Return of the Moyong Clan's Prodigal Master

The Origin

Liu Jin's eyes bulged so far out they looked ready to pop from his skull. The pain of a liver shot was not immediate; it was a rising tide of agony that shut down the nervous system.

His legs turned to jelly. His brain screamed for him to collapse, to curl into a fetal ball.

But Ha-jun didn't let him fall.

He grabbed Liu Jin by the collar of his silk robes with one hand, holding the taller boy upright. To the onlookers from a distance, it looked like Ha-jun was merely gripping his shirt, perhaps whispering a threat. They couldn't see the devastation happening behind the silk.

"You like to crush things under your heel?" Ha-jun murmured, his voice a low vibration that only Liu Jin could hear.

Ha-jun delivered a third strike. This one was a knee, driven slowly but with hydraulic force into Liu Jin's left kidney.

Crunch.

It was a wet, muffled sound. The kidney didn't burst, but the tissue around it hemorrhaged instantly.

Liu Jin's face turned a shade of grey that looked like wet ash. Tears streamed down his face, unbidden. He was in a hell of silent agony. His body was shutting down, his internal organs weeping blood, yet his skin remained unblemished. There was no bruise to show the elders. No broken tooth to use as evidence.

Ha-jun had turned the boy's torso into a bag of broken meat while leaving the packaging pristine.

"Pick it up," Ha-jun commanded again.

He released his grip.

Liu Jin collapsed. He didn't fall like a warrior defeated in combat; he crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

He hit the floor, curling tightly around his midsection, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land, gasping for air that his paralyzed diaphragm refused to give him.

He was crying, drooling, snot running down his nose, a picture of absolute, pathetic defeat.

The library was dead silent. The onlookers were terrified.

They hadn't seen a fight. They hadn't seen a flash of Qi or a secret technique.

They had just seen Ha-jun step close, and suddenly Liu Jin was on the floor, weeping in silence.

It was the unknown that terrified them.

Ha-jun calmly bent down. He gently moved Liu Jin's twitching leg aside and picked up the trampled scroll. He dusted it off with exaggerated care.

"Thank you for your cooperation," Ha-jun said to the writhing boy.

He didn't look at the stunned crowd. He didn't gloat. He turned his heel and walked away, his steps silent on the wooden floor, disappearing deeper into the labyrinth of bookshelves as if nothing had happened.

Ha-jun walked until the sound of Liu Jin's wheezing faded behind him. He needed distance. The violence, controlled as it was, had spiked the hunger in his Undying Furnace.

He felt the vibration of the Demonic Qi itching beneath his skin, wanting to finish the job, to crush Liu Jin's throat.

"Control," he muttered to himself. "Not yet."

He found himself in the deepest recess of the library, the section reserved for "Pre-Dynastic History and Theoretical Metaphysics." It was a section no disciple ever visited because it contained no techniques, only philosophy and old stories.

Or so they thought.

Ha-jun walked down the aisle, the smell of dust and decaying paper heavy in the air. He wasn't sure why he had come here. It was instinct. 

A magnetic tug on his soul that felt strangely similar to the System's presence.

He stopped in front of a heavy, black ironwood shelf at the very end of the row.

There, tucked between a treatise on rice farming and a genealogy of a dead clan, were two books.

They were glowing.

To anyone else, they would have looked like ordinary, leather-bound tomes. But to Ha-jun's Eye of the Sword Sovereign, they pulsed with a rhythmic, violet luminescence.

It was a heartbeat. They were calling out to him, their aura resonating with the emptiness in his meridians.

He reached out, his hand trembling slightly.

He pulled the first book. The leather was cold to the touch, like ice.

Title: The Chronicles of the Primal Chaos.

He pulled the second. This one felt weightless, as if he were holding a block of solidified air.

Title: The Step of the Absolute Void.

"Chaos... and Void," Ha-jun whispered, narrowing his eyes.

Disappointment crashed into him. "Demonic Arts. Pure Demonic Arts."

He recognized the terminology. 'Chaos' was the antithesis of the Order that the Orthodox sects worshiped. 'Void' was the concept of nothingness, of nihilism, a philosophy embraced by the darkest of the cults.

"System," Ha-jun sighed, weighing the books in his hands. "You led me to these? If I am caught with these, I won't just be expelled. I will be hunted down by the Murim Alliance. I can't practice these here. I need a foundation that looks Orthodox but functions like a beast."

[System Analysis Initiated.]

[Scanning Artifacts...]

[Analysis Complete.]

[Correction: Host is mistaken. These are not Demonic Arts.]

Ha-jun scoffed. "Don't lie to me. 'Chaos'? 'Void'? These are the names of the enemies of the Moyong Clan."

[Clarification: These are the Origin.]

The System's voice took on a tone of reverence Ha-jun had never heard before.

[History Lesson: Three thousand years ago, the Founder of the Moyong Clan, Moyong Di, discovered a fragment of a star that fell from the heavens. From that fragment, he derived a martial art too vast, too complex, and too volatile for the human mind to comprehend.]

[That art was the 'Chaos Secret Art'. It utilized the raw, unrefined energy of the universe—Chaos Qi—which contains all elements: fire, water, wind, earth, light, and dark.]

[But Moyong Di's disciples were weak. Their minds shattered when they tried to embrace the Chaos. Their bodies crumbled when they tried to step into the Void.]

[So, the Founder wept. He diluted the truth. He took the 'Water' aspect of the Chaos and simplified it. He slowed it down. He removed the volatility. He created a safe, watered-down version for his incompetent children.]