Chapter 35
“You understand, don’t you? Do not kill them under any circumstances. Bring them back alive.”
Just before the operation began, the wandering martial artist Ju Baek-ryun once again warned the fighters who had reached first-class level.
If they killed the targets by accident, then everything planned for today would come to nothing.
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t worry.”
His subordinates answered in low voices and drew their weapons in unison.
To be honest, capturing an elderly married couple who could barely even move properly, let alone know martial arts, would have been easier than wringing the neck of a dried-up chicken.
And since there was not just one first-class expert present, but several, there was no real difficulty in the task at all.
Just then, as they were about to head toward the home of the Gong couple, the kindest and most good-hearted family in Fengyang County, a sudden change struck.
Heaven-Returning Golden Needle Technique!
The moment they set foot near the thatched cottage where the Gong couple lived, a flash of gold burst through the darkness.
Faaaat!
Too fast for the eye to follow, a streak of golden light shot like an arrow and ambushed the man in the lead.
It was aimed straight at his eyes, to cripple him with a fatal wound.
“Aaaagh!”
In the end, the man had golden needles driven into both eyes and let out a shriek like a child, writhing across the ground in a most undignified manner.
“Wh-who is it?!”
“Who goes there?”
Ju Baek-ryun and the guard martial artists under Seok Ju-woo all realized they had been ambushed. They abandoned their contempt, tense now as they raised their heads.
Then, from the darkness thick on the opposite side, someone finally stepped forward.
That figure was, of course...
“You!”
“Young Master Seok Geum-ryong?!”
Ju Baek-ryun froze in alarm and trembled when Seok Geum-ryong appeared so abruptly, accompanied by his bodyguard, the Shadowless One Shin Dan-woo.
He had never, even in his dreams, imagined that he would run into Seok Geum-ryong here of all places.
“Why are you so surprised? It’s not as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Unlike Ju Baek-ryun and the martial artists, who looked as though their pupils might burst from their sockets, Seok Geum-ryong remained utterly composed.
“How did you end up here...?”
Ju Baek-ryun could not believe his own eyes.
Everything he was doing had been meant to deal with the very man standing before him, Seok Geum-ryong.
And yet that same man had shown up at a moment like this, so uncanny that all he could do was stare in shock.
“Why else? The world is so harsh it’s practically a painted-glass mirror of madness.”
Seok Geum-ryong shrugged as if to show off, then continued.
“Before I went to bed, a thought crossed my mind. What if... someone kidnapped the old foster parents of Butler Gong Sang-pil, that Scholar in Blue, and forced them to poison the feast set out for my birthday?”
“Hah! H-hahh!”
Ju Baek-ryun could not collect himself. At the precisely accurate words, words that did not merely expose the truth but seemed to blow it apart, he gaped in panic and even started to drool.
Incredibly, everything Seok Geum-ryong had said was correct down to the last detail.
“W-what nonsense are you talking about? I was only...”
Ju Baek-ryun, having been hit exactly where it hurt, tried to spin a lie with the clever head he was said to possess, but his flustered mind refused to work as it should.
“Don’t try to hide the sky with a palm. You think that’ll conceal anything?”
Seok Geum-ryong’s words, too mature for a child, startled Ju Baek-ryun again.
To be honest, Seok Geum-ryong had struck the mark with terrifying precision.
Ju Baek-ryun’s plan, devised for his master, Seok Ju-woo, the second son of Seokga Manor, had been to make Gong Sang-pil betray him.
At first, he had tried to sow discord with promises of immense wealth, but the loyal Gong Sang-pil had not bitten at all.
So the next plan was to seize the foster parents whom Gong Sang-pil cherished even more deeply than his own birth parents, then use them as leverage.
In his previous life as well, Gong Sang-pil had been driven into a cruel choice between his foster parents and Seok Geum-ryong’s life.
As everyone knew, in the end he chose to save Seok Geum-ryong and took his own life.
That son of too much filial piety had poisoned the food only under duress for the sake of his foster parents, but when he could not bear to watch Seok Geum-ryong die by his own hand, he swallowed poison himself.
I never dreamed there was such a reason at the time.
Not only Seok Geum-ryong from his former life, but even Woo Do-min, the Gold-Selling Swordsman who later became Geum-ryong’s bodyguard after Gong Sang-pil’s death, never knew the full story.
But after visiting the Beggars’ Sect in this life, he had learned Gong Sang-pil’s hidden past and realized that Gong Sang-pil was from the same hometown as him, and that the person who had come just before the thirteenth birthday in his previous life was none other than Seok Ju-woo’s steward, the wandering merchant Ju Baek-ryun.
“The one who hired assassins from Blood Killing Gate to murder me was also Seok Ju-woo, wasn’t it?”
Seok Geum-ryong said.
That made everything clear.
The one who had caused the servant Deung Chon to die in his previous life and the one who had caused Butler Gong Sang-pil’s death were the same man.
So the culprit is the vile second son of Seokga Manor, Seok Ju-woo!
At first, he had thought it was the work of the rat who would eventually overturn and seize Seokga Manor at the age of twenty, the eldest son Seok Dong-seo. But no.
It had all been Seok Ju-woo’s doing.
Shiver!
Ju Baek-ryun and the others, having been hit squarely in their weak point, trembled violently all over.
They had never imagined that Seok Ju-woo’s true face, his rotten behavior, would be laid bare at this point.
But their shock lasted only a moment.
“Heh-heh-heh. So what if I did?”
Ju Baek-ryun finally dropped the pretense.
To him, Seok Geum-ryong was no longer a blood relative of Seokga Manor higher than himself, nor a young master.
In his eyes, Geum-ryong was nothing but a corpse that needed to die soon.
Swish!
Ju Baek-ryun spoke without the slightest respect and produced his weapon, a bamboo fan.
On the surface it looked like a plain fan woven from bamboo, but make no mistake. Steel spikes were hidden in the ribs, making it a vicious weapon in its own right.
“This is even better. No need to go through the trouble of capturing Gong Sang-pil’s parents. We can just kill you here, Seok Geum-ryong, and silence the dead, can’t we?”
That was why Ju Baek-ryun had revealed his true face.
Since everything had been exposed already, he might as well use the darkness of the country night to kill Seok Geum-ryong without a trace, where no one could see.
Of course, the Shadowless One Shin Dan-woo stood beside Geum-ryong with fierce eyes, but within Seokga Manor, Dan-woo’s reputation was not especially high.
And Ju Baek-ryun had no idea that Seok Geum-ryong’s martial ability was formidable, so he believed that if he and the first-class fighters with him moved together, dealing with Geum-ryong and Dan-woo would be no trouble at all.
“Good. That’s the way to do it. To achieve your goal, murder is no more than breathing, isn’t it?”
Seok Geum-ryong no longer regarded Ju Baek-ryun and the others, who bared their killing intent, as fellow human beings.
They were less than beasts.
Clink.
As if on cue, Shin Dan-woo drew his sword as well.
The number of first-class martial artists Geum-ryong and Dan-woo would have to face, including Ju Baek-ryun, was over seven even after excluding the one whose eyes had been injured.
“Heh-heh-heh. Shin Dan-woo. Do you really think you can beat all six of us?”
Ju Baek-ryun began by trying to intimidate Dan-woo, treating Seok Geum-ryong as though he were not worth his concern at all.
In truth, however strong Shin Dan-woo and Seok Geum-ryong might be, it was too much to expect two men to overcome seven opponents all by themselves.
Grin.
Just as Ju Baek-ryun was about to smile in certainty, feeling that he had the upper hand and that everything was going far too well...
“Hold on. Let me ask you a question first.”
Seok Geum-ryong smiled, his expression as innocent as a child’s.
Of course, what he said was a far cry from innocence.
“What?”
“One of my golden needles has already stabbed a man in the eye, and he’s shouting and causing a ruckus... so why is it that no one else has come out, including the Gong couple?”
Geum-ryong asked with a smile.
Come to think of it...
Only after hearing that question did Ju Baek-ryun sense something strange.
Despite the fact that things had gone far awry from their original intent to infiltrate quietly, no one had come out, and the rural village in Fengyang County remained silent.
Could that really just be a coincidence of the old couple being hard of hearing?
“You blocked them with internal energy? Impossible! To shut out the voices and cries of so many people over such a wide area, you’d need to be at least at the Zenith Realm...!”
Ju Baek-ryun shook his head, unable to believe it.
He was about to insist with forceful denial that Geum-ryong was talking nonsense when another figure finally appeared.
Step, step.
She made her presence known with powerful internal energy, as though she wanted them to see her in person and despair.
“One of the Four Honored Guests, the Moon Spirit Swordswoman Im So-gun!”
“No way!”
“That can’t be. Why is she here?”
The moment Moon Spirit Swordswoman Im So-gun appeared, the situation changed completely.
Ju Baek-ryun, who had been certain of a clean victory and had treated Seok Geum-ryong and Shin Dan-woo like walking corpses, felt despair the instant he saw her exquisite form. The martial artists under Seok Ju-woo, who had prided themselves on their own abilities, were struck by the same hopelessness.
It was only natural. All four of the Honored Guests were super-peak experts, mountains so high that first-class fighters could only look up at them from far below.
Although Moon Spirit Swordswoman Im So-gun was the youngest among the Four Honored Guests and therefore the weakest of them, that was only in comparison with other super-peak experts.
“Young Master. Shall I capture them, or kill them all?”
Seeing an impossible figure standing before them, Ju Baek-ryun and the others froze like mice that had just met a venomous snake at point-blank range.
Only now, face to face, did they understand it.
No matter how desperately we attack together, we won’t just fail to win... we won’t even be able to run away!
Ju Baek-ryun had always prided himself on his martial skill and his schemes, but the instant he faced overwhelming force, he realized with painful clarity that every trick and every calculation turned to dust before it.
What was even more shocking was Im So-gun’s question.
To ask whether they should be killed or taken alive, with those lovely lips, carried a beauty so paradoxical it was almost startling.
“Hmm.”
Seok Geum-ryong thought for a moment.
This had nothing to do with the value of human life or with dignity.
The reason he hesitated was because, just as with Seok Myo-hee before, he was calculating whether he could seize these people as hostages and use them to blackmail Seok Ju-woo, or strip him for profit.
But Geum-ryong shook his head.
That sneering bastard Seok Ju-woo is nothing like the foolish Seok Myo-hee.
Even if someone kidnapped Ju Baek-ryun’s own mother, let alone Seok Ju-woo’s biological mother, he would deny it flatly, claim it had nothing to do with him, and then openly declare war as though someone had challenged him to it.
Then there was only one answer.
“I ask that you handle this... cleanly.”
Seok Geum-ryong’s single sentence decided the fate of Ju Baek-ryun and the men with him.