Chapter 79
Chapter 79
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: uly
Chapter: 79
Chapter Title: Why Is That Bastard Here?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wind swept in alongside nine riders, each astride glossy black horses. They wore black capes billowing in the breeze, with five-cheok dragon-head longswords slung across their backs.
The intense northern sun might have been why they pulled their bamboo hats low, but the glint of their eyes peeking from beneath the brims was murderous. Just looking at them carried the stench of blood.
The sudden arrival of the bamboo-hatted men froze the entire relay station solid.
‘I can see it, I can see it.’
He didn’t know who they were, but a brutal swordfight breaking out any moment now was crystal clear in his mind.
Sticking around vicious types like that was a sure way to get struck by lightning out of nowhere. Dawdling would drag him right into a headache of trouble.
‘Let’s get back to the Central Plains quick.’
With no baggage to speak of, Heuk Do-san rose from his seat with a light heart.
Yong Seol-ran asked.
“Are you leaving now?”
“That’s right.”
“Won’t leaving right now make them suspicious?”
“Maybe if their eyes were rotten. Well, even if they suspect something, it can’t be helped. Like I said, thanks for the good meal. Farewell.”
“Wait a moment.”
Yong Seol-ran grabbed Heuk Do-san and held out a wine jar from the table.
It was one of the jars they hadn’t cracked open yet, with a long, slender neck like a gourd flask.
“What’s this?”
“Drink it when you get thirsty crossing the desert. It’s repayment for the good information you shared.”
“That was just me paying for my meal.”
“Then call it courtesy between fellow travelers.”
Yong Seol-ran flashed a warm, friendly smile.
“Thanks.”
Heuk Do-san pocketed the wine jar happily and headed for the entrance.
Crossing the desert overnight meant he’d be having breakfast in Shaanxi Province by dawn tomorrow.
The thought alone swelled his chest with excitement.
‘Once I’m back in the Central Plains, what should I do first?’
Shaanxi was close to Sichuan, so maybe visit Dang Yak-ran? Would she still remember him? Would she welcome him warmly? Had she given her heart to someone else in the meantime?
Or should he head straight to Shandong to see his master first, even if it was farther? He wondered if his master was well. What about his senior brothers, and how had White Deer Academy changed?
Come to think of it, it had been a full thirteen years since he left White Deer Academy. He hadn’t returned even after the Righteous-Demonic Great War ended, so by now, everyone probably thought him dead.
‘They must all be healthy...’
Of course, the Jangbod o tempted his palate too.
It was the item he and the old mercenaries had failed to steal in their last bid to turn their luck around, after all.
But after three years in hellish conditions, his thinking had shifted.
Money and all that didn’t matter anymore. He’d long forgotten about hunting down his second brother’s killer for revenge.
His brother was fated to die that way from the start, and if the killer was fated for heavenly punishment, wouldn’t they show up eventually?
When they did, he’d make them pay for his wasted life with maximum cruelty.
Back in the Central Plains, he’d live quietly, like a ghost.
‘Kill Seop Dae-gang next.’
That resolve from when he started training in the cave—to slay him and uphold justice in the martial world—was gone.
The world teemed with hypocrites like clouds. Killing one wouldn’t suddenly make it a better place.
Unless they crossed paths by chance, he had no intention of wasting his precious time hunting that bastard down.
Locked in a cavernous abyss for so long, he’d realized it in utter desperation.
‘From now on, I’ll live my own life.’
Lost in such thoughts, he passed the bamboo-hatted men toward the entrance.
One of them on the left lifted his hat brim slightly from horseback and scanned the room.
The face that appeared in that instant.
“...!”
Heuk Do-san halted in his tracks. He stared straight at the man. Shockingly, it was someone he knew all too well.
‘Hong Gong-tak...!’
For a stunned moment, his mind went blank. He hadn’t even reached the Central Plains yet—why on earth was this bastard popping up here out of nowhere?
A sudden thought struck him, and he carefully scanned the other bamboo-hatted men.
Sadly, no Seop Dae-gang. It seemed Hong Gong-tak had brought his newly formed Ghostly Ten Fiends. Including him, that made exactly ten.
‘They must be out on some mission...’
Heuk Do-san hadn’t expected to run into him here. Part of him was glad, part incredulous.
‘You really have the worst luck, you bastard.’
Then, their eyes met squarely.
“...!”
“...?”
Heuk Do-san debated whether to greet him or rush over and snap his neck.
Hong Gong-tak asked.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
‘Is this guy insane?’
Shouldn’t he be freaking out like he’d seen a ghost, since the guy he thought dead had come back alive? But all he says is where are you going?
‘Does he not recognize me?’
Fair enough. Dressed in rags, with wild hair and a three-year beard covering half his face.
He couldn’t do much about the beard, but the hair he could fix. Heuk Do-san obligingly swept his hair back behind his ears with both hands.
‘How’s that? Heart dropping yet?’
But no—Hong Gong-tak just looked like he’d seen some lunatic.
Heuk Do-san wiped the smile off his face.
No way that was possible. Short as their time together was, it wasn’t something to forget easily.
Unless it was etched deep in the bastard’s brain.
“No one leaves this relay station from now on.”
As Hong Gong-tak spoke, he scanned the room again. That one sentence was a warning to everyone in the station, not just Heuk Do-san.
Faces around grew icy cold. Who were these punks to say who could leave?
But Heuk Do-san paled for a different reason.
‘He really doesn’t recognize me.’
Another thought flashed through his mind.
He glanced around hurriedly and spotted a waiter frozen by a bubbling cauldron with a water bucket in hand.
He’d come out to fill the bean-boiling pot but stopped dead at the bamboo-hatted men’s arrival.
Heuk Do-san rushed over, snatched the bucket, and set it on the floor. Then he peered into it.
The water sloshed at first, obscuring his view. As it settled, his face outline emerged bit by bit.
A stranger’s face stared back from the water.
A rugged jawline, stubborn lips, proud nose bridge, sun-bronzed skin, and sharp, chilling pupils at the center—none of it his.
‘Disguise Transformation...!’
Just before escaping the snow mountain cave, Heuk Do-san had absorbed a massive amount of death energy from the Snow Mountain Elder’s corpse all at once.
The backlash was severe; he lay immobile for a full month. And over that month, his body transformed.
Immense pure qi built up inside, bones reshaped, steel-like muscles bulged.
Bone Exchange Rebirth.
His skeleton had changed, shedding his original form.
Disguise Transformation was one side effect of Bone Exchange Rebirth—face and voice altering to match another person.
But usually, it just meant looking or sounding a bit younger or tougher.
Bone Exchange Rebirth itself was so rare that even minor Disguise Transformations were extraordinary.
He’d never heard of a case where someone’s face changed so completely they wouldn’t recognize themselves.
‘Damn it all!’
Strength drained from Heuk Do-san’s body.
Imagine waking one morning to find the face you’d worn for thirty-odd years gone, replaced by some stranger’s atop your shoulders.
How chilling would that be?
‘And I only just found out...’
No mirrors on the road, so no way to notice.
He knew his voice had changed, but his face—especially into someone else entirely? He hadn’t dreamed it possible.
Then the relay station buzzed with murmurs.
He looked over to see Hong Gong-tak up front now, with one of his bamboo-hatted underlings dragging thirty-some bound middle-aged men forward by ropes.
The man’s clothes were shredded to rags, hair a wild mess, face a bloody pulp from who-knew-how-many beatings.
Yet even wrecked, his features were well-proportioned. His garments, though torn and bloodied, were fine white silk.
Someone recognized him and murmured low.
“Heavenly Wind Young Lord...!”
That name sent ripples through the room.
Heuk Do-san, scanning around, asked a hulking middle-aged man sitting alone at a table nursing wine.
“Who’s the Heavenly Wind Young Lord?”
The giant glanced at Heuk Do-san perfunctorily.
“Lecherous thief.”
“That all?”
“Lecherous thief who terrorized Shanxi Province.”
Central Plains folk call rich heirs who ravage women “flower princes.”
Kindly put, idle playboys born rich. Harshly, lustful demons.
With countless flower princes across the realm—and in the martial world too—martial artists slapped unique nicknames before “prince.”
Like Thousand Poison Prince or Life-Stealer Prince.
The former raped women with a thousand poisons; the latter always killed after his fun.
Heavenly Wind didn’t sound like a butcher, probably a cultured type.
Still, a lecherous thief was a lecherous thief.
“Why’s everyone so shocked then?”
“Disciple of the Golden Casino King.”
‘Guy’s a man of few words.’
But this giant was one of the three strongest in the station by Heuk Do-san’s gauge.
Now he narrowed his eyes.
The Golden Casino King was said to hold the last Jangbod o. No wonder people panicked at his disciple’s appearance.
He glanced at Yong Seol-ran. Color had drained from her face; her shoulders trembled faintly. The escorts looked badly rattled too.
‘Something’s up, as expected.’
He’d known they weren’t ordinary escorts. He’d ignored it since he owed them and wanted no deep martial world entanglements.
‘Watch a bit longer?’
He’d planned to leave.
But with Hong Gong-tak involved, things changed.
Heuk Do-san swiftly shaved his eyebrows with a dagger to ensure no one he’d fought here recognized him later.
Eyebrows shaped impressions crucially; removing them alone disguised one completely.
Like simple disguise from a blank slate.
He covered the old mercenary’s Thunderclap Axe and dagger—things Hong Gong-tak might recall—with his robe flap.
In the deathly silence, Hong Gong-tak asked the Heavenly Wind Young Lord softly.
“Are they here?”
Eyes closed, the Young Lord said nothing. Captive or not, he’d cling to his Shanxi playboy dignity.
Hong Gong-tak wasn’t one to back down.
In a chillier voice, he said.
“Choose: your life or the Jangbod o.”
That cleared everything up. They sought the Jangbod o too, and the Young Lord knew its whereabouts.
Low groans rippled through the crowd.
“You’re mistaken. The moment you learn the Jangbod o’s location, I become useless—and that’s when my life’s truly at risk. So my only way to survive is to keep silent.”
No sooner had he finished than the bamboo-hatted captor smashed a fist into his side.
Thud!
Kneeling from the blow, the Young Lord couldn’t breathe for a while from the shock.
Shing!
The man drew his sword and pressed it under the Young Lord’s chin.
Hong Gong-tak said.
“No point keeping a sealed mouth alive.”
Was he serious? The blade tip dug slowly into the neck. Blood welled, staining the silver edge.
The Young Lord lifted his head.
“Can you handle it?”
“What do you mean?”
“The ones who toppled the Golden Casino King of the world and stole the Jangbod o. Can you truly handle them?”
“They’re here.”
The Young Lord chuckled lightly, then swept the room with venomous eyes. Every gaze followed his.