Chapter 238: A Supreme Master?

The Devil’s Walk Through the Dark Night was a wide-area Transcendence-Level Ultimate Technique that spread dense darkness, robbing enemies of sight and hearing.

Sssssss...

It was a secret technique Choi Geon had forged from his lifelong hatred of evil and his desire to destroy the wicked hiding in the dark.

Inside it, the senses ceased to function properly. A person could walk right up beside you without being noticed.

In other words, it was a Transcendence-Level Ultimate Technique uniquely suited to infiltration and assassination.

Stab. Stab. Stab.

Every time Choi Geon casually thrust his sword as though dotting points on a page, another demonic martial artist of the Heavenly Demon Cult crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

There were no screams. No warning.

Men who had been drinking moments earlier simply collapsed face-first onto their tables as if overcome by sleep. Others who had been laughing and talking fell abruptly silent.

“...What?”

“Why did everything suddenly...?”

A handful with exceptionally sharp qi perception reacted belatedly, but all they managed was to realize that death was coming.

The result was no different.

SLASH!

Choi Geon severed the necks of several fleeing demonic martial artists, then flicked the blood from his sword onto the floor.

“Kehehe. The stench is unbearable. I feel as though I’ve walked straight into a cesspit.”

Muttering calmly, Choi strode across the Heavenly Demon Cult’s hidden base.

“Aaaaaagh!”

“Kill them!”

Sensing mortal danger, the trapped demonic martial artists began going berserk inside the darkness.

They swung their weapons wildly in every direction. Some even stabbed their own comrades. Others bled from their eyes and noses as side effects of their Demonic Void Arts, while the color of their skin visibly changed.

“A den of demons worthy of the Heavenly Demon Cult indeed.”

Choi walked impassively through the hellscape he had created.

Most Demonic Void Arts in existence eroded a person’s humanity, dulled their sensitivity to blood and murder, and at the same time left them emotionally unstable and restless.

That made The Devil’s Walk Through the Dark Night—which induced overwhelming fear and terror—something close to a natural predator of demonic martial artists.

“May you all be born as decent people in your next lives.”

CRUNCH!

Choi crushed the skull of a twitching man beneath his foot and continued toward his disciple.

That was when—

“You bastard! Do you have any idea where you are?!”

A spellcaster.

One whose presence carried a weight approaching that of a supreme master.

The hunchbacked old man glared at Choi with eyes stained completely black.

Perhaps because he was a spellcaster rather than a martial artist, he seemed capable of seeing through the darkness of the Transcendence-Level Ultimate Technique.

“Kehehe. What an ugly old creature. I heard what you said to my disciple. That he was well suited to your demonic cult?”

The old man glared at the displeased Choi approaching him and pushed his spellcraft to its absolute limit.

“I’ll rip out your heart and offer it upon the Heavenly Demon’s altar!”

WHOOOOOSH!

An enormous torrent of smoke erupted from his pipe and spread through the entire area.

At the same time, the corpses of the fallen demonic martial artists began rising from the floor.

This spell was far more vicious and powerful than the one he had used against Kim Muhyuk.

Apparently, there was a price.

Black blood streamed from the old man’s eyes, ears, and nose.

Grrrrr...

“GRAAAAAH!”

In exchange, the dead temporarily regained the martial might they had possessed while alive and charged Choi all at once.

“Kehehe. That’s rather creepy.”

But the thick smoke of the Demonic Void Art could not drive back the darkness.

Nor could the demonic martial artists the old man had briefly resurrected come anywhere close to the Sword Demon.

SLAASH!

Bodies split apart at the waist.

Chunks of flesh flew in every direction.

With every sweep of the Sword Demon’s blade, dancing like the weapon of an executioner run wild, the coppery stench of blood grew thicker.

“Y-you are clearly of the demonic path yourself...!”

The hunchbacked old man backed away, staring at Choi as though nothing made sense.

“Then why are you attacking the Cult?! The Heavenly Demon’s embrace is where you belong!”

Choi strode right up to him.

Then he grinned down at the old man.

“Wrong. This old man devours evil and washes it down with the blood of devils. Put another way, I am a righteous heroic swordsman.”

“Nonsense! You are obviously—!”

SHNK!

The sword flashed.

The hunchbacked old man’s head dropped to the floor.

Choi picked it up and muttered,

“My disciple must be waiting.”

A short while later, Choi discovered the Heavenly Demon’s altar and the ceiling mural Kim had seen earlier.

“...What a hideous devil.”

Frowning, he split the ceiling apart with a single stroke of his sword and demolished the Heavenly Demon’s altar.

Then he tossed the hunchbacked old man’s severed head into the room where Kim and Black Swallow were.

*****

“S-Sword Demon...”

Black Swallow had gone corpse-pale.

Choi bared his white teeth in a grin.

“So it was you. The bastard who broke into the Martial Alliance underground prison to destroy evidence. The bastard who planted bombs at the Great Heaven Gate and slaughtered innocent people. The one who clung to Jang Jinmyeong and the Black Heaven Society’s society leader like a leech, whispering schemes into their ears and plotting every filthy trick...”

Their grudge went back a long way.

Killing intent glinted in Choi’s eyes as he approached, his voice low and chilling.

Black Swallow slowly backed away.

Then he abruptly spun around and lunged at Kim.

I have to take Kim Muhyuk hostage if I want to survive!

Black Swallow remembered the information stating that Kim Muhyuk was still only a pinnacle expert.

The fact that Kim had passed the hunchbacked old man’s test so easily should already have told him that information was wrong.

But in that moment, he did not have the presence of mind to think that far.

When cornered, people tended to believe only what they desperately wanted to believe.

I have to take Kim Muhyuk hostage and buy time somehow. If I can alert Master Han, I still have a chance!

Driven by desperation, Black Swallow rushed his attack and exposed a slight opening.

It lasted only an instant—an opening that even a pinnacle expert might see but could do nothing about.

Kim, of course, did not miss it.

Phantom Dream’s dark-red arc split the space between them like lightning.

SPLURT!

Black Swallow stared in shock at his own right arm spinning through the air.

His gaze shifted toward Kim Muhyuk’s cold smile.

A supreme master?

He could see it with his own eyes and still could not believe it.

A supreme master at only twenty years old?

Didn’t that mean his growth as a martial artist was even faster than Richard Han’s had been?

“M-monster...”

Black Swallow stared at Kim with bulging eyes and muttered the word.

That was as far as his consciousness lasted.

Whoosh!

Kim closed the distance in an instant and struck Black Swallow’s sleep pressure point, knocking him unconscious.

At last, they had captured the man who had spent more than twenty years secretly undermining the Korean martial world from behind the scenes.

“Kehehe. Well done. You caught yourself a big fish.”

Choi approached and patted his disciple on the shoulder.

Kim looked around at the darkness of The Devil’s Walk Through the Dark Night as it slowly dispersed and shrugged.

“It was all thanks to you, Master.”

Having successfully concluded their first outing in New York, master and disciple looked at one another and grinned.

*****

“What have you done?!”

Team Leader Grace Taylor of the World Martial Alliance Peacekeeping Unit had rushed to the scene after receiving Choi Geon’s call.

Now she was furious with him.

The reason was obvious.

Dozens of martial artists’ corpses had been discovered beneath an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Chinatown.

“We were sightseeing around the city when we happened to notice some suspicious men. We followed them, and as you can see, the place turned out to be a den of demons.”

Grace’s eyes sharpened at Choi’s shameless excuse.

“This is America. Even if they were martial artists from the unorthodox faction, you should have contacted us first. Even a peerless master cannot simply commit indiscriminate slaughter like this and expect us to—”

Choi cut her off.

“They practiced Demonic Void Arts.”

“...Is that true?”

Grace Taylor’s expression hardened.

Choi nodded and explained what he had seen.

“There should still be traces of disgusting demonic qi left in the corpses. There were illegal drugs as well, along with refrigerated human flesh.”

“I’ll need to verify that myself.”

“By all means.”

The World Martial Alliance itself had declared the practice of Demonic Void Arts taboo.

Their side effects could strip away a practitioner’s humanity, and they posed a severe threat even to civilians who had never learned martial arts.

That was precisely why Choi had contacted Grace immediately.

“Subduing a demonic martial artist who practices Demonic Void Arts is not subject to disciplinary action, regardless of nationality or affiliation. Isn’t that the World Martial Alliance’s official position?”

“I don’t believe ‘subduing’ means massacring every last one of them.”

“Kehehe. I’ll admit my hand was somewhat heavy. Isn’t that why I came all the way to America to wear a Black Restraint Band?”

Grace Taylor shook her head at Choi’s brazen attitude.

“Fine. For now, I understand. But that man...”

Grace looked toward Black Swallow, who was slung over Kim’s shoulder like a sack of cargo.

This time, Kim answered.

“He’s a criminal wanted by the Korean Martial Alliance. We happened to catch him here.”

That was a coincidence too?

Grace narrowed her eyes and looked back and forth between master and disciple.

“You didn’t come here after combing through New York’s back alleys looking for that wanted man, did you?”

The two of them suddenly found other things very interesting to look at and gave her awkward smiles.

“Well, one thing led to another.”

“As long as the result was good, doesn’t that count for something?”

“Haa...”

Grace let out an exasperated sigh.

Choi’s expression turned serious.

“Do whatever you wish with the rest. But this one needs to be taken back by the Korean Martial Alliance.”

As commander of the Demon Extermination Unit, Choi formally requested the World Martial Alliance’s cooperation.

They had finally captured one of the masterminds responsible for countless problems that had plagued the Korean martial world for years.

There was still much to investigate and much they needed to learn from him.

Fortunately, Grace Taylor cooperated without resistance.

“I’ll submit the request to my superiors. However, until you take him back to Korea, we’ll keep him in our custody.”

“Kehehe. I was going to ask you to do exactly that.”

And so master and disciple safely returned to World Martial Alliance headquarters.

Naturally, however, news that dozens of Demonic Void Art practitioners had been discovered in the middle of New York threw the World Martial Alliance into an uproar.

*****

They returned before dawn.

By the time daylight began creeping over the horizon, Kim and Choi were still being questioned in a World Martial Alliance investigation room.

The two gave mostly truthful accounts of what they had seen and experienced inside the hidden base.

But they said nothing about the Heavenly Demon Cult itself.

We still don’t know how deeply they’ve infiltrated everything. Better not to say anything yet.

That was Kim’s judgment.

Choi agreed with his disciple.

Even the World Martial Alliance could not be trusted completely.

If the Heavenly Demon Cult’s influence had penetrated farther than expected, telling the Alliance too much could amount to handing information directly to the enemy.

At least until I know for certain who’s an enemy and who’s an ally...

Until then, Kim intended to build connections, strengthen his reputation, and accumulate enough influence of his own to act when necessary.

“Disciple, I’ll be off, then.”

“Master, I think they’ve officially marked you as a person of interest now, so please watch what you say and do.”

“You’re the one who needs to stay put and not cause any trouble until I get back.”

Master and disciple stared at each other with identical looks of distrust.

Then Choi left as scheduled to begin his Black Restraint Band suitability assessment.

Left alone in his lodgings, Kim considered getting some sleep, but he was not particularly tired.

“I’m not even sleepy.”

He lay on the bed and checked his phone.

Several messages had arrived through the social-media account he had created the previous day.

[King Lucas: Hey, Ki! You haven’t forgotten our promise, right?]

A casual message from Lucas Pereira.

Kim briefly considered replying, then decided to put it off until later.

There were also several direct messages from people who had found him through Lucas’s followers.

Most were easy enough to ignore.

But the new notification that appeared at that moment was impossible to dismiss.

[Richard: I heard you’re in America. If you’re free today, want to grab a light lunch together?]

“...Richard Han?”

Kim checked whether the account was genuine.

It was Richard Han’s official social-media account.

This time, Kim did not hesitate.

He immediately sent a reply.