Part 11 - Predation
"Here it is. The place that smells delicious…."
With blue ghostfire scattering from his eyes, Yeon Sang-hyeon burst into wild laughter.
That laughter was horrendous—like someone scraping iron plating with a rasp.
Inside his mouth, teeth as sharp as saw blades gleamed eerily, and his blood-red throat was like an abyss, so deep there was no telling where it ended.
"U… uaaagh!"
At the grotesque sight, one of the men—who had pissed himself—lunged forward in a spasm.
An ordinary person would've gone slack-jawed at the nightmare before them.
But these were men who had prowled Luoyang's back alleys, places like a battlefield.
They weren't martial artists who could protect their minds with inner power, but the ferocity they'd forged in blood and violence was real.
"Die!"
The blade in his hand flashed.
No tricks—just a strike so clean and fast even he would've admired it.
"....!"
But in the next instant, he realized his wrist had been caught.
For a moment he thought the other's palm was small—soft, without a single callus.
And colder than a midwinter river.
So cold frost seemed to settle down from his wrist.
"Uaaah…!"
He kicked at his opponent.
No—he tried to.
But the other's squeeze was faster.
As if bones and muscle didn't exist at all.
As if crushing a cold dumpling would take more effort.
Tuk!
The hand holding the blade rolled across the ground, spraying blood.
"—KRAAAAGH!"
The 'monster's' grip was so far beyond common sense that the man's hand had been severed outright.
As he toppled backward, clutching his spurting forearm, one of the bigger men charged in.
He wrapped both hands tightly around his blade and threw his weight into it, intending to bury the edge in the monster's torso in one go—
Kakak!
Sparks flew where the monster's palm met the steel.
"Urk!"
The impact was like striking a stone wall. The big man dropped the weapon.
He tried to retreat and look for another opening, but the monster snatching both his wrists was far faster.
"L-let go…!"
He screamed hoarsely, wringing every ounce of strength out of himself as he thrashed, trying to break free.
No matter how he struggled, the other's grip didn't budge.
It didn't even tremble.
And then it began to tighten—slowly.
"Uaaah—stop, stop…!"
It was as if the monster regretted crushing too easily the first time, cutting the wrist clean off.
This time it increased its strength gradually, as though it wanted to watch what would happen.
Leisurely.
Almost curious.
There was no need to draw out demonic energy.
He simply—calmly, unhurriedly—added force.
Soon came the sound of bone snapping, and the wet tearing of flesh.
"UAAAGH! UAAAGH!"
Even then, the big man kicked wildly, but it was no different than kicking a wall.
If anything, his own ankle dangled—broken.
"Keu…aah…!"
Bones shattered to pieces, and the sound of meat being wrung out echoed through the alley along with screams.
Like squeezing juice from fruit flesh, a thick stench of blood rose with a mist of red.
"…Grrrhk."
The big man, collapsed on the filthy ground, writhed like a bug whose body had been crushed.
Teeth broken by unimaginable pain mixed with blood and poured from his mouth.
Left alone, he would've died of blood loss and agony—but the monster had no intention of letting him go.
He felt both ankles get grabbed.
In the next moment, his legs were torn off—one after the other.
Blood sprayed from the ripped limbs, drawing long arcs across the alley walls.
This wasn't martial arts.
It wasn't technique.
It was pure violence.
A torment carried out through overwhelming strength.
"Uuh…"
The big man twitched for a brief moment—then stopped.
"Hmm?"
As Yeon Sang-hyeon stared at the corpse, a strange light entered his eyes.
From the darkness on the ground, pale hands rose up and dragged the body down.
Dozens of white hands, large and small.
Among them were a child's hand, an old man's hand, a woman's hand.
And so the corpse sank into the dense darkness below.
Even the blood he had sprayed around—at some point—had all sunk away as if absorbed.
Thump! Thump!
Yeon Sang-hyeon felt his dantian pulse powerfully.
Vitality surged higher, and a soaring exhilaration rushed through him.
"Hoh?"
Half-lidding eyes wreathed in blue ghostfire, he savored that refreshing sensation.
"…U-uaaagh!"
Then one of the men—who had been frozen stiff by the nightmare—started running without looking back.
The back alley was dark, littered with obstacles.
He tripped and rolled into a pit of filth; he tore clothes and skin on something sharp—yet he kept running.
Even when it felt like his lungs would leap out of his throat, he didn't stop.
But for some reason, the alley wouldn't end.
No one peered out, even though this was still Luoyang.
Not a single speck of the usual lamplight could be found on the night streets.
The alley ahead spun in circles.
Then a hand burst out through his belly.
That fist, clenching his intestines, was soaked in his blood—slick even in the dark.
"…!!"
He wanted to scream with everything he had, but his abdominal cavity had been destroyed, his diaphragm torn apart.
Kneeling, he desperately tried to gather up his own guts.
"..."
Yeon Sang-hyeon looked down at him without a word.
In that gaze there wasn't even the tiniest shred of humanity.
Thump—.
He raised his arm and drove it into the man's back.
His piercing hand tore through the torso again with a sound like ripping a leather sack, churning brutally inside.
Because he was using nothing but raw strength—without even demonic energy—it wasn't clean.
And that roughness, that filthiness, was exactly what he intended.
Yeon Sang-hyeon shoved the ripped corpse aside.
Thump—.
As before, the dead man's body was dragged under by white hands rising from the ground.
Not a single drop of blood left behind.
Thump—.
Yeon Sang-hyeon's reason was sharp, but his mind overflowed with madness, and his heart cavorted in ecstasy.
"This makes no sense…!"
That meaningless muttering came from the fourth man, slumped in a corner.
"This is a dream. It has to be."
This space had already been corroded by demonic energy leaking from Yeon Sang-hyeon—The Ruler Of Darkness.
The third man, who thought he was escaping down the alley, hadn't actually fled even ten steps, and the one slumped beside him had long since had his mind subdued.
This was the true face of Yeon Sang-hyeon's demonic energy—of The Ruler Of Darkness.
Compared to this, the intimidation of servants that morning had been nothing but a prank.
When he—The Ruler Of Darkness—released his demonic energy in earnest, it alone was enough to destroy a person's mind and twist their reason.
And he hadn't even injected demonic energy directly into their heads.
Just by deciding to raise it, he dominated the entire space.
Thump—.
Tearing apart the man whose mind had been subdued took only an instant.
Limbs ripped into pieces sank down into the floor.
"Hm…?"
Then he sensed the man whose wrist he'd twisted off at the start slipping out into another alley.
The man had tried to escape as carefully as possible, but this domain was already Yeon Sang-hyeon's.
With a low chuckle, Yeon Sang-hyeon lightly kicked off the ground.
It was Dark Current Transformation.
***
"F***, where the hell is this? Where's the way out?!"
This back alley had been as familiar as his own front yard—until now.
Clutching his wrist, the man was circling in place.
More precisely, he was looping through the tangled alleys in a square—like the shape of "口."
He had succeeded in getting away from that horrific spot, but his mind had already been eaten into by demonic energy.
"Is anyone there?! Anybody?!"
He shouted, vomiting blood.
His unfocused eyes wandered through empty space.
What the hell had just happened?
He couldn't understand it.
A ghost? A monster? A reaper?
Sure, like most people in Luoyang, he'd always believed in some superstition.
But that was about invisible things—fate, gods, luck.
Not the kind of creature from scary stories used to frighten children.
Then what was that?
He screamed reflexively.
"Why are you doing this to me?! Why me?!"
Maybe it was the blood loss—dizziness hit him, and he dropped to his knees.
He wailed.
"…There are so many bad bastards in the world—why does it have to be me?!"
In that moment, his whole body felt like it froze.
Because he felt a clear breath at his ear.
A freezing exhale mixed with thick sulfur and a harsh stench of blood.
'It' whispered into his ear in a voice full of metallic noise.
[You're only the beginning.]
Then it chewed and swallowed him, torso and all.
***
"You… didn't you devour them?" the old man asked.
Yeon Sang-hyeon slowly stroked his stomach.
"…Now that I think about it, I don't feel hungry anymore."
Juices overflowing.
The texture of raw, uncooked flesh.
He'd just committed cannibalism—an act repulsive and contrary to the laws of heaven—and yet he felt no special emotion.
Only the relief of escaping that painful hunger, and the faint satisfaction of fullness.
"Devouring evildoers is the first—and last—demand The Ruler Of Darkness makes of a Disciple."
Yeon Sang-hyeon restored the memory.
Hadn't it been described as "a scripture that, in place of the indifferent and lazy heavens, will feed upon all the darkness of the Saha World, a defying-heaven scripture"?
"And the more evildoers you devour, the more of The Ruler Of Darkness's power you will come to understand."
Give and take.
A rational system, in its own way.
"But Elder… it doesn't seem like 'eating' only means me physically eating them."
Yeon Sang-hyeon recalled the corpses being dragged down into the floor by countless hands.
"That's right. Those hands are agwi(hungry ghost) of The Ruler Of Darkness. Within the 'domain' you spread using demonic energy, they can exert physical influence and help with your 'meal'."
At that moment, a vibration began from the ceiling.
Stone dust spilled from here and there, and dust clouds rose.
The pillars of light coming down through cracks in the ceiling began to narrow.
"Time's nearly up."
"So it is…"
The pillar of light illuminating the old man also shrank little by little, and his body seeped back into deep darkness.
"We'll meet again soon."
In the darkness, the old man's eyeballs bloomed into blue ghostfire.
"Until then… may your hunting go well…"
Yeon Sang-hyeon gave the old man a long, respectful bow.
Soon, a vicious darkness swallowed everything.