Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Songshan Shaolin Temple.

Into the innermost depths of this place — the undisputed foremost martial sect of the Orthodox faction — a single pale shadow slipped through the cover of night and glided softly inward.

Clearing the mountain gate halfway up Sosilbong, the hazy silhouette brushed past even treacherous strongholds like the Scripture Pavilion, the Precepts Hall, and the Arhat Hall as smoothly as the night air itself.

The killing mission, launched at the tail end of the Ox Hour, flowed onward without the slightest obstruction, like water finding its course.

And the final destination reached at the end of that path.

The Abbot's Chamber.

"......"

Standing in the corner of the small courtyard before it, Annihilation steadied his breathing for a moment before moving onward with steps even more cautious and meticulous than before, padding forward with feather-light care.

Given that the target's level of martial prowess was what it was.

Rather than clumsily deploying concealment arts and provoking his opponent's keen qi sense, he chose the opposite approach — pressing his internal power firmly down to suppress it, and instead making full use of the physical agility he had honed externally over the years.

"......"

Swish. Hush. Swish.

Despite clearly advancing forward, not a single footprint was left upon the shallow sand.

It was not as though he had even deployed some lofty stepping art like Treading Snow Without Trace.

Yet befitting his infamy as the most dreaded Reaper of the age, it was a terrifying prowess — one that deceived even his own body's weight like a trick, without expending a single grain of internal power.

Slide.

From the moment he slipped through the crack of the door he had noiselessly pried open, vanishing as if seeping through it —

The time he had spent traversing a mere thirty feet was a staggering full hour.

'It's time.'

But paying no mind to that grueling effort, Annihilation focused solely on the imminent encounter with his target, now right before his eyes.

Passing through the outer receiving chamber — an empty, open space — he finally entered the inner quarters.

At the very center of that pitiful room, far too meager for the dwelling of the Shaolin Abbot who commanded all the martial world, a tiny old man of barely five feet lay still upon aged bedding.

A face he had never seen before in his life.

Yet from the weighty waves of qi leaking out in minuscule amounts even in sleep, Annihilation could harbor not the slightest doubt about the man's identity.

'Martial World Registry, rank three. Fist God Hyejong.'

What manner of martial feat must a mere human body achieve to be bestowed the audacious epithet of God by the masses?

It was a question that flickered through his mind for an instant, but Annihilation swiftly wiped even that idle thought clean from his head.

God or immortal, it didn't matter.

'I kill him.'

Tonight, the colossus ranked third in the martial world would have his life cut short in his own quarters without ever knowing why.

"......"

In stark contrast to the killing intent sharpening ever more keenly within his heart, the presence of Annihilation — standing a mere five feet from his target — scattered ever more faintly into nothing.

He had already constricted his breathing and heartbeat to a degree rivaling the Turtle Breathing Technique.

Yet even that he deemed insufficient, and so, on the cusp of the kill — the final act that was both the last step and the entirety of the mission — he began to plunge his own body temperature into a rapid drop.

Down to a state befitting the desolate, biting cold air at the end of the Ox Hour.

With all preparations thus complete, he shifted one foot microscopically forward.

'......Not enough.'

The divine weapon Soul Severance, gripped tight in his fist, could reach the target from here.

But it was a subtly, frustratingly ambiguous distance for delivering a perfect, undisturbed death.

Just one more step forward, and he felt he could guarantee success with certainty.

"......"

Within that sliver of distance hardly worth calling a gap, he could not be certain whether his concealment would go undetected by his opponent.

Trickle.

By the time he had stood there frozen, dagger in hand, in that awkward half-crouch for roughly a quarter of an hour —

Only when a tiny bead of sweat rolled down from his brow and gathered on his eyebrow did Annihilation finally reach a decision in his heart.

'No choice.'

The conclusion reached after calculating dozens of possible scenarios in his head over the span of a single cup of tea.

It was a resolve to cut flesh and sever bone — one that placed more weight on the target's certain death than on his own safety.

A deadly conviction that even if he were ultimately discovered, he would sever the old monk's life without fail.

As an assassin, no value could ever take precedence over the target's death.

That was the end of it.

FLASH—!

SQUELCH—!

"!!!"

FLARE—!

CRASH—! CLATTER—!

"Guh!"

"Kh— Khhaaagh...!"

Soul Severance plunged deep beneath the old monk's chin, burying itself up to the hilt in that slender, exposed throat.

At the same instant, Hyejong — detecting the assault — desperately unleashed a full-powered protective qi barrier with everything he had.

"Gakh! Krrgh! Grrk!"

But with his throat already torn apart and every blood vessel and qi meridian leading to his head laid waste, there was no means of survival — not even for a master who looked down upon the world.

All he could do was clutch his own neck with both hands as crimson blood surged terrifyingly upward, and glare with murderous ferocity at the Reaper who had come calling in the dead of night.

To chase down and punish the assailant, even the last flicker of life draining away at such speed was too precious to spend.

"Guk! BLEGH!"

The one who had carried out the kill, meanwhile, was not entirely unscathed either.

The terrifying protective qi barrier that had erupted the instant Hyejong's will surged — that alone had become a viciously brutal weapon.

Having taken that monstrous force head-on at point-blank range with no defense whatsoever —

"Urgh!"

On top of his insides being churned into ruin, it was only natural that his flesh would peel away in strips as if burned.

He had steeled himself for the sacrifice of his own flesh, but now that he was actually in that state, his vision spun in dizzying spirals.

And to make matters worse, as if piling calamity upon calamity —

{You wreeetch!}

Hyejong, realizing he could not stave off the death that had come for him, began pouring forth a terrifying pressure in surging waves, befitting his fearsome epithet of Fist God.

On top of that —

"What is this commotion?!"

"The Abbot's Chamber! Something has gone wrong at the Abbot's Chamber!"

Shaolin's most formidable masters, roused by the qi wave that had erupted like fire in the middle of the night, were waking in droves and directing their attention this way one after another.

"Ptui!"

SWOOSH—!

Annihilation could not even think of retrieving his cherished weapon Soul Severance, and had no choice but to flee the Abbot's Chamber with every ounce of strength he had.

{You wreeetch! You think you'll escape unscathed after this?! You abomination deserving of heaven and man's wrath!}

All the while, a painstakingly articulated curse bored like needles into the back of his skull.

That was no mere voice.

'......A monster in every sense of the word.'

Wisdom-Light Mind Speech.

It was not a qi transmission whispered into the ear, but a supreme art of inner power that rammed intent directly into the mind.

'I nearly failed.'

SWOOSH—!

But for Annihilation, now fleeing for his life with no thought of concealment, the only thing that mattered was the fact that the assassination had succeeded, whatever else might follow.

Wisdom-Light Mind Speech or whatever it was — in the end, even that extraordinary master had not escaped his killing hand.

"Guh!"

Of course, his own consciousness was flickering on the verge of snuffing out at any moment, forcibly held together by sheer will, so he was hardly in pristine condition himself.

'To the safe house...... I'm going.'

CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG—!

WHOOSH—! WHOOSH—!

"Intruders!"

"The Ab— the Abbot! Abboooot!"

"Find the assassin! Quickly!"

Murmur, murmur!

Clamor, clamor!

The fierce tolling of alarm bells reverberating from behind, the trivial noise and shouts of countless people, and the torches blooming one after another in every direction — he turned his back on all of it.

Sliiide.

The silhouette of Annihilation, having scaled Shaolin's wall at last, vanished like a trick into the murky shadows at the entrance of Sosilbong.

***

News of the death of the Fist God — the Shaolin Abbot, hailed as the greatest of the Orthodox faction.

As the saying goes, a word without feet travels a thousand leagues. Despite Shaolin's rigorous efforts to seal lips within its walls, the rumor had already spread beyond Hanam and was fanning out across the land.

Because of that, the martial world had lately been brimming with this story wherever one went.

"Heavens! How could the Shaolin Abbot end up like...!"

"Assassination! How on earth could anyone do that to the Fist God...!"

"And they say it happened while he was sleeping in the Abbot's Chamber, no less? Just how lax must Shaolin's security have been...?"

And that was most intense within Hanam itself, where the incident had occurred.

"I hear it was that one again this time?"

"The Soul-Severing Wanderer? But Shaolin adamantly insists it wasn't him."

"......This is something I heard from a friend of my cousin......"

"Ah! The one who's Shaolin lay clergy?"

"That's right, that's right. According to him, the Soul-Severing Wanderer's usual mark wasn't left behind, but the dagger he always used was found in the Abbot's Chamber......"

Whisper, whisper.

Given their proximity to Songshan here in Nakyang, it was not the sort of thing to speak of carelessly, and so the merchants quickly lowered their voices to murmur among themselves.

And right behind them —

'Is there a way to retrieve Soul Severance?'

Annihilation, disguised as an ordinary commoner, sat barely touching the dumplings on the table before him, his ears sharply attuned to the conversations around him.

By rights, he should have been at the safe house here in Nakyang by now, focused on treating his wounds and tending to his internal injuries.

But for reasons unknown, the formation leading to the safe house had been sealed shut.

Unable to fathom why, he had hidden himself among the populace with his wounds still untended.

That was now the tenth day.

No matter how blinded by fury Shaolin might be, they could not tear through innocent commoners and cause a scene — and that judgment had proven precisely correct.

At present, Shaolin was simply fuming in place, unable to find a target for its wrath.

The problem was how to treat the considerable internal injuries he had not yet been able to touch, along with the unsightly external wounds — the skin peeled away across his torso and both legs.

'The main Sect should be sending word soon.'

Even that did not particularly worry him.

The safe house being sealed was an unexpected variable, but there were several other channels through which orders could be relayed.

And that night.

Just as he had done for the past nine nights, Annihilation headed for the back of a gambling den on Nakyang's main street, where he finally laid eyes on a message unmistakably sent from above.

Two characters carved into the filth between shadowy heaps of refuse.

Return.

'At last...!'

It was the first order to return he had received in a full twenty years since his first killing mission in the Central Plains.

***

Though his body was in shambles, Annihilation's steps toward Cheonsan in Singang were lighter than ever.

The total number of killing missions he had carried out in the Central Plains: one thousand.

It was a path of glory — returning after completing every last one of those missions without a single failure.

'That's everything.'

With this overwhelming record — one that no one in the history of the Phantom Slaughter Sect had ever achieved — surely even someone of lowly birth like himself could spend the rest of his days in comfort at the main Cult.

'Mother.'

The prospect of reuniting with the mother and two younger sisters he had been separated from for a full twenty years was also a crucial factor in lifting his spirits for the first time in an age.

The years spent casting away emotion, killing even his own heart.

The root that had sustained him through it all — forgetting his original name and clinging stubbornly to life under the designation of Annihilation — was the existence of the family he had never once doubted he would see again someday.

No matter how much blood had been stained upon his hands until now, it was enough so long as his remaining family could enjoy peaceful days at the main Cult, reaping the benefits.

He, too, had fulfilled every condition imposed upon him by the Phantom Slaughter Sect to which he belonged, and would likewise obtain a life of tranquility.

And so the worst Reaper in the world, the one the Central Plains called the Soul-Severing Wanderer, would never appear anywhere again — or so Annihilation believed.

Diligently practicing the smile he would show his family when they met again after a full twenty years.

But Cheonsan, reached after a grueling month of travel in his wounded body, greeted him with a landscape vastly different from what he had expected.

"Th-this...!"

The village where he had spent his childhood with his family had vanished without a trace.

In its place, only a desolate plain where not a single blade of grass grew properly remained, sitting empty and alone.