Book 15 Chapter 8

Rise of the Nihilists

-Synthesis

The goblet is an indispensable strategic point in the beggars' eating behavior. You wouldn't dare talk about eating without it. It's a must.

It's no exaggeration to say that the way you approach this place will determine the color of your life as a beggar.

On the rare occasions when a beggar finds himself with a byproduct of cooking in a guest's cup, his life is instantly bathed in bright colors. On the other hand, if he falls victim to a big, brawny, fistful of shoulders, his life turns a grayish ash color for days and weeks afterward, and he becomes depressed.

Nevertheless, the beggars never stopped trying to get to the table, as is their wont. So when the beggar appeared at the table, none of the guests cared about his presence. Except for the owner, Duchil.

"Hey, Inum, are you deaf, and can't you get the hell out of here, or shall I give you a taste of Old Man Duchil's stone fist, which is second only to the three great delicacies of our Hua Hsiang?"

Duchil circled his fist, the size of a pot lid, in a threatening gesture, but the beggar did not flinch, as if he had learned the iron nonchalance of eating.

"Please don't do that, sir, just put a spoonful of rice on board for this poor beggar, he hasn't had anything to eat for two days now, and he looks like he's going to eat a man if you don't!"

A beggar with greasy hair and a gaunt face spoke in a raspy, pleading voice. His body was trembling slightly, as if he were suffering from an illness. He seemed to have great difficulty in moving, which aroused even more pity.

But how many beggars has Duchil faced in his thirty years of business? A slight exaggeration would be to say as many as the stars in the night sky. It was a tiresome, tedious, inelegant battle. Sometimes he won, sometimes he compromised, and that's how he built his business. He wasn't about to fall for a simple psychological attack.

"Do you think this old man Duchil is going to fall for your shallow tricks? Get out of here before I hit him!"

Normally, I'd be in a good mood to throw a bowl of rice at him, but I wasn't in the mood today. As if his fists weren't enough, he picked up a club and swung. The beggar narrowly avoided his blow by staggering backwards twice with his feet.

"Hmm? That!"

When he saw it, a fascination dawned in his eyes; he recognized some law in the movement of the foot. But it was peculiarly not an open one. The staff that supported its staggering body was not a batting stick, but a stick wrapped in a cloth.

Duchil shouted angrily.

"What, he's dodging? Wait, I'm going to hit him with one of my leg sticks……."

Then a light bulb went off in the beggar's eyes.

"It's dangerous!"

Crying out in an urgent voice, the beggar hurriedly held out the twins toward Du Qil.

The sound of a drum beating echoed from the thick chest of the guest owner, sending the new model flying backwards and close to the ground. But it wasn't just the owner who was sent flying. The beggar who had struck the pair had also been knocked backwards by the recoil.

"Kuck! How dare this… beggar dare to make people……."

Duchil's tirade, which was supposed to consist of all sorts of profanity and various curse words, never made it to the end.

"Heeeeeeeeep!"

A muffled scream erupted from Duchil's mouth.

Silent rain!

An ominous looking sack of black rainwater had been embedded in the very spot where he had just stood.

The beggar's sleeve was sharply split, and I glimpsed a thin red line on his bared forearm. A trickle of red blood dripped from the spot where the rain had struck.

Duchil, finally realizing the meaning of the words, said in an excited voice.

"Ugh, Eun-gong, you can have all the rice you want……."

It's a moment where the beggar is instantly transformed into a silver ball, but for some reason the reward is very mysterious.

But right now, the beggar didn't seem to have the stomach for a meal. His stoic face had disappeared, and his entire demeanor was tense. He was no longer the same man.

Bam!

Suddenly, without warning, the front door of the room closed.

Boom, boom, boom!

The next thing I know, the twelve windows that were open in all directions are closed at once, on both the first and second floors. But it was daylight, so it didn't get much darker.

"Ears, ghosts!"

Duchil exclaimed in horror.

This ghost has no sense of time! What kind of ghost is this in broad daylight? The words came out like a spring.

"Could it be psychic?"

Mo-Kyung asked with a wary look on her face, forcing Lim Deok-Sung to go to the trouble of saying something that didn't need to be said.

"Of course it's human!"

He was right.

"That's a lot of work!"

A figure emerged from the railing of the bunk with a voice that was soft but carried a power that vibrated the entire room.

"Boom, I've got a dummy……."

The beggar groaned and said. It was a voice he remembered hearing. No, it was a voice he could never forget, and he had run all the way here to escape it.

His entire body was wrapped in lightless, pitch-black cloth, and like an unwelcome visitor, his face was covered by a mask. Even at a glance, one could tell that he was a servant of the darkness, living in the night dew.

"You've done well to escape our pursuit, but we must stop playing games! I'm a lowly man, and if I play too much, I'll be caught by my superiors."

The voice did not sound like a shadowy, unidentifiable figure. I could tell he was a man of considerable culture and learning.

"Do you think you can do it alone?"

The beggar sneered and said.

"The side effects of the detonator must be considerable?"

The black man said in a nonchalant voice.

"Well, how do you do that?"

His body shuddered once beneath the rags.

"I hope you don't underestimate our intelligence, and besides, it's not really a big secret, is it?"

The black man said, his voice still nonchalant.

"Hmm, but I'm not caught yet, and if you think you're going to get off easy like that, you're going to be sorely mistaken!"

His voice was indomitable and strong, the kind of voice you often hear from people who have staked their lives on their beliefs.

"Oh, well, that's the way a man should be!"

A middle-aged woman who hadn't stopped savoring the flavors even in this situation clapped her hands and said. There was no sign of nervousness at all. Her chopsticks were still in her hand.

To show such criminal nonchalance under the circumstances……. The black man's eyes naturally fell on the middle-aged woman.

Then, noticing the stare, the woman smiled broadly and said.

"Oh, don't mind me, I'm just a passing eater, so go ahead and finish what you were doing. Ho ho ho ho!"

It was a beaming smile, free of any crinkles that would be out of place in such a murderous place.

With that, the woman went back to eating her food. The two old men sipped their drinks and played with their chopsticks with a nonchalant attitude. Whatever was going on around them was completely irrelevant to them.

The black-clad man was momentarily taken aback by this insensitivity, but quickly recovered his composure.

"Well, that's the only time you'll get to do that, because I don't plan on sparing anyone else. No one is going to leave this room alive."

"Don't you think you're making a big deal out of it, just you?"

The fake beggar gritted his teeth and shouted.

"Jumping to conclusions, I never told you that the resuscitation came alone?"

At his signal, dozens of black-clad men surrounded the first and second floors from all sides, as if oozing out of the darkness. Like the black-clad men, they too were wrapped in the color of darkness. It was as if the abstract idea of sinisterness had taken on human form in order to exert its properties.

Their eyes, hidden behind their masks, were as inanimate and emotionless as their nature.

"Damn, I've come this far……. just a little further!"

The beggar gritted his teeth as he looked around at the black robes that surrounded him. He was overwhelmingly outnumbered.

The situation was dire, and even hoping to get a job seemed unlikely.

"I won't be lonely because I have a friend to go with me!"

Something flicked from the conductor's black-clad hand.

Poof!

Degurrrr!

It was a man, Yuan Yun, who rolled eagerly to the beggar's feet. He had lost his head from the neck down, and his eyes were sunken in sorrow.

When the beggar saw it, the corners of his dirty mouth twisted up like a crumpled piece of paper, and his eyes widened to tears.

"Do you recognize it?"

A familiar face, a familiar person, a familiar subordinate, of course.

"Dog, dog nose!"

A mournful echo escaped her twisted lips.

The owner was none other than the dog he'd been working with until recently.

"You idiot, you're going to have to pay me back for this one day……."

A single tear fell from the beggar's eye.

"Would you like to take a look at the other two that are still there, Special Inspector of the Island West Branch of the Spiritual Heavenly Sect, Gu Qiuqing Iron Heart An Minghu?"

The cloaked man said, his voice as indifferent as a cold sea breeze on a winter's night.

'Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!'

Duchil screamed.

But no one was running outside.

"Oh, how cruel!"

Bringing a hand to the corner of her mouth, the woman frowned slightly and spoke in an elegant voice. But she didn't seem too surprised. The two elderly men in the group also began to watch the situation with silent gazes, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Hey, boss, I think this is a little dangerous, why don't you get out of the way?"

Mo Jing whispered in his ear. If it involved the Inspector General of the Martial League, there was no point in getting entangled (and she had already gotten entangled). She'd better get out of here before things got worse; she had a bad feeling about this.

"It's loud, how can you get away with this?"

"So are you going to help me?"

I asked, pointing my finger at the beggar, An Myung-hu.

"Are you insane? Why should we help a man who's blind as a bat? In what spirit?"

"Definitely."

Zheng Tianmeng was the natural enemy of their seventy-seven forests. If he should happen to help one of their inspectors, he would be frowned upon by the entire Green Forest.

"So?"

"But I'm not going to get away with this, and I'm not going to have any dignity by pulling my butt out of my ass!"

Lim Duk-sung crossed his arms and shouted emphatically.

"Only because?"

"Then what other reason do you have, do you think there's anything in this world that's more important than my dignity?"

To have such a personal, petty, and flimsy reason to make a judgment call at such a crucial moment……. I was too weak to protest. They say that if the boss is ignorant, the subordinates suffer, but that's exactly what happened to me.

"I guess that whole pretense thing is what got you in trouble today, huh?"

A sarcastic Turo Mokyung said.

"Did you think we wouldn't find you if you scattered and begged in the guise of beggars? I think you underestimated the power of our Destroyers."

The blue-robed old man's body stirred for a moment at the mention of the name Gyeongsungdae.

"Not even the Three Immortals can escape death at our hands. We were made for that purpose. It's a shame, Inspector An, that we're only a short distance from our destination. I must die here!"

It was a lot of confidence. But it was not unreasonable to have such an overwhelming lead.

But…….

"Oh, be afraid! Did you hear that? Not even the Three Musketeers could defeat it."

The middle-aged woman, who still hadn't let go of the chopsticks, as if they were life to her as a sword is to a martial artist, turned to the two old men with an expression that said, 'What a surprise! Her voice was not at all strained compared to the content of her words.

Of course, the woman's two companions had certainly heard the story, and it was one they couldn't pass up, especially for the old man, who was too sick in the stomach to keep listening.

"Pooh, pooh-pooh……. No more, no more……."

The nervousness that had been tickling the old man's belly finally exploded. Like a flood, it broke the banks of his patience and burst outward in laughter.

"Poohahahahahaha! Kheeheeheeheehee! Giggle giggle giggle!"

The needle-like tension in the room was instantly broken by the old man's laughter. It was an uncharacteristically boisterous laugh that sent shivers down my spine, making me think an earthquake had hit.

"This is it, Won, you're too plastic to listen anymore!"

A short, old man stretched and said.

"What is it, old man, do you want to die?"

The old man waved his hand in the air as if to say, "Don't bother," in response to the threat, all the pretense of politeness he'd maintained as a mask just moments before.

"Aren't you going to kill them all anyway, what's the big deal?"

The old man's words were unmistakably true: for them, destruction of evidence was a virtue and an iron law above all else.

"Good, then wait, I'll kill you soon!"

The voice was full of abnormality, but the old man didn't raise an eyebrow.

"Can we do it? What's the matter with Cheonmusung? Phew!"

"Is that so funny?"

"Funny? Of course it's funny!"

With a shout, a mountain of qi immediately erupted from the old man's body. It was an enormous qi that instantly overwhelmed the entire hall.

"What a presence!"

Samahon, the black-clad man, was stunned. It was a pressure he had never felt in his life. The momentum emanating from the tiny old man was unimaginably huge. Every inch of the hall seemed to be filled with the old man's presence.

My breath caught in my throat.

An eerie voice emanated from Old Man Qing's mouth.

'Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh!'

The old man playfully stuck out his second finger, which he'd been poking in his earlobe, and said.

"Da, what are you?"

Samahon asked, his voice trembling.

"The name hasn't crashed enough to teach you guys a lesson. Go for it! I'll make you cute enough!"

It was a gutsy move.

"Heh, heh, heh, I can't believe you're getting so worked up about this in your old age……. You must still be a young man."

The middle-aged woman nodded in agreement with the old man in white.

"Yeah, youth is great, but it's not good for you to be so angry, and you're not being polite to the kids, so just send them back with something nice."

The woman said sternly.

"So what if it doesn't make sense?"

"A child who doesn't listen is going to be stuck."

The middle-aged woman's hesitant words caused the black-clad man's body to tremble once.

Even for a forty-four year old man who was a gentle killer, there was only so much he could take.

"Kill them all!"

Outraged, Samahon shouted.

That was definitely a mistake.

When the old man of Qing snapped his fingers, Samahon thought it was just a figurative symbolism. It was not an uncommon phrase; it was often used among the warriors when they were bluffing. But he never imagined it had a literal meaning, used as a simile.

The old man raised the second of his five fingers, the last point he had reached through the web of palmistry that began at his right shoulder, traveled past his elbow, then down his wrist, and pointed to one of the hooded figures on the right side of the bunk, at the end of which still clung tenaciously to the remnants of the earwax that had covered him only moments earlier.

The old man's expression was nonchalant, and he lightly twirled his index finger in a spiral. It was a playful gesture, but the repercussions were not small.

"Huh? Uh, uh, uh, uh?"

"What kind of insanity is that?" an exclamation of disbelief erupted from the masked man's initially puzzled mouth. An invisible stream of air currents, generated by the movement of his index finger in a spiraling trajectory, enveloped his body. He couldn't control himself as he thought.

"This, this……."

But the masked man didn't finish his sentence. The old man drew a large arc with his index finger.

"Ouch!"

A scream erupted from the mouth of the named cloaked figure, his body reversed in an instant.

With a loud bang, the masked man's head met the floor. He had learned to stand on his own two feet, but he hadn't yet learned to stand on his head.

Duchil involuntarily turned his head away from the scene, squeezing his eyes shut at the horrific imagery. One of them made a loud, powdery sound. It looked like he'd have to work his backside off to clean up the blood that had soaked into the floorboards.

"Oh, my God…"

Even as a forty-year-old man who hadn't been far from the scene of what had been tentatively dubbed the "black-clad man's reverse decapitation," I couldn't quite make out the words. The only thing he knew for sure was that the mysterious event that had just occurred was somehow related to the movement of the old man's index finger.

Again, the old man's index finger pointed at the bunk, this time at the masked man on the far left. Because there was a precedent, the masked man tried to duck.

But the old man's index finger has already drawn an arc and…….

Boom!

Once again, a loud bang echoed through the room. This time, despite my best efforts to defend myself, I was helpless.

"I can't be bothered to catch them one by one!"

With that, the old man stretched out his hand. The only finger still extended was his index finger, and he flicked it back and forth like a ladle stirring a boiling cauldron.

"Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh……."

A few panicked voices erupted. It was not unreasonable. At the snap of the old man's fingers, an irresistible current had been created out of thin air, more powerful and unstable than the raging river in the rainy season, sometimes rippling, sometimes widening, gathering and then dispersing again. I felt like I was in the presence of nature's immense power.

The masked people were swept to and fro by the huge current. It was like a princess being swept away by the current…….

"No way… this technology is……."

Suddenly, a name popped into Samahon's head. No, it was more curious that he had forgotten.

In fact, they hadn't dared to think about it because they hadn't made that assumption, because they believed it couldn't happen. They were oblivious to their own righteousness, even though this was a force created solely to deal with them.

"No way is this drifting?"

There is a distinctive current, a flow of chi, that must be followed before the Driftless Way can unfold. The bondage to that flow is the true power of the Driftless Way.

"You recognize it!"

It was a compliment, but it had already fallen on deaf ears. The shock of realizing the old man's identity had temporarily paralyzed his thinking.

"Tosung… Hahusik……."

He was the only one in the forest who had the ability to stir up the entirety of the intestinal tract with the power of drifting. But why is he, who has been traveling all over the place, and who hasn't been heard from in years, eating at this ramshackle table? And at this very hour!

Still, Samahon's recovery from the shock was quick, and he barked out orders.

"Unleash the Manchurian Sword!"

Then, one by one, the black men on the second floor gathered in a winged formation around one man, who placed his left hand on the back of the man in front of him and held a sword in his other hand.

"Trigger!"

A chanting sound echoed, and the feet of the black men sprawled in a dizzying web across the floor.

"Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Huh?"

This was quite a surprise to Dao Sheng. The horde of black-clad men who had gathered in one place had dared to reject the harmony of his index finger. As before, his index finger spun in a circle, but they were not moving like a giant tree rooted to the ground. They were collectively resisting the movement of the air currents it generated.

"Hmmm…, group sacroiliacs?"

Tosung puzzled over the cause of the change. Samahon nodded and answered.

"That's right, it's a wall of steel that binds the sacroiliac aerodynamic forces of individuals together to create a tremendous amount of weight, and there's no drifting here!"

The three groups he leads were originally specially bred warriors who were responsible for the blockade of the city of Hahusik.

"It's not working, is it?"

In a quiet voice, Tosung replied. If you're going to go to this much trouble, you shouldn't be called a city in the first place.

"Sand is sand, no matter how much it clumps together, and it never becomes a solid rock. It's a fun game. But play is play."

His fingers and shoulders swung wildly as he focused his mind on the tip of his index finger. His mind, gathered at the tip of his index finger, rushed toward a point within him in a giant vortex.

The immanent universe began to spin in a massive revolution around the axis of the soul.

Driftlessness (漂流無相氣) Misunderstanding (奧義)

Spiral Dragon Winds

With a flick of his wrist, a huge whirlwind from the tip of his index finger swept through the black-clad men on the first and second floors, one after another. It was like a disaster in miniature, powerful and indiscriminate. The spiraling draconic wind swept through everything at once, without regard for people or objects around it.

The vaunted Manchu Sword Ikkijin of the Destroyers of Destiny was shattered like glass by this one move. The place where the whirlwind swept through was so devastating that it was impossible to look at it with open eyes.

"Oh, my God……. I can't believe that the swordsmen have been destroyed like this……."

Samahon muttered, as if in a daze.

Surprisingly little lethality-it was clear that he had ejaculated in his hand-many injuries, but few deaths. But the fact that one of his greatest strengths had been so easily destroyed was enough to cause him to panic, and he was battered and torn all over his body by the miniature whirlwind that had just blown through the cabin. Fear and horror gripped him as he witnessed what was beyond human limits. He could no longer muster the courage to face the city, and even if he did, it would be a reckless endeavor.

Samahon immediately did the next best thing.

[You'll never win this…you'll never win this. Take that woman over there hostage!]

He immediately ordered his men, who were stationed on the first floor, because, of course, she, with her monkfish-like appetite, was the most unassuming of the three. It was also because she was the youngest.

His men immediately began to execute the order.

Voila!

A fierce sword flew toward the back of the middle-aged woman's head. The old man in blue and the old man in white hadn't noticed this and didn't care at all.

In fact, she wasn't interested at all, as it would be terribly uneconomical to waste energy on something she knew would be futile. Her abilities were not limited to "infinite feeding beyond perception".

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

The middle-aged woman screamed softly and dryly, but with a simple tilt of her head, she let the sword of surprise slip away, and as if that weren't enough, she grabbed the chopsticks she was holding (she hadn't let go of them since the food was served) and caught the tip of the incoming blade without looking back.

Towering!

The sword stood still, as if under a spell. The momentum that had seemed to carry a thousand men a moment ago had been snuffed out by a single wooden chopstick from a woman.

"No way!"

The swordmaster exclaimed in embarrassment, "I fell asleep on a mission and had a dream, and I thought it was a test report. He wondered if it was because he hadn't been sleeping much lately.

Unfortunately, this is what he was experiencing.

The woman held her index finger in front of the masked man's eyes. The man was stunned by the thrilling momentum, but nothing of the horrible, brutal, gruesome sort he had imagined happened.

I just waved my index finger from side to side in front of my eyes.

"Tsk, tsk, you're a bad kid, ambushes are for bad kids, and it's even worse that your ambush failed with all that stigma attached to it…"

"Yay, profit!"

He tried every trick in the book to pull the sword out, but it only confirmed his helplessness. No matter how hard he pushed, pulled, and shook it, it would not budge, as if stuck in a rock.

"It doesn't work!"

Easy profit!

As the woman spoke, white frost began to form on the sword she was holding.

"An ambush and a meal interruption - I can forgive the ambush, but not this."

Changgang!

The woman applied a little pressure to the cob in her chopsticks, and it crumbled like the black confection of a man who had forged it a thousand times on anvil and flame.

The woman, looking at the sword in her chopsticks, said with a tone of regret.

"You can't eat this!"

Ignoring anyone's comment of 'you might be able to do it…', the woman nonchalantly flicked her wrist, sending the chopsticks flying from her grasp.

Peeeeeeeee!

With a fierce ripple through the air, the blade circled through the air at a terrifying speed.

"Kaaaahhhhh!"

Four screams, each with a different pitch, erupted in sequence from the silver trajectory of the sword.

When she was done, the woman stabbed her chopsticks back into the fish broth with a nonchalant face.

"Alas, the fuss is not what you want……."

The old man in white clicked his tongue and said.

"Don't you think you're supposed to be a grown-up and keep your shit together? I think it's disrespectful to flirt with children like this……."

As he spoke, the old man in white lightly swung the branch he was holding.

It's just a flicker of lightness. It doesn't look effortless at all. There's no flashy sword that stands out. There's nothing about the sword that makes you feel like you're looking at a sea of stars. It's just overly simple and monotonous. There's not much flair to it, and yet it's absolutely effective.

None of the sharpest swords the blacks had could overcome his branches. Not even a scratch, let alone a chop.

Perhaps not surprisingly, they were killed without a single blow being exchanged. Each time the old man's lightly swung branches struck the masked men in the forehead and head, they collapsed like straw dolls. It didn't kill them. At this level of skill, resistance was futile, but they didn't run away, they kept charging. They were persistent.

"I don't want to see blood."

As the white old man said this, he lightly swung the branch, the 'galaxy', again. The sword of the mind stretched out in all directions in infinite harmony.