Chapter 559: Infiltrating the Gu Clan
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 559: Infiltrating the Gu Clan
"Aaaaaaaargh!"
Lee Jae-won let out a primal scream.
An uncontrollable, monumental rage surged within him.
Boom! Crash!
He smashed his desk.
Thud! Crack!
He swung his fists, pulverizing the walls.
Crunch!
He stomped his feet, shattering the floorboards.
Snap!
With a kick, he reduced a table to splinters.
He broke, smashed, and destroyed.
Everything in his line of sight was obliterated.
"You son of a bitch!"
Lee Jae-won’s eyes, bloodshot and gleaming, darted around as he roared.
It had been a long time since he had felt this level of fury.
Not since he had been "memory-assaulted" at White Flower Peak a year ago.
"Die! Die! Die!"
Lee Jae-won stomped relentlessly, caving in the wooden floor.
Creeeak.
Crunch.
Soon, the floor of the office was collapsed beyond recognition.
He was an absolute master who had reached the Profound Realm.
Nothing could withstand the weight of Lee Jae-won’s kicks.
"Aaaaaagh!"
Even after tearing up the entire floor of the office, his anger remained unquenched, and he let out another shriek.
His scream was thick with pure, unadulterated rage.
"Gu Ja-yeop! Gu Ja-yeop! Gu Ja-yeoooooop!"
He was livid.
Livid at Gu Ja-yeop, who didn't know his place and dared to crawl up to him, babbling about impeachment.
He was the hero of the Murim.
He was the leader who had founded the organization known as the Cheonmu Alliance.
And yet, they wanted to impeach him? Simply because they didn't "like" how he did things?
How could he not be irritated?
How could he not be enraged?
It was preposterous.
His irritation flared, quickly curdling into a boiling wrath.
The anger began to consume him.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Lee Jae-won spat out a string of curses.
He couldn't back down like this. He couldn't allow himself to be impeached.
The Cheonmu Alliance was the paradise he had built.
Wealth.
Fame.
Power.
Women.
It was a paradise where he could satisfy any craving.
And now he was being kicked out?
It was unthinkable.
Are these bastards all collectively insane?
Lee Jae-won couldn't understand it.
Until now, the leadership had coddled him no matter what kind of shit he pulled. Even that stubborn, fastidious Gu Ja-yeop had always deferred to his word.
So why the sudden rebellion now?
Claiming they wouldn't tolerate his dogmatism? Threatening impeachment if he forced his way?
He couldn't wrap his head around it.
How could people change so drastically in an instant?
Don't make me laugh! You think I'll just sit back and be impeached?!
Lee Jae-won’s eyes flashed with murderous intent.
He would not be impeached. If anyone was going to be kicked out, it would be Gu Ja-yeop and the rest of the leadership, not him.
He was the king who ruled the Murim.
The most noble existence of all.
Why should he step down? He hadn't done anything wrong.
These Murim bastards were nothing but uncivilized chinks. And he, a great leader and a modern man, was the one guiding and leading these savages.
How could that be a mistake?
How could that be a dictatorship?
It was a forced narrative.
It was clearly a plot by the leadership to drag him down.
Gu Ja-yeop.
Grind.
Lee Jae-won ground his teeth.
It seemed the root of all evil was Gu Ja-yeop. No, it had to be him. Only that man would pull something so petty and immature.
So, you want to mess with me?
A bloody light flickered in Lee Jae-won’s eyes.
They say the only good chink is a dead chink. The old sayings really are never wrong.
Recalling a phrase he had seen before, he made a vow.
He would turn that insolent bastard into a "good" chink.
He would deliver a sharp lesson to the leadership who dared to discourage blind devotion to the Alliance Leader.
Lee Jae-won’s gaze began to glow with a sinister light.
*
The Cheonmu Alliance owned a vast amount of land in Jinan.
Depending on their performance and contributions, the Alliance provided land to its members so they could establish residences in the city.
Consequently, most members of a certain age and seniority typically owned their own homes.
Furthermore, as one’s rank rose, the size of the provided land increased; it was common for high-ranking leadership figures to live in massive manors.
This was also true for Gu Ja-yeop’s family, the Gu Clan.
Originally based in Zhejiang Province as local lords, the Gu Clan had moved to Jinan twenty years ago.
This happened when Gu Ja-yeop’s father, Gu Gang-tae, became captivated by Lee Jae-won’s ideology of exalting and practicing chivalry.
Lee Jae-won had liked Gu Gang-tae.
The man possessed such immense loyalty that he would have doused himself in oil and jumped into a fire at Lee Jae-won’s command.
Perhaps thanks to that loyalty, exactly ten years after the founding of the Cheonmu Alliance, Gu Gang-tae’s son, Gu Ja-yeop, was able to inherit power as the Hall Master of the Yellow Turban Party, succeeding his retiring father.
It was a gesture of favor from Lee Jae-won, who held Gu Gang-tae in high regard.
When he first inherited the position, Gu Ja-yeop hadn't shown it outwardly, but he had been secretly overjoyed.
How could he not be? He had become a Hall Master of the Murim’s greatest power, standing at the very center of authority.
He had thought to himself: I will serve Lee Jae-won excellently, just as my father did, and lead the Alliance to greatness.
But his hopes were never realized.
The Lee Jae-won he experienced firsthand was a man more incompetent and foolish than he could have ever imagined.
Lee Jae-won’s understanding of administrative work was woefully lacking.
He had managed the Alliance for decades, yet he knew almost nothing about the specific roles of each hall.
Moreover, his wife and other relatives had occupied key positions and were bleeding the Alliance’s budget dry.
There was no way his hopes could be fulfilled.
What difference did it make to serve excellently when the Alliance Leader himself was a moron?
After becoming Hall Master, Gu Ja-yeop had directly challenged these issues.
He argued that things were too strange—that this wasn't a properly functioning organization.
However, the rest of the leadership, excluding himself, blindly followed the Alliance Leader’s opinions. Not a single person sided with him.
Gu Ja-yeop was deeply disappointed by that sight.
He realized that the caliber of the leadership—supposedly a gathering of seasoned politicians—was pathetically low.
He realized then: If left like this, the Alliance will collapse.
He made a decision. He would make the Alliance function properly, no matter what.
Since that resolution, Gu Ja-yeop had constantly opposed Lee Jae-won.
Seeing the man roll out nonsensical idiocy under the guise of "policy," Gu Ja-yeop feared that the Cheonmu Alliance—the organization his father had dedicated decades to—might crumble if left unchecked.
And perhaps thanks to his endless opposition, the Alliance managed to maintain some semblance of an organized system.
It had been upgraded from a sandcastle on the verge of collapse to something akin to a hut made of straw.
It was still a precarious situation.
His relatives were still committing fraud and accumulating wealth.
Lee Jae-won was still a pathetic idiot.
But Gu Ja-yeop was satisfied. He had transformed a moronic group with zero structure into something that could at least function.
However, one specific incident had utterly destroyed that small sense of satisfaction.
It was the case of the serial rape and murder of Paeng Ji-yoon, allegedly committed by Jang Sam.
One day, news broke that the Alliance Leader’s first disciple, Jang Sam, had raped and murdered Paeng Ji-yoon and had been arrested on the spot as a flagrant offender.
When he first heard the news, Gu Ja-yeop had scoffed.
The situation felt far too contrived.
How could they have raided the scene at the exact moment he was supposedly murdering Paeng Ji-yoon? And to someone of Jang Sam’s status as the first disciple?
He was certain that a shallow conspiracy was at play.
In fact, it wasn't just him. Most of the leadership likely knew that Jang Sam had been framed.
But they all remained silent. They assumed that once the Alliance Leader returned, he would handle it appropriately.
However, their expectations were completely wrong.
Jang Sam escaped, and Lee Jae-won proceeded to pile even more false charges onto him.
He designated Jang Sam as the culprit behind a string of serial rape-murders that had gone unsolved for decades.
Witnessing this, Gu Ja-yeop felt a profound disgust for Lee Jae-won as a human being.
Until then, he had merely viewed the Alliance Leader as a prideful fool.
But his judgment had been wrong.
The man wasn't just a prideful fool; he was a piece of trash. A bottom-tier scumbag one should never associate with.
How could a man sacrifice his own disciple for the sake of his own power and reputation?
He felt pity for Jang Sam. Simultaneously, his revulsion toward Lee Jae-won peaked.
From that moment on, he knew.
For the sake of the Cheonmu Alliance—for the organization his father had spent ten years building—Lee Jae-won had to be impeached.
Otherwise, there would be no future for the Cheonmu Alliance.
He initially kept a low profile.
He realized that to a man who could heartlessly cut down even his own disciple, someone like himself was nothing more than a disposable tool that could be discarded at any time.
He remained silent about Jang Sam being made a scapegoat and slowly began to cultivate anti-Alliance sentiment.
A year passed, and today, as the succession competition resumed, he finally found his chance.
The perfect pretext for impeachment, one that everyone could agree on, had been finalized.
The Alliance was, at its core, an organization that claimed to be a gathering of free chivalrous heroes.
Yet, Lee Jae-won had tried to forcibly bind those heroes.
How could they not rebel?
He used Lee Jae-won’s dictatorship as a focal point, and the majority of the leadership agreed with him.
Their long-simmering grievances had finally exploded all at once.
"Hehehehe."
Gu Ja-yeop let out a satisfied smile.
He felt as though he had finally saved the Cheonmu Alliance, the foundation of which his father had sacrificed himself to lay.
"Father, did something good happen?"
His daughter, Gu Ha-ran, who was eating in front of him, looked at her smiling father and asked.
"Something very pleasant happened at the Alliance today," Gu Ja-yeop replied with a gentle smile.
"Oh? What was it?" his wife, Madam Ha, asked curiously from beside him.
"I shall tell you once it is finalized."
"Hmph, why can you never give a straight answer?"
Gu Gang-tae, the white-haired old man, spoke up in disapproval.
Gu Gang-tae was naturally a very curious man. He didn't like Gu Ja-yeop’s habit of keeping them in suspense.
"Hahahaha, please bear with it just a little longer, even if you are curious."
Gu Ja-yeop laughed softly and managed to brush it off.
If Gu Gang-tae, a staunch follower of Lee Jae-won, found out that he had proposed impeachment, the old man would surely fly into a rage.
"Bah, I don't like it! That's why your wife is always so frustrated with you! She never knows what kind of schemes you're hatching!"
Gu Gang-tae shook his head from side to side as he spoke.
"Father, is this the first or second time he's been like this? I've learned to just let it go," Madam Ha said with a bright smile.
"Listen here, daughter-in-law. It's not too late. Leave this fool and find yourself a new husband."
"Hehe, who would want an old woman like me?" Madam Ha chuckled at Gu Gang-tae’s playful remark.
"You say that as if you'd leave the moment someone offered."
"Well, why wouldn't I?"
"Hoho... decades of affection, all for naught."
"Then you should have treated me better."
Madam Ha wore a playful expression as she spoke.
"Mother, Father, then who should I follow?" Gu Ha-ran joined in with a laugh.
"You're even worse than your mother! Hahahaha!"
Gu Ja-yeop burst into a loud laugh. He found his daughter’s unfiltered joking incredibly endearing.
Soon, the room was filled with the sound of warm, harmonious laughter.
*
Step. Step.
A masked figure walked briskly.
Step. Step.
For someone wearing a mask, the gait was incredibly bold and arrogant.
It was a manner of walking that was worlds apart from anything resembling stealth.
After walking for some time, the figure stopped.
Slowly, the masked person looked up.
Directly ahead was a large main gate, and above it hung a plaque that read: The Gu Clan.
The masked person’s eyes curved into gentle crescents. They looked immensely satisfied.
Step. Step. Step.
The masked figure began to move again, heading straight for the main gate of the Gu Clan.
The walk was arrogant and leisurely.
"Who goes there!"
As the figure reached the gate, the guards leveled their spears. They clearly did not welcome this masked visitor.
"Extras, get lost."
The masked figure spoke indifferently.
"Wh-What?"
"What does that—"
Slash!
In an instant, thin red lines appeared on the guards' necks, followed by a burst of blood.
Thud.
Roll.
Their heads fell straight to the ground.
As if they had been cleanly decapitated.