Chapter 993: Live a Good Life (6)

Hyung Taejak’s face darkened.

It was because the iron mace’s round metal head—raised high—had taken the sun’s place overhead.

But Hyung Taejak had already been beaten one hundred and eight times. Even with the iron mace blotting out the sun—his own end hanging above him—he was so drained he couldn’t move.

So all he could do was glare with eyes full of venom. Sensing the end, Hyung Taejak spat out a hoarse, rancor-soaked shout.

“You bastards won’t die easy! The brothers of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition will hunt you down!”

For a final curse, it was oddly stylish—especially compared to how pathetic his performance had been.

Qing didn’t back down either. She shouted right back.

“In all the world, the only true men are in New Greenwood, and a true man doesn’t run or hide! You want blood payment? Come to Tianzi Mountain! To New Greenwood’s land that rose from the ruins of fallen Old Greenwood!”

Qing—who wasn’t a “true man” anymore anyway—might have just been spewing whatever came to mind with that loose mouth of hers.

If you went to Tianzi Mountain, who knew what was even up on that steep peak? At least Qing didn’t.

“Enough nonsense. Now rest!”

Qing’s iron mace dropped.

Toward Hyung Taejak’s head—

BONK.

For some reason, the impact sound was... oddly cute.

“AGH!”

Even if the sound was cute, getting flicked in the head with a lump of metal the size of your head hurt enough to make you yell.

But it only hurt.

“...?”

“What? I told you to rest.”

Qing hit him again.

BONK!

Hyung Taejak erupted in rage.

Because there was no such law in this world.

No matter how vile a bandit was, you weren’t supposed to turn a warrior’s final moments—when he’d steeled himself for death—into a joke.

You weren’t supposed to.

“Nngh! You—mocking me to the end—”

BONK!!

“AGH! Damn it! What is this—”

BONK!!

“If you’re going to kill me, just—!”

BONK!!!

“KAAH! Just kill me already! What is this—”

THUD!! THUD!! THUD!!! BONK!!

Hyung Taejak kept flailing and vomiting fury, and every time, the iron mace came down—and the impacts sounded like they were getting louder and louder.

“AAAH!! Wait! Wait—wait—wait!”

Hyung Taejak thrashed his arms desperately and screamed for her to stop.

Qing tilted her head, and Hyung Taejak—almost on the verge of crying—asked in a trembling voice,

“W-why are you doing this? It really hurts...”

“I told you to rest.”

“If you’re telling me to rest, why do you keep bonking me?! Finish it in one hit! I’m ready to rest!”

“You don’t want to rest yet.”

And then—

SWHIP—BONK!!!

“KAAAH!”

Now it was starting to hurt for real. Those “forehead flicks” had the nuclear principle in them.

Hyung Taejak was too exhausted to even rub his head—just trembling in place—when Qing looked down at him and fired off a stern voice.

“...Why didn’t you rest?”

“What?”

“You didn’t want to rest. That’s why.”

“What the—AGH!”

BONK!

“Stop enduring it and rest, I said.”

In that instant, Hyung Taejak understood.

“Rest”—wasn’t that what people usually said when they were about to kill you, or knock you out?

Now that he looked again, the subordinates sprawled all over the place were still groaning, and even the ones lying limp—if you checked carefully—were still breathing.

So these “New Greenwood” bastards... hadn’t intended to kill them in the first place.

She’d said to rest.

If someone who didn’t intend to kill you said that, then it meant: Pass out. Lose consciousness.

But people didn’t usually pass out just because they got hit. If you kept hitting them, the ones who’d “passed out” would pop back up screaming.

A desperate fight where one perfectly landed punch or kick makes the enemy instantly black out and collapse?

That kind of scene only existed in the fiction of Qing’s homeland.

So what did it mean?

It meant—

Pretend to be unconscious on your own.

I’ll keep hitting you until you do.

And the hits were getting stronger. If he kept “enduring” like this, his skull really was going to crack.

He’d been fired up with desperate spite because he thought he was going to die anyway—but the moment a path to survival appeared, that venom melted away.

If you could live, you lived.

There was no law that said you had to die.

“Stop—stop! Okay! I’ll rest! I’ll rest—”

BONK!!!

“AGH! No—I said I’ll rest!”

“No. You don’t want to rest.”

“When a man says he will, I said I’ll—”

BONK!!!!

In the agony that felt like his skull was shattering into pieces, a thin line of enlightenment suddenly bloomed in Hyung Taejak’s head.

Ah. So that’s it. I truly didn’t want to rest.

So Hyung Taejak clapped a hand over his own mouth and slowly toppled sideways, collapsing flat onto the ground.

In truth, for a martial artist, it was the choice you would never make—rather die than do it.

But the solemn atmosphere had already been smashed into a farce, and people were the kind of creatures who got swept up by the mood.

And with his body beaten senseless, and those increasingly brutal bonks scrambling his judgment, he genuinely wanted to rest, too—I don’t know anymore—teetering close to total surrender.

Qing nodded with a satisfied smile.

“Now your heart can rest in peace.”

Hyung Taejak, finally, rested!

“Brothers of New Greenwood! Did you see?! Help these suffering guests rest in peace!”

At once, the Golden Hawk members sprawled on the ground—groaning and writhing—clamped their mouths shut and went limp.

Compared to their unit commander, their enlightenment came faster. If there was ever a time to use the saying “blue comes from indigo, yet is bluer than indigo,” this was it.

The Golden Hawk Detachment—an elite combat unit of the Evil Path Thug Grand Coalition.

Collectively rested!

“Alright, kids. By the strict law of bandits—our customers are resting! Strip them clean!”

And so New Greenwood’s “heroes” began real business operations—carefully collecting every coin pouch off the limp Golden Hawk members.

*****

Meanwhile, Hyung Taejak felt a spark of hope.

The gold in the carriage was eighty strings—but they were busy taking coin pouches. That meant they didn’t know what was inside the carriage, didn’t it?

But once they checked the cargo, those bandit-or-robber bastards would realize how severe the situation really was.

Anyone with even a little sense wouldn’t lay hands on wealth that enormous.

And even if they tried?

Eighty strings of gold weighed five hundred geun.

No matter how strong you were, it was hard to move. Even if you divided it up, what were you going to put that much gold into and split?

If you dragged the whole carriage, your trail would be obvious and you’d be tracked immediately.

So even in the worst case, wouldn’t they just take as much as they could carry?

No—please. Please do that. I’m begging. It’s my wish...

Honestly, it wasn’t hope so much as pleading—frantically inventing reasons they “couldn’t” take the gold.

In Qing’s homeland, there was a professional term for that: a “hope circuit”—the human instinct for self-protection.

But then—

“WHOA! What is this?! Holy—! Guys! We’re rich! It’s gold! Gold—dozens of strings! No, it looks like over a hundred!! See?! Life really is one big hit!!”

That excited voice crushed Hyung Taejak’s expectations without mercy.

And he even said it was over a hundred strings?!

Not only was that not even true—why the hell was that idiot shouting it out loud?!

Through Hyung Taejak’s narrow, half-open view, he saw two bandits hugging a split-open gold crate—holding the cut face up toward the sky—as they moved with swift, agile leaps.

Not exactly split in half—more like seven to three.

Yeom Hwiyoung carried the bigger portion; Heema carried the smaller.

Heaven-and-Earth Great Shift.

A peerless divine art so difficult that even its creator couldn’t fully master it. (And “unfinished” was a forbidden bad word.)

A Demonic Cult secret art so unfathomable that the basic entry-level feature was “use internal-energy flow to push the body’s strength to the extreme.”

And at this moment, its true power was being made perfectly clear:

It was very good for carrying gold.

It was also the moment New Greenwood’s bandit chief—Black Whirlwind Wagyu—began to become known across the world.

Of course, Qing herself was in the state of Will I ever see any of this again?—Li Kui or Wagyu, who even knew anymore—so what did it matter?

*****

After the New Greenwood bandits left—

Hyung Taejak fell into a serious dilemma.

When am I supposed to open my eyes?

If he jumped up the instant they were gone, it felt... too pathetic.

But if he stayed lying there—until when?

Maybe because the threat to his life had passed, the pain in every part of his body—hands, head, feet, torso, legs—came roaring up without missing a single place.

So, after about an il gak—

“Ghhh...”

Hyung Taejak let out a deliberately loud groan and sat up.

He clutched his head and looked around, acting like he’d “accidentally” lost consciousness for a moment.

Hearing that, the Golden Hawk members—who had “officially” been unconscious—also began to come to, one by one.

Golden Hawk Detachment total: fifteen.

Current: fifteen. Injured: fifteen. Missing: zero.

By sheer luck, every last one of them was alive—

“...Ghh.” “Ugh...”

—and even among them, their unit commander was the one in the “best” condition.

Because Yeom Hwiyoung might have looked like he was just casually stretching out a limb, but there was a Mystical Realm principle hidden inside it—so even if it looked like you’d only gotten “lightly” hit, internal injuries would burst.

And Choi Ri-ong—originally a notorious demonic master—had always had a heavy hand. Plus, he didn’t like this stupid—yet, in a way, funny—mask-play at all, so he’d vented his irritation with his fists.

But the ones in truly dire condition—

The ones with broken bones, the ones who’d puked up a bowlful of blood—

Those were all Heema’s work.

Pure innocence was the most frightening evil, they said—had Heema’s hands always been this brutal?

No, that wasn’t it.

It was just raw capacity.

Only masters could control their strength. Honestly, the fact that someone was “fine” without even a scratch was praiseworthy in itself.

And even that was, quietly, the result of Yeom Hwiyoung and Choi Ri-ong looking out for them.

Anyway.

All Hyung Taejak had left was a carriage with its door torn off, and injured men.

The aftermath of having the gold stolen—he’d deal with that when he returned to headquarters.

For now, they needed to find a Therapist and get treated.

But—

“Does... anyone have money...?”

“... ... ...”

The men—already grim—lowered their heads even further.

Because, obviously, that had been taken too.

Those dog bastards—if they were going to take eighty strings of gold, they could’ve at least left them some coin pouches. Even professional gamblers and con artists left a cut behind...

The one saving grace was that, within half a day’s travel, there was a Therapist who would treat you even without money.

And after being publicly humiliated in front of Yichang’s commoners, they were so ashamed they wanted nothing more than to leave the city as quickly as possible.

So—

“Put the ones who can’t move in the carriage. For now... hah. We go to Jagwi County.”

*****

Sasa Bo-yeol looked a little excited.

“You said you were bringing gold, but what—did you try to earn club-money and get beaten into paste? Or did you go take a beating in place of a capital criminal? Good grief. What a mess. Tsk tsk.”

“Club-money” was literally the price of a club—meaning extortion scams where you picked a fight, got beaten, then threatened to report it to the authorities unless you were paid.

And “beating-money” was payment for taking someone else’s caning, or serving prison time in their place.

In other words: You said you were bringing money—so where did you go get your ass kicked?

It was pure mockery.

Hyung Taejak shut his mouth, face burning red.

When you were the one in need, keeping your mouth shut was usually the wiser choice.

“The Evil Path Alliance is really stingy. Someone asks for a little money, and they knead them down this evenly? And for a good cause, too.”

Bo-yeol knew nothing.

Because he literally had no idea.

But by Bo-yeol’s common sense, to “knead” the Golden Hawk Detachment like this, it had to be the Evil Path Alliance using force. And the fact that they hadn’t killed them—only thoroughly pulverized them—made it feel even more certain.

“...It wasn’t like that.”

“If it wasn’t like that, then how did you end up like this?”

“...Something happened.”

He couldn’t exactly say they’d met bandits inside the city and had all the gold stolen.

And even if he did, it wasn’t the kind of story anyone would believe.

“Enough talk. So—how is it?”

“Tsk tsk. Whoever did this really kneaded you properly. Bones, muscles—there isn’t a single spot without bruised blood pooling. And your meridians are shredded—your Eight Extraordinary Meridians look like this because you were taking hits quietly, without resisting, the whole time, weren’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is the trace of hidden force burrowing in. If you’d raised your internal energy, you would’ve gotten severe qi deviation starting from the Belt Meridian—dead, or crippled.”

Hyung Taejak’s insides went cold.

Because the whole time he’d been “resting”—eyes closed—he’d hesitated over whether to spring an ambush, and in the end he’d given up.

If he had sprung it—

He’d be a wandering ghost by now.

“It’s so intricate I can’t even... For now, you’ll have to watch it for about a month. Of course you can’t use internal energy, and regulated breathing cultivation is forbidden too.”

“Isn’t there something? Like an elixir. Internal injury medicine, you know.”

Bo-yeol truly hated that line.

These combat-unit bastards acted like he was obligated to hand out drugs on demand.

Normally, since the Grand Leader doted on the combat unit, you had to give them medicine because their influence was frightening.

But now?

Bo-yeol beamed.

“That costs extra. Pay up.”

“No—this is a charity clinic. What money?”

“A charity clinic is for poor commoners who can’t afford treatment even when they need diagnosis. What am I supposed to ‘charity’ to well-fed martial artists? If anything, I should be taking donations. And do you even know how expensive elixirs are? They’re tonics. Tonics.”

“Ahem.”

“Right. I’ve got a one-tael silver one, a six-tael silver one, a one-tael gold one, and a five-tael gold one. Which do you want?”

Bo-yeol asked, no longer even trying to hide his grin.

Hyung Taejak, keeping a polite posture, asked politely.

“Senior... between us... could you put it on credit?”

Bo-yeol’s face went flat—

“I’m very sorry, patient, but our medical academy does not accept credit. Payment is upfront. Patient.”