Turning an Unfortunate Future Around (2)
Despite Woo Jun-rae’s plea to let him sleep, Seok Geum-ryong showed no sign of stopping.
“There is still more to the story. He was not a completely irredeemable villain. He had a natural aversion to killing a child barely older than his own son for the sake of his own happiness.”
That, too, was true.
Flying Horse Spear Woo Jun-rae had never lived his life as an assassin from the beginning, and because his resolve had never been properly set, his spear tip wavered.
As a result, he had failed to kill Seok Geum-ryong outright and instead left behind only a grave wound that would make him limp.
“Stop!”
He had described Woo Jun-rae’s inner state with such uncanny precision that the man’s pupils shook.
Everything Seok Geum-ryong had said was right.
What was more, Woo Jun-rae had even resolved to make today the day of the deed, waiting to kill Seok Geum-ryong once he fell asleep.
How does he know all this...?
Now that Seok Geum-ryong had seen through his plan, Woo Jun-rae’s mind wavered; his heart reeled as if struck by an earthquake, and he lost all composure.
“I told you to shut your mouth, didn’t I?!”
Startled, Woo Jun-rae jerked his spear up without even realizing it, but he was already so flustered that not just the spear tip, but the entire weapon was trembling.
Now!
Watching that sight, Seok Geum-ryong exulted inwardly.
In truth, all that talk, all those details about Woo Jun-rae, had been meant solely to shake his composure.
No matter how strong I am, I’m still in a child’s body, and as things stand I have zero real combat experience.
By contrast, Flying Horse Spear Woo Jun-rae was a first-class expert whose rapid spear style was faster than a galloping horse.
Even after taking the Heaven's Promise Pill, it was still far too dangerous to challenge a master like Woo Jun-rae one-on-one.
He could not waste the precious opening he had won and lose the young master’s life in vain.
So Seok Geum-ryong called up the story from his past.
He was threatening me with his spear, but he was trembling a little.
The moment my eyes met his through the slit of his mask, I knew it.
Ah. This man was not a born assassin. He had been cornered by someone and brought under control through weakness.
His bright and gifted master had heard that story, and later, when circumstances came to light, he had learned Woo Jun-rae’s psychology in detail.
In his previous life, Woo Jun-rae had been killed by the very person who had recruited him, cut down and silenced after trying to run away at night with the beloved courtesan he loved. It was murder to erase a mouth.
It was a tragic story through and through.
“If only you die, then I...”
Shaken by shock and pressure, the unstable Flying Horse Spear Woo Jun-rae.
Without meaning to, Woo Jun-rae drew his spear and lashed it toward Seok Geum-ryong.
Whoosh!
But the attack was clumsy beyond belief.
It had to be. His mind was shaken, his spear was shaking, and he could not control the chaos, so instead of a proper form he merely flung the spear about in a blind rage. There was no way that would work.
Swish!
Still, it was the attack of a first-class expert striking out in panic, and it carried a vicious force to it. Yet astonishingly, Seok Geum-ryong let the spear slide away with a soft, fluid step.
Not only that, he closed the distance in an instant and drew a sharp dagger he had already prepared in his sleeve.
This Silver-Glint Sword was Seok Geum-ryong’s late mother’s keepsake, and also a token of affection given to him by Manor Lord Seok Ji-sung.
When Seok Geum-ryong’s birth mother died, the item naturally became his keepsake.
He had always carried it on his person, and now, at last, it would reveal its true value.
“Hah!”
With a fierce shout, Seok Geum-ryong displayed the martial art he had refined for this day alone while taking the Heaven's Promise Pill.
Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique: First Form, Greedy Wolf!
That art was, of course, Greedy Wolf, the first form of the Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique.
A set of seven sword forms named after the seven stars of the Big Dipper.
The first form, Greedy Wolf, was simple and linear, but precisely because of that, its power was all the more formidable.
Whoooosh!
Though it was only a short dagger wielded by a child’s slender little hand, it contained internal energy on par with a peak expert.
Then, with the addition of Greedy Wolf, the top-tier sword art carrying the spirit of the Northern Dipper Swordsman and his master, Chilseonggun, there was no way an ordinary veteran martial artist could withstand it.
This is impossible!
Even in that fleeting instant, Flying Horse Spear Woo Jun-rae could only stare in stunned disbelief.
To be honest, he had never dreamed Seok Geum-ryong knew martial arts at all, and the level of the art he was now unleashing was so high that it clearly did not belong beneath him.
Crack!
In the end, Seok Geum-ryong’s Silver-Glint Sword flashed with sharp sword qi and pierced directly into Woo Jun-rae’s heart, shattering it.
What a perfect counterattack!
Even Seok Geum-ryong himself, the one executing the form and strike, shivered in astonishment.
Despite his excellent internal energy, his body was still that of a boy who had not yet fully grown, so he had been worried on many fronts.
But the Heaven-Shattering Seven Stars Sword Technique he had just displayed was no exaggeration to call it a skill that had reached the ranks of the first-class.
“Cough! Cough!”
Woo Jun-rae was completely countered and coughed up thick blood where he stood.
The shock to his heart and the waves in his mind were far stronger than the sharp impact rippling through his whole body.
“H-How...”
At last, Woo Jun-rae let go of his spear and looked at Seok Geum-ryong with dying eyes.
When he accepted the offer to kill Seok Geum-ryong, he had investigated the boy thoroughly in his own way.
But there was nothing anywhere that said Seok Geum-ryong had learned martial arts.
So he had thought that hurting a child who knew nothing of martial arts would be child’s play. But no.
The one becoming child’s play now, the one dying, was not Seok Geum-ryong, but him.
“Don’t take it too hard. You were the first one who tried to kill me.”
Seok Geum-ryong gave a courteous clasped-hands salute toward the slowly dying Woo Jun-rae.
There was no guilt over killing a person for the first time.
By now, the young Seok Geum-ryong’s self was already the self of the middle-aged expert who had fought countless duels in his previous life, the Gold-Selling Swordsman.
And there was one more thing.
“In any case, even if I had not done it, you would have been murdered and silenced by the true culprit anyway.”
“Th-That... that...”
Woo Jun-rae trembled even harder at Seok Geum-ryong’s final blow.
He could not dismiss it as a lie or a trick, because everything Seok Geum-ryong had said before had been far too exact, far too chillingly perfect.
“Now then, before you die, tell me as atonement. Who was the culprit that hired you?”
Seok Geum-ryong asked.
Even in his previous life, this was the one thing he had never known.
Woo Jun-rae had merely been a chess piece manipulated by someone else, and the identity of the one who had tried to kill Seok Geum-ryong had never been uncovered.
Seokga Manor’s eldest young master, Seok Dong-seo, will later join hands with the Dark Heaven Alliance and shake Seokga Manor to its foundations, but at this point it makes no sense for him to target me.
At this point in time, Seok Geum-ryong was nothing more than a nominal direct-line son celebrating a modest birthday banquet, with no foundation to lean on and no maternal clan of any significance behind him.
So there was no one who seemed to benefit from killing him right now.
Even in his previous life, young master Seok Geum-ryong had been deeply curious about that fact.
The succession struggle had not yet intensified, and there was no major faction in play, so why had someone tried to kill him?
“A-Alright. I’ll tell you...”
Drip, drip!
Woo Jun-rae, half-dead already, forced a smile and let blood pour from his mouth.
In truth, he had never been a born assassin. He had only been a fool who made a ruthless choice for the sake of his own happiness.
Seeing Seok Geum-ryong clasp his hands toward him in a gesture of forgiveness, Woo Jun-rae felt many things at once, and in the name of atonement he resolved to name the person who had recruited him.
“T-The one who came looking for me at the brothel... was... Gu Jin-taek!”
Woo Jun-rae barely managed to leave those words behind before dying.
Seok Geum-ryong’s full-force, one-strike kill had pierced his heart; even if the King of Hell himself had arrived, there would have been no bringing him back.
“Gu Jin-taek? Smiling Elder Gu Jin-taek recruited you?”
At that familiar name, Seok Geum-ryong rose in shock.
Smiling Elder Gu Jin-taek.
A nickname earned from the fact that he always wore a broad smile, he was the fourth butler at Seokga Manor.
And the sibling who kept that fourth butler in her own residence while competing for succession was none other than...
Seok Myo-hee, the manor lord’s eldest daughter, and young master Seok Geum-ryong’s older sister!
Thump, thump!
Too unexpected to believe, Seok Geum-ryong’s whole body trembled as he failed to accept what was happening before him.
The shock was that enormous. It was information he had not even obtained in his previous life, and now it had only come to him here, at this moment.
“How can this be!”
Seok Geum-ryong cried out again in astonishment.
Because in his previous life, when Seok Geum-ryong had been resurrected or survived attacks from assassins, the sibling who had worried over him with the kindest, most beautiful face, sending medicine and checking on him more than anyone else, had been this very Seok Myo-hee.
I can’t believe this even after hearing it.
What was more, Seok Myo-hee had been the one who had helped increase the number of guards after the attack by an unknown party the last time, had she not?
She was also the only sister-like figure who had shared jewelry and food with Seok Geum-ryong every year.
Then the attack itself was probably a self-staged act, a lie.
Perhaps Seok Myo-hee had staged the whole thing in order to create any excuse, any pretext she could use to send a murderer after Seok Geum-ryong.
“Why, why...”
Seok Geum-ryong searched for the reason, repeatedly shocked by a fact he had not known even though he possessed the information of his previous life.
Among his half-siblings, the sister he had believed was at least somewhat human in her treatment of him was Seok Myo-hee.
And yet she had been the one pulling the strings behind his death and causing the limp in his leg.
To eliminate one more rival as early as possible?
Seok Geum-ryong could not determine the reason, but one thing had become clear.
“In this life, the sibling I need to be wary of is not only Eldest Young Master Seok Dong-seo, but Seok Myo-hee as well.”
Seok Geum-ryong, still shaking from shock.
The disturbance in his heart did not last long.
When he thought about it differently, had he not completely escaped the fate of becoming lame, and now, in this life, discovered that Seok Myo-hee, whom he had not even suspected in his previous life and whom he had trusted as his only ally and blood relation, was the one who had plotted all this?
That only benefits me.
He had succeeded in changing the present that would have left him limping, and he had also gained information that would alter the future.
“Damn it! This isn’t the time for that.”
Seok Geum-ryong was cunning.
He did not want it known that he had learned such excellent martial arts and personally killed Flying Horse Spear Woo Jun-rae.
So he chose to tamper with the scene.
Swish, swish.
Seok Geum-ryong hurriedly worked over Woo Jun-rae’s corpse and the traces around his Silver-Glint Sword, burying the truth beneath falsehood.
Even if he was still a child, once the soul of a peak-transcendence sword master lived within him, manipulating a battlefield was not difficult.
“Aaaaaaah!”
Then came the next step: screaming like mad to summon the other guards.
“What happened?”
“What is going on?”
At Seok Geum-ryong’s desperate cries, the remaining four guards, with the exception of the already-dead Flying Horse Spear Woo Jun-rae, came running in a panic.
“A-There was a scary man in a black mask, and he... he...”
After that, trembling with fear, he pointed at Woo Jun-rae’s body as though it had been a different intruder who had fought and killed him.
From there, everything moved along as swiftly as a torrent.
“Spread out and catch the assassin!”
“We cannot let Woo Jun-rae’s sacrifice be in vain!”
“Capture the culprit at all costs!”
In this way, the fact that Seok Geum-ryong had used outstanding martial skill to subdue the assassin, and the fact that Woo Jun-rae had been unable to resist temptation and committed a vile act, were both buried away.
It could hardly have been a more perfect piece of work by Seok Geum-ryong, or a more perfect setup.