“So this is the place. The source of that delicious smell…”

A lurid blue ghost fire flickered to life in his eyes as Yeon So-hyeon let out a peal of mad laughter. The sound was a grating horror, like metal scraping against a steel plate. Within his mouth, rows of sharp, serrated teeth glinted menacingly, and the crimson cavern of his throat seemed to plunge into a bottomless abyss.

“Gah… Gaaaaah!”

The man who had wet himself at the grotesque sight charged forward in a convulsive fit. An ordinary person would have been paralyzed, their mind shattered by the nightmarish vision before them. But these were men who had carved their lives out of the blood-soaked battlegrounds¹ that were the back alleys of Luoyang. Though they were not martial artists who could shield their minds with internal energy, the mettle² they had forged in blood and violence was real.

“Die!”

The blade in his hand flashed. It was a simple strike, with no feints or tricks, but it was executed with a clean speed that made the man himself marvel.

“—!”

But in the next instant, he realized his wrist had been caught. For a fleeting moment, he registered that his opponent’s hand was small, soft, and utterly devoid of calluses. And it was colder than a river in the dead of winter—so cold that frost seemed to crystallize on his skin from the point of contact.

“Aaargh…!”

He kicked out at his foe. Or rather, he tried to. But his opponent’s hand squeezed shut far faster.

As if his wrist contained no bone, no muscle. Easier than crushing a cold, leftover dumpling.

Pop!

His hand, still gripping the blade, tumbled to the ground in a spray of blood.

“…Kuaaaaaaaah!”

The monster’s grip had been so unnaturally powerful that his hand had been torn clean off. As he staggered back, clutching the gushing stump of his arm, another of the thugs rushed forward. Gripping his own blade tightly with both hands, he threw the full weight of his body into a lunge, intending to bury the steel in the monster’s torso…

SKREEE!

Sparks flew where the monster’s palm met the blade.

“Urk!”

The impact felt like striking a stone wall, and the thug lost his grip on his weapon. He tried to retreat hastily and look for another opening, but the monster was faster, snatching both of his wrists.

“L-Let me go…!”

He roared, thrashing with all his might, struggling to break free from the creature’s grasp. But no matter how he fought, the grip did not yield. It did not even tremble.

And then, slowly, it began to squeeze.

“Aaargh, stop, stooop…!”

The creature’s movements were deliberate, almost leisurely, as if it regretted having torn the first man’s hand off too quickly. This time, it seemed to want to slowly add pressure, to savor the process and see what would happen. There was no need to draw upon Demonic Qi. Casually, unhurriedly, it simply increased its physical strength.

Soon, the sickening sound of snapping bone was followed by the wet tear of flesh.

“Gyaaaah! Gyaaaaaaaaah!”

All the while, the thug kicked wildly at his captor, but it was no different from kicking a brick wall. In fact, the force of his own kicks caused his ankle to snap, leaving his foot dangling uselessly.

“Kuaaaargh…!”

The sound of bones being ground to powder and flesh being pulped into ruin echoed through the alley, mingling with his screams. Like a juicy fruit being squeezed dry, a thick mist of blood, heavy with its coppery scent, bloomed in the air.

“…gurgle…glk.”

The thug collapsed, writhing on the filthy ground like a crushed insect. His teeth, shattered by the unimaginable pain, mixed with blood and drooled from his mouth. Left alone, he would have surely died from blood loss and shock, but his tormentor had no intention of letting him go so easily.

The thug felt his ankles being seized. In the next moment, his legs were torn from his body, one after the other, and sent tumbling through the air. The blood that fountained from the ripped stumps painted long, crimson arcs on the alley walls.

This was not martial skill. This was not combat. This was pure, unadulterated violence. A brutal display of overwhelming physical power.

“Urgh…”

The thug twitched for a few moments longer, then fell still.

“Hmm?”

A peculiar glint appeared in Yeon So-hyeon’s eyes as he gazed at the corpse. From the darkness on the ground, dozens of pale hands were rising up, grasping the body and pulling it down. They were hands of all sizes, white as bone—the hands of children, of old men, of women. Slowly, the corpse sank into the deep shadows of the ground. The blood he had splattered across the alley was also absorbed, disappearing as if it had never been there.

Thump! Thump!

Yeon So-hyeon felt his Danjeon pulse powerfully. A surge of vitality coursed through him, and a feeling of exhilaration washed over his senses.

“Hoh?”

Yeon So-hyeon half-closed his eyes, the blue ghost fire flickering within them as he savored the refreshing sensation.

“…G-Gaaaaah!”

Just then, one of the men who had been frozen by the nightmarish scene broke free and began to run without a single glance back. The back alley was dark and littered with obstacles. His foot caught, and he tumbled into a pit of filth, but he scrambled up and kept running, his clothes and skin tearing on unseen debris. He ran until he felt his lungs would burst from his throat, never stopping.

But for some reason, the alley never ended. And though it was a back alley, no one looked out their windows. Not a single point of light from the famously sleepless city of Luoyang could be seen. The world before him began to spin.

It was then that a hand burst through his stomach from behind. Its grip, clenched around his entrails, was slick with his own blood, glistening in the darkness.

“…!!”

He tried with all his might to scream, but his abdominal cavity had been ruptured, his diaphragm torn apart. He dropped to his knees, desperately trying to gather his own spilling guts.

“…”

Yeon So-hyeon looked down at the man in silence. His gaze was utterly devoid of humanity. Not a shred, not a flicker.

Thump.

He drove his arm into the man’s back. His spear-hand³ strike tore through the man’s torso with the sound of ripping leather, and he churned his hand about inside. He used no Demonic Qi, only pure physical strength, so the result was far from clean. The messiness, the sheer brutality of it, was precisely his intent.

Yeon So-hyeon shoved the mangled corpse aside.

Thump.

Just as before, the dead man’s body was seized by the white hands that rose from the ground and dragged below, leaving not a single drop of blood behind.

Thump.

Yeon So-hyeon’s reason was sharp, but his mind was overflowing with madness, and his heart was racing with savage joy.

“This can’t be happening…!” The meaningless mumble came from the fourth man, who was slumped in a corner. “This is a dream. It has to be a dream.”

The space had already been corroded by the Demonic Qi flowing from Yeon So-hyeon—from the scripture. The third man, who thought he had been fleeing down the alley, had in reality not even made it ten steps, and this fourth man’s spirit had been suppressed long ago. This was the true face of the scripture’s power. Compared to this, the intimidation he had used on the servants that morning was nothing more than child’s play. The Demonic Qi he was now unleashing in earnest was enough to shatter a person’s mind and twist their reason just by its presence. He wasn’t even injecting it directly into their minds; simply by letting it rise, he had taken complete control of the space.

Thump.

Tearing apart the man whose spirit was already broken took but an instant. His dismembered limbs sank into the ground below.

“Hmm?”

Just then, he sensed the first man—the one whose wrist he had twisted off—escaping into another alley. The man was moving as cautiously as possible, but this entire area was now Yeon So-hyeon’s domain.

A low chuckle escaped Yeon So-hyeon’s lips as he lightly pushed off the ground. Dark Flow Transmutation.

***

“Fuck, where am I? Where’s the way out?!”

This back alley, which he had considered his own backyard, was now an unfamiliar labyrinth. Clutching his severed arm, the man was simply going in circles. To be precise, he was running in a continuous square through the complex network of alleys. He had succeeded in escaping that horrifying spot, but his mind had already been eroded by the Demonic Qi.

“Anyone there?! Is anyone there?!” he screamed, coughing up blood. His unfocused eyes darted about the void. What in the hell had just happened? He couldn’t understand it. A ghost? A demon? The God of Death? Of course, like most people in Luoyang, he believed in superstitions to some extent. But that meant believing in unseen things like fate, gods, and luck—not in monsters from scary stories told to children.

So what was that thing?

He screamed convulsively. “What the hell are you doing to me?! Why are you doing this?!”

Perhaps it was from the blood loss; he felt a wave of dizziness and dropped to his knees. He wailed. “…There are so many bad bastards in the world, so why me?!”

In that moment, he felt his entire body freeze over. He could feel a distinct breath on his ear—a glacial exhalation, reeking of thick sulfur and overpowering blood.

It whispered in his ear, its voice filled with the grating of metal.

[You are only the beginning.]

And then, it devoured him whole.

***

“You. Did you not devour them?”

At the old man’s question, Yeon So-hyeon slowly patted his own stomach. “…Come to think of it, I no longer feel hungry.”

The overflowing juices. The texture of uncooked, raw meat. He had just committed the act of cannibalism, a deed both repulsive and a violation of all heavenly moral law[1].

He felt no particular remorse. Only a satisfying sense of fullness that had displaced the agonizing hunger.

“Devouring the wicked is the first and last demand the Scripture that Commands the Dark and Quakes the Heavens makes of its Fated One.”

Yeon So-hyeon recalled its words. ‘A scripture that defies the heavens, destined to consume all the darkness of this Saha world in place of the indifferent and lazy heavens themselves.’

“Furthermore, the more wicked people you devour, the more of the scripture’s power you will be able to awaken.”

You get what you give, is it? A rather rational system.

“But, old man, it seems that ‘devouring’ does not refer exclusively to the act of me physically eating them.”

Yeon So-hyeon recalled the sight of the corpses being dragged into the ground by countless hands. “That is correct. Those hands belong to the hungry ghosts of the scripture. They will exert a physical influence within the ‘domain’ you create with your Demonic Qi and will assist you in your ‘meals.’”

Just then, a tremor started from the ceiling. Dust and stone fragments rained down, and the columns of light piercing the gloom began to narrow.

“It seems our time is up.”

“Is that so…”

The column of light illuminating the old man also began to shrink, his body melting back into the deep darkness. “We will surely meet again.”

In the blackness, the old man’s eyes flared to life like twin blue ghost fires. “Until then… happy hunting.”

Yeon So-hyeon gave the old man a long, respectful bow. In the next moment, a suffocating darkness swallowed everything.