Chapter 649
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 649
Chapter Title: There Is Someone I Must Protect
“Like father, like son. I like how quick on the uptake you are.”
In response to Ha Mu-baek’s words, Yeon Gong-hu nodded slightly.
It was something he himself had regretted, but with All Streams Return to the Sea...
He believed that once his realm reached its peak, he could overcome that flaw.
So he asked.
“Once the realm advances and breaks through the wall into the Transformation Realm, couldn’t it be overcome?”
Ha Mu-baek answered Yeon Gong-hu’s question slowly.
“It might be possible in the Transformation Realm. At least against those of lower realms, it could work in practice. But what if you face another expert at the Transformation Realm? That tiny gap in real combat experience creates a massive disparity. Even between Transformation Realm cultivators.”
“Ah...”
Yeon Gong-hu let out a low exclamation, having never considered that angle.
After reaching his current realm, he had only thought of himself, not of clashing with others.
Confined to the safety of the Yeon Clan’s walls, it hadn’t occurred to him to think about facing another Transformation Realm expert.
“Why do you stay cooped up within the Yeon Clan’s walls?”
Ha Mu-baek asked, a note of pity in his voice.
It was regret for a genius who hid his true strength while training.
“There is someone I must protect. That’s why I can’t leave the clan.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to protect her if you showed your full strength?”
Ha Mu-baek could guess who this “someone” was from the answer, but he pretended ignorance and asked anyway.
Yeon Gong-hu shook his head at Ha Mu-baek’s question.
“Grandfather won’t just leave someone useful alone.”
It meant that if Yeon Gong-hu revealed his skills, Yeon Ja-kyeong would take him away, leaving the person he needed to protect defenseless.
“Couldn’t you negotiate with Yeon Ja-kyeong using that?”
“He refuses to leave the clan.”
That was the response to Ha Mu-baek’s question.
“Why?”
He had no choice but to ask again.
“There’s someone he’s waiting for.”
It was obvious who.
Ha Mu-baek had already guessed who Yeon Gong-hu meant to protect.
So he said it.
“Yeon Ha-min?”
Yeon Gong-hu jumped in surprise at Ha Mu-baek’s words.
But he quickly regained his composure.
He remembered who Ha Mu-baek was.
Wasn’t he the instructor in charge of the Fierce Dragon Corps at the Dragon Training Pavilion, where Yeon Ha-min belonged?
“Is Ha-min doing well?”
His face was filled with a brother’s concern for his sister.
Ha Mu-baek wondered if his own expression looked like that when he thought of Ha Seol-ran.
“Of course.”
Ha Mu-baek gave a curt reply.
“I should have gone to Wu-chang to check on her... but since that day, I haven’t been able to leave the clan.”
“That day” surely referred to when Yeon Baek-ryang met his end in the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest.
“I occasionally pass letters to Uncle on her behalf, but he seems quite busy himself.”
“Busy. Extremely so.”
Ha Mu-baek replied, recalling Yeon Baek-jin’s unchanged demeanor.
“I heard the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest has been pacified. What happened to Ha-min’s duties afterward?”
Yeon Gong-hu asked as if it were perfect timing.
At the question, Ha Mu-baek looked at Yeon Gong-hu with a mix of pity and frustration.
“Even if you choose to stay in the well, you must keep watching the world outside. How can you only stare inside the well?”
Yeon Gong-hu lowered his head slightly at Ha Mu-baek’s pointed remark.
The scrutiny within the clan was too intense.
But explaining that would only sound like an excuse to Ha Mu-baek.
“I’m ashamed.”
“The situation inside the Yeon Clan must be dire.”
Ha Mu-baek stated calmly.
There were no further rebukes toward Yeon Gong-hu.
“It’s a tricky situation. One I can’t look away from.”
Ha Mu-baek frowned at those words.
It seemed different from the story about Yeon Baek-jin.
Dong Juk-gae’s comment about the strange atmosphere naturally came to mind.
“Yeon Baek-pung, was it? The one managing the clan now?”
Ha Mu-baek asked, organizing the information he’d heard from Dong Juk-gae.
“Yes. Third Uncle is acting as acting young clan leader.”
Yeon Gong-hu’s voice was laced with wariness as he answered.
Wariness toward Yeon Baek-pung.
“So the clan’s atmosphere is strange, as I heard.”
Yeon Gong-hu was startled by Ha Mu-baek’s mutter.
How did he know even that?
“The one you must protect is your stepmother.”
She was Yeon Ha-min’s mother, but Yeon Gong-hu’s stepmother.
“It’s Mother.”
Yeon Gong-hu answered firmly.
He had never once thought of her as a stepmother.
From the day she arrived with his father and greeted him, she had been another mother to him.
That was what his mother meant to Yeon Gong-hu.
Her background didn’t matter.
She was dignified, compassionate, and overflowing with love.
She was indeed worthy of being his father’s wife.
That was why there was now this headache.
At that moment, a thought suddenly struck Yeon Gong-hu.
Why had Ha Mu-baek come to the Yeon Clan all of a sudden?
At first, he’d suspected it was to kill him and sow chaos in the clan.
Ha Mu-baek had no reason to, but the killing intent he’d shown forced that conclusion.
It had been that terrifying—a murderous aura and intent filled with true resolve to kill him.
“But why did you come to the Yeon Clan?”
Yeon Gong-hu asked.
“Ah.”
The preamble had dragged on too long.
The problem started when he’d drawn his sword, moved by the sight of Yeon Gong-hu training.
No regrets, though.
“Ha-min came to Yi-chang.”
Short words.
But...
Ku-kung.
To Yeon Gong-hu, they were shocking.
“How...”
His voice trembled slightly.
Ha Mu-baek shared Ha-min’s recent situation.
“Even after the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest vanished, the Fierce Dragon Corps remained intact. They just changed deployment areas—to the western garrison of Jiangxi Province. Stationed on the border with the Four Seas Union. And I’m the Fierce Dragon Corps Leader.”
Relief washed over Yeon Gong-hu’s face at Ha Mu-baek’s words.
With Ha Mu-baek as leader, Yeon Ha-min’s safety was somewhat assured.
“I came to Yi-chang on leave, and the purpose is to meet your mother.”
A shadow fell over Yeon Gong-hu’s face at those words.
Ha Mu-baek immediately sensed from his expression that his mother’s situation was precarious.
‘Good thing I came here first.’
He was glad he’d scouted the situation before knocking on the Yeon Clan’s main gate with Yeon Ha-min.
Night was deepening.
An unusually quiet night, unlike usual.
A woman gazed out the window.
A middle-aged beauty to whom “beautiful” seemed insufficient.
She was refined, elegant, and exuded grace.
Her features closely resembled Yeon Ha-min’s.
One could imagine Yeon Ha-min looking just like her in middle age.
Jin Na-yeon, Yeon Ha-min’s mother.
After staring out for a long while, she tilted her head.
Something felt different from usual, but she couldn’t pinpoint what.
“Hoo.”
A deep sigh escaped her.
What did it matter, one way or another?
Her own circumstances wouldn’t change.
As she pondered her plight, a glint entered her eyes.
“Ah.”
She realized what was different.
Her son’s residence across from her annex.
Its rear garden was far too quiet.
That’s why it felt quieter than usual.
It was her son’s secret training ground, unknown to the clan members.
At this hour, the trees in the rear garden always rustled faintly.
As if swaying in the wind.
Even on windless nights.
But tonight, it was silent.
No, they had swayed.
More violently than usual.
But briefly.
Even though it was still time for the trees to sway, silence reigned.
‘Has something happened to Gong-hu?’
Worry creased her face.
Hubei Yeon Clan.
With her only blood relative, daughter Yeon Ha-min, safely escaped from the clan, her son Yeon Gong-hu was the sole person she could trust and rely on here.
Others might point fingers, calling him not her real son, but she cherished him more than her own.
An exceptional child.
He wasn’t unleashing his full potential.
She knew the reason.
It was because of her.
That made him both heartbreaking and deeply grateful.
So every night, she watched her son’s quarters like this.
That’s how she noticed something was off.
Worry filled her eyes.
Even as her own position teetered on the brink of disaster.
She fretted only over whether something had happened to her son, unconcerned for herself.
The grand hall towering at the clan’s center.
The highest floor was the clan head’s office.
Below it, the young clan head’s office.
Not its official master, but one permitted temporary use.
Yeon Baek-pung overlooked the clan’s expanse.
His gaze lingered on the annex.
“How long can you keep that up? This time, I will surely...”
A dark mutter, thick with lust.
“When Uncle was alive, the clan must have been hell for Mother and Ha-min. An uncle lusting after his nephew... even if not blood-related, it’s unforgivable.”
Ha Mu-baek nodded at Yeon Gong-hu’s words.
“So, after Uncle died so tragically... I thought—though I shouldn’t—that things might improve for Mother and Ha-min.”
Yeon Gong-hu spoke calmly.
The source of the hell was gone, so the hell should vanish too.
But it was Yeon Gong-hu’s miscalculation.
“It was Grandfather who initially wanted to use Ha-min in a political marriage.”
Clan Head Yeon Ja-kyeong.
He was an absolute existence in the Yeon Clan.
No one could defy his will.
“But Ha-min has already escaped the clan, leaving only Mother, so I thought it was over. Even if the clan shuns her, it’s far better than when Uncle was alive.”
He softened “shuns” from the harsher reality of contempt.
He’d heard from Yeon Ha-min about her mother’s origins and life in the clan, so he could infer it.
“But then Third Uncle took over as acting young clan head, even if temporarily, and things changed.”
Yeon Gong-hu grimaced.
“Beauty itself... might be a curse that invites calamity.”
Yeon Gong-hu said bitterly.
Beauty was something everyone coveted.
Yet here it was called a curse.
“When Mother served as a maid in the clan, someone had already set their heart on her. No, many, probably. She’s that beautiful.”
One of them might have been Yeon Gong-hu’s late father, Yeon Baek-un.
He had remarried her after she became a widow.
“It wasn’t my father.”
Was he worried Ha Mu-baek might think that? Yeon Gong-hu clarified as if defending his father’s honor.
“Father was too focused on training then. And already married.”
Ha Mu-baek chuckled at that.
“Your lady mother was a truly beautiful and strong swordswoman. She and Baek-un had excellent harmony too.”
Yeon Gong-hu was startled.
“She was also a fine warrior who charged into battle herself.”
He hadn’t known his late birth mother had ties to Ha Mu-baek.
Yeon Gong-hu’s memories of his birth mother were scant.
Just faint fragments.
Perhaps that’s why the stepmother he met at ten felt like his true mother.
In truth, Stepmother Jin Na-yeon loved him no less than a birth mother.
“I had no idea you were connected to my late mother too.”
“We were comrades-in-arms.”
The reason Yeon Gong-hu lost his mother young: the Blood Cult and Demonic Cult.
It was also why Yeon Baek-un fought so desperately on the battlefield.
“I see.”
Yeon Gong-hu paused briefly.
Then returned to the main topic.
“Third Uncle was different from my late father. Despite having an aunt, he harbors feelings for her.”
Ha Mu-baek couldn’t help but scowl.
‘This damned family...’
An uncle with lust for his nephew, now a younger brother-in-law with lust for his sister-in-law.
Utter scum.