2026-01-20 19:16:55He didn't hear it. The only thing he heard was the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears, a tidal wave of pure, distilled hatred.
"Break my jaw?" Ha-jun stood up.
His movement was unnatural. He didn't push off the bed; he simply was standing. The muscles in his legs, the Myriad Beast Sinews forged by the System, fired with a snap.
Jang Myung frowned.
Something was wrong.
The runt looked the same, but the air around him felt heavy, suffocating. The shadows in the corner of the room seemed to be stretching toward Ha-jun, clinging to him.
"You deaf?" Jang Myung stepped forward, raising a hand the size of a ham hock to deliver a backhanded slap. "I said sit down and—"
Ha-jun moved.
It wasn't a technique. It wasn't a calculated martial arts move. It was an explosion of kinetic energy.
Ha-jun stepped inside the slap. His left hand shot out, not in a fist, but with fingers hooked like talons. He didn't aim for the face or the chest. He grabbed Jang Myung's wrist.
The Adamantine Skeleton withstood the impact of the giant's swing without a tremor. The Myriad Beast Sinews contracted.
CRACK.
It sounded like a dry branch stepping on a gunshot.
Jang Myung's eyes went wide. His mouth opened to scream, but the sound hadn't traveled from his brain to his throat yet.
His wrist wasn't just broken; it was crushed. The radius and ulna were ground together, the pulverized bone fragments tearing through the skin from the inside.
"You like breaking bones?" Ha-jun asked, his voice devoid of humanity. "You like the sound?"
He didn't let go. He yanked the massive boy downward. Jang Myung, outweighing him by a hundred pounds, was rag-dolled, his face meeting Ha-jun's rising knee.
THWACK.
The sound of cartilage exploding was wet and sickening. Jang Myung's nose collapsed into his skull. Blood sprayed in a fine mist, coating Ha-jun's face.
The two lackeys in the doorway froze, their brains unable to process the image. The "runt" had just dismantled their leader in a single heartbeat.
"Monster!" one of them shrieked, fumbling for the wooden training sword at his belt.
Ha-jun didn't look at him. He was focused on the work of art beneath his hands. He grabbed the back of Jang Myung's head, his fingers sinking into the greasy hair, and slammed the giant's face into the wooden support pillar of the hut.
Bam.
"This is for the leg," Ha-jun hissed.
Bam.
"This is for the arm."
Bam.
"This is for the twenty years of eating scraps!"
Splinters flew. The wood cracked. Jang Myung was no longer fighting; he was limp, a sack of meat being tenderized. But Ha-jun didn't stop.
The rage wasn't draining; it was feeding on itself. The newly forged Undying Furnace Dantian spun wildly, pumping adrenaline and raw energy into his limbs, demanding more violence.
[Warning: Excessive force detected. Target is incapacitated. Continued trauma may result in fatality.]
[Query: Does the Host wish to initiate 'Mercy' protocol?]
"Mercy?" Ha-jun laughed, a wet, choking sound as he hurled Jang Myung's unconscious body across the room. The giant hit the far wall and slid down, leaving a smear of crimson on the plaster. "I am the mercy! I am saving the world from his incompetence!"
He turned to the lackeys.
They were terrified. They scrambled backward, tripping over each other in the doorway.
"We... we didn't do anything!" one cried out, holding his hands up. "It was him! It was all Jang!"
"You watched," Ha-jun said. He walked toward them. He didn't run. He didn't rush. He walked with the heavy, inevitable gait of an executioner approaching the block. "You laughed. You held me down while he poured the urine on my bedding. Do you remember?"
Ha-jun certainly remembered.
The System had reconstructed his brain, sharpening his memories to crystal clarity. He could remember the specific pitch of their laughter from a decade ago.
He lunged.
The first lackey swung the wooden sword. It was a clumsy, panicked strike.
Ha-jun didn't dodge. He raised his forearm.
Clack.
The solid oak training sword hit his arm and shattered into splinters. The Adamantine Skeleton was harder than iron; wood was nothing to it.
The lackey stared at the broken hilt in his hand, horror dawning in his eyes. "What... what are you?"
"I am a ghost," Ha-jun whispered.
He grabbed the lackey by the throat with an iron grip and squeezed hard. Not enough to kill instantly, but enough to compress the windpipe, to make the eyes bulge, to let the boy feel the cold approach of death.
Ha-jun lifted him off the ground. The boy kicked helplessly, his heels drumming against Ha-jun's shins.
"Please..." the boy gurgled.
"Did I beg?" Ha-jun tilted his head, genuinely curious. "When you broke my ribs behind the mess hall... did I beg?"
He threw the boy. He didn't toss him; he pitched him like a javelin.
The lackey flew through the air and crashed into the second lackey, sending both of them tumbling out of the hut and into the dirt of the courtyard.
Ha-jun stepped out into the night. The cool air hit his blood-soaked skin.
The commotion had woken the other disciples. Heads were poking out of nearby huts. Lanterns were being lit. They saw the carnage, and Jang Myung, who was unconscious and bleeding in the room. They saw the two lackeys groaning in the dirt, limbs bent at unnatural angles.
And standing over them was Moyong Ha-jun.
He looked demonic. Blood, not his own, dripped from his chin.
His eyes were glowing with a faint, terrifying luminescence, a side effect of the Eye of the Sword Sovereign activating unconsciously.
His stance was loose, relaxed, yet radiating a pressure that made the air feel heavy.
He looked at his hands. They were stained red.
For the first time since waking up, the screaming in his mind quieted. The confusion was gone.
The dissonance between his old soul and new body vanished.
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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. Tear
Silent Execution
The Seven Agonies of the Stone Buddha.The Gale of the Broken Wing.Techniques that killed their users. Techniques that were ugly, painful, and devoid of grace.They were perfect.He felt a strange kinship with these books. They were outcasts, just like him. They were weapons that had been judged as failures because the world was too weak to wield them."I will give you a new master," Ha-jun whispered to the dusty pages. "And together, we will break every beautiful, flowing sword in this clan."He turned to leave, the manuals tucked under his arm. As he walked back toward the front desk to register them, a group of disciples blocked his path.Three of them. Older. Inner Disciples, judging by the silk embroidery on their cuffs."Well, well," the leader said. He was a tall, handsome youth with a face that Ha-jun remembered.Liu Jin. The son of the Hall Master of Discipline. A man who had once forced Ha-jun to kneel in the snow for three hours because Ha-jun had "looked at him with disre
Trash Manuals
Ha-jun ignored them. In his past life, he would have kept his head down, apologizing for existing. He would have hurried past, desperate to avoid confrontation.Now, he walked down the center of the path. His stride was long and predatory. He didn't look at them, not out of fear, but out of the arrogance of a higher species ignoring insects.The Tyrant's Aura, the passive skill he had unlocked, rippled off him in cold waves. When his gaze accidentally brushes against a disciple, the boy would flinch, pale, and look away, instinctually sensing the predator within.He reached the Library. It was a colossal five-story pagoda, guarding the clan's knowledge like a slumbering beast.At the entrance sat Elder Gu.Ha-jun remembered Gu. A withered old man with a heart as dried up as his skin. Gu had been the one to officially record Ha-jun's demotion to servant status in the previous timeline. He was a man who delighted in bureaucracy and the suffering of those beneath him.Ha-jun approached t
Void's Hunger
But Ha-jun was already insane. The fire in the Death Forest had burned away his sanity, leaving only purpose."If the Heavens won't accept me because I am a demon," Ha-jun said, closing his eyes and forcing the black vortex in his gut to spin faster, "then I will drag the Heavens down into the mud with me."He could feel the power humming in his veins, dark, heavy, and magnificent. It was the power of a predator."The Moyong Clan wants a loyal dog?"Ha-jun channeled the energy, feeling it tear through his meridians with a pleasurable agony, burning away the last remnants of his weakness."I will show them a rabid beast."***The morning sun bled over the horizon, casting long, pale shadows across the Moyong Clan estate. To any other disciple, it was the start of a beautiful day for cultivation, the air crisp and filled with the scent of pine and discipline.To Moyong Ha-jun, it felt like starvation.He sat on the edge of his bed, his chest heaving with a phantom exertion. His new body
Acknowledgment
"A thousand-fold," he vowed, his voice trembling with the sheer weight of his hatred. "If they cut my finger, I will sever their arm. If they mock my name, I will erase their lineage. I will not just kill them. I will break their spirits. I will make them watch as I burn everything they hold dear, their reputation, their power, their legacy, until they beg me for the mercy of death. And I will deny them even that."[System Acknowledgment: Vengeance Directive Accepted.][The path of the Ashen Swordmaster is lonely and cruel. Prepare yourself.]Ha-jun took a deep breath, pushing the rage down into his gut. Rage was fuel, but if left uncontrolled, it was a wildfire that would consume him.He needed to understand his weapon. He needed to know what this "Reconstruction" had done to him.He sat cross-legged on the stained mattress, assuming the lotus position. He closed his eyes, turning his vision inward, initiating the Art of Introspection.In his previous life, looking inside his body wa
What Are You?
The violence had acted as the final welding arc, fusing his spirit to this new vessel of destruction.He felt... good.He felt powerful.He looked down at the last conscious lackey, who was crawling away in the dirt, sobbing. Ha-jun stepped on the boy's ankle. He applied pressure slowly."A-ah! AHHH!" the boy screamed."Listen closely," Ha-jun said, his voice carrying across the silent courtyard so every waking disciple could hear. "And tell the others."He leaned down, his face inches from the terrified boy." The dog is dead. The wolf is hungry."[Combat Encounter Resolved.][Performance Grade: S (Brutality Bonus Applied).][First Blood-Debt Collected: 3/3 targets neutralized.][Reward: The System acknowledges the Host's nature.][Unlock Feature: 'The Tyrant's Aura'.][Passive Effect: Low-level enemies will experience the 'Fear' status effect upon making eye contact.]Ha-jun straightened up, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He stared at the blue text box. T
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