Chapter 16: The Four Divine Arts Activated (6)

“Young Master! We broke open the southwest gate! The flames on that side are under control!”

“R-really?”

Shin Mo looked at Yeon Jipyeong with a puzzled gaze.

Jipyeong’s expression was strange—part fear, part awe.

“Young Master?”

“This isn’t the time to stand around! Get everyone out—now!”

Jipyeong bolted forward.

“I’ll fetch the Je Gal siblings!”

“Hey! Young Master! It’s dangerous that way! Their leader is—!”

“It’s fine! My brother handled it!”

Brother? He means the First Young Master?

Shin Mo turned his confused eyes toward the smashed gate.

At that moment, a single, ripping detonation rolled out.

BOOM!

“—!”

Right after the brutal collision, Ma Bang involuntarily staggered back.

“Hurts?”

He glanced at his hand.

His palm was flushed red. The hand that could split a log bare, without channeling inner strength, was faintly trembling.

Ma Bang looked at Yeon Hojeong’s iron cudgel.

From the tip, a blue haze steamed up like heat-shimmer.

“A spear?!”

It wasn’t staff work—it felt like spear work.

It looked like an iron staff, but the strike just now was unmistakably a spear-thrust—a killing method meant to punch straight through a man’s chest in one blow.

“You little—”

“Bring it out.”

“What?”

Yeon Hojeong’s voice was ice-cold.

“Weren’t you blocked at the Yin-Fire Red class?”

“......!”

“I’ll receive it—come on.”

Blood filmed over Ma Bang’s eyes.

A long-forgotten emotion—rage—slowly welled up. Not because his opponent was stronger than expected, but because the boy knew the Yin-Fire Red class.

“Asking how you know won’t help, will it?”

FWASH!

Yeon Hojeong shot in like a drawn blade.

The speed wasn’t remarkable, but the crashing momentum was savagely overwhelming—hard to evade on that ferocity alone.

“Like a beast.”

FWASH!

The iron cudgel snapped for his throat.

Not the chest—the throat. Aiming for so small a target meant the attacker trusted his precision.

SKREEE!

He twisted the cudgel’s path with twin daggers.

“Tch!”

A heavy shock rang up both dagger-bearing arms.

Whatever else, the boy’s raw strength surpassed his own. How that lean frame produced such power was beyond him.

They’d traded only three exchanges, but Ma Bang finally understood: in this state, he could not beat this opponent.

“You—!”

Fwoosh.

It felt as if a scarlet flame ripped up from deep in his dantian.

“If you want to see it so badly, I’ll show you!”

Killing intent flared in Ma Bang’s eyes.

Yeon Hojeong’s gaze flashed.

That was the problem.

Whether Yin-Cold White class or Yin-Fire Red class—if one trained in a Yin-lineage art, one never bared killing intent. Such arts were created for assassination.

Anyone could see Ma Bang wasn’t in his right mind. Even with a Je Gal daughter before him, he felt no fear—he’d planned to torture the siblings and sell them.

He’d fallen into qi deviation, raving madness.

For Yeon Hojeong, that was a once-in-an-age boon.

“Bastard!”

CRACK!

Ma Bang’s movement changed.

The sly, passive footwork turned rough and aggressive in an instant. He tossed his poison-laced daggers aside somewhere and came barehanded for Hojeong’s head.

“He’s coming.”

WHOOOM!

The palm art tearing the air was vicious.

Fast and violent to match the killing intent laid bare—a truly fire-like martial art.

POP! BOOM!

The air thumped like bursting drums.

Against the Thunderfire thugs earlier—and even moments ago against Ma Bang—Yeon Hojeong hadn’t stopped attacking. He looked like someone who didn’t even know defense or evasion.

Not now.

He refused to meet Ma Bang’s firestorm head-on and avoided with ruthless discipline. The motion cut in abrupt beats—unnatural to the eye—but not a single blow landed.

“This brat—?!”

Ma Bang, pressing the attack, couldn’t hide his dismay.

“Does he know the properties of the Yin-Fire Divine Palm?”

The Yin-Fire Divine Palm was an “infiltrating force” palm—an暗 palm focused on penetration.

Not a smash-for-power art, but one that seeped in to ruin the insides. Even a block would be pierced through, inflicting internal injury.

It forced a troublesome fight—there was no answer but evasion or exploiting an opening.

Drawing up more inner strength, Ma Bang thrust a palm at Hojeong’s chest.

SSSSHT! BOOM!

Hojeong spun and slipped past, landing behind Ma Bang.

Ma Bang’s eyes jolted.

The chest strike had been a feint. He’d pretended to attack with the Yin-Fire Divine Palm and, with his toe tip, stabbed for midline instead—and even that was avoided.

“He read it?”

He’d slipped the trump, too. The man’s evasion was astonishing.

Without even looking back, Hojeong chopped the iron cudgel in a short cut.

THUD!

“Ghh!”

Ma Bang reeled.

His back, struck by the tip, felt split open. If inner strength had been loaded, ribs and part of the scapula would have powdered.

“Stole it somewhere and practiced? Why is it so sloppy?”

“......!”

“Do it properly.”

Rage burned in Ma Bang’s eyes.

“I’ll cook your entrails through.”

WHIRRR!

Yeon Hojeong spun the cudgel. Gripping at mid-shaft, he turned it until the air seemed to be sucked in.

Sparks jumped in Ma Bang’s eyes.

Hojeong’s face held no expression at all. If anything, a languid look—but no real emotion appeared.

“You treating me like nothing?!”

He wasn’t seeing him as a proper opponent. Ma Bang felt his boiling inner strength surge to his crown.

“You son of—!”

FWASH!

Faster than before.

The precision had burned off, but it was far more threatening. The faint ruddy glow wicking off both his hands filled onlookers with a nameless dread.

Hojeong’s eyes shone for a beat.

“Fire Qi.”

At last, the man drew his real power.

Ma Bang’s hand scythed for Hojeong’s face.

CRACK!

A tree struck by the Yin-Fire Divine Palm snapped clean through mid-trunk. The break surface was charred black.

“Impressive.”

Hojeong, slipping it by a hair, judged the level acceptable.

Ma Bang ground his teeth—because Hojeong was smiling as if satisfied.

“You little wretch! I am the heir to the Yin Deity!”

POP! POP-POP!

The air heated to a fever.

The faint red radiance grew denser, soon blooming into flame-like shapes.

“A little more.”

POP-PO-POP! FWOOSH!

Small flames sparked and winked out in midair.

With each technique he unleashed, the Fire Qi climbed and his power rose. His speed rose as well.

Bloodshot to the brim, Ma Bang clearly wasn’t sane. Hojeong’s eyes, by contrast, sank colder.

“More.”

“Die!!”

Huff!

For an instant, Ma Bang’s motion swelled.

As if to unleash his maximal strike, a powerful force spread out. Fire Qi and killing intent spiked to the limit.

Hojeong’s gaze flipped.

“Here.”

From seven full paces away, Hojeong’s body crashed in to nose range in a blink.

Startled, Ma Bang lashed out a palm.

THUD-DUNK!

Hojeong’s left hand caught Ma Bang’s right.

Elation surged up Ma Bang’s face.

“Stupid bastard! You’re dead!”

VMMMMM!!

A strange resonance bellowed from their clasped hands.

Ma Bang’s cruel smile faltered to confusion.

“What?”

The palm-force that should have raced through the enemy’s hand to burn veins and viscera to cinders—

—did nothing. Yeon Hojeong’s face stayed as it was, expressionless, those clear eyes fixed on him. As if the Yin-Fire Divine Palm’s penetrating force weren’t there at all.

“...Huh?”

Ma Bang blurted, dazed.

“What is this? Why are you unharmed?”

Then it happened.

From Yeon Hojeong’s eyes—until now lit by a faint, gentle blue—something pitch-black surged up.

It was darkness, but not ordinary darkness.

A blackness cool and strangely soft. The heaving, rising black aura, like a flooding river, looked ready to spill from his eyes and sweep Ma Bang away.

SSSSSS!

A pale steam lifted from their clasped hands.

Ma Bang’s eyes went round.

“My Fire Qi?!”

The Yin-Fire Red energy was being drawn into the boy’s palm.

As naturally as water flowing from high ground to low, it poured in—as if that place were its rightful home—Fire Qi ripping loose from Ma Bang’s control and racing into Yeon Hojeong at a terrifying speed.

“—!”

Ma Bang’s body shuddered.

Yeon Hojeong breathed out.

“Hoooo.”

His exhale was thick with moisture.

“Good—pulled out.”

Like the legend of the Hegemon-King of Western Chu surrounded by songs, the wall of fire encircling Choseong Pavilion spewed Fire Qi that trapped all paths.

But it wasn’t enough.

The Four Spirit Arts are purely human arts; they properly activate when they receive an enemy’s killing intent and fighting will. Unless one’s realm is profound, even entry presumes a battlefield of life and death.

Easier. More certain.

Meeting an enemy who poured out Fire Qi and killing intent, Yeon Hojeong finally stirred the legend of the Four Spirits sealed in his soul.

He swept the iron cudgel in his right hand.

VWUM! WHA-THUD!

“—Gah!”

Ma Bang groaned and pitched forward.

It felt like being whipped by a cable as thick as a man’s wrist. The pain in his left clavicle made it hard to stay conscious.

THUNK!

Planting the cudgel in the ground, Yeon Hojeong drew in a great breath.

FWOOSH-ROAR!

The flames being suppressed suddenly leaned toward him.

“Come.”

As the Four Spirits’ arcane art, provoked by Ma Bang’s Fire Qi, finally raised its head, it drew on a far stronger blaze to amplify his Water Qi.

The amplified Water Qi wrapped his whole body, rendering his frame supple. The meridians heated by the Yin-Fire Divine Palm’s passage snapped back to their original state.

WHIRRR!

A wind rose.

The Water Qi Yeon Hojeong exhaled met the wind and formed /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ a translucent divine beast—a strange creature with a serpent’s head and a turtle’s body.

The Water God of the North—the northern ruler.

The Black Tortoise of the Four Spirit Arts revealed itself.

SSSSSHHH!!

The surging Water Qi circled the entire cudgel.

Ma Bang, who spat a mouthful of blood, shrieked.

“Uraaagh! You bastard! What did you do to my inner strength!!”

Ma Bang hurled a fist, face slick with blood. Little inner strength remained—but the punch still carried ample destructive power.

At that instant, Yeon Hojeong turned the cudgel.

KRAAANG!

Ma Bang, who’d launched the attack, ricocheted away at brutal speed and tumbled across the ground.

His body twitched where it rolled. The right arm he’d struck with was grotesquely broken.

An outrageous rebound force.

HUMMMMM!

Before the circling cudgel, a faint membrane formed.

It was the Black Tortoise’s art—a supreme defense that, at consummation, could repel cannon and battering ram.

“Thanks. Thanks to you, I drew it out quicker than expected.”

Having passed entry to the Four Spirit Arts, summoning the other three spirits would only be a matter of time.

The ancient, legendary, undefeated Four Spirit Arts had never once tasted defeat in a thousand years.

Now that it was awakened, someone of Ma Bang’s level couldn’t so much as brush Yeon Hojeong’s sleeve. He’d roused only one of the Four Spirits, but even that alone could blunt nearly any attack.

Yeon Hojeong seized Ma Bang by the collar and hauled him up.

“You helped me save time. I should return the favor, in my way—shouldn’t I?”

“—Khk!”

“Looks like you love fire. I’ll at least let you spend your last moments in it.”

Ma Bang’s deadened eyes went wide.

“N-no—”

CRACK!

The cudgel shattered his front teeth.

With everyone watching, Yeon Hojeong carried Ma Bang toward the raging blaze.

Faces showed the same “he wouldn’t—would he?”—among them Yeon Jipyeong, Shin Mo, and the Je Gal siblings.

Yeon Hojeong clamped a hand around Ma Bang’s throat and lifted him high.

“In your next life, play with fire by yourself.”

“Grrrk—!”

Yeon Hojeong hurled Ma Bang into the inferno.

FWOOSH-ROAR!

The furious flames swallowed him. Ma Bang, savaged by internal and external injuries, couldn’t flee the fire.

A chilling scream shook all of Choseong Pavilion.

Watching a man burn alive, the crowd shuddered in horror.

Half an hour later,

the flames at Choseong Pavilion were brought under control.