Chapter 15

He looked at me and asked:

“Fine, I’ll let you go. Take him and leave.”

“I’ve got business here too.”

“So you also can’t stand the sight of injustice?”

“You know me.”

“Birds of a feather, huh. You here to preach too?”

“That’s right.”

“Sigh. I’ll give you one more chance. Just take him and leave.”

“I said no.”

“Then you die.”

WHOOSH—

Something whipped in fast; I slipped aside and only then saw it was a sickle.

CLACK—

The old man grinned wickedly, one in each hand—twin sickles.

“Where should I cut first? Say the word.”

“Wherever suits your taste.”

“So you knocked those big oafs down and now you’re feeling bold.”

“Yup.”

“Heh-heh-heh. Do you know why I bothered talking to you?”

“Beats me.”

“Look up.”

I tilted my head. Small holes dotted the ceiling.

“Qi-Scattering Poison sprays from there. And you kept breathing like an idiot. You know what Qi-Scattering Poison is?”

“A poison that makes you unable to use internal qi.”

“You know your stuff. Now you see why I stalled?”

“So I couldn’t use internal qi?”

“You do know your stuff. Do you understand your situation now?”

“Nope.”

“Then I’ll enlighten you myself.”

FWIP—

He swung both sickles straight for my arms and legs.

THUNK—!

They should’ve sliced clean, but both stopped like they’d snagged on something.

He stared at me, disbelief carved across his face.

I smiled.

“That’s awkward, isn’t it? I never had internal qi to begin with.”

“What?”

“Why don’t we take the hit first and then keep having our honest talk?”

“W-wait—”

THUD—

“Gah!”

His body folded in half.

Even with his abdominal guard tight, it didn’t help.

What pain.

More than that, this kind of monstrous punch—without internal qi?

Unbelievable.

Who was he again?

Third-ranked elder of the Hundred-Gold Sect, the Blood-Remnant Twin Scythes.

Once a name that rang decently loud across the martial world, a master at the High-Grandmaster tempering realm.

And yet one punch without internal qi was enough to blast his mind white.

He wasn’t the sort to go easy on an old man.

Same breed as me.

No—something above it.

That demon mask couldn’t have suited him better.

“W-wait! L-let’s talk. With words.”

I raised my fist and answered the elder begging for talk.

“This is me talking.”

“I mean a conversation.”

“This is a conversation.”

“T-that’s absurd—”

CRACK!

CRUNCH.

SNAP.

SPLINTER—

The sounds kept coming, cold and steady.

CLANG—

The twin scythes—never dropped mid-fight, he’d have sworn—hit the floor, snapped.

Beside them lay the elder, the Blood-Remnant Twin Scythes, so caked in blood he was barely recognizable.

****

The Blood-Remnant Twin Scythes opened his eyes.

He hauled himself up with a face like he’d just clawed out of a nightmare.

“Haah. What a vile dream. It was so vivid my whole body hurts.”

Then a voice reached his ear he should never have heard.

“That wasn’t a dream.”

He jolted and turned. The demon from his dream stood there smiling.

“You slept like a rock. Sleep well?”

“N-not a dream?”

He tried to stand, denying reality, and pain crashed over him.

How did he hit me to make it hurt like this?

As he grimaced and turned his head, he caught a ridiculous sight.

All the big bruisers were kneeling with their foreheads to the floor, sweating buckets.

“What are they doing?”

“Repenting for what they’ve done. You should repent too.”

“What wrong did I commit?”

“Huh? You don’t know what you did wrong?”

He clamped his mouth shut.

“If you don’t know, you need more beating. You sure you want that?”

I clenched my fist and walked toward him, slow.

His body remembered before his mind did.

How much it hurt to take that fist.

He yelped in a rush.

“N-no! I r-remember! I remember!”

“Say it.”

The Blood-Remnant Twin Scythes began to rattle off the evils he’d committed.

There were a lot.

“Impressive. Truly.”

He bowed his head.

Saying it out loud, even he had to admit it sounded pretty bad.

“How do you swap out Loan Notes?”

“It’s a method called the Hidden Paper Contract. You overlay an extremely thin sheet on top; the overlaid section has patterns, so you can’t notice another sheet sitting there. It’s hard for veterans to catch, so ordinary folk could die and come back and still never know why the contents of their Loan Note changed.”

“To return the money you stole from innocent people, I’ll have to talk to your sect master, won’t I?”

He nodded.

“What kind of person is your sect master?”

“A man with no blood or tears when it comes to money.”

No blood or tears before money meant he was that attached to it.

“Words won’t work, then.”

At my line, the Blood-Remnant Twin Scythes let out a thin smile.

“He’d sooner die than give up money. Never.”

Oh?

That far gone?

I’d picked the perfect test subject.

If I could make even a man this mad for money into a person again, it would mean my Repentance Fist worked.

****

Tonight again, Hundred-Gold Sect Master Hwang Geumman was spending a happy evening counting the stacks of promissory notes piled on his desk.

“Heh-heh-heh! How much is all this! Ah, beautiful!”

Counting bundles, he turned his eyes to a chest brimming with jewelry.

The gleam put a blissful smile on his face again.

“There can’t be anything in this world more beautiful.”

Beaming, Hwang Geumman admired the wealth stacked around the room.

Then a commotion rose outside.

“Sect Master! It’s urgent! You need to come out!”

Hwang Geumman hurried out of his vault-like room, carefully shutting the vault-door of a door behind him.

Outside, one of his men waited, looking anything but calm.

“What is it?”

“T-the branches have all vanished!”

Hwang Geumman stared at him like the words made no sense.

“The branches... vanished?”

“Exactly as I said. We couldn’t reach them, so we sent people to check—report is the branches themselves have disappeared.”

“The branches themselves?”

“Yes! Empty. Completely empty.”

“Empty? Where did the men there go?”

“All gone.”

He stood there blank a beat, then his face began to twist in real time.

“You miserable bastards! You colluded and ran off with my money!”

Nothing else explained it.

He decided the three branches had conspired together.

This was no time to stand around.

“L-let’s go. Now!”

“Yes!”

Hwang Geumman rushed out—but not before carefully laying a formation across his room.

A kind of lock.

Only one man could undo it:

Hwang Geumman.

Why?

Because there wasn’t a single formation master alive who could have installed it.

With that, Hwang Geumman and his men left to check the branches.

The air wavered, and a human shape slowly came into view.

I stepped out from under my Transparency Mantra.

I examined the formation set up in the room and chuckled.

Then I swept my hand, and the so-called formation vanished like it had never been there.

“This was a formation? I thought it was a kid’s prank.”

Disabling the formation, I headed for the vault I’d seen.

I grabbed the handle and pulled; the entire door tore free.

GRR-RRRK—

THOOM—

With a thunderous noise, the vault door came off.

I did it loud on purpose.

That way Hwang Geumman would hear and rush back.

It was his own room; he’d come back with everything he had.

Just as I expected.

Barely moments after the door came ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) off, Hwang Geumman burst back in.

Face flushed red, he took in the wrecked room.

Then he spotted the ripped-off vault door.

His eyes flipped and he charged straight at me.

“You filthy wretch! Get away from my vault!”

THUMP—

His strike met my palm and stopped, light as nothing.

If he’d been calm, he might have gauged my strength and braced. But right now, Hwang Geumman wasn’t calm.

His head was crammed with one thought: protect the vault.

“Get away from my vault, now!”

His hands turned gold.

The Golden Divine Art.

Even his martial art was gold-hued.

I couldn’t help a snort.

Truly a man mad for gold.

No way...

He didn’t choose that art because it shines gold when you use it, did he?

The kind you can’t talk sense into even if you beat him.

A fresh specimen.

Which made him even more valuable to study.

Blocking his blazing attacks, I noticed something curious.

His angles were consistent.

I smirked.

Even now he was straining not to strike toward his vault. Somehow it felt almost pitiful.

What if...?

I stepped into the vault, and he panicked and halted his assault.

“W-what do you want!”

I smiled and pointed into the vault.

“All of that.”

“Y-you filthy—!”

He was boiling over, but he didn’t attack.

“If you’re a man, come out! Come out and talk.”

“So you can attack me when I step out?”

“I—I won’t! I won’t, so please, come out.”

He was nearly begging.

Even then, his eyes never left the contents of the vault.

“I told you what I want. That.”

“You think you can just carry that out of here?”

“I’m not carrying it out. I’m going to hand it out to the people here.”

For a beat, Hwang Geumman lost his footing.

He whipped around to look at his men—and their faces looked anything but loyal.

“Y-you don’t believe him, do you?”

“Haha. Of course not.”

“Would we ever believe anyone but you, Sect Master?”

“Don’t worry.”

Despite their words, expectation already brimmed in their expressions.

To turn those hearts back?

Hwang Geumman squeezed his eyes shut and said:

“C-catch that bastard and I’ll give each of you one tael of gold!”

“Wooooo!”

The men roared.

Then my voice cut through.

“If I hand out everything in here, it won’t be just one tael. If you’re lucky, you could grab enough to live on for life.”

Watching his men get glazed over by greed again, Hwang Geumman was ready to lose his mind.

He had never imagined this situation, not once, and had no idea how to handle it.

Then something whizzed over Hwang Geumman’s head.

In that split second he knew it was his gold; he hurled himself with everything he had and snatched it.

He exhaled in relief and looked back—only to see his men wearing faces full of disappointment.

You could watch their loyalty drop in real time.

A no-win moment.

He stared at the gold in his hand.

And he decided.