Black tracksuits, matching top and bottom.

Short, sporty haircuts, and solid bodies.

Most of them were on the short side.

And in their hands... something like a machete, the kind people call a jungle knife.

The blades were stupidly wide.

They'd been honed so sharp they gleamed pale blue in the moonlight.

One hit and it would go right through bone.

The air around them was different too.

They were much stronger than the guys Chairman Oh of Ana had sent.

Even their breathing was quiet.

These men were properly trained martial artists.

Their eyes were like a black mamba's, sizing up its prey.

The deadliest snake of them all, and right now it was after me.

Killing intent hung heavy in the air.

There were four of them.

There was no way around them.

"What's this? You planning to carve me up?"

These guys were on a whole different level from the pig on the wrestling team back in my second year of high school.

It was a joke, but they didn't answer.

They didn't seem to understand me.

"Not homegrown, huh?"

They were East Asian, no question, but they didn't feel Korean.

I guessed they were Chinese.

Joking aside, I didn't take them lightly.

For the first time, I pushed my internal energy all the way to its limit.

I remembered the warning: be ready when danger comes.

Believe it or not, I'd trained every single day without fail in the Taegeuk Five Elements Dual Intent Mind Art that Divine Lord Cheollyong taught me.

You might think taegeuk and the five elements are different things, but taegeuk is like the parent of the five elements.

When yin and yang collide at their extremes, the energies of the five elements are born.

The laws by which the five elements feed and overcome one another all began in the taegeuk of heaven, earth, water and fire.

The eight trigrams born from the taegeuk stand for the sixty-four hexagrams that symbolize all things in heaven and earth.

In other words, the taegeuk is everything in the world, and the five elements…