The man wordlessly drew a straight line across my throat.
I figured he expected me to topple over spraying blood any moment now.
He didn’t bother paying much attention to me and started glancing around again, looking for the Heavenly Demon statue.
“Isn’t it that one?”
“Huh?”
He jumped and whirled around.
The person who should have been collapsing in a shower of blood was standing there perfectly fine.
Just in case, he touched the edge of his dagger with his finger.
It was so sharp that even the lightest touch drew blood.
He cocked his head, then looked back at me.
The young man in front of him was Jeok Wigang—me.
“So all we have to do is find the Heavenly Demon statue?”
“I definitely cut your neck.”
I grinned.
“There isn’t a blade in the world that can put a scratch on my neck.”
“Vajra-unbreakable?”
“I’m stronger than Vajra-unbreakable.”
Is he insane?
He clearly thought I was mentally unwell.
The moment he shifted into a stance—
He had already slipped around behind me.
SSSK—.
He slit my neck again.
But the feeling at his fingertips was strange.
Unlike usual, there was no satisfying sense of a cut.
What the hell?
He turned his head.
I was still standing there without a mark on me.
“Don’t waste your strength on pointless things. Just tell me °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° what happens once you find the Heavenly Demon statue. Then I’ll let you live.”
He took a step back.
What is this? Am I hallucinating right now?
I am the one they say is among the top three assassins in all the Central Plains—
the Blood-Mist Death God himself.
Yet I couldn’t kill a single kid who looked barely into his twenties.
He didn’t even seem to have any internal qi.
No, I was sure of it now.
The ring on his finger, the Heart-Sight Ring, wasn’t reacting at all.
The Heart-Sight Ring was a treasure that measured the other side’s realm and internal qi.
Thanks to that treasure, I’d pulled off countless perfect assassinations.
And that ring wasn’t reacting.
That meant he was a completely ordinary person.
No internal qi, but Vajra-unbreakable?
It was possible.
There are perverts who only drill external arts.
There’s only one way to beat Vajra-unbreakable.
Poison.
I’d prepared it just in case.
I never thought the day would actually come when I’d use it.
Heaven-Count Blood Poison.
No matter how Vajra-unbreakable someone is, their insides aren’t Vajra-unbreakable.
This poison was an apex toxin that completely destroys the interior.
You can’t dodge it.
Just a single pinch down the hatch and it’s over.
When did I give him the poison, you ask?
Heh heh.
I already did.
You’re wondering if it’s possible to move that fast?
It is—because it’s me.
There’s a reason I’m an assassin in the top three.
I didn’t use a pinch, either.
I used half of all the Heaven-Count Blood Poison I owned on that bastard.
It should start kicking in any moment now.
“This won’t do. I’m going to hit you a bit.”
Tch.
A guy with no internal qi thinks he’s going to grab me?
The moment I took my weight back, thinking that—
The world spun, and it felt like half my face had been blown clean off.
That was just the beginning.
The next pain hit my abdomen.
My body felt like it was folding in half, and all of my internal organs screamed at once.
It was pain unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life; my mind started to go hazy.
My dimming consciousness snapped back into focus at the impact on my jaw.
Along with the agony running through my whole body, I heard a voice.
“Having to hold back so you don’t die while I’m hitting you is annoying.”
Is that something you say while beating someone?!
My consciousness really was starting to fade now.
If I passed out, this pain would disappear too.
Clinging to that thought, I started to let go—
And the pain stopped.
My mouth was forced open, and something was shoved inside.
It was sweet, and it melted in an instant and slid down my throat.
In that moment, my mind snapped wide awake.
It was like I could feel every last nerve in my body.
I opened my eyes to see the crazy monster beaming at me like he was actually glad to see me.
“Looks like it works. I’ve been wondering who to test that on.”
What? Did he just feed me some unproven pill?
More than that—what is this feeling?
This sense that everything is painfully vivid?
I flicked the Blood-Mist Death God right in the forehead with my finger.
SNAP—.
“Gyaaaaaaaah!”
The pain earlier had been unbelievable, but this was on a completely different level.
Is this what suffering in hell feels like?
It felt like my skull had been blown apart.
All I’d done was flick his forehead, yet that much pain.
The Blood-Mist Death God clutched his forehead and stared at me, dazed.
“Because of the pill you just took, the pain you just felt is going to spread through your whole body at ten times that level. This is your last chance. Once you find the Heavenly Demon statue, what happens?”
Gulp—.
As expected, that pill seemed to be there to amplify pain.
“You don’t have to say anything. I can just go find out myself. If I smash every statue I see, something’ll come out eventually.”
“N-no. I’ll talk.”
Torture? I can endure that.
But I didn’t think I could endure this guy.
The instinct I’d honed over years of killing screamed a warning.
The man in front of me really meant to kill me.
And he’d do it without batting an eye.
I don’t want to die.
I’d lived such a hard life to become the Blood-Mist Death God I am today.
I couldn’t just die like this without ever truly enjoying it.
I was going to live, and I was going to enjoy everything.
“There’s a door under the Heavenly Demon statue. If you sprinkle blood on the emblem you saw earlier, that door opens. Until the moment it opens, you can’t even notice there’s a door there.”
“A door? What’s inside?”
“It’s the Secret Cave of the Ghost-Killing Demon Lord—one of the Four Heavenly Demon Lords.”
“Ghost-Killing Demon Lord?”
“You don’t know of him?”
I didn’t know his sobriquet.
I hadn’t been interested in that in the first place.
“No. What’s his real name?”
“There are barely any people who know the names of the Four Heavenly Demon Lords.”
“Yeah?”
Whatever the case, it meant it was the Secret Cave of one of my younger brothers.
“Let’s go.”
The Blood-Mist Death God hung his head, abandoning all resistance, and led the way for me.
****
“So this is the Heavenly Demon statue?”
“I-it seems so.”
“You didn’t know either?”
“They said ‘Heavenly Demon,’ so I just thought it was some statue in human form. I never imagined it’d be an actual Horse...”
“So it wasn’t a Heavenly Demon, it was a Heavenly Horse.”
It wasn’t even a manmade statue.
It was a naturally formed, massive stone in the shape of a horse.
Part of it had collapsed, so unless you looked carefully, you wouldn’t even realize it was a horse.
“Where’s the entrance?”
“Somewhere around here...”
Where the Blood-Mist Death God pointed, enormous house-sized boulders were heaped on top of one another.
They had probably piled up over the entrance when the stone “statue” collapsed.
He stepped up carefully and put his hand on one of the boulders, then pushed internal qi into it.
THUUUM—.
A powerful backlash rippled out from the stone and shoved the Blood-Mist Death God backward.
“I thought it might be, and of course—it’s Heaven-Fang Stone.”
“So we have to clear these rocks to see the entrance?”
“Yes. But with human strength, that’s...”
Before he even finished, I threw a punch.
WHUUM—.
A chilling force brushed past the Blood-Mist Death God, and a howling gale roared through.
He barely managed to keep his staggering body from toppling.
With a face frozen in disbelief, he slowly turned around.
A gaping, unobstructed view greeted him.
The massive chunks of Heaven-Fang Stone that should have been there were gone, and only a hole in the ground remained.
“Looks like that’s it. Let’s go.”
“Y-yes, sir...”
He had clearly seen it.
A single punch had erased Heaven-Fang Stone.
Only now did the Blood-Mist Death God understand what I’d meant earlier when I’d grumbled about how annoying it was to hold back my strength.
If I hadn’t held back, he would’ve ended up exactly like that vanished Heaven-Fang Stone.
“You’re not coming?”
“Ah. Y-yes! I’m coming!”
He made himself a promise.
He would never talk back to Jeok Wigang.
The moment we stepped inside, something flew toward us at high speed.
Watching me walk forward, taking the incoming hidden weapons with my bare body, the Blood-Mist Death God could only scowl with horror.
Traps meant nothing to me.
I just smashed straight through them all with overwhelming strength.
The Blood-Mist Death God couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d gotten caught by one truly incredible human being—and in the worst way possible.
****
It was a miserably unimpressive cave.
“What the hell? There’s nothing here.”
“T-that, well...”
“Is this the right place?”
“Y-yes, it is.”
“Then why is there nothing?”
“T-that, I don’t really know either.”
“Look for something.”
“Understood.”
I was disappointed.
I’d thought I’d find traces of my younger brother here, and it turned out there was nothing at all.
“There’s a booklet here.”
“Yeah?”
“Except... the contents...”
“What about them?”
“It’s all insults.”
“Huh?”
“It’s just page after page of insults about some person.”
“Bring it here.”
The Blood-Mist Death God hurried over and respectfully held the book out.
FLIP—.
My expression twisted further with every page I turned.
Every line in the book was an insult aimed at me.
[I’m sick of having to treat that little brat like he’s my Senior Brother! That fucking bastard! Just die! Die!]
[Today I had to slam my head on the floor. I’m supposed to be the Ghost-Killing Demon Lord, and I’m being told to bang my head. That fucking Senior Brother bastard! I hope he dies!]
[*Still, at least having this space lets me breathe a little. I can come here and curse my Senior Brother all I want, and write all this stuff mocking that bastard as much as I please.
It’s a shame I can’t show him this book, but I want to live too, so I created this place to make sure he’d never discover it. Not that my Senior Brother would ever find this place, but you never know with people. You stupid Senior Brother bastard. Right now I’m here scribbling down insults about you like crazy! Hahaha!*]
My expression was not good, and the Blood-Mist Death God watched me, measuring my mood.
He quietly looked around the area and noticed statues.
Stone faces that looked very familiar from somewhere.
Not a single one of them was intact.
Where have I seen that face before?
As he tilted his head, I spotted the statues too.
“So they carved my face and did this to it.”
His face?
Now that he mentioned it—
They did look like him.
“Pack it.”
“Sir?”
“Pack every single book in here.”
“Ah, understood.”
“Just wait till I find you.”
The sound of my teeth grinding made a chill run down his spine.
Just what kind of relationship did I have with the Ghost-Killing Demon Lord?
Judging by the situation, the person in these books was clearly the monster standing right in front of him.
From the contents, it seemed like the Ghost-Killing Demon Lord was afraid of this monster.
He’d been so afraid of insulting this monster that he’d created a Secret Cave just to come here and curse him in private.
And it looked like he’d gone to obsessive lengths to hide the Secret Cave strictly to keep this book and those statues from ever being found.
“I’ve packed everything.”
“You’re coming with me.”
“Ah, understood.”
So much for freedom.
He squeezed his eyes shut, slung the bundle of books over his back, and followed after me.
****
“Who’s that?”
“He was looking for the Ghost-Killing Demon Lord’s Secret Cave. So I caught him and brought him.”
“The Ghost-Killing Demon Lord’s Secret Cave? I thought that was just some nonsense rumor.”
“It was real.”
“So? Did you go inside?”
“Yeah.”
“What was in there? Any trace of them?”
“Nope. Just a bunch of books filled with curses.”
“Curses?”
“Yeah.”
“About who? Was it about me?”
“There weren’t any curses about you, Grandfather. Who knows, though. There might be somewhere in those books.”
The Blood-Mist Death God watched carefully.
This crotchety-looking old man didn’t seem like an ordinary person either.
“That was all?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why’d you bring that bastard back?”
“He says he’s in the top three among assassins. He looked useful, so I brought him.”
“Hooh.”
The Heavenly Martial Emperor’s eyes lit with interest.
“What’s your sobriquet?”
“I am the Blood-Mist Death God.”
“Ah, the lunatic who kills people and scatters their blood into a mist as he leaves?”
“Y-yes, that’s me.”