Chapter 202: Maximizing Perception
Chapter 201 – Maximizing Perception
The resurrection of the Great Martial Arena. And the incident of publicly smashing the Patrol Squad under the Demon Gathering Law Hall on top of the Great Martial Arena.
All of it was enough to attract the attention of the surroundings.
The gazes pouring onto the Great Martial Arena rapidly increased.
‘It is faster than I thought.’
Smashing even the patrol squad members following the Patrol Squad Leader was for the sake of chipping away at the Heaven-Obeying Faction’s control, even if only by a little.
The crowds flocking to the Great Martial Arena, which had been designated as a forbidden area, was no different from proving that the Heaven-Obeying Faction had lost its control.
‘Even so, this speed is somewhat strange.’
The Orthodox Faction values justification. To use force, there had to be a valid reason for everything.
If they began to wield force as they pleased, they would not be recognized as Orthodox.
Therefore, they had no choice but to pay attention to the flow of public sentiment as well.
But it was not so for the Demonic Cult. In the matter of changing the Demonic Cult, the public sentiment of those who had failed as demonic practitioners did not become a significant variable.
‘Yet such people are moving so freely?’
If it was due to the limits of the Heaven-Obeying Faction’s power, then the Heaven-Obeying Faction’s current situation was truly nominal, no different from a sheep in a tiger’s skin.
It meant that it was loose enough to collapse even if left alone.
[Look at these guys?]
“What is it?”
[They are not controlling them, but letting them in?]
“……Pardon?”
They were letting them in instead of blocking them?
[If a house is on fire, what should you do?]
“You should pour water to put it out.”
[But they are pouring oil instead?]
“……They are?”
‘What are they thinking?’
They were strange fellows.
Not only did they move as I wanted, but they were also raising the stakes and making the board bigger.
“What is this, are they idiots?”
[They are indeed idiots. From the looks of it, they seem to be planning a wheel fight.]
“……Against me?”
I was the one who had clashed head-on in an internal energy confrontation with the Devouring Demonic Monarch, who had completed the Great Absorption Method, and won.
I did not know by what wonder my body had become like this, but under specific conditions, my internal energy was infinite.
To think they chose a wheel fight with the purpose of consuming my strength against someone like me.
‘It makes sense that they are thinking of a wheel fight, just as Master Heavenly Demon said.’
Perhaps the Heaven-Obeying Faction’s purpose was to show me crawling on top of the Great Martial Arena, exhausted and drained from fighting repeatedly, right down to the very bottom of the Demonic Cult, to utterly humiliate me.
Though from my perspective, it was a proper act of idiocy.
[A wheel fight… Pfft! The level of the Demonic Cult… Puhahaha!]
Master Zhang Sanfeng was laughing too much.
[Ho… Hoho… Wait… I shall go to the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss and laugh before coming back. …Khh! If I laugh here, it will ring in our disciple’s head… Puha!]
[……]
Even Master Bodhidharma joined in to mock.
It was the first time I saw Master Heavenly Demon unable to say anything while being mocked like this.
[Send a few fellows quickly. So I can fry them.]
Master Heavenly Demon ground his teeth viciously.
“We’ll see.”
[What do you mean we’ll see!]
Perhaps because he did not like my reply, Master Heavenly Demon’s voice became sharp.
[Kill them! A festival should be grand like a festival! The Great Martial Arena is not a place that ends with haha-hoho like when you were playing in the Orthodox Faction!]
That was also true.
A festival like a festival.
“A sacrifice to be offered for the sake of grandness is needed…”
‘How can I turn a person into a grand living sacrifice… thinking about it like this, I seem like a fucking crazy guy?’
The rationality built by the years spent living under the name Yeon Cheong-un defined the thought I had just come up with in that way.
‘But what can I do, the place is what it is.’
However, my sense of reality temporarily suppressed the rationality built up by my past life.
In a world where everyone had only one eye, if a person with two eyes went there, that person was the abnormality.
Right now, there was a need to keep one eye closed.
Since I would not live as the Heavenly Demon for thousands or tens of thousands of years anyway, let’s fold this sense of incompatibility and normal thoughts to one side and cherish them.
In the midst of organizing my thoughts like that.
“Blood Fist Demonic General! I challenge the lawless one who disrupts the Heavenly Demon Cult!”
Whether preparation was slowly finished, a fellow stepped forward.
Fortunately (?), he was a guy who did not do the idiotic thing of stepping onto the Great Martial Arena while showing off like the Patrol Squad Leader.
‘Demonic General-level…’
Demonic Sovereign, Demonic Emperor, Demonic King, Demonic Monarch, and Demonic General were the highest ranks representing the Demonic Cult.
The Demonic Cult had hierarchized society as a whole, from the very bottom to the highest rank.
The higher one went, the more benefits were given.
It was showing clearly before one’s eyes what kind of life a talented person could enjoy if they trained with painstaking effort.
It drove motivation by instigating desire.
It was the foundation that made the Demonic Cult strong.
‘But stagnant water is bound to rot.’
The problem was that equality of opportunity and fairness of outcome no longer existed.
For example, although one was called a Demonic General-level, their actual skill belonged to the lower stage.
A line was drawn where one could not overcome everything through talent alone.
‘What about this guy?’
The Demonic Monarch-level experts were masters who had established a school in the areas they were confident in.
Even the Devouring Demonic Monarch, who had received harsh criticism from the Heaven-Entering Divine Demonic Sovereign, was a skilled person who surpassed the elders of the Nine Sects.
I did not know how the Demonic General-level was.
When I gestured with my finger to bring it on, he rushed in, full of excitement.
“Hyaah!”
As he materialized his internal energy and loaded it onto his fist, in accordance with the word ‘Blood Fist’ in his title, a blood-colored red energy wavered.
However,
‘Slow.’
No matter how it might look to other people’s eyes, it looked extremely slow to me, who had heightened my senses.
To the point that, facing an attack that could crush a rock the size of a house right before my eyes, I was evaluating it and thinking of other things.
If I had responded seriously, I felt like I would have already struck him three times.
To think an expert who materialized internal energy looked weak.
I was able to find the reason quickly.
‘It is not only me who became stronger.’
The elixirs eaten last night based on the information designated by the Heavens were to replace the divine power of water.
It seemed that the side effect had also influenced Sang-hwa.
Water generates Wood. As Sang-hwa, who took root in the nerves, grew, my senses were growing at a crazy rate.
‘What happens if I unfold the Scripture-Refining Mind Method, which maximizes the sensory perception of the nerves, on top of this?’
A terrifying imagination arose.
[What are you doing?]
‘Ah, right. I am in the middle of a fight, aren’t I?’
It seemed I had lost my mind for a moment because the opponent looked so easy.
I hurriedly (?) responded to the attack flying right before my nose and dodged it.
Swoosh! Swoosh!
I narrowly parried the fist extending by the difference of a single sheet of paper.
A sneer hung on the mouth of the fellow called Blood Fist Demonic General.
“Hahat! How long are you going to keep dodging like a rat while claiming to be the Heavenly Demon! Are you planning to unfold the Lazy Donkey Roll next?”
As if thinking he had seized the momentum and intending to utterly humiliate me, he aimed for my flank with a whip-like whipping kick.
To avoid this attack, one had to roll on the ground like a donkey.
Since he told me not to dodge, I should not dodge.
I lightly kicked off the ground.
In an instant, the distance narrowed to the point that the opponent’s pupils were visible.
“Heok?!”
The lightly extended fist struck the Blood Fist Demonic General’s jaw.
Thud!!
“Keuh…”
It was a lightly extended fist on my part, but the result was not light.
Tip of his jaw, drawing a circle, rose high.
“Heo… Heup…”
The Blood Fist Demonic General’s pupils had already lost focus.
His appearance, struggling somehow not to lose consciousness, was quite a sight.
He was like a poorly grown zelkova tree.
It was a shape where his waist slipped out due to the collapse of his center of gravity, yet his mind was forcibly grabbing his collar and holding on.
I felt like I could highly evaluate his grit.
The posture of struggling to raise his body somehow despite being half-unconscious was not bad.
If only this place were not the Great Martial Arena.
‘You should have just collapsed instead.’
Master Heavenly Demon had said so.
That this place was not a place that would end with haha-hoho.
“You are making me the bad guy. Tsk!”
Seeing that his eyes had lost focus, his vision must have been at the level of sticking his head into murky water, yet the moment I approached, he threw a punch despite staggering.
“Yes, yes.”
The punch, which was not properly loaded with power, did not have the same energy as before.
Receiving that fist with my chest and approaching, I placed my hand on the Blood Fist Demonic General’s jaw.
“Rest now.”
Crack!
This time, it spun around completely.
With the sound of a dry branch breaking, the Blood Fist Demonic General fell face down on the ground.
“Next.”
As two workers quickly came in and cleared the corpse, a demonic practitioner who had been waiting leapt onto the Great Martial Arena.
“I am the Sutra Wheel Demonic General! The revenge of my comrade who died by your hand…!”
Smash!
I immediately narrowed the distance and threw a Wuji Palm.
A headless corpse rolled on the Great Martial Arena.
Although I had not perfectly mastered Master Heavenly Demon’s Wuji Palm, it was not a technique that could be easily blocked with just my current proficiency.
One of the Six Forms of Wuji, a martial art that Master Heavenly Demon had mentioned as the pinnacle of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.
Since he had tried to block it with a clumsy defense, it was natural that he was smashed in a single blow.
“Next.”
While the workers cleared the corpse, I looked toward one side of the Great Martial Arena.
The place where those waiting for their turn stood.
As if to give me absolutely no time to rest, they were even standing in an orderly (?) line.
It seemed true that they were thinking of a wheel fight, just as Master Heavenly Demon predicted.
“Isn’t it your turn?”
The face of the demonic practitioner at the very front stiffened the moment his eyes met mine.
“Tell the next corpse to come up.”
The demonic practitioner trembled with a stiff expression as if he had already become a corpse.
***
“Five…”
Im A-hyeong counted the number of Demonic General-level experts who had gone up onto the Great Martial Arena.
“Not even the time it takes to eat a meal has passed, and it’s already five.”
“Five…”
Beside him, Jeok So-byeok replied with a pale face.
It was also the number of Demonic General-level experts who had died on top of the Great Martial Arena.
“Doesn’t he seem to have become even stronger?”
“Hey, hey. Stop it. It gives me goosebumps.”
At Im A-hyeong’s mention, Jeok So-byeok, who had crossed hands with Yeon Cheong-un, shivered.
No matter how favorably one looked at it, it was a growth rate that did not make sense.
It was more likely that he had been hiding his strength because it was the territory of the Orthodox Faction.
Yeon Cheong-un, running wild on the Great Martial Arena, was showing a martial prowess no different from a monster.
It was a grandeur to the point of making one wonder if his martial prowess momentarily rivaled that of a Demonic Sovereign-level expert.
Jeok So-byeok, who had watched the fight with the Kunlun Sect expert at Mount Kunlun, thought it was entirely possible.
However.
“He is overexerting himself.”
“It seems he realized it is a wheel fight. He is finishing it without dragging it out.”
“He might get through today somehow, but if he fights like that, three days would be a long estimate.”
The Heaven-Obeying Faction experts watching from the side seemed to have different thoughts.
Im A-hyeong caught a vile scent in their voices.
Meanwhile, Yeom Jin-muk, who had not opened his mouth needlessly, spoke up.
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“The wheel fight.”
“…It is disgusting.”
Jeok So-byeok said in a low voice.
Yet, even though it was a low voice, ample emotion was embedded within it.
Yeom Jin-muk continued in a voice even lower than Jeok So-byeok’s.
“Do you have any thoughts of changing flags? I heard that the Heaven-Rebelling Faction is currently overflowing with people who are completely infatuated with that person.”
“You?”
At the dangerous proposal, Jeok So-byeok opened his eyes wide and was busy managing his surprised expression.
Im A-hyeong looked at Yeom Jin-muk with calm eyes.
“How do you know the reaction of the Heaven-Rebelling Faction side in such detail?”
“Why do you think?”
“…You, you were on that side.”
The Heaven-Rebelling Faction was mixed within the Heaven-Obeying Faction.
After a brief hesitation, Im A-hyeong asked Yeom Jin-muk, who had revealed his tail.
“What do you want?”
“As expected, talking to you is comfortable.”
Yeom Jin-muk grinned.