Chapter 166. Even If I Have to Paint Myself with Lacquer or Swallow Charcoal (12)

The desire to slaughter rose from within him.

Although there was no such thing as a death that wasn’t miserable or painful in this world, being beaten to death by so many people was truly a wretched and sad occurrence.

How terrifying must it have been for that young man to be beaten to death?

“I don’t know what happened, but whoever caused this better pray I never find them.”

First, he wanted to find out what was going on. He caught a young man wandering around, dragged him off to a secluded place, spread a veil of qi to block any sound, and began to interrogate him.

“Tell me what happened and you can keep your life.”

As he came face to face with a young man he had never seen before, the young man was about to shout for help. However, his body seemed to freeze as his soul seemed to be crushed by the bloodlust in Woo-Moon’s eyes and the enormous pressure covering his entire body.

“

...U...ugh...

”

The young man shivered as if he was facing the King of Hell himself.

It might have been different if the young man had been a member of the

murim

, but an ordinary human facing the aura of a Paragon could suffer catastrophic damage. In fact, Woo-Moon could quite literally kill normal people by sheer pressure of his aura, causing their hearts to stop. And with how intense it was now, the young man was not far from dying, and every moment until death would be tremendously painful.

However, Woo-Moon didn't care.

Not only was the young man’s fist covered in bloodstains, but Woo-Moon could feel the bloodlust and latent murderous aura exuding from his body.

Still, even if he was going to kill him anyway, he had to get an answer first.

Woo-Moon reined in his aura just enough to allow for the man to answer.

It was only then that the young man, free from the pressure, finally opened his mouth.

“I-if I... really tell you, you promise not to kill me, right?”

When Woo-Moon nodded, the young man spoke with a slightly relieved expression.

“This is a secret... In our village, we hold a ritual service for our Lord Guardian God once every ten years.”

Woo-Moon had heard stories like this—that some villages practiced human sacrifices for their gods.

“So you're saying that the girl who was being dragged away earlier was a sacrifice?”

Seeing Woo-Moon grow angry, the young man became more thoughtful in his responses.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry? Who are you saying sorry to?”

The young man spoke with even more fear as he could feel the chill drip from each of Woo-Moon’s words.

“W-well, I’m apologizing to the God in front of me...”

In the eyes of the young man from the village, Woo-Moon felt scarier and more enormous than any other being in the world. What else could he be but a god?

“No, you chose the wrong person to apologize to. The people you should be sorry for are those girls you sacrificed for that ridiculous Guardian God or whatever, and that dead boy over there.”

Woo-Moon’s words took aback the young man.

“Y-you can’t! You’ll bring catastrophe down on our village if you speak about the Lord Guardian God like that!”

Woo-Moon couldn’t care less about the catastrophe he may or may not bring upon the village. In his view, they were all pieces of shit. Hadn’t they all decided to sacrifice their daughters to whatever fucking god?

‘Hold on... Are those really their daughters, though? It’s not that hard to go to a poor village and ‘rescue’ a little girl.’

“A catastrophe? Is that catastrophe really that scary?”

The young man nodded his head.

Woo-Moon’s qi began to circulate as he glared menacingly at the young man.

Rumble!!

The dirt and stones on the ground they stood on—even the rocks underneath them all rose into the air.

“

Ugh, ahhh!

”

Due to the wind Woo-Moon had stirred, even the ground that the man was standing on floated into the air. Countless rocks, ranging from the size of a fist to the size of a head or even larger, floated between and around both him and the young man.

Bang! Bang, bang!

They all exploded one by one.

Unimaginable things were happening that the young man couldn’t even comprehend.

“I think you should fear me more than whatever god of yours.”

The piles of dirt and stone that had risen into the air fell back to the ground and, under Woo-Moon’s tremendous pressure, quickly returned to being solid ground.

The man, whose pants were by now drenched in urine, kowtowed and started begging.

“P-please spare me! Please, I’m begging you, spare me!”

With tears and snot running down his face, he seemed really naive and pitiful at the same time.

However, Woo-Moon felt absolutely no sympathy for him.

‘If I pity him, then who’s going to pity that dead kid?’

Woo-Moon raised his hand and pointed at the boy's body.

“Answer me, and you better be honest. Why did that boy die?”

“Well, that is...”

Woo-Moon frowned slightly, but even that slight frown made the young man shit his pants as well. He didn’t wait half a second more before starting to talk.

“He was an orphan who came to the village some time ago to do odd jobs. When we tried to offer up a village girl as a sacrifice to the Lord Guardian God, that brat interfered, saying ugly things like we shouldn’t believe in superstitions...”

“You’re saying he stood forward just for that reason? That’s it? Are you sure he and the girl didn’t have some kind of relationship?”

The young man flinched.

Noticing that, Woo-Moon knew he was on the right track.

“Oh, I see what’s going on. So there were not one but

two

orphans who came to this damned village, right? Since the village needed a sacrifice, and by chance, one of them was a girl, you all happily took them in. Those orphans must have been really grateful, huh?”

Woo-Moon didn’t need to wait for confirmation.

Everything he said was correct; the young man’s reaction was proof enough.

As he spoke, an uncontrollable rage started to rear its head.

“So, the boy stepped up to protect what, his sister? And so you beat him to death, huh?”

The young man was shocked.

“N-no, no, I didn’t! I just hit him a few times! The others beat him more than I did!”

Creak.

Woo-Moon gritted his teeth without realizing it. This bastard was genuinely disgusting. No... Everyone here was an abomination.

“Fuck off! Go to your home right now and don’t come out. Don’t talk about me to anyone. Do you understand?”

“Understood! If you want, I’ll sew my mouth shut!”

“Shut up and fuck off!”

Woo-Moon didn’t even bother to kill him. The young man had already suffered irreparable harm to his soul by this point and would soon wither away.

Then, Woo-Moon threw both Lightflash and Inkblade into the air, still sheathed.

With a boom, the two swords flew through the air and plunged into a cliff all the way down to their hilts, high enough that no one could reach them.

Woosh!

As the young man ran to his home, Woo-Moon’s figure flickered and reappeared far off in the distance, right in front of the villagers dragging the young girl.

“W-Who are you?” an old man who looked like the village chief shouted in surprise.

“You don’t need to know who I am. Hand that girl over to me.”

The only way for the village to reach their Guardian God was by walking up the mountain path.

However, the road was so narrow that it could barely fit four people side by side. Woo-Moon could easily block the path and keep the entire village from ascending on his own.

“So you’re some outsider, then. Why are you interfering in our village's affairs?! Get out of the way!”

No matter how small the village was, a village chief was still a chief. Thus, there was quite a bit of dignity in the village chief's shout.

“Well, there’s no one in your village that can stop this ridiculous farce, so I, an outsider, ought to step in for you. Don’t you think so?”

If Woo-Moon had a weapon on him, they might have been more alert. However, since that wasn't the case, they looked down on him.

“This good-for-nothing pretty boy is really leaving me no choice. If you don’t get out of our sight, I’ll kill you where you stand!”

The more one committed murder, the more familiar one became with it.

The people in front of Woo-Moon were rather experienced with murder. In fact, they were

extremely

experienced for people not belonging to the

murim.

Having forced countless village girls to their deaths under the pretext of offering them as sacrifices made them accustomed to murder.

Even if they weren’t the ones taking the girls’ lives directly, their actions were still equivalent to killing them with their own hands, causing them to slowly exude bloodlust and murderous auras.

That was why they didn’t care about killing the boy earlier and why, even now, they had gone to murder as their first resort without even bothering to talk things through.

Suddenly, Woo-Moon sighed.

“How are these bastards any different from the bandits and thieves of the Black Hand? Isn’t it even more vicious to murder the weak and the children in the name of ‘sacrifice’ as a group, rather than just slaughtering as an individual?”

Right at that moment, the girl suddenly pushed away the people surrounding her and rushed toward Woo-Moon.

“Save me!”

Although she was thin and weak-looking, thanks to her strong will to live, she succeeded in pushing through men who were several times stronger than her.

“Huh? Hey, you bitch—

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

!!!”

Unfortunately for him, one of the men standing near the edge of the path tripped as the girl pushed him and fell down the cliffside, screaming. Naturally, a rock was waiting for him at the bottom, in the perfect position to crack his head open.

Seeing that, one of the villagers screamed.

“Ahh! No, Wang-Bo! My son!”

Meanwhile, the girl was shaking as she hid behind Woo-Moon.

She was clean, wore pretty clothes by the village standards, and even had some light makeup on. But seeing her dressed so fancily made Woo-Moon’s heart ache even more.

‘How scared must she have been, forced to don pretty clothes and put on makeup for her own death?’

One of the villagers shouted, interrupting Woo-Moon's thoughts.

“Give me that bitch, you bastard! How dare you kill my son!!”

He rushed toward Woo-Moon, holding a sickle in one hand.

‘So he really intends to swing it.’

That intention mattered. It meant that he had the will to murder.

Thud!

Then, the villager really did swing his sickle right at Woo-Moon’s neck.

Of course, it was easily blocked by Woo-Moon’s two fingers.

“So, your son is important, but this child isn’t? Did you ever think about how this child’s parents would feel?”

“You... you bastard! Let go!”

The answer Woo-Moon was looking for came directly from the village chief’s mouth.

“What’s the big deal about sacrificing an orphaned girl for the future of the village? Because of that child’s sacrifice, we can all live in abundance.”

Yes, this was reality.

Unhan, the village where Woo-Moon was born and raised, was a prosperous place, and the level of culture and civilization was much higher than here.

However, in this remote village, children served as nothing more than free labor. Any desire to keep children safe because they were children was minimal, if it even existed. Considering that, how important was the life of a little orphaned girl who suddenly appeared in this village?

The reason they were committing such evil and cowardly acts was likely their harsh environment.

Still, Woo-Moon had no desire to forgive them.

“There is bloodlust in your eyes.”

With a cold sentence, Woo-Moon grabbed the left shoulder of the middle-aged man holding the sickle and shattered all of the bones under his grasp.

“Aaaah!!!”

The villager’s shoulder was crushed, and all of the nerves severed. He wouldn’t be able to move that arm for the rest of his life.

“My arm! My arm!” he screamed.

Although Woo-Moon was nearly bursting with bloodlust and a desire to kill, he did his best to suppress it and hold himself back. He hesitated to kill them.

Even though these people were no better than monsters, none of them was a martial artist. It was against the code of the

murim

, especially for someone of the Righteous Faction, to harm an ordinary person.

“You fucking bastard!”

“What have you done!”

However, the villagers had no idea that Woo-Moon was dangerously close to tipping over the edge and squashing them like bugs. Seeing what he had done to the middle-aged man, they actually started cursing at him.