Chapter 237: East, Celestial Academy (2)
Hwang Bojin is one of the typical “villains” you’ll find in the Celestial Academy, with a short temper and a tendency to say mean things whenever he opens his mouth.
He reminds me a lot of Amon, as he has decent muscles and is a big guy. However, he’s much worse than Amon.
In the first place, Amon wasn’t even close to being an asshole or having a bad personality compared to this guy.
A cursory examination of his cultivation reveals that he’s still in the early stages of first-class but even that was due to his own family’s merit.
Arrogant and unassuming even with such an insignificant talent and skill.
To describe Huang Bojin in one word, he was a terrible bastard.
“I doubt that you’ll be able to overcome me…”
Look at him talking all big.
Huang Bojin rolled his eyes up and down, glared at me, and cleared his thick throat.
“I’m Zetto from the Innocence Academy.”
“I’m Huang Bojin from the Celestial Academy.”
We exchanged introductions, and before we knew it, Guan Zhu, who was watching the referee, announced the start of the competition.
“”Oooooooh!!!””
A thunderous cheer pierced his ears from both sides of the room, where the students and cadets of the Academy were.
In response, I drew Sierra from my waistband.
“Reverse grip…Ha, I can already tell what kind of person you are.”
Watching this, Huang Bojin stood up and let out a pathetic sigh.
I lightly dismissed his words, raised my hand for a moment, and asked Guan Zhu.
“We shouldn’t have any unfortunate incidents like having our limbs chopped off while fighting, right?”
“…They won’t get cut off unless you use sword qi. Do you know how to use it?”
“No, I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then don’t worry. There are no students in the academy whose limbs won’t be cut off by a sword that is not loaded with qi.”
Guan Zhu snorted with a tone that suggested he didn’t know such common sense.
“Foohahaha! Were you worried that your sword would cut off my arm? You’re even funnier than you look.”
Before Guan Zhu could finish, Huang Bojin’s sneer could be heard.
“…I see.”
I didn’t learn because there was nothing to learn.
A sword is a sword and it has a job to do.
I turned the Spectral Sword I was holding with the back of the blade facing forward into a reverse grip.
“You’re so arrogant…”
Huang Bojin’s eyes widened at my behavior, and he gritted her teeth.
“What is he doing?”
“Are you deaf to the sound of your own ears, even though your lordship said there was no such thing…”
“Act like a big deal, asshole.”
Back to back.
The sarcasm poured out along with the unkind gazes of the students who saw me for the first time, but I couldn’t help it.
‘Not fired…’
I held my tongue, wondering if he would.
The dark red circles on Huang Bojin’s body in front of me couldn’t have been clearer.
If I were to accidentally cut through those red circles, it was obvious what would happen next.
Even though the burly Huang Bojin looked as solid as Amon on the outside, perhaps even more so, he was by no means solid.
There were other hard men in the Celestial Academy.
‘He may be wasting his talent right now, but…’
In any case, I wasn’t about to spoil a martial arts tournament that could earn me a Nine Moon Flower, even for the sake of Volk, who would later become my sharp claw.
[You’ve done the right thing, apprentice, and don’t listen too closely. This will be your first duel like this, so it’s to be expected.]
Sierra must have noticed my distress, because she stroked my cheek to comfort me.
Contrary to her concern, I didn’t have time to listen to the criticism that was being heaped upon me.
My mind was currently filled with thoughts of how to cook Huang Bojin.
I thought about it for a while.
Huang Bojin spoke up and solved my problem.
“Hey, platinum-haired nameless young lady! I’m asking you to watch Huang Bojin’s fight. I’ll win this tournament, and I’ll put the Nine Moon Flower into your hands.”
He pointed at Aizel and made a confessional declaration in a thunderous voice.
“Are you talking to me…?”
Aizel only frowned in displeasure, but I remembered the lewd conversations Huang Bojin had with his friends and could recognize the malice in his smile.
That sealed Huang Bojin’s fate.
‘If I want to feel comfortable…I’d better be overpowering.’
After this fight, Huang Bojin will not be able to get out of bed, at least not for the duration of our stay in the Celestial Academy.
***
Like a knight before a jousting tournament, Huang Bojin pointed to Aizel as the princess he wished to cheer on, announcing his bold ambitions.
Huang Bojin, who had envisioned himself ending the duel with a single punch, was currently out of breath and panting.
His opponent, Zetto, on the other hand, hadn’t exhausted himself at all, and was casually tilting his head and raising the corners of his mouth.
It was a clear provocation, especially since he had no intention of coming down.
Still, there was nothing Huang Bojin could do.
‘This must be a dream, a terrible…A terrible nightmare.’
Eventually, Huang Bojin began to question everything about this.
It couldn’t be real, he thought, that he, the second son of the Huang family, couldn’t even touch a blind man’s hair.
He was still arrogant.
Meanwhile, Zhang Shan, who was also unable to keep his mouth shut in disbelief at the current situation, slowly recounted what had just happened.
‘What the hell happened?’
Huang Bojin was the first to step out since closing the distance against a sword was the essence of martial arts and he was able to close the distance between them quite easily, just as he wanted.
Up until that point, Huang Bojin must have thought he had won.
Most of Huang family techniques consist of simple, straightforward movements.
However, they are characterized by their simplicity, speed, and the power of each attack.
Just like that, Huang Bojin’s fist slammed into the blind man.
It was much faster than any fist Zhang Shan had ever seen. It was different from the time he had bullied Zhang Shan.
It was only a basic technique but given Huang Bojin’s inner strength, its speed could not be ignored.
However, the blind man dodged the punch very lightly.
It wasn’t even a swift move, it was simply a slight twist of the body.
Huang Bojin let out a weak laugh at the unexpected result.
He was just lucky, it was a coincidence that the blind man was able to avoid his fist.
Zhang Shan guessed that was probably what Huang Bojin was thinking at the time.
Immediately afterward, Huang Bojin’s onslaught continued.
Huang Bojin didn’t pay any attention to the reverse blade that the blind man was holding, and the blind man didn’t really swing his sword.
However, even as he unleashed countless strikes, he was unable to land a single effective hit.
As if he knew where the attacks would come from, the blind man dodged Huang Bojin’s fists and intestines with minimal movement.
Huang Bojin’s fists couldn’t touch him and so it came to this.
The field, where countless cadets and students had gathered, was as silent as a mouse.
However, the reasons were different.
“Am I seeing things?”
“It’s Huang Bojin, did you have any expectations?”
“I didn’t expect anything, but…”
The other side couldn’t believe what was happening.
“He’s being too hard on him, too.”
“Still, it seems like he held out for a long time.”
“Should I say endured it?”
The cadets are not surprised at all, because it’s business as usual.
Huang Bojin, who had lost his strength from punching the air, and Zetto, who was leisurely approaching him with a smile on his face.
At that moment, Zetto lifted the arm that was holding his sword.
Amon, who was yawning against the wall, concentrated on the duel for a moment.
Finally, Zetto attacked but once again, Amon missed his move.
No, all but a few people missed his movements.
Before they could find him, they blinked two or three times, and a loud, alien sound began to echo through the unarmed crowd.
-Bam! Bam!
-Bam!
One dull sound after another.
It was the sound of something hard breaking followed by a scream that came from the mouth of a large man.
“AUGH!!!”
As they searched for Zetto, who had disappeared from view, their eyes first fell on Hwang Bojin, who was now lying on the floor of the offstage area.
The only problem was that his limbs were twisted in ways they shouldn’t have been.
It was such a grotesque sight that some of the onlookers covered their mouths.
“Ugh… Ugh…”
Huang Bojin was about to pass out from the pain.
Even Huang Bojin, who normally trained in the external arts to prepare himself for physically demanding martial arts such as Wall Force Divine Power, was unable to withstand the pain of having his entire body’s bones crushed at once.
As everyone stared in horror at Huang Bojin’s plight, their eyes fell upon Zetto.
Zetto appeared in front of Huang Bojin, who was on the verge of passing out, and habitually swung his bloodless sword once in the air.
“Hii…Hmph…”
Huang Bojin was terrified and fell unconscious.
Looking down at him, Zetto spoke in a cheerful voice.
“…Still, it’ll be less painful than having your limbs chopped off, because it’ll hurt like hell, I know because I’ve been chopped off.”
It was a joke and a consolation that no one else in the room could laugh at.