The World’s Greatest Junior Martial Brother - Chapter 13

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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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Cheonha Jeil Sajae (13)
What’s this?
As I said before, Jiuding Mountain is so quiet and beautiful that legends of immortals dwelling there are still told among the people.
Rare herbs and flowers bloomed everywhere, the water ran clear and transparent, and endless seas of clouds rolled across the peaks. Then, a few days ago, a bolt from the blue struck this mountain that held all of that beauty.
Hwireuureung―.
It was a late hour, when the waxing moon cut coldly across the sky.
The martial guards stationed at the ruined Guihwa Ridge of Jiuding Mountain were growing restless, and they yawned loudly, one after another.
“Haaaah. Time’s crawling today.”
“Tell me about it. The next shift won’t be here for ages.”
It had been three days since the bolt from the blue struck Guihwa Ridge. Thankfully, there were no herb gatherers or slash-and-burn farmers nearby. Had anyone been loitering in the area, they would have met a terrible fate.
“I wonder who did this?”
“Shh! Watch what you say!”
When the lanky guard grumbled, the chubby swordsman pressed a finger to his lips and fussed at him.
“The locals think it was heaven’s punishment! So mind your mouth!”
“I always mind my mouth. But anyone can see this was explosives going off—mmph! Mmmph!”
In the end, the chubby one clamped a hand over the lanky guard’s mouth.
“Why do you think we’re guarding this place? It’s so no rumors spread that someone used gunpowder privately in the villages, isn’t it?”
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
“Honestly, your big mouth is the problem!”
Despite the official’s scolding, the lanky one kept struggling hard to say something.
It was the truth.
What had struck the Guihwa Ridge of Jiuding Mountain was not heaven’s punishment or a bolt from the blue, as the world believed. The one who had laid waste to Guihwa Ridge was, without question, explosives.
But gunpowder, together with salt, was among the goods the state controlled most strictly. If it had been used privately, the government would immediately suspect the martial world.
“So silencing them is the best course…”
Just as the muttering chubby one turned around, a firecracker tore through the darkness and shot up into the sky.
Pyeong―!
A firecracker that bursts into shattered brilliance at a set height, painting beautiful flames across the air.
“Is there some festival going on somewhere?”
At festivals large and small, firecrackers are less a sideline than a necessity. Perhaps that’s why the chubby guard thought nothing of it.
Pyeopyeongpyeong―!
Starting with the first, countless firecrackers rose and filled the night sky, and the lanky guard and the chubby one lifted their heads to gaze at the dazzling flames.
So this must be what a hundred flowers blooming at once looks like.
As countless flames of every color and faint wisps of smoke settled over Guihwa Ridge, the lanky one, who had been staring blankly at the sight, suddenly clutched his throat and spat blood.
“Kkrhuk!”
Following him, the chubby guard also trembled violently, as if he could no longer breathe.
Puk―!
Countless guards collapsed, blood spurting from their seven orifices.
Ssaaaa―.
In an instant, the swordsmen spat blood and died, and all that remained of Guihwa Ridge was a massive crater left by heaven’s “punishment” and a sea of blood surging across the mountainside, bleak and desolate.
Ttuk-ttuk―.
Bright crimson drops of blood dripped one by one into the dark pool.
Bubble-bubble.
The stream of blood that had been falling in scattered drops suddenly began to boil, and dozens of blood-red bubbles rose from its surface.
Pak-pak-pak!
Over a hundred warriors were born from more than eighty blood bubbles.
The blood-clad figures emerged from the crimson foam. They stood barely five feet tall, and their eyes burned with bright red ghostfire, making them look like nothing but small demons.
One of the little demons, rolling its sly eyes as it looked around, half-buried in the pool of blood beside a corpse, cackled.
“They said the Murim Alliance’s southwest branch was crawling with fighters as swift as dragons and as fierce as tigers, and it was all nonsense!”
On the collar of the little demon who crowed with delight, the number three was stitched in red.
“Kekekeke! No matter how skilled a fighter, there’s no escaping Jeolmyeong Nokmusan!”
The little demon, clutching his belly in triumph, bore the number seven plainly on his collar.
The Jeolmyeong Nokmusan they mentioned is a deadly poison that proudly holds one of the seats among the Ten Great Poisons of the World.
It is the poison of poisons, said to kill a fully grown ox instantly with the smallest trace. Once one is poisoned, even Hua Tuo could not save them if he were brought back to life—the most venomous toxin under heaven.
“They packed this kind of extreme poison into firecrackers and sent them up. Whether it’s the Murim Alliance or anyone else, they were bound to die!”
The seventh little demon kept cackling without pause.
As he surveyed the corpses sprawled across the ground, a shocking title burst from his mouth.
“Still, they died by the hands of our Gwiju Eighty-Four Honored Ones, so they’ve no reason to feel wronged.”
They called themselves the Gwiju Eighty-Four Honored Ones, but in truth they were the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains, the bane of the martial world of the southwest.
Under the pretense of taking contract work, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains committed every kind of atrocity for a price—murder, plunder, arson, and more.
Naturally, the Righteous Path, led by the Murim Alliance, set out to subdue them, but the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains deftly evaded the pursuit squads and kept on murdering and plundering.
“Of course! Of course! If you died at the hands of the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains, you’ll be treated like royalty in Myeongbu!”
The voice was that of a child, high and mischievous, and so was the body.
Yet why did their speech and gestures feel so worldly-wise?
The Third and Seventh Villains cackled at their own joke, and the rest of the thugs doubled over laughing too.
“That’s enough play. Get back to work.”
A booming voice rang out from somewhere, but the two thugs, still giddy, brushed it off with a shrug.
“Alright, alright.”
“Don’t rush us.”
Whoosh!
A huge hand shot out from nowhere and clamped onto the heads of the Third and Seventh Villains.
“W-what’s the big idea all of a sudden…!”
“P-please!”
Crack—.
The two thugs’ heads shattered like watermelons.
Blood and brains sprayed in every direction, and through the spray, another villain emerged slowly, taking the full brunt of it.
A giant of a villain, with a swastika stitched onto his collar, licked the blood that had soaked into his palm.
“Insolent brats.”
The massive demon bared his crooked, protruding buck teeth.
“I’ve been treating you well these past few days, and now you’ve gone and made yourselves masters over me.”
Gwiju Daehyung. Head of the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains.
Like the others, Gwiju Daehyung had a squat, shabby frame barely three heads tall, but his bulk was the size of a house, which made him less comical than oddly terrifying.
“Well? Shall I make you lot look like those two?”
Shiver!
Flicking his red tongue, Gwiju Daehyung swept his gaze over the crowd, and the little demons shook their heads frantically.
“Ojon, Gujon. You two, head southeast and search!”
Swish—.
“Yukjon and Iijon, check the northwest!”
At his orders, the thugs scattered across the blast site, and Gwiju Daehyung led the rest toward the great crater at the center.
It had once been the site of a thatched hut, but having taken the full force of the blast, it had now caved into a gaping hollow.
Blackened timber and shattered household goods lay tangled together, making it hard to tell what had been what, but the thugs, terrified of Gwiju Daehyung, scrambled to pull the items apart.
“Grab only what we’re after and clear out fast. Before the Murim Alliance’s gnats come swarming.”
Realizing how undignified that sounded, Gwiju Daehyung tacked on an afterthought.
“Ah, well, it’s not that I’m afraid of the Murim Alliance. It’s just that getting tangled up with them means nothing but trouble.”
Just then, someone asked a question.
“So what exactly are we looking for?”
“Have you been listening at all?”
Gwiju Daehyung bellowed.
“This was Jin Muok’s school. The monster who appeared out of nowhere and nearly devoured the Jianghu whole used to live here, you idiots.”
Gwiju Daehyung, eyes bulging, bent forward.
“Surely, in the place where such a monster lived, there’s bound to be something worth finding?”
Picking up a half-burnt desk leg, Gwiju Daehyung broke into a sly smile.
“Not that I know for sure, but those fools seem to be hoping for the Gaebyeok Sinbo or the Musang Jibo. If I find a treasure like that, I’ll keep it for myself. Why would I hand it over to them?”
“Then who do you suppose blew this place up?”
“How should I know? We’re just…”
The questioner cut clean through Gwiju Daehyung’s mumbling, as casually as if it were nothing.
His voice grew softer and softer.
“Who attacked Baekri Unhak?”
“…!”
Sensing something was wrong, Gwiju Daehyung whipped his body around and caught the strange atmosphere.
“Who the hell are you?”
He roared, but the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains, their faces twisted with shock and dread, could do nothing but stare at the ground.
“A-a corpse!”
“The corpse is talking!”
As Gwiju Daehyung frowned in bewilderment, one of the corpses at his feet shot upright.
“I asked whose doing this was!”
“You crazy bastard!”
The corpse, struck in the face by a fist as big as a cauldron lid, had its neck snap clean off and sail through the air.
It did fly, though.
“Blood, there’s blood!”
“But there’s no blood coming out!”
His head had been wrenched clean off, yet not a single drop of blood spilled from the corpse.
It should have gushed like a fountain, but there was nothing.
Taking advantage of the opening, the countless bodies sprawled at the feet of the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains all rose at once.
“Who did this?”
“Aaaaargh!”
The Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains swung their blades indiscriminately at the corpses that screamed at them.
They had murdered and plundered as naturally as breathing, so heaps of corpses were nothing new to them. But a dead body that got back up and screamed? That was a first.
“Aaaaaaargh!”
“Die! Just die already!”
They weren’t slashing so much as chopping firewood, hacking at the bodies with their blades. Madness now burned in their eyes, far beyond mere fear.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
This time, blood sprayed!
The corpse Gwiju Daehyung had faced hadn’t shed a single drop, yet the bodies that blocked the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains sprayed blood like waterfalls.
“Haah! Haah!”
Drenched in the corpses’ blood, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains stopped their blades and gasped for breath.
“D-damn bastards.”
“Just corpses, and yet.”
Ashamed at having been frightened by corpses, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains raised their voices on purpose.
But then.
They had definitely killed them.
Struck by the Jeolmyeong Nokmusan, there was no way they could have survived.
Yet the corpses had risen again and opened their mouths just as they had in life. How could that possibly make sense?
As the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains exchanged looks of suspicion, they suddenly clutched at their throats.
Just like the Murim Alliance warriors who had been poisoned by the Jeolmyeong Nokmusan.
“Kkhhaaak!”
“Keh—!”
Spewing blood from their seven orifices, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains collapsed backward.
As his subordinates began to fall, Gwiju Daehyung glanced around in a panic.
“Get away from the corpses now!”
At the Gwiju Grand Villain’s command, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains who had not yet been splattered with blood widened their eyes.
“I said get away from that damned thing right now!”
Whoosh!
The startled Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains took a step back, and the Gwiju Grand Villain kicked at a corpse that was still standing, even with its head torn off.
Thud!
The corpse sprawled out, pitiful and limp. No, wait…
“A puppet?”
So the sixty-odd warriors who had been guarding this place were actually puppets?
But they had spoken, hadn’t they? They had moved while conversing with one another!
“Tch!”
The Gwiju Grand Villain noticed faint cord marks on the necks of the slain Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains.
“Thread…”
That was right. They had been strangled by threads so fine that they were nearly impossible to detect.
“Impossible!”
Following the Gwiju Grand Villain’s lead, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains felt around the bodies, and found a great many hair-thin threads.
“Who in the world is behind this!”
From the very beginning, there had been no Murim Alliance warriors. There had only been puppets wearing the skins of warriors.
Their movements had been so precise that the number of controllers must match the number of puppets. The proof was that each puppet had spoken in a different voice.
Then, as he thought of someone, the Gwiju Grand Villain swallowed hard.
“N-no way?”
He had heard there was a master who could control dozens of puppets at once. And that he could project the voices of dozens of people simultaneously with multi-voice ventriloquism.
A man said to possess puppetry and ventriloquism that bordered on the divine.
That man was none other than…
“The Death-Wire Spider?”
Kkhk-kkhk!
“Caught me?”
A mischievous child’s voice rang out from every direction, but the figure who emerged from the darkness was a man in his early twenties.
His entire body was wrapped in black robes that seemed to swallow every ray of light, and his skin was so icy white in contrast that the phrase “a face of jade and ice” fit him perfectly. He was a strikingly beautiful young man.
“But you’re too late.”
The voice had clearly come from somewhere, yet the young man’s lips did not move. Only the girl-shaped puppet held in his arms kept chattering without pause.
Faced with this grotesque sight, the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains who still lived edged slowly backward.
“Of all people, it had to be the Death-Wire Spider!”
I’d rather run into the Grim Reaper himself!
If you lot were a plague on the Southwest Martial World, with your sneaky and filthy schemes, then Byeok Eunsa, the Hell Spider, was as good as the Grim Reaper to the black and demonic paths of this land.
His divine skill, which pulled in his foes with hundreds and thousands of Formless Threads and then tore them apart in an instant, inspired a terror in the Heterodox Sects that went far beyond awe.
Byeok Eunsa studied the hesitating Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains in silence, then stepped forward.
“If you lot hadn’t laid a finger on Baekri Unhak, who else would have attacked him?”
His voice was bright and cheerful, but his eyes were as dry as the desert.
“Don’t know?”
Byeok Eunsa watched the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains with a blank face, then raised a hand.
“Even if you don’t know, considering the sins you’ve committed all this time…”
The puppet’s eyes flashed with light.
“Die.”
Chhharaaaaak—.
The formless threads melted into the darkness, sliced through the air, and bound the Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains in front of him before bursting them apart.
“Gyaaaaaaaah!”
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Byeok Eunsa broke out of the whirlwind of blood that raged all around and pressed forward, when something came flying toward him.
Thud—!
It exploded in midair, scattering green blood and flesh in every direction.
Hsssss—.
Corrosive flesh and blood that melted anything it touched rained across the sky, and for the first time, Byeok Eunsa stepped back.
Human Poison Bomb, the signature art of the Gwiju Daehyung.
A horrifying martial art that turns a target into a poison bomb in an instant and hurls it at the enemy.
“Drop dead, you ice spider!”
With a howl of triumph, the Gwiju Daehyung seized the heads of two Gwiju Eighty-Four Villains in his hands.
Juwaaaak—.
He drove the poison beaded on his fingernails into their skulls, then hurled them one after another at Byeok Eunsa.
Pyeong! Pyeong! Pyeong!
Every one he caught became a poisoned missile, and the Gwiju Daehyung kept throwing his own subordinates at Byeok Eunsa until the entire Guihwa Ridge was drowned in deadly poison. Only then did he finally stop.
“Heh! Heh! How about that, you ice spider!”
With an attack like this, not even the strongest master under heaven could avoid it.
Hwireureung—.
When the thick green poison fog finally lifted, the Gwiju Daehyung, shoulders heaving, stared with his mouth hanging open as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“W-what the hell?!”
Byeok Eunsa had woven an intricate curtain of hundreds and thousands of threads to shield himself.
Like a cocoon.
“Done already?”
The puppet’s bright voice drifted out from within the cocoon.
“If that’s all you’ve got, I’m disappointed.”
“Aaaaaargh!”
Something bone-chillingly cold lurked behind that teasing tone, and the Gwiju Daehyung caught a glimpse of it and bolted for dear life.
“Monster! You freakish spider brat!”
Cursing wildly as he ran, the Gwiju Daehyung spotted something poking its head out of the ground and lashed out with his hand.
“You’ll be the next victim of my Human Poison Bomb!”
The Gwiju Daehyung thrust out his hand, but the figure that had emerged from the earth dodged slightly and drove its fist straight forward.
Bbeo—k!
Crash-bang-thud—.
Jin Muok looked down at the Gwiju Daehyung, who had rolled across the ground a full ten times before landing in a sorry heap, and scowled with an air of utter bewilderment.
“What is this, then?”

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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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