Chapter 137

The atmosphere instantly froze.

The four people here specialized in disguise and infiltration, not exceptionally high martial arts. Facing Snake Scorpion Poison King, who had turned Yunnan’s martial world into a wasteland, was absurd from the start.

If they could have handled him in the first place, they wouldn’t have been just monitoring him!

The four exchanged glances with each other.

Let’s run!

Of course, one person would have to stay behind. Then even Snake Scorpion Poison King wouldn’t be able to catch them all – that was their calculation.

The idler signaled the other three with his eyes. He planned to sacrifice himself to save the other three. The idler took a stance to charge at Jin Ja-gang. And the other three prepared to flee in all directions the moment the idler charged.

But just as the idler was about to lift his heel and charge, and the three’s gazes split apart.

Jin Ja-gang suddenly lifted a small pouch and turned it upside down.

Whoosh!

Unidentifiable dark powder poured out.

Dust-like powder rose hazily at the entrance to the alley. The idler, who had been about to charge at Jin Ja-gang, was startled and fell backward.

Jin Ja-gang looked at the four and continued speaking calmly.

“What kind of poison do you think I’m scattering now? Will you be able to pass through here, or won’t you?”

The idler and the other three held their breath and retreated backward. Since poison had been scattered, they couldn’t charge forward.

They had no choice but to flee in the opposite direction. They were prepared to commit suicide if caught, and even if caught, only the minimum number should be captured.

Jin Ja-gang said to the four.

“I have no grudge against you. If you just answer my questions, I’ll let you go.”

The four naturally had no intention of doing so.

“Run!”

The moment the idler shouted, the four fled in the opposite direction. The quick-bodied peddler ran out first. The moment the peddler turned the corner at the end of the alley and disappeared, a scream rang out. Then the warrior dressed as a laborer also let out a scream the moment he turned the corner.

“Aah!”

“Kugh!”

The idler and farmer hurriedly stopped. The peddler and laborer were rolling around in front, both clutching their feet and groaning. There seemed to be something on the ground.

The idler and farmer couldn’t pass through that spot, not knowing what had happened.

Soon Jin Ja-gang followed right behind them.

Jin Ja-gang swung his fist. The farmer tried to block Jin Ja-gang’s fist with his pitchfork. Jin Ja-gang twisted his fist and struck the farmer’s forearm.

Prick!

The farmer felt something sharp embed in his forearm. It seemed he had hidden a needle or something between his knuckles.

“Damn it!”

The farmer screamed and retreated backward.

Jin Ja-gang immediately changed direction toward the idler. The idler had just seen the laborer get attacked by Jin Ja-gang and scream, so he didn’t rashly face Jin Ja-gang directly.

When Jin Ja-gang attacked, he flinched in surprise and dodged, continuing to retreat and only evade.

But as the idler dodged Jin Ja-gang’s fists several times, he began to feel somewhat puzzled.

Snake Scorpion Poison King was the one who had destroyed Yunnan’s poison sects. He had even brought down Zhuge Yan. Then he should definitely be a tremendous master. Either using movement techniques invisible to the eye or having poison fly around just by extending his hand.

But looking at his movements, though agile, it was hard to see him as a martial arts master. No matter how generously he judged, he didn’t seem that much better than himself. That made it even more confusing.

The idler was the most skilled in martial arts among those here. He could face ten or twenty back-alley thugs simultaneously.

‘Could it be… this isn’t him?’

If he wasn’t Snake Scorpion Poison King…?

No, but if this person wasn’t Snake Scorpion Poison King, why would the other three comrades be rolling on the ground?

The idler was confused, but gradually Jin Ja-gang’s movements became familiar to his eyes. Perhaps because he was limping, his attacks weren’t as fast as expected.

‘This guy, he mentioned something about rumors earlier. Are the rumors really exaggerated?’

Half fearful and half doubtful, the idler tried attacking.

He pressed down on Jin Ja-gang’s extending wrist with his palm while striking Jin Ja-gang’s temple with his other palm.

Smack!

Jin Ja-gang’s head shook and his body swayed.

“Huh?”

At the last moment, Jin Ja-gang had turned his head, so it didn’t hit properly. However, the idler was bewildered since he had never thought his attack would work in one try.

‘This guy… is he really Snake Scorpion Poison King?’

If it was the Snake Scorpion Poison King he knew, shouldn’t he not be able to touch even a hair?

However, the idler realized his hand was caught in Jin Ja-gang’s grip. Jin Ja-gang was grasping the idler’s forearm like scratching it.

It was surprising that he had grabbed his arm the moment he was hit, but he couldn’t understand what he intended to do with that. Couldn’t he just shake off his arm?

“What…”

At that moment.

Jin Ja-gang’s right eye turned reddish, and suddenly his fingers gripping the idler’s forearm dug into the flesh.

Crane Sect’s grappling technique, Capturing Dragon Strike!

The idler felt pain as if his forearm was being gouged with a red-hot iron skewer, and his hair stood on end. His arm and shoulder instantly stiffened.

“Uh, uaaaah!”

When the idler screamed, Jin Ja-gang stuffed the leather pouch he was holding in his left hand into the idler’s mouth.

Jin Ja-gang had seen an assassin commit suicide before. The assassin had chosen suicide to keep secrets even though he could have fought more. This time too, in case the idler might commit suicide, he needed to prevent him from biting his poison pill or tongue.

But Jin Ja-gang’s choice ended in failure.

Suddenly the idler’s body convulsed greatly. Though he couldn’t make a sound with leather in his mouth, his eyes rolled back.

Red blood spread across his chest. A sharp pitchfork protruded from his chest, having pierced through from behind.

The farmer had killed the idler when he was captured. The farmer stood with the pitchfork thrust in, spitting blood foam and dying. It wasn’t from poison Jin Ja-gang had used.

It seemed he had already swallowed a poison pill before thrusting the pitchfork.

Seeing this, the peddler and laborer sighed. Their faces showed they realized they too were doomed.

The laborer put something in his mouth. The laborer soon foamed blood at his mouth… But the peddler hesitated a bit and missed the chance to swallow his poison pill. Even though poison needles were already deeply embedded in his soles, there seemed to be some hesitation about dying.

He tried to swallow the poison pill belatedly, but Bian Bu, who had secretly crawled there, rushed at him. Bian Bu stabbed the back of the peddler’s neck with a bamboo stick.

“Urgh!”

The peddler’s body stiffened and he dropped the poison pill in his hand.

“Whew…”

Bian Bu grimaced in pain, blood streaming from his heel. Then when he looked up, he saw Jin Ja-gang also leaning against the wall and gasping for breath like himself. Jin Ja-gang’s face was covered with sweat.

“Are you… alright?”

Jin Ja-gang nodded without answering and caught his breath.

Bian Bu complained.

“Really too much, friend. Knowing I was being attacked, you were late coming because you were scattering saliva in front? Thanks to that, I became a cripple. Much obliged.”

The reason Jin Ja-gang couldn’t immediately help even though Bian Bu’s ankle tendon was being cut was because he had to go hide poison needles in the direction they would flee.

Jin Ja-gang silently walked to the peddler to check his condition.

“I stabbed his pressure point, so he won’t be able to move for about an hour.”

Bian Bu grumbled.

“Are you really Snake Scorpion Poison King? What kind of poison are you using that these guys are fine? Thanks to that, we almost let them all die or escape. Good thing I caught one.”

The fortune teller speech disappeared and Bian Bu spoke at length as if his gag had been removed.

Jin Ja-gang answered with a stiffly frowning face.

“I used poison that causes diarrhea.”

Only now did the poison take effect, as the paralyzed peddler’s body began to smell foul. The peddler didn’t speak but his face turned red with embarrassment.

Bian Bu’s mouth fell open in disbelief.

“Snake Scorpion Poison King used such poison…!”

Of course, if you had diarrhea, you’d lose strength and couldn’t fight or run away, so it was surprisingly a good method. But it felt somewhat inappropriate for Snake Scorpion Poison King, who carried tremendous rumors, to use such trivial poison.

“I can’t kill people I don’t even know.”

Bian Bu’s expression became even more incredulous.

“Very different from the rumors I heard. Your martial arts seem lackluster too.”

But as Bian Bu spoke, he looked at the idler who had died with finger holes in his forearm and added more words.

“No, it doesn’t seem entirely lackluster. But less than the rumors.”

Someone with poor internal energy couldn’t make holes in a person’s forearm with their fingers.

Still, it was true that Jin Ja-gang’s martial arts were strange somewhere. It was also true that his martial arts weren’t as high as expected. If his martial arts were high, there would have been no need to go around back to scatter poison needles and return.

Then he too wouldn’t have lost a leg.

However, the situation wasn’t suitable for just complaining. Bian Bu wrapped his injured ankle with cloth and limped toward the peddler.

“Ugh, that stench… Don’t you usually shit yourself?”

Bian Bu frowned and waved his hand in front of his nose.

“You, can you talk? What organization? What were you aiming for coming here?”

The peddler’s face turned red and blue as he gritted his teeth.

“Kill me. I won’t say anything.”

“If you wanted to die, you would have taken poison and died already.”

The peddler bit down hard on his teeth. He seemed to feel ashamed himself.

“So spill it. What will hiding it improve? It’ll just be painful.”

Bian Bu took out a bamboo stick and spun it between his fingers. When the peddler glared with wide eyes, he stabbed the bamboo stick between his collarbones. It went in two joints deep.

“Kugh!”

Blood vessels bulged in the peddler’s neck and jaw.

“This isn’t just a bamboo stick but has a long steel needle inside. It’ll hurt a lot.”

The peddler gritted his teeth.

“If you can endure it, then endure.”

Bian Bu pulled out five bamboo sticks and stuck one just above the peddler’s knee. Then he continued sticking bamboo sticks, moving up half a span at a time.

“Kugh, kugh!”

Four were stuck in a row along the inside of his thigh.

If he stuck the last remaining one in the current state, it would naturally be stuck right in the middle of his groin.

The peddler’s face was covered with sweat from pain and anxiety. Bian Bu smiled apologetically.

“Sorry. But doing spy work, you might not be able to function as a man and such things can happen. That’s originally what our kind of work is like. If you get caught, you die, if not, then not. Hehe.”

Bian Bu raised the bamboo stick. The peddler cursed with veins bulging on his forehead.

“Our capture will soon be known, so you won’t be able to survive either! Burn to death with this village!”

“Well, as expected.”

Bian Bu called Jin Ja-gang.

“Do you have anything to ask? I’ve heard all the necessary talk.”

“What?”

The peddler was flustered.

Jin Ja-gang didn’t have anything particular to ask. He already knew who these people worked for and why they were monitoring him.

“Nothing.”

The peddler gritted his teeth.

“You won’t say more even if asked anyway, so hurry up and kill me!”

The moment the peddler finished speaking, Bian Bu drew a dagger from his waist, went to the peddler, and slit his throat. The peddler spurted blood from his neck and collapsed.

Bian Bu casually wiped the dagger on the peddler’s clothes and said.

“These guys were preparing to use you to implicate our dark path. And you heard just now, right? About burning this village. That’s the last scheme these guys prepared in case their previous trick failed.”

Jin Ja-gang looked at Bian Bu somewhat bewildered. When Bian Bu saw Jin Ja-gang’s gaze directed at him wiping blood from the dagger, he asked back as if wondering why.

“What? Why?”