"I switched my allegiance to the second young master, but this impostor didn't cooperate and killed the second young master's guard. What am I to do now?"
Guard Gam's expression hardened as he heard Mok Gyeong-un's mocking words.
The death of Jo Il-sang, the second young master Mok Eun-pyeong's guard, was the least likely scenario he had anticipated. The prowess of a warrior on the brink of becoming first-class couldn't be countered by mere strength alone.
"Impossible," Guard Gam thought, looking at Mok Gyeong-un with shaky eyes. It seemed unbelievable, yet he couldn't dismiss it. The fact that Mok Gyeong-un knew about his change of allegiance and how he had told the second young master about Mok Gyeong-un's loss of martial arts was proof enough.
"You... really..." Guard Gam stammered.
"Yes, I killed him," Mok Gyeong-un replied nonchalantly.
"How could you kill someone nearly at first-class level..."
"I hung him upside down and cut his throat. He begged pitifully for his life. I guess even a skilled warrior fears death."
Mok Gyeong-un smiled as he spoke, and Guard Gam felt a chill run down his spine as their eyes met. Mok Gyeong-un's sinister gaze seemed to tighten around him.
"This guy is truly..." Guard Gam thought, suddenly remembering that this impostor was a death row inmate who had killed countless people. Though Guard Gam himself was an assassin who had taken many lives, he had grown weary of killing and quit. But this man was different, existing in a realm apart from ordinary people. He seemed to revel in death.
Guard Gam's mind raced. The second young master, Mok Eun-pyeong, had given him two hours to find his guard, Jo Il-sang. But the man was already dead. His boastful promises now seemed hollow. It was the worst possible situation.
Mok Eun-pyeong's murderous warning echoed in his mind: "If you fail to find him, be prepared to forfeit not just your arm, but your pitiful life as well."
"I switched sides for nothing," Guard Gam thought bitterly. His new allegiance hadn't even lasted a day before crumbling. He couldn't believe this ridiculous turn of events.
Suddenly, a thought struck him. "Did this bastard kill him on purpose?"
It made sense. As an impostor, Mok Gyeong-un had to be cautious in everything he did. No matter how unpredictable he might be, someone as cunning as him surely understood his own situation. Yet he had killed the second young master's guard.
"He killed Mok Eun-pyeong's guard because I abandoned him and switched sides. Damn it all," Guard Gam realized, astounded by Mok Gyeong-un's craftiness. By killing Mok Eun-pyeong's guard, he had placed Guard Gam in an impossible situation. Now, Guard Gam couldn't switch allegiance to any other young master. Who would trust him after this?
Guard Gam clenched his fist as he grasped the cunning man's intentions. This murderer, who hadn't even learned martial arts, had outmaneuvered him so thoroughly.
"Everything I've prepared has been ruined because of this bastard," Guard Gam seethed, his anger rising.
"My, your facial expressions are quite varied. Judging by how red your face is, you must be angry," Mok Gyeong-un taunted.
Guard Gam glared at him, wanting nothing more than to kill him right then and there. But then he remembered something crucial.
His hand moved to his chest, where he kept two pages from the Yeonmok Heart Transformation technique manual. Seeing these two pages, Guard Gam realized they must be genuine.
"That bastard Go-chan kept his mouth shut until the end, but having this means..." It meant that Mok Gyeong-un had somehow obtained the secret manual. How he had done so was a mystery, but that wasn't important right now.
Guard Gam pressed a dagger against Mok Gyeong-un's ribs and whispered, "The rest of the secret manual... you have it, don't you?"
"The secret manual?" Mok Gyeong-un feigned ignorance.
Guard Gam tapped his own chest. "This. I'm talking about this."
"Ah, that? Of course I have it," Mok Gyeong-un replied casually.
A flicker of hope crossed Guard Gam's face. Even in the direst situations, there was always a way out.
The situation in the sect was precarious, with the leader's life hanging by a thread and no clear successor named. In such circumstances, possessing the secret manual that only the sect leader could learn, or having an heir who had mastered its techniques, would put one closest to becoming the successor.
"This could be worth my life," Guard Gam thought. Even the second young master, Mok Eun-pyeong, would covet this manual. Having it might offset the loss of his guard, Jo Il-sang.
Guard Gam pressed the dagger closer and said, "I won't waste words. If you don't want to die, hand over the secret manual."
"You seem to really need that manual," Mok Gyeong-un observed calmly.
"I don't have time for your word games."
"Are you in quite a desperate situation?"
"You really have a death wish, don't you?"
"Not at all. I'm just wondering if it's okay for you to threaten me like this when you're the one in a tight spot, not me."
Guard Gam scoffed at Mok Gyeong-un's words. "Don't think I'm like Go-chan or Jo Il-sang. Killing you without even letting you make a sound is nothing to me."
Though retired, his primary occupation had been that of an assassin. He knew hundreds of ways to kill. And he was a first-class expert. The gap between someone approaching first-class and a true first-class expert was significant. He could kill someone like Jo Il-sang with one hand.
"Don't provoke me any further," Guard Gam warned.
"How frightening..." Mok Gyeong-un began, but before he could finish, the tip of the dagger pierced slightly between his ribs.
"I won't ask again. If you don't talk about the secret manual, I'll drive this dagger all the way in. If it goes through this gap, it's instant death," Guard Gam threatened.
"If I die here, won't you be at an even greater disadvantage?" Mok Gyeong-un said, nodding towards the workers in the herb storage.
Guard Gam exhaled softly, then suddenly sprang towards the workers. His movement was so swift that in an instant, he had reached them and, with lightning-fast motions, stabbed their vital points with his dagger.
The workers in the herb storage died instantly, their vital points pierced. There was hardly any blood, and they didn't even have time to scream. It was a clean job, befitting a former assassin.
"Even if I can't, the second young master should be able to handle silencing three herb storage workers," Guard Gam thought confidently.
Returning to Mok Gyeong-un, Guard Gam said, "Still think I can't kill you?"
But to his surprise, Mok Gyeong-un merely smirked.
"You really don't grasp the situation, do you? Seems like you'll only open your mouth after experiencing pain firsthand," Guard Gam said, swiftly closing the distance between them.
He grabbed Mok Gyeong-un's arm, twisting it behind his back, and gripped one of his right fingers, pressing the dagger against it.
"You seem quite resistant to pain," Guard Gam observed, remembering how Mok Gyeong-un hadn't even whimpered when pelted with stones by onlookers while in the wooden cage.
"But you know, even if you're tough, you're not immune to pain. And I know how to maximize that pain," Guard Gam said with a sinister smile.
The dagger bit into Mok Gyeong-un's finger. "I'll peel the flesh from your fingers like peeling fruit. It'll be a pain you've never experienced before."
"Is that so?" Mok Gyeong-un replied, still seemingly unfazed.
"Let's see how long you can keep up that composure," Guard Gam said, about to slice upwards with the dagger.
At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un spoke. "Before you start, I have something to say."
Guard Gam's lips curled into a slight smile. Just as he thought. No matter how much of a murderer he was, at just 17 years old, he couldn't help but fear the impending pain.
"Speak," Guard Gam said.
"I was wondering how to use this. Thank you for the opportunity," Mok Gyeong-un said cryptically.
"What?" Guard Gam was confused. What was he talking about using?
Suddenly, Guard Gam felt something odd. The palm gripping Mok Gyeong-un's finger felt like it was sticking. Thinking he might be gripping too tightly, he tried to loosen his hold slightly, but his palm remained stuck to the finger.
"What is this..." Guard Gam thought, alarmed. He tried to channel his inner force to detach his palm.
But at that moment, he felt his inner force rapidly draining through his palm.
"Huh!" Guard Gam exclaimed, shocked by the sudden phenomenon. His hand was stuck, his inner force was rapidly depleting, and the flow of his energy was disrupted, making it difficult to detach his palm.
A significant amount of his inner force had already been drained. His left hand and arm, which were gripping Mok Gyeong-un's finger, were starting to lose strength.
"Where did this bastard learn such a demonic technique?" Guard Gam wondered. This wasn't a righteous martial art. Absorbing someone else's inner force? Already, 10% of his inner force had been drained, and if this continued, it could become truly dangerous.
"Let go!" Guard Gam shouted, attempting to strike Mok Gyeong-un's neck with the hilt of his dagger to knock him unconscious.
However, Mok Gyeong-un twisted his neck, causing the blow to land on his shoulder instead.
"Puh!" Mok Gyeong-un coughed up blood from the impact of the inner force-laden punch, but he still didn't let go of Guard Gam's finger.
"Urgh! You bastard!" Guard Gam raged, repeatedly striking Mok Gyeong-un's neck and back. Despite the pain from these inner force-infused blows, Mok Gyeong-un stubbornly refused to let go.
Finally, Guard Gam plunged his dagger between Mok Gyeong-un's ribs.
"Huh!" Mok Gyeong-un's breath caught as the dagger sank halfway into his ribcage, breaking his concentration and ending the strange technique.
As soon as the adhesive force disappeared, Guard Gam kicked Mok Gyeong-un's back, creating distance between them.
Guard Gam stared at his palm, his face pale. His left hand was convulsing severely, and he couldn't feel any inner force in it. Although he could restore the circulation with some effort, he had never experienced such an unsettling sensation before.
Looking at the staggering Mok Gyeong-un, Guard Gam demanded, "What the hell? What kind of demonic technique have you learned?"
"Huff... huff..." Mok Gyeong-un panted, gripping the dagger lodged between his ribs as he struggled to regain his balance.
"You're... definitely first-class," Mok Gyeong-un managed to say.
"Answer me. What was that just now?" Guard Gam pressed.
"This alone... isn't enough to deal with you," Mok Gyeong-un admitted.
Guard Gam gritted his teeth. Did this insolent brat think he could handle him just because that demonic technique had worked for a moment? If so, he was sorely mistaken.
Guard Gam circulated his inner force and pulled out his dagger, assuming a fighting stance. There would be no more carelessness.
"Let's see if you can pull off that trick when all your limbs are cut off," Guard Gam thought as he lunged towards Mok Gyeong-un, who had barely regained his posture.
As long as he was careful not to let his palm touch Mok Gyeong-un, he was confident he could handle him.
One of Guard Gam's thrown daggers embedded itself in Mok Gyeong-un's thigh, causing him to stumble. Not missing this opportunity, Guard Gam pulled out another dagger hidden in his wrist, aiming for Mok Gyeong-un's shoulder.
At that moment, Mok Gyeong-un uttered, "Demonic Monk."
Instantly, Guard Gam felt a chill run down his spine and sensed something trying to grab his wrist from behind. Startled, he lowered his arm and leaped sideways to avoid the eerie sensation, then looked back.
Guard Gam frowned in confusion. He had clearly felt a chilling, strange sensation from behind, but there was nothing there.
"What did you just do?" he demanded, turning his eyes back to Mok Gyeong-un.
"What do you mean?" Mok Gyeong-un asked innocently.
"Don't play dumb. Something definitely tried to grab my wrist from behind."
"You do have keen senses," Mok Gyeong-un acknowledged.
"So you did do something."
"Well, it wasn't me. It was this friend here," Mok Gyeong-un said casually.
"This friend?" Guard Gam was baffled. Could there really be an accomplice?
As Guard Gam scanned the surroundings with heightened senses, Mok Gyeong-un spoke nonchalantly, "Since you're curious, I'll show you. Demonic Monk."
The moment those words left his mouth, Guard Gam's eyes widened in disbelief. Right in front of him, a large monk figure with a blood-soaked kasaya robe and a skull rosary appeared like a mirage, staring down at him with a chilling gaze.
"What... what is this..." Guard Gam thought, stunned. If his eyes weren't deceiving him, this was clearly not a living human. It was more like a ghost.
In that moment of shock, something pierced the center of Guard Gam's chest, passing through the monk figure.
It was a dagger.
"That'll do," Mok Gyeong-un said.
With those words, the monk's figure blurred and disappeared, revealing Mok Gyeong-un in a throwing stance behind it.
"How... how..." Guard Gam looked down at his chest where the dagger was embedded. Despite protecting himself with inner force, the dagger, empowered by inner force, had penetrated deeply.
Guard Gam muttered in disbelief, "How?"
Mok Gyeong-un smiled and replied, "Both the dagger and the inner force are yours."
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A/N:
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