Chapter 61. I Split Them with My Trusted Axe.

“Where I came from isn’t important.”

“…….”

“What matters most in the world right now is that you don’t blink.”

By now, the man’s eyes were bloodshot. A moment later, when I saw a tear roll down, I warned him.

“Three Great Finger-Flicking Arts of the Jianghu.”

The person who suddenly visited the Unu Association and had a staring contest with the gatekeeper—that was me.

“Where did I come from, you ask? That’s a long story. Originally, I came from my parents, but I doubt you’re asking about my roots. Which neighborhood did I come from? It probably isn’t that kind of geographical question either. I suppose you mean something like, from what faction have I come? That’s also quite a long story. So, then……”

The gatekeeper, whose patience had run dry, swallowed hard and said,

“Please spare me.”

“Spare you?”

“Yes.”

“No. A staring contest is a staring contest, a match is a match, and a forehead flick is a forehead flick.”

I figured the match would be decided soon, so I pressed my thumb and index finger together, brought them to my mouth, and blew hot air onto them.

Perhaps he had lost his composure, because he started spouting nonsense.

“I’ll pay my tab.”

“Don’t need it.”

The instant his eyes blinked, I struck his forehead with a flick.

Thwack!

The gatekeeper flipped backward through the air and fainted, sprawled face-down on the ground.

“My victory.”

Having defeated the gatekeeper, I followed the path lined with round stones and went inside. I got the feeling that the main base’s layout was slightly sinister.

Perhaps because many of the men who served Chief Master Su were away, the interior was quieter than expected.

I stopped for a moment by a small pond and watched the fish. Tiny fish whose names I didn’t know were swimming around. Strangely enough, when I looked down at them, they gathered at my feet as if asking for food.

When you’re weak, you end up begging others for food and being trapped in a narrow place like this.

It occurred to me that the Mad Monk had searched for a fish the size of a great roc because……

His own skill and ego were as large as a great roc, so perhaps his journey had been to see what masters existed out in the vast sea. In any case, while traveling from Xizang to Zhejiang, every large fellow would have stood out.

I quickly lost interest and looked around.

Maybe because the base was in the form of a manor, the garden was quite large, and here and there I saw small houses of unknown purpose, warehouses, and even an incinerator.

I went to the incinerator and asked the man whose back was turned to me.

“What do you burn here?”

The large man had been eating something at a small table. He looked me up and down before answering.

“Who are you?”

“Someone who came to see Master Su.”

“Ah, he shouldn’t be here right now.”

I looked at what the man was eating.

“You’re in the middle of a meal.”

“Yes.”

“Is anyone inside right now? Is the vice chairman here?”

“Only guests are here. The vice chairman should have gone out.”

I gestured with my chin toward the large incinerator and asked,

“I asked what you burn here.”

“Corpses. What else would we burn?”

“Do you people have reason to burn corpses?”

The large man replied while chewing meat with a sour expression.

“If they don’t pay back the money, we burn them. I’m just doing what I’m told, so I don’t know much.”

I watched the man diligently eating his meat, then let out a sigh.

“Killing a man while he’s eating makes me feel a bit off.”

Only then did he stop using his chopsticks and glare fixedly at me. I pointed at the food he was eating and said,

“Finish eating.”

I turned to go check who the guests were, but the man who had stopped eating stood up and walked beside the incinerator.

When I looked back, he was staring at me with an axe in his hand.

“You’re not a guest, are you?”

He approached, gripping the axe.

Just how many people had he killed for him to decide so quickly that he was going to kill someone? Perhaps because he was somewhat lacking in intelligence, he repeated the same words as he swung the axe.

“You’re not a guest!”

Judging from the way he swung the axe, he had enough skill to slaughter a dozen third-rate martial artists with external arts and brute strength alone. I didn’t want to touch his body, so I aimed at his eye with the Wooden Rooster Finger-Flicking Art.

Thwack!

The instant his eye burst and he was about to scream, I kicked him in the abdomen and sent him flying, accurately stuffing him into the mouth of the incinerator. As the man, having dropped his axe, tried to crawl out by grabbing the incinerator’s opening with both hands, I ran over and crammed him inside.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Even though he screamed, not a single person came out.

I picked up the axe that had fallen to the ground and headed for the main building.

The closer I got, the louder the music flowing from inside the main building became.

When I opened the door, the interior of the main building was rather spacious.

Even though I entered, no one looked at me.

On the central stage, dancing girls in clothes that clearly revealed their bare skin were performing awkward dances, while martial artists in all sorts of outfits watched from below.

I walked over with the axe in hand and stepped onto the stage.

Only then did the dancing girls scream and leave, and I took over the role of the star of the stage.

I stood the axe beside me and looked out at the audience seats.

Only the area around the stage was lit by lamps, and the windows were covered with screens, so the audience seats were quite dark. Only then did the music stop, and silence settled in.

I looked around from the stage and said,

“Someone light this place up.”

It was strange.

Not a single one of them tried to run away. They were all drawing their weapons.

Why on earth?

* * *

I set the bloodstained axe beside me and sat cross-legged.

It seemed they had mistaken me for someone from the Murim Alliance.

Because every member of the audience had attacked me as if determined to kill or die, it took me an entire quarter-hour to kill them all.

For a while, together with the bloodstained axe, I pondered what kind of place the Unu Association was. Since I hadn’t held a conversation with them, I had learned nothing.

I did not want to ask the dancing girls either.

When I opened my eyes anew in order to ask someone, there were only corpses around me.

I closed my eyes again.

I had no choice but to wait until the vice chairman, who had supposedly gone out, returned.

Whatever the case, these were all men who would have had their necks cut off by strict Murim Alliance members, so they surely hadn’t committed mere petty crimes I could turn a blind eye to.

With my eyes closed, I listened to the sounds around me and heard men moving about while keeping their footsteps to an absolute minimum.

I could not hear as far as the outer perimeter.

Because my martial arts had not yet reached the level of the Steel Turtle, nor that of the Great Peng.

When I focused on my sense of smell, at first all I could detect was the stench of blood.

As I concentrated, I was able to distinguish the scent of face powder and perfume amid the smell of blood.

There were quite a few among the Black Path who sprayed poison in mist form, so I always had to sort out smells like this.

While my eyes were closed, all sorts of thoughts surfaced at random.

First of all, the dancers’ performance had been a mess.

It was as if they had only learned the dance recently.

Which meant they were not professional dancers.

And every one of the men who had died under my axe had looked wealthy.

As for why they had attacked me without asking a single question, I reached this conclusion: if they had been Black Path men instead, at least some of them would have asked who I was, fled, or assessed the situation.

In that case, there was a possibility that most of the audience had been wealthy martial artists belonging to noble clans.

It was nothing unusual for the wealthy upper class to mingle with the Black Path.

It was common.

The Black Path would do anything as long as they were paid, and the upper class had nowhere left to spend their money, so they grew increasingly twisted. Caught between them, the ones who always suffered and died were only those who earned their money through honest work.

That was why, in my previous life, many of the White Path had also died by my hand.

Because I had not drawn that line, I had been able to rise quickly in the rankings of the public enemies of murim. So quickly that they had needed to cast the Heavenly Net to catch me.

Even after returning to the past, some things were bound to repeat themselves.

But that was fine.

Because I was still growing stronger. Just then, I heard several sets of footsteps and opened my eyes again.

* * *

The doors of the main hall opened again, and the men who had organized the performance looked around inside with flustered expressions. Perhaps because their organization had strict discipline, the small fry kept their mouths tightly shut, while the Vice Leader spoke to me.

“Who are you?”

When his subordinates removed the screens, my field of vision brightened.

The Vice Leader was a fairly composed man. His calm was evident from his expression, and he was not as old as I had expected. When I remained silent, the Vice Leader walked up to the foot of the stage and looked up at me.

“Which Black Path are you from? I suppose you can handle our Society Leader?”

He did not seem like someone with whom I would have a particularly interesting conversation, so I answered half-heartedly.

“I came to collect on an unpaid bill.”

“Just how much is this bill for you to do something like this…”

“How much can you give me?”

The Vice Leader pondered for a moment, then, surprisingly, answered like this.

“Would three hundred standard gold pieces do?”

“Astonishingly, that is exactly the amount the Lord of Heukseon Fortress told me to repay.”

The Vice Leader smiled faintly and replied.

“Ah, so you owe a debt to the Lord of Heukseon Fortress. In that case, take three hundred from me and settle the debt cleanly. Heukseon Fortress’s debt collection is no less severe than ours, after all.”

“I don’t need to pay it back.”

“Why not?”

With my hand, I roughly explained the situation in which I had smashed the Lord of Heukseon Fortress’s head apart.

“Was it four times with a wolf-fang club? Once you’ve scattered into blood and chunks of flesh, you tend to forget about collecting debts. He probably doesn’t even know who he lent money to anymore. If you people owed Heukseon Fortress anything, thank me.”

The Vice Leader closed his mouth. I could not guess what he was thinking right now, so I admonished him kindly.

“Don’t run. I’ll spare your subordinates and chase only you. Don’t order your subordinates to attack first, either. I’ll ignore them and kill only you.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? Shall I bring the money first?”

“Don’t do that either. Seeing how empty this place is, your forces must be somewhere else. If you go to get the money, it seems likely those forces will come flooding in. Just stay here. Let us have a time of repentance together. Mourn the dead. Think deeply about how our lives came to drift this far. We surely were not evil from the moment we were born, so how did we end up like this?”

At that moment, the front doors of the main hall opened wide again, and men holding swords entered quietly.

Even though dozens more subordinates had arrived, the Vice Leader’s expression remained stiff.

I spoke to the Vice Leader in a stern tone.

“You don’t want to talk to me? Is this how you’re going to act?”

The Vice Leader suddenly rounded his mouth and let out a long breath. He raised his hand as though he were about to give the order to attack, then said to his subordinates.

“You lot, go outside.”

When the Vice Leader gestured silently, all of his subordinates withdrew. With an exhausted expression, as though he had just engaged in an intense martial exchange in that brief span of time, the Vice Leader said to me.

“I sent them out, so calm down. If there’s something you want, tell me, and let’s resolve this through conversation from beginning to end. I’m willing to cooperate, I’m willing to betray, and I’m willing to kneel and beg for my life. For now, let’s talk.”

I nodded, then replied.

“Kneel.”

The Vice Leader climbed onto the edge of the stage and knelt.

* * *

The Vice Leader of Unuhoe clasped his hands together and prayed inwardly again and again.

He was now certain.

He had been caught by a complete madman.

He could tell after conversing with him. After seeing his eyes, he became even more certain. And the state of the guests’ corpses told him that his guess was not wrong. Ordinarily, when one killed with an axe, it was common to sever arms and legs, but most of the corpses had their crowns split neatly in half.

Just by looking at the condition of the corpses, he could roughly gauge the madman’s skill.

The Vice Leader spoke with the sole intention of surviving this moment first.

“If there is anything you want, anything at all… For now, fortunately, the Society Leader is absent, so I think I can tell you anything. Of course, you’re probably not interested in money or women, but I would like you to tell me what you want.”

* * *

I answered the question of the kneeling Vice Leader.

“When will Mr. Su arrive?”

“I think he will arrive late this evening.”

“Can you kill him?”

“Of course, it would be difficult for me alone. Difficult, but if I strike at the same time as my direct subordinates, we can kill him. Poison, hidden weapons, a joint attack, an ambush. And today, he will come after drinking. It should be easier than usual. I can do it. I can kill him… Believe me. If I fail to kill him, you can kill me then. You were planning to kill Mr. Su anyway, weren’t you? Then you can just kill us all at that time.”

“So you’re a traitor.”

I stood with the axe in hand and approached the Vice Leader. I approached while expecting a counterattack, but the Vice Leader did not move at all.

I stroked the Vice Leader’s head with my left hand, then gripped the axe short.

“I heard Mr. Su is as strong as the Great Rakshasa. Can you do it?”

“That is if they fought formally…”

I brought the axe down just like that and split the Vice Leader’s head in half.

Come to think of it, it occurred to me that the entire Unuhoe was of such poor quality that there were hardly any worth taking in and putting to use.

The corpse of a treacherous bastard—strong against the weak and weak against the strong—was added to the stage.