If You're About to Die, Pray
"You're not from the Stone Flower Gate."
The voice scraped like iron on iron. Sun Wukong frowned.
"Ugh, that rasp. Quit smoking already. Just listening to you, I can see you keeling over from lung rot. Want me to check when I hit the underworld? See if the Book of Life and Death lists your cause of death as consumption?"
"……."
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's eyes flared. Sun Wukong shrugged.
Why were humans always so angry? It was a joke. The way this one was looking at him, you'd think a glare could kill.
"So you've got the goods?"
"Yeah. The sword fragment."
"Word is some golden freak beat the Stone Flower Gate Master into the dirt at the docks. That'd be you. And you stole that blade so you could… what, strike a bargain with me?"
"I heard there was gold in it."
"There would have been. If you hadn't shown up acting so damn cocky."
Sun Wukong didn't bother answering. He flicked the cup back and knocked it down in one swallow. He'd already demolished several bottles on his own, and there wasn't a hint of drink on his face.
"Ah, shit. This booze tastes like garbage."
Well. They did say the company made the drink. And this guy was a real appetite-killer.
More than that, Sun Wukong could see it — the world of the mind's eye. Between himself and Sideburns stretched a thread of pure, snow-white silk. Between himself and Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi, a sticky dark-crimson cord flickered with an unholy gleam, as unsettling as the trail of a severed vein. Sun Wukong snickered.
An ill-fated bond, huh.
He'd crossed paths with this bastard's previous life. An enmity. And now that same soul was hunting this thing. What a fascinating twist of fate and fortune.
"But if you hand over the goods quietly, I'll overlook the attitude and throw in the gold besides. Where is it?"
"Whoa, someone's in a hurry. Let's have a drink first."
"……."
"A real man lets conversation bloom over a shared cup, doesn't he?"
Judging by the look on his face, he was weighing whether to just kill him now. Sun Wukong clicked his tongue and drew the sword fragment from his robes. The man's expression flickered, just for an instant.
"Someone put you up to this too, huh?"
"……!"
"If you actually knew what this thing was, you wouldn't be reacting like that. Anyone who can order around a notorious piece of work like you has to be a pretty big deal. Who's got you running errands?"
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's face went rigid. Sun Wukong cackled.
"Work on that poker face. I was just poking around, and you immediately advertised whose lapdog you are. This is why you've got to pick the smart ones when you're hiring."
"You—!"
"Shut up and sit down."
The moment Sun Wukong's expression went cold, the air in the room changed. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi felt it too. He drew his blades from his robes — not a long sword, but a pair of mid-length sabers, each about the length of a grown man's forearm. Sun Wukong clicked his tongue.
"Every damn time I try to talk things out, somebody forgets their place."
He stood up in one sharp motion. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's face twisted into something peculiar.
"Empty-handed?"
"Yep. Don't have the Ruyi Jingu Bang on me right now."
"The Ruyi Jingu Bang? I really do meet all kinds of lunatics."
"Right? I was just thinking the same thing. Drawing a blade on Teacher Sun, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven. I really do meet all kinds of lunatics."
A sharp mid-saber thrust served as the reply. Sun Wukong grinned.
He kicked a wine cup into the air. Once. Twice. Three times.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi knocked all three aside with his sabers. Sideburns stared, stunned. Steward Yang hadn't even managed to dodge — his face had been smashed in — but this man had deflected three cups in a row.
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's face, though, had gone beyond rigid. It had gone deathly white.
He blocked every one of my attack paths?
To everyone else, it looked as though Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi had swatted the cups away. That wasn't what had happened. Sun Wukong had thrown each cup precisely into the point of a thrust, intercepting it. Which meant he was reading every single movement.
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi clenched his teeth and drew up his inner energy. Mighty neigong snapped through his muscles, making them coil with a tighter, more explosive elasticity. His blood roared. His heart hammered. His whole body burned as he moved faster, struck harder.
Sun Wukong stood with his arms crossed and tapped things with casual little kicks of his foot. Each time, a plate, a pair of chopsticks, a spoon, a wine bottle went flying — and shattered against a thrusting saber with a crash.
Ah, this is fun.
Every little toss, every clang and shatter — it was almost festive. If Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi had known what was going through Sun Wukong's head, his blood pressure would have spiked and he'd have clutched the back of his neck.
He swung and thrust those mid-sabers with everything he had. And yet he could not take a single step from where he stood. Every movement, every line of attack — the bastard had them all figured out. Without so much as shifting his feet.
Cold sweat ran down Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's spine.
At first he'd taken this for some reasonably skilled punk looking to scrape together a pile of gold. Even after realizing the man wasn't one of the Stone Flower Gate people they'd arranged to meet, it hadn't mattered — as long as he got the goods. But the bastard had had the gall to summon him down here, and his skill was anything but ordinary. Worse, he seemed to know what the object actually was. When even Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi himself did not.
I thought only He knew...
There was something here. This man was strong. They hadn't crossed blades properly, but he was at least in the same class — a master of the Peak Realm. And yet Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi had never heard of a Peak Realm expert with a face like that.
Who the hell is he?
That was as far as the thought got. Sun Wukong, who had been kicking objects into the air, suddenly closed the distance.
"Nothing left to throw around, so how about we dance?"
Golden light rippled through the air.
Sun Wukong had no shortage of enemies.
People generally assumed that Sun Wukong, the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, was so overwhelmingly powerful that he had no equal in the world. But combat, more than most realized, was not an absolute measure. Even the mightiest of great demons had been known to fall to some unremarkable monk or Daoist, and even the weakest of yaoguai had, on occasion, single-handedly slaughtered entire human armies.
Even the legendary Sun Wukong had suffered his share of hardships on the long pilgrimage to India. Most of those had been thanks to the boneheaded stunts of Tang Sanzang and Zhu Bajie — but a few of those fights had been genuinely serious.
Still. This isn't one of those cases.
There was no reason a previous life's power would carry over into this one. All the same, Sun Wukong deliberately studied Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's movements, just in case some memory of the past might surface.
Hell, I've got so many old grudges I can't even tell which one this is.
If he knew who the man had been, he might even have been a little glad to see him. Then again, the result would be the same either way. Sun Wukong had met countless enemies. He had faced them all. And he had not died. He was here.
In short: the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, Sun Wukong — always wins.
The twin mid-sabers danced in a chaotic whirl. Clang after clang rang out, sparks flying in every direction, and Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's eyes spun. That was not the sound of bare fists meeting steel. Sun Wukong was swinging the sword fragment itself — a hunk of metal in all but name — this way and that.
No particular form. No stance. No path. Just wild, indiscriminate swinging.
How?!
Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's body trembled. The shock had numbed his nerves so thoroughly he could no longer even feel the cold sweat running down him. It was his own twin sabers that were dancing, flowing brilliantly from form to form — and yet it was Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi himself whose body was accumulating the damage.
To an onlooker, it would have looked even. A matched fight. It was anything but. Pain and impact stacked through his entire body, wringing his muscles, rattling his organs, shaking his dantian.
This was nothing short of—
He's toying with me!
Was he planning to play until the neigong ran dry? Like a cat batting a mouse around until it had no strength left — that was exactly what Sun Wukong was doing. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi felt it in his bones. He'd picked the wrong fight. He understood, with terrible clarity, that he was standing on the line between life and death.
And so he made his choice.
A desperate technique taught by a being of astonishing, unmatched terror. In a single burst, every last ounce of latent power is wrenched to the surface.
His withering inner energy caught — crack, crack — and ignited. Once lit, the fire became a roaring blaze that wrapped every meridian in his body. His martial arts, rooted in yin energy to begin with, erupted with an even more sinister, unholy force.
Kill him in one stroke, take the goods, and get out!
No matter how much stronger the bastard was, right now he could cut him down.
And in that instant, Sun Wukong's eyes blazed red as fire.
The world of the mind's eye, laid bare
The corners of Sun Wukong's mouth curled up, and his fangs flashed. Now he knew.
"You're that one, aren't you? The python of Mount Chiljeol."
"……!"
"I heard it was an old grudge, so I was looking forward to it. Turns out you're nobody special."
He'd even played along just to figure out who the man was. What a waste. Sun Wukong flicked the sword fragment aside, then cracked the knuckles of both hands and rolled his neck from side to side.
"What?"
"I'm a Buddha myself, you know — attained enlightenment and everything. Killing some poor bastard while he's begging for his life would be a little too merciful of me."
If you think you're going to die, pray to the Buddha?
Buddha? He was telling him to beg a Buddha for his life? That was the kind of thing those bald Shaolin monks spouted.
That was as far as the thought got before Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's mouth fell open. A choking groan spilled out.
Thud! Craaack! Crack!
His body jerked and flopped like a puppet with its strings cut. Face, shoulder, chest, gut, thigh — blow after blow, stacking and chaining without end. Muscle tore. Organs threatened to burst from his mouth. His mind swam.
He was going to die. So he opened his mouth.
"B-Buddha…"
Crack!
The instant he opened his mouth, a fist smashed into it. Tears sprang to Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's eyes. It wasn't fair. He'd said to pray to the Buddha if you thought you were going to die!
"You little shit, you've got no grit. No grit at all. You gotta last a little longer, pal. Huh?"
"……."
Sun Wukong meant it. He was even a little pissed off.
"You little shit, huh? You ate people, piled up sins, and died for it — so you should've reflected, yeah? You finally get reborn as a human and what do you do? Murder people left and right? Public enemy of Murim? Give me a break, you bastard."
Sun Wukong's hands never stopped, even as he talked. Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi was truly dying. A fighter of that caliber could have ended him with a single punch — instead, every blow was calibrated to the exact intensity of just-shy-of-death. The inner energy that had been blazing through him was long gone, scattered by the agony. His dantian was bone-dry, and every gasping breath sent searing pain through his whole body.
He really was going to die. So he poured everything he had into opening his mouth.
"N-Namo Amitabha… G-Guanyin Bodhisattva…"
Calling on Guanyin — the most famous bodhisattva among common folk — was perhaps only natural.
The problem was.
Sun Wukong's hand clamped down hard on Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's throat. The man's mind grew fainter and fainter. In the dimming of his consciousness, a question surfaced.
He said he'd… spare me…
A look of bitter resentment found Sun Wukong. Sun Wukong clicked his tongue in irritation and slammed the unconscious man into the floor.
"Of all the names you could've called, you pick Guanyin?"
You did that on purpose, didn't you? Just to piss me off.
Sun Wukong drove his fist into the already-unconscious Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi's face. Bone shattered and warped. Even if the man survived, he would never be able to show that face in public again. Sun Wukong spoke as if chewing the words and swallowing them.
"Namo Amitabha, Guanyin Bodhisattva — that it? May you attain Buddhahood. Attain it. Yeah?"