Chapter 174
Chapter 174
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 174
Chapter Title: The Power of the Blood Jade
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Geun-yeong squarely faced his father's blazing fury.
But what rose on his face was not fear—it was resolve.
“I have come to excise the long-festering rot from our clan.”
“W-what?!”
Su-gyeong, whose momentum had been quelled by Geun-yeong's bold declaration, soon ground his teeth and raised his voice again.
“What nonsense is this!”
“Can you still call it nonsense after seeing this!”
Geun-yeong pulled a thick ledger from within his robes.
It was the account book he had received from Chief Steward Jegal Sun.
“That’s…?”
“This is the double ledger held by Internal Chief Steward Jegal Sun! It contains clear records of how you, the patriarch, and the elders have been embezzling the clan’s assets all this time!”
A shocking revelation.
An immense shock swept over the patriarch and the senior clan members who followed him.
-Embezzling…? The patriarch?
-That’s absurd!
-Is the young master known for spouting nonsense?
The elders, who had been whispering among themselves, soon turned their gazes to Su-gyeong.
Eyes filled with all manner of emotions stabbed into Su-gyeong from every direction.
But Su-gyeong could offer no response.
It was because even he could not comprehend what Geun-yeong was saying.
Embezzlement out of nowhere?
To slander him, who had devoted his entire life to the clan, with such a vile accusation. Why…?
A tangle of thoughts wrestled in Su-gyeong’s mind until a single hypothesis flashed through.
It would have been impossible for Geun-yeong to forcibly take the ledger from Chief Steward Jegal.
The steward must have handed it over personally.
And the chief steward was the only one who knew about the Blood Burst Technique, aside from himself and the elders.
Geun-yeong must have heard about the Blood Burst Technique practitioners as well.
Blood Burst Technique.
Embezzlement.
“…No way?”
Su-gyeong realized that Geun-yeong was using the pretext of embezzlement to expose the Blood Burst Technique without revealing it to the world, all to drag him down.
‘Right, we purchased livestock in bulk to feed blood to the Blood Burst Technique practitioners…!’
The ledger recorded those bulk livestock purchases.
He could never reveal that the purchased livestock had all been used as food for the Blood Burst Technique practitioners.
To those unaware of the circumstances, it perfectly appeared as evidence of embezzlement at that point.
‘It’s a perfect trap.’
He could never reveal the Blood Burst Technique, but without doing so, he couldn’t shake off the embezzlement suspicions.
Su-gyeong gnashed his teeth, thinking his son had prepared a brilliantly cunning move.
“…….”
“P-Patriarch? Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Seeing Su-gyeong unable to open his mouth easily, unease crept onto the faces of those who had been defending him.
What if it was true?
Feeling the suspicious gazes intensify, Su-gyeong desperately denied Geun-yeong’s claims to save face.
“What utter rubbish! Driven mad by your greed to become patriarch, you dare frame your own father with such filth!?”
“…Denying it won’t help. The evidence is right here.”
Su-gyeong in a rage, Geun-yeong calm and composed.
The elders grew confused over whose words rang true amid the stark contrast between father and son.
‘Continuing this conversation will only disadvantage me.’
Determined not to let Geun-yeong speak further, Su-gyeong turned to Jegal Seung.
“Lying Dragon Captain! Subdue them at once!”
“…Patriarch.”
Until just before Su-gyeong appeared, the Lying Dragon Squad had been helplessly pushed back by the group.
It was impossible for them to carry out the order to subdue now.
“Are you deaf?! What are you…?”
While berating Jegal Seung, Su-gyeong belatedly took in the surroundings.
Several Lying Dragon Squad members had already lost consciousness and collapsed, while those still standing looked utterly defeated.
The ones who had reduced the Jegal Clan’s strongest enforcers to this state were none other than Ja-seong’s group.
Su-gyeong’s eyes widened as he recognized their faces.
“What is the meaning of this…! How dare you…!”
Ja-seong shrugged at Su-gyeong, who was too stunned to speak properly.
“Indeed. We never imagined we’d have to do something like this, but the situation demanded it.”
“…What?”
Su-gyeong flinched.
Ja-seong added a quiet word as he stared in disbelief.
“I can’t go into details, but I’ll just say that I met with the Elder Council Leader.”
“…!”
At that single statement, Su-gyeong paled, realizing the clan’s secrets had been exposed to an outsider.
-Met with the Elder Council Leader…? What does that mean?
-I don’t know either….
Su-gyeong’s pupils shook as he heard the elders murmuring again.
Only one thought filled his mind.
‘I have to kill them all.’
He could fabricate a reason later.
First, he had to kill them all to prevent the clan’s shame from leaking out.
But judging by the situation, the Lying Dragon Squad alone couldn’t handle them.
Su-gyeong sought another option.
“W-where are the other enforcers…?”
He looked for the remaining three enforcer squads excluding the Lying Dragon Squad, but they were no longer within the clan grounds.
They were probably scouring the mountains right now, hunting for that tiger.
‘No way, even that sudden tiger plague nonsense was Geun-yeong’s scheme?’
Astonished by the thorough preparation, regret flooded in.
He should have been suspicious from the moment the tiger plague talk started…!
But regret always comes too late.
As he pondered how to escape this crisis,
-Roaaar-!
“…!?”
“This is…!”
A massive roar echoed throughout the manor.
At the same time, a fierce, chilling energy swept past everyone.
It was an eerie aura that froze bodies in an instant.
And it was originating from the west side of the clan—the Elder Council hall.
*
“W-Wait…! Hear us out!”
“That wasn’t our intention…!”
Hyukligwang slowly approached the old men spouting pathetic excuses.
Veins bulged on the back of his hand gripping the hilt of his sword, and a razor-sharp aura rose from his entire body, as if he would tear the elders apart at any moment.
The elders backed away unsteadily from Hyukligwang, who looked ready to charge and rip them to shreds, until they reached the vice leader’s position.
“V-Vice Leader…! Do something! Why are you just standing there?!”
“I-It was your idea from the start to have Cheon-sang absorb the Blood Jade!”
Even as they begged and subtly shifted blame, the vice leader stared silently at Jegal Cheon-sang’s corpse, showing no reaction.
“…Hrng.”
“Vice Leader?”
Then suddenly,
“Hah… hahaha-!”
The vice leader burst into mad laughter.
The elders and Hyukligwang alike stared at him in disbelief, but the vice leader ignored them and kept laughing.
And soon, everyone understood why.
“Hnng… grrr…!”
“…!”
Hyukligwang halted at the gurgling groan from behind him.
The elders sent shocked gazes past Hyukligwang’s back, unable to hide their horror.
‘No way, no way?’
Hyukligwang slowly turned to look behind him, and an unbelievable sight met his eyes.
“H-Huh…!?”
Jegal Cheon-sang was reviving.
The blood that had poured out into a pool was sucked back into his body as if time were reversing.
The severed heart and shoulder bones adhered perfectly, returning to their original state as if they had never been damaged.
Jegal Cheon-sang had reverted to the form he had before being sliced by Hyukligwang’s sword.
Only the tattered martial robes proved what his condition had been moments ago.
“Hnng… hnnng…!”
Jegal Cheon-sang, who had been groaning lowly, snapped his eyes open and rose.
He blinked blankly for a moment, as if unable to grasp the situation, then let out a shrill scream as he groped his body.
After feeling around his shoulder and chest for a long while, Jegal Cheon-sang realized he hadn’t died—no, that he had come back to life—and his lips curled up.
“Heh… hehehe…! So the Blood Jade had power like this too!”
Jegal Cheon-sang’s face, leaking a bizarre laugh, suddenly hardened coldly, and his crimson gaze turned to the father who had killed him.
“…Father. You truly meant to kill me.”
“…….”
Hyukligwang’s face hardened, offering no reply to the icy words.
He simply raised his sword again, aiming at Jegal Cheon-sang.
“Ha… haha…!”
Jegal Cheon-sang let out a hollow laugh at his father, who sought to kill him again despite his hard-won revival, then twisted his face into a demonic snarl.
“Am I that displeasing to you? Enough to try killing me with your own hands?”
His voice was as eerie as that of a demon risen from hell.
Everyone who heard it shuddered.
Hyukligwang, the attendants, even the elders who had inflicted the death penalty on Jegal Cheon-sang.
The revived Jegal Cheon-sang was now emanating a ferocious aura that instinctively stirred primal human fear.
“Of course. You always favored Yin with the essence of the Folding Leaf Blade, while tossing me some hollow shell of a Folding Leaf Sword.”
It wasn’t that Hyukligwang favored Hyukli-yin.
It was because Su-gyeong, wanting to make Jegal Cheon-sang the clan’s top warrior, had forbidden him from learning the Leaf School’s arts.
Even against the patriarch’s opposition, the fact that Hyukligwang had painstakingly created and passed on the Folding Leaf Sword revealed how he truly felt about Jegal Cheon-sang.
“…….”
But Hyukligwang offered no excuses like “That’s not it” or “It’s a misunderstanding.”
He knew from his son’s face that such words wouldn’t get through.
He simply closed his eyes tightly with a bitter expression, then charged at Jegal Cheon-sang like a tiger once more.
“Father, you…!”
The son cried out to his father, who sought to kill him again.
His face, contorted fiercely, grew even more demonic as he raised his sword.
Seeing this, Hyukligwang struggled to maintain composure and thought.
‘I can’t clash head-on. I need to exploit an opening.’
Having already experienced Jegal Cheon-sang’s power, he dodged the oncoming sword instead of blocking it, slipping past to the side.
-Pfshk!
Blood erupted from Jegal Cheon-sang’s side immediately after.
The gushing momentum was extraordinary, but only for a moment.
Soon, as if time reversed, it flowed back into his body, and the wound healed.
“…What the hell is that?”
One of the attendants muttered at the astonishing sight, no matter how many times they saw it, but even Hyukligwang had no answer.
He could only guess it was the Blood Jade’s ability.
The problem was how to defeat Jegal Cheon-sang, who endlessly regenerated through that ability.
Would endlessly slashing him eventually end it?
Did that mean he had to keep carving up his son’s body until that end came?
Biting his lip in despair, Hyukligwang charged at Jegal Cheon-sang again.
“Haaah!”
Jegal Cheon-sang swung his sword with a shout, but he still couldn’t match Hyukligwang’s speed this time.
As a result, the sword deeply sliced his upper body, and blood sprayed once more.
Of course, it healed again as if nothing had happened.
But the martial robes he wore did not recover.
The rags fell away, fully exposing Jegal Cheon-sang’s upper body.
Veins bulged grotesquely on his torso, just like his face and hands.
But there was something else that caught the eye.
A dark crimson orb.
A dark crimson orb, like congealed blood, was embedded squarely in the center of Jegal Cheon-sang’s chest.
“…That’s it!”
Hyukligwang’s eyes widened at the sight, instinctively realizing it was the Blood Jade.
But why was it embedded there?
Wasn’t the Blood Jade an spirit pill meant to be absorbed into the body?
Questions flooded chaotically, but only one thing mattered now.
‘I need to destroy that.’
Shatter that, and the regeneration would stop.
Moreover, perhaps—by some miracle—it might even restore his son to normal.
Clutching that desperate hope and ignoring his instincts, Hyukligwang raised his head and rushed toward his son.
His target: the Blood Jade in the chest.
Unleashing qi from his Conception Vessel, Hyukligwang shot forward faster than ever before.
In a truly instantaneous moment, he reached Jegal Cheon-sang and swung his sword at the Blood Jade.
-Shrieeek!
An especially intense sound of slicing air.
The moment the sword blade, tearing through the air, was about to strike the Blood Jade.
Jegal Cheon-sang’s whites turned fully red, and he unleashed a massive roar.
-Roaaar-!
With the roar, blood-red energy poured from Jegal Cheon-sang’s entire body.
That was the last sight Hyukligwang saw before losing consciousness.