Chapter 558:
“No, you crazy bastard!”
Sa-ma, who had been watching with a dumbfounded expression, saw some beggar burst out with foam in his mouth.
“What are you doing! In this situation.”
“Shh!”
Wei Yan-ho made a panicked gesture, covering his mouth.
“Let’s go quickly, quickly.”
“What do you mean quickly go! Don’t you see that?”
Jang-il raised his hand and pointed at the Sa-mas.
The Sa-ma, who had suddenly been referred to as ‘that thing’—a pronoun he had never heard applied to himself in his entire life—unconsciously let his mouth fall open.
“Divine Strategist is being attacked! We need to save him quickly!”
“Who am I supposed to worry about!”
Wei Yan-ho shouted as if his insides were bursting.
“How old am I that I should be running around saving old men! The old men should be saving me! With all the experience they’ve accumulated rolling around in Jianghu, does it make sense for them to ask a green kid to save them?”
Puuk.
Divine Strategist felt as if someone had driven a nail into his chest.
“I came here to get help, not to give help! It’s not the first or second time you’ve caused trouble and asked me to solve it!”
Puuk!
Something kept stabbing him.
“I won’t do it! I said I won’t! Even if my luck is bad, it’s disgustingly bad! Why is there chaos everywhere I go! Why!”
Jang-il began trying to calm Wei Yan-ho down.
“Still, what can we do about it. It’s not like he did it on purpose. He’s just incompetent, so how can you curse him like that?”
Puuuuk!
The word ‘incompetent’ pierced Divine Strategist’s ears and stabbed his chest twice.
Divine Strategist’s body began trembling violently.
‘Those, those bastards like flatfish!’
There was no humiliation like this humiliation.
At this point, Divine Strategist couldn’t gauge whether Wei Yan-ho’s precise appearance was fortune or misfortune. The possibility of survival was certainly fortunate, but… wouldn’t it be better to just close his eyes tight and bite his tongue right now rather than survive after receiving such humiliation?
But it seemed Wei Yan-ho and Jang-il’s eyes couldn’t see Divine Strategist’s reaction.
“You should cause trouble in moderation! Whenever anything happens, it’s ‘trouble broke out here so solve it quickly. Something happened over there too so go check it out quickly.’ No! If I go around solving all that, what exactly does that old man do for work! Is playing around his job, playing around!”
It was the moment when Divine Strategist, called the busiest person in the Righteous Martial Alliance, was suddenly treated like an old man who just plays Go in his old age.
“Keu…”
When Divine Strategist clutched his chest, Sa-ma unconsciously opened his mouth.
“Are, are you alright?”
It was Sa-ma worrying about the condition of the person he had been trying to torture to death. If anyone saw this scene, the saying that only heartless murderers live in the Demonic Cult would definitely be wrong, but unfortunately there was no one watching this scene. It was an injustice for the Demonic Cult.
A Demonic Cult member was worrying about Divine Strategist, while someone who was supposedly from the Orthodox Sect was criticizing Divine Strategist—a strange spectacle was unfolding.
Jang-il tried to settle the situation.
“I acknowledge that he doesn’t really do proper work… but still, he does have some work to do, so wouldn’t it be better to save him?”
‘That beggar bastard!’
Divine Strategist’s eyes became bloodshot.
If only this matter could be resolved somehow and he survived, Divine Strategist vowed to pull out every single tooth of the Beggar’s Sect Branch Leader.
“Eh, can’t save him. Abandon him, abandon him.”
“…Hey, how can we abandon that gentleman?”
“If we have to abandon him, we have to. Look, don’t you see those old men?”
“Huh?”
Wei Yan-ho waved his hand dismissively.
“Can’t win, can’t win. It’s not just one, there are two of them. Rather than rushing in here and getting beaten up, let’s just continue on our way.”
“How can we go after seeing that, man!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. That’s how people’s hearts are. When you think about it, it leaves an unpleasant feeling. From the beginning, we never stopped by here. Just think of it as a dream and forget about it.”
“Should we?”
Divine Strategist raised his head and looked up at the sky.
‘What sin did I commit…’
To suffer such a fate in his later years.
No, thinking about it, maybe the sins he had committed were too deep, so he was suffering this fate. Divine Strategist sincerely apologized to all those he had harmed while living.
If they saw him in this state, they would probably forgive Divine Strategist too.
“So, so you’re really just going to leave?”
“What can we do about it. Look over there.”
Wei Yan-ho gestured with his chin toward Divine Strategist and Sa-ma.
“How can we save that?”
“True.”
“There should at least be some possibility to try something. His neck is already half severed, so how can we reattach that neck? Let’s just bury him nicely.”
Jang-il nodded in agreement.
‘Don’t agree, you beggar bastard!’
His insides were burning with rage.
If he opened his mouth now, it felt like fire would spew from his throat. Divine Strategist forcibly suppressed his explosive anger and slowly opened his mouth.
“Wei, Wei Yan-ho, you bastard…”
Sa-ma patted Divine Strategist’s shoulder.
“You’ll pass out at this rate. Calm down a bit.”
“…Keuung.”
“By the way, Wei Yan-ho, you said?”
Sa-ma looked at Wei Yan-ho with interested eyes.
If that bastard really was Wei Yan-ho…
‘Does that mean he broke through the main force?’
Sa-ma’s eyes narrowed slightly. No matter how absent the bishops were, and even if Doma and Blood Demon hadn’t stepped forward personally, breaking through them and arriving at this place was remarkable.
“Are you Wei Yan-ho?”
“I said I’m not!”
Wei Yan-ho firmly waved his hand in denial.
“…Huh?”
Sa-ma looked at Wei Yan-ho with bewildered eyes.
“You said you’re not, so why do you keep saying that. You’ve mistaken me for someone else!”
“No, no, didn’t Divine Strategist call you Wei Yan-ho?”
“He must have seen wrong. Maybe his eyes are dim because of his age.”
“That little shit…”
A groan-like curse burst from Divine Strategist’s mouth.
Sa-ma couldn’t help but feel bewildered.
‘No, what kind of crazy bastard is this?’
He had heard stories about Wei Yan-ho until he was sick of them. Given the Demonic Cult’s nature of not having particularly major incidents, information about Jianghu was always of great interest.
In such a Demonic Cult, the name most frequently mentioned recently was precisely Wei Yan-ho. So there was no way he wouldn’t know about Wei Yan-ho. But…
‘Isn’t this worse than I thought?’
He had heard that Wei Yan-ho wasn’t in his right mind. But he had only heard talk of him being crazy, crazy—who could have imagined he really wasn’t in his right mind to this extent?
“You’re as eccentric as I heard.”
“I said you’ve never heard of me. Old man, can’t you understand what people are saying?”
“…Old, old man?”
Now he wasn’t even angry.
Could there be even one person in the world who could call the great Sa-ma ‘old man’?
“I said I’m not that kind of person.”
Just how far did he have to play along?
Sa-ma’s patience was beginning to run out.
“Then…”
“Stop.”
Sa-ma’s chilly voice caught Wei Yan-ho’s back. Wei Yan-ho frowned deeply and turned his head.
“Why?”
“I don’t know how you managed to escape our cult’s pursuit, but now that you’ve caught my eye, that luck won’t continue. You don’t believe you can infiltrate the cult, rampage, and still live, do you?”
“Did you see it?”
“…What?”
“Did you see me rampaging there?”
“…”
“Then why are you grabbing an innocent person without even seeing it? Anyone would think you watched from the sidelines.”
“You, you…”
Sa-ma could perfectly understand Divine Strategist’s feelings. His insides were turning over and rage was boiling.
“This bastard dares…”
That was the moment.
‘Hmm?’
Sa-ma noticed that something had changed. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had changed, but something had definitely changed right now.
‘What is it?’
A strange sense of unease, and an incomprehensible warning from his body.
Strength tensely filled the muscles of his entire body, and his Dantian began to fluctuate. Only then could Sa-ma understand what had changed.
‘Slow?’
The world was slowing down.
The leaves swayed slowly, and his body wouldn’t move as if heavy weights were attached to it.
In that slowed world, the only thing maintaining its proper speed was Sa-ma’s mind.
‘This is…’
Sa-ma knew what kind of situation this was.
His body, sensing threat, accelerated. His senses expanded endlessly and began processing every piece of information without missing even the smallest detail. So relatively, the world’s time appeared to slow down.
It was a phenomenon that often appeared during extreme combat when drawing out power to the limit. But why now?
At that moment, Wei Yan-ho’s movement entered Sa-ma’s eyes. Wei Yan-ho’s right hand, which had been waving dismissively, naturally grasped the handle of the sword at his waist.
It was such a natural movement that it felt completely normal.
‘Ah!’
Only then did Sa-ma realize.
Wei Yan-ho’s hand was moving very naturally. In this slowed world. The world was slow, but the hand movement was natural.
In other words?
That hand was moving faster than anything else in the world right now. So fast it was invisible to the eye.
Sa-ma’s mind began spinning furiously.
If that sword was drawn?
Could he counter that sword moving alone swiftly in this slow world?
His thoughts were brief, his calculations quick.
Sa-ma released his hand from Divine Strategist and threw his body to the side.
It might have been an absurd judgment. But the fact that this judgment was perfectly accurate was immediately proven.
Seuuing!
The sound of Wei Yan-ho’s sword being drawn pierced Sa-ma’s ears like thunder.
Simultaneously, a dazzling wave of light swept through the space between Sa-ma and Divine Strategist—that is, where Sa-ma had been standing just moments before.
Uuuuuuung!
A sound like a swarm of bees buzzing, or similar to a massive waterfall pouring down, rang in Sa-ma’s ears. And then…
Kwaaaaaaaang!
As the world’s time returned to normal, a tremendous explosion echoed.
The moment Wei Yan-ho’s burst of light sword energy, Light Steel, touched the ground, the floor paved with solid blue stone burst apart in all directions like tofu struck with a club.
Sa-ma couldn’t say anything.
His mouth was stuck shut as if glued together.
‘What the hell is that?’
The power wasn’t the issue.
He too was a bishop of the Demonic Cult. If he put his mind to it, he could produce this much power easily. But to produce such power with a single strike launched at high speed without any preparation like Wei Yan-ho just did?
That was beyond specifications.
‘Di, Divine Strategist?’
Only then coming to his senses, Sa-ma violently turned his head to stare at where Divine Strategist had been. But as expected, that place was already empty.
Sa-ma’s head slowly turned back.
“This…”
Wei Yan-ho had already sheathed his sword and was grinning broadly. And Divine Strategist stood awkwardly beside him.
The fish that had been caught had spat out the bait and escaped.
“This damn bastard!”
Extremely enraged, Sa-ma began emanating demonic energy with his entire body.
Wei Yan-ho clicked his tongue watching this scene.
“I don’t understand why people blame others when they make mistakes.”
Jang-il said nonchalantly.
“Are you talking about yourself?”
“…”
“Aren’t you?”
Wei Yan-ho suddenly kicked Jang-il in the buttocks.
