The Former Supreme Master [Novel] Chapter 23

The distance to Baek Socheon was roughly ten steps.
A range where his strike could not possibly miss.
All he had to do was twitch his finger, and everything would be over.

Yet Cheon Yangho hesitated. Unable to grasp the true nature of this sudden hesitation, he desperately forced himself to focus.
‘I don’t need to trust myself. I just need to trust the Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle!’
The very fact that the Murim Alliance had branded it a Forbidden Hidden Weapon was an absolute testament to its lethal killing power.
‘The moment I butcher this bastard, a lifetime of luxury awaits. Now, press it.’

The exact moment Cheon Yangho’s finger twitched to trigger the hidden weapon.
Baek Socheon smoothly broke his handstand, rose to his feet a split second faster, and spoke.
“Since you’re here, why don’t you step out? What are you doing lurking in the shadows?”

Cheon Yangho was so startled he nearly dropped the Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle.
Fortunately, he managed to conceal it securely within his sleeve instead of letting it fall.
‘I completely suffocated even the sound of my breathing, so how did he know?’
Furthermore, the man supposedly lacked internal energy. So how on earth had he detected his presence?
Cheon Yangho emerged from the suffocating darkness.

“I saw you immersed in martial training, so I was about to pass by quietly. You are working hard despite the heat.”
“I thought rural towns were supposed to be brimming with hospitality, but it turns out the atmosphere here is even more bloodthirsty. So I must train.”
“True enough. The legend of rural hospitality is just an old tale now. Well then, keep up the good work.”

Terrified that the hidden weapon tucked in his sleeve might be exposed, Cheon Yangho hastily turned to leave, only for Baek Socheon’s question to nail him to the spot.

“Is the investigation into the Yangchu massacre proceeding smoothly?”
“It remains shrouded in thick fog. The culprit is far too elusive; we have zero leads.”
“Is it that you lack leads, or do you lack the will to catch him?”

Instantly, Cheon Yangho’s brow furrowed.
‘Look at this arrogant bastard.’
He violently swallowed his surging fury and plastered on a polite smile.
“It must be because my abilities are lacking.”
Knowing full well his opponent’s martial prowess was monstrous, he dared not act rashly.
“But tell me, how did you sense my presence?”
He desperately wanted to add, ‘When you don’t even possess internal energy,’ but forced himself to swallow the words. Doing so would blatantly expose that he had been digging into the man’s past.

“My senses are rather sharp. Didn’t I accurately deduce the Hundred-Year Fleeceflower hidden inside the box through scent alone last time?”
“Ah, you did. You truly possess a terrifying array of senses.”
He finally understood how he had been detected.
‘It was smell.’
He assumed the man had detected him through the scent clinging to his body.

However, this time, it wasn’t his sense of smell at play, but Baek Socheon’s monstrous sixth sense.
After his internal energy vanished and his physical body underwent a brutal recovery, his innate senses had evolved to a horrifyingly acute level. Not only his five senses but his visceral instincts had sharpened with terrifying precision.
This sensory evolution aligned perfectly with the explosive enhancement of his physical capabilities.
Just as his physical body shattered its limits to counterbalance the void of his internal energy, his sensory perception had ascended to an entirely new realm.

As they conversed, the distance between Baek Socheon and Cheon Yangho shrank to a mere three or four steps.
Naturally, Cheon Yangho’s heart began to pound violently against his ribs.
‘Should I slaughter him right here and now? At this range, I can absolutely kill him.’
He had never heard of a martial artist who could evade the Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle within a mere three or four steps.
Crucially, his colleague Gwak had already confirmed that Baek Socheon was utterly incapable of wielding internal energy. A sharp nose wouldn’t be enough to dodge the Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle.
What tempted Cheon Yangho even more was the fact that Baek Socheon had zero guard up. While wiping his sweat, the man didn’t even bother to glance in his direction.

‘Now. A single twitch of my finger, and twenty thousand taels is mine.’
He could gorge on luxury for the rest of his life, entirely free from the shackles of poverty.
‘Wait for the opening, then shoot. Shoot.’
It wasn’t his first time spilling blood, yet his heart hammered with deafening intensity.
Right then, Baek Socheon cast a fleeting glance at Cheon Yangho.

“You look tense.”
“Is that so? It’s because of the heat. I am uniquely vulnerable to the heat.”
“Are you sure you aren’t uniquely vulnerable to bribes?”
“What?”
“Ah, don’t ignite your fury. It was just a passing remark. It seems you are uniquely biased toward the Divine Fire Gang, so I simply threw a joke your way.”
Cheon Yangho nodded, wearing an expression that insisted he wasn’t offended.

“Pour me a cup of water.”
“Wait just a moment.”

The very second Baek Socheon turned his back.
*Thwip!*
*Thud.*
The movements of both men froze instantly.
Cheon Yangho stood aiming the Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle at Baek Socheon, while Baek Socheon turned his head, staring dead at his own back.
Something had just flown through the air and embedded itself deep into his back.

Cheon Yangho’s face erupted into a radiant, twisted grin. There were no miracles.
The needle had flown true and struck perfectly, leaving him baffled as to why he had trembled so violently over such an effortless kill.

“Argh. It stings! What the hell is this?”
“What else? It is the paradise needle destined to drag you down to hell. Hahahaha!”
As Baek Socheon reached back to yank it out, Cheon Yangho mocked him relentlessly.
“Too late. The moment the needle pierces your flesh, it melts instantly. The lethal poison coating it is already surging through your veins.”
“Why target me?”
“A request was made, and silver was paid. Right, your eyes didn’t deceive you. I eat the rice of the Divine Fire Gang. The silver they line my pockets with dwarfs the meager stipend I receive from the Alliance. If you were in my shoes, wouldn’t you take it?”
“I didn’t take it, did I?”
“That’s because you are a crippled fool. No, wait, you must have gorged on a massive salary back when you were a hotshot in the Iron Sword Corps, right?”

Drunk on the euphoria of securing twenty thousand taels, Cheon Yangho’s mood soared to the heavens. He spewed words that should have remained buried.
“I stumbled upon this hidden weapon a few years ago. I vowed to unleash it only when my life was on the line, or when a chance to rewrite my destiny descended. I never dreamed that day would be today.”
“At least you got one thing perfectly right.”
“What?”
“That this is the moment your destiny gets rewritten.”

Thinking about it, the time for the poison to paralyze him had long passed, yet Baek Socheon stood perfectly fine. Anxiety clawed its way up Cheon Yangho’s throat.
He stared down at the Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle clenched in his fist.
‘Don’t tell me it was a defective dud?’
As if reading the dread churning in his gut, Baek Socheon spoke.
“The Ten-Step Life-Severing Needle functioned perfectly.”
Hearing him flawlessly name the hidden weapon sent an even deeper jolt of shock through Cheon Yangho.

“Then why?!”
Cheon Yangho’s voice violently trembled.
“There was an era when assassins clung to me like a plague. I suffered quite a bit back then, nearly succumbing to venom on multiple occasions. Still, it was an era when the Alliance couldn’t function without me, so they poured immense resources into my survival. They mobilized Divine Physicians and Poison Doctors, squandering every rare spirit herb and venomous weed they could find to temper my body.”
“What on earth are you trying to say…”
Suddenly, a terrifying realization struck Cheon Yangho, and he screamed in horror.
“The Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity Body?”
“Right, that is what the Murim World calls this flesh of mine.”

“But you don’t possess internal energy!”
“Listen here, the Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity Body alters the fundamental constitution of the flesh. While forging this vessel demands a colossal ocean of internal energy, once the transformation is complete, it operates entirely independent of it.”
Cheon Yangho was paralyzed with terror. A storm of frantic questions tore through his mind.
‘What? Why in the hell would they forge him into a Ten Thousand Poisons Immunity Body? Why pour such a miracle into a mere Squad Leader of the Iron Sword Corps?’

However, this was no time to stand frozen in shock.
Cheon Yangho hurled the empty weapon cylinder aside and drew his blade. Hope still existed. His opponent was devoid of internal energy.
Corrupt to the bone he might be, but he was still a Unit Captain of a Division.
His blade, lunging for Baek Socheon’s vital points, was terrifyingly fast and precise.

Yet his martial prowess fell a realm below Heuksu’s, and Baek Socheon’s physical capabilities had surged even higher since that slaughter.
Thus, whether he used him as a mere training dummy like he did with Heuksu, or simply toyed with him, there was absolutely zero pressure.
However, Baek Socheon chose to neutralize him as brutally and swiftly as possible. Meaning, the man held zero value for either option.

*Swoosh.*
Evading the initial strike, Baek Socheon brutally assaulted Cheon Yangho’s knee.
*Crack.*
A vicious, snapping kick shattered the knee joint, bending it sideways.
“Ugh!”
Staggering wildly, Cheon Yangho swung his blade in desperation. But Baek Socheon, as if anticipating the exact reaction, leaned his body backward and viciously kicked him in the stomach.
With a sickening *thud*, Cheon Yangho skidded backward.
It felt like a light strike, yet Cheon Yangho’s intestines felt as though they had ruptured.

The moment he clutched his stomach with his left hand and prepared to thrust his blade again.
“Ugh.”
Forgetting the brutal injury to his knee, his stance completely collapsed.
The very next instant.
*Smash!*
Baek Socheon’s body launched into a somersaulting spin, his foot violently crashing into Cheon Yangho’s jaw.

There was no grand, epic duel; this was the absolute end.
Cheon Yangho’s body launched into the air before plummeting and smashing into the dirt.
Baek Socheon picked up the blade Cheon Yangho had dropped.
He ruthlessly slapped the unconscious Cheon Yangho’s cheek with the flat of the blade.
Eventually, Cheon Yangho regained consciousness.
Looking up at Baek Socheon towering over him, Cheon Yangho screamed.
“Please spare my life.”
“Get up.”
“Yes.”

Cheon Yangho scrambled up and immediately fell to his knees. He was a man who valued his own life above all else in this world. In this moment, balancing on the razor’s edge of death, his mind spun purely for the sake of ‘survival.’
“Heuksu is buried right beneath your feet.”
Cheon Yangho flinched and stared in horror at the ground beneath him.
He had suspected Heuksu fell to Baek Socheon’s hands.
What terrified him in this moment was the realization that he had buried the corpse right in his front yard.
“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t have a hobby of hoarding corpses in my yard.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Still, I suppose I could bury a few more. Heuksu must be lonely down there.”
“Please, I beg you, spare my life.”
“Why should I?”
Cheon Yangho understood instantly. One wrong word, and his head would roll.

“First, please accept this.”
He extended the envelope of silver he had received from Wang Gon. It burned his soul to surrender it, but survival came first.
“This is the blood silver Wang Gon handed me to assassinate you, Warrior Baek.”
He immediately attempted to shift the entire blame onto Wang Gon.
Baek Socheon laid the blade flat and extended it, prompting Cheon Yangho to place the envelope on the steel.
*Slide.*
Raising the edge of the blade, the envelope slid smoothly into Baek Socheon’s grasp.
He checked the fortune hidden inside.

“Is this paltry sum all my life is worth?”
“I was promised the same amount again upon success.”
“Even so, that is a mere twenty thousand taels, isn’t it? Are these bastards playing a joke on me? Do you have any idea what the bounty placed on my head by the Black Heaven Alliance was during my prime? Three million taels.”
Watching Baek Socheon brag, Cheon Yangho was utterly incapable of comprehending his words. Three million taels, no matter how high he flew in the Iron Sword Corps?
‘This fucking lunatic! Just because he grips the hilt of the sword, he spews whatever deranged fantasy crosses his mind.’
Yet in this moment, even if the man claimed it was ten million taels, he had to spit saliva in awe and scream, ‘Oh, how incredibly magnificent!’
“Wang Gon failed to recognize a true hero of the Murim World.”
“You failed to recognize me as well, didn’t you?”
“How could a pathetic, insignificant wretch like myself possibly understand?”
Driven purely by the primal instinct to survive, Cheon Yangho’s tongue moved frantically.

“Did Wang Gon issue the command to slaughter the Yangchu family?”
“I believe so.”
“Believe?”
“He never explicitly confessed it to me… but I am absolutely certain he did.”
Cheon Yangho rapidly conveyed the visceral intuition he had sensed from Wang Gon’s son, Wang Woo, and the desperation he felt from Wang Gon when he accepted the blood contract.
“It was undeniably their doing. Dog-like bastards! They are truly demons devoid of humanity.”
“Whose blades carried out the slaughter?”
“I do not know the identity of the culprit either. I will step forward and investigate it starting right now.”
Baek Socheon realized Cheon Yangho remained blind to the fact that the Divine Fire Gang had commissioned the Seven Swords Association. He was nothing more than a corrupt martial artist who gorged on bribes.

“I will serve you with my life moving forward, Warrior Baek.”
“Me? Why?”
“Keeping a hound like me around will prove useful. If any bothersome tasks arise, simply entrust them to me.”
Naturally, the only thoughts churning in his mind were a burning lust for revenge against Baek Socheon and a desperate focus on concealing that very intent.
“Listen here, Unit Captain Cheon.”
“Please, give the command.”
“I despise bastards with rotten temperaments. Because my own temperament is foul, I prefer keeping somewhat decent guys around me. You understand, right?”
Cheon Yangho replied instantly.
“I will reform my temperament starting today. I will turn over a new leaf. Whatever you command, I will execute flawlessly.”
“Will that really work?”
“Is there anything impossible if one puts their life into the effort?”
“Alright, let’s assume it works. Still, there is one glaring problem.”
“Just give the word!”

Baek Socheon stared dead into his eyes and asked.
“Have you ever spared the life of someone who tried to assassinate you?”
“I have!”
The answer exploded from his lips reflexively. Miraculously, there was exactly one such instance. In truth, he hadn’t spared the man; he had simply failed to kill him. The bastard had fled far into the Outer Regions.
“I have demonstrated compassion and spared a life!”

The exact moment those words ended!
*Swish— Slash!*
With a single, blinding strike, Baek Socheon severed Cheon Yangho’s neck with the blade in his hand.
*Sploosh!*
A geyser of blood erupted from his neck, and without a single final word, Cheon Yangho collapsed, utterly dead.
Looking down at the corpse, Baek Socheon spoke with icy detachment.
“I haven’t.”

Glancing at the bloodstained blade in his hand, Baek Socheon let out an ‘Ah’ and tossed it beside Cheon Yangho’s corpse.
“Ah, I said I wouldn’t use a sword…”