Once again, the reactions split in two.
The far larger group reacted as if they were dealing with a madman. Buoyed by the absolute reassurance of the number ninety-nine, they wore sneers at the corners of their mouths.
Some grew tense.
One worry rose in their minds.
What if he wasn’t mad?
The moment that assumption became reality, those words about reducing the number of mouths would be no different from the Grim Reaper opening his ledger.
The Flame Emperor was among those who worried. He stared piercingly at Geom Mugeuk, trying to gauge his hidden strength, but he could reach no conclusion.
He was young—far too young—and no matter how he looked at him, he did not seem to be that much of an expert. And yet, in this situation, he was saying such things.
“Since the Gang Leader must have grown fond of them, for better or worse, I’ll handle it for you. Which mouth should I take care of first? From what I can see, they all look like mouths that could disappear.”
The Immortals all frowned at once. There were more than a few who wanted to charge out immediately and kill this insolent bastard.
For the Flame Emperor, this was truly a first. No expert in the world would dare spout such madness before them. When all of them were gathered, even the Murim Alliance would not dare barge in recklessly.
‘Could he be aiming for that? Trying to pass himself off as an expert with such arrogant words?’
That was how far his thoughts went. Truly, the more he looked at him, the more confusing the man became.
‘Fine. First, I need to see his skill.’
Before the bastard attacked, they would move first.
The Flame Emperor smiled leisurely and said,
“With lives as tenacious as ours, reducing the mouths won’t be easy.”
At the Flame Emperor’s glance, nine men stepped forward, from the Ninetieth Immortal to the Ninety-Eighth Immortal. It would not be too late to decide what came next after accurately assessing the opponent’s strength.
They surrounded Geom Mugeuk.
After slowly looking them over, Geom Mugeuk said,
“Are these the youngest?”
He asked as if guessing, but Geom Mugeuk had accurately grasped their skill. Judging by their presence, they were weaker than the others.
Amid this crowd of people, Geom Mugeuk had understood their abilities precisely with just a brief glance. And that was not all.
“It doesn’t look like you’ve ever fought in a combined attack before, either.”
He had seen that accurately as well. They had never had the chance to fight in a coordinated assault. Most of the time, they simply swarmed in for revenge and carried out one-sided massacres. Even that had hardly happened in recent times.
‘You want to assess my skill?’
Of course, Geom Mugeuk was not someone who would play along with his opponent’s intentions.
With his sword hanging low, Geom Mugeuk seemed to slowly walk toward the opponent standing directly in front of him.
Whoosh.
In an instant, he changed direction to the right and rushed forward. The movement was so fast and so sudden that the man on the right had his throat cut before he could even swing his sword.
Puaaak!
As blood sprayed in every direction, Geom Mugeuk’s figure was already charging toward another Immortal. The opponent instinctively thrust out his sword as well.
The two swords brushed through the air. Because he had thoroughly hidden his true skill, Geom Mugeuk’s sword was ahead of his by exactly half a move.
Thud!
That was why, when he killed the second Immortal, sighs of regret burst out here and there. It was from the disappointment that, had he been just a little faster, that Immortal could have won.
The sword that had pierced the second opponent’s heart now spun in a wide arc and flew toward the man rushing in from the opposite side.
Paat!
The blood on Geom Mugeuk’s sword flew through the air and entered the Immortal’s eyes. Whether it had been intentional or accidental was impossible to tell, but he closed his eyes for an instant. He would never open those closed eyes again. Once again, sighs erupted from all directions. Of all things, blood had to get into his eyes?
When he cut down the third man, a surprise attack came from behind.
The attacker was almost certain he had succeeded, but the strike missed by a hair.
Because it was such a pity, the thought, “One more time,” naturally sprang to mind, but he had no second chance.
The blood he spewed sprayed in every direction once more, blocking the vision of the remaining Immortals.
Surely he wasn’t deliberately scattering blood like this to obstruct their sight? There was no way, right?
Those watching found themselves thinking such thoughts. That was how much blood was spraying like a fountain. Geom Mugeuk’s fighting was not elegant. It was rough and ferocious. It was a battle steeped in the reek of blood.
Of course, there was a reason Geom Mugeuk was fighting this way.
The battle was close. If only they had been a little faster. If only they had attacked from a slightly different angle.
Leaving behind such regrets, the remaining Immortals fell one after another. Sighs of disappointment continued, and when the ninth sigh ended, they had all collapsed as corpses.
The smell of their spilled blood filled the hall.
The silence hanging over the hall was, of course, heavier than when the Ninety-Ninth Immortal had died earlier. No one had expected nine experts to die like this without leaving so much as a scratch on their opponent.
And yet, it did not make them think the opponent was extraordinary.
Rather, most of those watching felt, ‘What a lucky bastard!’ In their eyes, it had been a fight lost by the narrowest of margins.
On top of that, Geom Mugeuk’s swordsmanship was far too ordinary.
‘He should defend like that, and attack like that.’
It was the kind of fight that would be perfect to show beginners just starting to learn martial arts. A battle that could be drawn exactly as it was and published as a manual.
Of course, in the Flame Emperor’s eyes, this fight looked different.
‘It looked as though he was fighting purely by instinct.’
His nine subordinates had not managed a proper combined attack even once.
If two or three of them had attacked at the same time, they surely could have led the fight more easily. They must have intended to coordinate, but the opponent’s movements did not allow it, and in the end, they were each defeated individually.
‘What if this fight was intentional? What if this narrowly won, lucky-looking battle was thoroughly calculated?’
The Flame Emperor knew. He knew how difficult it was to kill them with fundamentals. Far more difficult than killing them with dazzling techniques.
‘This bastard has a hidden move.’
After shaking the blood from his sword, Geom Mugeuk looked at the Flame Emperor and said,
“Now then, I’ve reduced the mouths for you, so pay back the money.”
The Flame Emperor gave no answer.
‘Where on earth did they find and send a bastard like this?’
Geom Mugeuk saw the unconcealable greed revealed on the Flame Emperor’s face.
Through prior investigation, Geom Mugeuk had already known that the Flame Emperor was such a man. He valued money more than his subordinates.
If he had to hand over all the money he had earned, he would rather give up his life.
That was why, in order to open the Flame Emperor’s vault, he absolutely could not rush.
He could wipe them all out at once, but he had to draw blood like this and gradually heighten the mood, slowly breaking down the man’s heart. The primary goal today was not to kill them, but to recover the money.
“You kill a few errand boys and get carried away.”
Of course, they were not such people, but the Flame Emperor forced himself to keep up his momentum and suppressed an unknowable unease.
‘Whom should I send?’
Just as he was considering whether to send out the Ten Immortals and cut the sprout at the root—
Geom Mugeuk did something completely unexpected.
“Let me pass for a moment.”
Geom Mugeuk suddenly began walking toward the Immortals standing on the right.
At the sudden action, the Immortals on that side drew their swords and stepped back. As they spread left and right, a path naturally formed.
The Immortals on either side glared with fierce momentum, but Geom Mugeuk passed between them with a face that showed no fear at all.
Openings showed in his natural stride. They wondered whether to attack or not, but because the openings were too obvious, they could not bring themselves to strike.
But there was one Immortal who could not hold back. He had already calculated that this single move would raise his rank by ten places at once.
Shh.
It was a surprise attack that truly looked, to anyone watching, as though it had landed properly.
Puk.
Geom Mugeuk twisted his body to evade and drove his sword in.
This time as well, he dodged the attack by luck and barely succeeded in counterattacking.
Even at that moment, several Immortals flinched. They were tormented by the desire to take advantage of the opening and attack, but the man who had just died was the Forty-Fifth Immortal. Among those present, a fighter above the middle ranks had failed in a surprise attack.
When the Ninety-Eighth Immortal attacked, it was close. When the Forty-Fifth Immortal attacked, it was close.
Then they should have drawn a wise conclusion from this result, but right now, Geom Mugeuk gave them no time for that.
“Is this painting genuine?”
Holding a sword dripping with blood, the place he had walked to was the painting hanging on the rear wall.
The Flame Emperor asked with a puzzled gaze,
“Why are you asking that?”
“If the Gang Leader comes up short on money, I was thinking of taking this too.”
The Flame Emperor’s expression hardened. The opponent was openly disregarding him. There was certainly dignity he had to maintain before his subordinates.
But for now, the strange unease this young opponent gave him was greater.
“Do I look like the sort of person who would hang a fake in a place where people come and go?”
Such pride, in a situation thick with the smell of his subordinates’ blood? Geom Mugeuk felt a strange sense of dissonance.
But Geom Mugeuk was the only one who found it dissonant.
Rather, his subordinates felt no sense of incongruity at those words whatsoever. For all of them, their own face and money were more important than their comrades.
Geom Mugeuk began taking down the frame from the wall.
Was he really taking the painting? The moment the Flame Emperor’s expression stiffened sharply—
Shiiing!
An Immortal nearby did not miss the opportunity and launched a surprise attack. It was the very moment he took down the painting and lifted it. Moreover, when Geom Mugeuk held the painting in his right hand, he could not restrain himself. Of course, in the end, he should have.
Puck!
The sword missed by a hair, and Geom Mugeuk, turning around, struck his jaw with his left fist.
If he was the Thirty-Ninth Immortal, he should have been able to withstand a single punch, but he collapsed dead on the spot. It had not even looked like such an impressive fist technique.
The Flame Emperor’s gaze was directed not at his dead subordinate, but at the painting. One question had taken hold of him.
‘Why take the painting now, of all times? If he really needs it, he could take it down later.’
Geom Mugeuk carried the frame over and placed it on the table piled with bank drafts. It looked as if he were saying that everything here belonged to him.
“What are you doing right now?”
At the Flame Emperor’s question, Geom Mugeuk replied calmly,
“Because you people have lived this kind of life, there aren’t many ways to deal with you. So don’t resent me.”
The Immortals stood there staring at Geom Mugeuk with expressions that seemed to say, What nonsense is he spouting?
In that instant, an ominous thought rose in the Flame Emperor’s mind.
‘No way. Surely not?’
It was right then.
Shiiiiiiing!
The Flame Emperor saw a single line.
Not only him—everyone saw it. A single line was drawn out in a clean sweep, then vanished.
The line appeared to Geom Mugeuk’s right. The very side where Geom Mugeuk had walked over and taken down the painting.
The line passed through the Immortals standing there. It passed through the Immortals in the first row, and through those in the second and third rows as well.
A moment later, they saw Geom Mugeuk extending his sword toward them.
Only when they saw that did they finally understand.
That the line they had just seen had been a sword line created by Geom Mugeuk’s blade.
‘Can sword qi fly out as a single line like that?’
It had not flown like a brilliant light, nor had it left afterimages behind.
A single line, as if drawn straight with a ruler.
It was the first time in their lives they had seen such clean sword qi.
Silence flowed through the place.
Clack.
The moment Geom Mugeuk’s Black Demon Sword entered its sheath—
Srrrrk.
The bodies of the Immortals standing on the right began to slide apart.
The Immortals whose bodies had been cut in two all spurted blood at once and collapsed where they stood.
“Uaaaaaagh!”
One Immortal watching the scene from the front screamed. No matter how bold these experts were, the sight of over twenty men having their torsos sliced apart in a single move was both shocking and terrifying.
And now they understood why he had taken the painting from the back. The sword qi that had cut through the Immortals left a long line on the rear wall.
The Flame Emperor’s eyes widened.
He had thrown himself into the murim and overcome many crises, but had there ever been a time when he had been this shocked?
He had known the opponent had a hidden move, but he had not imagined he would kill over twenty of his subordinates in one stroke.
The other Immortals were the same. Now there was no one left there who was sneering.
The hot, rising stench of blood filled the great hall.
“He used up a great deal of internal energy, so he must have none left!”
Had he looked inside Geom Mugeuk’s dantian, such words could never have come out, but at the Flame Emperor’s shout, the Immortals all drew their swords at once.
They all revealed their killing intent, but Geom Mugeuk was not frightened in the slightest.
“I told you not to draw your swords, but to repay the money.”
Even in this situation, with over thirty of his subordinates dead, the words that he would pay did not leave the Flame Emperor’s mouth. Even with their lives, they had yet to touch so much as a hair of the three million nyang.
“It seems the number of mouths needs to be reduced further.”
This time, Geom Mugeuk looked to the opposite side, the left, and quietly said to the Immortals standing there,
“Fortunately, there’s no painting on this wall.”
Absolute Regression Chapter 475