Descent of the Demon Master

Ding-dong!

“Hey, Ju-Chan? Sorry about this, but I still wanted to talk to you more about... Huh?”

Kim Won-Hyeok scanned the interior of the cafe. For some reason, he couldn’t sense people’s presence.

‘...Is that the smell of a cigarette?’

Kim Won-Hyeok’s expression crumpled. Which cafe would allow people to smoke freely inside, unless it was in a separate smoker’s area?

He immediately realized how strong the cigarette smell was, too.

He snapped his head in the direction of the smell’s source, only for his brows to furrow deeply. A round table somewhere in the middle of the cafe was in a messy state, with untouched drinks still present. What caught his attention was a cigarette stub floating in one of those drinks.

‘What the hell happened in here?’

Kim Won-Hyeok instinctively realized something had happened while he wasn’t here and scanned the interior of the cafe again. He still couldn’t sense anyone. In that case, what next?

Kim Won-Hyeok’s perception shifted to the rear entrance of the cafe. While pushing his senses to their maximum level, he hurriedly exited through the back. That was when he immediately sensed the presence of several people by the alleyway next to this one.

He unhesitantly rushed to that alleyway. What he saw next was enough to furrow his brow.

“That’s why you shouldn’t have acted like an entitled brat, okay? You picked a wrong person to act all so high and mighty with!”

Four men oozing the distinctive aura of neighborhood thugs had Seong Ju-Chan surrounded. It seemed acts of violence had already taken place, judging from Seong Ju-Chan’s burst lips and swollen face.

“Hey, you sons of b*tches!”

Kim Won-Hyeok, now thoroughly enraged, rushed up to the thugs while clenching his fists.

“Who the f*ck is that now?”

“Hey, would you look at that? He’s clenching his fists.”

Just before Kim Won-Hyeok could pummel these bastards to the ground, Seong Ju-Chan loudly cried out first. “No, don’t!”

“...!”

Kim Won-Hyeok’s brows shot up at how determined his friend sounded just then. “What? But you...”

“I said, don’t do it, man!”

“...Huh.”

Kim Won-Hyeok let out a hollow chuckle just then. Was his friend really telling him to spare these pieces of human sh*t?

“Look at these motherf*ckers. Do they think this is a f*cking joke? Hey, you, come here! What was that? Don’t do what?”

Slap! Slap, slap!

The thug in front of Seong Ju-Chan roughly slapped the latter’s face several times. However, Seong Ju-Chan didn’t fight back and let the thug hit him.

Kim Won-Hyeok roared in anger. “Hey, you piece of sh*t! Touch him again, and I’m gonna break your f*cking arms!”

“Ohh, really now?”

SLAP!

The thug slapped Seong Ju-Chan one more time, then glanced at Kim Won-Hyeok.

“Oopsie. So I slapped him. Now what?”

Kim Won-Hyeok glared at the thug before pulling out his phone and dialing the emergency number.

“Police? Yes, I want to report thugs beating someone up on the street. The address is...”

“What the f*ck?!”

“That stinking motherf*cker!”

The thugs shouted in irritation while backing off.

“F*ck! Mister Manager, you got lucky this time. But we’re gonna f*ck you up when we meet again next time!”

The thugs kept spewing tough guy nonsense even as they retreated. Eventually, though, their retreat broke into a full-on sprint out of there.

“...F*ck!” Kim Won-Hyeok spat on the ground after watching the thugs run away and walked up to Seong Ju-Chan. “Hey, man. You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Honestly.”

“What the f*ck! Your mouth is all swollen and sh*t, man!”

“Those losers can’t hurt me. Compared to all the sh*t I’ve gone through already, this is nothing.”

“You idiot! Not relying on your cultivation isn’t the same as not fighting back, okay? You could’ve beaten those bastards in less than three seconds even without using qi, so why did you let them hit you, man!”

Seong Ju-Chan’s swollen face distorted into a smirk.

“Maybe I am an idiot, that’s why.”

“Come on, man!”

“...But that’s how it all starts, though.”

Kim Won-Hyeok frowned in confusion. “What? What are you saying?”

Seong Ju-Chan carefully rubbed his swollen mouth. “You keep telling yourself it’ll be fine as long as you don’t cross this line, that not resorting to your qi should be fine. If you keep doing that, though, sooner rather than later, you’ll want to get into a situation where relying on your cultivation is a must. Since that’s the case, I might as well not start from the get-go.”

“What? Even if that’s true...!”

“I wouldn’t have started this whole thing if I was gonna half-ass it. Besides, this is nothing, okay? If this is something every business owner must go through... I’ll gladly go through it.”

“Gimme a break, you idiot. Who just stands there when someone’s hitting them?!”

“...Keep it down, will ya? My head is ringing.”

“Oh, now it hurts? You moron.”

Seong Ju-Chan took out his phone to look at the state of his face. “This is bad... How am I supposed to serve customers with a face like this?”

Kim Won-Hyeok tutted. “Circulate your qi. Hurry.”

“Huh? But we’re forbidden from using our qi.”

“No, you’re forbidden from using qi to beat up ordinary people! If the higher-ups didn’t want you to use qi even in situations like this, they’d have destroyed your cultivation!”

“Ah... You have a point there.”

Seong Ju-Chan sat crossed-legged on the spot. External injuries of this level could be dealt with, more or less, via thirty minutes of qi circulation. That should fix his appearance pretty well, although his internal injuries would still remain to some degree.

Kim Won-Hyeok gritted his teeth as his friend started circulating qi according to the cultivation method.

‘Those sons of b*tches!’

If it were up to him, he’d have chased after those thugs and ripped them apart to pieces. Not because this situation with Seong Ju-Chan had pissed him off, though.

These thugs caused a scene in the middle of morning and even assaulted another person. If left alone, they’d obviously repeat their behavior somewhere else.

Unfortunately, Kim Won-Hyeok couldn’t leave his friend here unprotected while circulating qi to recover.

‘Dammit! I hope we run into each other again, you as*holes!’

Kim Won-Hyeok’s teeth gritting grew louder. Even if he got punished for hurting powerless ordinary people, he still swore to make those thugs pay.

***

“F*ck, man. We stepped on sh*t so damn early in the morning.”

After running away at the threat of cops showing up, the thugs eventually slowed down and began sucking on their cigarettes.

“Hey, cops won’t chase after us this far, right?”

“Hah! Have you ever seen pigs working their asses off like that before? They’ll probably search around the place a bit and then leave.”[1]

“What about the CCTV footage, though?”

“You think the pigs will identify us from that grainy footage? No f*cking way, man. Stop pissing in your pants, alright?”

An unexplainable excitement, a buzz, filled these young thugs up. Breaking the law in a society governed by strict rules would always leave them with this euphoric feeling. They did whatever they felt like; this was how they chose to live their lives. Although they had to pay a few times for their lifestyle choices, the payment itself was too negligible to make them change their ways.

The one who slapped Seong Ju-Chan scowled deeply. “F*ck! The more I think about this, the more pissed I get. Should I go back there in the evening?”

“Why? Haven’t we slapped the f*cker around enough?”

“But that f*cker was smirking when we were beating him up, right? That pisses me off.”

“Don’t be stupid. If the cops catch you for this, you ain’t coming out for a long time.”

“I’ll go alone if I have to, okay? I gotta f*ck that place up real bad until it’s gone... Huh?”

That was when his shoulder clattered against another passerby with a loud bang.

Despite the passerby being smaller in stature, the thug’s reward for nonchalantly running into him was landing painfully on his butt.

“What the f*ck?!”

The passerby stared disinterestedly at the thug on the ground, then entered a nearby alleyway in a lazy gait.

“What the hell?! Is he f*cking crazy?!”

“Get him! Get that motherf*cker!”

The thugs rushed into the alleyway, and after spotting the passerby in the distance, their eyes began burning furiously.

“He’s running away! Hurry up and catch that f*cker!”

“This alleyway leads to a dead end, though?”

“I don’t give a sh*t! Catch the f*cker first!”

All four thugs rushed deeper into the alleyway. What they discovered after reaching the deeper part was the passerby waiting for them, his back to the wall.

“Uh-whew!”

The thugs panted and wheezed out of breath, then walked over to the passerby while cocking their heads threateningly.

“What the f*ck, you stinking little motherf*cker! You should apologize if you bump into someone, no? Korea is supposed to be a courteous country, so who would want trash like you around here?”

“Don’t worry, these big bros will teach you what manners are... Eh?”

The passerby suddenly pushed forward something at the thugs. And it was a... paper bag? Not just any paper bag, but one that was filled with something.

“...What’s this? A present for us?”

“Hah, this f*cker. You trying to turn us into robbers, too? You think we’re trying to rob you or something?”

That was when the passerby slowly grabbed the bottom of the paper bag, then unhesitantly ripped it open.

Clatter!

The bag tore open at the bottom, causing what it contained to spill to the ground. And there were a lot of them, too.

“W-what’s that?” 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

“Coffee... beans?”

Indeed, the objects falling to the ground happened to be coffee beans.

“What the f*ck? Is this punk insane or what? Why dump that sh*t here?”

The passerby confirmed that the bag was empty before crumpling it and throwing it away. He then pointed at the beans with a simple flick of his chin.

“Pick them up.”

“...?”

“Every single bean. Don’t leave a single one behind.”

The thugs blinked their eyes in stupefaction while taking in the sight of this passerby. His age seemed early twenties? With a physique that was on the slender side, he didn’t seem all that threatening. So, with what guts was he trying to pick a fight with this quartet of thugs?

“Hey, dumbass, are you crazy?”

One of the thugs strode toward the passerby before grabbing the latter by the collar.

“Looks like you got a death wish or something. Or watched too many goddamn movies. But here’s the deal...!”

Grab!

That was when the passerby’s hand suddenly grabbed the thug’s face.

“Kkeuhk?!”

And then, the thug was slowly lifted off his feet. The other three thugs watched this spectacle unfold as their jaws fell.

That thug was easily over 100 kilograms in weight, yet the passerby had lifted him with one arm! Worse still, he did so without breaking a sweat, too!

Something unexplainable through logic was now unfolding right before their eyes.

“Aaaahck! Ahhhhk!”

The thug caught in the passerby’s grip began quivering pathetically. He desperately tried to free himself, but the hand gripping his face must’ve been made of solid steel or something similar. It didn’t budge an inch. As a matter of fact, the grip tightened more and more the harder he struggled!

“Aaaaaaaahk!”

Just before everyone here thought the thug’s head might explode!

Plop!

The hand finally let go, and the thug landed ungainly on the ground before tumbling around to the side.

The passerby, Kang Jin-Ho, coldly observed this scene before addressing the thugs. “Pick them up.”

“...!”

The thugs instinctively realized they were in serious trouble this time.

“Figure out for yourselves what might happen if you miss even one bean. As a final warning...”

Kang Jin-Ho bared his fangs in a ferocious smirk.

“If I were you, I’d have started picking them up already.”

“...”

As the stupefied thugs couldn’t decide what to do, the thug with his face grabbed by Kang Jin-Ho hurriedly went down on his knees to pick up the coffee beans.

One of the thugs asked him. “What... are you doing, you moron?”

“Pick them up, now! You f*cking bastards! If you don’t want to die!”

Spit drooled out from the corner of his lips.

Those who had not experienced what it felt like to be gripped in that hand could never imagine the truth!

This man couldn’t be a human being. No human could handle another human being like that! As a man familiar with violence and physical strength, the thug could instinctively tell this slender young man possessed a scarcely believable amount of power.

Piss this young man off, and they would die for real! This fear motivated him to crawl on the ground with utter disregard for his pride.

Other thugs, trying to gauge the situation until then, also hesitantly got down to their knees and began picking up the coffee beans. Kang Jin-Ho remained icy-cold while observing the thugs before addressing them again.

“Looks like you’re pretty confident of your strength, so...”

Step, step!

Kang Jin-Ho walked up to the spot with the highest concentration of coffee beans and kicked them away, causing those tiny beans to scatter in every direction.

“You better pick every single bean up, or I’ll teach you how useless your power, the one thing you’re so proud of, is. You have ten minutes. Pick them up.”

Chills ran down the spines of the thugs. They could all feel that the young man wasn’t bluffing.

Their hands moved swiftly and quite desperately to pick up all the scattered coffee beans on the ground.

“C-can’t you see that one over there?! You f*cking moron!”

“Hurry the hell up, man! What the f*ck are you doing?”

“You son of a b*tch! Hurry the f*ck up!”

Kang Jin-Ho’s eyes narrowed to slits as he watched the thugs crawling around on the ground.

Soon, ten minutes passed by.

“W-we’ve picked them all up, sir!”

The heavily sweating thugs stood at attention before Kang Jin-Ho and put the beans into a bag.

“Have you now?”

Kang Jin-Ho stared at the bag of coffee beans, then walked toward a small rock by the corner of the alleyway. When he pushed that rock aside, an unclaimed coffee bean revealed itself.

“...!”

Kang Jin-Ho stared at this bean before turning around, the corners of his lips curling up suspiciously.

“It looks like you still haven’t taken my warning seriously...”

“N-no, sir! That’s not...”

“It’s fine, though,” said Kang Jin-Ho, a faint smirk etched on his face. “You’ll soon take it seriously, anyway.”

He leisurely closed in on the thugs, his smirk deepening.

As for the thugs, their complexion paled at the sight of the devil walking in closer and closer.

1. “Pig” is a derogatory term for police officers. ☜