The man from Mulung, who had been patiently waiting while I chatted with my senior master from my past life, stepped forward with a delighted expression.

“Left Guardian, I didn’t think we’d ever be entangled in the affairs of Jianghu together, but it’s a pleasure to meet you like this. To exaggerate a bit—it’s an honor. I get a chance to fight with a top expert from the Demonic Cult.”

I looked at the expression on Mulungja’s face. So many of his disciples had died—what exactly was making him so happy? His face showed nothing but genuine joy, which left me puzzled. There aren’t many martial artists in Jianghu who would be pleased to fight the Sword Demon.

What kind of confidence was this?

The Sword Demon glared at Mulungja and responded.

“Old man, hearing you say that, it’s an honor for me as well.”

Mulungja chuckled and then looked toward the Drunk and the Lecher.

“Fortunately, the matchups are fair. You two—who are you? Let’s be clear from the start about who’ll be killing whom, and who’ll be killed.”

The Drunk introduced himself.

“Just know me as the last disciple of the Six Harmonies Sect.”

Mulungja nodded.

“Oh, so you were the mad avenger known as Master Yukhap. A pleasure.”

The Drunk ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) snorted. The Lecher, locking eyes with Mulungja, opened his mouth.

“I’m the Se—of Baek Eung-ji’s—what are you looking at?”

Everyone present stared at the Lecher.

Realizing he had blurted out something awkward under some kind of psychological pressure, he quickly tried to shift the topic.

But I introduced him instead.

“He’s the Sex Demon of Baek Eung-ji.”

Behind me, my senior master muttered.

“Ah, full of problems.”

The Lecher glared at him.

“The problem’s in your brain.”

My senior master rubbed his head with both hands and denied it.

“No, it’s not!”

The Lecher laughed and replied.

“Oh, come on. It is.”

I turned my gaze toward the old men flanking Mulungja.

One was so fat it went beyond a robust physique for a martial artist—he smiled and said,

“To be honest, I’m afraid of the Left Guardian. Please don’t make me fight him one-on-one. Just call me Pyeongpyeongja.”

A guy that far from "balanced" calling himself "Balanced One" naturally made my mouth open.

“You’re more like Fattyja than Pyeongpyeongja.”

Pyeongpyeongja glared at me.

“Lord of Haomun, shut it.”

A strange noise came from behind me, and I turned to see my senior master laughing.

Well, at least it was funny. If he laughed, that’s enough. Meanwhile, the rest of the bunch also introduced themselves.

A swordsman, shorter than the other old men, said,

“Call me Gosanja.”

The last one, a man with a dark complexion, introduced himself last.

“I’m Baekdoja.”

The whole thing sounded like a joke, with no proper epithets. "Doja" originally means "peach," so this dark-skinned man’s nickname was “White Peach.”

In short, that made him Baekdo.

I nodded.

“So, a white peach on a flat spot of a tall mountain—this must be the Peach Blossom Utopia. Is that what the nicknames of the Four Sons mean?”

Mulungja laughed.

“No real meaning.”

“Hahahaha...”

The Four Peaches all burst into laughter simultaneously. Behind me, my senior master began uttering innocent nonsense.

“Excellent. Let the eight of you spar, but make sure no one gets seriously hurt. Isn’t it enough to simply determine superiority?”

“Shut up.”

“This is why I hate monks.”

“Baldy, shut that mouth.”

“Cueball, stay out of this.”

Getting scolded in succession by the Four Peaches, my senior master swallowed hard.

Mulungja made a suggestion.

“It’ll be fun to watch each one die one by one in a rotation. Or you could all fight at once. The juniors can choose how they want to die.”

I asked Mulungja,

“What do you want?”

“One-on-one would be best.”

I stepped forward first. Honestly, with these demonic freaks, there was no way this would be a clean one-on-one, so I took the initiative. In this kind of fight, the first bout is most important. Once I kill one, the rest will likely turn into a team brawl. Even if I lose, it’s the same.

“I’ll go first.”

Mulungja, Pyeongpyeongja, Gosanja, and Baekdoja looked at one another, considering who should step out. Mulungja was likely watching the Sword Demon, so I figured the second-strongest among them would come.

Pyeongpyeongja drew his sword and stepped forward.

“Lord, I’m counting on you.”

He already said he didn’t want to face the Sword Demon, so he must feel confident against the rest. As Mulungja’s group retreated, the Four Great Evildoers grabbed my senior master and pulled him away to a safe distance.

Left alone with Pyeongpyeongja, he said,

“Lord, let’s not kill each other.”

I nodded.

“Shall we stop at slicing off arms and legs?”

“That’s acceptable.”

“Pyeongpyeongja, what’s the deal with the peach?”

“That, I can’t tell you.”

Mulungja cut in.

“Stop the nonsense.”

The moment I turned my gaze toward Mulungja, Pyeongpyeongja’s sword appeared in front of my eyes. I dodged backward and tilted my head, but his swordplay was so nimble it chased my eyes like it had a will of its own.

I unsheathed my wooden sword, swung from above to deflect his blade, and prepared my left palm technique. The move I used to parry his sword left a big opening, and as expected, Pyeongpyeongja thrust his left palm at me. I met it with the Flame Valley Great Palm that I had readied in advance.

Before the reddish palm force could fully form, his energy clashed with mine, causing a booming explosion—and his next attack followed right after. His movements were nothing like what his fat body suggested. He used his body mass to amplify his internal energy, moving with more elasticity and explosive speed than expected.

His internal energy ran far deeper than I anticipated.

Maybe it was because he was thirty or forty years older than me. In the opening exchange, which was practically reconnaissance, I didn’t have the upper hand in anything.

Footwork, internal energy, swordsmanship, palm techniques...

Honestly, I was worried about surprise attacks from Mulungja’s group, but I chose to trust the Four Great Evildoers to handle it. I focused solely on Pyeongpyeongja, infusing my wooden sword with Flame Valley energy and wrapping Moonlight Cold Heart Technique around my left palm to suppress variables.

After clashing swords more than ten times in a flash, I realized something strange—his internal energy was absurdly deep, more so than his swordsmanship skill.

Sure enough, once I stuck to pure defense, he tried to crush me with sheer force. He seemed confident he could overwhelm me even if it meant burning through his internal energy.

His sword tricks and feints I could handle, but each time he released palm force, it surged like a tidal wave crashing down on me.

‘Why the hell is his internal energy so deep?’

Suddenly, I started wondering what the hell this “peach” was that Mulungja mentioned. The reason Mulungja became a public enemy was listed in the martial alliance records. He gained fame for training many disciples—but many of them went missing. Eventually, so many reports piled up that the Martial Alliance summoned him to explain. He refused again and again, then ended up killing alliance members.

Putting it that way, the peach wasn’t a peach.

If you think darkly, that is.

I organized my deductions and looked at Pyeongpyeongja again. I originally meant to retire him by maiming his limbs, but now I wanted to rip him apart completely. With Mulungja, Gosanja, and Baekdoja still remaining, I immediately pushed my power to the limit from the start.

As soon as our blades clashed again, I crossed my arms and unleashed another left palm strike.

Thwack!

Pyeongpyeongja must’ve planned to dominate me with internal energy—his hand didn’t separate from mine this time.

Our swords locked, our left palms locked, both glued together by sheer force.

I stared into his eyes and face up close.

His mouth moved, and suddenly a tiny metal pellet shot out with a whoosh.

I tilted my head to dodge, and behind me, I heard the pellet strike someone’s sword.

I kept pouring out energy, glaring at him. He grinned, then tried to headbutt me by pulling me in with external strength. With both our swords and left hands stuck together, it was a hard move to avoid.

I mimicked his cheek-chewing gesture and spat in his face just as he headbutted.

Stop a headbutt with spit?

Nope. I anticipated a hidden weapon—he was so surprised he jerked his head back. I used his staggering imbalance to help him along by shifting sideways and kicking his ankle with my right foot. Since it was the leg supporting his weight, his whole body floated into the air.

The moment his massive body slammed to the ground, I wrapped Flame Valley and Moonlight Cold Heart around my hands and pulled them together—just like forging the Heaven-Piercing Sun-Moon Radiance.

To say I "forged" it is a stretch.

But when extreme yin and extreme yang met, it sparked the precursors to that technique. A burst of light and a roar erupted before me, and Pyeongpyeongja thrashed on the ground. I tried to press my palms together, and he desperately resisted to stop me.

At that moment, Mulungja’s group launched their surprise attack, but I didn’t bother responding.

Almost simultaneously, the Lecher, Drunk, and Sword Demon drew their swords or moved. Leaving the rest to the Four Great Evildoers, I forced Moonlight and Flame Valley to collide.

The hand holding my sword and the palm channeling energy—both crossed.

In that moment, I stared at Pyeongpyeongja—and bit his damn face like a wolf.

There was no time to chew. He shrieked in horror, and that deep internal energy he had—vanished like water suddenly dammed.

I let go of my sword, grabbed his throat and face with both hands, and began injecting Hundred Battle Tenfold Qi.

He screamed, and I suddenly burst out laughing.

“...Was the biting really that scary? You don’t even have a handsome face, but you lost your shit. You really did.”

Still laughing, I poured the electric qi of the Hundred Battle Tenfold directly into his convulsing skull. His face charred black as he tried a desperate punch—but I had no intention of getting hit. Still clutching his face, I flipped upside down, legs kicking into the air, then twisted mid-air and kept injecting more qi.

“Hey, Pyeongpyeongja. Old man. What’s the peach? Tell me and I’ll spare you. I’ll spar—”

His head was already scorched to a crisp. He couldn’t speak.

I looked up—by then, the Four Great Evildoers were already clashing with Mulungja’s group.

In the midst of that, my senior master glared at me with bloodshot eyes and suddenly shouted,

“Did you really have to kill him?”

While scanning the battle, I said to him,

“Baldy, don’t you think you’re looking at the world a little too beautifully? A lot of Mulungja’s disciples have gone missing. That ‘peach’ you’re thinking of—it’s not the one you think. Didn’t you start as a child monk? You’re probably the kind of ‘peach’ he’s after. If there were only one or two villains in the world, I’d tell you to reeducate them. But there are too damn many like him. What about the innocent ones they kill? Killing him—that’s the way of Jianghu.”

I stared at my senior master, then raised my foot and crushed the already-dead Pyeongpyeongja’s skull again. I picked up my wooden sword and checked on the bastards still fighting.

The Sword Demon was going all-out against Mulungja.

The Lecher and Drunk were each dueling Gosanja and Baekdoja. It was a fairly even match, so there was no room to intervene just yet.

I turned to my senior master, who stood there dumbly, and said,

“Baldy, don’t just stand there—help me. Help my brothers. If we all die, are you really still going to try reeducating those bastards?”

My former-life senior master silently stared at me.

I told him,

“If we all die, you die too, so think carefully.”

Honestly, being a disciple of Gwangseung—and Gwangseung himself calling him a martial genius—meant his skills had to be impressive. But his soft-hearted nature made him a prime target for Jianghu predators.

I scolded him first, then rejoined my brothers in battle.

Saving my senior master was important—but what I believed to be the true way of Jianghu was keeping the Four Great Evildoers alive.