Volume 1 Chapter 11 – Predation and Satiation

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Translated by Rain

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“It is here. The place where a delicious smell comes from…”

Scattering blue ghost fires from his eyes, Yeon So-hyeon laughed madly.

That laughter was as terrible as scraping an iron plate.

Inside his mouth, teeth as sharp as sawblades shone eerily, and his crimson throat was like an abyss, its end unknowable.

“Ugh…, Aaaah!”

At that bizarre sight, the man who had wet his pants rushed forward fitfully.

If it were an ordinary person, they would have lost their mind at the nightmare-like sight before them.

But they were people who had traversed the back alleys of Luoyang, which were like an Asura realm.

Although they were not martial artists who could protect their minds with internal energy, the spirit they had forged amidst blood and violence was real.

“Die!”

The blade held in his hand flashed.

It was a strike delivered cleanly and quickly, enough to make even himself admire it, though there was no trickery.

“…!”

But in the next moment, he could realize that his wrist was grabbed by the opponent.

In that instant, he thought that the opponent’s palm was small and soft without a single callus.

And it was colder than the river water in midwinter.

Enough for frost to settle from the wrist.

“Aaaaah…!”

He kicked the opponent.

No, he tried to kick.

However, the opponent squeezing his hand was much faster.

As if there were neither bones nor muscles.

As if it were easier than crushing a cold dumpling.

Thud!

His hand holding the blade rolled on the floor, spraying blood.

“…Aaargh!”

It was because the ‘monster’s’ grip strength was powerful enough to transcend common sense, cutting off his hand just like that.

While he fell backward holding his forearm from which blood was gushing, one of the hulking men rushed in quickly.

He intended to grip the blade firmly with both hands and use his body weight to drive the blade into the monster’s torso in one breath, but…

Clang!

Sparks flew where the monster’s palm met the blade.

“Ugh!”

At the shock that felt as if he had struck a stone wall with a sword, the hulking man dropped the blade.

He tried to hastily retreat and look for the next opportunity, but the monster snatching both of his wrists was much faster than that.

“L-Let go of this…!”

Screaming some sort of bizarre cry, he struggled to escape the opponent’s grip by squeezing out all his strength.

But no matter how much he struggled, the opponent’s grip did not show any sign of budging.

It did not even budge a hair.

And it was slowly squeezed.

“Aaargh, stop, stooop…!”

It was as if that action was out of regret for severing the wrist by squeezing it too easily at first.

This time, it was leisurely, as if wanting to see what would happen by slowly adding force.

There was no need to draw out demonic qi.

He just slowly, leisurely, added physical strength.

Soon, the sound of bones breaking and flesh tearing resounded.

“Aaaaah! Aaaaaah!”

Even in the midst of that, the hulking man kicked the opponent wildly, but it was not much different from kicking a brick wall.

Rather, his broken ankle dangled.

“Gyaaaa…!”

As the bones were shattered into pieces, the sound of flesh being squeezed resounded in the back alley along with screams.

As if squeezing a moisture-rich fruit pulp, a blood mist rose along with a thick scent of blood.

“…Gurgle-gurgle.”

The fallen hulking man writhed his entire body like a bug whose body was partially crushed in the dirty back alley.

In an unimaginable pain, his broken teeth mixed with blood and trickled down from his mouth.

If left alone, he was a hulking man who would die just like that from excessive bleeding and terrible pain, but the opponent had no intention of letting him go just like that.

The hulking man felt that both of his ankles were grabbed.

In the next moment, his legs were torn off, one at a time, and rolled away.

The blood spraying from the legs, which were as good as pulled out, drew a long arc on the wall of the alley.

It was neither martial arts nor martial techniques.

It was just pure violence.

It was toyed with by overwhelming physical strength.

“Ugh…”

The hulking man squirmed for a very short moment, then stopped moving.

“Hmm?”

A strange light shone in the eyes of Yeon So-hyeon, who was looking at the corpse.

Pale hands rose from the darkness of the floor and were pulling the corpse.

They were dozens of pure white hands, large and small.

Among them, there were children’s hands, old men’s hands, and women’s hands.

In that way, the corpse sank into the deep darkness of the floor.

The blood he had sprayed also sank, as if entirely absorbed at some point.

Thump! Thump!

Yeon So-hyeon felt his dantian pulsing greatly.

His vitality rose even higher, and a sense of elevation soared.

“Ho?”

Yeon So-hyeon half-opened his eyes, from which blue ghost fires flared, and enjoyed that refreshing feeling.

“…U-Uaaah!”

At that time, one of the men whose whole body had frozen at that nightmare-like sight started to run away without even looking back.

The back alley was dark, and there were many obstacles.

Even after tripping and rolling into a pit of filth, and even though his clothes and skin were torn by catching on something, he ran.

Even if his lungs seemed about to pop out of his throat, he did not stop.

But for some reason, the alley did not end.

No matter how much of a back alley it was, there was no one looking outside.

Not a single light, so common on the night streets of Luoyang, could be found.

The alley before his eyes spun round and round.

At that moment, there was a hand that popped out after passing through his stomach.

The grip holding his entrails was stained with his blood, glistening even in the darkness.

“…!!”

He wanted to scream with all his might, but it was after his abdominal cavity was heavily damaged and his diaphragm was torn away.

Kneeling down, he desperately gathered his own entrails.

“…….”

Yeon So-hyeon looked down at the man without saying anything.

In that gaze, not a single trace, really not even a single trace of humanity could be seen.

Thump-.

He raised his arm and drove it into the man’s back.

His spear-hand, along with the sound of ripping a leather sack, roughly pierced and stirred the opponent’s torso once again.

Because he mobilized pure physical strength without even needing demonic qi, it was far from clean.

And that roughness and messiness were precisely what he intended.

Yeon So-hyeon moderately pushed aside the corpse whose torso was torn.

Thump-.

Just like before, the corpse of the dead man was dragged in by the white hands that rose from the floor.

Without leaving a single drop of blood.

Thump-.

Yeon So-hyeon’s reason was sharp,

But his mind overflowed with madness, and his heart wilded with joy.

“This makes no sense…!”

That whispering of unknown meaning originated from the fourth man who was crouching in the corner.

“This is a dream, it must be a dream.”

Already, this space was eroded by the demonic qi flowing out from Yeon So-hyeon—the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens.

The third man, who had thought he was fleeing through the alley, had actually not even run ten steps, and the man crouching nearby had long since had his spirit subjugated.

This was precisely the true aspect shown by the demonic qi of Yeon So-hyeon, the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens.

Compared to this, scaring and overwhelming the servants in the morning was just at the level of a prank.

The demonic qi that he, that the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens, emitted in earnest was already enough by itself to destroy a person’s mind and twist their reason.

Even then, he had not directly injected demonic qi into these people’s heads.

Just by generating demonic qi with determination, he was dominating that space.

Thump-.

The time taken to tear apart the body of the man whose spirit was subjugated was only an instant.

His limbs, torn in several directions, sank into the floor.

“Hmm…?”

At that moment, he felt that the man whose wrist he had first twisted and torn off was slipping out to another alley.

The man would have fled as carefully as possible, but this domain was already Yeon So-hyeon’s.

Yeon So-hyeon let out a low laugh and lightly kicked off the ground.

It was the Dark Flow Transformation.

* * *

“Fuck, where is this? Where is the path!”

It was a familiar back alley that he had regarded as no different from his own front yard, but not now.

Holding his wrist, the man was circling in one spot.

To be precise, he was just spinning around the complicated alley in a square loop.

He had succeeded in escaping from that terrible spot for now, but his spirit was already eroded by the demonic qi.

“Is anyone there?! I said, is anyone there?!”

The man shouted, spitting blood.

His out-of-focus eyes wandered through the empty air.

What on earth had happened?

He could not understand.

A ghost? A monster? A grim reaper?

Of course, he himself, like other people in Luoyang, had believed in superstitions to some extent.

But that was only to the extent of believing in invisible fate, gods, luck, and the like, not believing in monsters from ghost stories that scared children.

Then what was that?

He shouted fitfully.

“Why on earth are you doing this to me?! I said, why?!”

Was it because he had shed too much blood? He felt dizzy and knelt on the spot.

He cried out.

“…There are so many bad bastards in the world, so why me?!”

In an instant, he felt as if his entire body was freezing.

It was because he felt a clear breath by his ear.

It was an exhale cold enough to freeze, mixed with a thick sulfur smell and an intense blood smell.

‘It’ whispered in his ear in a voice filled with metallic sounds.

[You are just the beginning.]

And then, it chewed and swallowed the man along with his torso.

* * *

“Did you not eat them up?”

At the old man’s question, Yeon So-hyeon slowly stroked his stomach.

“…Come to think of it, I no longer feel hunger.”

The overflowing gravy.

The texture of raw meat.

Although he had just committed the act of cannibalism, which violated the heavenly laws and was utterly disgusting.

There were no particular impressions.

Only the satiety slightly felt after escaping from the painful hunger was satisfying.

“Eating up wicked people is the first and last demand that the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens requires of the chosen one.”

Yeon So-hyeon revived his memory.

Did it not say it was ‘the heaven-defying scripture that would consume all darkness of the mortal world on behalf of the indifferent and lazy heavens’?

“Furthermore, the more you eat up wicked people, the more power of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens you will be able to realize.”

Does it mean one receives as much as one gives?

It was a reasonably rational system.

“However, Elder. That act of eating does not seem to mean only the act of eating directly by myself.”

Yeon So-hyeon recalled the sight of the corpse being dragged to the floor by countless hands.

“That is right. Those hands are the hungry ghosts of the Scripture of Controlling Darkness and Shaking the Heavens. They will exert physical influence in the ‘domain’ you unfolded using demonic qi to help your ‘meal’.”

At that moment, vibration began from the ceiling.

Stone dust ran down here and there, and dust rose.

The pillars of light coming down from the gaps in the ceiling also began to narrow little by little.

“Time is running out.”

“Is that so…”

The pillar of light illuminating the old man also gradually decreased, and his body seeped into the deep darkness.

“We will be able to meet again soon.”

In the darkness, the old man’s eyeballs bloomed into blue ghost fires.

“Until then, I wish you a good hunt…”

Yeon So-hyeon clasped his hands in salute toward the old man.

Soon, the dreadful darkness swallowed everything.