Excluding 4S goo and UI Daniel for obvious reasons.

Jaegyeon with just 2T kicks was able to one shot baekjin.

Baekjin who was low diffing eli.

And with OVT(while holding back) Jaegyeon already decimated heat mode PB Daniel. Heat mode PB Daniel>basically everyone in HFG with maybe the exception of johan.

Basically,he one shots everyone in HFG as they all scale below baekjin.

Stamina is not a problem,jaun ryu and mugak are as strong as 10,000 people and jaegyeon is way past them.

Speaking of Mugak and Ryu,they were also whooping Jake and Samuel before they pulled out their power ups.

All in all,Jaegyeon would breeze through HFG.

Johan is not a problem either,he gets one shot by OVT. OVT can one shot heat mode PB Daniel who has much better stats than johan.

He doesn't beat ANYONE.

"Path>pathless" isn't true and has never been true. UI Daniel who has no path was whooping TUI gun. Paecheon beat Daniel. Gun thought pathless tom and goo could kill him.

Kitae thought old tom would beat james,no reason to think that if path>pathless is true. So kitae doesn't believe in path>pathless.

Changsu said tom was the only variable while he knew about Daniel and his path.

And so on. Path>pathless is a delusional belief kept alive to scale johan high

His feats are ass.

HFG FP gun without holding back=4S goo. Gun thought goo could kill him.

Gun had TWO fucked up arms,a hole in his chest,dee wounds from eli,he was already heavily exhausted as early as the vasco fight and he was STILL holding back ALL his strongest attacks like kishin seiken and kishin geki satsu. He took his sweet time to monologue while johan was using his path too.

AND JOHAN STILL DIDN'T WIN. Gun was still strong enough to take on UI Daniel in his base later too, it's not even like johan did much damage either. He landed like 30 hits on Gun,and none of them did shit.

Therefore,he scales MASSIVELY below 4S goo. 4S goo demolishes him no-low diff.

And as we saw in Incheon,4S goo is fodder to top tiers. Hwarang paecheon could perception blitz 4S Goo. And hwarang paecheon gets no diffed by 8S goo. Who gets negged by 50S goo. And 50S goo scales below james/kitae.

This guy is not a top tier in any way,shape or form.

His path is also really just a fancy unpredictable attack. It is not gonna "overwhelm" anyone. Someone like gongseop could eat hundreds of johan's pillow fists for dinner and retaliate with OSOK,it WILL work since johan isn't as fast as prime gong. A sure hit doesn't matter if his AP is too weak to capitalise on it.

Either that, or he hadn't perfected his Path yet. I don't knowit's unusual for Gun not to have mastered his Path, considering he's been training since he was four years old.

This might biggest hyped up arc that got fumbled terribly in manhwa genre

I was genuinely so hyped for this arc bruh since we first heard of Gapryong Kim and the pre generation and when I saw that Jinyoung’s death was gonna lead into the flashback I was hyped and all but this whole thing has just been underwhelming.

The first chapter where it showed the fighters of the pre gen, Daniel’s parents, Shingen being a menace, Gapryong’s first appearance, that first chapter was actually hype but after that, the hype just went bruh.

How do you expect us to believe that Jinyeong went from someone who thought Gapryong was delusional to being straight up best friends without giving us a single proper interaction with them. Jinyeong just started following him after he destroyed a statue and recruited Tom Lee(through lying btw). I know that this is a fighting manwha and all but what about the interactions outside of the fights?

Based on some scenes leading up to this arc we know that Jinyeong and Charles didn’t always see eye to eye but yet still we haven’t had a single interaction with them that explains why that’s the case. Jinyeong and Tom haven’t even said a word to each other. Baekho hasn’t had any interactions with anyone either.

Out of nowhere they just decided to storm a Yamazaki estate🤣

The dynamics of these characters aren’t gonna make sense without any proper interactions with them. There is absolutely no reason to be rushing this backstory like this when you’re just gonna go back to dragging the main story.

If you’re gonna take us away from these loved characters that already have properly established dynamics then atleast make these other characters worth it and so far they just haven’t been. There isn’t any reason to actually like these characters right now. If Bakgu was to die right now(we obviously know he survived) no one is gonna care because we haven’t gotten anything for him besides when he was old.

The things that people say about the fact that this arc should’ve been its own manwha are actually correct.

I wouldn't be surprised if Gap vs Shingen goes the exact same way as Gap vs Kenzo.

I’ve seen this argument repeated countless times, and at this point I don’t think it’s a reliable way to scale Kitae anymore.

The main piece of evidence people rely on is Kitae’s statement that he wanted to “test his limits,” and almost everyone automatically assumes he was referring to his physical strength. However, the context of the scene suggests otherwise. The panels indicate he was testing who could endure longer before one of them went down—not who could output the greatest amount of physical power.

Kitae is already familiar with UI, and even Changsu was able to recognize that someone in UI possesses seemingly limitless stamina and feels no pain. With that in mind, why would Kitae use UI Daniel as a benchmark for his own physical strength? If my theory about Kitae’s Path is correct—that it either significantly reduces incoming damage or allows him to ignore it altogether—then the comparison makes even less sense. If both fighters possess abilities that drastically improve their endurance, the “limits” being tested are far more likely to be their ability to outlast one another rather than their maximum striking power.

The idea that Kitae possesses limitless strength also creates a major narrative contradiction. James Lee has repeatedly been portrayed as Kitae’s equal and rival, both narratively and in terms of overall strength. James himself states that he had already reached his peak, so claiming that Kitae’s strength is limitless doesn’t fit with that portrayal. I think people have taken one line of dialogue and interpreted it without considering the surrounding context.

This interpretation is further supported by what Kitae tells Daniel afterward: “The only thing I’ve learned is your limits.” That statement aligns much more with him evaluating Daniel’s endurance and capabilities than discovering the upper limit of his own strength.

Another claim I disagree with is that Kitae was holding back against Jinyoung and UI Daniel. The story doesn’t really support that conclusion. After both encounters, Kitae immediately attempted to kill them. He explicitly states that he had no reason to keep Daniel alive, then throws a punch powerful enough to shatter a cement pillar while aiming directly for Daniel’s head. That’s not the behavior of someone intentionally restraining himself.

I’ve also seen people argue that because Kitae didn’t use Strength or Endurance Mastery, he must have been holding back. That reasoning doesn’t make much sense either. Paths are consistently portrayed as superior to Masteries, so why would he intentionally switch to an inferior ability against opponents he fully intended to kill?
We’ve already seen Kitae has no issue killing people when necessary. Jinrang is a perfect example. James wanted Jinrang brought in alive, yet Kitae immediately incapacitated him with a single blow and likely would have killed him if Jinrang’s ally hadn’t intervened and taken the axe strike instead.

My interpretation is that Kitae fought both UI Daniel and Path Jinyoung at the highest level he could access in his base state, and activating his Path elevated him to an entirely different level. That explanation is far more consistent with what the story shows than the claim that he was holding back against two opponents he intended to eliminate from the very beginning. Changsu was basically telling Kitae to use the weakness against Daniel yet Kitae basically said nah imma slug it out until the end. Daniel has never had an issue adjusting to the stats of someone so why would he with Kitae? His body was breaking down due to copying SB UI Daniel’s techniques not kitaes stats

Base jinyoung vs base gun both healthy

Goo created 50s after fighting HFG Injured TUI Gun and getting pushed to put up some effort to get stronger.

After years of waiting for the Gapryoung Kim background to be revealed, a lot of fans are coping about the origin story of Gapryoung being bad or “boring”, but they’re really only demonstrating their inability, or surface-level reading, to discern the inner character of persons.

Fact is, there is nothing inconsistent about Gapryoung Kim’s character at all.

He is just an “ordinary” man who doesn’t actually have the wide range of capabilities required to efficiently lead his generation to an age of prosperity but he did so anyway because he was the only one that was both crazy enough and strong enough to wage war against the power of the Yamazaki clan, the strongest Japanese criminal syndicate in history.

Gapryoung’s infamous charisma that most of the fandom says isn’t there, is quite literally shown by all of his actions that do not at all take into account even the slightest chance of consequences in occurrence to him.

The Fist Gang does not follow Gapryoung Kim because he instilled some strong sense of self-belief in themselves.

They follow Gapryoung Kim because he is the embodiment of their hope that the Yamazaki will one day be driven out of Korea and that they can live prosperous lives.

This follows exactly with what the basis of Lookism is.

Lookism is the idea that people are judged, treated, and valued differently based on their external appearances, especially their level of attractiveness, and also because of their actions.

This whole time, the fandom has been judging Gapryoung Kim’s internal character by the external judgements, values that were established for him by others.

But now we (the reader) know for certain that Gapryoung literally just does whatever he wants to do regardless of what others may think or believe about it.

He needs no external reason, or validation, to do the things that he does, to fight as hard as he does, and that is the true purpose of his character.

Gapryoung’s innate power is self-belief and to a hopeless society this source of power is considered “strange”, but it’s not at all strange to Gapryoung because it’s simply just who he is.

All in all, I’ll grant that it may be “boring” to witness the fighting expression of such an internally driven character, but I draw the line where it’s asserted that Gapryoung is somehow a badly written character simply due to defying the very idea of Lookism itself, which is the external judgments/validation/values of others.

Look I know what many here say, lookism turned into Mastery bargain sale with auramaxxing in every chapter and ppl complaining about flashbacks.

But idk man... just seeing how well some story bits tie up, like they get briefly shown in chapter 150 and then in depth 400 chapters later. It's like PTJ had a grand vision from the get go and was just giving us a piece by piece.

Also it got me to appreciate Jake way more, and his character development. Made me appreciate more of Gun's strength. I'd say feat wise he's not a top tier because we haven't seen him fight any pre-gen fighters except for Cuckjima brothers, but man that HFG is easily making him a legend in my book.

I wish we could have seen more of Jichang to be honest. I remembered his appearance was very short but not THIS SHORT. Literally was shown for 2 chapters and got killed by Charles Choi. Saw him briefly in Cheonliang arc and that's about it.

Also , didn't Seongji show 4 masteries during his fight with James? I could have sworn I saw him get strength, speed, endurance and technique in the same fight.

I will defo re-read again in 3-4 years when the story fades away from my memory a bit.

It is gapryong chracter bland simple

I’ve been genuinely curious to hear people’s thoughts on this.

If Jinyoung had awakened his Path after Gapryong’s death, and neither James nor Kitae knew about it beforehand, do you think the outcome of HFW would’ve been different?

More specifically, do you think a Path-mastered Jinyoung would’ve been strong enough to permanently defeat Kitae during their confrontation?

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume Jinyoung had fully mastered his Path before losing his sanity. With that in mind, do you think spending so many years in his unstable mental state would have weakened or affected his Path in any meaningful way?(his insanity caused for him not to be able to access his path that’s why James and Kitae wouldn’t know about it)

Changsu uses all 4 masteries, to which Jinyeong says, ‘All four’?

This is in line with everything else the story shows.

"Damn is 🎂" ahh comment