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Chapter 271: Revealing (1)

Bang Jin-Hun felt that way right at this moment. He was getting a crash course on how the word he had been using every day without too much thought came to be.

Had anyone really thought about this before? If a person ran into a tiger, they would be shocked by the animal\'s sheer size. People naively thought of tigers as merely \'big\' in a vague sense. However, they would finally learn the hard, cold truth when the tiger raised its torso and towered over them by the proverbial mile. The truth of how much larger a tiger was compared to them, that was! And when said tiger bared its fangs right in front of their faces... They would come to grips with the terrifying reality.

The reality of... the unbreachable chasm in strength! The reality of why the ancient humans called the tigers the \'mountain gods\' and worshiped them!

They would learn that a tiger wasn\'t some imaginary creature of a folktale that would get easily scared by an arrow from a passing scholar. No, they would learn how terrifying and awe-inducing a tiger was. An animal with untamed primal savagery!

A playful slap from a tiger\'s front paw was enough to tear a person\'s head off. A light little bite from its fangs could easily tear open a person\'s arteries. Only by experiencing such things would a human being understand that human language couldn\'t even express a quarter of a tiger\'s strength—the terror it inspired. And that was what Bang Jin-Hun felt right now.

He thought he had heard enough about Kang Jin-Ho from Cheon Tae-Hun\'s mouth. Indeed, he believed he could fully understand how terrifyingly strong this returner was from Cheon Tae-Hun\'s half-delirious rambling. But now...

Having witnessed Kang Jin-Ho unleashing his true self, Bang Jin-Hun finally understood the truth. He finally knew how arrogant he had been all this time.

“So, you want me to prove myself?” Kang Jin-Ho was smiling brightly. It was as if he found Bang Jin-Hun\'s demand too funny and could barely hold back his laughter. The meaning behind the smile was crystal clear as well. It was undoubtedly mockery.

Kang Jin-Ho turned his body slightly and walked around the table. "I have to say; I haven\'t heard that demand in a very, very long time."

There was a time in the past when people often demanded that from him. Back when he had to repeatedly prove himself.

It was the period after Kang Jin-Ho said goodbye to his master. Back then, everyone in the world seemed to be in a rush to become his enemy. After he repeatedly proved himself to all those demanding to know who he was, the demon cult came knocking afterward. They also wanted him to prove himself.

Kang Jin-Ho humored every one of their requests. And after a certain point in time, people demanding him to prove something to them simply... stopped showing up.

“Can you guess what happened to all those people demanding me to prove myself, Bang Jin-Hun?”

Bang Jin-Hun couldn\'t reply. The \'people\' Kang Jin-Ho referred to should be folks not from this era. Kang Jin-Ho had no qualms about killing people now, so how savage was he back in the past?

Bang Jin-Hun didn\'t even need to think too deeply to figure it out. He suddenly got up. It was unknown if he did that consciously. What was certain, though, was that he was already on his feet when Kang Jin-Ho came closer and closer.

His reaction seemed strange but unsurprising as well. What would be the most... \'correct\' thing for a person to do when they sensed that a wild predator had closed the distance to them?

That would be to stand up and prepare to run away. Even if running away wasn\'t an option, one didn\'t need to be a genius to figure out that being on two feet offered a wider range of possible responses than sitting down.

Unfortunately for Bang Jin-Hun, though, his response couldn\'t see the light of day.

Crunch...!

What a bizarre noise. The normal thing to do after hearing such a sound would be to figure out where it came from. However, Bang Jin-Hun didn’t need to do that, though because the noise came from too close to his own ears after all.

The sound of bones being ground came from Bang Jin-Hun\'s own throat after Kang Jin-Ho had grabbed it. For a brief moment, Bang Jin-Hun wondered if his neck was broken. He wanted to touch and inspect his neck to make sure right at that moment, but doing so was impossible. Kang Jin-Ho\'s glare as he stood in front of him forbade Bang Jin-Hun from even lifting a single finger.

“So, you want me to prove my worth?”

— How should I go about doing that?

That was the question contained in Kang Jin-Ho\'s glare.

This was the moment when Bang Jin-Hun realized something. And that was the unfortunate fact that he was the only \'thing\' in this place that could prove how strong and cruel Kang Jin-Ho was.

Almost immediately, Bang Jin-Hun started to regret what he said. Wasn\'t this the same as presenting his neck at the hungry lion and goading the creature to tear his head off with its sharp fangs? Unsurprisingly, the price for his arrogance was brutal.

Bang Jin-Hun, thinking that his neck would get broken at this rate, reflexively threw a right hook at Kang Jin-Ho\'s face, his fist flying at the speed of light. That was the instinct of a martial artist. A punch born out of the sense of danger!

Grab.

No one knew whether his choice was right or wrong. But the end result of it was far too clear to see. The fist flying toward Kang Jin-Ho\'s face was easily captured mid-air by Kang Jin-Ho\'s hand.

“Hmm. Should I praise you for this?” Kang Jin-Ho smirked softly. “To think you\'d throw a punch at me in this kind of situation. That proves you\'re indeed a martial artist—a martial artist whose body responds before their brain could think things through. The thing is, though... I like people like that.”

There was a clear hint of goodwill contained in Kang Jin-Ho’s voice.

“However, this and that are separate.”

Cruuuunch!

Bang Jin-Hun\'s right fist within Kang Jin-Ho\'s grip was crushed into a lump of meat.

Blood vessels burst within Bang Jin-Hun\'s eyes, turning the whites bloodshot. To experience the pain of all the bones in his fist getting crushed and torn apart while he was still wide awake was... Despite having trained his body through countless painful experiences before, Bang Jin-Hun still shivered briefly like he was having a seizure. He gritted his teeth so hard they even threatened to turn into powder, too!

However, no scream escaped from his mouth. He simply glared at Kang Jin-Ho as his face turned bright red like a fire monster after the blood vessels in his skin had burst.

"You have guts; I\'ll give you that," Kang Jin-Ho chuckled, seemingly satisfied by this response.

Every single individual unlucky enough to experience Kang Jin-Ho\'s methods was pathetically weak-kneed. Just a small taste of what was in store had been enough to make them burst into tears and beg for mercy. Of course, such reactions were what Kang Jin-Ho had been after all along, but he still felt disappointed after getting the desired results far too easily.

“Unfortunately for you, that\'s about it.”

Snap!

The sound was soft and nearly inaudible, as if a biscuit was broken in half. Bang Jin-Hun\'s head silently turned toward the origin of that noise. And the sight of his limp hand dangling in the air after his wrist was broken greeted him.

Bang Jin-Hun\'s right hand had been serving as his trusty weapon for the past few decades. So, to see it crushed and broken until it could only dangle limply in the air was a huge shock to Bang Jin-Hun\'s system. So much so that he became utterly speechless.

However, this experience also taught him what he had to say right now.

“I, I now understand!”

“Mm?” Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head.

"I now understand how strong you really are! You\'ve already proven it, without a doubt! That\'s why, please—"

“Oh, you want me to stop? Is that it?” Kang Jin-Ho cut Bang Jin-Hun off and smirked insidiously.

“Y-yes, that is it!” Bang Jin-Hun urgently replied.

However, he only got a chilling grin as a response. Kang Jin-Ho was clearly ridiculing him. Bang Jin-Hun felt his heart tumble to the pit of his stomach after facing that mocking grin.

“Sounds like you\'re mistaken about something here...” Kang Jin-Ho muttered as his grip on Bang Jin-Hun\'s throat tightened. Bang Jin-Hun\'s eyes bulged as breathing gradually got harder and harder for him. “I still haven\'t shown you everything just yet.”

Kang Jin-Ho\'s right hand pressed against Bang Jin-Ho\'s gut just below his solar plexus. Bang Jin-Hun\'s body started to shiver like a lone leaf against the winds.

No one could even guess what Kang Jin-Ho was thinking here. No, that wasn\'t true. Bang Jin-Hun knew. And it was because he knew that it was even more terrifying.

Crunch, cruuuunch!

Bang Jin-Hun\'s complexion went deathly pale. In the midst of this torture, he got to learn something new—the sound made by a human hand digging into another person\'s flesh—as well as what it would feel like to have his gut penetrated while he was still alive. And the kind of pain such a thing would inflict on him!

"Kuuuuhhh!" Martial Artist Bang Jin-Hun stifled his scream while his mental wall started to crumble. This man... this returner... He had to be a devil!

Now, he finally knew why Cheon Tae-Hun ended up in that broken state. Bang Jin-Hun figured that it was all because of Kang Jin-Ho’s terrifying strength. Cheon Tae-Hun was deathly scared of that strength, or so Bang Jin-Hun thought. However, he had been incredibly mistaken.

Bang Jin-Hun finally figured out why Cheon Tae-Hun was terrified of Kang Jin-Ho. Simply put... Kang Jin-Ho didn\'t know the meaning of not crossing the line.

Whenever a person interacted with their fellow human being, they would draw a line somewhere and say that the other person shouldn\'t cross it. Imagine a scene where a random passerby suddenly stabbed another person on the street for no reason. Afraid of suddenly getting stabbed, no one would be willing to walk around on the streets anymore.

Whenever humans interacted with their fellow human beings, they were all in a tacit agreement that the \'other person would not cross a certain line.’

However, such a thing didn\'t apply to Kang Jin-Ho. He existed outside that tacit agreement, and it made him capable of unleashing all sorts of horrors on Bang Jin-Hun. Without a shred of hesitation, he could cut Bang Jin-Hun\'s head off or nonchalantly break Bang Jin-Hun\'s wrist, then toy with the latter. And now, Kang Jin-Ho\'s hand was impaling Bang Jin-Hun through his gut.

What would it feel like to sense another person\'s hand touching one\'s intestines? In a \'mischievous\' manner, too?

Bang Jin-Hun\'s jaw went slack. It had to be some kind of a miracle that he was still sane. His martial prowess, built upon decades of harsh training regime—his martial arts, which he believed were second to none in this country, was rendered totally useless in this cruel moment.

He was nothing more than a slab of meat on a cutting board, no more, no less. Too bad for him, though... Kang Jin-Ho was emphatically not a chef skilled in the delicate handling of meat. No, he was more like an amateur knife wielder who just did whatever he wanted with the meat!

“Uu-waaaaaah!”

Bang Jin-Hun could no longer endure the torture and started screaming when Kang Jin-Ho\'s hand impaling his gut started to travel downward, all while tearing his flesh apart. That scream wasn\'t made by his body, but by his soul! It was a desperate plea for help that barely managed to break free from the bleak terror and intense pressure.

Soon after that, though...

“...Huh? Eh?” Bang Jin-Hun\'s eyes shot wide open.

A large hand was looming so close to his eyes. For some reason, it looked like a woman\'s hand judging from how delicate it looked. However, anyone could tell whose hand it was.

\'...Kang Jin-Ho?!\'

Kang Jin-Ho\'s hand was hovering in front of Bang Jin-Hun\'s face, which was rather odd.

That was definitely Kang Jin-Ho\'s right hand, wasn\'t it? But shouldn\'t that right hand be buried deep inside Bang Jin-Hun\'s gut right now? So, how could that right hand be in front of Bang Jin-Hun\'s face? Without a speck of blood on it, too?

Dazed and confused, Bang Jin-Hun urgently touched his gut to inspect it. And \'it\' wasn\'t there. The gaping hole that should have been there wasn’t present. That was when Bang Jin-Hun also realized that his right hand wasn’t broken. It was perfectly fine.

\'What just happened?\'

What did he experience just now? Those things were definitely not the product of his imagination. The pain from his broken hand and impaled gut was so vivid and real that he could still feel the dull ache even now. So, how...?

"Do you finally understand?" Kang Jin-Ho asked in a quiet voice before Bang Jin-Hun could compose himself.

Of course, Bang Jin-Hun was quick-witted to know what he had to do. It was obvious. Instead of moving his jaw with no strength in it, he focused his energy on urgently moving his head to nod away.

He nodded, and nodded some more.

Kang Jin-Ho watched Bang Jin-Hun nod away like a madman before quietly issuing his order. "Go and prepare yourself. I\'ll be calling on you soon. When that happens, you\'ll take control of the Martial Assembly and fight the Yeongnam Group. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, I do..." Bang Jin-Hun muttered in a voice that didn\'t sound like his own. But it still came out of his throat. Even though it was difficult to make sounds with his tired and strained vocal cords, he still managed to do it.

“Good. Well, then...” Kang Jin-Ho smirked softly. “I\'ll be in your care for a while.”

This was the moment when the devil acquired a chess piece called Bang Jin-Hun.