The Strongest in Our Neighborhood - Chapter 1

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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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The Strongest in Our Neighborhood (1)
Jang Ga-in came to his senses to find himself naked, sprawled among dense undergrowth, and he was considerably alarmed.
Shaking his throbbing head, he searched for his last memory before losing consciousness.
“I remember grabbing the tail of that ascending Imuggi, the one meant to obtain the Spiritual Pearl… but…”
It had been five years since his defeat at the hands of Ma Do-un, the deputy leader of the Demonic Cult and the leading candidate to become the next cult master.
That loss had demolished his reputation as a promising figure of the coming generation in one stroke, and left him cast out from his own clan.
For three years he had wandered in search of spiritual creatures, desperate to gain the power for revenge.
Finally, on Daecheon Mountain, he discovered a lone Imuggi preparing for Heavenly Ascension, and after two years of waiting, he witnessed the moment of ascension arrive.
That day, the powerful winds descending from the edge of heaven drew up every drop of water from the great lake at Daecheon Mountain, forming a colossal water spout.
As the Imuggi rose into it, the creature began to shed its old skin, and new scales sprouted across its body—front legs and hind legs emerged, and a sacred horn began to grow.
The eyes that had always worn a base expression filled with Divine Qi, and the tongue that had flicked crudely was now drawn inward with elegant precision, beautiful beyond measure.
This was it!
You shall become the foundation of my Inner Power!
Though the creature had not yet obtained the Spiritual Pearl, the Inner Core of an Imuggi who had slumbered for a thousand years before ascending would surely double—at least—his own Inner Power, which remained at Second Rank.
Jang Ga-in pushed off the lake’s surface and leaped into the maelstrom as the water and wind spiraled upward toward the heavens.
His body hidden within the vortex of water and wind as the creature ascended, but he believed in himself—mastered in the Wind Cloud Divine Art, he could break through it.
And so he seized the dragon’s tail.
“Surrender your Inner Core to me!”
Even amid the rough spray of water and wind, Jang Ga-in drew his beloved blade, Hei Ming.
No matter how vast and powerful a dragon might be, once its tail was severed by his Hei Ming, it would have no choice but to plummet to earth.
A dragon fallen to the ground was no different from a giant serpent!
Imbued with Inner Power, Hei Ming trembled with a terrible Sword Cry, releasing Sword Energy nine feet in length.
“Do not resent dying for my sake!”
The dragon, visibly panicked, turned to look back and locked eyes with Jang Ga-in.
He felt some regret, but the blade was already drawn—
If the creature offered up the Spiritual Pearl, he might grant it mercy, but a dragon so newly transformed would possess no such treasure, so Jang Ga-in poured all his Inner Power into his supreme secret art, the Cang Tian Blood Extreme.
In that instant—
Jang Ga-in felt his strength drain from his left hand, which had gripped the tail with an iron grip he thought would never loosen.
In a blink, the dragon slipped from his grasp and shot skyward, evading the secret art and stirring winds incomparably fiercer than before.
“How… how could this be?”
The water spout, now many times more violent, wrapped around Jang Ga-in’s entire body.
In that moment, despair seized his center of balance, and he was swept up in the vortex, spinning endlessly as he was lifted toward the heavens, until consciousness abandoned him.
“The last thing I saw seemed to be the endless expanse of the Cloud Sea… Did I perhaps ascend alongside the dragon?”
As he drew in a breath, the concentration of Qi diffused through the air was noticeably denser than usual.
“Then… is this the Immortal Realm?”
Jang Ga-in scratched his head and pushed himself up.
“I always thought the Immortal Realm was a place where cranes wandered, peach blossoms bloomed in abundance, and immortals and celestial maidens danced, but it’s nothing like that at all.”
At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a deep forest somewhere in Joong-won.
The undergrowth was somewhat thicker, and the trees were two or three times larger and taller than those he’d seen on Daecheon Mountain—that was perhaps the only notable difference.
The absence of his beloved sword, Hei Ming, which he had never once set down in his life, and the fact that he stood naked, were the chief changes from before.
Whether this was the Immortal Realm or not, he could not wander about naked, so Jang Ga-in wove together some bark that looked soft and several thick leaves, then covered his essential parts.
“Perhaps it’s the effect of being caught in that water spout? My body is in terrible condition. Internal injuries like these will need at least a week of recovery.”
After a light meal, he was looking around with the intention of finding a cave to perform Qi Cultivation Meditation, when he noticed a tree in the distance laden with fist-sized fruits hanging thick upon its branches.
“Similar to a pear, and they look appetizing. Perhaps these fruits from the Immortal Realm will help heal my injuries.”
As he approached the tree and examined the fruit, it indeed resembled a pear, though its surface was somewhat bumpy.
Uncertain what this place held, he cautiously touched his tongue to one.
It tasted sweet and tangy.
“There doesn’t seem to be any poison.”
Reassured, he bit off a large piece, and though he’d never tasted anything like it before, it was quite delicious.
“Such flavorful fruit does exist. Though usually, when something tastes this sweet, insects swarm all over it—they secrete bitterness to drive them away… Is it because this is the Immortal Realm? There are no insects… Ugh! Blech! Ptui! Ptui!”
Suddenly his mouth burned as if scalded by flame, and as that burning traveled down his throat and reached his stomach, his entire belly began to blaze.
Jang Ga-in quickly spat out what remained in his mouth.
“Hrk! Uuuhrk…”
But the pulp already swallowed began to burn like fire itself.
‘Damn it… my throat and chest feel like they’re burning away!’
He retched so violently his stomach contracted, bringing up bile, yet the heat only intensified.
Jang Ga-in knew that in such circumstances, he needed to drink large quantities of water and flush out his stomach.
He moved urgently to find water.
Hearing no sound of running water, he climbed a tree to search for a valley or stream.
‘Ugh! What… what kind of Immortal Realm is nothing but grass and trees? No sound of water anywhere…’
Jang Ga-in suppressed the toxic qi with his Inner Power and descended from the tree, racing toward the lower ground ahead.
‘Heat that Inner Power cannot contain!’
Pitter-patter…….
After running down the mountain for roughly a mile, the sound of flowing water finally reached his ears.
Jang Ga-in rushed toward the water and drank until his stomach was distended, then clenched his abdomen and began to retch.
Heave, heave…….
After retching several times, the heat gradually began to subside.
“Huff, huff…… I thought I was done for!”
Once the heat had receded somewhat, Jang Ga-in emerged from the stream and performed Qi Cultivation Meditation, turning his awareness inward.
‘Damn it! A week’s worth of injury has stretched into two weeks.’
After assessing his condition, Jang Ga-in managed a bitter smile, released his seated position, and stood.
Growl, growl, growl…….
The forced vomiting had left him ravenously hungry.
He rummaged between the stones in the stream, searching for small fish or crayfish. Yet for some reason, nothing of the sort appeared.
Squelch.
As he wandered about in search of food, a fragrant scent drifted from somewhere.
Following the scent, he found a flower with petals the size of a palm—something resembling a massive sunflower.
‘Hooh! A flower that large would surely have plenty of nectar. And since it resembles a sunflower, I might even eat the seeds.’
Jang Ga-in approached the flower and brought his nose close.
Snap-snap-snap…….
In an instant, the petals contracted and engulfed his face, while the stem and leaves wound around his body like tentacles, tightening their grip.
“What—what is this? What kind of flower…… Ugh! Ugh!”
Jang Ga-in frantically peeled away the petals covering his face and tried to snap the stem and leaves. But they were as tough as grapevine, stubbornly refusing to break.
‘A—a carnivorous flower? Why would there be a carnivorous flower in the Immortal Realm?’
A Poison Fruit, and now a carnivorous flower!
This was clearly not the Immortal Realm he had imagined.
Gritting through the dull ache in his lower abdomen, Jang Ga-in summoned his Inner Power and severed the stems in one sharp motion, then staggered backward.
After backing away roughly a dozen paces and brushing away the plant debris clinging to his body, he could finally allow himself a shaky breath of relief.
The plant lay still, as if nothing had happened, its torn sections remaining exactly as they were.
“Damn it! This is definitely not the Immortal Realm! It couldn’t possibly be like this!”
Based on his experience so far, this place was no simple Immortal Realm.
Moreover, with his body ravaged by Internal Injury, he could not risk wandering unarmed.
Jang Ga-in picked up a stone that looked reasonably sharp, honed it further, then gathered a straight branch and fashioned a wooden spear.
A leaf-woven garment and a wooden spear.
It felt almost like he had become a primitive from ancient times, but sorrow was a luxury he could not afford. Instead, Jang Ga-in resolved to prioritize healing his Internal Injury and began Qi Circulation Cultivation.
* * *
Thud, thud, thud…….
Deep in his Qi Circulation Cultivation, Jang Ga-in felt the ground trembling and quickly concluded his practice.
“What—what’s this? Even the elephant I saw in the Southern Barbarian Lands didn’t produce vibrations like this.”
His body was not yet whole, and he lacked the strength to extend his Qi Sense far enough to survey his surroundings.
‘Whether it’s a divine beast or a demonic creature, I don’t know. I’d better hide.’
He tore away nearby branches and leaves to camouflage himself, then crouched in the undergrowth behind a tree. The thundering vibrations grew more intense, and shortly after, a beast roughly twenty feet tall came into view.
‘What—what is that? Similar to the gorillas I saw in the Southern Barbarian Lands…… except without fur. But how can it be so massive? And what’s that stone ax?’
It resembled a giant gorilla, though calling it one would be imprecise—the absence of fur and the presence of a roughly crafted stone ax made that impossible.
At minimum, it possessed enough intelligence to craft an ax. And judging by the leather garment it wore, its craftsmanship exceeded his own current circumstances.
The giant gorilla even wore a leather pouch at its waist. It strode toward the stream and began filling the pouch with water.
Sniff, sniff…….
As it filled the pouch, the beast suddenly stiffened its nose and began sniffing the air like a dog, turning its head to survey the area.
‘What’s it doing? What scent is it picking up?’
The giant gorilla, its nostrils flaring, followed the scent toward the undergrowth where Jang Ga-in lay hidden.
‘What? Don’t tell me it caught my scent?’
As the twenty-foot colossus drew near, a sense of danger surged through him, his nerves pulling taut.
The problem was clear: if the creature hunted by scent rather than sight, discovery was only a matter of time.
Moving silently, he began retreating backward when the gorilla’s eyes suddenly flashed and it raised its stone ax, crashing it down on the tree behind which Jang Ga-in concealed himself.
Crash! Crack-crack-crack…….
‘Damn! I’ve been spotted.’
The tree split with a sharp crack, and leaves rained down like a shower.
Jang Ga-in flung the wooden spear he had crafted at the gorilla’s eyes and kicked off the ground, fleeing.
Roooarrr…….
The spear flew just wide of its mark, managing only to tear the gorilla’s forehead, but that was enough to enrage the creature, which now pursued Jang Ga-in at terrifying speed.
Ugh.
Jang Ga-in gritted his teeth as he fled from the gorilla.
The internal injury he’d barely managed to suppress through Qi Circulation Cultivation was reopening.
‘If I’d just finished healing this Internal Injury, I wouldn’t be running from some worthless beast like this!’
He was the one who had tried to capture a dragon.
Yet here he was, being chased by a mere oversized gorilla—it was pathetic, infuriating, and grating all at once.
Jang Ga-in deployed the Divine Movement Technique, weaving between trees as he ran, making it harder for the gorilla to pursue.
* * *
Kai-rin, Sai-ran, and El-dom.
The three siblings watched with complicated expressions as the naked human fled from the Ogre.
They had entered the Ogre’s territory to kill it and avenge their parents’ deaths.
They had returned to their homeland and trained in Spirit Magic and martial arts to avenge their parents, who had died protecting them, and they had found weapons capable of killing the Ogre.
For four days they had been following it in secret, waiting for the Ogre to fall asleep so they could ambush it.
Now the Ogre was preoccupied with chasing a man—the reason they hadn’t found an opening to attack until now was that the creature was more sensitive and perceptive than expected, snapping awake at the slightest disturbance.
But with its attention diverted like this, an ambush would be far easier.
“Sister, is that Ogre really the one who killed our parents?”
El-dom, the youngest, asked.
“Yes. The scar on its left shoulder—that’s the wound Mother gave it. The scars on its left cheek and ear, too.”
“Right, I remember now. The slash mark on its back is the one Father made.”
As the youngest fell silent, recalling what had happened next, Sai-ran quickly changed the subject.
“Anyway, that man is lucky. With any luck, he might live thanks to us.”

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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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