BOOM!

“Hk!”

At the earth-shaking vibration, Basarek snapped awake.

“Ghk!”

The moment consciousness returned, pain surged through his entire body and strangled his breath.

“AAAGH!”

It hurt.

He had never felt pain like this in his life. Below his severed knees, worms had swarmed, chewing into his flesh. His ruined left hand was swollen purple-blue.

His core had been crushed, so circulating Inner Power was nothing but a dream, and the blood loss made his head spin. And yet, in the middle of all that, the pain came through with crystal clarity—like some kind of sick joke.

It hurts! It hurts!

Cold sweat streamed down his whole body.

Normally, at this point, he should be dead. The powerful vitality he’d been born with had become poison to him instead.

Then a single, chilling voice slid in.

“Does it hurt?”

Basarek jerked his head up.

FLASH! FLASH!

A young man stood before him, blue killing light blazing from his eyes.

A gray-black chain crossed diagonally over his upper body, wrapped around him. A monstrous axe hung over his shoulder—his lean frame carrying a weapon as big as a human body, a grotesque sight that stirred primal fear.

“Y-you... who the hell—?!”

Yeon Hojeong crouched down slowly.

Basarek flinched.

Even for someone with Western blood mixed into him, the cold blue glare pouring from Yeon Hojeong’s eyes was impossibly vivid—like the gaze of a reaper.

“Of course it hurts. I left you like this without doing a damn thing because I wanted it to hurt.”

“Y-you bastard!”

“Want me to slice you up some more?”

Basarek stopped breathing without realizing it.

Slice him up? Was that something a person said to another person? Even living as a horse-bandit lord, he’d never once talked about “slicing” someone like livestock.

It told him, in the bluntest possible way, how this man saw him. Basarek’s face drained white.

Yeon Hojeong smiled.

A ghost’s smile.

“I was going to start by pulling your eyeballs out the next time you ran your mouth.”

“......!!”

“You really do have absurd survival instinct. Ah—maybe not. You held out to the end even when we stormed in.”

Basarek shut his mouth.

This one’s insane.

He could tell from experience. He looked like some polished scholar who’d spent his life reading books—but he was the kind of man who could mince a human into butcher-shop meat.

You didn’t provoke someone like that. Eyeballs? Forget eyeballs—he’d be lucky if he didn’t get turned into dried jerky while still alive.

“You’ve got a rough idea of the situation, yeah?”

“.......”

“The Gray Wolf Band you led is buried. All of them.”

Basarek swallowed without thinking.

Yeon Hojeong tilted his head slightly.

“No reaction.”

The words were hard to read.

Basarek swallowed again, then carefully opened his mouth.

“What... are you planning to do with me?”

Yeon Hojeong gave a short chuckle.

His tone was surprisingly polite. He’d been spitting rough filth nonstop while fighting Mo Yong-woo, but now he was doing everything he could not to provoke his opponent.

An animal, through and through. If he’d honed martial arts to that level, his mind should have been strong too—but this one was a bandit to the bone.

That would make him easier to handle.

“What I do with you depends on what you tell me.”

“......?”

“You know your condition. Your vitality is ridiculous. But no matter how tenacious it is, you won’t last long like this.”

“......!”

“If you answer my questions properly, I’ll treat you—and I’ll put some money in your hands.”

Basarek’s eyes shook.

Treat him, and give him money? Did that mean he intended to let him live?

No way.

Basarek knew the trick. He’d played people with slick negotiation plenty of times himself.

“Will you really?”

“I will.”

“You said you’d treat me and give me money. You didn’t say you’d spare my life.”

A smile touched Yeon Hojeong’s eyes.

“Cunning. I didn’t even think that far. They say the ones who’ve eaten know how to eat—looks like I learned something useful.”

Basarek didn’t let himself be fooled. No—whether the other man was sincere or not, you entered negotiations assuming he wasn’t.

One mistake and his life was gone. Legs? Hand? Those could come later. First, he had to survive.

“I’ll answer. I’ll answer, so treat me and give me enough money to live without worries. And... move me somewhere safe, without harming me in any way.”

Shameless.

Yeon Hojeong scratched his cheek.

“Well, damn. You’re so confident demanding it, you’re making me feel small.”

“If you won’t, then I won’t answer either.”

That was a lie.

If Yeon Hojeong said he’d kill him without hearing anything, everything Basarek had demanded would vanish. If Yeon Hojeong pressed even a little harder, Basarek would bow his head.

But unexpectedly, Yeon Hojeong nodded.

“Fine. If you answer willingly, I’ll give you money, I’ll treat you, and I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

“You won’t come kill me later?”

“Do I look like someone who wastes time just to kill a petty bandit like you?”

“.......”

“Don’t worry. Unless we happen to run into each other while walking the Central Plains, I’m not going to go hunting down something that’s basically a walking corpse just to cook it.”

Basarek let out a breath of relief. He’d heard sincerity in Yeon Hojeong’s voice. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

“......Fine. What’s your question?”

A mouth that light.

Yeon Hojeong didn’t doubt for a second that this man would tell the truth now.

“Why did you come?”

“......?”

“I heard you were the ones raising hell across Tibet, Qinghai, and northern Gansu. So why did you come all the way to Shandong to stir up shit?”

Basarek swallowed again. His mouth was so dry he barely had anything left to swallow.

“Do you know a man named Yeong Go-wi?”

“Yeong... as in the Sea Dragon Merchant Group?”

“Yes. He’s the younger brother of the Sea Dragon Merchant Group’s leader. In the past, he stole the group’s goods several times and traded with us.”

Yeon Hojeong nodded.

“And?”

“The red jade he stole couldn’t be smuggled out of Shandong Province. So we came ourselves. He brought two full sacks of top-grade red jade—so we....”

“Do you want to die?”

Basarek’s eyes widened. Want to die—what the hell was that supposed to mean?

“W-why are you saying that?”

“So in your eyes, I just look like some lunatic.”

“......?!”

“Trying to size me up with a lie that doesn’t even hold together... not bad. You’ve got nerve. Your life is on the line and you still play games? I’m seeing you in a new light, bandit lord.”

“Th-that’s not— ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) It’s true! It’s true! If you bring Yeong Go-wi here face-to-face—!”

Then Yeon Hojeong pulled a small sheet of paper from his robe. With Inner Power gone, Basarek’s eyes couldn’t make out the faint writing.

“Gray Wolf Band Lord Basarek. Formerly of the Little Thunder Sound Temple in Tibet. Expelled for unknown reasons over a decade ago, then founded the Gray Wolf Band. A self-made figure who built the strongest bandit host beyond the frontier over the next ten years. Cruel and cunning, a textbook small-minded man who prizes his own value.”

“......!”

“For two sacks of red jade, a thousand-man Gray Wolf Band crawls all the way into Shandong? The mighty Gray Wolf Band Lord, himself?”

The blue glare in Yeon Hojeong’s eyes slowly bled into red.

WHOOSH.

Basarek’s jaw fell open.

For an instant, the firelight burning in Yeon Hojeong’s eyes was terror itself. With a body that couldn’t even circulate Inner Power, receiving killing intent pouring down like a storm made Basarek’s breathing seize.

Yeon Hojeong spoke.

Was it just his imagination? Basarek felt like the man’s canines were lengthening—like a beast’s fangs.

“I’m changing the terms.”

“H-Hk! Hk!”

“You die no matter what.”

“Ghk!”

“If you want a clean death, speak only the truth. The moment you put even a speck of lie in that filthy mouth.”

Yeon Hojeong smiled.

The warehouse filled to the brim with skin-crawling killing intent.

“Then I won’t kill you. I’ll make you live a long life.”

It was a threat so vile it turned the blood cold.

He won’t kill him? Basarek wasn’t stupid enough to mistake that for mercy.

SZZZT.

The crimson killing intent seeped into his eighty-four thousand pores.

“Why did you come to Shandong.”

Basarek’s mouth opened on its own. He couldn’t resist.

“I-I was... asked.”

“By who?”

“By the Fighting King... Fighting King Yangcheon.”

In that instant, Yeon Hojeong’s killing light doubled in intensity.

Yangcheon!

The Thirteen Seats of the Sacred Heavens.

The thirteen strongest masters in the martial world of the Central Plains.

Among them, excluding the Three Lords—considered the “new blood”—the remaining ten were revered separately as the Immortal Sovereign Kings.

Fighting King Yangcheon was one of those Immortal Sovereign Kings. A man well past sixty who wielded devastating barehanded combat—an unrivaled master of practical, real-battle fistwork.

And he was the most threatening enemy Yeon Hojeong had brought down, long ago, as the last obstacle before he unified the Dark Path.

You took a request from Yangcheon? You?

No way.

Yangcheon was ambitious, arrogant, and vicious by nature. He wasn’t the sort of man who asked anyone for anything. He commanded.

Yeon Hojeong’s fist tightened.

“Who is it?”

“Y-yes?!”

“I’m asking who’s backing you.”

“Hk!”

“It’s not one person. It’s an organization. Some group beyond the frontier is backing you.”

Basarek’s eyes shook like they’d gone mad.

Yeon Hojeong read the trembling gaze and expression in a single glance.

Basarek was the same as all the Dark Path trash. Reading a bastard like this was easier than draining a cup.

“It isn’t the Little Thunder Sound Temple. If I think about it, that’s weird too. The Little Thunder Sound Temple is one of the top powers even beyond the frontier. There’s no way they’d sit still watching an expelled disciple turn into a bandit like this.”

“......!”

“Who is it? Who’s backing you?”

“Th-that....”

Yeon Hojeong roared.

“Say it straight!”

Basarek squeezed his eyes shut.

“I-I don’t know!”

“What?”

“I-I don’t really know what they are! Only....”

“Only?”

“Only that they’re... unbelievably strong, and cruel.”

“How do you know that? Did you even meet them?”

“Yes.”

“......You met them?”

Of course he had. This petty bastard wouldn’t have let himself be jerked around without knowing what kind of power he was dealing with.

Still, Yeon Hojeong was shocked.

He’d suspected it, faintly. He’d thought—just maybe—these bastards might be connected to some group beyond the frontier.

But he’d dismissed it as wishful thinking. The odds weren’t high. Still, he’d hoped they were connected—because that would make them easier to find.

And it seemed they truly were.

“Name.”

“W-what?”

“What’s the name of that organization?”

“I-I don’t know! I really don’t! They never once said their organization’s name!”

Yeon Hojeong’s killing intent thickened.

Basarek hurried on.

“But! They had a trait!”

“A trait? What?”

“They were wearing—this weird kind of cloak, like a rain-cape! Every single one of them, the ones I met!”

“......!!”

“It felt like... members of some religious sect. I swear it!”

Yeon Hojeong rose.

WOOOONG! WOOOONG!

It felt like the warehouse walls themselves were trembling.

“A religious sect?”

“Yes!”

“......I see. So that’s what it is.”

Yeon Hojeong lifted his head and stared up at the ceiling.

On his face, as he looked upward, there was pure rapture—and extreme fury.

Tremble.

His clenched fist shook like it might shatter at any moment.

Yeon Hojeong’s mouth opened, slowly.

...Found you.