Descent of the Demon Master-Chapter 1376. Arriving (1)

Chang Piljae screamed.

“Aaaaaaaahk?!”

“Keep your mouth closed!”

“W-what the f*ck?! But how?! Uwaaaaaaahk?!”

Lee Hyeon-Su furrowed his brow deeply.

Wouldn’t screaming be more difficult in this situation? After all, the wind pressure was strong enough to almost tear one's face off right now. To be able to scream in this situation was indeed worthy of some praise. Probably.

Hold on? Feels like I can sympathize with him, but at the same time, I kinda don’t?

Lee Hyeon-Su also thought his soul would abandon his body when he first experienced this ordeal. And he was supposed to be a martial artist! Since things had been that torturous for him back then, how could an ordinary person like Chang Piljae endure this situation?

This “ride” must be ten times more terrifying than the world’s scariest roller coaster, after all!

“Hiiieeeek! What the?! Eeeeeeek!”

Lee Hyeon-Su sympathized with Chang Piljae. He really did. However, trying to suppress a grown-ass man squirming in his embrace was making things very awkward for him right now. He fully understood that now wasn’t the time to think about such a thing, but this...!

“Bloody hell?! Stop! Clinging to me like this!” Lee Hyeon-Su yelled unhappily.

Chang Piljae yelled right back. “You think I enjoy doing this?! I might fall if I don’t, you know!”

“You are not going to fall! Okay?! I’m holding you, aren’t I?!”

“Do not let go! Never! Don’t let goooo!”

“Gimme a freaking break!”

Lee Hyeon-Su would’ve liked nothing more than throwing away this noisy human luggage, but this thing called “bond” got in his way!

“Hiiieeek?! Blood! Blood!”

Chang Piljae tried to contort even more while freaking out at all the blood splashing on his face. Lee Hyeon-Su held Chang Piljae tightly while yelling loudly again.

“What the hell, man! You’re a secret agent, aren’t you! It’s only some blood! Why all the ruckus?!”

“Why would a secret agent see blood, you moron?! If I’m seeing blood in my job, that means I’m dead, you know!”

“Moron?!”

Lee Hyeon-Su subtly loosened his grip.

“Uwaaah?! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Don’t let go! I’m sorry!”

A bitter smirk formed on Lee Hyeon-Su’s face. He must’ve also lost his bloody mind, considering he was actually messing around with his passenger in this situation!

He looked around and watched the surroundings blur past him at a scarcely believable speed.

Feels like our speed is about the same as a bullet train at full flight?

Of course, this view could never feel the same as watching the passing scenery inside a bullet train’s safe and cocooning cabin. Traveling at the same speed was bound to offer a very different experience depending on the situation, after all!

The fear of getting killed if Kang Jin-Ho stumbled, even if only for a bit, tightened Lee Hyeon-Su’s heart. Worse still...!

Slice, slash!

Lee Hyeon-Su bit his lips, hard; a North Korean trying to block Kang Jin-Ho’s path was literally sliced apart into chunks, his meat blocks scattering everywhere.

Lee Hyeon-Su’s view momentarily turned crimson before clearing up once more. He looked back at where they had been, and blood scattering like a fog had begun coming down like a miniature rainstorm.

Gee whiz! I will never get used to that scene, now won’t I?

Lee Hyeon-Su might be used to Kang Jin-Ho and his antics by now, but getting used to the grisly scenes he usually left behind? Now there was a tall order even he couldn’t fulfill. And something in his gut told Lee Hyeon-Su that he’d never get used to it for the rest of his life.

Getting used to this sight would mean it’d become harder to define himself as a human being, didn’t it?

Lee Hyeon-Su sneakily looked up at the back of Kang Jin-Ho’s head. The way the Assembly Master kept sprinting forward with his attention locked firmly on the path ahead... It looked familiar, yet somehow foreign.

Even though Lee Hyeon-Su had seen Kang Jin-Ho unhesitantly push ahead whenever he had set his eyes on something many, many times already, the problem right now was...!

“Sir! Sir! We’re going the wrong way! To the left! Your left!”

Kang Jin-Ho abruptly changed his direction to his left.

Craaack!

Lee Hyeon-Su heard a noise akin to his spine breaking just then. The lower half of his body couldn’t seem to support the weight of his head, which had been increased by the g-force generated by a sudden change in direction.

“Aaaahk?! My blood is?! I’m getting light-headed!”

When Chang Piljae screamed that, Lee Hyeon-Su was almost overcome with the intense desire to find a needle and some threads to sew the former NIS agent’s mouth shut. After all, wasn’t he trying his absolute hardest to endure the g-force acting on two human bodies right now? To the point of his spine almost giving up? Yet this grown-ass man was whining non-stop!

“...! A-Assembly Master! My shoulder! Grab my shoulder! My neck might break!”

Kang Jin-Ho instantly let go of the back of Lee Hyeon-Su’s neck before grabbing the latter’s shoulder. It felt like fingers of reinforced steel were tearing into Lee Hyeon-Su’s flesh just then.

“Euh...!”

Lee Hyeon-Su desperately gritted his teeth and swallowed back his pained gasp. Right now, he and Chang Piljae were nothing more than baggage to Kang Jin-Ho. As such, baggage should behave itself and keep quiet during the ride.

Lee Hyeon-Su shouldn’t struggle like Chang Piljae and increase the burden on Kang Jin-Ho.

Goddamn it! How did they find out, though?

No matter how many times he thought about it, Lee Hyeon-Su couldn’t figure that out. Was it because China had been monitoring them all along?

That couldn’t be it, though. If the Chinese had known, they would have tried to stop Kang Jin-Ho from entering North Korea altogether. Why would they let their target enter another country where it’d be harder for them to do whatever they wanted?

So, it could only mean North Korea had figured out something China had failed to do on its own. But how was that even possible?

North Korea’s ability to gather information paled in comparison to China’s. Of course, nothing was certain in this world, and freak occurrences happened pretty often in life. Even so, Lee Hyeon-Su was dead-sure that his group left no traces while entering this country.

“They are coming,” said Kang Jin-Ho in a calm voice. He then increased his speed even more.

Just how many enemies had they run into so far? It felt like they couldn’t break through the encirclement, no matter how fast Kang Jin-Ho ran.

This encirclement was not like the Chinese military’s, which relied on an overwhelming number of soldiers to surround Kang Jin-Ho. Even so, North Korea’s encirclement still felt unending. It was as if this country’s military had deployed every one of its combatants to stop Kang Jin-Ho’s progress. What was even worse was that...

Pow!

An impact noise considerably “soft” for something Kang Jin-Ho had created registered in Lee Hyeon-Su’s hearing. Almost at the same time, he saw a figure of a person blocking their path flying away to a distance.

Lee Hyeon-Su grimaced deeply. F*ck! That’s a goddamn kid! A bloody child!

Even though he only got a quick glance and nothing more, Lee Hyeon-Su could still tell that the individual flying away was a child still many years from reaching adulthood.

“What the f*ck is wrong with these people?! How could they do this?! Sons of b*tches!”

The Chinese military had deployed well-trained soldiers; there was no doubt about that. However, the North Korean ‘combatants’ trying to stop Kang Jin-Ho consisted of people seemingly from every age group!

Some of them were definitely martial artists emitting flinch-inducing sharpness. But most of them were ordinary soldiers with zero cultivation. And then, there were kids who hadn’t even sprouted body hair pitifully trembling in fear but still forced into waiting for Kang Jin-Ho’s arrival.

Dammit!

Lee Hyeon-Su swore inwardly. He could tell that this situation was worsening the mental burden on Kang Jin-Ho.

Lee Hyeon-Su’s boss followed a pretty clear-cut principle. Anyone daring to obstruct him would die. But there was a small wrinkle in that, and that had to do with whether someone was blocking him of their own volition or not.

In Kang Jin-Ho’s view, someone trying to kill him no matter what shouldn’t be categorized the same as those who wanted to avoid the firing squad treatment for insubordination and had to stand in his way.

It would be so much easier if he just killed everyone in his path, but...

Even during his high-speed dash, Kang Jin-Ho still responded differently to martial artists, ordinary soldiers, and civilians dressed up as soldiers.

Any martial artists blocking his path got completely obliterated until not even their corpses remained. As for soldiers, Kang Jin-Ho tried to deal with them by knocking them out. But for the civilians and children? He did his best to minimize their injuries but still knocked them out.

It must’ve been tremendously taxing for his mind to instantaneously differentiate the individual combatants within the waves upon waves of enemies and respond accordingly.

Even if it was Kang Jin-Ho boasting near-infinite physical stamina, his mental energy must be running ragged right now.

Lee Hyeon-Su hurriedly checked the GPS.

Dammit! Still so far away...?!

Even at their current speed, they still needed another thirty minutes to get to coordinates Wiggins had mentioned. Although Lee Hyeon-Su didn’t think Kang Jin-Ho would falter from this level of threat, North Korea had presented too many variables so far. Anything could literally...

Before Lee Hyeon-Su could finish his train of thought, a strange whistling noise registered in his hearing. At the same time, he heard Kang Jin-Ho suck in a deep breath.

Even before Lee Hyeon-Su could figure out what happened, he felt his body become airborne. And a blink of an eye later...!

The ground behind them was rocked by a large explosion.

Lee Hyeon-Su reflexively looked down. It wasn’t just one explosion, but several explosions went off to disintegrate the ground they had been running on a second ago!

Those insane sons of b*tches?!

There were still people down there! Their own goddamn allies, no less! Yet they didn’t even check how close their allies were before blowing that place up with rockets?!

An act like that should be unthinkable, unless the ones ordering the strike didn’t view other humans as their fellow human beings.

“Heuh... Heeeuh?”

A strange whimper entered Lee Hyeon-Su’s hearing next, causing him to reflexively look up. That was when he noticed Kang Jin-Ho holding a person wearing a so-called Mao suit.

“Huh...?”

This person’s face was so young. Was all the soot on this kid’s face deliberately applied? Lee Hyeon-Su obviously had no way of finding that out right now, but he still could see a kid with a soot-stained face dazedly staring back at him.

What happened was that Kang Jin-Ho had grabbed this child blocking his path and leaped into the air just as explosions went off behind him.

Griiit!

Lee Hyeon-Su heard someone angrily grit his teeth. He had no doubt that the noise came from Kang Jin-Ho’s mouth.

Kang Jin-Ho lightly landed on the solid ground before dumping the kid to the side. The kid plopped on the ground, the strength in their legs completely gone. Even before the kid could regain their wits, though, Kang Jin-Ho resumed his sprint.

Lee Hyeon-Su finally realized the significance of where they were.

So, this is North Korea...?

Was this place especially more dangerous? Or did it have something especially amazing or mysterious? No, this country did not.

Even then, people still felt this unwillingness, maybe even repulsion, because this country, this land... It was still a land of savagery.

What was considered rational and common sense was roundly rejected in this country. In this place, things other ‘normal’ societies prioritized were in a tangled mess.

When Lee Hyeon-Su finally realized all that, the air he breathed in suddenly felt incomparably heavier than before.

We... We need to get out of here as quickly as possible!

Lee Hyeon-Su also gritted his teeth. He no longer wanted to stay in this country, in a different sense from their original purpose. Right now, he just wanted to return to South Korea as soon as possible.

Kang Jin-Ho shouted, “Lee Hyeon-Su!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Directions!”

Lee Hyeon-Su quickly checked the GPS again. “To the ri... No, to the left!”

Kang Jin-Ho didn’t skip a beat and changed the heading again.

More whistling noises of the atmosphere being torn apart slammed into Lee Hyeon-Su’s hearing, followed by a series of thunderous explosions behind them.

Lee Hyeon-Su reflexively cried out, “What the hell is happening here?!”

“What do you mean, what?! Those are ‘magic tricks’ from the staves beloved by third-world countries, you know?!”

Lee Hyeon-Su’s expression crumpled at Chang Piljae’s angry reply.

“What?! They don’t even have enough money, so why are they wasting RPGs like this?!”

“It’s not that they don’t have enough money to buy RPGs, but more like buying up RPGs made them poor, okay!”

“Is this really the right time to correct me?!”

The experience of rocket-propelled grenades exploding right behind him was enough to raise every hair on Lee Hyeon-Su’s body. Even so, when objectively looked at, this situation shouldn’t pose a grave threat to his well-being.

Rockets flying in at such a speed would never catch up to Kang Jin-Ho. His reflexes were more than enough to spot and dodge any incoming rockets, after all! However, the real problem was something else.

Just how many RPGs have they deployed here?

Even in China, its government still remained mindful of the reactions of its citizens, at least to some degree. As such, unleashing this level of firepower within its borders would never be done carelessly.

However, the story differed significantly in North Korea. It was the only country on Earth with total control of its populace. So much so that none of its citizens complained or rebelled even after the North Korean leadership tested nuclear weapons within its borders.

Since that was the case, the North Korean military wouldn’t see any issues with blowing stuff up. In other words, they wouldn’t hesitate to unleash the firepower much more destructive and wider-scale than what China had unleashed earlier! For instance, things like bombers and even actual tanks!

As long as those military equipment is functioning properly, that is!

Right now, Lee Hyeon-Su had no choice but to pray that those aging military equipment couldn’t be deployed right now due to poor maintenance. The lack of funds holding the North Koreans back was the only...

Just as Lee Hyeon-Su’s thoughts reached that far!

A pitch-black hand suddenly broke through the ground. A dagger gripped in this hand took aim at Kang Jin-Ho’s ankle. However, Kang Jin-Ho simply kept running and kicked the dagger-holding hand out of the way.

CRAAAACK!

An entire arm got ripped out of the ground and sent flying far away. But that meant Kang Jin-Ho’s speed slowed down a little.

“Sir! Up! Look up!”

When Chang Piljae yelled urgently, Lee Hyeon-Su reflexively looked up into the night sky. That was when he saw some things.

He saw dozens of shadows rapidly descending from high up while blocking out the pale moon of the night sky.