The carriage carrying Cheon Su-rin headed for the outskirts of Clear Mirror Town.
After running for a little over a double-hour, the rattling carriage came to a stop.
“Please step out.”
The man who had been guiding him opened the door.
Once Cheon Su-rin stepped down from the carriage, his gaze naturally turned forward.
There, a massive pavilion towered in all its grandeur.
“The pride of the Black Tiger Gang, the Black Tiger Pavilion. Among all the sects in the area, we are the only ones to have raised a hall of this scale.”
The man's voice was full of pride.
It was certainly overwhelming in scale for the residence of a mere sect.
Raising a building like this would have required enormous funds and manpower.
The Black Tiger Pavilion itself was a symbol of the Black Tiger Gang's power.
“It's certainly magnificent.”
At Cheon Su-rin's brief admiration, the man's shoulders swelled with pride.
But the words that followed instantly turned the man's mood to thin ice.
“A pavilion of blood, built by plundering the powerless.”
“......Watch your words.”
“And if I don't, what will you do?”
The man bit his lip, but there was nothing he could do.
Boss Wi Mu-ryang's order was to bring Cheon Su-rin as an honored guest, and above all, the chilling killing intent he had felt at the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy was sending him an instinctive warning.
“......Follow me. The Boss is waiting.”
In the end, the man walked on as if he had not heard.
Cheon Su-rin also seemed to have no intention of escalating things right away, and silently followed behind him.
.
.
.
The top floor of the Black Tiger Pavilion.
When they arrived, Boss Wi Mu-ryang, who had already taken his seat, welcomed Cheon Su-rin.
“Welcome.”
Wi Mu-ryang greeted him with easy affability, but Cheon Su-rin only stared at him without a word.
At his continued arrogance even before the Boss, the man who had accompanied him shouted in alarm.
“You bastard, how dare you, before the Boss......!”
“Step back. From here, I will receive the guest myself.”
At Wi Mu-ryang's glance, the man swallowed his resentment and left the room.
In the wide room, only silence hung between the two.
Smiling, Wi Mu-ryang led him to a table of wine and food set by the window.
“Sit. I prepared this especially for an honored guest. The view is a little rough, but the wine tastes rather fine while looking down from here. Do you drink?”
“I'll pass.”
Wi Mu-ryang's hand, which had been pouring the wine, stopped in midair.
Without filling the cup even halfway, he lowered the bottle and asked in a low voice.
“Do you perhaps suspect there is poison in it?”
“It'd be strange not to. Isn't the Black Tiger Gang the kind that thinks nothing of even innocent lives to get what it wants?”
A piercing glint flashed in Wi Mu-ryang's eyes.
“About the corpses found in the cave. Are you the one who did that to my men?”
“I am.”
Wi Mu-ryang was inwardly shocked.
When he had ordered So-ho to deal with Cheon Su-rin, he had thought of it as merely getting rid of one irritating academy brat.
But the boy before him had killed So-ho and walked into the tiger's den on his own two feet.
“Astonishing. To have such martial prowess at that age. Did you learn your martial arts from your father?”
“What's the point of the question?”
“I value talented people. I tend to spare no investment to acquire someone outstanding. How about it? Will you not make a deal with me?”
This was his true reason for calling him all the way here.
“A deal...... Let's hear it.”
“A big job recently came to the Black Tiger Gang. A commission to take complete control of the market district around Clear Mirror Lake.”
“So that's why you forcibly took the merchants' livelihoods?”
“Took? We merely paid a reasonable price and made a fair deal.”
Cheon Su-rin's eyes sank coldly.
What he had witnessed of the Black Tiger Gang's conduct had not been a deal but a trampling.
Wi Mu-ryang was dressing up that process, riddled with threats and violence, as 'reasonable.'
“Most people in Clear Mirror Town make their living fishing. Losing that land is no different from letting go of their lifeline. Why would they give up their livelihood for a few measly coins?”
“It is a kindness, telling them to take this chance to find a new life.”
“By shoving money into their hands that isn't even enough for medicine?”
“Once they sell, it is over. Must I look after them afterward as well? If anything, once Clear Mirror Town develops thanks to this, they will thank me someday.”
Wi Mu-ryang burst into laughter tinged with madness.
When Cheon Su-rin simply looked at him without reacting, he rose from his seat awkwardly and got to the point.
“A person gets only a few chances in a lifetime. The one who seizes them grabs a fortune overnight, and the one who misses them crawls along the bottom for the rest of his life. For me, this commission is that very chance. So I have no intention of tolerating any meddlers.”
“Then you'll have to kill me. I've no intention of standing by while the Black Tiger Gang swallows Clear Mirror Town.”
Wi Mu-ryang's eyebrow twitched.
But he soon forced a smile, took a heavy money pouch from a drawer, and tossed it over.
Thump.
When Cheon Su-rin caught the pouch reflexively, a hefty weight pressed down on his wrist.
“A hundred taels of silver. I can give you more if you wish.”
It was a huge sum, on par with the Heavenly Way Martial Arts Academy's budget for a whole year.
“I doubt you're just giving this away.”
“Did I not say it was a deal? What you have to do is simple. Just stand by and watch.”
“.......”
“I will give you more if you wish.”
He thought it cheap if a few hundred taels of silver could solve the problem.
Having the work delayed, or losing more of his men, would be the bigger loss.
“How much more can you give?”
At the question, the corners of Wi Mu-ryang's mouth rose vilely.
He felt certain that, as expected, no one could stand firm before money.
“The hundred taels is an advance. When the job is done, I will give you four hundred more. Five hundred taels in total. Is that not a fortune that a backwater academy would never see in a lifetime?”
“.......”
“And if you come under me, I will add a thousand taels on top.”
“One thousand five hundred taels altogether. You must have so much money it's rotting.”
“For talent, it is no waste.”
“Since when have you known me?”
“A truly famous sword reveals itself at a single glance, even without showing off.”
Wi Mu-ryang was certain.
That cruel killing intent lodged in Cheon Su-rin's eyes.
He was by no means an ordinary academy student.
He was the same kind as them. No, he was one who harbored a darkness even deeper.
“The Black Tiger Gang is the best place for your talent to bloom. How about it? Will you not walk the true dark path with me?”
The moment Wi Mu-ryang approached with confident steps, a baleful force burst explosively from Cheon Su-rin's body.
“You don't know what the true dark path is.”
“......!”
“If you did, you wouldn't dare spout such nonsense at me.”
Cheon Su-rin hurled the money pouch in his hand.
Flying like an arrow, the pouch struck Wi Mu-ryang in the stomach.
Unable to block it in time, Wi Mu-ryang groaned and staggered back, and silver scattered noisily across the floor from the burst pouch.
“You...... refuse my offer?”
“I mean that I'll walk my own dark path.”
“Your own dark path? What on earth is that supposed to mean?!”
CLANG—!
Cheon Su-rin drew his sword.
When the cold blade was revealed, Wi Mu-ryang trembled with instinctive fear.
“Until now, I only denied my fate and tried to avoid it. But in the end, there was no avoiding it. The harder I suppressed the killing urge inside me, the more fiercely it burned.”
“What nonsense are you......!”
“In short, killing isn't necessarily a bad thing.”
Cheon Su-rin's eyes were clearer and more piercing than ever.
They were not eyes of madness ruled by the Heavenly Slaughter Star, but the eyes of one who controlled his killing intent by his own will.
Killing the innocent is a sin. But can one say that cutting down the wicked to protect those innocents is also a sin?
His past self had gone berserk while refusing to kill at all, but now it was different.
If it was a fate he could not avoid, he would choose for himself whom to cut down.
“If I can't escape my fate, then I'll at least decide its direction myself.”
“You truly are a madman!”
Wi Mu-ryang screamed and called for his men outside.
At the same time, he drew the sword at his waist and swung.
WHOOSH—!
Cheon Su-rin's body kicked off the floor and shot forward.
Wi Mu-ryang, too, as befitted a master close to first-rate, poured energy into his sword.
A faint but sharp sword qi flowed along the blade.
‘Die!’
Wi Mu-ryang was certain of his victory.
But just before the swords clashed, he saw it.
An ominous, hideous blood-red energy swirling around Cheon Su-rin's blade.
“......Sword qi!”
Along with that single, shocked cry, Wi Mu-ryang's sword was sliced like a sheet of paper.
The red trajectory did not stop its momentum and swept straight across Wi Mu-ryang's neck.
CRASH—!
The door shattered, and the warriors of the Black Tiger Gang rushed in.
But what they faced was a blood-red glare wavering in the darkness, and Wi Mu-ryang's head rolling on the floor.
“Cutting off the heads of the wicked. That is the dark path I've chosen.”
When Cheon Su-rin pointed his sword with a cold voice, dozens of warriors froze without being able to take a single step.
Soon, the man came to his senses and shouted at the warriors.
“He has assassinated the Boss! Do not let that bastard leave here alive!”
At the man's desperate shout, the warriors of the Black Tiger Gang drew their weapons all at once.
Objectively, anyone could see the Black Tiger Gang had the overwhelming advantage.
Even if Wi Mu-ryang had fallen, the opponent was merely one kid.
They believed that if they pressed in with their numbers, they could easily tear him to shreds.
Grin—.
But an eerie smile hung on the lips of the boy surrounded layer upon layer.
At that bizarre composure, the warriors' steps faltered.
“Move! I said kill him!”
At the urging, the warriors forced their bodies to move.
The encirclement closed in so tightly that not a single gap could be found.
In the very middle of it, Cheon Su-rin held his sword level.
WHOOM—!
The blood-red energy lodged in the blade let out a wail like a scream.
The moment they faced that eerie wave, the warriors instinctively realized it.
That was not a human martial art.
Those standing at the front tried to turn their backs in terror, but it was already too late.
Cheon Su-rin's arm cut through the air.
Along the trajectory the sword swept through, space itself was dyed red.
In an instant, the bodies of the enemies standing in the sword's path were torn apart like sheets of paper.
Patter—.
Reeking blood and shreds of flesh poured down like rain inside the hall.
At the end of the red trajectory Cheon Su-rin had swung, only a thick road of blood remained.
“Heavenly Slaughter Phantom Blood Sword.”
The name of the technique he had just swung lodged itself in his mind.
A martial art that gave substance to killing intent and shaped it into destructive sword qi.
He had never been taught it by anyone.
It was a sensation that burst out naturally, as though he had known it from birth, the way a bird spreads its wings or a fish swims.
This was the martial art of Jeok Geon-ho, who had once driven the martial world into terror.
The moment the Heavenly Slaughter Star awakened, the record of slaughter engraved in that blood had been reproduced through Cheon Su-rin's body.
It was the first time he had actually used it, but its power far exceeded his expectations.
‘As expected of the martial art of the one called the Heavenly Slaughter Calamity.’
It was an imitation that did not reach even half of the catastrophic power of his past life, but it was more than enough to butcher a mere sect.
Only now did he begin to understand a little why the masters of the Heaven-Subduing Hundred Saints Corps had fallen so helplessly.
It was a martial art that should have vanished along with the karma of the past.
Yet Cheon Su-rin had dragged that blood-stained martial art back out into the world.
So as not to repeat the mistakes of his past life, and to prove the path he must walk as the Heavenly Slaughter Star.
Step, step.
Cheon Su-rin walked quietly.
When he passed the heap of butchered corpses and reached the end of the road of blood, the man from before was there, slumped on the floor in terror.
Thanks to having been far away, he was still alive, but the sight unfolding before his eyes was hell itself.
“Y-you...... What on earth are you?!”
The man screamed, his teeth chattering.
With a single swing, dozens of warriors had been turned into chunks of meat.
Before this carnage more unreal than a dream, the man's mind was already on the verge of collapse.
“The Heavenly Slaughter Calamity.”
Cheon Su-rin's voice dropped coldly.
“The calamity that has come to reap the lives of bastards like you.”
When he finished speaking, Cheon Su-rin's sword mercilessly slashed across the man's throat.