Descent of the Demon Master

to figure out the situation, something else shocked him back to his senses.

Paaaaaang!

“Aaaaaaahk!” A weird sound of air splitting apart registered in everyone's hearing, immediately followed by yet another gang member by the far corner falling to the ground.
“My leg! My leeeeg!”

“W-what the f*ck?! What now?!” Liu Chi freaked out and urgently rushed over to the screaming gang member.

“My leg! Aaaaahk! My leg!”

“Stay still, you dumb sh*t!” Liu Chi yelled.
He wondered if a snake had bitten this fool by the ankle, but an animal bite couldn't cause such a strong whiff of blood to waft in the air.
“Get me some light over here! Hurry up!”

The writhing man on the ground was held down before the flashlight was directed at his leg.
Liu Chi's eyes trembled in shock when he saw the wound.
“…What the f*ck?”

The collapsed gang member's ankle was split at the back.
More specifically, his Achilles' heel was sliced open, blood visibly gushing out from the wound.
It was as if someone had taken a sharp razor blade to this fool's skin.

“S-stem his bleeding, now!”

With that much bleeding, this idiot could die from excessive blood loss in a short while.
One of the gang members undid his belt and used that to tightly clasp the injured man's thigh, but that was only a stop-gap measure in a deep wilderness like this mountainside.

“…Damn it! Tighten the belt some more!” Liu Chi cried out.

“But, da ge! That might lead to necrosis of his leg!”

“F*cking hell?! That's still better than dying!” Liu Chi yelled back, his eyes burning like flames.
The subordinate arguing back could only nod his head at that.
For sure, losing a leg was better than dying.
The person in question might not necessarily agree with that call.

Liu Chi angrily looked around.
“Scatter, now! Find who did this!”

“Who are you talking about, da ge?”

“You dumb sh*t! Use your brain! Do you really think a wound like that is caused by stepping on a broken bottle on the ground? Someone with a knife is behind that wound, you sh*t!” Liu Chi yelled once again.
He had severed many Achilles' heels before, so he could recognize that kind of wound in an instant.
And someone was definitely behind this!

“B-but, da ge, there shouldn't be anyone besides us around here… Mm?” The subordinate hurriedly clamped his mouth shut.
That was because he had just remembered who they were chasing after.

'Sh*t! We got it wrong!'

Liu Chi thought they would be fine because they had guns.
Even if ordinary people couldn't win against a martial art expert, he still believed over twenty people firing their guns from afar should be more than enough to overcome any opponent.
Unfortunately, that was nothing more than an overestimation of their chances.

'Besides, is it even possible to attack from a distance now?!'

The inky-black darkness had settled in their vicinity, yet the opponent still managed to accurately hit the ankle of a gang member from afar.
Which could only mean that Liu Chi and his boys no longer had the advantage of distance.

Their enemy couldn't be seen, yet he could see them just fine… What would happen next?

Liu Chi's body began to shudder.
“…We weren't hunting, were we?”

Indeed, he was right.
This was not a hunt.
No, they were the prey being hunted right now.
The role of the predator and prey had reversed in an instant!

Paaaang!

Yet another noise of air ripping apart, and another gang member collapsed to the floor.
“Aaaaahk! My foot! My foooot!”

Liu Chi didn't need to see to know what just happened.
“Everyone, gather around me! Gather in one spot, now!”

Blam! Blam!

Liu Chi fired two rounds in the air and cried out, “We can kill this f*cker as long as we figure out where he is! So, don't scatter and come over here to get in formation!”

The gang members heard his order and hurriedly rushed to Liu Chi's position.
They quickly stood around in a circle and aimed their guns in all directions.

“…Da ge, just what the hell is going on here?”

“Think of it as facing off against a bastard with a gun! However, he's alone! So, we can—”

Before Liu Chi could finish…

Paaaang! Paaaaaang!!!

Several sharp noises tore through the air, and Liu Chi witnessed many bluish streaks of light rapidly closing in on his group.

“…Ah.”

Those streaks of light were extremely fast.
Just as Liu Chi's brain registered them, several gang members fell to the ground while screaming at the top of their lungs.
Almost at the same time, Liu Chi felt a burning sensation coming from the right side of his head—as if that part of his body had been ripped away from him!

Liu Chi slowly raised his hand and touched his head.
He felt thick blood, and then…

'…It's not there?'

His ear couldn't be found attached to its usual location.
It had been cleanly severed.

'We are all going to die!'

The fear of death instantly overtook all the other thoughts in his mind.

“Aaaahhh!” Liu Chi began firing his gun indiscriminately in all directions.
It wasn't just him, though, as his subordinates followed suit and fired their weapons in every direction.
Fear was the only thing left in their expressions.

Numerous gunshots echoed in the mountainside shrouded in darkness.

Click! Click!

The pistol with spent magazine let out hollow clicking noise.
Liu Chi urgently replaced the empty magazine with a new one.

Paaaahng!

Paaaang!

Just as he was done, more blue streaks of light flashed from the darkness, causing two more gang members to collapse.
The fear among the group reached its zenith.

“…We, we are all going to die!!! We'll die if we stay here!”

“N-no! Calm down, you sh*theads!” Liu Chi yelled, but it was no use.

“Uwaaaah!”

His subordinates began to run away in every direction.
Liu Chi swore loudly and tried to stop them, but the terror-stricken gangsters couldn't hear any of his urgent yellings.

“Urgh…
Argh…”

Eventually, Liu Chi's hearing could hear nothing but the pained moans coming from those too injured to run away.

'Just…
Just where did things go wrong?'

Liu Chi didn't come this far to chase that foreigner bastard only to witness this wretched outcome.
He kept asking just where he did wrong to reach this conclusion.
He slowly aimed his pistol into the darkness while biting his lower lip.
“I… I'm not going to die…!”

He hadn't been struggling so hard in his life just to die on this nameless mountain.
He gritted his teeth, swearing to himself that no matter who his enemy was, no matter how strong that foreigner was—he would put a bullet between the eyebrows of anyone daring to come after his life!

“Come out, now! Come out, you son of a b*tch!” Liu Chi's hoarse yell verging on a scream rang around in the mountainside.
His echo bouncing off from somewhere far away worsened his already heightened fear, though.

“Come out!”

Blam! Blam! Blam!

After firing a few shots in the air, Liu Chi's pounding heart calmed down a little.
Unfortunately for him…

Shushushu…

Black clouds were gradually flooding in front of him.
Liu Chi could only stare in stupefaction at this supernatural sight as if he was caught in a dream.
The darkness slowly coalesced into a figure of a person.
And when a pair of crimson eyes flashed eerily within the shape of the cloud's head, Liu Chi fell on his butt, his mouth agape.

“As you wish…” The 'face' of the shadow bared its fangs in a toothy grin.

Liu Chi could only let out a hollow chuckle.

'I didn't know it'd be a devil…'

This was the moment when Tian Shan, the Mountain of Heavens, became a living hell.

1.
“Da ge” is Chinese for big brother.
Kinda like 'hyung-nim'. ☜