Chapter 13

A cold sweat ran down Gu Yeokpyeong’s spine.

The fact that Pyo Wol had been hiding right next to him without him noticing at all filled him with fear.

If Pyo Wol had harbored any ill intent, he would have been a dead man.

If this had been a real situation and not training, he would have lost his life at Pyo Wol’s hands without even knowing how he died.

‘Crazy! Is it even possible to master the Breath Concealment Art to this level in just six years?’

If that were the case, the four children would never have been discovered by him.

Not everyone could do it. It was only possible because it was Pyo Wol.

The skills in which Pyo Wol particularly excelled were Stealth, the Breath Concealment Art, and infiltration techniques. His abilities were specialized for secretly infiltrating or escaping.

‘Still, to think he could deceive my senses.’

Gu Yeokpyeong felt the blood in his entire body run cold.

It was the first time he had felt a sense of crisis since retiring from his life as an assassin.

It wasn’t just Pyo Wol.

Among the children, a few exceptional ones boasted particularly outstanding achievements. Their accomplishments were enough to threaten the existing instructors.

Their senses were developed to a degree that was hard to believe they were human. As they learned martial arts based on these developed senses, their achievements were beyond compare.

Their accomplishments made the instructors fearful.

The instructors’ assessment was that they would be perfectly fine even if deployed on an assassination mission immediately.

Pyo Wol was one of them.

Skin as white as snow from not having seen the sun for six years, eyes with a faint crimson glow, and an expressionless face.

The most handsome among the children was Go Shinok.

If Go Shinok had a slender body and a beautiful face reminiscent of a woman, Pyo Wol possessed a sensual beauty that was hard to describe in words.

Masculine and feminine features were mixed, exuding an androgynous charm.

Looking into Pyo Wol’s crimson-tinged eyes made one’s heart inexplicably shrink. Even for experienced assassins like Gu Yeokpyeong.

Pyo Wol opened his mouth.

“The training is over. May I rest now?”

“Ye-yes!”

Gu Yeokpyeong stuttered without realizing it.

Pyo Wol gave Gu Yeokpyeong a slight bow and turned around.

He felt Gu Yeokpyeong’s intense gaze on his back, but he pretended not to notice.

He had been in stealth, using the Breath Concealment Art, for a full three days.

Perfecting the Breath Concealment Art was good, but as a result, his muscles had stiffened and the function of his internal organs had declined.

To properly recover his body’s condition, he needed to perform Qi Circulation and breathing exercises quickly.

Pyo Wol’s residence was still in Sector One.

Six years had already passed since he came here. Most of the other children had moved their quarters to the main building, but Pyo Wol still insisted on staying here.

Pyo Wol only felt at ease when he was in a dark, stuffy space that felt damp and oppressive.

Six years of time had made him that way.

Pyo Wol settled down in a corner of the room.

There was no fear of being attacked from behind, and his forward view was clear, allowing him to react swiftly in case of an emergency.

For the past six years, Pyo Wol had lived like this.

He always moved with survival in mind, and he trusted no one.

Even when the other children formed and dissolved groups based on their interests, he remained alone, not getting swept up in it.

He was ostracized by many children because of it, but it was a familiar experience, so he didn’t pay it much mind.

Pyo Wol closed his eyes and quietly performed Qi Circulation.

The Mind Method he was operating was the Thunderclap Mind Method.

Even as the other children skipped the Poison Dragon Mind Method to learn more advanced Mind Methods, he still practiced only the Thunderclap Mind Method.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t looked at other Mind Methods at all. Pyo Wol had examined all the Mind Methods the instructors gave them. But each time, his conclusion was the same.

No other Mind Method could match the Thunderclap Mind Method.

For now, other Mind Methods might have superior destructive power, but as time went on, the gap would rapidly close. And soon, he would be able to surpass them.

As he operated the Thunderclap Mind Method, he felt a sensation as if lightning qi was piercing him from head to toe.

It was by no means a delusion.

After the Thunderclap Mind Method reached a certain level of mastery, Pyo Wol felt this sensation every day.

The Internal Energy cultivated through the Thunderclap Mind Method possessed the properties of lightning. Although it was so faint that it couldn’t even be discharged outside his body, it stimulated Pyo Wol’s nerves every day.

At first, it was just unpleasant.

The tingling in his nerves was accompanied by considerable pain.

He could have stopped at that point, but Pyo Wol paid it no mind and continued to train and study the Thunderclap Mind Method.

After five years of this, Pyo Wol realized that his body’s reaction speed had increased dramatically.

When he sensed a threat, his body would react and move before his mind could.

He didn’t know the reason at first, but after thinking for a long time, he soon figured it out.

The cause was the lightning qi.

The lightning qi had stimulated and developed his nerves.

One of the things he learned while practicing the Thunderclap Mind Method was that all of the body’s motor responses were, in fact, caused by lightning qi.

The reaction speed varied depending on how fast the lightning qi was transmitted. A person with fast lightning qi transmission would react that much faster, while a person with slower transmission would have a slower speed of perception and reaction.

All this time, Pyo Wol had consistently stimulated the nerves throughout his body with the Thunderclap Mind Method. As a result, his nerves had developed to a point that others could not dare to follow.

Because of this, his reaction speed was on a level that the other children could not hope to match. Even if they learned and performed the same martial arts, their speed was bound to be different.

Something else had changed as well.

It was what Pyo Wol had named Heart Speed.

The expansion of his neural network had also increased the speed of his thoughts.

His thought process had become so much faster that it was as if Pyo Wol alone was thinking in a different flow of time.

Pyo Wol thoroughly hid all these facts.

He only showed his talent in miscellaneous skills like the Breath Concealment Art and Stealth Skill, while keeping his other martial arts roughly at the level of the other children.

The only person who knew these facts was Pyo Wol himself.

To escape this hellish place, he had to hide not just thirty percent, but at least fifty percent or more of his true abilities.

Thus, Pyo Wol had endured the past six years.

One thing that made him uneasy was that the Thunderclap Mind Method was no longer showing any progress.

He needed a slightly higher-level Mind Method.

A Mind Method that would expand upon the Thunderclap Mind Method and guide it properly.

But obtaining such a Mind Method in this place was impossible.

The Mind Methods given by the instructors were all shallow, quick-fix types. Such Mind Methods were a great help for immediate achievement, but their limits were all too clear when looking at the distant future.

Pyo Wol had two options.

Continue to practice and develop the Thunderclap Mind Method as it was, or go out into the Jianghu and learn another helpful Mind Method.

But considering the latter was almost impossible, the only immediate option left was the former.

‘Whether I live or die, I have no choice but to cling to the Thunderclap Mind Method…’

Pyo Wol thought it was fate that he had come to learn the Thunderclap Mind Method.

All the children who entered this place had learned the Thunderclap Mind Method, but he was the only one who had delved deep into it.

Because of that, the others did not know that the Thunderclap Mind Method had such benefits. And they would never know.

They had already forgotten the Thunderclap Mind Method and were delving into other Mind Methods.

Pyo Wol had destroyed the original copy of the Thunderclap Mind Method.

Still, no one cared. Not the children, and not even the instructors.

The Thunderclap Mind Method was now completely Pyo Wol’s.

Pyo Wol opened his eyes, having finished his Qi Circulation.

For a moment, the crimson light in his eyes deepened. But the red glow soon subsided.

Pyo Wol briefly looked around.

The snake that had bitten him was no longer in sight.

It had disappeared at some point, so it was clear that it had either died or moved elsewhere in search of prey.

Pyo Wol showed a fleeting expression of disappointment, but he soon left his room with an indifferent face.

The place he headed for was the largest building in the underground cavern.

As he arrived at the entrance of the building, he felt furtive gazes from all around. They were the gazes of the children.

“Kekeke! Look who it is. What brings his highness all the way here?”

One of them revealed himself and greeted Pyo Wol.

He was a boy with a slightly hunched back, a neck stretched out long like a turtle’s, and a gloomy gaze that left an impression.

His name was So Gyeoksan. The other children all called him the Hunchback, or the Soul-Devouring Wolf.

So Gyeoksan was said to be from a troupe of acrobats who performed miscellaneous acts. Perhaps because of that, he had many talents, but the most surprising was a skill called Face-Ripping.

Face-Ripping was a technique of drawing a person’s face on silk, layering several of these over one’s own face, and then instantly tearing them off to change faces.

Even if you stared with wide eyes, you couldn’t catch the moment the face changed, and So Gyeoksan was an expert at Face-Ripping.

However, there was something different from normal Face-Ripping. He didn’t draw faces on silk.

He performed Face-Ripping by peeling off the facial skin of dead children, and it was so seamless that it was difficult to tell if it was real or fake.

Many shunned him because he used the faces of dead children as if they were his own.

Pyo Wol opened his mouth.

“Your face has changed again. Is that Yoo Gwangin’s face?”

“Kekeke! He kicked the bucket a while ago. So I’m using his face.”

“If you keep doing that, you might forget your own face.”

“So what? It’s not like we can get out of this place anyway. If I didn’t do things like this, I would have gone crazy already.”

“If you keep that up, you’ll be killed by someone before you go crazy.”

“Who? You?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Kekeke! You tell some unfunny jokes.”

“Does it sound like a joke?”

“I’m saying I hope it’s a joke.”

As Pyo Wol’s voice lowered slightly, a look of tension appeared on So Gyeoksan’s face.

‘Damn bastard.’

So Gyeoksan feared nothing in the world, but for some reason, he felt an uneasy feeling when it came to Pyo Wol.

Over the past six years, he had grown frighteningly.

He had achieved a level of accomplishment that was by no means inferior even when compared to So Yeowol and others who had shown promise in the early days.

Because of that, he did not fear So Yeowol or the other children. But for some strange reason, he was wary of Pyo Wol alone.

Perhaps it was because the image Pyo Wol had shown in the beginning was that intense.

The violence Pyo Wol had inflicted on Yeom Iljung at that time was that horrifying. But a lot of time had passed.

The children had grown up that much.

Now, any of the children here could gouge out a person’s eyeball with a smile.

They had become that vicious, and that cruel. But even such children would strangely feel a sense of unease and shrink back whenever they saw Pyo Wol.

Beyond mere martial arts skill, there was something about Pyo Wol that made people afraid. So even if he resolved to teach him a lesson someday, he kept putting it off.

So Gyeoksan spoke, forcing a nonchalant expression.

“Go on in.”

Pyo Wol walked past So Gyeoksan and entered the building.

The inside of the building was quite cozy.

He could feel the warmth of human life.

As Pyo Wol entered, the children who were sitting down looked up at him.

So Yeowol, Song Cheonwoo, Go Shinok, Kang Il, Lee Min.

They were the children who had grown to be exceptionally outstanding among those who had survived to the end.

Now, even the instructors could not treat them carelessly.

Their achievements had surpassed the instructors’ expectations. Because of that, they had reached a point where they could not be controlled by anyone other than the likes of Il-geom, I-geom, or Sam-geom.

The children had a bonfire going and were grilling something.

Pyo Wol naturally sat down among them.

The children did not seem wary of Pyo Wol either.

There was no reason to be friendly just because they hadn’t seen him in a while, but there was also no reason to exclude each other.

Although Pyo Wol moved alone like oil that couldn’t mix with water, he had never caused them any particular harm, so the children accepted him as a member.

Pyo Wol picked up one of the skewers being grilled over the bonfire and opened his mouth.

“Looks like they’re starting to care. Sending us meat and all.”

“The quality of the food has gotten much better recently.”

So Yeowol said as she added wood to the bonfire.

Her gaze was incredibly deep and profound. It was to the point where you felt like you were being sucked in if you looked into her eyes. Countless children had been mesmerized by her gaze.

Pyo Wol thought as he tore at the meat.

‘It seems the time to be deployed on a mission is approaching.’

Even a pig is given delicious food before it’s slaughtered.

If the people who had given the children just enough food to endure suddenly gave them plenty, there was only one reason.

Suddenly, his eyes met So Yeowol’s.

Her gaze was as deeply sunken as Pyo Wol’s.

It was clear that she had also guessed what Pyo Wol had surmised.

So Yeowol said,

“Soon, we will be deployed on a mission.”

Fwoosh!

At that moment, the bonfire blazed more fiercely, dyeing the children’s faces red.