Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 61 - Bring the Fire (3)
Chapter 61 – Bring the Fire (3)
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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As I emitted demonic qi, it felt as though every pore in my skin had opened and begun to breathe. A sensation of exhaling qi and communing with nature. Of course, nature was rejecting this demonic qi.
“You’re a lay disciple of Wudang?”
“So what if I am?”
“A disciple of Wudang can’t possibly possess such a sinister and bizarre energy.”
“That’s a personal matter.”
“Absurd.”
Mun Il-ji raised both fists and held them by either side of his jaw. He was pretending not to care, but it was obvious he was wary after seeing my demonic qi. Fortunately, since the Demonic Cult had been gone a long time, it seemed he only felt it was some sinister energy and did not realize it was demonic qi.
“I’m coming!”
Mun Il-ji kicked off the ground and rushed toward me. It had been quite a distance, but in a single bound our faces were already close enough to meet.
But this place was now under demonic qi’s control. That meant I could feel Mun Il-ji’s movements with all five senses. Right now, I moved more by sense than by sight.
I drew my sword at once and slashed toward a line where I could cut both of Mun Il-ji’s wrists.
“You bastard!”
Mun Il-ji’s eyes flashed wide, and heat began to surge from his hands. Come to think of it, he did carry the sobriquet Flamefire Ghost Hand.
“Die!”
As my sword swept horizontally, Mun Il-ji struck the flat of my blade upward with his fist. Both my arms were thrown high, exposing every opening in my body.
Bang!
Mun Il-ji’s fist struck my ribs. The pain was so immense that tears welled in my eyes, and before they could even fall, I had already been sent flying into the alley wall. As the wall collapsed, I rolled several times.
“Aaagh!”
It seemed there was a commoner’s house behind the collapsed wall, because people screamed. But I had no time to apologize to them.
“It seems you haven’t fought much.”
Mun Il-ji, now smug again after landing one hit, strode toward me while cracking his neck left and right.
“M-Mun Il-ji?”
“Flamefire Ghost Hand!”
The commoners recognized Mun Il-ji and fled outside without even caring about their own homes.
“So that strange energy is your whole foundation, is it?”
Without answering, I dropped to one knee and tried to rise. At that moment, my body swayed under the heavy shock. I heard Mun Il-ji laughing in front of me.
“My penetrating force entered your body. With your body being shaken apart like that, how exactly do you mean to move?”
Mun Il-ji approached leisurely. Remaining on one knee, I drove my sword into the ground. It was a crisis, but for some reason I couldn’t help grinning.
“You really are different.”
“What is?”
“I didn’t know you could knock a sword upward with your fist and then land a strike.”
“Exactly. It means you haven’t fought much.”
“I’ve sparred a lot in Wudang, but I’ve never seen anyone fight like you.”
Orthodox sects usually considered a weapon an extension of oneself. So they showed respect not just to the opponent, but to the opponent’s sword as well. Striking an opponent’s blade with a fist and changing its direction was the way of the unorthodox. The problem was that, being unfamiliar with the unorthodox style, I had allowed a hit.
“Stop posturing when you can’t even move.”
Flamefire Ghost Hand Mun Il-ji was the first true martial artist I had encountered since stepping into the jianghu. But it was strange. Maybe because I’d already died once, or maybe for some other reason, but I did not feel afraid.
“Farewell, Divine Physician of Hubei.”
Mun Il-ji’s fist, now close enough to stand at my feet, came smashing down toward my head. If that fist packed full of qi struck me, my skull would surely burst like a watermelon.
But I could not let it end here. As I rose, I whipped my sword upward. My aim was to cut Mun Il-ji’s shoulder before his fist could land.
“What?”
I heard Mun Il-ji’s startled voice. The reason I had remained still until now was to hide the fact that I could move.
Mun Il-ji hastily withdrew his fist and sprang back. His face showed an expression of total incomprehension.
“What is this? You took an internal injury, so how can you move?”
“Do I have to be unable to move?”
I smiled mockingly. From the moment Mun Il-ji’s penetrating force entered me, I had been aware of it. The demonic qi inside my body had attacked that penetrating force and dissolved it. By the time Mun Il-ji came all the way in front of me, the penetrating force had already been completely resolved.
I had heard it once, sometime in the past. That demonic qi was the natural enemy of all internal energies. So it had erased the invading internal energy before it could even reach my dantian.
“The more I look at you, the stranger you seem. But one thing I understand now.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you are no saint worthy of being called Divine Physician of Hubei. You probably treated people only to gain something.”
“Hah. That’s a pretty wild accusation.”
“A person’s energy speaks for him. It doesn’t matter that your qi itself is sinister. That’s just because of the internal cultivation method you learned. But the way that energy moves is used thoroughly to coldly crush your opponent. How could a person like you carry the name Divine Physician of Hubei?”
“Think whatever you want.”
I answered calmly, but inwardly I felt heavily pricked. Cheong-hwa too, and now this. Were martial artists all fortune-tellers or something?
Demonic qi told me people were approaching from far away. Sure enough, opening up demonic qi seemed to sharpen my perception enormously. I could even hear the murmurs of people beyond the walls. Which meant it was time to end this fight quickly.
“Mind if I go first this time?”
“Who said you had my permission?”
“I don’t need it.”
Swish. When I mixed demonic qi into the graceful Azure Cloud Steps, it became the footwork of a quiet and stealthy assassin. They said the heart method was the main beam of all martial arts, and it really did seem that even Wudang’s martial arts became somehow sinister when used through demonic qi.
Before long I was behind Mun Il-ji, and my sword flashed out. Startled, Mun Il-ji hurled himself forward in a tumbling roll.
Mun Il-ji sprang back up from the roll and rushed me. It seemed he had instinctively realized that he couldn’t afford to give me the initiative again. His fist art and my sword art wove together, and in an instant we exchanged thirty moves.
“I think I’ve seen enough now.”
I said that, and Mun Il-ji’s eyes widened. He didn’t even have the spare breath to answer, so he seemed startled that I could still talk.
“Of the way the unorthodox fights, I mean.”
The fists filled with heat were certainly fearsome, but the fist art itself was nothing more than typical unorthodox brawling. He had simply happened to learn a decent heart method, while never properly learning a fist art. Of course, that alone was threatening enough. But to me, who had spent all this time watching orthodox martial arts, those fists were ultimately only shallow punches.
Even so, the reason I watched was because I had already allowed him to land a blow once. As a merchant, I would end up fighting unorthodox men far more often than orthodox sect disciples. Know the enemy and know yourself, and you need fear no battle.
“Now let me show you Wudang’s martial arts.”
“What can a mere lay disciple…”
Mun Il-ji had barely managed to answer when his eyes widened again. Dense mist spread through the manor. Wudang’s sword arts that raised mist with the sword were famous enough for everyone to know them.
“F-Flowing Cloud Sword Art?”
“You’ve got a good eye.”
“No. How can a mere lay disciple…”
Mun Il-ji’s shock could not continue. The mist already swallowed him.
“W-wait! Hey!”
Panicked, Mun Il-ji shouted. In the hazy mist he saw, the air would be filled with killing intent, so thick he couldn’t know from where a blade might fly. When Cheong-hwa had first used the Flowing Cloud Sword Art on me, the pressure alone had nearly made me suffocate.
“I surrender, I surrender! You madman!”
“Surrender?”
Just before I cut Mun Il-ji’s throat, those words made me stop. Mun Il-ji immediately threw away his gauntlets and struck his own lower abdomen with his fist.
“Cough.”
Blood sprayed from Mun Il-ji’s mouth at once. He seemed to be trying to prove he had taken an internal injury. It was a swift, precise surrender if there ever was one.
“Th-this should be enough, right?”
“Why would it be?”
I cut Mun Il-ji’s throat.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
Mun Il-ji clutched at his neck, rolled all over the ground, and screamed. Tears and snot poured out from the terror of death, and he even wet himself on top of that.
“Cut it out, bastard. You’re not dead.”
“U-uh, wh-what?”
What I had cut was only the flesh to the side of his throat. The wound was no more than a graze, and only a thin smear of blood was welling up. Sitting down and putting a hand to the wound, Mun Il-ji stared at me blankly.
“Let’s go calculate the price of your life.”
My tone had already returned to businesslike composure. He had gone from someone to kill to a customer, so naturally that was the case.
***
When I entered Radiant Crystal Merchant Company with Mun Il-ji at my side, people’s eyes all widened.
“C-Company Lord.”
“Yes?”
“That person next to you. Isn’t that Great Hero Flamefire Ghost Hand Mun Il-ji?”
“What sort of great hero is a black-path man? Just call him that bastard.”
“G-gasp!”
Once it was confirmed that it really was Mun Il-ji, everyone working inside the merchant company stopped what they were doing in shock. For them to stop working in the middle of such a busy period, Mun Il-ji’s visit must have been that much of a shock.
“I-it’s Flamefire Ghost Hand.”
“But looking at his mouth, there’s blood there.”
“Then does that mean Company Lord won?”
“How can that be possible? Is Company Lord’s martial art really that strong?”
“He’s a lay disciple of Wudang.”
“What does that matter? A lay disciple is something anyone can become if they pay money.”
The murmurs of the people reached all the way into the Company Lord’s room. I had hidden my demonic qi, but my sensory perception itself was now on a completely different level from an ordinary person’s. They were probably speaking as if I couldn’t hear them.
I sat down in the Company Lord’s seat and loudly called for Jo Chung-heon.
“Foreman. Come into the Company Lord’s room.”
The moment those words fell, Jo Chung-heon opened the door. Through the gap I could see a cluster of people gathered there. They looked as if they were dying of curiosity over why Mun Il-ji had come here.
I looked at Mun Il-ji and smiled.
“You’re quite the celebrity.”
“…In Wuhan, I was somewhat known.”
“Really?”
“You’re the strange one. Even a main-sect disciple of Wudang at your age shouldn’t be able to handle me, so how can a lay disciple beat me?”
Now that he thought about it again, Mun Il-ji seemed indignant. But the moment I glared at him once, he lowered his head again.
At that moment Jo Chung-heon, having come in and closed the door, stammered,
“S-so it really is true.”
“What is?”
“That Company Lord defeated Great Hero Mun Il-ji.”
“I told you, not great hero.”
Even though I had just said I was the one who won, Jo Chung-heon still kept glancing nervously at Mun Il-ji. It seemed Mun Il-ji’s notoriety in Wuhan was that great.
“Someone of Great Hero Mun Il-ji’s level has mediated many fights among the unorthodox factions, so he has quite a high standing. Well, perhaps ‘high standing’ is a strange thing to say of a black-path man.”
Jo Chung-heon said that. I had felt it myself in life as well: not all black-path men were the type to guzzle fiery liquor, get drunk, and smash things. Most humans acted rationally. The only difference was that the road they had walked until now had led them into the black path.
“Anyway, why did you bring him here?”
“Because he has to pay.”
“Pay?”
“I saved his life.”
Jo Chung-heon still looked unable to adjust to the fact that I had beaten Mun Il-ji, and kept shifting his eyes between us.
“I’m not the kind of man who’d stab someone in the back and wipe his mouth clean after having his life saved.”
Mun Il-ji said that. I nodded.
“Of course you aren’t.”
“Still, I’d like the accounting to be clean.”
“I’m a merchant. My accounting is always clean.”
Mun Il-ji’s face filled with unease.
“…What exactly are you planning to make me do?”
“What else?”
Rubbing my hands together with a smile, I answered.
“I’m making you the vanguard commander for crushing the Black Dragon Gate.”