Chapter 23 - Tang Wu

“What is it?”

It was an exceedingly brief question, yet those few words overwhelmed everyone present except Dong Bongsu. The brown-robed middle-aged man’s icy voice sent a momentary jolt through his heart, but he felt no intimidation. He had merely learned, for the first time, what it felt like to hear a voice imbued with internal energy.

He never felt fear of anyone or shrank before them in the first place. He only pretended to.

The brown-robed man turned his head and surveyed the crowd. Dong Bongsu hid his eyes behind Yeoro. It was instinctive. In this world, he was still an immature predator. Nothing good could come of drawing the attention of another predator whose strength surpassed his own—especially now, when he needed to study his opponent.

The man spared Yeoro only a brief glance before turning back to Gi Daehyo, apparently uninterested.

Dong Bongsu, too, focused on Gi Daehyo again. Gi Daehyo was the Danri Family’s hands, feet, and eyes. He hoped the man would explain who this stranger was. Yet Gi Daehyo apparently did not know either; he swallowed hard and announced his name and position.

“I am Gi Daehyo, leader of the Danri Family’s Black Crow Unit. The person you are tormenting is a young master of the Danri Family. Remove your foot at once, or I will not stand idle.”

Though Gi Daehyo was making a threat, his voice was decidedly lacking in confidence. He had already been cowed by the other man’s presence.

Dong Bongsu realized that Gi Daehyo knew nothing about the brown-robed stranger. Several deductions followed. The Black Crow Unit’s leader had encountered someone in Fengyang whom he did not recognize.

That meant the man was not a martial artist from Fengyang. No, more than that—he probably did not operate anywhere in Anhui Province. Gi Daehyo and the Black Crow Unit had such an excellent intelligence network that scarcely a corner of Anhui’s martial world was unknown to them. If he did not recognize this man, then the stranger clearly was not from around here.

‘An outsider. And an expert whose strength I can’t measure.’

Dong Bongsu had to decide. An expert at least ten levels above him was displaying hostility toward their party. He could not be certain, but in his judgment, the brown-robed man was even stronger than Danri Cheon-u. The people here had absolutely no chance against him.

Should he flee? Or stay and see how things developed?

He did not deliberate for long.

Dong Bongsu was born without anything resembling killing intent, but he had an exceptional talent for reading it. Its intensity was immensely useful in determining a predator’s caliber.

Those without killing intent, like himself, stood at the very top.

Once he detected it, however, its intensity allowed him to gauge the degree of a person’s savagery and predatory nature.

For now, the stranger was not emitting any killing intent. He was not someone who naturally lacked it; he simply gave the impression of a lion looking at insects. He clearly had no intention of wiping out Dong Bongsu and the Black Crow Unit.

Dong Bongsu chose the latter option.

As a sharp gleam entered his eyes, the brown-robed man looked at Gi Daehyo and spoke quietly.

“The Danri Family? What’s that? Something you eat?”

To Gi Daehyo, those words were deeply contemptuous. To Dong Bongsu, they were a clue to the man’s strength. He realized that the stranger thought nothing of the likes of the Danri Family.

Still, he remained where he stood. He could sense no killing intent from the man even now.

Gi Daehyo’s face, meanwhile, was turning alternately red and purple.

It must have been difficult to bear. His was a reasonably prominent family in Anhui, yet it was being treated like this. But Gi Daehyo was indeed a composed man. Either that, or the stranger’s presence had utterly cowed him.

Clenching his teeth, Gi Daehyo addressed the brown-robed man.

“What you have just said is an insult to the Danri Family. May I take it as such?”

It was the best response Gi Daehyo could manage. He probably wanted to swing his sword and attack immediately, but instinct must have told him that he could not. Those few words were therefore the best course available to him.

Unconcerned, the brown-robed man replied with an expression colder than before.

“Who knows? I have no idea whether the Danri Family is something you eat, shit out, or step on.”

“Ghk...”

As he said the final words, “step on,” the middle-aged man pressed down harder with his foot. Danri Ganghae’s face instantly went white, and his eyes began to roll back. His airway was completely blocked. A little more pressure, and he would die on the spot.

Gi Daehyo’s face turned just as white. If Danri Ganghae died, he was a dead man too. He had no other choice now. Immediately raising his hand to point at the brown-robed man, he shouted.

“Black Crow Unit, all of you! Attack him and rescue the young master!”

Dong Bongsu, meanwhile, merely continued watching the stranger. He still sensed no killing intent whatsoever. Gi Daehyo simply could not perceive what Dong Bongsu could.

He watched the confrontation between the brown-robed man and the Black Crow Unit at his leisure. Now that his safety was assured, all he needed to do was observe the stranger’s advanced martial arts.

To the man, the Black Crow Unit would be nothing more than playthings. No one killed their playthings. Though they might break them by accident.

TAP-TAP-TAP!

The entire Black Crow Unit, including Gi Daehyo and Gi Manji, charged at the brown-robed man.

He remained unhurried as he watched them. Without removing his foot from Danri Ganghae’s throat, he merely raised one hand to shoulder height.

Dong Bongsu’s keen eyes spotted hundreds of fine needles held between his fingers.

‘A hidden-weapon art?’

The instant that thought crossed his mind, the brown-robed man lightly flicked his hand toward Gi Daehyo and the Black Crow Unit.

FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!

They were not fast. After leaving his hand, the needles clustered into butterfly shapes and flew toward the Black Crow Unit’s elite fighters along strange, curving paths, zigzagging like bees. Yet not one member of the unit dodged those slow-moving needles. No—they could not dodge them.

To Dong Bongsu, they looked like guided missiles of the kind found only on modern Earth.

“Ghk!”

“Ugh!”

“Agh!”

Amid an assortment of brief cries, Gi Daehyo and every member of the Black Crow Unit collapsed to the ground at once. One move. The Black Crow Unit, the pride of the Danri Family, had been subdued with a single move.

“Th-this is! Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly?! Th-then you are...!”

His body paralyzed, Gi Daehyo could only lift his head and stare at the brown-robed man in shock. He had never seen the technique before, but it was a hidden-weapon art renowned throughout Murim.

A martial art named for the way it moved like butterflies chasing souls.

Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly was a secret art of the Sichuan Tang Family, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains. And within the Tang Clan, there was one expert said to have attained godlike mastery of it.

Gi Daehyo looked at the stranger’s face once more.

Ah, why had he only recognized him now? The brown-robed middle-aged man matched his recollection of the Tang Clan’s greatest expert perfectly.

Hearing Gi Daehyo’s startled cry, the man sneered. He looked down at Gi Daehyo and spoke in an icy voice.

“For a country lackey, your eyes aren’t entirely rotten. I am Tang Wu.”

Tang Wu.

An expert belonging to the Ten Greats among the Two Divinities, Three Eccentrics, Five Masters, and Ten Greats—the twenty strongest people in Murim. The greatest expert of the Sichuan Tang Family, one of the Five Great Families of the Central Plains. A supreme master with scarcely an equal to be found in Sichuan Province.

There were many ways to describe him, but ultimately, none captured him as well as his epithet.

The Soul-Chasing Poison Hand.

[Whoever incurs Tang Wu’s displeasure shall never escape his poisonous hands, even after dying and becoming a ghost!]

Originally, the Tang Clan had been a noble clan renowned for hidden weapons and poisons, a sect straddling the orthodox and unorthodox paths. When the Murim Alliance was first established, however, Master Hyein, then abbot of Shaolin Temple, persuaded them to join, and they became one of its pillars. Though they had experienced numerous ups and downs since, they remained so powerful that they had never once lost their place among the Five Great Families of the Central Plains.

The Sichuan Tang Family had produced many experts as renowned for their ruthlessness as for the poisonous origins of their martial arts, but Tang Wu stood alone among them. Apart from Ten Thousand Flower Rain, which was now almost entirely lost, Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly was the hidden-weapon art most difficult to learn and cultivate to mastery. Having brought it close to perfection, Tang Wu was unquestionably a master who had left his mark on the Tang Family’s history.

Indeed, he had corrected several weaknesses in the original Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly, developing it into its present form, and had used it to defeat countless experts of the unorthodox path.

Tang Wu also possessed an innate gift for poisons and had developed countless varieties he had yet even to name. Had he chosen to be ruthless a moment ago, he would have unleashed his nameless poisons along with Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly. It was obvious that, had he done so, Gi Daehyo would not have been capable of looking so astonished now.

Tang Wu’s fearsome reputation was so widespread that even Dong Bongsu had heard his name once or twice.

‘One of Murim’s twenty greatest experts.’

Dong Bongsu looked at Gi Daehyo, who lay paralyzed with only his head held upright. He was staring at Tang Wu, his face so pale that his soul might already have fled his body. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but with the shock nearly driving his soul out of him, how could he have the presence of mind to speak?

An apology? He did not seem to have the mental strength for anything of the sort.

Gi Daehyo’s reaction alone revealed the weight carried by the names of the Sichuan Tang Family and the Twenty Greatest Experts. Judging by that weight, the trouble Danri Ganghae had caused today outweighed every other incident of his life combined.

Dong Bongsu did not know what mistake he had made, but if he had offended someone of Tang Wu’s stature, then depending on the offense, a family like the Danri Family could easily be forced to close its gates—

Yet Dong Bongsu remained at ease.

Tang Wu still stood imperiously, glaring with icy eyes, but he had not killed anyone yet. And if he had intended to kill, Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly would have left them all dead a moment ago.

Dong Bongsu simply recalled the way Tang Wu had executed Soul-Chasing Flying Butterfly and watched to see how the situation would unfold.

Just then.

“Grandfather.”

A slender woman with a brown veil covering her face walked out of the Bold Wayfarer Inn.