"I have to ask something since I donât know."
Late at night, after the third round of the martial tournament.
I was watching Paejon, who was training alone in the practice grounds, and asked,
"Are you out of your damn mind?"
"What did you just say, punk?"
Paejon, who was lifting a boulder the size of a room, turned to look at me.
His expression was more baffled than angry.
"So now you're cussing at your master, huh?"
"No, thatâs not it..."
I stopped mid-sentence and swung my fist.
âWhoosh!
âCrash!
I shattered the boulder flying straight for my face.
My wrist throbbed.
Damn it. That bastard had wrapped Qi around the boulder before throwing it.
"Your expression is hilarious."
"Does it look good?
"Itâs not bad. Didnât I give you exactly what you wanted?"
"...Hah..."
Not bad, huh?
I sighed as I looked at the scattered debris littering the ground.
"It's as bad as it gets."
A mess.
There was no other way to describe it.
A complete mess.
"Thanks to you, the martial tournament couldn't even finish halfway."
For the third round, they had only prepared a single fighting stage.
It was built sturdyâstrong enough to endure most impacts without a scratch.
Even if cracks appeared, it was designed to be easily repaired.
'But how are they supposed to repair that?'
Thereâs a limit to everything.
When the damage is so severe that you canât even tell what it originally looked like,
itâs no longer repairable.
'That's not a repair job. It's rebuilding it from scratch.'
Who could've expected this?
Who would've thought that a single martial artist could completely destroy a stage reinforced with ten-thousand-year steel?
I narrowed my eyes slightly and looked at Paejon.
'He called it Shattering the Heavens.'
The fifth technique of Tua PacheonmuâShattering the Heavens.
The technique Paejon used against the Blade King during this tournament.
It was a power I had never witnessed before.
'...Shattering the heavens, huh?'
The name sounded ridiculously arrogant for a martial technique.
And yetâ
'He might actually be able to pull it off.'
After witnessing its destructive force firsthand, I couldn't deny it.
Its sheer power had made my entire body tremble.
'What the hell was that destructive force?'
I couldn't shake the image of Paejon using Shattering the Heavens from my mind.
A compressed, swirling mass of gray energy.
When he detonated it, the resulting explosion was catastrophic.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om