Book 26 Chapter 18

Law and power

-Ravio's Past

The father of Lacbio, King of the West, was a judge in a province, that is, someone who judged sins according to the law. He was very upright and honest. Despite holding a position of power that could easily corrupt him, his father was not corrupt. The law was justice for his father. As a child, he admired his father for judging sins according to strict laws.

One day, a sinner was captured, but the problem was that he was the son of the local lord, a man who held the city's wealth and the power of darkness in his hands.

Naturally, a request was made to release his son, accompanied by a huge pot of money. His father refused to accept it. Then came the threats. If he wanted to live a long life with his family, he would do as he was told. In this county, they are the law. But for his father, the only law was the one written in the law books, and he refused to obey any other. He sentenced the lord's son to death according to his own convictions. He could not let the man who had committed all sorts of fraud, who had attacked his wife and children, and who had murdered them when he was bored. The father's justice was not forgiving.

But there was one person who could not forgive his father. It was the upkeep of the region.

He didn't need judges who weren't lapdogs of money and power. With money in hand, they were the kind of men who firmly believed that the law was meant to be interpreted to suit the tastes of the powerful.

For them, the idea of a political party was ridiculous. Fairness didn't exist by their standards anyway. Unfair was fair to them.

He unleashed his men to storm the county hall, meeting little resistance as most of the soldiers guarding it were already paid by him.

The father, who had no shame in what he had done, did not flee, but was killed while sitting in the same place where he watched over his affairs. My mother, unable to escape, was captured by them, humiliated, and then killed.

Only Rakvio escaped his wrath by hiding in a secret room that only a child could fit into. He watched with his own eyes as the book of laws his father had tried to uphold was burned to ashes and blown away with the bodies of his father and mother. Laws were so powerless in the face of power.

He was rescued by a burly old man who rushed to the prefectural office when he saw it on fire. The master was a man who had once been favored by his father's fair judgment, and he took him under his wing, saying that a martial artist needed to clarify his beneficence. His master was one of the hidden peak masters of the Jianghu, whose nickname was "Black Gold River". He went into the mountains with the man who had taken him under his wing and practiced martial arts, and the martial art he learned was the Golden Bantan Xin Gong.

"It made me realize how foolish my father was to worship laws and rules. That only strength is justice in this world. From then on, I decided to seek only power, and when I finally got it, I was able to descend and take revenge on them, in their own way, by force. The law could not help me in my vengeance; only power could accomplish it."

And with his vengeance complete, he entered the Temple of Heaven, hoping to gain even more power.

"I have gained this power through bone-crushing pain. I have gained justice. So I no longer lose. I am no longer unhappy!"

Rockvio, whose emotions were swirling wildly within him, shouted nervously. Upon hearing of his unfortunate past, she didn't raise an eyebrow, not even a twitch of her eyebrows. She wasn't in the mood to sob in sympathy. No, it was a sneer that tugged at the corners of her mouth.

"Foot, stop lying, it's funny."

"What's a lie?"

Flames of anger flashed in Rakvio's eyes at the unexpected mockery.

"Why don't you take a look at yourself, don't you think something's wrong?"

"What's wrong?"

"This is serious. Hey, you. Why are you fighting me alone now? Why do you insist on going one-on-one when there are dozens of men lined up on either side? I thought you said you wanted power? From the sound of it, it sounds like the law of one has been broken by the force of many? If you didn't want to put yourself through that shit again, shouldn't you have gone in as a group from the start? Forty or thirty of you could have come in all at once, and it would have been a lot easier?"

"Well, that's……."

For some reason, Rockvio didn't have a clear answer to the barrage of questions.

"Don't you think that's really weird, and why are you so obsessed with the rules from the bet earlier, when you can just hit one or two or whatever you want? Why bother making rules and tying yourself to them? Isn't the power you're talking about simply breaking those rules?"

"That's just for fun………."

Rakvio's unconvincing answer immediately made her shake her head.

"No, that's just an excuse. Why don't you realize that it's the same thing with different rules, different laws, and different names. You wanted to win by playing by the rules all by yourself, just to prove to yourself that you can't be outnumbered."

"Woo, woo……."

A strange groan escaped Rakvio's lips. He was very puzzled and confused. His mind was now churning harder than ever. Bi Ryuyeon didn't let up on the offensive, delivering the final blow.

"Don't you realize that you've been chasing your father's shadow all this time? You've been denying it with your words and talking about power and righteousness, but your actions haven't. Your unconscious still believes that your father is right. Did I call him foolish earlier? No, it was you who was foolish, and you are still being foolish."

Rakvio's body shook violently, like an aspen tree struck by lightning.

"I, I……."

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Rakvio knew he had to say something back. But he couldn't think of anything to say. It was obvious. He really did believe that. In the back of his mind, he'd always believed it. It was he who kept running away from the truth: he was the biggest coward of all. At this moment, Rakvio's mind was completely neutralized.

"It's time!

Bi Ryuyeon's eyes began to burn with golden light. Entering the 'trance' of seeing the invisible, hearing the inaudible, and touching the untouchable, her eyes detected the crack in Rakvio's mind.

"You've honed your physical armor pretty hard over the years, but how hard is your mental armor?"

Before he could finish his sentence, Bi Ryuyeon's body was incinerated by a single electric shock.

Lightning Sword (飛雷刀)

Sword Qi Righteousness

Chapter of the Single-minded Formlessness

Thunderstorm Heatwave (裂破)

From Bi Ryuyeon's hand, a single bolt of lightning fell vertically in a single flash. The lightning bolt struck him squarely in the middle of his forehead. In that moment, an intangible bolt of lightning pierced through his confused mind and spirit. He shuddered as if he had been struck by lightning. He felt as if his mind had been struck by lightning.

With a technique similar to this one, Bi Ryuyeon had once broken the ban on the Galhyo Rod, which was under psychic control at Shaman Mountain. It was the mind, not the body, that was cut. Just as Galhyo Feng was under psychic control, Rakbio was bound by mental wounds from his past. This technique cuts through that. But this was no gentle psychic counseling; this was a fairly forceful intervention, and in some cases, the wounds were far worse than healed. No wonder. The original purpose of the technique was to get through those cracks and break them completely. It was a truly terrifying technique, designed to break a person's spirit.

She used it with a slight twist. But even she doesn't know how it will turn out. There was no point in calling it irresponsible. Unlike the physical body, trauma to the mind is likely to manifest itself in many different ways.

She had just shattered Rakvio's hardened physical armor with a blow to his unstable mental armor. Rakvio's mind went blank for a moment, and Bi Ryuyeon seized the opportunity.

Flying Sword Misunderstanding

Chapter on Illusory Bodies

Falsum (八閃)

Thunderbolt (雷光轟打)

In an instant, Bi Ryuyeon's new fists, which had grown to eight in number, began to pummel Rakvio's body from all sides. This time, however, they didn't bounce back and forth like they had earlier. Instead, wherever their fists struck, ripples rushed out, echoing with the sound of drums. Even in his slightly dazed state, the martial arts carved into his body were doing their job.

"I already figured it out."

On the other side of the ripple, her alter ego threw another punch. It was the exact opposite of where she had hit earlier. The ripples crashed into each other and canceled each other out. That and similar things would be done simultaneously by the eight different alter egos. The ripples canceled each other out so frequently that it was impossible to counterattack.

His technique, Anti-Ballistic Steel, was to channel the force of the spreading ripples as they returned and turn them into an attack.

However, attacking from multiple directions simultaneously made it nearly impossible to control the flow of force smoothly. Originally, Rakvio would use the water in his body, more than half of a human body, to dissipate the shockwaves he received, but in this state, the water was frozen.

Unable to dampen the shockwaves, Rakvio was stripped of his vaunted physical armor, meaning he would have to take the brunt of the impact.

Koo-koo!

Like a great tower collapsing, Rakvio's body crumbled. He fell to his knees on the ground. There was no longer any strength left in his body to fight back.

The golden bantan ball had been completely scattered. It looked like it would take quite a while to recover.

I could barely lift a finger as the energy ebbed and flowed out of my body.

He worshipped power, and he lost to power. It was a perfect defeat.

"I lost…… I lost……."

In a slightly dazed voice, Rockvio admitted defeat. Even more shocking than the fact that he'd lost this fight was the fact that he'd been attacked by Bi Ryuyeon's horsepower.

She looked at Rakvio in disbelief.

"Now, then, as promised, will you take me to where the woodwork is?"