Cleanup
The siblings had already tied the unconscious thugs up with rope.
Baek Wontae turned to the physician.
“Doctor, go to the magistrate’s office and file a report. Tell them a bunch of thugs swarmed your pharmacy.”
Physician Yang looked down at the gangsters.
They were still breathing, but their mangled, pounded-to-paste condition was downright horrifying.
“...How am I supposed to explain what happened to these men? They won’t believe I did it. And if I say the Hahou siblings did it, the two of them will end up with a fair amount of trouble...”
Baek Wontae gave a light laugh.
“Then just say customers who came in for treatment solved the problem and left.”
“Customers who came in for treatment? Who would believe something that ridiculous?”
Baek Wontae shrugged.
“Do you really think the people at the magistrate’s office will take the story apart and verify every little detail? Unless Hamwon happens to be run by some incorruptible saint who investigates every case personally and gets the facts straight.”
“...Well, no.”
“Then we’re good. It’s not like the administration has infinite manpower, and if the other side is trash like this, who cares which one of them got beaten? They’ll probably just be glad someone came along and cleared out the garbage.”
He added, “But you can’t mention us at all. Not one word.”
The physician looked at the siblings.
Both of them nodded with pitifully earnest expressions.
Physician Yang did not know who they really were.
He didn’t even know their names properly.
He only thought of them as diligent, capable, kind siblings who liked to help other people.
So he couldn’t understand why they were trying so hard to hide their identities.
Still, he could guess.
Like anyone else, they probably just didn’t want to get dragged into pointless trouble or stand out for no reason.
If it were him, he’d feel the same.
“...But those men already saw your faces. I even blurted out the siblings’ surname. The Hahou siblings have plenty of acquaintances in Hamwon; if those thugs testify, what good would it do for me to keep quiet?”
Baek Wontae smirked and shot back, “You’re the only witness, Doctor. Do you really think the magistrate’s office will believe those pieces of trash over your word? Your reputation is pretty solid, isn’t it?”
“Well, I suppose that’s true...”
“Great. Just make sure your testimony doesn’t contradict ours. Three customers came in: two men, one woman. That’s all you need to say.”
Then he shifted his gaze to the thugs.
A strange smile touched his lips.
“I’ll handle the part that might be a problem.”
The clan head had told them not to do anything that would draw attention—
So I’ll make sure nobody noticed anything.
He rummaged through the thugs’ clothes.
“Would be nice if they had one...”
A moment later, several hard wooden tokens were in his hand.
“There it is.”
Sinpae.
The identity tokens used in the Yeom Kingdom.
On the small wooden plaque, a person’s name, residence, and family ties were all carved in meticulous detail.
Of course, people didn’t always carry them around.
Just as even in modern times there were idiots who left their IDs at home, plenty of people didn’t bother to keep their Sinpae on them.
Fortunately, a few of these guys had theirs.
He had seen plenty of thugs while running the drug business.
Big-bodied fools who relied on muscle and swagger.
And men like that were fragile when it came to outside pressure.
He knew exactly how to handle that kind of thing.
“Hey, wake up.”
Baek Wontae kicked one of them in the ribs.
The thugs woke with a jolt, pain ripping through them.
“Hiiik...!”
Terrified, they wriggled uselessly against their bindings.
Baek Wontae checked the Sinpae one by one, reading off the names.
“Bang Deokgye, Jang Pyeong, U Daegwang... And the address is... oh, look at this bastard?”
The corners of his mouth twisted upward.
“You even have a family. Elderly parents, a wife, a little daughter... and you still threatened a physician and harassed a woman. Nice work.”
He spun the wooden token between his fingers and smiled.
“This works out perfectly. Let’s keep it simple and settle for one threat. What you saw here, what you heard—if even a single word leaks outside, I’ll slice your families alive, pickle them like salted fish, and send them to the prison canteen as side dishes. Got it?”
Everyone in the pharmacy thought they had misheard him.
His voice was calm, but the words were monstrous.
Jang Pyeong’s face went chalk-white as he shrieked, “Y-you demonic bastard...!”
Bang Deokgye, the gang leader, was covered in blood and still laughing.
Not because he had any confidence left.
It was pure vanity—the pathetic need to keep up the image of a boss.
“Heh... Acting all tough, are you? Have you ever killed anyone? Anyone can talk big! I’ll spill everything to the magistrate’s office!”
“Boss! Have you lost your mind?!”
“Shut up, boss!”
His underlings tried desperately to stop him, but he wouldn’t.
Rotten as he was, he was still the boss.
And in the end, he wanted to save face.
Even after getting beaten half to death, the way he kept strutting and bluffing was pathetic.
Baek Wontae laughed along with him.
“Hahaha.”
Bang Deokgye burst out laughing like a lunatic.
“Hahaha!”
Then—
Snap.
Baek Wontae’s laughter was cut off.
Haa—
A sigh slipped out of him.
“You think I’m joking? Fine, I’ll make an example. Whose family should I slice up first? You idiots decide among yourselves. ...Hey, take this. Once you decide, go grab one for me.”
He casually tossed a Sinpae to Dang Ihyeon.
The thugs had just been beaten senseless.
They had personally experienced the siblings’ strength, and it had scarred them down to the bone.
More than that, there was that vile look in his eyes.
Anyone who worked for this demon would absolutely be willing to violate his family without a second thought.
There was only one conclusion.
He really would do it.
Thud—!
The thugs slammed their foreheads into the floor.
Pathetic. Groveling. Humiliating.
“Wait! Wait! We won’t talk! We absolutely won’t! We’ll keep our mouths shut and take our punishment quietly! We swear to heaven and earth!”
“What a bunch of two-faced bastards. I kind of like how cooperative you are.”
He lowered himself and whispered, “I’ll be watching. Don’t go running your mouths, don’t move away, and don’t be too smart for your own good. Got it?”
“Y-yes, sir!”
The answer came out more like a sob.
Only then did Baek Wontae straighten up and stand as though nothing had happened.
“All right, Doctor. That’s everything cleaned up. Please go report it.”
Physician Yang, still dazed by his savagery, blinked himself back to reality and nodded.
“I understand.”
“Take care.”
* * *
After the physician left the pharmacy, the group slipped out as well, hiding themselves nearby and keeping watch over the shop.
Dang Ihwa spoke in a low voice.
“That’s unexpected.”
“What is?”
“When you handed the knife to Dang Ihyeon, I thought you’d tell him to kill them. You’re stricter about your line than I expected.”
“Line, my ass.”
“...?”
“How would you handle it if six people got killed in broad daylight, in the middle of a crowded city? Sure, there are ways to clean that up, but... want to hear them?”
“I’m good...”
Inwardly, she reevaluated him.
A man with an appallingly demonic streak.
A ruthless threat, delivered with not even a flicker of change in his expression.
Of course, they had nearly beaten the thugs to death themselves, but...
That had been within the category of “justice” meant to protect the weak and defend themselves.
He was different.
He stomped on wounds and used families as hostages.
It was unmistakably “evil.”
His methods were on a level that the values of this age simply couldn’t compare to.
Just what had this man been doing in the world he came from?
And yet, she also understood him.
What if they had simply handed the thugs over to the magistrate’s office?
They might have blurted out, “Those bastards are the reason we ended up like this.”
They were hiding their identities under aliases.
With their circumstances, when they absolutely could not afford to come to the attention of the Dang family, Baek Wontae’s handling of the situation had been excellent.
Brutal, yes, but with the threat he had uprooted any future trouble at the root.
It was what had to be done.
He had taken on the parts they themselves couldn’t touch.
Come to think of it, he didn’t threaten innocent people. He only threatened the thugs who attacked the physician.
Evil was evil.
But it wasn’t wickedness.
Only then did she realize.
His evil was—
necessary evil.
Cold-bloodedness that would use any means necessary to reach its goal.
Privately, she felt he might be the man closest to the Dang family of anyone she had met.
Whatever the case, he was still the one who would make them money.
For the business to succeed, they needed that ruthlessness and that lack of mercy.
Like Ihyeon had said, at the very least, they shouldn’t hold him back.
Baek Wontae said calmly, “There was no profit in killing them anyway. I don’t think someone like Physician Yang would enjoy that kind of mess, either. If there’s something to be gained, then the best profit is to end it at a reasonable level.”
“You figured all that out in that short a moment?”
“Easy.”
A little while later, Physician Yang returned with the city guards.
The guards entered the pharmacy and dragged the thugs outside.
They seemed nearly paralyzed from the waist down, and even walking was a struggle.
The guards questioned the physician, and he testified exactly as Baek Wontae had instructed.
The thugs’ threats. The customers who had happened to come in. The man and woman who had beaten them into a pulp and vanished without a trace.
It sounded like something out of a story.
The guards tilted their heads, but they accepted it without much further probing.
The reason was simple.
They couldn’t be bothered.
Jing shui bu fan he shui.
If two men and one woman had smashed six thugs, then they had clearly used martial arts.
That meant they were likely people of the jianghu, and there was an unspoken rule that officialdom and the martial world did not meddle with each other lightly.
If they pried any further, it would only create a headache.
If some major sect happened to be involved, it would quickly become a tangled mess of competing interests.
Of course, even if someone was from the jianghu, the authorities could still intervene if it was a dispute with ordinary people.
But if the other side was just a pack of local thugs?
Arresting them and locking them up was enough to consider the case closed.
Besides, these thugs had been wandering the neighborhood and causing nothing but trouble and crime all over town.
They were the kind of trash that should have been dealt with sooner anyway, so from the guards’ perspective, this was less work for them.
On top of that, the victim and witness in this case was the well-respected Physician Yang.
If he said it, whether it was true or not, it didn’t matter.
The higher-ups would accept it without suspicion.
So they didn’t dig any deeper.
Baek Wontae had seen through that.
He understood the relationship between the authorities and the martial world, and he knew the guards would let it slide at the edges of that blurry boundary.
That’s how the cops are here; why would the bureaucracy from a few hundred years ago be any different?
In the end, the guards were not the ones to worry about.
The real problem was the thugs’ mouths.
That was why he had been so ruthless.
Physician Yang clicked his tongue.
He admired the man’s judgment, but at the same time, a question nagged at him.
How had those innocent-looking siblings ended up traveling with such a vicious man?
Once the guards left, Baek Wontae and the others headed back to the pharmacy.
“You didn’t mention us, did you...?”
Physician Yang shook his head.
“No, I didn’t. I knew the children were unusual, but... I had no idea their martial might was that impressive. There must be some story behind you.”
“Unusual? What do you mean?”
The physician gave a low laugh.
“They were able to carry heavy loads that would have taken several grown men in an instant, all by themselves.”
Baek Wontae turned his gaze to the siblings and narrowed his eyes in disbelief.
And you said not to stand out...
What a goddamn mess.