Chapter 23. Tang Wu
"What is it?"
It was an extremely short sentence, but with just that single phrase, everyone present except Dong Bong-su was overwhelmed. Dong Bong-su felt a brief, thrilling squeeze in his heart from the cold words of the brown-robed middle-aged man, but he did not shrink back or falter. He simply realized for the first time what it felt like when internal energy was carried within a voice.
From the beginning, he was not the type to feel fear toward others or physically recoil. He merely pretended to do so.
The brown-robed middle-aged man turned his head and swept his gaze over the people. Dong Bong-su instinctively hid his eyes behind Yeoro. It was a reflexive action. In this world, he was still an unripe predator. There was absolutely nothing good to be gained from catching the attention of another predator with superior power. Especially at a moment like this, when one needed to observe the opponent carefully, it was all the more so.
The brown-robed middle-aged man only briefly glanced at Yeoro, then, as if uninterested, turned his gaze back to Gi Dae-hyo.
Dong Bong-su also refocused his attention on Gi Dae-hyo. Gi Dae-hyo was the hands and feet, as well as the eyes, of the Danri Family. Dong Bong-su hoped he would explain who the brown-robed man was. However, Gi Dae-hyo seemed not to know the man's identity either, swallowing hard as he stated his official name and position.
"I am Gi Dae-hyo, leader of the Black Five Group of the Danri Family. And the person you are oppressing right now is a young master of the Danri Family. If you do not withdraw immediately, we will not stand idly by."
Although Gi Dae-hyo was issuing a threat, his voice was clearly not confident. That was because he was already losing in terms of presence.
Dong Bong-su realized that Gi Dae-hyo knew absolutely nothing about the brown-robed man. From that alone, many things could be inferred. The leader of the Black Five Group had encountered someone unknown in Bongyang.
That meant the man was not a martial artist of Bongyang. No, going further, he was not even a martial artist active in Anhui Province. Gi Dae-hyo and the Black Five Group possessed intelligence so thorough that there was hardly a corner of the Anhui martial world they did not know. If he did not recognize the man, then it was clear he was not from around here.
'An outsider. And an immeasurable master.'
Dong Bong-su had to make a decision. A master with a level difference of ten or more was directing hostility toward them. Though he could not be certain, by his judgment, the brown-robed man was even stronger than Danri Cheon-u. With the people present here, there was absolutely no way they could handle him.
Run away? Or continue to watch how things unfolded?
His hesitation did not last long.
Dong Bong-su was not someone born with killing intent, but he possessed exceptional talent in reading it. The intensity of killing intent was extremely useful in determining the rank of a predator.
Those like himself, who lacked killing intent, were at the very top.
However, once killing intent was detected, its intensity allowed one to measure the degree of savagery and predatory nature.
At present, the man was not emitting any killing intent. He was not someone who lacked it entirely; rather, he felt like a lion gazing at insects. It was clear that he had no intention of eliminating Dong Bong-su and the Black Five Group.
Dong Bong-su chose the latter option.
As his eyes shone sharply, the brown-robed man looked at Gi Dae-hyo and calmly opened his mouth.
"The Danri Family? What is that? Something you eat?"
To Gi Dae-hyo, it was an utterly contemptuous remark, but to Dong Bong-su, it was a clue to the man's strength. Dong Bong-su realized that the brown-robed man did not even regard the Danri Family as worth his attention.
Even so, he continued to stand his ground. There was still no killing intent coming from the opponent.
Instead, Gi Dae-hyo's face was turning red and blue by turns.
It must have been hard to endure. After all, they were a family with a certain reputation in Anhui, yet they were being treated like this. Still, Gi Dae-hyo was indeed a composed individual. Or perhaps he had been completely overwhelmed by the brown-robed middle-aged man's presence.
Clenching his teeth tightly, Gi Dae-hyo spoke to the brown-robed man.
"Those words are an insult to the Danri Family. May I take them as such?"
For Gi Dae-hyo, this was the best response he could manage. Ideally, he would have wanted to swing his sword and attack immediately, but instinctively, he knew that would be a fatal mistake. Thus, the few words he had just spoken were the best course of action available to him.
Regardless, the brown-robed man responded with an even colder expression than before.
"Well? I don't know whether the Danri Family eats, defecates, or gets trampled."
"Ghk ... "
As he spoke the final words, "gets trampled," the brown-robed middle-aged man applied force to his foot. Danri Ganghae's face instantly turned pale, his eyes beginning to roll back. His airway had been completely blocked. If even a little more force were applied, he would die on the spot.
Accordingly, Gi Dae-hyo's face also turned deathly white. If Danri Ganghae died, then he himself was as good as dead. There was no longer any other choice. He immediately raised his hand, pointed at the brown-robed middle-aged man, and shouted loudly.
"All members of the Black Five Group, attack him and rescue the young master!"
Meanwhile, Dong Bong-su continued to simply watch the brown-robed middle-aged man. Even now, he still felt no killing intent from him. It was just that Gi Dae-hyo could not perceive what Dong Bong-su could.
Dong Bong-su calmly observed the clash between the brown-robed man and the Black Five Group. With safety now assured, all that remained was to witness the man's high-level martial arts.
To the brown-robed man, the Black Five Group was nothing more than toys. No one kills their toys. They might break them by accident, but that was all.
Pababak -!
Gi Dae-hyo, Gi Man-ji, and the entirety of the Black Five Group charged toward the brown-robed middle-aged man.
The brown-robed middle-aged man remained relaxed as he watched them approach. He did not remove the foot pressing down on Danri Ganghae's neck, and raised only one hand to shoulder height.
Through Dong Bong-su's sharp eyes, he saw hundreds of fine needles lodged between the man's fingers.
'A concealed weapon technique?'
The moment he thought that, the brown-robed middle-aged man lightly flicked his hand toward Gi Dae-hyo and the Black Five Group members.
Pyubyubyuk -.
It was not fast. The needles that left his hand clustered together in butterfly-like shapes, drawing bizarre arcs through the air as if bees were zigzagging in flight, and flew toward the elite of the Black Five Group. Yet not a single member of the Black Five Group could dodge those not-so-fast needles. No, they could not dodge them.
To Dong Bong-su, it looked like a guided missile one might see on modern Earth.
"Ghk!"
"Damn!"
"Damn!"
Along with various short screams, Gi Dae-hyo and all members of the Black Five Group collapsed to the ground simultaneously. It was a single move. In one exchange, the pride of the Danri Family, the Black Five Group, had been subdued.
"T-this is! Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly! T-then you are!"
Gi Dae-hyo, his body paralyzed, lifted only his head to look at the brown-robed man, his face filled with shock. He had never seen this technique before, but it was a concealed weapon art far too famous in the martial world.
A martial art named for how it moved like a butterfly chasing the soul.
Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly was a secret art of the Sichuan Tang Family, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains. And within the Tang Sect, there was a single master said to have reached a divine realm in this art.
Gi Dae-hyo looked at the brown-robed man's face once more.
Ah, why had he only recognized it now? The appearance and attire of the Tang Sect's greatest master that Gi Dae-hyo remembered were a perfect match with this brown-robed middle-aged man.
The brown-robed middle-aged man sneered upon hearing Gi Dae-hyo's cry, then looked down at him and spoke in a cold voice.
"For a backwater grunt, your eyes aren't completely rotten. This old man is Tang Wu."
Tang Wu.
One of the ten among the Twenty Greatest Masters of the Martial World, the so-called Two Gods, Three Monsters, Five Elders, Ten Great. The supreme master of the Sichuan Tang Family, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains. An absolute master for whom it was difficult to find a match within Sichuan Province.
There were many titles used to describe him, but in the end, nothing represented him better than his epithet.
Soul-Chasing Poisoned Hand.
[Those who anger Tang Wu shall not escape his poisoned hands, even after death as wandering souls!]
Originally, the Tang Sect was a family famous for concealed weapons and poison arts, a sect that stood between the orthodox path and the demonic path. However, when the Martial Alliance was first formed, they were persuaded by Master Hyenin, then head monk of Shaolin Temple, and from that time onward became one of the central pillars of the Martial Alliance. Though there had been several ups and downs since then, they had never once fallen from their position among the Five Great Families of the Central Plains, remaining an exceptionally powerful force.
The Sichuan Tang Family produced many masters renowned for both martial prowess and poisonous cunning, but among them, Tang Wu was an unrivaled existence. Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly was the most difficult concealed weapon technique to master and refine, aside from the now nearly lost Rain of Myriad Flowers. The fact that Tang Wu had trained it to near perfection meant that he was undoubtedly a master who left an indelible mark on Tang Family history.
In fact, he had modified several weaknesses of the original Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly, developing it into its current form, and with it had defeated countless masters of the unorthodox faction.
Moreover, Tang Wu possessed a natural talent for poison arts, having developed countless poisons that had yet to even be named. Had he harbored truly lethal intent earlier, he would have deployed nameless poison alongside the Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly technique. If that had happened, it would have been obvious that Gi Dae-hyo would not even be able to wear such a shocked expression now.
Tang Wu's fearsome reputation was so well known that even Dong Bong-su had heard his name once or twice.
'One of the twenty greatest masters of the martial world.'
Dong Bong-su looked at Gi Dae-hyo, who was paralyzed, his head stiffly raised. Gi Dae-hyo was staring at Tang Wu, his face pale as if his soul had already left his body. His lips twitched as if he wanted to say something, but after such a shock, how could he have the presence of mind to speak?
An apology? He did not seem to have the mental fortitude for such a thing.
Just from Gi Dae-hyo's reaction, one could grasp the weight carried by the name of the Sichuan Tang Family and the title of one of the Twenty Greatest Masters. And just as heavy as that weight was, the incident Danri Ganghae had caused today was far greater than all the troubles he had accumulated throughout his life combined.
He did not know what mistake had been made, but if one were to offend someone of Tang Wu's caliber, then depending on the circumstances, even a family like the Danri Family could easily be sealed off.
…..... However, Dong Bong-su remained calm.
Although Tang Wu stood there arrogantly, casting cold glances around, he had not killed anyone yet. And if he had intended to kill, everyone would have already died from the Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly earlier.
Dong Bong-su merely recalled the technique of Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly that Tang Wu had just demonstrated and continued to observe how the situation would unfold.
At that moment.
"Grandfather."
A slender woman, her face covered with brown gauze, walked out from Haengho Inn.