Watching the frail old man standing entirely isolated in the center of the junkyard, Cheon Do-jin gently shook his head, his detached eyes devoid of a single ripple.
He spat out a sentence dripping with absolute disdain:
— “Your old bones are already halfway in the grave, yet you keep blabbering.”
The moment the words left his lips, over thirty subordinates swarmed down from the crests of the trash mountains like a pack of ravenous hyenas.
They rapidly fanned out, encircling old man Akaisin from all sides in a tightly locked perimeter.
Raucous laughter and the metallic clashing of heavy weapons rang out as the lackeys snarled in crazed excitement:
— “Old man!
Time to get ready for your memorial service!”
SWOOSH!
SWOOSH!
SWOOSH!
Dozens of thugs lunged simultaneously, the weapons in their hands carving out brutal trajectories aimed squarely at the old man’s vital spots.
Facing the lethal pincer attack, the playful smirk vanished from Akaisin’s face.
His eyes turned terrifyingly cold and serious as the ancient, ash-gray Sophion surrounding his frame detonated, rippling outward into a massive, invisible pressure wave.
— “Ignorant fools!
I absolutely despise cleaning up trash like you, but since you insisted, let’s end this quickly!”
”Ten Directions Flesh Lock!”
An invisible spatial shockwave swept through the battlefield.
Instantly, roughly sixteen frontline thugs who were mid-lunge froze dead in mid-air, immobilized like rigid stone statues.
The sudden, extreme molecular compression instantly suffocated them.
Their faces flushed crimson before rapidly turning purple from a lack of oxygen—even twitching a single muscle fiber became a physical impossibility.
Not stopping there, Akaisin lightly flexed his fingers, unleashing another surging torrent of ash-gray energy.
”Myriad Threads Soul Bind!”
This time, the slender Sophion energy threads did not stop at the usual count of ten.
Instead, hundreds of razor-sharp energy filaments erupted, piercing directly into the neural meridians of the remaining fourteen thugs in the formation.
The lackeys, who were still utterly bewildered by what was happening to their comrades, suddenly realized in absolute horror that they had completely lost control of their own bodies.
— “What the hell is this?!
My body…
my body won’t move!”
— “My hand…
my hand is raising itself!
NO!
STOP!
DON’T SLASH ME!!!”
A Symphony of Carnage
A grotesque, blood-drenched horror show officially commenced right there in the dirt.
Under the tyrannical manipulation of Akaisin’s hundreds of soul threads, the fourteen thugs turned on one another, hacking mercilessly.
Even the sixteen frontline thugs who were frozen solid and suffocating could not escape their grim fate.
Trapped in a state of absolute paralysis, they could only watch wide-eyed in sheer terror as their own comrades lunged forward, violently butchering and hacking their bodies to pieces.
— “Oh god…
my intestines…
they’re spilling out!
Stop slashing, it hurts so bad!!!”
— “MY ARM!
IT’S SEVERED!
AAAA!!!”
Agonizing shrieks and the sickening sound of tearing flesh echoed across the wasteland.
It was a masterclass in crowd manipulation; without breaking a single drop of sweat, the old man had forced thirty elite thugs to slaughter each other like moths to a flame.
Limbs were severed cleanly, torsos split lengthwise, and visceral internal organs scattered loosely across the muddy earth.
More horrifying still, several thugs who had already been completely decapitated by their allies—their heads rolling fitfully in the dirt—continued to move.
Thanks to the Sophion threads pinned deep into their nervous systems, their headless corpses stumbled back up, blindly retrieving their weapons to hack and stab at anyone within arm’s reach in a mindless frenzy.
Within a few agonizing minutes, the thirty elite subordinates were reduced to nothing more than a mangled mound of mincemeat.
Amidst the battlefield reeking heavily of copper and blood, only Akaisin and the two enemy leaders remained.
Cheon Do-jin surveyed the desolate carnage before him, lightly raising an eyebrow, his tone remaining as flat as ever:
— “This large-scale crowd control technique…
is rather impressive.”
Jiang Fengmo, on the other hand, gripped his head, bursting into a sick, hysterical cackle:
— “Hahaha!
Look at that guy over there!
His fucking head got chopped clean off and he’s still crawling up to slaughter someone else!
Brutally exquisite!”
Akaisin casually rested his decaying wooden cane over his shoulder, squinting at his two remaining opponents:
— “Well, boys?
How do you like this old ginger’s trick?”
Cheon Do-jin slowly rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, a chilling, razor-sharp gleam flashing across his otherwise vacant eyes:
— “In that case…
allow us to join you, old man.”
The Shattered Blade
SLASH!
Without another word, Cheon Do-jin unsheathed a medieval-style longsword from his back.
Bizarrely, the blade was broken completely in half.
However, the exact millisecond the sword left its scabbard, a dense, blazing torrent of Sophion energy erupted from the fracture point, extending outward to form a razor-sharp, high-pressure energy blade.
He swung his arm, unleashing a devastating horizontal energy wave.
The sheer velocity of the slash literally tore the atmospheric boundary apart, forcing Akaisin to instantly trigger his “All-Matter Exchange Art,” swapping places with a distant object to evade the strike.
BA-BOOM!!!
The energy slash tore forward, cleaving directly through consecutive, colossal junk mountains in its path.
Every structure of solid steel, iron, and dense scrap metal on its trajectory was sliced as cleanly as wet clay.
The tyrannical strike went as far as slicing the air currents in half, leaving a vacuum trench that caused the surrounding trash mountains to lose their structural equilibrium, collapsing outward in massive landslides.
Cheon Do-jin lightly twirled his wrist, speaking flatly:
— “Quick dodge, old man.”
Akaisin materialized at a different angle.
Looking back at the hundreds-of-meters-long trench carved into the earth, a surge of genuine alarm struck his heart:
— “What a terrifying strike!
Kids these days are absolute monsters.”
However, the moment he touched down, he abruptly realized that the psycho, Jiang Fengmo, had vanished from Do-jin’s side.
His combat instincts screamed:
— “Wait!
Where is Fengmo…
BOOM!!!
A savage, heavy horizontal punch buried itself dead center into Akaisin’s ribs, blasting the old man violently backward.
Jiang Fengmo’s velocity had reached a psychotic realm; he was moving at a speed that completely shattered the sound barrier, leaving behind not just ten, but dozens, hundreds of solid afterimages in his wake.
The terrifying part was that these were not ordinary optical illusions—each individual afterimage concentrated a highly volatile amount of tyrannical Sophion energy!
— “MYRIAD AFTERIMAGES — SPATIAL BLITZ!!!” Jiang Fengmo roared in unhinged euphoria.
VÚT!
VÚT!
VÚT!
Hundreds of his afterimages unleashed their fists simultaneously, launching a storm of energy blades as dense as a hurricane, carpet-bombing the old man’s position.
Akaisin was forced to continuously cycle his Exchange Art to blink away.
Yet, ironically, the moment he materialized at a new location, Fengmo’s afterimages immediately anticipated his arrival, instantly drenching the coordinates in explosive energy, denying him even a single second to draw breath.
Right as Akaisin was pinned down by the relentless storm of afterimages, Cheon Do-jin closed the distance from a blind spot, his energy blade flashing with blinding radiance:
”Invisible World-Severing Slash!”
He systematically swung his sword, generating intersecting, invisible slashes that sliced through every physical structure within his radius.
Caught in a fatal pincer attack, Akaisin gritted his teeth, forcing his “Ten Directions Flesh Lock” to unleash at its absolute maximum scale, expanding the barrier to a 100-meter radius to completely freeze the movements of both assailants.
Yet, reality proved unforgiving.
Jiang Fengmo mobilized his absolute peak velocity, continuously crashing his volatile, Sophion-clad body directly against the spatial barrier.
The brute force generated a massive structural disruption within the spatial grid, throwing the locked dimension into absolute chaos.
Seizing the precise, fleeting window created by his partner, Cheon Do-jin glided through the spatial rift like an invisible phantom.
The broken sword in his hand drove forward in a single, lethal thrust.
SQUELCH!!!
The energy blade pierced cleanly through Akaisin’s chest.
A torrent of fresh blood spewed violently from the old man’s mouth, staining the muddy ground beneath his feet crimson.
Cheon Do-jin smoothly retracted his blade, standing calmly before the staggering old man, speaking nonchalantly:
— “A direct hit, miserable old man.”
Akaisin clutched the gaping wound on his chest, coughing up several large gouts of blood, yet the corners of his lips unexpectedly contorted into a bizarre, ominous smirk:
— “Cough…
cough…
Heh…
Quite the coordination…
Way better than I expected from you little punks.”
Jiang Fengmo dropped down from above, baring his teeth in a savage, predatory grin:
— “Old man!
No running this time!
Let me claim this next achievement!”
— “Heh…
heh…
Hahaha!” Akaisin suddenly burst into a booming, resonant laugh that echoed across the desolate junkyard, filled with pure mockery.
“Have you two…
ever considered that you would completely lose faith in your very own eyes?”
Cheon Do-jin narrowed his eyes, raising his sword back into a defensive guard:
— “On the verge of death, yet you still spout nonsense?”
Akaisin lifted his head, his ash-gray eyes glistening with profound, hidden meaning:
— “Take a real close look at what you’ve actually been attacking this whole time, you brats.”
CRACK…
SHATTER…
To the absolute bewilderment of the two killers, the blood-drenched body of Akaisin standing before them suddenly began to fissure.
His skin and flesh dissolved instantly, replaced by rough, coarse, dull gray stone.
In the blink of an eye, the old man who had just been impaled through the heart transformed into a mindless, inanimate stone statue before shattering into a pile of pebbles!
Jiang Fengmo’s eyes bulged out of his head as he barked out a curse:
— “What the actual fuck?!
A stone statue?!”
Even Cheon Do-jin lost his characteristic composure, his pupils constricting violently:
— “What?!
What the hell is this?!
Since when?!”
— “Looking for me, brats?”
An old, leisurely, and profoundly playful voice echoed from high above.
Cheon Do-jin and Jiang Fengmo whipped their heads around in shock.
Atop the crest of a smaller junk mountain not far away, Akaisin was sitting cross-legged, one hand propping up his chin while the other casually tilted his wine jar for a massive swig.
His body was completely unblemished, devoid of a single scratch.
His sharp, hawk-like eyes were looking down at them as if they were two absolute idiots who had spent the last ten minutes furiously performing a theatrical play against a literal rock.
He set the wine jar down, letting out a cold smirk:
— “Well?
Was the show fun, boys?”
Cheon Do-jin’s face instantly turned incredibly grim.
He gritted his teeth, finally realizing the horrifying truth:
— “God dammit…
A Spatial Domain!”
Jiang Fengmo, consumed by blind rage, prepared to leap forward to demolish the trash mountain, but Cheon Do-jin swiftly extended his sword across the psycho’s chest, stopping him as he shouted:
— “STOP!
IT’S A SPATIAL MANIPULATION DOMAIN!
THE PERSON IN FRONT OF US MIGHT NOT EVEN BE THE REAL OLD MAN!”
Akaisin slowly stood up on the peak of the junk mountain.
His ancient, ash-gray Sophion now completely blanketed the hundreds of meters surrounding them, sealing off every conceivable escape route.
He let out a cold smile, his voice carrying absolute, suffocating dominance:
— “How do you like it?
The very millisecond I stepped in to wipe out your lackeys, I silently deployed my spatial domain.
Now…
within this world, let’s see if you two can still trust your five senses and intuition.”
Akaisin flung both arms wide, and the surrounding space distorted freakishly:
— “Welcome, boys, to…
Absolute Spatial Illusion!”
Inside the Domain
Within the boundaries of Absolute Spatial Illusion, reality was torn to shreds.
Unable to distinguish real from fake, Cheon Do-jin and Jiang Fengmo were forced to retreat, standing back-to-back to guard all four quadrants.
Suddenly, Do-jin’s hearing registered the peaceful chirping of birds—a sound so profoundly tranquil that it felt entirely absurd and surreal amidst a blood-drenched junkyard.
Meanwhile, Jiang Fengmo’s vision warped into a living nightmare: the mangled corpses of the thirty slaughtered lackeys suddenly stumbled back to their feet, baring demonic fangs as they crawled erratically toward him like undead straight out of hell.
Jiang Fengmo rolled his eyes wildly, gritting his teeth as he barked:
— “This godforsaken place…
Is there a way out or n—Urgh!”
BOOM!!!
Before he could finish his sentence, an invisible punch carrying explosive force slammed straight into Jiang Fengmo’s chest out of thin air.
The dry crack of fracturing ribs echoed painfully.
The psycho coughed up a massive wave of fresh blood, his body nearly collapsing to his knees.
He staggered backward, wiping the blood from his lips, his eyes pulsing with manic, bloodshot excitement:
— “A sensory-deceiving ability is pretty damn annoying…
But what if I use this, old man?!”
”Reality Severance!”
Jiang Fengmo roared.
He completely discarded perceiving the world through conventional senses.
Instead, he proactively shut down his own five senses entirely to escape Akaisin’s manipulation.
Simultaneously, a colossal wave of high-frequency vibrating Sophion energy erupted from his body, sweeping outward like an invisible shockwave.
CRACK…
SNAP…
SHATTER!
The tyrannical vibrating wave forcibly shattered the structural matrix of the illusion space.
Jiang Fengmo now fought purely on feral instinct and raw energy sensing.
As the illusion dissipated, he instantly pinpoints a massive Sophion signature coming from Akaisin and blazes forward like a wind-splitting beast.
Standing atop the junk mountain, Akaisin was slightly surprised by the psycho’s recklessness:
— “This bastard actually broke my technique.
Impressive.
But I’ve got a gift for you boys too!”
”Grand Sphere of Destruction!”
The old man spread his arms wide.
The entirety of the ash-gray Sophion within his body and the surrounding environmental energy violently converged, condensing into a super-compressed, blinding orb of energy carrying cataclysmic pressure.
He hurled the sphere straight at the charging Jiang Fengmo.
Guided by feral instinct, Jiang Fengmo reflexively raised both hands to block the incoming orb moving at terrifying velocity.
— “You stupid dog!
Get out of the way!” Cheon Do-jin screamed.
At the razor’s edge of the moment, Cheon Do-jin blitzed forward.
Channeling his massive pool of Sophion into his broken longsword, he unleashed a full-power strike.
SLASH!!!
The invisible slash, carrying supreme divine might, painstakingly cleaved the super-compressed energy orb cleanly from top to bottom into two halves.
The two halves of the Grand Sphere of Destruction were knocked off trajectory, scraping past the duo and rocketing straight toward the distant horizon.
EARTH-SHATTERING BOOM!!!
When the two fragments impacted distant obstacles, a cataclysmic explosion carrying a terrifying shockwave sweeps over them.
The towering stone cliffs in the distance were pulverized in an instant.
The volatile energy tidal wave spreads, forcing the surrounding junk mountains to suffer the exact same fate—leveled completely into nothingness.
Dust and smoke billow high into a colossal mushroom cloud.
Jiang Fengmo turned his head to look at the flattened landscape, swallowing hard before muttering:
— “Holy shit…
That thing blew up beautifully!”
Cheon Do-jin’s face turned dark, turning to roar:
— “You stupid piece of shit!
Are you insane, trying to block that monster sphere with your bare hands?!”
— “Who the hell knew that old geezer’s outdated trick would be that fucking strong!” Jiang Fengmo scratches his head, arguing back.
Akaisin glided down from above, his eyes razor-sharp as he glares at the suited man:
— “Do-jin, you’re pretty impressive yourself.
Seeing my ultimate move and actually daring to slice it in half.
But you bastard, I’m still not done with you!”
— “LET’S GO!!!”
Without a word, all three figures transform into streaks of light, colliding directly into a terrifying free-for-all brawl.
BAM!
SLAM!
CRASH!
BOOM!
The speed and power of the three monsters clashed continuously amidst the smoke and dust.
The surrounding junk mountains shook and collapsed violently like massive landslides from the residual shockwaves of their punches and sword strikes.
Earth, rocks, and scrap metal flew wildly through the air.
Collateral Damage
However, the direction of their battle drifted further and further off course.
Cruelly, the shockwaves of the conflict gradually rippled toward the edge of the junkyard—where the dilapidated corrugated iron shack of the four family members stood.
Inside the shack, Shin, who had just carried the unconscious Kento back, was hiding inside with Loona.
CRASH!!!
A massive shockwave from the peak Sophion collision between Akaisin and the two villains swept right through.
Though it was merely a residual shockwave, its force was far too cataclysmic for such a crude structure.
The entire ruined iron shack was blown completely apart, its rusted iron sheets warping and tearing as they were flung into the sky.
Amidst the desolate wreckage, Shin instantly threw himself forward, using his entire back and body to tightly shield the comatose Kento and little Loona, who was screaming in terror.
He used his own body as a shield to protect his siblings from the raging energy tempest.
— URGH!
— A shard of flying scrap metal sliced across Shin’s shoulder, crimson blood seeping out, yet he gritted his teeth and bore it, never loosening his embrace.
From the distant battlefield, Akaisin caught a glimpse of the destroyed shack.
His pupils constricting, his heart tightening in sheer horror:
— “Oh no…
The kids!!!”
Recognizing the old man’s sudden distraction, Cheon Do-jin glanced toward the three siblings struggling amidst the wreckage.
An indifferent, cruel smile slowly crept onto his elegant face.
Lightly twirling his energy blade, his tone drips with chilling, mocking derision:
— “It seems…
I’ve just found a brand new game for you, old man.”
END OF CHAPTER 9