Withered Jujubes: Yi Gyeol, the Greatest Under Heaven
Yi Gyeol, the withered greatest under heaven, opened his eyes again—and a strange sensation gripped him.
What is this? Wasn't this body dead?
He had surely felt heaven's call and bid farewell to his many retainers. Could it all have been a dream? That made sense. Perhaps he had simply dozed off in the warm spring sunlight.
...No. This isn't a dream. Something's different.
Furrowing his brow, he scanned his surroundings. He was still perched atop the high pavilion roof, the vast vista of Dongjeong Lake stretching before him unchanged. Verdant grass sprouted in the blooming spring...
But when he shifted his gaze downward to the roof's edge, he immediately pinpointed the source of his unease.
Yi Gajang, always bustling with retainers and guests. The grand estate of the world's greatest clan, which he himself had built—it lay eerily empty. Utterly vacant. It wasn't just the absence of people. The scene could be summed up in one word: desolation. Furniture and carts that should have dotted the grounds were nowhere to be seen. Even the garden trees had been uprooted or withered away. Barren, as if spring's vitality had deliberately skipped Yi Gajang alone.
A curse slipped out unbidden.
"What in the devilish—"
Then, from somewhere, two scrawny youths came dashing out in a panic. They looked up at him on the pavilion's edge and bellowed.
"Brother! We found him! Jinpyeong's on the pavilion again!"
"Aigoo! You rascal! Why'd you climb up there this time?!"
"We've told you it's dangerous how many times! Get down here now!"
What? Were they talking to this body? And calling this height dangerous? To Yi Gyeol, the unrivaled greatest under heaven, whom no one in the jangho could match.
It had to be a joke or mistaken identity. Yet the youths' faces brimmed with urgency and worry. They waved their arms desperately, urging him to move back from the edge to safety, promising they'd come rescue him soon.
Yi Gyeol reached a swift conclusion.
"Mad fools."
Come to think of it, these were faces he'd never seen before. Did he have retainers he didn't know? Merchants passing through the clan, or perhaps escorts from a transport bureau? Regardless, anyone in the Central Plains—especially those who frequented Yi Gajang—should recognize him on sight.
He examined the youths' attire closely. Both were skin and bones, sallow-faced, clad in threadbare, patched rags.
Yi Gyeol added to his assessment.
"...Deranged beggar scum."
A sigh escaped him. He had no idea where everyone had gone or why they'd abandoned the estate—but he couldn't let unidentified riffraff roam freely. The dignity of the world's greatest clan was at stake.
He leaped down. To sort this mess himself.
"Wha... whaa—!!"
The two youths' eyes bulged in shock, their faces idiotic.
"Wha... whaa—!!"
The amusing part? Yi Gyeol himself was equally stunned. Only after launching his body downward did he realize it wasn't his body anymore.
The ironclad physique, honed without a hair's breadth to spare, was gone. In its place: chopstick-thin limbs. His clothes hung so loose that the flapping collar roared in the wind.
Pungsin Jigyeol.
Wind God Secret Art. A body light as a falling leaf, pursuing the wind without a trace.
He urgently tried to summon the wind's qi—but nothing happened. Where had the inner energy that once filled him to the brim vanished?
The ground rushed up fast. At this rate, disaster.
Damn—but Yi Gyeol wasn't one to panic idly. If he rolled his body precisely at the right moment, even this frail frame could land unscathed.
That was, assuming no interference.
"Jinpyeong!"
"Don't worry, I'll catch you!"
An utterly unforeseen development. The two youths, frozen as they watched his descent, hurled themselves forward at the last instant—right into his landing spot.
And—thud! A massive crash echoed, dust billowing.
"Agh, my aching bones..."
Yi Gyeol brushed himself off and stood. Thanks to the brothers' noble sacrifice, he was unharmed. Truth be told, he'd have landed far more gracefully without them.
"...What in blazes?"
He inspected his body this way and that. The fainted youths, eyes rolled back, weren't his concern. He, whom he'd thought dead, was alive and well—in someone else's body. A boy on the cusp of youth, somewhere in between.
What had happened? Had he returned to youth? Even then, why this feeble body and empty dantian? And what calamity had befallen the clan?
As he puzzled, a groan emanated from the piled-up duo.
"Ughhh... Little bro... no... dangerous..."
"Don't worry about a thing. Your big brothers will protect you..."
They weren't fully conscious yet. Even unconscious, they fretted over someone desperately.
Yi Gyeol added another note on the mysterious youths.
"Brotherly beggar scum with fine camaraderie."
He figured it was time to wake them. To learn how they'd infiltrated and what they knew of this mess.
"Hey. Who are you lot?"
He prodded them with his foot. From the bowl one clutched fell something that rolled across the dirt.
A jujube seed. Withered and shriveled.
The instant he saw it—
"Urk—!"
A vicious headache assaulted him. Pain unlike any he'd known. With it came memories—not his own, but foreign ones belonging to another.
Soon, he understood his predicament.
"Such damnable..."
Clutching his throbbing head, he slumped down. The shock outweighed the pain. He finally realized: he wasn't Yi Gyeol himself—but reborn into a descendant's body.
Yi Jinpyeong. Age fifteen. Yi Gajang's youngest, plagued by inexplicable madness since birth.
How? By what principle? He couldn't say. His time had stopped the moment he closed his eyes before his retainers. Then, generations later, born as Yi Jinpyeong, he'd endured fifteen years of tormenting madness—until just now, reclaiming his true self.
If reincarnating, why not from the start? Why awaken only at fifteen? Perhaps the boy's lifelong madness stemmed from this. Merging two souls' memories was agony—especially in such a frail vessel as Yi Jinpyeong's.
But such details mattered little. Sifting through Yi Jinpyeong's fragmented memories, Yi Gyeol could only pound his chest.
The absurd reality choked him.
"So... this body died, and roughly a century passed? The clan went belly-up in that time, reduced to this?"
Yes. Yi Gajang had collapsed. The empty estate, left untended—that was why.
Unbelievable. How could the clan he built—the world's greatest—fall so utterly? And not for some external foe.
From the boy's spotty recollections: all because his descendants faithfully heeded his final words: "Live by giving to others."
Was that possible? The greatest clan ruined over one deathbed wish?
"Even the rich last three generations—how did these pathetic whelps?!"
Upon reflection, they'd outlasted three. He nearly nodded in grim acceptance—then felt the lingering weakness of Yi Jinpyeong within. He slapped his own cheek—smack!
It burned, swelling hot. Painful. But refreshing. He slapped the other side too.
Smack!
The sting sharpened his mind. Only then could he survey his surroundings again—with leisure.
Toward the two still-prone youths. Not beggars, as he'd thought—but his descendants. Brothers.
Eldest: Yi Jingang. Second: Yi Jinun. Both past twenty, yet stick-thin pathetic wrecks. How negligently had they trained? Fainting from catching this body off a mere roof height?
"Well now, my dear brothers. Time to rise?"
He'd try talking. Yi Jinpyeong's patchy memories left too many baffling gaps.
"...Hey. You two?"
Odd. The brothers only groaned sporadically, showing no sign of stirring. The crash had been loud, but his blood shouldn't be this frail.
Had they hit something vital? He urgently checked their pulses. After thorough diagnosis:
Malnutrition.
"......"
Fury surged.
Thud. Thud. Thud!! He kicked the log-like brothers soundly.
"You brainless idiots! Pathetic blockheads! What have you been doing to let it come to this? Where'd all the clan wealth go—sold off? Where's your martial prowess?! My descendants, malnourished and collapsing? Absurd!"
He pummeled a while, but his rage didn't subside. The brothers showed no signs of waking, only accumulating bruises.
Exhausted at last, he panted and collapsed.
Everything displeased him. This frail body, lacking even a wisp of inner energy at this age. These brothers, neglecting themselves to starvation.
Gazing blankly around, his eyes fell on the chipped bowl on the ground—and the jujubes inside.
A few shriveled ones, mirroring his brothers. Then it hit him. Their meaning. Why they'd triggered his awakening. These mere seeds were, in truth...
"This body's ancestral offering?!"
The clan founder Yi Gyeol exploded in rage. He personally kicked over his descendants' pitiful altar.
Boom—!
The former greatest under heaven, reincarnated into a bankrupt clan.
Awakening: Day 1.