The Reincarnated Hunter Sweeps Up All Fortunes - Chapter 42

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 42
Episode 42
The gap between One-Star Grade, Two-Star Grade, and Three-Star Grade martial arts was vast.
If One-Star was like a newborn infant, then Two-Star was like a baby beginning to roll over, and Three-Star was roughly the stage where it crawled—the difference lay in degrees of development.
In other words, Two-Star was the stage where real power began to manifest.
‘A little more and I think I’ll reach Three-Star….’
Im Gang felt an itching sensation near his chest.
It was a kind of instinct.
Conviction bloomed that he could break through to Three-Star.
For about thirty minutes, he alternated between the Chasing Thunder Palm and the Responding Wind Hand.
Ding!
[First-rank Chasing Thunder Palm skill has risen to Three-Star Grade.]
[Second-rank Responding Wind Hand skill has risen to Three-Star Grade.]
‘Excellent.’
Im Gang felt satisfied. Was this what blood and sweat bore as fruit?
But the ascent of his martial arts didn’t end there.
Ding!
[First-rank Nine-Chain Fist Method skill has risen to Three-Star Grade.]
‘…What?’
The Nine-Chain Fist Method, which had been sitting idle, suddenly rose to Three-Star as well.
What was this?
As Im Gang stared at the system window in bewilderment—
Ding!
[Skills Chasing Thunder Palm, Responding Wind Hand, and Whirlwind Kick have achieved Chaining with Nine-Chain Fist Method.]
“Huh?”
The Chasing Thunder Palm, Responding Wind Hand, and Whirlwind Kick had achieved Chaining with the Nine-Chain Fist Method.
This sudden Chaining came out of nowhere….
Standing there bewildered, another notification appeared.
Ding!
[Chasing Thunder Palm, Responding Wind Hand, Nine-Chain Fist Method, and Whirlwind Kick merge into Unity.]
Unity—
Many becoming one.
[Perfect-Grade Wind-Thunder Hundred Strikes skill has been registered.]
“…!”
Im Gang’s mouth fell slightly open. The Chasing Thunder Palm, Responding Wind Hand, Nine-Chain Fist Method, and Whirlwind Kick had merged into a single entity and transformed into a new martial art.
And at that—a Perfect-Grade martial art at that.
Wind-Thunder was wind and lightning; Hundred Strikes was a hundred forms of attack.
Using fist, palm, finger, and kick, one could unleash a hundred varied movements like wind and lightning—this was precisely what the Wind-Thunder Hundred Strikes could be called.
‘Wow… martial arts can fuse together.’
In his past life, there had been a skill fusion system.
Skills learned from skill books could fuse when they exceeded a certain level and possessed compatible attributes, characteristics, and—as it were—synergy with one another.
He’d assumed it would be impossible in this life and hadn’t even considered it, but he never imagined fusion would be possible with martial arts here either.
His mind began to race.
‘…Could magic techniques fuse in the same way?’
Wouldn’t the Explosive Flame Heaven-Splitting Technique fuse into something new if combined with another magic technique?
Even without magic technique—if he somehow paired it with a fire-aligned martial art….
‘…Wait.’
Im Gang shook his head vigorously, sweeping the thought away.
Perhaps it was because he already knew the incantation for the magic technique, incomplete though it was.
Stray thoughts kept bubbling up.
He was beginning to understand why demons did such strange things.
Delusion suddenly bloomed in his mind.
Im Gang steadied his stance. And just as he was gathering his breath to demonstrate the newly registered Wind-Thunder Hundred Strikes, about to extend his fist—
Crash!
The front gate shattered to splinters.
“Ugh!”
A figure came flying through, coughing up blood.
* * *
Hangzhou barely maintained its balance under the dominion of the Hangzhou Three Tyrants.
That balance had grown precarious of late.
There had been incidents capable of disrupting that balance before. But the Hangzhou Three Tyrants had kept them in check well enough, upheld by the law of the strong and the subjugation of the weak.
The problem was that all of them erupted at once.
And violently.
The incidents involving Yan Wang Chai and the Explosive Fury Demon Army had been the turning point.
Bandits multiplied outside Hangzhou, and countless martial artists fell. The Hangzhou Three Tyrants’ power did not diminish greatly, yet for that very reason, the balance of forces grew unstable.
Countless heterodox sects and clans began fighting one another — some to survive, others to expand their influence.
The Hangzhou Three Tyrants watched. They were the three kings who truly ruled Hangzhou. They did not wish chaos in the land they governed.
So they made their decision.
To eliminate those who stirred up that chaos.
Vagrant warriors were no exception.
Though ronins were looked down upon by martial artists, in Hangzhou they had been indispensable hunting dogs—and meat shields besides. But word spread that Hangzhou was a good place to operate, and their numbers swelled beyond measure.
When there is too much water, it overflows.
Some culling was necessary.
First, they banned commissions through the Information Broker House and waited. Desperate for coin, the ronins scattered in search of work, and the feuding clans hired them.
With the heterodox sects already at each other’s throats, and the vagrant warriors joining the fray, the fighting grew fiercer by the day.
The Hangzhou Three Tyrants watched and bided their time for the decisive moment.
* * *
Im Gang, frozen in the posture of throwing a punch, let out a hollow laugh.
‘And now they’ve smashed the front gate of my own home.’
The uninvited visitor who had shattered the gate was a heterodox sect martial artist.
How could he tell?
Live in Hangzhou for a few years and you can spot them at a glance—ah, that one’s definitely a sect bastard, you just know.
‘What are the Hangzhou Three Tyrants doing? This is dereliction of duty.’
Im Gang sighed inwardly.
He had saved diligently to buy this house.
He’d barely had time to settle in before the front gate was in ruins?
Beyond exasperation—it was enough to make him laugh bitterly.
He could tolerate gang brawls, but for sect warriors to penetrate residential areas and brandish blades was a clear failure of control.
‘Or maybe it’s not failure—maybe it’s intentional.’
The thought struck him. If they were going to clean house anyway, better to do it all at once. Efficiency. They were probably waiting for things to escalate further.
That would be the decisive moment.
‘Well, regardless.’
He had to deal with the immediate problem first.
“Ngh…….”
The sect warrior staggered to his feet, shaking his head and trying to regain his senses.
Im Gang approached him.
‘Just subdue him for now.’
He wanted to run his blade through the man’s throat, but he held back. Killing him could turn into a headache.
Right now, his own safety came first. One dead sect martial artist wouldn’t cause a catastrophe, but there was the corpse to dispose of, blood to wipe up, the alley entrance to clean…….
Troublesome work piled on troublesome work.
Tap.
Im Gang struck the man’s nape lightly.
“Hack—!”
The man gasped, collapsing face-down. Unfortunately, he didn’t lose consciousness. The success rate for such strikes was never high anyway. Real life wasn’t like television dramas.
Thud.
“Damn. I should’ve learned pressure points.”
He’d meant to ask Baek Do Gwang to teach him if he knew how, but he’d been so startled to hear the man was leaving Hangzhou for a while that he’d forgotten to ask.
Im Gang shoved the beaten martial artist to one side and turned his head.
Three sect warriors were walking through the shattered gate—dressed completely differently from the first intruder. They weren’t wearing masks, but from hair to toes, everything was black. Definitely sect martial artists.
When their eyes met his, they grinned wickedly.
“Their eyes are properly wild now.”
Im Gang clicked his tongue and muttered. Vagrant warriors who had never trained formally in the blade often did this when they tasted real combat for the first time.
The high of first blood, the thrill overwhelming reason.
Also the most dangerous state.
“Hey.”
The middle warrior jerked his head at Im Gang.
“Hey?”
Exasperated at the uninvited guest’s casual tone, he repeated the question back.
“Should we call you the ‘little hero’ instead?”
“What about ‘great hero’?”
“Not a minor hero, not a major hero—maybe I’m the middle kind.”
“Ahahaha!”
A joke with no bite whatsoever.
He’d been aiming merely to subdue them without leaving much damage, but……
‘They’re making my hands itch.’
As if reading his thoughts, the three of them flared their nostrils and slowly widened their distance.
What they called a Combined Formation.
Though calling it that was almost embarrassing—they’d merely assumed the positions.
Im Gang flexed his fingers and asked one final time.
“Which outfit are you with?”
“What’s the point of knowing where we belong? So we can bow and scrape and beg forgiveness? But that won’t happen. We’ve no intention of telling. Tee-hee.”
“You came uninvited, but you’re still a guest. It’s fair to ask.”
“If we meant to answer, would we have come dressed like this?”
This was exactly why rootless Heterodox Sect thugs were worthless.
Im Gang grumbled to himself and made his decision.
The way they’d been creeping closer with that gap between them had been grating on his nerves from the start.
He raised a finger and flicked it.
The Breaking Wall Finger Technique activated together with the long-range attack enhancement and guidance protocol.
A gust of finger wind shot out.
It sheared clean through the ear of the man in the center. Even then, he hadn’t yet realized his ear was gone.
“Hey.”
“What? Should I—”
“Your ear all right?”
“……Huh?”
The burning sensation caught up with him belatedly, and the thug’s hand went to that spot.
Where an ear should have been, there was nothing.
“……?”
Drip.
Blood suddenly gushed from the raw edge where the ear had been severed.
The moment that blood hit the ground, a scream erupted.
“My ear! My eaaaar!”
“What? Why all of a sud—ack!”
The instant their eyes turned away, he closed in using the Swift Shadow Movement.
He drove his palm upward into one thug’s jaw. Crack! The sensation of fracturing bone transmitted crystal-clear through his arm. A faint dissatisfaction crept in.
‘Slipping a needle-thin blade through would be cleaner.’
Not killing them cost him extra effort.
[Novice Peaceful Void Step (One-Star Grade) → Novice Peaceful Void Step (Two-Star Grade)]
He advanced naturally forward, and as he drew his striking hand back, he drove his other elbow into the man’s ribs. Thud! Several ribs gave way, and the thug crumpled.
He used the falling body as a screen and shifted sideways. One-Ear was still shrieking; another lay sprawled on the ground.
The third? He was turning his head, searching for the vanished Im Gang.
Im Gang lowered his stance.
Before pressing himself flat against the earth like a turtle hugging the soil, he tensed through his toes and kicked off hard, skimming the ground as he shot forward.
“……Hah!”
The man sensed the danger as Im Gang drew near.
Boom!
A palm strike slammed into his abdomen, driving him hard into the Stone Wall.
And then.
Crash.
The Stone Wall came down.
Im Gang looked at his own palm, then at the rubble of the Stone Wall, then at One-Ear—who’d forgotten even how to scream.
“The Front Gate wasn’t enough, so now you want me to demolish the Stone Wall?”
“…Y-you knocked down the Stone Wall…!”
Smack!
“W-we’ll pay compensation!”
Indeed, there was nothing like education delivered through force when dealing with rootless Heterodox Sect scum.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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