Ha Mok-ryeong was already lying on the ground, gone cold.
Cheon Su-rin glanced at the corpse, then fixed his gaze on Jo Jeong-tak again.
“I was going to kill that guy.”
“I did not know. Had I known, I would not have needed to dirty my own hands.”
“.......”
“Seeing you up close, your spirit truly is extraordinary. That must be why you stepped forward alone in that situation.”
Jo Jeong-tak remembered Cheon Su-rin.
The bold act of hurling a radish at Ha Mok-ryeong had been rather memorable.
“Let me ask you just one thing.”
“What?”
“Do you have some sort of relationship with the man this one was beating?”
“Not really. We just nodded at each other a few times while I passed through the market.”
“Then why did you step forward at such risk?”
“Just because.”
Jo Jeong-tak tilted his head.
His way of thinking strictly followed a merchant's track.
A merchant never makes a losing deal.
He assumed there must be some fitting gain or reason behind Cheon Su-rin's actions.
“If I had to name something, it's this. Just seeing wicked bastards makes me shake with disgust.”
“You mean you acted out of chivalry?”
“It's different from that.”
“Then what?”
“Whenever I see guys like that...... a very slimy, nasty memory comes back to me.”
It was a kind of self-loathing.
As if looking into a mirror, every time he saw people committing evil, his past self was reflected in them.
Blood-reeking memories of committing murder as easily as eating a meal, ruled by the Heavenly Slaughter Star.
He could not pretend now that they had never happened.
Hatred for himself and a bitter atonement for his past life were mixed together in Cheon Su-rin's actions.
“It seems you have quite a story.”
“I do. One I can't put into words.”
“I am curious, but I will hear it another time.”
Jo Jeong-tak shifted his foot slightly.
In that instant, his figure blurred like a phantom and slipped into Cheon Su-rin's blind spot.
It was the same ghostly body technique he had used when he dispatched Ha Mok-ryeong in a single move.
He swiftly thrust out his right hand, trying to seize Cheon Su-rin by the throat.
“......?”
But Jo Jeong-tak's fingertips grasped only empty air.
Belatedly realizing that his hand had missed, shock filled Jo Jeong-tak's eyes.
‘He dodged?’
He had not imagined in the slightest that the boy could react to his footwork.
He had not used his full strength, but he had not moved carelessly either.
‘A coincidence?’
A little ways off, Cheon Su-rin stood indifferently.
His movement itself did not seem to involve any special technique, so Jo Jeong-tak could not shake his doubts.
This time, he raised a good deal of qi and stepped into his footwork.
Shff—!
Once again, he took the blind spot and went for the throat.
But Cheon Su-rin, as if he had seen through every trajectory, twisted his body in an instant and let the attack slide past.
Once again, only the chill of empty air lingered in Jo Jeong-tak's palm.
‘It's not a coincidence.’
Now he was certain. Once, perhaps, but no one could dodge his lethal technique twice by chance.
Moreover, this time he had raised his speed considerably, yet his opponent was composed.
Realizing that Cheon Su-rin was no ordinary boy, Jo Jeong-tak's eyes grew sharp as a blade.
“So it was you. The one who wiped out the Black Tiger Gang.”
In truth, until a moment ago, Jo Jeong-tak had thought that person was Cheon Hyeong-do.
He had used Ha Mok-ryeong to find that person.
He had thought that if someone ran wild against the merchants in the market just as the Black Tiger Gang had, the culprit might show himself.
As expected, one man had cut down Ha Mok-ryeong and his gang, and that man was Cheon Hyeong-do.
Of course, the first to step in had been Cheon Su-rin.
He had simply excluded him because he thought that young brat did not have the skill to bring down the Black Tiger Gang.
But now his mind had changed.
Seeing him dodge his lethal technique twice, he was certain that Cheon Su-rin was the one he had been looking for.
“So it was you. The one pulling the strings behind the Black Tiger Gang, and this time playing games by putting that trash out front.”
Cheon Su-rin murmured in a low voice.
At the fact that each had been chasing the other, Jo Jeong-tak burst into an incredulous laugh.
“You knew of me?”
“Rather than knew, I suspected. By common sense, there's no way the Azure River Society could subdue all the dark path groups around here overnight, right?”
“.......”
“You must have weeded out the ones in your way and put up a scarecrow. The Black Tiger Gang was probably one of those too.”
He was no ordinary one, as expected.
A cruel smile spread across Jo Jeong-tak's lips.
“I grow more and more curious about who you are. Who on earth are you?”
“Cheon Su-rin. I help my father teach children at the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Believe it or not, that's up to you.”
Of course, he would not believe it.
“The Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy...... What on earth is that place?”
Cheon Su-rin, and his father as well, were people of extraordinary skill.
At the very least, their level was by no means one that should be teaching children in a place like this.
“Now it's your turn to answer.”
“......?”
“Who are you? Why are you after Clear Mirror Town?”
Jo Jeong-tak thought for a moment.
His curiosity about Cheon Su-rin and his background was greater than his wish to hide his identity.
He revealed his status with an arrogant air.
“Jo Jeong-tak, Head Trader of the Golden Might Trading Company.”
“The Golden Might Trading Company.......”
“Our trading company is expanding its commercial reach. I judged Clear Mirror Town to be the best strategic point to build a harbor.”
Only then did the reason the Black Tiger Gang had hounded the merchants like rats become clear.
The Golden Might Trading Company. That massive, greedy shadow had been targeting this place.
“Is that why you seized the land around Clear Mirror Lake?”
“Seized? That hurts. I, too, wanted to handle it as amicably as possible. But they were the ones who refused a fair deal. So what choice did I have? I need the land, and they refuse to leave.”
“.......”
“One of them asked for ten times the market price. So I figured this way would come out cheaper.”
Asking for ten times the price was a polite refusal, a way of saying he would not sell.
To them, that place was not mere land, but life itself.
But Jo Jeong-tak could not care less about such circumstances.
Only minimum cost, maximum efficiency.
It was merely the view of a merchant who saw the world only as numbers on a ledger.
“You see the world only in terms of money.”
“Is that not what a merchant is?”
It was an attitude without the slightest guilt.
Jo Jeong-tak instead smiled coldly and asked.
“Now, I have revealed my status, so tell me who you really are.”
“The one who kills bastards like you. That's me.”
“......So you have no intention of opening your mouth quietly.”
Jo Jeong-tak snorted.
When he raised his right hand, a dull golden energy began to gather faintly on his palm.
“Will you be a little more honest if I cripple one of your arms?”
“So that's the Golden Might Trading Company's way.”
“......?”
“That's how you've piled up your wealth until now, by sucking the blood of others, isn't it?”
Jo Jeong-tak's expression hardened in an instant.
Soon he kicked off the ground and rushed in.
His right hand, condensed with energy, flew toward Cheon Su-rin's chest with a sound of splitting air.
This time, Cheon Su-rin did not dodge. He thrust out his right hand just like his opponent and met him head-on.
BANG—!
When palm met palm, an impact like a thunderclap burst out.
For a moment, a taut standoff ensued.
But Cheon Su-rin's expression was as calm as a lake, and the one who drew back, soaked in bewilderment, was Jo Jeong-tak.
“......!”
Jo Jeong-tak's pupils quivered.
He had been pushed back in a contest of palm techniques.
This was a shock on a different level from when the boy had dodged his attacks earlier.
‘I... was pushed back in palm techniques?’
He was called a grandmaster of palm techniques even within the Golden Might Trading Company.
He had risen to this position on that alone, yet a strike Cheon Su-rin had thrown out lightly had easily blocked him.
Could there be someone in Clear Mirror Town who wielded palm techniques at the same level as his?
What was even more shocking was that this opponent was a boy not yet even twenty.
Jo Jeong-tak looked down at his tingling right hand.
As if he had struck a massive wall of steel, the feeling was going numb from his fingertips to his elbow.
‘Perhaps.......’
An ominous premonition swept over him that Cheon Su-rin might be a move above him.
It hurt his pride, but the sensation lingering in his palm did not lie.
‘I must not see him as an inferior.’
Finally acknowledging his opponent as a master, Jo Jeong-tak brought out his ultimate technique.
The lethal technique that had killed countless enemies of the Golden Might Trading Company. Ten Thousand Trades Return to Coin.
When he lowered his stance, the surrounding air took on a fishy, metallic tinge and was sucked into his palm.
The air, compressed by his qi, wrapped around his right hand like a giant gauntlet.
Fwip—.
Jo Jeong-tak rushed in again.
Ten Thousand Trades Return to Coin was a martial art that exploded compressed energy at a single point.
Its destructive power was strong enough to turn a great boulder to dust.
Even Cheon Su-rin would not escape unharmed if he took this blow head-on.
‘That's it, don't dodge!’
Cheon Su-rin once again chose to meet it head-on.
Certain of victory, Jo Jeong-tak poured all of his qi into his right hand.
KWA-BOOM—!
Once again, the two men's palms collided.
But in that instant, Jo Jeong-tak felt a bizarre sensation, as if his entire martial art were being swallowed whole.
“Aaaaargh—!”
Jo Jeong-tak's wretched scream tore through the area.
He staggered backward, and red blood spurted like a fountain from where he had stood.
His arm was gone.
His right arm, which should have been below his shoulder, had vanished without a trace, as if something had swallowed it.
“Nngh-ugh.......”
Even amid the terrible pain, he looked ahead.
Cheon Su-rin's right arm was unharmed.
No, more than that, 'that thing' floating above his palm stole Jo Jeong-tak's soul away.
A red energy swirling balefully above Cheon Su-rin's palm.
It was a mass of murderous intent, as if seeking to annihilate all things.
Small though it was, that sphere, which seemed to have condensed all the darkness in the world, had swallowed Jo Jeong-tak's palm technique and his arm together.
“I-I was wrong!”
Jo Jeong-tak realized it instinctively. That was not a human martial art.
He crawled across the ground and wailed.
“I'll withdraw! I'll never set foot in Clear Mirror Town again! So spare my life, please, just spare my life!”
Instead of answering, Cheon Su-rin took a step closer.
The aura in his eyes was not the mercy of a chivalrous hero.
It was the gaze of the slaughter nature facing nothing but a target that must be killed.
Jo Jeong-tak turned his back in terror and fled.
At the same time, Cheon Su-rin's palm strike cut through the air.
The palm force struck Jo Jeong-tak square in the back as he fled.
CRUNCH—!
A huge hole was punched through Jo Jeong-tak's back.
With the place where his heart should have been left empty, he took a few more steps, then crumpled limply.
Thud—.
It was the wretched end of Jo Jeong-tak, Head Trader of the Golden Might Trading Company.
Cheon Su-rin confirmed that his breath had stopped and was just about to slowly withdraw his killing intent.
Whoosh—!
A sword strike flew at him from behind, along with a killing intent that made his skin crawl.
Cheon Su-rin instinctively drew his sword and blocked it, and his body was pushed back.
“......!”
When he saw the face of his attacker, Cheon Su-rin's eyes flashed wide.
Cheon Hyeong-do. His own father was pointing a sword at him, radiating cold killing intent.
“Father! What are you doing?”
“Who are you?”
“It's me! Your son, Su-rin.......”
“No.”
Cheon Hyeong-do's voice was colder than ten-thousand-year cold iron.
“The Heavenly Slaughter Star.”
“......?”
“You are wearing my son's skin, and you are nothing more than a thing I must cut down.”
Cheon Hyeong-do's eyes were no longer looking at his son.
They were only the eyes of an executioner intent on passing judgment on the slaughter nature that would become the root of the world's ruin.