Chapter 1195. Countering (5)

Chapter 1195. Countering (5)

Kang Jin-Ho was right.

‘What am I scared of?’

They were going to die, anyway.

No one would go home alive if they fail to kill that monster tonight. This place was not Japan, after all. Fleeing did not guarantee one’s survival.

Why? Because everywhere you flee to would still be the enemy’s backyard!

‘That’s right. There is only one path of survival!’

And that was to cut Kang Jin-Ho’s head off!

All they had to do was cut that devil’s head off. That was it. So, what was there to be terrified of? Weren’t they already facing the same outcome of death either way, anyway?

What would change for them by running away from here only to get killed by someone else’s hands?

Griiit!

Yoshinobu loudly gritted his teeth. He could still sense his legs trembling. But his vanished pride was flooding back into his chest.

‘How pathetic is this!’

To think he let the fear of the enemy cloud his judgment!

His ancestors did not hesitate to dive straight into enemy warships with their planes. They overcame the absolute differences in combat strength between two nations through nothing but their mental fortitude and undying loyalty!

He was facing only one enemy, so how dare he get scared!

Yoshinobu gripped his sword tightly while gnashing his teeth.

“Commander, sir!”

Yoshinobu flinched at the urgent voice coming from his advisor. But that helped him sober up. He raised his sword and pointed at Kang Jin-Ho.

“There is only one enemy!”

Yoshinobu’s roar rang like a thunderclap into the night sky.

“He’s not a monster! Nor is he a devil! No, he’s definitely human! And as a human, he’s bound to run out of stamina eventually! So, keep overwhelming him! Keep attacking! Tonight, we will definitely return home with that bastard’s head as a trophy!”

Of course Yoshinobu knew. He knew full well that his words were meaningless. Even he couldn’t think of Kang Jin-Ho as his fellow human being, so how much worse would it be for his subordinates?

But he still shouted all these meaningless words because what these warriors needed to hear wasn’t the truth.

“

Ohhh

!

Ooooooooh

!”

“Kill the bastard!”

Yoshinobu’s meaningless shout was met with heated roars from his men.

Take the hope of survival away, and humans would no longer have the will to fight back.

A drowning man would grab at straw. Even if these bits of straw were rotting and broken, what mattered was that the drowning man could see them!

However, one more motivation still needed to be added on top.

Yoshinobu cried out, “Captains! Stand at the forefront to punish that devil! When the battle is over, I will personally cut the heads off of any captains still left standing! That goes for you, vice captains, too!”

Yoshinobu could clearly see the expressions of several men hardening. However, they soon resolved themselves and gritted their teeth.

“

Ha!

”

“We shall obey!”

The rapidly cooling morale was set ablaze once more.

Kang Jin-Ho watching this scene in silence began smirking like a vile villain.

His heart was racing. Heat of excitement coursed throughout his body. The sensation of demonic qi pumping through his meridians felt indescribably pleasant.

However, his mind remained icy-cool.

In the past, rousing this much strength would have meant his mind was in a half-berserk state. Demonic qi would’ve had him in its firm grip, and he’d barely distinguish allies from enemies.

But now? Bloodlust and hatred continued to well up in his heart, but other than them urging him on, Kang Jin-Ho could easily maintain the clarity of his mind.

Of course, that didn’t mean his actions would be gentler or more forgiving!

Entering a battle meant one was risking their life. Getting lost in the madness of demonic qi didn’t make you a vicious creature. However, what was cruel was that you had to kill others to survive in war.

“

Huw

-

aaaaaaaahk

!”

“

Aaaaaaahk

!”

The Japanese warriors charged at Kang Jin-Ho while roaring loudly enough to nearly rupture their vocal cords.

What a familiar sight that was to Kang Jin-Ho. People charging at him often acted this way.

‘I wonder why?’

Kang Jin-Ho chuckled quietly.

Of course he knew the reason. That was one’s desperate struggle to overcome their stubborn fear and stop their body from shivering pitifully. What Kang Jin-Ho didn’t get was something else, something that came before the roaring.

Why were these people afraid?

Weren’t they the ones willingly rushing into their own death? If it was so scary, couldn’t they just run away? Indeed, they could just flee and never look back. That would be the end of it.

Kang Jin-Ho didn’t have a hobby of chasing down every single person running away and cutting them down from behind, after all.

However, these Japanese did not run away. No, they chose to rush toward him instead.

Despite their determination, these people still feared their death and had to roar loudly to awaken their courage. Kang Jin-Ho found that so ironic.

Then again...!

Paaaaaaahang!

While making a sharp noise, Kang Jin-Ho’s sword cut through the space. This was not the same as cutting through human flesh.

Everything the blade touched split apart, even if that was the empty space. Human flesh merely happened to be within this splitting space, that was all.

The outcome remained as gruesome as ever.

The momentum from their jump sent the Japanese warriors flying over Kang Jin-Ho’s head as their torsos got bisected across the waist, their blood and entrails raining down everywhere.

Kang Jin-Ho didn’t bother to avoid the blood. Was it because he enjoyed the bloodshed and all the deaths? Of course not.

A martial artist’s death always accompanied bloodshed. Making his enemies bleed to death—that was a martial artist’s job on a battlefield. Anyone who wished to avoid doing that was not qualified to enter a battle.

“

Fuu-woo

...”

Kang Jin-Ho let out a low, heavy breath. As hatred and cold objectivity co-existed in a bizarre cocktail within his mind, Kang Jin-Ho calmly studied the people before his eyes.

Their upper torsos leaned forward as if they wanted to rush at him right away, yet their legs kept trying to back away.

‘Are they still scared?’

What an odd behavior that was. These Japanese voluntarily stepped on Korean soil. While crossing the ocean to enter this country, they must’ve resolved themselves to kill every single Korean martial artist and turn the Korean martial society into a Japanese colony.

In that case, why were they so afraid?

“This world has...”

Crackle, sizzle...!

Demonic qi strands burned Kang Jin-Ho’s surroundings.

He nonchalantly strode forward while leaving behind footprints of black flames. The coarse metallic scratching sounds leaked out of his mouth next.

“...One inviolable rule.”

His voice was not all that loud. In fact, it was almost like a whisper.

However, it was just loud enough to spread to all corners of this eerily silent space. Everyone here heard Kang Jin-Ho’s words loud and clear.

Of course, only a few Japanese warriors could understand Korean. But the contents of what he said didn’t really matter at this moment. The atmosphere around him, created by the chilling aura he emitted, was enough to suppress and overwhelm everyone, after all!

“There is no such thing as acquiring something without paying the price.”

The demonic qi surrounding Kang Jin-Ho’s face distorted strangely. It was as if the devil was smirking. If anyone was willing to call that bizarre distortion a smile, that was!

“If you wish to kill, then you should also risk your life, too.”

Stepping on this land without resolving themselves? If so, they should pay the appropriate price.

Kang Jin-Ho’s eyes grew even redder than before. He no longer held his viciousness back and fully unleashed it.

As his demonic qi burned even more fiercely, Kang Jin-Ho dashed forward.

This place was the Martial Assembly, the heartland of the South Korean martial society!

He was not planning to spare a single one of these invaders that dared to dirty this place with their presence!

Paaaaaahang!

The walls of humans were suddenly cleaved apart in half horizontally.

“A-attack him!”

“We can kill him! There’s no such thing as humans who can’t be stabbed with a blade!”

“

U-uwaaaaaah

!”

They were desperately struggling.

To those who no longer stood on the safe foundation of belief in their strength, confidence in numbers, and trust in those who had dispatched here, all they had left was blind desperation.

Despite knowing that charging at Kang Jin-Ho would result in getting ripped apart into mangled bits of flesh, these Japanese warriors had no choice but to do it.

Dying while running away or dying while attacking the target—weren’t they all the same at the end of the day?

Those leading the charge shed tears of blood as they closed in on Kang Jin-Ho.

Demonic qi thickly enveloped Kang Jin-Ho’s right hand gripping the Crimson Destiny. And he punched the incoming warrior.

Baaaaaang!

As the powerful sound of a leather drum exploding resounded in the air, the warrior pouncing on Kang Jin-Ho transformed into a shower of blood and scattered away.

That man wasn’t crushed. Nor did he get stabbed clean through.

Quite literally, he was blown apart. Watching this process proved the notion of a human body being 70% ‘water’!

A human being instantly transformed into blood. It seemed that the claim of corpses being unrecoverable ‘intact’ in the aftermath of a bomb blast was not a lie!

After reducing the leading attacker into a pool of blood, Kang Jin-Ho chopped down with his two swords enveloped in black flames.

Splaaaaat!

The sound produced was akin to a blade slicing through water. At the same time, a Japanese warrior was split right in half from the top of his head to his groin. His two halves slowly fell to the left and right sides.

Splash!

Kang Jin-Ho’s feet stepping on the blood-soaked ground issued goosebumps-inducing noises.

He looked like a devil enveloped in pitch-black flames. Two swords, one in each hand and jutting out to left and right, also burned fiercely in the same black flames. And the pair of crimson light balls sizzling away as if to freeze the souls of who dared to look into them...!

‘And...?’

Yoshinobu belatedly realized something. He couldn’t see anything from Kang Jin-Ho’s face covered in the demonic qi’s black flames.

Here was a creature who swung his swords around to chop and slice people apart like reeds, yet his expression couldn’t be seen. And that fact roused a new sort of terror in Yoshinobu that he had not felt until now.

Was that man really human? Really?!

Because he’s human, blades could stab him?

‘Bullsh*t!’

That creature was definitely not human! No human could behave this way.

Only then did the Japanese realize what they were facing. Their idea of martial arts, their common sense, did not work in this place!

Ants would always be ants, no matter how many of them gathered. One thousand ants couldn’t possibly hunt a tiger down.

That was how wide and despair-inducing the gap in strength between the two sides was.

Slaaaaash!

Kang Jin-Ho swung his sword again. He didn’t even get into a stance to do that. But the sword still moved so fast that to naked eyes, it looked as if the weapon had teleported from left to right.

As for the outcome of the sword swing, it remained gruesome as before.

“

Huh

...?”

Those who still hadn’t realized that they had been cut through horizontally across their waists dazedly looked down at themselves.

Their clothes split open, and a thin but vivid crimson horizontal line soon disturbed the exposed flesh.

The line was as slender as a slight scratch. But the redness of the line grew more and more vivid.

The warriors immediately figured out the meaning behind that line and waited for their unavoidable fate in despair.

Plop! Plop!

Severed upper torsos fell to the ground one by one. It was like watching a portion of a dense forest made up of Japanese martial artists being deforested.

As for the warriors behind the severed-in-half victims...!

A Japanese warrior witnessed thin strands of demonic qi barely miss him and collapsed on his butt. His legs lost all their strength, and he couldn’t stand up anymore. His groin was soaked in urine, too.

Unfortunately for him, it was still too early to relax.

The embers of demonic qi flying off Kang Jin-Ho’s sword settled on the Japanese warrior plopped on the ground.

“...!

Kkeuhuk

?!”

He felt a burning sensation from his gut and hurriedly looked, only to find the pitch-black demonic qi ember ‘burning’ through his flesh and burrowing deep into his gut!

“

Ah

...

Ah

...!”

His body wasn’t burning, of course. After all, that thing might look like a flame, but it wasn’t actually a fire.

However, maybe the ember being a genuine fire would’ve been better.

As if someone had poured a mixture of heavy water and hydrochloric acid on him, all the areas touched by the demonic qi ember melted away. The flesh in his gut melted down first, and the Japanese warrior witnessed his spine being exposed to the elements.

He was about to freak out and convulse violently, only for his limbs to go stiff in a lifeless paralysis.

“...!?

Hiiieeek

!”

Another Japanese warrior freaked out at this scene and tried to retreat, only for Kang Jin-Ho to grab his face.

“

Aaaaaaaahk

!”

White steam gushed out from the warrior’s grabbed face. Maybe it was burning. Or melting.

The warrior ungainly swung his arms and thrashed about at the pain caused by the unknown source. Despite the struggle, Kang Jin-Ho easily lifted up the frail human body off the ground as if his arm was a massive crane.

“

Kkreuk! Kkuhhurruek?!

”

Crimson bubbles and drool trickled down the warrior’s chin.

Thankfully, Kang Jin-Ho was merciful this time.

Craaack!

He didn’t torture the man any longer and crushed his skull, after all! Although, whether the victim was thankful or not was up for the debate.

Plop!

Kang Jin-Ho glanced at the headless victim crumbling on the ground, then yanked out Crimson Destiny stabbed into the ground. He turned his head, then fixed his gaze on one specific Japanese warrior.

Flinch!

After locking eyes with Kang Jin-Ho, Yoshinobu momentarily stumbled back.

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

“Is that all?”

Kang Jin-Ho muttered while leisurely walking toward Yoshinobu.

However, that was when...!