Book 24 Chapter 22

Where the winner goes

-Memorization without even thinking about it

Wham!

He couldn't take it anymore and coughed up a bowlful of blood. The dirt floor of the arena was stained with blood.

"How long has it been since I've coughed up blood like this?

The memory was a blur.

"Is a win a win?

I didn't have the strength to lift a finger. My body felt like a tattered piece of rag. If I was attacked now, it would be the end of me, so I looked for the seven scars. First of all, it wasn't in front of me, and it wasn't to my left or right.

The blood in his body twitched, he vomited up a bowl of blood, his nerves were on fire, and his limbs felt like they were being torn apart, but somehow he was the last one standing. It was a wonder he could still stand at all.

"Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!"

"Kill! 살(殺)! 殺(殺)! 殺(殺)! Kill! Kill!"

The excitement in the hall reached a fever pitch as blood gushed out of the bloodsucker's body like a fountain.

"Shut up!"

Yeonbi was a joke. His voice echoed through the cylindrical arena. Suddenly, the place was as quiet as a mouse. The strange power emanating from his entire body was overwhelming the crowd of thousands.

"You think this is a joke? Why should I become a murderer for your amusement? Is this fun? Of course it is, but I'm not going to kill him! I'm the winner, not you! So stay out of my way, because I'm the one who decides whether to kill him or let him live! If you have a problem with that, come here. I may be a little tired, but I still have the strength to admonish fools. If you don't have the courage to do that, stay right there, and don't talk about killing or sparing him. Do you object?"

It was quiet. Really quiet. It was an unthinkable outburst from the mouth of such a beautiful woman, but no one spoke out of shock.

"I see no objections, then I suppose I may declare you the winner, young commentator?"

Yunfei's gaze traveled dozens of miles and landed on Eugene. Eugene shouted at the top of his lungs.

"At last, we have a winner! She's beautiful on the outside, but she has a foul mouth. But she's gorgeous, and no one can argue with that, because she's the winner. Now, let's all applaud the winner, salute the winner, glory to the winner, and money to the winner! Three hundred thousand nyang to the winner! Yeonbi! Winning group! Missouri regiment!"

"Waaaaaaaah!"

Suddenly, a collective cheer erupted from the silent crowd. You're gorgeous, you're the best! Buy me a drink, blow my cheeks off. I'm an ass, and so on, and so forth, and so on, and so on. But Yunbi didn't pay attention to any of it. It was tired.

Minor Eugene shouted excitedly.

"At last, at last, the day has come: the undefeated king of the arena, the bloodsucker, has been defeated!"

He threw his hands up in the air in response to the cheers. As the cheers poured in, Yunbi shouted to herself.

"See, you damn master, I'm not dead!

True to my heart's desire, the Yeonbi survived.

"Okay, so what do we do with this person?

* * *

Just then, two men, one stout and the other frail, ran up from the arena side with a stretcher to carry the fainted body. Just as they were about to carry the body, the stretcher stopped them.

"Wait!"

Two men turned to look at him, wondering what was going on. They didn't look like councilors or medical students, but neither did they look like mere powerhouses. They were both trained in martial arts, to a considerable degree, as evidenced by the glowing sunblood. And they both wore rings on their middle fingers, though they were unremarkable rings that did little to indicate their affiliation.

"Do you have any orders, Sojae?"

The sturdier of the two, a man with a scar above his eyebrow, asked.

"I'm going to take him over to our side, I have some business to attend to, so you two don't have to worry about him."

"That's a little awkward. He's injured, and we need to get him to the infirmary right now."

He was quite eloquent on the subject of Hudre laborers. And gutsy.

"No. What if?"

Each syllable carried with it a quiet but imposing weight. Like the trained ones, they were sensitive to the dark flesh that the fuel exuded.

"Ha, but……."

Yeonbi was smiling. But it looked like the snarl of a black panther.

"Do you really think I'm going to take you out and fry you up if you win? I just want to talk to you about martial arts, and you're a famous person from the past, and I'm sure you'd be willing to make that kind of accommodation for someone who won this tournament?"

They nodded grudgingly, not wanting to dignify the winner of the contest with a bunch of stretcher-bearers.

"Okay, let's do that, but if she doesn't wake up for more than an hour, we'll have to show her to the senator, so would you mind if we took her then?"

"Sure, you can do that."

Yeonbi said with a smirk.

"Great, then we'll walk you to the waiting room."

He understood, and both of them stopped protesting and helped him onto the stretcher.

"Wait! Stop!"

Before he could finish his sentence, Yanbi turned into a black gust of wind and whipped toward the two men. Moving with terrifying speed, she grabbed the sturdy man's right arm with one hand and yanked it back without a struggle. The man let out a horrifying scream as a crunching, grotesque sound echoed from his joints.

"Why, what's the matter, So, Sojae?"

The frail-looking man stammered, his voice filled with fear.

"Why? Because of this, of course."

Yun Fei smiled and held out his right palm in front of the weak-looking man.

"He, it!"

The apothecary cried out in surprise. A sharp, pointed needle was protruding from the center of the man's middle finger. The needle was attached to the back of the ring he wore on his middle finger.

"Stretcher-bearers are wearing strange things on their fingers these days."

The ring's needle seemed to be a way to pierce the flesh and release the drug inside. It was designed to deliver a larger dose, as applying it alone would not be effective.

"I knew it, I was thinking it was a fancy stretcher."

It was almost as if he expected it.

"Uh, how?"

"It didn't look like the kind of top I'd wear with an unmarked ring. Plus, he's way too stubborn for someone who's supposed to be carrying it."

In this context, high is relative to a normal stretcher.

Yunbi eyed the ring on the man's finger.

"What's in this ring, I wonder? Poison? No, it must be a powerful sleeping pill, since you seem to have a story to tell as well. Hmmm, were you planning to put me to sleep beforehand so I wouldn't wake up with a headache? No, no, no, it must be poison to keep me quiet."

"Oh, no, this is just a sleeping pill."

"Oh, lie."

Woohoo!

I twisted my arm again, trying to come up with a useless excuse.

"Me, really."

"Okay, well, we can try it. If I don't die from the stabbing, it's probably a sleeping pill."

"Sin, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The frail-faced man bowed his head in silence.

"I didn't know, I really didn't know. I really didn't know, I don't know anything. I really do."

He bowed and apologized dozens of times. The Yeonbi didn't pay much attention to his apology.

"Well, never mind."

He turned his head to interrogate the man who had caught him, catching him completely off guard. At that moment, the man's eyes flashed sharply as he lowered his head to a right angle. At the same time, his body moved like a flying wolf. A dagger protruded from his sleeve as his hand shot toward Yeonbi. It was a skillful, neat move that told me he had taken countless lives with this method. There was no hesitation in this attack. It was so clean and natural that the vast majority of spectators didn't even notice it. Only a few pinnacle masters were able to witness it, and they let out another gasp.

The dagger that had been aimed at his back was stopped about a finger away from his back. Two fingers blocked the blade. The other hand, the one that wasn't holding the weaker man, had caught the flying blade with just two fingers without looking back.

He turned his head slightly to look at me in horror, and then smiled. A smile that seemed to some to be the smile of the Grim Reaper. The dagger's blade snapped in half. The smile on Yun Bi's face deepened.

It was probably an instinctive reaction on the part of the stretcher bearer. Visibly tired and with a bowl full of blood, the odds may have seemed in his favor, but he was sorely mistaken. No matter how tired and exhausted I was, the Yeonbi was the winner of this huge non-stage event. It was a mistake to think that even the most skilled player would be able to memorize and succeed. If his commanders had considered the situation, they would have told him never to make any suspicious movements, but this was an unexpected situation, and they would not have given the order. This was one man's improvisation, and it was a clear failure.

I thought about beating the crap out of these guys on Yeonbi, but then I stopped. In fact, I thought about it, but I was too tired. I wanted to rest now, and I didn't want to lift a finger for these cowards. There's a secret to the Seven Deadly Sins. A secret he wants to hide, a secret the rest of us want to know. He was hiding more than his identity. Now his identity is known. It was Yeonbi himself who had been exposed, and the organization, or organizations, that wanted to silence him or uncover his secrets were already in motion.

"Blah blah blah."

The two men screamed, but didn't answer.

Yunfei lightly twisted and pulled the joints of their right arms apart, then slapped each of them across the cheeks with his right hand. Sure enough, the sharp needles of the ring pierced their cheeks, squirting out medicinal fluid. They both screamed, and then promptly collapsed. It worked, for sure. But they weren't dead; they were still asleep. Seeing this, Yanbi spoke up.

"Chet, it must have been a sleeping pill, not poison."

Yun Fei slung the fallen Chilsanghun over his shoulder and slowly walked toward the other waiting room. In her own waiting room now, Na Yerin was resting, and she didn't want to interrupt her rest, but she couldn't take her eyes off of Chilsangheon either. There would be people lining up to kidnap her or keep her quiet. So she had no choice but to scoop him up and head for his waiting room. If he was right, someone would already be waiting for him there.

One Yeonbi estimate was right and one was wrong. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that only one was correct and two were unexpected. In the waiting room of Chilsangheon, old man Hyuk-jung was already waiting. So far, so expected. Yan Bi's eyes quickly returned to the old man's back.

"Inspiration, they are……."

"Huh? I don't think I need to introduce you, we had a nice little fight not too long ago."

I was expecting Hyuk-jung to be there, but I didn't expect his father-in-law and mother-in-law to be waiting for him, and I knew that if I said something like that to them, they would think I was crazy.

"Congratulations on your win."

Na Baiqian was the first to offer his congratulations.

"We meet again."

Mrs. Ye Qing's voice was still cold.

"Uhhhh, by the way, Large, is this really the same guy, or has he changed too much?"

"Well, yes, of course. You think I don't recognize any of my students? You think I'm going to forget that I've had a few of them? You've got a long way to go before you get dementia. By the way, has he regained consciousness?"

"Not yet."

"Well, this young lady should have been beaten to a pulp."

The old man clicked his tongue as he looked at the fainted remains of Chil-sang-hyun.

"Don't complain, I made sure you had a breathing mask as promised. The conditions were the same, and I almost died too."

He'd done his part by bringing her here alive, but he'd been criticized for anything else.

"I hope you don't beat him over the head and make a fool out of him."

"Don't worry, Chuck, you look strong enough."

He said in a tone that said Yeonbi was no big deal.

"Well, that's a plus."

The old man sighed, then agreed.

"You seem to know your stuff, huh?"

"Well, I've been beaten up a lot in my day."

"Oh, yeah?"

It's not a very nostalgic line, and it turns out that this Chil-sang-hyeon guy had a pretty pitiful past.

"ugh……."

Then a groan escaped the comatose Chil-sang-hyeon's mouth, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He muttered something through his lips, but it was unintelligible.

"Why is he doing that?"

"I don't know, you must be dreaming."