Chapter 140: Yang VS Tokita Ohma! (Patreon)

Looking at Yang, Sekibayashi Jun clapped his hands excitedly. "You've got real talent for wrestling! Tall frame, powerful muscles! And you're not bad-looking either!"

As he said this, he rubbed his chin with a hint of resignation.

"A few years back, you'd have been too pretty for wrestling. But plenty of promotions have been chasing the female audience lately, and a young guy like you—handsome and built—would sell a lot better than I ever did."

"Good advice. But there's something more pressing to deal with right now."

Yang paid Sekibayashi Jun's words no mind, turning his gaze instead to Tokita Ohma standing off to the side. "You're getting a little impatient, aren't you, Tokita Ohma?"

"Yeah." At Yang's words, Ohma nodded, a note of irritation in his voice. "If you two future losers have anything to say, say it now while you still can. Once you're done, get ready for the match."

Hearing himself called a future loser before the fight had even begun, Sekibayashi Jun burst into hearty laughter instead of anger. He clapped Yang on the shoulder.

"Well then, I won't get in your way. Good luck!"

With that, he turned and walked off into the crowd to wait for his own turn.

Ohma glanced at Yang once, then looked away, apparently uninterested in the fact that Yang had been parachuted into the match through the chairman's special privilege.

Or perhaps, to Ohma, both Yang and Sekibayashi Jun were simply fighters he would defeat—stepping stones to prove that Niko Style (lit. "Two Tigers style") was the strongest under heaven.

And he had no desire whatsoever to converse with a stepping stone.

Yang wasn't surprised by his reaction. He simply asked, calm as ever, "You're... the heir to Niko Style?"

"What—?!" Ohma's head snapped toward him.

Although he'd already joined the Kengan Association, Ohma had never told anyone what style he practiced, let alone explained anything about it.

In Kengan Ashura, Tokita Ohma hailed from The Inside.

On his way here, Yang had made a point of looking into what The Inside was like in this world.

Simply put, it was a place much like Old City, only far more degenerate and hopeless—beyond any hope of salvation, a lawless den where crimes of martial violence ran rampant.

To keep ordinary people safe, The Inside had been erased from maps entirely. Its existence was also one of the reasons Japan had joined forces with police from multiple countries to establish the Violent Martial Arts Riot Squad.

Ohma's childhood memories had been deliberately wiped through brainwashing. For as long as he could remember, he'd lived in The Inside—though he himself had no idea how he'd ended up there, and couldn't recall his parents or any relatives at all.

Later, he met the man who became his master and adoptive father, Tokita Niko. It was only then that Ohma finally had a name.

The reason he was named Tokita Ohma was simple enough. The city was carved up into districts ruled by various lawless criminal factions, and Tokita Niko had found the boy right at the border between Tokita District and Ohma District. Following Japanese naming custom, he named him Tokita Ohma.

All things considered, it was a good thing Niko had found him in that particular city. If he'd picked him up in Northeast China instead, the kid might've ended up named "Tokita Shenyang Avenue"...

As it turned out, "Niko" wasn't a single person's name at all—it was a code name shared by a whole group. When Ohma was still a child, the Niko who'd raised him was killed by another man bearing the same name. Before leaving, that other Niko told the boy his adoptive father had died simply because he'd been too weak.

Ohma's mind had already been unstable from the childhood brainwashing. Then he'd watched his adoptive father die a violent death, and the killer had mocked him, saying it was all because his father had been weak. His mind, still too fragile to bear it, simply broke—triggering a traumatic bout of amnesia.

Overwhelmed by grief, he came to mistakenly believe that he himself had killed his adoptive father.

Now, the only reason Ohma had entered the Kengan Association was to prove his strength to his dead father—to prove that Niko Style was the strongest style there was.

But unfortunately... an ordinary fighter might not have noticed, yet both Yang and even Sekibayashi Jun could sense it clearly.

Along with his lost memories, the intent that should have defined him as a fighter was badly, fundamentally broken.

Sekibayashi Jun didn't know any of this history—he'd merely wondered why Ohma never showed his full intent. But Yang understood: it wasn't that Ohma refused to reveal it. He'd simply forgotten what his own intent even was.

And now...

"You. Are weak."

Meeting Ohma's stare, Yang smiled. "You. And this Niko Style you use. Both weak."

"...Do you want to die?" Ohma's eyes went cold as he stared at Yang.

He'd never cared what anyone said about himself. But to insult Niko Style, in his eyes, was to insult Tokita Niko.

Yang felt the killing intent and malice erupting off Ohma, yet his expression didn't so much as flicker. He simply turned and walked calmly toward the fighters' corridor.

As he walked, Yang activated his healing effect, using the Charm Arts of Shiranui-ryu to stimulate the secretion of androstenone and androstadienone, then used that same healing effect to accelerate their volatilization and spread.

Androstenone occurs naturally in male body odor, and it communicates dominance, competitiveness, and aggression. The higher a man's testosterone level, the more sensitive—and the more averse—he is to that scent.

Androstadienone works similarly—a steroid compound found in male underarm sweat. In excess, it registers to other men as a signal of threat and dominance, triggering avoidance or submission.

As a fighter, Ohma's testosterone levels went without saying. Even this slight activation, combined with the intent radiating off Yang, was enough to make Ohma's eyes narrow sharply—he could feel, unmistakably, the naked hostility and malice pouring off him.

Instinct tightened every muscle in Ohma's body, snapping him into combat readiness.

But Yang was in no hurry to strike. He simply kept walking, unhurried, and said, "It's because you were too weak that you got Tokita Niko killed."

"—!!!" At those words, Ohma's eyes went distant for an instant, flooded with memories his mind had buried away as a defense mechanism.

"What do you even know?!" Ohma snapped back to himself, screaming hysterically.

But by the time he looked up, Yang was already gone.

"...Mr. Ohma?" Yamashita Kazuo watched him with worry, unsettled by the way Ohma had frozen and then suddenly exploded with rage.

Finding Yang gone, Ohma turned his killing-intent-laden gaze on Yamashita instead.

"That man! Where's Yang?! Where did he go?! Where is he?!"

"He's already getting ready to enter," Yamashita said carefully. "If you don't hurry, Ohma, you'll forfeit for being late!"

At that, Ohma hesitated no longer. Eyes bloodshot, he stormed toward the arena like a cornered beast.

Just as the tension between Yang and Ohma grew unbearably tight, hurried footsteps and breathless chatter sounded from the entrance to the spectator area.

"We're late, we're late! It's all Ichika's fault—she said she knew the way and took us on a huge detour!"

"How was I supposed to know it'd take this long from Old City?! Besides, it hasn't even started yet!"

Tenma Nozomi, Iori Ichika, and Hana Mitani came stumbling out of the corridor, and their frantic arrival immediately drew stares.

"Over here!" Chun-Li called, waving to them from the front row of the crowd.

Calling it a "spectator area" was generous—it was really just a circle painted on the ground in white, with the crowd standing outside its edge.

Tenma Nozomi lit up at the sight of Chun-Li like she'd found family, hurrying over and looking around while catching her breath.

Her expression shifted from anxious to confused, and then from confused to disbelieving.

"Wait, this is where the Kengan Association holds its matches? A parking garage... under an abandoned mall?"

"Most of the matches are like this."

Chun-Li tilted her chin toward the ring. "The Kengan Association doesn't make money off tickets. The bigger, more official matches are different, though—you can come see one sometime."

While Tenma Nozomi and the others were still gawking around, a spotlight snapped on at the center of the arena.

At some point, unnoticed, Katahara Sayaka had already taken her place right beneath it.

She wore a red evening gown, her eyes blazing with excitement. The moment she appeared, every murmur of conversation in the garage vanished the instant she raised her right hand.

"Sorry to keep you all waiting!"

True to her reputation as the demon's throat, her voice—loud, warm, needing no microphone or amplifier—rang off the concrete walls all on its own.

"I'm sure everyone here already knows what makes tonight different—a special match arranged under Chairman Katahara's own privilege! Tonight's fighters—

Two wins in two fights since his Kengan Association debut, averaging under three minutes a match—he's already taken down Japan's Deva King, Komada Shigeru, and the Razor's Edge, Superman Lihito, sweeping through the Association with pure, overwhelming conqueror's will! The rookie monster representing Sakurasou Charcoal-Grilled Barbecue—standing one hundred ninety-eight centimeters, weighing one hundred forty kilograms—Dahao, Yang!!"

As she spoke, Yang walked in as usual, wearing his tank top, trench coat, and jeans, expression stony.

Facing that pressure, the crowd's reaction this time was nothing like their earlier indifference—quite the opposite, in fact.

The cheering nearly tore the roof off the garage.

"There he is! Yang's here! Tear him apart!!"

"Two-on-one again! Two-on-one again! One-on-one fights just can't satisfy him anymore!"

"He beats this rookie and then goes straight into Sekibayashi Jun—that's Sekibayashi Jun!"

"Yang could beat Ohma in two minutes flat—without an extra opponent it wouldn't even be worth watching!!"

"Yang's gonna one-shot Ohma! Guaranteed!"

Clearly, two consecutive victories won through undeniable, effortless violence had already earned Yang no small amount of popularity within the Kengan Association.

But beyond the gamblers, some in the crowd had also caught a blind spot in Katahara Sayaka's announcement.

"One ninety-eight? A hundred forty kilos? Wait, wasn't he only one ninety-six and a hundred one kilos a week ago? How'd he grow two centimeters and gain nearly half his body weight?!"

"Growing inward, maybe? Denser muscle or something?"

"One ninety-eight, one forty kilos... that's already heavier than a lot of super-heavyweights. So why doesn't his build even look that different?!"

Unlike the ordinary gamblers, these were company representatives within the Kengan Association—people who paid close attention to every fighter's physical condition to decide their companies' future direction.

They'd expected Yang's growth to plateau once he hit 110 kilos. Instead, not only had there been no plateau, he'd packed on another forty kilos with barely a trace of added fat.

Even Sekibayashi Jun couldn't help frowning at that, let alone anyone else.

As a super-heavyweight wrestler himself, nobody understood better than Sekibayashi Jun just how much destructive force raw body weight could add to a physical clash.

Yang, for his part, showed no reaction at all, his expression calm as ever.

Katahara Sayaka paid it no mind either, turning her attention immediately to the corridor on the other side.

"On the other side—another mystery star, officially registered just this month, who crushed a veteran Association fighter in his debut match with total dominance! Origin unknown, style unknown, representing the Nogi Group—standing one hundred eighty-two centimeters, weighing eighty-five kilograms—Ashura, Tokita Ohma!!"

As she spoke, Ohma stepped into the ring, his dark eyes locked unblinkingly on Yang.

At first, the crowd paid him little mind.

After all, as a rookie, his record was nothing special. His fighting style might be a mystery, but by every physical metric, he was only a little above average.

The existence of qi meant a fighter's true strength could never be measured by height and weight alone—but at the same time, thicker bones could carry more muscle, and more muscle could carry more qi.

By the numbers, at least, Ohma had already lost in their eyes.

But right then, as Ohma glared at Yang, a fierce killing intent began spreading outward from him in waves.

The inexplicable chill silenced a good part of the crowd, and made more than a few people blink in surprise.

Staring at Yang, Ohma mouthed something silently.

"Say it," his lips read, "or I'll kill you."

Even though Yang could understand Japanese, it wasn't his native tongue—so he had absolutely no idea what Ohma was actually saying.

Sensing the tension, Katahara Sayaka hesitated no longer. She stepped back, and the instant her right hand chopped down, she shouted: "Let the match begin!!"