“Kkyaaaahk!”
Female students, picturing a horrific end to this scene, screamed in shrill voices and urgently turned their heads away. The suppression baton was a weapon meant to suppress. Getting hit in the head with the big club made out of birch would surely crack your skull and cause an outpour of blood. A fair number of people even get killed now and then from being hit in the head, too.
Mu Ssang sneered. “Looks like you are all dangerous bastards, huh.”
Never mind some measly baton. Not even a metal pipe would’ve been enough to hurt Mu Ssang. However, not a single person would be happy to see some punks rushing in just to get their skulls cracked open.
Mu Ssang’s left hand performed one of the moves belonging to the Stealing Guard of Hundred Hands to scoop up both of the falling batons, as if he was picking up some pebbles.
Smack- Slap-!
Mu Ssang’s bear-style punch, with his fingers tightly clenched, smacked and slapped the chin and cheeks of the two Baekgol-dan members.
The two who were rushing in oh-so energetically suddenly lost all light in their eyes and began stumbling around like a couple of drunkards. In the eyes of the witnesses, it looked like the assailants just placed their batons in Mu Ssang’s hand and began dancing like idiots.
Pow, pow-!
As the two Baekgol-dan members staggered around without any sense of equilibrium, a foot was mercilessly connected into their unguarded butts.
Tumble, crash-
Both men tumbled to the floor while shoving aside the reading room chairs. Since both of their jawbones and gums were cracked, these two poor fools would have to eat liquefied food for the next three, maybe even four months.
“Aikoo~, looks like these punks are working under the influence of alcohol, eh?” Mu Ssang sarcastically ranted.
A suppression baton was as hard and heavy as a metal club. These two Baekgol-dan members were drunk with the taste of blood. If they hadn’t targeted Mu Ssang’s head but some other body parts, he wouldn’t have hurt them this badly.
“Kill him!”
“Die, as*hole!”
The sight of their comrades falling so easily had pushed the rest of the Baekgol-dan over the edge. In a sudden rage of hormones, they angrily pounced on Mu Ssang like a locust horde of the desert that had gone crazy.
Mu Ssang was disappointed. All these punks were still wet behind their ears, just kids barely past the age of 20. Some of them even used to be protestors who got gassed up with tear gas fumes and got drafted into the military, eventually finding themselves assigned to the Baekgol-dan. So what exactly was making these punks go berserk like this?
“All of you, stop this now!”
Too bad Mu Ssang’s warning fell on deaf ears. They wouldn’t be called the Baekgol-dan if they had stopped just because someone told them to.
Batons fell on Mu Ssang like a hailstorm. His figure started swaying and wavering like a mirage. Finally, batons slid past him as if the assailants were deliberately trying to miss their target.
Pow pow pow-!
Sounds of a club repeatedly hitting wet laundry rang out in the library. With barely any time in between the hits, the Baekgol-dan members got their cheeks slapped around, and they tumbled unconsciously to the floor like falling dominoes.
“You f*ck, don’t move!” The Baekgol-dan commander in the black combat uniform hurriedly yanked out his revolver.
“Uwahk?!”
“It’s a gun!”
Students began screaming.
Mu Ssang glanced at the muzzle, pointed at his chest, then cocked an eyebrow at the policeman. The sadistic eyes of the cop gleaming sharply under the deeply-pressed cap made him feel disgusted for some reason.
“Oii. That thing’s an antique over 30 years old, isn’t it? Can it even fire properly? Tsk, tsk!”
Mu Ssang instantly recognized the weapon and began tutting away. That was a Smith & Wesson K-frame six-shot single barrel Model 10 revolver. That antique, developed in the 1950s, was the standard-issue handgun of the Korean police.
Not only was it a grandpa-tier revolver, its clunky design meant that its accuracy was laughable at best. As for its advantages, well, it doesn’t misfire? About that much? Then again, there are so few cases where modern firearms miscarried due to the functional problems, so that wasn’t something to be proud of.
“Shut up, you f*ck! Raise your hands high before I put a bullet in your head!” The plain-clothes cop roared angrily, the muzzle swaying up and down uncontrollably.
The revolver itself was terrible, but the cop’s firing position was even more stupid. The way he stood diagonally and supported the grip with his left hand, made it seem like he was worshipping the gun, and not wielding it. His pose might look nice, but it happened to be the absolute worst position to even withstand the recoil.
“Hey, dumbass, are you trying to imitate Charlie Chaplin or something? What’s up with your rubbish firing position? Even I’m getting embarrassed while looking at your sorry ass. Although, a moron messing around with a rusted gun is more preferable to that Moon Gui-dong bastard who tortures his victims with his tiny willy, isn’t it!”
“Wah-hahaha!”
The students who were listening burst into a peal of laughter.
“Shut up, you f*cking commie bastard! Raise your hands, or I’ll shoot!”
The lower part of the policeman’s face was visibly getting redder from anger. He looked this close to squeezing the trigger.
However, Mu Sssang began taking a look at his own body. “I’m not red, though? By the way, why is our conversation even heading that way? Since I’m a ‘red,’ does that make you black?” (TN: the Korean slang for ‘commie’ is ‘red,’ hence this joke.)
Mu Ssang pointed at the policeman’s black combat uniform.
Students burst into another round of laughter. They were always on the receiving end of brutal beatings and got chased around like rats every day by the police, so watching a cop getting openly mocked like this was the catharsis they’ve all been waiting for.
‘What the hell?! This insane motherf*cker!’
The cop’s face became so flushed that it seemed ready to burst any second now. Mu Ssang was left dumbfounded by what he saw. The movements of the cop’s eyes, his tense shoulder muscles, all these things indicated that he was only a moment away from pulling that trigger.
Sure, this was the era of the government acting like a goddamn thug, but that man was still a cop of South Korea, not a member of the Black September Organization. Was he really thinking of pulling the trigger inside a library teeming with students?
“You f*cking bastard, die!”
Blam-!
A loud gunshot rocked the reading room. In the blink of an eye, the thought of ‘No, he would never’ instantly became ‘He did!’. However, Mu Ssang didn’t even blink once and continued glaring at the bullet’s trajectory as it brushed past his head. He had already determined beforehand the potential course by analyzing the muzzle’s direction and the movement of the index finger.
“Ah, damn it!”
Mu Ssang’s complexion paled instantly. He had forgotten about the students standing behind him. He hurriedly looked back in alarm. The bullet embedded itself into the reading table partition, while a pale-faced student right next to it was trembling in fright with their eyes slowly losing focus.
Even the one pulling the trigger seemed to be shocked by what happened as he was dazedly staring at the bluish smoke rising from the muzzle. Then, two, maybe three seconds later, screams and commotions broke out.
“Kkyaaaahk!”
“Uwahk?! That f*cker fired his gun!”
“Woo, woo!”
“Trample that bastard to death!”
All sorts of curses burst forth from the crowd. But that reaction was understandable. Clubs and tear gas canisters were meant to suppress, but guns and knives were intended to kill.
Even if you closed the lid on a toilet, it would still smell horrible. The public’s violent reaction to firearms became so much worse, partly due to how the incidents during the Gwangju Uprising of May the 18th got publicized despite the regime’s strict lockdown on the press. One will definitely be agitated, when one’s life is being threatened. Road rage is a typical example of this.
“Y-you f*ckers! Don’t you dare move! Anyone moves, and I’ll shoot you down!”
When the atmosphere became very hostile for him, the cop began waving the gun’s muzzle in every direction. The male students who were stepping forward to gang up on the cop froze on their spots.
The cop switched on his radio.
Hiss, hiss-
“Back up, need back up!”
“Haigooo. Give me a freaking break! You are a crazy as*hole.” Mu Ssang cocked his brow unhappily.
This cop was starting to remind him of the rotten-to-the-core Jang Chi-soo. Mu Ssang was only 13 when he was falsely accused of theft. Jang Chi-soo wanted to get a false confession, and began slapping the young Mu Ssang in the head with a nightstick.
A bastard like this is definitely not acting as the walking aide of the people, but a stick of punishment instead.
Bang-!
Mu Ssang kicked a Baekgol-dan helmet rolling around on the floor.
Crack-!
A chill-inducing noise rang out loudly. Instantly, a massive pair of glass windows shattered into pieces. The helmet shot forward like a bullet and destroyed the cop’s shin, bounced away, and eventually broke the window.
“Kkuwaaaaahk!”
Blamblamblam-!
Along with the cop’s wretched scream, three more rounds of bullets were discharged one after the other. The fluorescent lamps in the ceiling shattered when the bullets hit them, scattering the plaster powder like white mist in the process.
“He’s rotten to the core, isn’t he?” Mu Ssang tutted away.
If the cop had discharged his gun by accident while tumbling backward from the impact, there was no way he would have fired three rounds in a row like that. This damn bastard wanted to take everyone else down with him.
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“Aaah!”
The shocked students hurriedly evacuated to the far corner.
“This goddamn moron!”
In a flash, Mu Ssang seemed to have teleported to the cop. And he stomped down on the cop’s right hand that was still holding the revolver.
Crunch, crack-!
The chilling noise of bones getting crushed resounded. Mu Ssang was merciless this time.
“Kkuwaaaah!” A shrill scream burst out of the cop’s lips.
The force of impact brought about by the Thousand Ton Stomp, performed with the resonance wave, can easily reach two tons worth. As a result, the cop’s right hand would never be able to grip chopsticks for the rest of his life.
South Korea was unlike in Africa or the Middle East. Mu Ssang never imagined that he would run into a crazed idiot who is willing to fire a gun indiscriminately inside a university library. The fact that the cop fired three rounds in a row was pretty damning evidence of the man’s intent to murder the students.
In all honesty, though, it didn’t matter what the justification was. This cop already broke the regulations on firearms. The standard procedure for the Korean police was to always leave the first chamber empty, fill the second chamber with a blank, and only load the live ammunition in chambers three to six. Yet despite the regulation, this bastard packed all six chambers with live ammo.
Broken bones jutted out of the cop’s skin, while blood-soaked nerves and tendons were now visibly in a messy tangle. Mu Ssang delivered the punishment decisively and mercilessly.
“Whoooa~! I knew it; he is Darth Vader!”
“Holy cow! How pitiful.”
“Big bro, you’re the best!”
Stunned by Mu Ssang’s freakish performance, the students began crying out in a mix of horror and awe.
*
Mu Ssang picked up the blood-covered revolver and put the safety on. He released the cylinder and took out the remaining two rounds, then grabbed the cop by the collar as he squealed away like a pig on festival day. He picked up the wounded man, only to be met with a huge surprise.
‘Huh?! It’s Jang Chi-soo!’
Mu Ssang quickly swallowed back his words. A bean-sized wart can be found smack-dab in the middle of the cop’s forehead, with three strands of hair sticking out of said wart. That was Jang Chi-soo’s trademark lucky spot. Anyway, even if this man, in his late thirties and with a gaunt face, didn’t have that wart, he was still unmistakably Jang Chi-soo.
How could Mu Ssang not immediately recognize someone who was mentioned explicitly in the record of favors and grudges!
Since his days as a patrolman, Jang Chi-soo acted like the people’s stick of punishment, and unfortunately, it seems like he still hadn’t fixed this crappy habit of his. Mu Ssang’s ‘business’ with Jang Chi-soo was particularly unsavory. This bastard was the one tasked by Mu Ssang’s aunt, Missus Jang, to imprison the young Mu Ssang for ten days straight while beating him up every single day.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. Six years after that first encounter, Mu Ssang ran into this bastard again thanks to Kang Young-sook’s assault and rape case. To no one’s surprise, Jang Chi-soo was responsible for cooking up all sorts of false testimonies, even tampering with the crime scene.
Bitter enemies were supposed to run into each other on a lone bridge somewhere. And as expected, South Korea is a nation of far-too-cramped landmass.
“A cop indiscriminately fires his gun at innocent students?! Do you think students studying in a library are spies or murderers?! You as*hole, you’re beyond saving, aren’t you!”
Slap, slap-!
Mu Ssang’s palm viciously swung back and forth across Jang Chi-soo’s face three to four times. He even smacked the cop’s chin upward too. His slaps contained a hefty load of emotions, causing the noises of breaking bones to ring out loudly.
“Kkuuuuuk!”
Jang Chi-soo was already suffering from nerve-shattering pain. Despite that, he couldn’t even scream properly, as he tip-toed precariously between life and death. Then, as his consciousness was about to fade away, he was suddenly brought back by a tidal wave of pain.
This was the effect of Mu Ssang’s trademark technique, ‘Returning Mind, Burning Body,’ which was a vile torture technique that applied intermittent stimulus to the victim’s nerve system in order to sober them up, allowing them to experience the full brunt of the pain.
“Why the f*ck did you fire your gun, as*hole? This is all your fault, is it not? Eiii, what a weak-ass punk. He already blacked out.” Mu Ssang released his grip on Jang Chi-soo’s collar. The unconscious cop slid to the floor like an empty sack.
From the outside, Jang Chi-soo seemed to be suffering from a fracture in one of his shins and a crushed right hand. But his internal injuries were much more severe. Not only was his jawbone shattered, but his molars and canine teeth would not function properly anymore too. In addition, five of his ribs were also broken, damaging his lungs and liver in the process.
“Kill that motherf*cker!”
The agitated students rushed in and began kicking and punching Jang Chi-soo without realizing his current state. Finally, the female student, whose hair was yanked around earlier, took off her shoe and mercilessly slammed Jang Chi-soo’s head with the heel.
“Hey, hey. That’s enough. You’ll kill him at this rate.” Mu Ssang stepped in to stop the agitated students.
The angry mob instantly stopped their gang beating and retreated like a receding tide. After all, no one here was brave enough to go against Darth Vader’s command.
“Big bro, thank you so much. We’re alive thanks to your heroic act.”
“He’s right. If it weren’t for you, big bro, we would have been beaten half to death and thrown inside the bakery.”
Mu Ssang asked in a dazed voice. “Bakery? What’s that?”
“Prison, big bro. Prison!” (T/N: the Korean slang for prison is “ggam-bbang”; “bbang” is bread in Korean)
“Hooray to our big bro Darth Vader!”
These naive students began throwing cheers around, without realizing the severe consequences that lie ahead.
“Hooray, my foot. Stop trying to embarrass me, will you? Anyway, you all saw this f*cker firing his gun, didn’t you?”
“Yessir! He’s the real bad guy here.”
“We need to beat those bastards to death, too!”
The students who were thrashed earlier by the Baekgol-dan got agitated again and began growling menacingly. Finally, they picked up the batons and seemed ready to murder the unconscious Baekgol-dan members laid out on the floor.
“Don’t do that! These punks are just a bunch of pitiful idiots, you know.”
“…Okay, understood.”
The furious students conceded and stepped back without complaint. Darth Vader’s commands were absolute, after all.
“But big bro, things just got massively complicated for you because of us. And what are we going to do with that pig?” One of the students, who seemed to have a sharper brain than the rest, asked, while pointing at the battered and bruised Jang Chi-soo.
“That f*cker is the worst of the worst. But, of course, you all saw him pointing the gun at me before firing, right?”
“Of course. That f*cker tried to shoot you. Then he tried to shoot at us. If you hadn’t chucked that helmet at the bastard, several of us would’ve died today! A motherf*cker like him needs to be trampled to death, you know.”
“Keep a lid on that, will you. Since I turned a pig into that state, yeah, things might get a bit noisy for me. Don’t you worry, though. I’ll handle the fallout.”
“No, that’s not right. Let us take care of it, big bro. It can’t be more than three years in prison, right?”
“Hey, you. You’re supposed to be studying your butts off for the future right now, so don’t you think that losing three years will be the end of youu? Like I said, don’t worry about it and just come forth as witnesses when necessary.”
“I’m sorry about this, big bro. We’ll prepare affidavits. You can call on us anytime.”
The students eagerly chucked their student ID cards at Mu Ssang. Even those students who rushed into the library during the action didn’t hesitate to present Mu Ssang with their ID cards. In the blink of an eye, he ended up collecting over a hundred ID cards.
“Tsk. I finally caused a scene, huh.”
Mu Ssang felt a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. He wanted to stay under the radar and live a quiet life if possible, but still, he ended up getting involved. Of course, he wasn’t scared, but that didn’t mean he was happy about the annoying, unavoidable trouble that is about to come his way. Since he went against his Master’s orders, he could very well end up repeating the exact similar scene of Sun Wukong being crushed under the Marble Mountains.
*
Mu Ssang asked the female student who got her hair yanked around earlier. “Hey. You alright now?”
“Yes, I’m alright.”
She replied vivaciously, as she pulled out a compact mirror from her handbag. She combed her hair, tried to fix her make-up, then covered her bruised cheek with her hair.
‘Huh. I guess that’s really how women are!’
Mu Ssang was genuinely impressed. Even the female guerillas of Sahel’s FROLINAT frantically dolled themselves up despite the terrible environment they were in.
“Come, let’s go to a hospital. I’ll take you there.”
The female student finished tidying up and demurely looked up at Mu Ssang. “My name is Kim Sook, and I’m a big fan of yours, Big Bro Darth Vader. Can I get your autograph?”
Kim Sook took out a notebook from her handbag while talking about something completely unrelated. Mu Ssang wanted to take her to a hospital, so what on earth was she talking about here? An autograph out of the blue?
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Mu Ssang, feeling somewhat bemused now, shook his head. “Seeing how you are muttering nonsense like that, you’re not okay, girl. Hey, guys. Take her to a hospital right away.”
Kim Sook grinned softly while the other students cackled away.
“Oppa. Is it okay for us to take away these comatose bastards?”
“Mm? What do you have in mind?”
“We’re thinking of locking them up in the percussion band club room, you see. We want to use them to exchange for our friends who were taken away by the cops.”