21 – Who Found Whom (14)
1.
The moment the fight started, one second split into countless fragments, and each of those fragments flowed like a second again.
A slowed-down world unfolds when a fight begins.
In this world, only one person can maintain the original speed in this place. Only me.
“Sneer…”
I calmly watched the four gangsters rushing towards me, taking a light breath.
Neck, side, head, solar plexus.
One against many, bare hands against blades, defenders and attackers.
In conditions so unfavorable that each one is extreme, senses honed to the utmost in detecting even the opponent’s will.
In the slowed-down world, when it should have been an instant penetration, like a compressed press, the blade that would have plunged into my belly and throat approached slowly.
Simultaneously, pipes swung from both sides, flying towards my forehead and temples to shatter them.
Sssaaahh-. Hooowww-.
The sound of wind slicing or tearing reached my senses, dulled by the extreme state, and I just watched it all head-on, casually swinging my hands.
The horizontally swinging pipe, with just a slight push upwards, deviated its trajectory, colliding with the descending pipe that would have struck my head.
Kaaahhh!!!
The wrist of the knife-wielder, whose blade was stabbing towards my throat, was simply struck down by my hand, making the knife plunge into the other knife-wielder’s wrist rushing towards my side.
Whoosh!
“Ah!”
“Ugh?!”
As the forcefully wielded pipe met the one swung with force, the recoil imposed a great burden on the hand holding it.
As if to prove this, both of them, with wrinkled expressions, released the pipes due to the shocking numbness rising from their hands.
Thud! Clang!
However, compared to the two knife-wielders, these two were better off.
“Hey, are you okay?!”
“Argghh······!”
On this side, the blade was deeply embedded in one of their wrists.
Since the blade unexpectedly flew in from an entirely unforeseen direction, piercing the wrist, it must have been agonizing and shocking.
Nevertheless, the fortunate thing was that the agony didn’t last long.
Thud!
The guy, who had a knife stuck in his wrist, grimacing in pain, had his head thrown backward.
Immediately afterward, he sprawled on the floor like a severed puppet. The guy next to him, who was about to call out his name while looking at him with wide eyes, also collapsed gracefully as if completing a semicircle.
“Uh, uh?”
“W-what.”
Almost simultaneously, as the two comrades became one with the ground, the faces of the guys rushing towards them with a lead pipe turned pale.
Thud!
And, of course, with faces now pale, they joined the ground just like that.
Having brought down the four men with weapons, I slowly exhaled the breath I had been holding.
“Hoo…”
That way, one breath came to an end.
While I took a breath, the gangsters who lost four comrades in that single breath hesitated as if unsure whether the guys who had just rushed at them were worth facing.
I quietly observed those guys.
“Swoop…”
I took another breath.
※※※
“W-what, what is that?”
Bang! Bang!
With a sound of something exploding as Kang Jinhyuk’s shoulder disappeared, at least two gangsters wielding weapons either soared through the air or collapsed to the ground.
“Am I the only one who can’t see the fist?”
Even though he wasn’t right in front and was watching from a distance, to Jo Cheol-man’s eyes, Kang Jin-hyuk’s fist seemed to disappear.
All he could see was the frozen fist before and after it was extended at best.
Fortunately or unfortunately, Jo Cheol-man wasn’t the only one who hadn’t seen Kang Jin-hyuk’s fist.
“I-I can’t see it either, hyung.”
Even the three gangsters who had lived for decades with fists couldn’t see the speed at which he extended his fist, flying people off with the sound that could be heard at a construction site. Kang Jin-hyuk, who continuously performed such monstrous feats without a hint of disturbance in his breath, was an unstoppable existence to these three.
“Damn. What the hell is this? Where the hell did that bastard pop out from?”
Incomprehensible, unknown, and with no knowledge of who he was, Kang Jin-hyuk’s limitlessly powerful existence was enough to evoke terror.
The most fundamental origin of human fear is the unknown; most fears arise from the unknown.
In that sense, Kang Jin-hyuk was an unknown existence, and to the three, he simply looked like a monster wearing the guise of a human.
Without a step backward, without even thinking of requesting backup.
“That bastard, stand still and do that.”
Kang Jin-hyuk doesn’t move from his spot to protect Choi Ha-an behind him.
From Noble mtl dot com
In that state, facing flying pipes and knives, the three realized that all their resistance was meaningless when Kang Jin-hyuk extended his fist once; at least two of them would fall.
While waiting for their turn like cattle dragged to a slaughterhouse, Kim Man-sik, the brain of the three gangsters, clapped his hands and exclaimed as he realized something.
“Y-yes! That guy, it was him!”
“What, who? You know that monster?”
“Yes! The guy I tried to teach a lesson because his dull gaze seemed insolent, and suddenly he stood up and took the guy next to him out! That guy! It was him!”
“Were there a lot of scars on your body?”
“Yeah, the back was spotless without a single blemish, but the front was so messed up that it was hard to imagine.”
Two days ago, Kang Jinhyuk’s body, seen at the bathhouse, was shocking and impressive even to the three gangsters who considered knife wounds to be natural.
The front of Kang Jinhyuk’s body was filled with deep and large scars so inexplicable that one couldn’t even guess the cause, but there was no trace of any injuries on the back.
On the day they saw a body with different fronts and backs, the three gangsters laughed and said, ‘Scars as tattoos? Man, that’s seriously threatening!’ and chuckled.
And later, when they met Kang Jinhyuk again, they vowed to mock him by asking where he got the scar tattoos.
But now, even though the three gangsters had met Kang Jinhyuk again, they could never recall such vows.
Kwakwang! Kwaguaguaguakwang!
Seeing Kang Jinhyuk knocking down subordinates without giving a chance for a scream, they could tell that the scars carved on his body were not fake.
“If, if those scars are real…”
“To have those scars and still survive…”
“Damn, damn it!”
Ironically, even though the three gangsters now knew more about Kang Jinhyuk, their fear of him only intensified.
Much of the fear that humans feel can arise from the unknown, but some fears start from knowing.
The fear that the three gangsters felt towards Kang Jinhyuk now fell into the latter category.
“T-Teacher! Isn’t there something we can do about this?”
“I-I don’t want to die in a place like this!”
“Shut up, you moron bastards! What can I do against someone like that!”
Suddenly, the three gangsters, forgetting their original intent to dunk Kang Jinhyuk and sell him to the highest bidder, began tearing each other apart.
The fear of the unknown coming from Kang Jinhyuk’s endless strength and the fear arising from the realness of his strength and experience combined, making it impossible to maintain reason.
And so, in the end, Kim Mansik, the brains behind the three gangsters, shouted at Jo Cheolman with frustration.
“Damn it! I told you not to touch the bottom line! You manipulated debts and nonsense that didn’t even exist to deceive me and make it seem real! This is ridiculous!”
His true feelings, filled with anger, which he would never have expressed under normal circumstances, were now unleashed due to the fear that had overwhelmed his brain.
The moment his true feelings echoed through the abandoned factory, everything in the factory fell silent.
To be precise, it was the silence that forced all other sounds away.
“What did you say?”
A voice that no one present had ever heard before, a voice so icy that it made the heart itch.
The owner of this voice was not Jo Cheolman, who should have been angrier than anyone else in this place due to Kim Mansik’s outburst, but Kang Jinhyuk.
“What did you just say?”
Kang Jinhyuk, who had been about to attack one of the gangsters with a knife, froze in his posture, holding the gangster’s neck and about to crush his face, and turned his head to look at Kim Mansik.
“H-hii…”
Thud!
Kim Mansik, who met the eyes of a person who remained calm even when anger reached its peak, without a trace of emotion, unknowingly lost strength in his legs and sat down.
“M-Mansik hyung…”
“Just with your eyes… just with your eyes…”
The gangsters, who had been facing off against Kang Jinhyuk and were about to bring him down, completely lost their former confidence when faced with his gaze alone, a gaze that had even made a high-ranking member of Wild Boar Capital hesitate.
Among those who had entered the abandoned factory, there were very few who were still able to stand and fight.
If even a single knife had been stuck in Kang Jinhyuk’s body, they would have fought tooth and nail, but he was completely unharmed, just as he had been before the fight even started.
No, he hadn’t even breathed heavily, so it was natural that their morale was not only broken but completely destroyed.
“I… I can’t. I don’t want to die, damn it…!”
Thud!
And so it began with one person.
“Ugh, ughhh! Get the hell out of the way!”
“I never heard a word about fighting with that monstrous bastard!”
“What the hell did we mess with these insane bastards for?”
“Run, damn it!”
Excluding the three thugs, every unscathed gang member, who hadn’t even tried to fight, discarded their weapons and fled with all their might.
Thus, the battle between one unarmed man and thirty thugs armed with blades ended in a complete landslide victory for the lone man.
“Pl-please…”
Ignoring the fleeing individuals, Kang Jinhyuk, with a grip on the collar of a trembling thug, drove his fist into the thug’s gut.
Crunch!
The impact, no longer surprising, echoed through the abandoned factory. Kang Jinhyuk casually tossed the collapsed thug onto the ground and, with an expressionless face, moved towards Kim Mansik and the two other thugs.
“Let’s hear the details. About that story. What’s the debt from Hwan’s family?”
The voice of Kang Jinhyuk asking this felt like an oracle of death to the three thugs.