Chapter 49

“…and as you take one step back… the second half of the form ends. Have you… remembered… our Bosam Gate’s sword technique well?”

“Yes…”

The hairy man looked around. But with no light, there was nothing to see.

“I’m so starved that I might have gone blind… I can’t see anything. I can’t hear the sounds of people either…”

The hairy man asked.

“Am I… the last one?”

“Yes.”

“Hehe. I thought there were… a few old men left.”

“They’ve all gone ahead.”

“Hehehe, such impatient old men.”

The hairy man smiled faintly. But it soon turned into a bitter smile.

The hairy man also knew that death was right in front of him.

But he couldn’t leave yet.

Before departing, he had one last thing to do for Jin Ja-gang.

“I have something to say.”

“Please speak.”

“Your… leg… let me examine it.”

“Yes.”

The hairy man felt Jin Ja-gang’s left shin.

“The bone has healed crookedly. Perhaps… I can make it… a little better.”

“Really?”

“I think I can try… manual reduction.”

Manual reduction is the process of realigning broken or dislocated bones.

Jin Ja-gang had a severe limp because his left shinbone, broken by Mang-ryo, had healed incorrectly. In this state, he couldn’t properly learn martial arts. So the hairy man thought of breaking Jin Ja-gang’s shin again to realign it.

Jin Ja-gang didn’t hesitate long.

“I’ll do it.”

“It’s been too long… it might not… completely return to normal.”

“That’s fine.”

“After I do the manual reduction, I won’t be able to… take care of you anymore…”

Jin Ja-gang understood the meaning of those words. It meant the hairy man had almost no time left.

Jin Ja-gang did as the hairy man instructed, removing his clothes, rolling them up, and putting them in his mouth.

“Well then…”

The hairy man felt Jin Ja-gang’s leg to confirm its position, then picked up a pickaxe handle.

The hairy man had lost his internal energy through torture, and his physical abilities had deteriorated to rock bottom due to prolonged starvation. But he still had one part of his innate true energy left.

Though not as powerful as internal energy, he could still muster enough strength for one strike.

The hairy man used all his strength to precisely strike the misaligned part of Jin Ja-gang’s shin.

Crack!

Jin Ja-gang’s eyes widened.

“Ugh!”

Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, and his body trembled. But Jin Ja-gang only let out a low groan.

Enduring pain was already familiar to Jin Ja-gang.

The hairy man roughly realigned Jin Ja-gang’s broken shinbone. The broken bone and bone fragments piercing the flesh caused even more pain than when it was broken.

It was pain that would have made an ordinary child faint.

But Jin Ja-gang endured it to the end.

“Impressive…”

The hairy man immediately lay flat on his back and breathed heavily.

Jin Ja-gang, with trembling hands, placed the pickaxe handle as a splint on his leg and tied it with his clothes.

“Huff, huff.”

After Jin Ja-gang exhaled the breath he had been holding, he heard the hairy man’s voice, now very faint.

“Please…”

Jin Ja-gang crawled to the hairy man and drew out poisonous energy. The poisonous energy Jin Ja-gang possessed was now almost depleted.

“I’m… sorry. For entrusting… too much to a child like you…”

After consuming the poison, the hairy man convulsed briefly before going limp.

Now Jin Ja-gang was completely alone.

***
Read only at nineheavens.org

Translated by Nine Heavens!

https://discord.gg/XC9DTsTQ9Z

***

There was only darkness.

Whether his eyes were open or closed, there was only darkness.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

Complete silence with no sound.

The only breathing sound was Jin Ja-gang’s.

Jin Ja-gang was leaning against the mine shaft wall with his splinted leg.

Growl.

He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, but he was getting hungry.

Jin Ja-gang finally moved. He couldn’t walk with the splint. Jin Ja-gang slowly crawled forward, feeling his way along the floor.

He touched someone’s cold, dried hand. Jin Ja-gang didn’t stop. He continued crawling, climbing over bodies and pushing aside blocking arms and legs.

He searched through the mine shaft, following his memory from before the torches went out completely. He carefully descended a steep slope.

After descending for some time, he found delicate plants about two finger joints in length growing despite the absence of sunlight. Perhaps seeds had been blown in by the wind. Jin Ja-gang felt the plants brush against his hand like cotton.

Jin Ja-gang carefully plucked just the upper parts of the plants and put them in his mouth to chew.

He didn’t know how long he would have to stay here, so he left the roots to allow the plants to regrow.

He also ate moss. There was plenty of moss, so he could eat it without worry.

Jin Ja-gang smelled the moss and memorized its scent. In a situation where he couldn’t see, finding moss by smell would be helpful.

He also licked the moisture on the walls to quench his thirst.

Soon his stomach began to ache slightly.

This mine shaft was originally a place where cinnabar was mainly excavated. Cinnabar is one of the five minerals, a mixture of mercury and sulfur.

The five minerals are materials used to concoct elixirs of immortality, but they are inherently highly toxic, to the extent that they are separately called the five poisons.

Naturally, the moss growing here and the moisture collecting on the walls were infused with the toxicity of cinnabar.

“Ugh!”

Jin Ja-gang clutched his stomach and curled up.

After a while, the pain subsided somewhat.

Jin Ja-gang, as if nothing had happened, crawled back to his original spot near the collapsed entrance. It took a long time to move back and forth since he couldn’t see at all and his leg was injured.

There, he found the blocked entrance and felt it.

Crumble, crumble.

It was full of crushed stone powder and soil. Just touching it caused soil to fall.

At this rate, even if he dug through, it would collapse again, and Jin Ja-gang would be buried.

Moreover, with Jin Ja-gang’s strength, he couldn’t advance by placing boards and erecting supports.

But Jin Ja-gang didn’t give up.

‘Let’s dig through the hard rock part instead.’

He boldly abandoned the spot where the survivors had been digging until then.

Instead, he felt around to find a section with hard bedrock on the side.

He found a chisel and hammer and tried to chip away at the bedrock bit by bit.

Clang, clang.

It wasn’t as easy as he thought. His hands vibrated, making his palms feel like they were being torn apart.

‘I’ll do it. I’ll make it.’

Jin Ja-gang gritted his teeth.

He recalled the faces of those who had died one by one, strengthening his desire for revenge.

Strength entered his hands holding the chisel and hammer.

Clang! Clang!

‘I will definitely get out of here!’

The moment he escaped, he would make the Stone Forest Gang and the Martial Arts Alliance pay the price.

It was clear that a scene of hell would unfold at that time, but Jin Ja-gang was no longer afraid.

When the hairy man from the Bosam Gate, the last survivor, died, Jin Ja-gang had already realized that he had entered the path of an Asura.

* * *

Mang-ryo had been sitting in the same place for an incredibly long time.

Day or night, whether the sun was blazing or it was raining, he continued to watch the collapsed entrance from the same spot.

His hair had grown to cover his shoulders, and his beard was shaggy, but he didn’t care.

All of Mang-ryo’s attention was focused solely on the collapsed entrance.

Originally, Mang-ryo had tried to give up at one point.

It was about five days after the Stone Forest Gang had collapsed the mine.

Mang-ryo was in a daze when he suddenly felt a small vibration.

Was there a sign of a landslide?

But something different, another sensation, was detected by Mang-ryo’s sixth sense.

Mang-ryo quickly went to the collapsed mine entrance and put his ear to the rock.

Rumble.

It was the sound of collapse.

The sound of somewhere inside the mine shaft collapsing.

And it was close to the entrance!

Suddenly his heart raced.

It had already been five days since the collapse, so it was too subtle to be considered an aftershock.

‘They were digging a tunnel from inside to escape!’

And then the tunnel seemed to have collapsed.

But after that sound was heard, no more sounds came.

There was nothing Mang-ryo could do from the outside. There were eyes watching to prevent Mang-ryo from doing anything foolish.

All he could do was wait.

‘You’re not the type to die like this. You’re the type who would eat the corpses of others to survive. Show me proof that you’re alive! Hurry!’

So Mang-ryo waited.

Believing that Jin Ja-gang would definitely survive.

Then one day, heavy rain poured all night.

And the next morning.

Finally, Mang-ryo saw it.

A trace of Jin Ja-gang, embodying his wish.

A puddle of water in front of the collapsed mine entrance.

Small ripples were forming in it.

They were very small concentric circles. They were circles caused by vibrations so small that they would be unnoticeable unless carefully observed.

A sound that couldn’t be heard no matter how much one strained to listen.

A tiny movement that Mang-ryo couldn’t feel no matter how much he heightened his senses.

It was visible on the surface of the water puddle.

Moreover, the ripples in the puddle, though faint, were continuing to form regularly.

Mang-ryo felt his hair stand on end.

‘He’s alive!’

By then, it had been well over fifteen days since the collapse.

It was more than enough time for an ordinary person to starve to death.

His heart raced.

“Kekeke.”

Laughter escaped him.

What a tenacious life indeed!

“That’s right, that’s what makes you who you are!”

From then on, Mang-ryo watched the ripples. He couldn’t deliberately create water puddles for fear of drawing attention from others.

He observed puddles that formed naturally, either from rain or urine.

Surprisingly, the ripples that formed in the puddle continued regularly for a very long time.

Mang-ryo remained in the same place for a long time afterward.

Even then, the regular ripples forming in the puddle did not disappear.

If Mang-ryo hadn’t been watching from the beginning, it would have been difficult to think that they were artificial ripples. Even Mang-ryo himself had doubted at times whether this was really a signal that Jin Ja-gang was alive.

But Jin Ja-gang’s signal was certain.

The ripples initially continued for two hours before stopping, then continued for another two hours before stopping, and now, three months later, they sometimes lasted for more than half a day!

Mang-ryo checked again for any other signs.

He still couldn’t hear any sound or feel any vibration. It was too faint for Mang-ryo to hear or feel.

Instead, only the regularly resonating ripples on the surface of the puddle indicated that Jin Ja-gang was alive.

“This is going to take longer than I thought.”

If nothing had changed after three months of progress, it meant either he was digging a tunnel from very far away or the progress was slow.

Mang-ryo glared at the soil-filled mine entrance, then finally stood up.

“Waiting is not boring, but it would be a waste to kill you on the spot after you’ve survived this far. Merely that wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the suffering I’ve endured.”

Surprisingly, there was a smile on Mang-ryo’s face.

“What will happen when you come out alive? With your personality, you won’t leave the Stone Forest Gang alone, right? And you’ll be curious about why and who collapsed the mine?”

Mang-ryo laughed like a child, holding his stomach.

“Kekeke!”

His mouth was laughing, but his eyes were filled with a chillingly vicious energy.

“But things will never turn out the way you think.”

Mang-ryo left the mine without looking back.

It had been three months.