Chapter 20. Divine Art Perfected!
Chapter 20. Divine Art Perfected!
Two weeks after the Gangnam shooting.
Detective Inspector Kim Juhyeok, furious at his superiors for treating him like a lunatic, was in his studio apartment, downing straight soju to swallow his rage.
The room-salon scene had a total of thirteen people.
But inside, there had been fourteen.
The hallway CCTV clearly showed three Black Dragon Gang members going in first, and then eleven Isu Gang guys going in afterward. Even when he shoved that clear evidence in their faces, the brass didn’t budge.
There should have been fourteen inside—but when he arrived after hearing gunshots, there were only thirteen.
A mid-level cadre of the Black Dragon Gang under the Samhaphoe, Chen Li, was confirmed entering the room, but vanished without a trace and couldn’t be found anywhere.
They investigated everything—whether there was a secret passage, whether the surveillance footage had been tampered with—but it was useless.
Chen Li disappeared.
Kim Juhyeok had seen it with his own eyes.
When he kicked the door open, he saw something shaped like a person scatter into ash and vanish. A human body turning into ash in an instant.
Those bastards had obviously done something vicious, yet they denied everything.
The Black Dragon Gang insisted they would only give statements through the Chinese embassy.
They also claimed the gun was only for self-defense and that it had discharged by accident.
Meanwhile, the Isu Gang testified that there were definitely three opponents, but at some point they disappeared—vanishing like smoke.
The Isu Gang claimed they’d only gone out because they were contacted, and the other side threatened them with a gun, telling them to run drugs and traffic organs. Once again, the Isu Gang positioned themselves as victims.
Kim Juhyeok found it annoying that they’d once again slipped away screaming “victim,” but thinking coldly, he was sure the Isu Gang’s story was closer to the truth.
Still, the brass treated it as an accidental discharge and illegal firearm possession, then handed the Black Dragon Gang over to the Chinese embassy.
And they were treating him like a madman for saying a corpse turned into ash and disappeared.
They said he’d gone insane chasing results and was making impossible claims. Today, his superior told him to lie low for a few days and cool his head.
Kim Juhyeok, who had climbed the elite track and risen fast, was so angry he could go crazy. A man once seen as the future of the police had been reduced to a loser overnight.
Detective Inspector Kim Juhyeok wanted his honor back.
From the Incheon faction members who died under mysterious circumstances, to the Black Dragon Gang cadre who turned to ash and vanished… there was clearly something unknown behind all of it.
“Can they really just ignore what people say like that? Idiots. They didn’t even see it with their own eyes!”
He muttered to himself and poured a shot of straight soju into his mouth.
“Kehehehe.”
A chilling laugh came from somewhere.
This was a one-room officetel studio on the 14th floor.
Juhyeok looked around, but there was no one inside. He even checked the bathroom door—nothing was off.
“Kehehehe. Sometimes you should pretend you didn’t see anything. Curious humans always end up unhappy!”
A gloomy voice boomed through the entire room.
“Who’s there?!”
Detective Inspector Kim Juhyeok, startled, drew his pistol.
In one corner, in an unusually deep patch of darkness, a pair of blood-red eyes floated up.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
He pulled the trigger without hesitation.
His fear that bullets wouldn’t work was stronger than any concern about discharging his weapon.
From that darkness, a thin red line shot out.
Something like red blood vessels wrapped around Kim Juhyeok’s head. He dropped the pistol and struggled to break free, but soon his limbs started moving as if they weren’t his.
Thrashing and groaning, Kim Juhyeok stumbled to the balcony and opened the window. A sticky, mucous-like mass of flesh covered his entire head, so he couldn’t see, but he could instinctively tell he was about to fall to his death.
A human who fell from the 14th floor would die instantly—head shattered, limbs broken.
Saroki, a probationary member of the Elders’ Council Discipline Corps, watched and curled his lips into a grin.
His primary mission was to deal with his own kind, but he liked killing humans more. There was even pleasure in tormenting weaklings who struggled and drowned in despair.
He was carrying out a mission he’d inherited from a senior Discipline Knight.
The senior had already silenced the Incheon faction members, and now Saroki had to deal with the Isu Gang and the Black Dragon Gang members who’d entered Korea this time. In the process, he eliminated the policeman who was about to cause trouble. Now it was time to deal with the next risk factor—the Black Dragon Gang.
The Black Dragon Gang had sent five low-ranking bloodkin, but to Saroki of the Discipline Corps, humans and they were no different—just bugs.
It was my day off.
When I woke up from a nap, Cheolmin hyung was up on the rooftop, swinging a wooden sword.
The rooftop was off-limits to guests because of the risk of suicide jumps.
Because of my hidden emergency cash tucked into the signboard gap, I constantly monitored the whole rooftop with telekinesis, so it was impossible for a guest to come up and kill themselves—but rules were rules.
Still, our motel VIP Cheolmin hyung was an exception. This place was basically his home, so saying he couldn’t even come up to the rooftop was nonsense. That was why Bella was also treated as an exception.
Cheolmin hyung said he’d gone to a kendo academy for two months as a kid, and maybe because of that, his stance was stable.
It didn’t feel like he had set forms—more like he just swung however he felt. But the inner power, or energy, flowing out from whatever sat in his lower abdomen sharpened the wooden sword’s force. If you got hit by that, it was at least a clean fracture.
“Are you awake?”
Cheolmin hyung, shirtless and wearing luxury-brand tracksuit pants, greeted me. His white Nike sneakers didn’t have a speck of dust on them.
“You’re working hard.”
“I don’t think life has ever been this fun. After receiving inner power instruction from you, little brother, and training, I can feel myself growing stronger.”
Compared to the core I’d first clumped together for him, the energy had only increased by an ant’s tear—but he said it with such a serious face that I felt a little bad.
Should I help him a bit more?
From watching the last two weeks, the inner power I’d made for him seemed harmless—if anything, it helped the body.
“Then we’ll increase your inner power further and perform the Small Heavenly Circuit. It’s the method of circulating and moving inner force in earnest.”
If you’re going to teach, you have to study.
Lately I hadn’t just been looking up wuxia trivia online—I’d also read dozens of wuxia novels. They were pretty fun. I lost track of time.
“Thank you, little brother.”
Cheolmin hyung looked moved. I had him sit cross-legged on the rooftop floor, then sat behind him and placed both hands on his back.
Then I said,
“I’ll directly perform the method of transferring inner power, open your meridians, and make the Small Heavenly Circuit possible. No matter what happens, don’t be shaken—calm your mind.”
Cheolmin, face grim, focused his mind on his lower abdomen.
Like before, I gathered energy from the air, compressed it tightly, and pasted it onto his lower abdomen in thick layers. The inner power that had been the size of a ping-pong ball swelled rapidly until it was the size of a baseball.
The core, which had been warm, turned hot—hot enough to make you yelp if you touched it.
Sweat began dripping from Cheolmin’s bare back.
If it had been a cold winter day, steam might have billowed.
At that moment, the rooftop door opened and Bella, in her pink tracksuit, came up.
“What you two doing?”
With an ice cream in her mouth, Bella stared at me and Cheolmin hyung like we were weird.
But Cheolmin didn’t waver—he fought desperately to stabilize the rapidly expanding core. And I, embarrassed to be sitting so seriously with my hands on a shirtless man’s back, quietly closed my eyes.
Bella walked over, inspected us from different angles, then looked like she understood something. She sat on the rooftop bench and watched a K-drama on her phone. From the dialogue, something about “Yeonjin fighting,” it sounded like a school-violence revenge drama.
“Now we’ll perform the Small Heavenly Circuit.”
Once Bella stopped paying attention to us, I pushed forward with the training I’d planned.
First, I slowly moved the core through the left pathway of the lower abdomen.
That invisible energy mass wouldn’t show up on an X-ray, but it might show on thermal imaging.
As something like a qi-pathway formed—rather than a physical channel—I drew the core up toward Cheolmin hyung’s solar plexus.
As the energy moved inside his body, pain seemed to hit; his body trembled.
I then lowered the energy from the solar plexus down to the right side of the lower abdomen, and finally pushed it back to its original position.
If you filmed it from the front with thermal imaging, it would look like the core traced a triangle with the solar plexus as its apex.
Wuxia novels rambled about Small Heavenly Circuits and Great Heavenly Circuits, but they never described the actual training in detail. It was useless.
Most of it was vague nonsense.
Weirdly enough, the methods on shady sites about mind training and soul training were more detailed.
On one site that guided you to “develop brainwaves” and “become an immortal” through “holy cultivation,” I found a method for forming an inner core and performing your first circulation.
It reeked of a scam, but maybe it worked—Cheolmin looked strained at first, then gradually stabilized.
As the inner force moved along a set route, it spread through his whole body like spiderwebs. It felt like, if you used that energy, movements like a wuxia master might actually become possible.
I slowly weakened the telekinetic force I was using to guide his core.
Soon, even after I fully withdrew my telekinesis, Cheolmin’s inner power continued moving along the set orbit.
As if in a trance, Cheolmin remained cut off from the outside world, performing the Small Heavenly Circuit.
If I left him alone, he might train until tomorrow morning.
I went and sat beside Bella. There was a black bag next to her, and inside were ice creams.
Cheolmin hyung would train on his own now, so my job was done.
“You bring for me?”
I unwrapped one, put it in my mouth, and asked. Without taking her eyes off the drama, Bella nodded.
Then, as if something occurred to her, she looked at me.
“Cheolmin and Chan… you two like? That why naked?”
“Cough!”
In the quiet rooftop, Cheolmin—who had been stable—suddenly spat blood, like he’d heard that.
I was startled and checked his insides. The inner power that had been rising toward the solar plexus had surged upward, slamming into his stomach and lungs.
I quickly forced it back to the original state and stabilized it slowly.
“No. We close, but not what Bella think! I like women!”
“Chan like women? Then Cheolmin like men?”
“No. Hyung also like women.”
“Lie. Then why now this?”
“We training. Exercise.”
“Exercise?”
It felt suffocating—like what I meant wasn’t getting through to Bella at all.
I gave up trying to make her understand and decided Cheolmin could explain after he finished training.
Sucking on my ice cream, I looked up at the sky. Bella lost interest again and went back to watching her school-violence revenge drama.
After stabilizing the turbulent inner force, Cheolmin stood, picked up the wooden sword, and began swinging again.
To me it looked like he was swinging however he wanted—no, however his heart led him—but Cheolmin was deadly serious.
Maybe the training had worked, because the power packed into the sword was incomparably stronger than before. If that wooden sword hit you now, it felt like even metal would dent.
Even Bella, an ordinary human, seemed to sense the force. Her eyes went wide as she watched.
After swinging for a long while, Cheolmin set the sword down, caught his breath, then bowed to me.
“Thanks to you, Master, I have perfected the divine art. There was a life-and-death crisis, but thanks to you, I completed the training safely. This disciple who only receives grace… I can only feel ashamed that I don’t know how to repay your kindness.”
This hyung was getting more and more historical-drama-toned, and it was a burden.
I glanced at Bella’s phone—she’d turned off Netflix and was searching terms like “master” and “disciple,” translating them into Russian.
“Kindness? It’s nothing. Still, your power is dangerous now, so don’t swing it around recklessly. And don’t use words like ‘master’ and ‘disciple.’”
“Yes, little brother. I swear to the heavens I will use great power only for justice.”
As Cheolmin spoke while bowing, sweat beaded across his shiny back. It looked gross.