Chapter 80: Retribution is No Trivial Matter

"What is it?!" Donape asked in a low, heavy voice.

Though spoken quietly, the command was infused with a pulse of Qi, reverberating like a muffled thunderclap directly inside the ears of all thirteen thugs.

The gang halted their advance in unison, looking around in sudden shock.

"T-That guy!" one of the thugs from the last time yelled, pointing a trembling finger at Donape. "That’s the brat! That’s the piece of shit who stopped us from taking the old man!"

Upon hearing those words, Seo-Jun rushed forward, dropping to his knees on the wet asphalt.

"Please! Please don’t do this here!" Seo-Jun begged frantically, holding out the fistful of wet, crumpled bills he had pulled from the cash drawer.

"My father is unconscious! Please show some mercy—don’t take him! I swear I’ll pay off my gambling debt! This is all I have right now, please just take it as an advance!"

"Get out of the way, you pathetic nuisance!" the lead thug growled, swinging a heavy arm and shoving Seo-Jun aside.

The young man crashed onto the wet street, his money scattering across the rain-soaked pavement.

Five thugs stepped out from the group, drawing simple switchblades and kitchen knives.

Glaring at Donape with murderous intent, they moved past Seo-Jun—one heading to grab Old Man Han, while the other four lunged toward Donape to teach him a lesson.

Donape didn’t even blink as cold steel flashed through the drizzle.

As if time itself had slowed down, he rose smoothly from Old Man Han’s side.

The thugs registered his motion, but their neural pathways couldn’t process the sheer speed fast enough to send commands to their limbs. They were locked in place, helpless passengers in their own bodies.

He closed the distance with a casual, measured stride, as if the entire world revolved around his pace.

"I truly despise senseless violence," Donape said flatly.

"And I don’t mind scum like you collecting gambling debts from fools like him." He gestured toward the trembling Seo-Jun.

"But dragging an innocent, bedridden old man into your filth? That deserves a thorough beating."

His words echoed clearly in their ears, yet their bodies remained paralyzed by the sheer gap in their physical reaction times.

Reaching the lead attacker, Donape drove a heavy front kick straight into the man’s knee, snapping the joint backward.

Crack!

"Argh—!"

Before the man’s agonizing scream could echo through the alley, Donape snapped a brutal jab into the thug’s jaw, shattering his teeth and cutting the sound short.

One down.

The remaining three attackers watched in horror, their eyes wide as their minds struggled to comprehend the speed of the execution.

Before they could flinch, Donape blurred forward, delivering three precise, bone-breaking strikes directly to their legs.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

As they collapsed, Donape silenced each of them with the same ruthless follow-up to the jaw.

Unable to scream, the four thugs writhed on the wet asphalt, letting out pathetic, muffled groans like dying dogs.

The fifth thug—the one stepping toward Old Man Han with a raised knife—froze.

His brain stalled as he tried to process how four hardened enforcers had been dismantled in the span of two heartbeats.

To his perception, the action had occurred simultaneously in super-fast motion and agonizing slowness.

Before he could pull back, Donape was already in front of him.

His hand shot out like an iron vise, clamping around the thug’s throat and lifting him effortlessly off the ground.

Desperate, the thug wildly swung his knife toward Donape’s face.

Donape simply tightened his grip.

The crushing pressure instantly cut off the man’s oxygen, forcing his fingers to go limp as the knife clattered uselessly onto the pavement.

Donape turned his cold, ferocious gaze toward the remaining eight thugs drenched in the drizzle outside the stall.

"Get over here! Stop wasting my time," Donape barked, his voice laced with absolute contempt.

"I know you’re not convinced yet. So show me what you’ve got! Or do none of you have the balls?! If you don’t, stop pretending to be men!"

The taunt hit its mark.

Enraged and humiliated, the remaining eight thugs gritted their teeth, raised their iron rods and knives, and charged blindly into the alley.

Tossing the strangled thug onto the wet street like a sack of trash, Donape stepped forward to meet their advance.

The remaining eight thugs surged into the small food stall as a desperate, chaotic mob, their iron rods and switchblades swinging wildly through the misty rain.

To Donape, their coordinated charge looked like slow-motion targets lining up for practice.

Stepping directly into the center of their formation, Donape tilted his head back just enough to let an iron pipe whistle harmlessly past his nose. Without breaking momentum, he drove a short, Qi-infused palm strike straight into the attacker’s solar plexus.

The kinetic shockwave caved the man’s chest in, blasting him backward into two of his comrades. All three crashed heavily against the brick wall before slumping onto the wet asphalt, unconscious.

Five left.

Two enforcers lunged from Donape’s blind spots, swinging rusted kitchen knives in a frantic cross-pattern.

Donape shifted his weight backward, his body weightlessly pivoting like a falling leaf. He clamped his hands around both of their wrists mid-swing, twisting their joints outward until a sickening double crack echoed through the drizzle.

Before their screams could erupt, Donape slammed their heads together with a dull, heavy thud. They collapsed into an awkward heap at his feet.

Three left.

The final three thugs froze mid-stride, their weapons trembling violently. Horror finally broke through their rage as they looked down at eleven of their hardened comrades scattered across the alley and food stall, broken and silent.

"T-This...!" one of them gasped, spinning on his heel to bolt toward the neighborhood exit.

"Retribution is no trivial matter," Donape’s voice whispered from behind him.

A sharp, lightning-fast leg sweep took out the runner’s ankles, while a pair of rapid backhands caught the remaining two across their jaws.

Within three seconds, the final three figures hit the cold pavement, completely neutralized.

Silence returned to the alley, broken only by the rhythmic patter of cold rain washing blood and spilt broth down the storm drains.

Donape stood in the center of the carnage, casually wiping a stray droplet of water from his cheek, his breathing as calm and steady as if he had just taken a casual morning stroll.

Seo-Jun, who had witnessed the entire brutal spectacle, could only gasp for air. He cowered on the pavement, completely terrified by the quiet, overwhelming force standing before him.

Donape glanced over at Seo-Jun, causing the young man to flinch violently. Shifting his gaze, Donape surveyed the narrow alley, now filled with thirteen thugs squirming and groaning in agony. Luckily, despite the body count, the fight had been brief and contained.

Regulating his breathing, Donape exhaled a heavy cloud of mist into the chilly air.

’Sigh... even though my internal energy is nearly drained, my physical body isn’t burdened at all. It’s progress, but still far from where I need to be.’

He blinked a few times, waiting, but the air remained still.

’No system notification... which means this isn’t over yet. The neighborhood still isn’t secure.’

As the cold drizzle continued to wash over the pavement, the long-awaited wailing of sirens finally echoed down the narrow street. Bright red and blue emergency lights flashed against the wet brick walls as a white ambulance pulled up near the stall, its tires splashing over the puddles.

The rear doors burst open, and two uniformed paramedics jumped out carrying a portable medical kit and a folded wheel stretcher.

The senior paramedic rushed toward the counter, but abruptly froze, his boots nearly tripping over the pile of broken bodies scattered across the street. He blinked in sheer disbelief, looking from the thirteen groaning men to Donape, who stood calmly beneath his umbrella.

"What in the world happened here?!" the medic gasped.

"Attempted robbery," Donape replied flatly, pointing behind the counter. "The patient is back there. He collapsed about an hour ago—I suspect a stroke or seizure. No visible head trauma. But his skin is cold, and his pulse is getting weak."

Pushing their shock aside, the paramedics immediately dropped into professional protocol.

The junior medic knelt beside Old Man Han, securing an oxygen mask over his face, while the senior medic wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm and attached a pulse oximeter clip to his finger.

"Blood pressure is dangerously low—80 over 50! Pulse is thready," the senior medic shouted over the rain. "Get the cervical collar on him, then load him onto the board!"

Working with practiced efficiency, they stabilized Old Man Han’s neck, strapped him onto a rigid spinal board, and lifted him onto the stretcher before rolling him toward the vehicle.

"Are either of you family?!" the junior medic called out over the idling engine, looking between Donape and the trembling Seo-Jun.

"I am... I’m his son!" Seo-Jun stammered, scrambling to his feet, still clutching the wet, crumpled cash.

"Get in the front passenger seat! We’re moving him to the Central General Hospital emergency room!" The medic guided Seo-Jun into the cab, pushed the stretcher into the back, and slammed the heavy doors shut.

As he jumped into the driver’s seat, he grabbed the radio mic off the dash. "Dispatch, Unit 4 departing scene with one critical patient. We have a dozen non-critical injuries left on site—requesting police backup and secondary transport."

With a sharp blast of its siren, the ambulance sped away into the rain, leaving Donape standing alone in the quiet alley among the broken loan sharks.