Chapter 197: You’re a monster

The iron security gates of the Pyeongchang-dong estate groaned under the weight of an invisible kinetic pressure. Frost cracked across the stone driveway, tracking lines like a shattered mirror toward the main foyer steps.

Min-Soo stepped out into the freezing stone courtyard, his dark wool coat draped over his broad shoulders. He pulled the heavy double doors shut behind him, locking the biometric deadbolts with a smooth click. He stood at the top of the marble steps, On his right index finger, the bronze band of Lady Ling-Xian’s ring remained perfectly dark, though the soul link inside his mind hummed with a cold, protective readiness.

Standing on the frosted asphalt below were three men. They wore matching slate-grey linen robes that billowed despite the absence of natural wind. Their knuckles were thick, and their faces were masked by an unnatural, dull grey mist—the signature cloaking method of the Sun-Woo Clan’s hidden enforcers.

The leader of the trio, a Level 12 Earth-Core cultivator named Elder Baek, took a slow step forward. The stone beneath his heavy cloth boot shattered into gravel, pulverized by the dense, toxic blue Qi rippling around his ankles.

"Lee Min-Soo," Elder Baek spat, his voice carrying a vibrational weight that made the estate’s glass security cameras hum violently. "You shorted our clan’s medical stock and used an unlinked proxy to steal the Gangnam logistics lanes. In the hidden world, commoner gold means nothing. Hand over the bronze ring and the transaction keys to the black account, or we will erase this entire estate from the registry before the sun sets."

Min-Soo looked down at the three cultivators with the absolute, analytical detachment of his copied S-Tier intelligence. Thanks to the Level 1 Qi Condensation core he had anchored inside his lower dantian earlier that morning, his vision didn’t register them as terrifying masters. He saw the structural flaws in their Qi circulation lines. He saw three over-leveraged combat targets whose local backing had already been compromised.

"Your clan’s pharmaceutical labs were fully liquidated under the Ilshin Group banner at 4:00 PM yesterday, Elder Baek," Min-Soo said, his voice flat, carrying an elite, bone-chilling resonance that cut straight through the freezing static of the yard. "The land deed beneath your clan’s private ancestral pavilion belongs to my proxy. You’re not executing an extraction phase. You are trespassing on an account I already own."

"Arrogant brat! Break his meridians!" Baek roared, his hand snapping out to draw a heavy, serrated steel blade that pulsed with thick, toxic blue light.

The two enforcers at his rear lunged forward instantly, their bodies blurring as they used their Earth-Core speed to close the distance. They came at Min-Soo from both sides of the marble staircase, their palms loaded with pressurized, bone-crushing kinetic shockwaves.

Min-Soo didn’t pull his hands from his pockets. He didn’t need to.

Relying entirely on his newly enhanced Level 1 physical reflexes—which had expanded by two hundred percent after burning through the Liquid Qi catalyst—Min-Soo simply tilted his upper body three inches to the left. The first enforcer’s palm strike whistled past his uniform collar, the pressurized wind shattering the stone pillar behind him into dust.

Without resetting his stance, Min-Soo’s left leg snapped out like an iron piston. Driven by his self-taught warehouse combat training and fueled by his newly opened channels, his heavy leather shoe caught the attacker squarely in the ribs. The impact sounded like a car crash, the physical force fracturing the enforcer’s defensive aura and sending his large frame crashing down the marble steps, coughing up black blood before rolling into the frozen gravel, completely unconscious.

The second enforcer’s high-frequency blade swung down at Min-Soo’s throat in a lethal, blinding arc. Min-Soo’s right hand whipped out of his pocket, his bare fingers catching the blunt spine of the steel blade with a precise, vice-like grip.

"What kind of mortal baseline is this?!" the enforcer gasped, his eyes widening in absolute, primal terror as he tried to wrench the weapon back. But Min-Soo’s grip was immovable, anchored by raw human mass and refined internal energy.

Min-Soo twisted his wrist downward. The steel blade snapped in half with a sharp, resonant crack. Before the pieces could hit the floor, Min-Soo drove a brutal, short-range left hook directly into the center of the enforcer’s chest. The sheer kinetic weight lifted the grown man off his feet, launching him five meters across the courtyard where he slammed into the solid iron security gates, fracturing the reinforcement bars before he slumped into the frozen dirt.

Elder Baek stepped back, his serrated blade trembling as the toxic blue aura around his legs violently snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane. He looked at his two elite Level 10 enforcers groaning in the dirt, then at Min-Soo’s pristine, unwrinkled custom uniform shirt. He couldn’t feel a high-level cultivation rank inside the boy, which meant the absolute efficiency of Min-Soo’s combat data was something far more terrifying than a standard sect lineage.

"You’re a monster..." Baek muttered, his boots scuffing the frosted gravel as he reached for an emergency signaling talisman at his waist. "The main council won’t let a commoner dominate the district lines—"

"The main council doesn’t handle your margins anymore," Min-Soo said, pulling his phone out with his left hand and swiping across the green interface screen.

[Shinhan Bank Alert: Real-Time Corporate Acquisition Confirmed.]

[Target: Sun-Woo Private Security Franchise.

Current Verified Liquid Balance: $16,291,000.]

"I just bought out the operational insurance bond of your security firm through an Ilshin Group proxy," Min-Soo said, his voice flat and final as the estate’s automated defense grids suddenly reactivated, the heavy electronic security gates locking down behind Elder Baek with a definitive thud. "By noon, your family’s cultivation licenses are being stripped by the provincial board. Hand over the serrated blade, or I’ll execute the final margin call on your clan’s remaining asset vaults before the lunch bell."

Elder Baek’s jaw dropped, the signaling talisman slipping from his numb fingers onto the ice. The undisputed enforcers of the district had entered the courtyard expecting a simple execution, only to realize they had walked straight into a sovereign’s cage.

Min-Soo turned on his heel, walking back up the marble steps toward the grand foyer as his phone delivered the final tracking metrics. The Sun-Woo Clan was dismantled, his net worth was securely locked past the sixteen-million-dollar mark, and his internal core was vibrating with an absolute, unyielding strength.