I Am Not Your Son
I must not beg the Clan Leader for mercy.
It is not that I lack the means. I could fabricate one of Mother’s bloodstained undergarments and flood the hall with tears. Wailing that I only wanted to see my father, pleading for him to save Hwarin—I could put on a perfect performance of desperate begging.
Later, while I was at it, I could even spark a purge inside the Dang Clan and cleanse any number of its people.
A moving reunion between father and son. Just imagining it is magnificent. Take my time proving I am the Clan Leader’s son, receive the Human-Faced Spider’s Poison Core, and cure Hwarin.
Time might run short, but it would be the righteous path.
The problem is that method only works if I truly am the Clan Leader’s son.
My greatest strengths can turn into fatal weaknesses in front of him.
The one who brought me this far, more than anyone, was Hyang-ah’s diary. Even when I claimed to be her son, no one could refute me. In this world there is only one person who knows her better than I do—and that one person is standing right in front of me now.
Dragging this into a long war would put me at a disadvantage.
For the moment I am confident I can fool even the Clan Leader. A prolonged campaign is another matter. The Human-Faced Spider’s Poison Core is a clan treasure. Even if the Clan Leader approves, the Elder Council must still grant permission.
A touching reunion would still be followed by interrogations. If I make even one mistake I myself do not know about in front of Dang Baek-ho… the outcome is as clear as day.
To keep both my life and Hwarin’s, I have to settle this in a short, decisive battle.
That means I cannot leave the initiative with the Clan Leader. I must seize control of this situation today and force the Poison Core into my hands.
How?
I already have the plan.
“I am not your son.”
Start with a shock.
“So the bastard finally shows his true colors!”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“The moment the Clan Leader appears he confesses the truth!”
My bombshell set the surroundings buzzing. The First Elder looked far too pleased.
“Quiet! The Clan Leader has ordered silence!”
Dang Baek-ho raised one hand. Only then did the crowd finally settle, glancing around nervously.
“What did you just say?”
Having restored order, the Clan Leader fixed me with a solemn gaze and asked the question.
Exactly what I said. I am not your son. I have come too far to reveal the truth now.
On my shoulders rest not only my own neck, but Hwarin’s life and the lives of every Medical Pavilion disciple who has already died.
I looked the Clan Leader straight in the eye and spoke.
“Exactly as I said. I am not your son.”
“I heard you shouted it boldly at the main gate of the Sichuan Dang Clan.”
So you went around town claiming to be my son—why change your tune now that you stand before me? That was the unspoken challenge. But even in that desperate moment I had not forgotten to lay my groundwork.
I twisted one corner of my mouth into a smirk and began correcting him.
“Seems you did not hear me clearly. I cried out that I am the son of Hyang-ah, the woman you loved. I never once said I was your son. Not a single time since entering the Sichuan Dang Clan have I claimed, with my own mouth, to be your son.”
With writing, with actions, with schemes, I had made the world believe I was the Clan Leader’s son. Yet I myself had never once spoken those words aloud.
“I was told your own wishes shaped this very gathering. And now you mean to play word games?”
Angry at the wordplay, is he? Those eyes could kill. Has he mastered the legendary technique that assassinates with a glance alone—Empty-Rending Eye-Stabbing Terror?
The Clan Leader merely shifted his gaze, yet I felt as if I stood before a tiger.
I clenched my teeth so the pressure would not crush me.
Hold. Do not shrink. You already prepared yourself to face the tiger. Immerse yourself. I am Kang Yunho. The son Hyang-ah was forced to abandon more than twenty years ago. That bastard abandoned my mother and me.
Pour the rage into your voice. Speak with pride.
“Do you know my name?”
“Yunho. Kang… Yunho, I was told.”
Had he begun to sense something? I seized the opening at once.
“If I had wanted to boast of being your son, why would my surname be Kang and not Dang? I am Hyang-ah’s son, but I am not yours.”
I can eat pineapple pizza. I carry the Bulmanghwan. But I am not your son. Do you understand what I am saying?
“More than twenty years ago a child was conceived between Hyang-ah and me. If you are truly her son, then naturally you are my—”
“Spare me.”
I cut him off, letting a thin edge of anger color my voice.
“What did you say?”
“If, at this late hour, you suddenly wish to be called Father, spare me the trouble. Any words you like can leave my three-inch tongue—but that particular word turns my stomach.”
I knitted my brows tightly and turned my head away with an expression of genuine revulsion.
“You cur! How dare you speak such insolence to your own father!”
One of the Clan Leader’s retainers roared. Perfect. Keep tossing that anger my way.
I unleashed the fury I had prepared in advance and opened my mouth.
“Who claims to be my father? Does giving the seed make a man a father? Ha! In that case I have a question for everyone present.”
I turned as if the very idea were absurd, spreading my arms wide toward the seated audience behind me.
“What is it?”
One of the Elder Council members whose eyes met mine asked.
Every gaze locked onto me. Exactly the stage I wanted. I circulated the Small Ripple Mind Image Art, poured power into my voice, and spoke so the entire hall would hear.
“You have all seen the fields of grain ripening across the wide plains. Do you think those stalks care where their seed came from, or who their father was?”
Everyone here would understand whom I meant by “seed.”
The grain is Kang Yunho. The seed is Clan Leader Dang Baek-ho. Does the man named Kang Yunho care who his blood father is?
The instant curiosity flickered across their faces I continued.
“No. The grain of the wide fields does not care on which wind it was carried and scattered.”
I shook my head, settling their questions, and pressed on.
“What the rice growing in those wide fields treasures, what it is grateful for, what it loves…”
I deliberately stressed the three words, then deliberately stopped short at the end and brought my hand to my heart. Every eye in the audience followed and fixed on my chest.
The person Kang Yunho would emphasize three times. The person precious enough to keep against his heart.
Who could that be?
“…is the earth that warmly cradled the seed—like a mother—and the farmer who raised it with his own heart, fearing it might fall ill or grow crooked—like a father.”
That person is not Clan Leader Dang Baek-ho.
It is Hyang-ah who bore Kang Yunho, and the adoptive father Kang who raised him. Those are the mother and father Kang Yunho acknowledges.
Having driven the thought into every mind present, I turned back to the Clan Leader and once more laid my hand over my heart.
“My name is Kang Yunho. Half of me comes from my mother; half of me comes from the father who raised me. That is why my given name is Yunho, the name my mother chose, and why my surname is Kang. And in that name there is no place for the Sichuan Dang Clan.”
I declared it to the Clan Leader with finality.
Behind his solemn mask I felt a subtle yet unmistakable tremor of emotion.
“So you mean to deny your own blood?”
He eased his oppressive aura and looked at me with eyes that held a touch of sorrow.
“The rice of the wide fields does not deny that it is rice. Yet a seed that was abandoned, a seed that does not even know what storms and hardships it endured while growing, never calls the man who left it ‘Father.’”
A strong denial forges a strong affirmation.
You are my blood father, but I do not regard you as my father. At the same time I mention the hardships of my upbringing, stabbing at the Clan Leader’s guilt.
Because I refuse to acknowledge him as father, I eliminate any need to prove further that I am his son.
If I myself declare I do not need him, why would anyone keep demanding I prove the bloodline? Yet that does not make me not his son.
Every piece of evidence so far has already made me the Clan Leader’s child. Add to that the public refusal to call him Father.
That refusal transforms me from some rootless bastard hoping to scavenge a scrap of paternal mercy into the true son whom fate has dragged before his father.
If anything, my credibility as the Clan Leader’s son continues to grow.
A brief silence seized the hall.
In that silence the audience would replay everything I had done until now and become convinced I truly was the Clan Leader’s son.
Of course, so would the Clan Leader himself.
Had Dang Baek-ho been a cold man, he could have simply said, “You claim you are not my son—then let us each go our own way.” But the Clan Leader I know is not that kind of man.
And I truly did grow up in hardship. Yet you were never there. By saying so I have already driven a spike into his guilt.
I do not acknowledge you as Father. Yet here I stand before you.
One thought will naturally follow.
“Then why did you write this book and come to the Dang Clan?”
The Clan Leader lifted Dangga Pungun and asked the question I had expected.
I had denied him as Father and deliberately opened a gap that led us exactly here. Now it was time to claim what I came for.
How should I answer?
To save a friend’s life. Because Hwarin is my friend. Not enough. Words like that will never be enough.
I must shake the Clan Leader.
No—I must drive a dagger into his heart, shatter the solemn mask, and leave him so shaken that he finally places the clan treasure in my hand.
And I already know exactly how to carve open the Clan Leader’s heart.
“I came because I want to protect my woman.”
His weakness.