger Fist's opening stance, Bonjwa met those red glares with haughty defiance.
This was the cradle of the finest external arts in all the murim and gangho—and, at the same time, a gathering den of thuggish monks who, holy men though they claimed to be, made a habit of beating people half to death. The essence of the orthodox Shaolin fist ran molten through the Fierce Tiger Fist. Its core lay in being an external art that honed a direct, destructive hard fist, yes—but that was not the whole of it.
The Fierce Tiger Fist was the tiger's forepaw. And the tiger was a beast of the cat family. Was it not famous, since time immemorial, that the rat's natural enemy—no, its hunter—was the cat! Natural enemy was far too modest a word; this was the relationship of predator and prey. That the Kitty-Cat Fist... no, the Fierce Tiger Fist, would prove devastating against rat bastards was attested even in the ancient chronicles and the old combat paintings...!
"Jjik, jjijijik..."
"Jjik-jjik."
I had no idea what they were saying. With low, growling cries, the ratmen sank into their stances. Having passed through countless battles, Bonjwa knew exactly what that wavering meant.
"...Heh."
A gale of blood, proud and unyielding.
Bonjwa flashed the ratmen a faint, crooked sneer. Nearly ten of them, pressing their advantage in numbers to surround Bonjwa alone, weapons leveled—but the moment they laid eyes on the Fierce Tiger Fist, they had passed mere wariness and were growing afraid, little by little! Had something in that opening stance—the image of a tiger a heartbeat before it pounced—struck a chord in them? Truly excellent instincts, befitting such cowardly rat bastards.
"KIIIIEEK!!!"
Then—from among the ratmen, a figure half again as large as the rest stepped forward with a wail. A rat's face, carved with a single scar slashing across the eye. Unlike real rats, ratmen had faces and features that leaned toward the almost cute, but this one's vicious appearance matched nothing around it, and anyone could see he meant to prove himself the leader of the pack. When the scarred one barked a rough command, the ratmen tightened their grips on their weapons, tension flickering across their faces.
"...Ngh."
Before I knew it, I was staggering back a step, cold sweat beading on my forehead. This was going to be no easy fight. That was what I thought, looking at the weapons in the ratmen's hands. They looked like crude junk, a jumble of shoddy swords and spears—but not one among them was anything less than a vicious demon blade...! Blades of some metal, iron or who knew what, impossible to identify. They seemed dull, their edges worn blunt, yet rust bloomed across them in patches, discoloring in real time.
Yes. This was...!
If it so much as grazes me... tetanus...!
A demon blade of disease, through and through. As if afraid anyone would dare claim they weren't rats, they had gone and enchanted their very weapons with disease damage. Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. I had, to be fair, received a tetanus shot as a child—but whether that shot still counted after this body had been remade into a girl's, I couldn't say for the life of me. My little sister Se-ah had dragged me to Rachel Lee for this vaccine and that, it was true, but I fainted the instant I laid eyes on a needle, every single time, so honestly I had no idea which shots I had actually received. That was the problem.
"Jjik, jjik-jjik."
Seeing me waver, and as if to repay the sneer from before, a crooked smile crept across the scarred ratman's muzzle as well. Drawing weapons against a bare-handed opponent was shameless enough—but demon blades of tetanus, on top of that? Truly a vile choice of armament, befitting rat-headed bastards...!
But. Losing here, of all things, was absolutely unforgivable. The humiliations and disgraces I had endured flashed through my mind, and I could feel the blood flooding my face, burning it scarlet. What indignities had Bonjwa—the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, greatest under heaven—suffered at the paws of a creature called a rat...!
"No newborn could be lying in a place like this, so at best it's some rat bastard scurrying through the alleys."
"What did I say? A rat, just as expected."
The one who had entered me into his kill ledger. That unidentified man in sunglasses, who had rated my combat power as that of a newborn, of all things...!
An unorthodox murim practitioner will use any means and every method to survive—and to win. And not only the unorthodox: for one standing at the crossroads of life and death, the road of survival has no high road or low. And yet that day, Bonjwa—
"...Jjik, jjik-jjik!"
FWOOOOSH!
Responding to Bonjwa's fury, the Forged Blood Art's qi surged, spread through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and spewed out yang-force qi hot as flame. Yang-force qi, by its nature, blazes hot when charged with yang energy. And this was yang-force power—so it was absolutely, positively not that Bonjwa was burning up from embarrassment...!
KUUUUNG!
A seismic stomp landed at full power, bursting the dirt into dust as if to shake the vast earth itself, and through the coiling twist of muscles wound tight as springs, the spiraling force traveled up along the blood vessels as its channel and into the upper body.
"Bonjwa...!"
The Fierce Tiger Fist. An external art, yes, but an ascending fist method that could draw on internal power once trained deeply enough. Granted, my Forged Blood Art was still too shallow to manage the internal-weighted strike that punches through the outer skin to batter the body's interior. So: not internal power—external. External alone would suffice. My meager Forged Blood Art would patch the shortfall in muscular elasticity, and that much was possible: bringing out the foundation of all ascending martial arts, fa jin, the explosive release of power. The spiral tension rising from my legs rode up through the torso, poured into the arms, and stretched out through my fists into the empty air.
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. In place of the tiger-roar acoustics meant to focus power, I unleashed a roar of pure rage, every ounce of body and mind behind it!
"Bonjwa is not... the Blood Mouse...!!!"
Vortex Tiger Rapid Strike
The wind drifting through the air tore open, a savage whirlwind rose, and a single punch bored through the empty space in one breath. The ratmen, seeing me attempt something, hurried to rush in with their weapons raised—
"Kit, kiiiik!"
"Jjik-jjik-jjik!"
At the sound of tearing wind, the red glares warped with shock, and the Vortex Tiger Rapid Strike, launched with the full tension of fa jin behind it, cut down every last ratman in an instant like vermin blasted from a firecracker...!
Thud. Thud. THUUUUD!
The footfalls of a giant bear.
"...Hik!"
"Jjik, jji-i-i-ik!"
The Two-Faced Gentleman's Steps, at full power...!
Shshshshshk!
The fist punching forward flipped straight down and became a forepaw, and I kicked off the ground on all fours, bolting in a single burst. And then—there was only a brief clatter of footsteps, and nothing happened.
Shshshshshk — tk.
"........."
"........."
Our eyes met. From a short distance away—and dead ahead, at that. The same eye level. The same shade of red eyes. The rusted weapons had slipped from their owners' hands at some point and lay rolling on the ground, and there on the filthy dirt, front paws and hind paws, all four planted firm—the ratmen, who had been about to flee on all fours in the opposite direction of those footsteps, and Bonjwa, counter-charging at the enemy in the exact same posture, had ended up locking eyes, face to face.
"........."
".........Jjik, jjik-jjik."
An uncomfortable silence, so heavy it felt as though an eternity had slipped past. Unable even to think of breaking that silence, which had slowed time itself to a crawl, I looked up at the sky. Perhaps because my stance was so low, the indigo sky looked bluer than ever today, the drifting clouds beautiful. And then—my eyes met, once more, with the big scarred ratman, who had been gazing blankly at the sky in the very same pose.
"...Ahem."
"...Jjik-jjik!"
Awkwardly, I scratched at my sweat-damp neck and my burning head for no good reason. The ratmen shuffled back up onto two legs one by one and retrieved the weapons they had flung to the ground, and Bonjwa, with perfect nonchalance, reset the stance of the Fierce Tiger Fist's Vortex Tiger Rapid Strike. I couldn't understand a word from the squeaking alone—but in that moment, eyes locked, with a slow and solemn nod, the hearts of the ratmen and of Bonjwa, the Blood Demon Cheon Yujin, became one.
"Bonjwa...!"
Bonjwa drew the Forged Blood Art higher, coiled its heat roughly about me, and stamped down a seismic stomp. The ratmen waited, patient, for me to finish the stomp and ready the Vortex Tiger Rapid Strike. It might have felt like déjà vu, a scene seen once before—but in any case, that is a delusion. Nothing more than a delusion. Yes. Just now, nothing... happened!
"Bonjwa is not... the Blood Mouse...!"
The whirlwind fist stretched out, and the instant it collided head-on with the weapon-swinging ratmen—!
GRUUUOOOAAAR!!!
The dense woods snapped as pitifully as so many sorghum stalks, and with a KWAANG!, a bloodstained forepaw swinging through the air, a giant bear so colossal that Bonjwa and every ratman stacked together could scarcely have met its gaze came crashing into the fight.
"Ssshit...!"
"Jjik, jjik-jjik!"
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. Bonjwa despises a bear crashing a duel...!
Shshshshshk—the moment the giant bear burst in, splintering trees, I was already running the forms of the Two-Faced Gentleman's Steps, counter-charging. The Forged Blood Art's qi was shielding my hands, so even scrambling on all fours across dirt strewn with jutting stone and gravel didn't hurt—and yet why did something blurry keep welling into my lowered field of vision?
"...Sniff."
Then, glancing sideways, I saw it: like reflections in a mirror, the ratmen were sprinting in the exact same posture. And so Bonjwa could smile.
"Heh."
My gaze met the ratmen's, and understanding passed between us. ...Well. Nothing for it.
"—A temporary alliance. Just this once."
"Jjik, jjik-jjik!"
And so it was.
The Ratmen. The Red Heart Clan. Ratmen born with black fur and crimson eyes. Among a people among whom no true warrior had ever existed, he alone had been born with a warrior's heart. Among kin whose scars bloomed only on their backs, earned in flight, he alone wore a single scar slashing straight across the face he showed the world.
War Chief, Letius.
Watching the female cleaving the wind beside him in a four-legged sprint, he thought: black fur streaming, a face red as blood, the instinct that opens with a craven run the instant it meets a stronger foe. And that four-legged dash—why, that was the Ratman of all Ratmen.
At first, he had taken her for a human. But Letius knew better now. True, the fur covering her body ran a little sparse—but she was simply suffering, poor creature, from that incurable disease called alopecia. No matter how he turned it over in his mind, she could be nothing other than kin...!