Han JinHo walked through the golden fog.
It wasn"t hard to tell apart the Black Bear Group members from other collapsed people. He first suppressed the men in black suits who had crowded in after the auction.
He didn"t kill them. Instead, he made sure that they would no longer be able to do anything of this sort ever again, by inserting modified mana into their bodies. This mana will not disappear until their death because it sustained itself by using the life force of the body.
From now on, they would have trouble using their power properly, as well as their brain. The energy and strength required for that would mostly be stolen by the mana.
It was a type of black magic. This magic only worked on normal civilians or people that have just started learning martial arts, thus having small amount of qi in them.
A different method was required for people with a strong qi force.
After planting black mana into the people on the ground, Han JinHo looked up towards the people that had been hiding near the top of the warehouse.
When he approached them, he saw that all of them had guns in their hands. First, he confiscated all the weapons and pushed them into his interdimensional storage.
He placed black mana into their bodies as well. There was no-one with inner qi out of the ones that had been carrying weapons.
Inside the warehouse, there were three members of the Black Bear Group who had strong qi within them. Han JinHo first checked the qi of the three - it was to determine how their mana were refined.
All three of them had a different method of refinement. After seeing that, he carved a magic circle on the place where their dantians were located. It engraved the mana like a tattoo so the one under its effect had to suffer an incredible pain.
Kwaduduk!
"Aaaaak!"
The scream along with the sound of the engraving of the magic circle resulted in a large noise but no-one could hear it. There were still hours left until the golden fog within the warehouse disappeared.
Just like that, he engraved magic circles into the three martial artists. The magic circles were purely carved of mana, and it operated by using the refined mana in the person"s dantian so it was invisible to the naked eye.
Maybe a person who was extremely sensitive to mana would be able to vaguely sense the shape of the magic circle, but not to mention Black Bear Group, even from the entire world, it won"t be easy to find such a person.
The magic circle Han JinHo had carved into their dantians had two functions.
One was wiretapping. It could gather all the sound within a five-metre-radius-circle with the magic circle as the centre and send it over to him.
The other function was exhaustion. If Han JinHo gave the signal, the inner qi inside the dantian would escape through the magic circle and the dantian would be totally exhausted. The speed of the discharge was quite fast, so if the amount of inner qi inside the dantian was large, it could create an effect similar to an explosion.
And naturally, the dantian would be broken afterwards, rendering the person unable to learn martial arts ever again.
On top of that, Han JinHo secretly planted black mana in their bodies. It was out of consideration; to make sure that they would not be able to lead a healthy life even after their dantians were shattered.
"The inside is now done with so…"
After dealing with all the Black Bear Group member inside the warehouse, he carried his feet over to the entrance of the warehouse.
There were quite a number of people outside as well. Among them, there were members of the Black Bear Group, as well as people that weren"t a part of the group. There were people who had simply attended the auction, some who had been curious of who would walk in to the trap that the Black Bear Group had prepared today, and people who were curious of how things would unravel.
In any case, today"s target was just the Black Bear Group and Han JinHo didn"t intend to have an exhausting brawl with them. He first slowly pushed the warehouse doors open.
Creak!
Along with the sound of metal scratching metal, the metal doors of the warehouse were slowly being opened.
He didn"t leave the building and only pushed the doors out using mana.
Soon, the warehouse doors were fully opened, but from outside, nothing could be seen past the doors - not even the fog that permeated the air inside. The lights inside the warehouse were switched on but the fog interrupted the light from spreading out so it was natural for it to appear dark.
Han JinHo only left the doors open and didn"t walk outside.
Sure enough, the people that had been waiting outside carefully started to approach the warehouse. Many of them were members of the Black Bear Group.
"There are about… thirty Black Bear Group members?"
It was actually not too difficult to tell who was a member of the Black Bear Group and who wasn"t. He just needed to see who appeared to be on the hosting side.
Guests had the distinctive aura of a guest.
He gave a bitter smile when he saw himself being able to differentiate each and every one of them. Being able to differentiate the atmosphere around a person like this was mostly thanks to Jung SangPil.
How much of the world did Han JinHo know before meeting Jung SangPil? Somehow making contact with Luina through luck and effort, and creating bank accounts in tax havens were the limits of his abilities.
The six months with Jung SangPil was what allowed Han JinHo to properly stand on his two feet.
That was why even though he looted his house, stole the counterfeit of Chusa and earned money by selling it, Han JinHo hadn"t cared too much about it.
As compensation, he had received an invitation card of a secret auction and a few relics that circulated in the black market, so he let bygones be bygones.
One of the people who had the most influence on his life was actually Jung SangPil. By travelling with him, he learned more about the world, how the rich thought, and also got the opportunity to think about what kind of guys the people that lived in the underworld were.
Standing behind the entrance and watching the people approach made him reminisce the past.
"Well, that doesn"t mean I"d work with SangPil-ajussi again, though."
Receiving help was nice, but he did steal his belongings and deceived him on top of that. He didn"t have the slightest of the intentions to awkwardly restart a partnership that was already done with.
In a short while, the people arrived at the front of the warehouse. They pointed their flashlights inside but obviously couldn"t see anything.
"The inside is completely filled with smoke! Can"t sense any heat!"
It meant that the smoke wasn"t due to a fire, but was instead deliberately spread by someone.
"Take your weapons out and enter! Don"t move around alone and stay with others!"
They all knew that much without being told. Not everyone entered, because there had to be some standing guard outside in case someone popped out from inside.
Therefore, the Black Bear Group let half of their members in. Others made some of their subordinates go in if they had a few, and those that didn"t stayed to observe the situation.
Han JinHo stood behind the entrance and pulled the sleeves of the people that entered to take them further inside. The fog made their senses tangle up and blocked their vision so no-one could avoid his hands.
They were easily pulled in by the strong pulling force and when they tried to find their balance, they leaned towards a strange direction due to their jumbled senses and miserably fell.
In this way, he threw all the people that had entered to a place slightly far away from the entrance. He didn"t need to use too much power either - he just pulled them inwards once and they automatically rolled towards a far enough place.
And within those people, he kindly punished the members of the Black Bear Group.
Once there was no-one else coming inside, Han JinHo walked out of the warehouse. After leaving, he showed leisure by closing the doors behind him.
Only after closing the warehouse doors and turning around did Han JinHo glance over the people wearing blank expressions, standing in the surroundings.
There were only 13 members of the Black Bear Group remaining, and there was only one true expert remaining from the thirteen. The others hadn"t learned martial arts yet, or only had a meagre amount of inner qi.
Han JinHo walked towards the gathered members of the Black Bear Group.
Everyone present faced him with nervous eyes. The number of people that had entered the warehouse was in dozens, and yet a little bit after they had entered, a man had left the building alone, and even showed the leisure of closing the doors.
Thus, n.o.body carelessly approached him.
After Han JinHo neared the Black Bear Group to a reasonable distance, he suddenly threw his body. He had incorporated his newly learned martial arts so the speed of his charge was tremendously fast.
Before anyone noticed, he was already standing before the strongest member of the Black Bear Group. The man"s eyes turned wide in disbelief but still threw a punch in reflex.
Perhaps the man had studied a fist-oriented martial art, his punch"s trajectory and speed was abnormal. The power behind it was also praiseworthy.
It was an action done out of reflex but still carried a lot of inner qi in it.
Han JinHo casually leaned his upper body back. The punch ripped through the air and pa.s.sed above his head.
Kwauu!
[TLN: I have no idea what the translations of these onomatopoeia are.]
It carried a ma.s.sive power and one wouldn"t have been able to retrieve their bones had that punch hit. However, due to its tremendous power, the gap created after its failure was just as big.
Han JinHo pa.s.sed by the man and slapped his dantian down.
Bang!
A sound of something exploding echoed, and the man vomited out a spring of blood from his mouth.
"Cough!"
Pa.s.sing by the man, Han JinHo approached the guys that had been standing behind. He moved his body in a fast and clever way that left the men unable to react.
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-bang!
His hands and feet smote the members of the Black Bear Group. All of them with exception to the first man who Han JinHo had smashed the dantian of, were no different to chaffs to him.
After lightly felling them all, he gave a fair distribution of black mana.
"Fuuu."
While deeply breathing out, he settled his breath. He did some sudden, fast and violent movements so he had gotten slightly out of breath.
He then glanced over the people that were dumbfoundedly staring at him and asked.
"Where are the cars brought by the Black Bear Group?"
Someone pointed towards a place where black sedans were lined up. Han JinHo rummaged through the pockets of the collapsed men and took out a car key. He pressed the b.u.t.ton on the key and searched for the corresponding car.
Beep!
He sighted a car that flashed its lights along with a sound. With light steps, Han JinHo walked towards it.
Soon, a black sedan under the Black Bear Group"s possession left the surroundings of the warehouse.
The people gathered didn"t do anything for a while and only blankly looked back and forth between the warehouse and the car speeding away.
Han JinHo drove the car in silence. He wouldn"t even talk to himself while in the car.
If there were some careful and slightly smart people in the Black Bear Group, there was no way that they wouldn"t have done anything to their own cars.
It was likely that the cars had wiretapping devices or transmitters hidden inside. Thus, he decided to just drive to the nearest city.
The warehouse was in the border between Gyeonggi Province and ChungCheong Province. He wondered how they even found such a location in the first place. Finding it must"ve been very difficult.
In any case, Han JinHo drove the car towards Daejeon City. After driving through the downtown area for a bit, he parked the car at a slightly luxurious location and entered a nearby building.
Then, he hid himself, repeatedly crossed to the buildings next door through the windows, entered a toilet to change his appearance back to his normal state and took out clothes from the interdimensional s.p.a.ce to change into them.
He stealthily travelled across more buildings after that, and only then did he get into a taxi, heading back to Seoul.
Getting off the taxi, Han JinHo took out his phone. He had kept it inside his interdimensional storage just in case.
While looking at the familiar scenery, he gave Che MinYoung a call.
- You"re calling a lot recently. Did something happen again? Don"t tell me, did things go wrong with the Black Bear Group?
"You don"t need to worry about the case with the Black Bear Group. I"ve somewhat dealt with it."
- Is that so? That"s great then. I was slightly worried since the Black Bear Group were more dangerous than I had thought.
"More importantly, please keep an eye on the Black Bear Group for a while."
- Yes? Didn"t you say there was nothing to worry about now?
"That was talking about me, not the Black Bear Group."
- Yes?
"Do you have contact with Lee MyungHoon-ssi often?"
He heard the sound of her swallowing saliva from over the phone.
"How many "strong people" are there in the Black Bear Group?"
- No more than fifty.
"Then I suppose there"s not many remaining now."
- Don"t tell me you killed every member of the Black Bear Group that had gone to the warehouse today?
"Do you think I"m a ma.s.s murderer or something? I haven"t killed a single one of them. It"s just that… they won"t be able to properly use their power anymore."
Che MinYoung didn"t continue her words for a long period of time.
- If we use this, we should be able to greatly sway the Black Bear Group.
"That"s exactly what I want."
- And make the three organisations under you grow while you"re at it?
"Just a side benefit."
- The pre-emption would be very important then. Can I handle this case however I want to?
"That"s also exactly what I want."
- Then I"ll immediately get to it.
She left those words behind and ended the call. After looking at the phone for a bit, Han JinHo murmured to himself.
"Isn"t she… enjoying this too much?"
In any case, he was able to take care of one annoying matter. It was now time to return to his main job.
"Let"s rest up for today and resume working tomorrow."
Today was quite an exhausting day. But while it was very tiring, it was rewarding just as much and he had gained a lot from it.