Emergency
The strict punishment my eldest brother and I had advocated for ultimately never materialized.
Instead, it ended with Father issuing a stern warning to all the elders, declaring it their one and only final notice.
“Disappointed?”
As I left Geomhonjeon, Blood Sovereign, my youngest uncle, fell into step behind me.
“No. I never expected anything in the first place.”
I already knew Father had no intention of taking this matter too far.
It wasn’t because he was weak.
Perhaps, as the family head, he had already grasped everything.
The way the elders had worn expressions that said, So it has come to this, and calmly smoothed over the situation during the council. Moreover, the fact that he had simply beheaded the vice-leader without even interrogating him had told me a great deal.
Father simply did not want to cause any greater turmoil as the head of the family.
I could understand it, roughly… but the bitterness was unavoidable.
“Here, take this and soothe your temper. Never forget that this uncle is always on your side.”
“This is…”
I absentmindedly accepted the crumpled scrap of paper my uncle casually handed over.
I wondered what it was at first, but the faint fragrance that wafted from it immediately told me its identity.
“It’s a hundred-year-old heshouwu. Hehe, it’s been aged another seventy years, so should I call it a hundred-and-seventy-year heshouwu? Anyway, it’s the reward I promised you before.”
The reward for successfully concluding the matter at Heukgak.
Even so, it was a precious item. To see it rolled up so carelessly in a piece of paper… truly, it was just like my uncle.
“Thank you, Uncle.”
I expressed my gratitude and immediately passed it to Muyoung.
After all, I had always intended to give this to him.
“Is this… really for me?”
Muyoung accepted the heshouwu with a look of disbelief and overwhelming honor.
“You need to get stronger so I can have an easier time.”
“Young Master…”
His eyes were filled with emotion.
For a man who looked as solid and steel-like as he did to send me such a moist, tearful gaze… it gave me the chills. Goosebumps rose all over my skin.
“Hehe. Then shall we… pick up right where we left off yesterday and throw ourselves into training again?”
“……”
Ah. So that was the real goal.
The morning routine had begun.
* * *
The sun hung high in the sky.
For two full hours that morning, I practiced downward strikes.
Without using internal energy—just pure physical strength—until the motion became perfect.
The basic training method Ju Tae-hwi described was utterly crude.
Yet beating the body this brutally turned out to be frighteningly effective.
“Hiya, this is insane.”
I lifted my tingling forearms and ran my hands over the muscles that had already begun to take shape.
I had never missed a single day of training before, but my uncle’s regimen operated on an entirely different level.
The speed at which muscle was forming was more than double what it had been.
The precision of the sword arts I normally practiced, the power behind each strike, and even the speed—everything was rising at a dramatic rate.
I had taken some pride in my level of sword mastery, but it seemed the saying was true: there is no limit to learning.
If I could solidify my fundamentals, my swordsmanship would advance another step.
“Young Master!”
At that moment, Muyoung approached me.
While I had been immersed in training with my uncle, Muyoung had spent the entire morning absorbing the heshouwu and focusing entirely on making its energy his own.
The expression on his face as he approached was different from before.
His skin practically glowed, smooth and radiant.
It seemed he had succeeded completely.
“Thank you.”
Muyoung’s gait and breathing—everything had changed.
“You’ve made progress.”
“Yes.”
The pinnacle of first-rate.
He had finally broken past that boundary.
He had properly stepped into the realm of the Peak, the stage where one could truly be called a master.
Muyoung himself looked at his own body in wonder.
His true qi surged far more vigorously than before, circulating throughout his entire body.
Not only had the size of the energy gathered in his meridians grown, but his blood vessels had expanded significantly as well.
So this… is what they call the Peak realm.
It felt as though an overwhelming power capable of accomplishing anything had awakened within him.
Muyoung spent a long while simply basking in joy, not knowing what to do with himself.
In truth, even without the heshouwu, Muyoung had possessed enough talent to reach the Peak.
But the chronic problem that plagued all martial artists—insufficient internal energy—had kept him stuck at first-rate.
Though it was called a hundred-year, or rather a hundred-and-seventy-year root, heshouwu was still heshouwu.
In a single stroke, it had overcome his internal energy bottleneck and allowed him to shed his old shell.
“Congratulations.”
“It is all thanks to you, Young Master.”
For some reason, Muyoung’s loyalty seemed to have grown even more steadfast.
“Then let’s get back to work.”
“Where are we headed today?”
“Where else? The underground prison.”
I turned and headed for the underground dungeon.
After the elders’ council ended, Beom Jin had been locked away there.
Since the vice-leader of the Red Dragon Unit was one of our own, we could handle his punishment freely. But Beom Jin clearly belonged to another merchant guild.
To punish him, we needed solid evidence.
However… I had to keep him alive.
“The ledgers are in my hands.”
I had also promised Beom Jin that I would spare his life.
Therefore, every ledger he had recorded was now in my possession.
Without the ledgers, there was effectively no evidence.
As a result, the Ju family could not dispose of Beom Jin as they pleased.
Well, unless they decided to align themselves with the black path factions.
In any case, I headed to the underground prison together with Muyoung.
“It still smells the same.”
This was the same place where the former leader of the White Dragon Unit had been imprisoned.
The same stale, damp stench stabbed at my nose.
There weren’t many prisoners in the Ju family’s underground dungeon.
Since it was mainly used to hold Ju family warriors who had committed crimes, Beom Jin was probably the first outsider to ever be locked inside.
“There he is.”
I soon spotted Beom Jin huddled in a corner.
“Y-Young Master! P-Please spare me! You said you would spare me, didn’t you?”
Beom Jin crawled desperately toward the iron bars and began begging.
His face was a mess of tears and snot; he was utterly terrified.
“Yes, I came here to spare you.”
I crouched down to meet his eyes at the same level.
There were still things I hadn’t heard from him yet.
“Did you supply goods to Heukgak?”
“Y-Yes? Y-Yes, of course. Rather than supplying, Heukgak is technically a customer…”
Heukgak was an alliance formed by numerous black path factions.
Naturally, the number of merchant guilds that came and went there easily exceeded three digits.
The Myoak Merchant Guild was merely one of them.
The only difference was their connection to Sa-an Gwi-gun.
“Don’t be nervous. I’m not interested in the likes of you. Just tell me who moved when you supplied goods to Heukgak this time.”
“Um… If I tell you this, will you really spare me?”
“That depends on your answer.”
“Please promise you’ll spare me.”
What an insolent attitude.
I stood up from my spot.
“Then just die.”
“W-Wait, Young Master! Aigoo, why are you in such a hurry!”
Beom Jin waved his hands frantically.
I looked at him with an expression that said I had no expectations.
“Normally, our chief steward goes to Heukgak. But this time the chief steward suddenly fell ill…”
“He got sick? Suddenly?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen it happen before either…”
The corner of my mouth curled up on its own.
Could Sa-an Gwi-gun have had a hand in it?
“So? Who went instead?”
“Yu-cheong. A man the chief steward brought in. He said he learned business while working with various merchant guilds across the Central Plains…”
“Yu-cheong?”
The moment I heard that name, goosebumps erupted across my entire body.
The instant I heard the name Yu-cheong, a memory from my previous life surged up.
He was… Sa-an Gwi-gun.
Jin Yu-cheong.
A plain name.
Just an incredibly common name.
That was why I had simply let it pass in my previous life and hadn’t remembered it easily.
“N-Now please let me out. Yes? I’ve told you everything!”
“It’s confirmed.”
It really was Sa-an Gwi-gun.
He had deliberately drawn me out at Heukgak, planted a sort of warning, and then vanished without a trace.
But he probably never dreamed I would chase him all the way here.
Especially since he had so carelessly used his real name.
I took the ledgers out of my robe.
After carefully extracting only the information related to the Ju family, I handed the rest to Beom Jin.
“The truth is, I don’t have the power to get you out of here.”
I smiled brightly.
“What? Then…”
“But I can at least keep you alive. The real information is in here.”
Because inside these ledgers were written the names of the traitors within the Ju family.
I folded them and tucked them back into my robe.
Father would probably interrogate Beom Jin relentlessly to obtain them.
However, if these fell into Father’s hands, the evidence would be destroyed.
I had absolutely no intention of letting them off so easily.
Of course, that included Beom Jin as well.
* * *
I left the underground prison.
“Have you found your answer?”
At Muyoung’s question, I nodded.
“I’ve come close enough.”
Sa-an Gwi-gun was blinded by revenge.
Since he knew everything about what had happened in the Zhushan Archipelago, he must have nurtured a deep grudge against them.
His parents had died merely for the sake of money.
It must have been a shock great enough to drive Sa-an Gwi-gun mad.
“Still, that doesn’t mean I can let him live.”
It was a shame, but that was his personal story.
In the end, Sa-an Gwi-gun had already taken his revenge.
And even now, he was creating countless more victims everywhere he went.
Soul-Destroying Illusion Art.
That demonic art itself had to be completely eradicated.
I immediately took Muyoung and headed for the Myoak Merchant Guild.
It was time to capture Sa-an Gwi-gun.
* * *
When had I first learned of him?
Among the Twelve Demon Emperors, Sa-an Gwi-gun was a man who enjoyed considerable trust.
Though his pure martial prowess didn’t seem particularly remarkable, his personal strength was still formidable.
On top of that, he possessed exceptional eloquence, political acumen, business savvy, and even that bizarre martial art that could dominate the mind.
However, the Soul-Destroying Illusion Art had a serious side effect.
“It shortens one’s lifespan.”
“There’s a martial art like that?”
“You experienced it yourself. How did it feel?”
“So that’s what it was. Hmm…”
Muyoung, who had been eroded by Sa-an Gwi-gun’s Soul-Destroying Illusion Art at Heukgak, shuddered as if he didn’t even want to think about it.
“It felt like running around naked. My body felt like it was freezing up, yet my mind was perfectly clear, but I couldn’t control it.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s called a demonic art. On the other hand, it has absolutely no effect on stronger experts or those with anti-demonic arts.”
Its power was certain, but so were its side effects.
“And it shortens your lifespan.”
Normally, the more a martial artist trained, the longer their lifespan became.
Through pure innate true qi and constant refinement of both internal and external aspects to maintain a clear mind, a strong body and spirit were born.
However, the Soul-Destroying Illusion Art was a demonic art that dominated the opponent’s mind.
By encroaching on their psyche, the user ended up feeling all of the victim’s emotions in their place.
It consumed an enormous amount of mental energy and carried the risk of the demonic art flowing backward.
Was that why?
In my previous life, the one time I had seen Sa-an Gwi-gun from afar, his face had been completely devoid of vitality.
By then, his own life no longer mattered to him at all.
BOOM!
At that moment, an enormous presence swept over the previously quiet corridor.
Just as I had expected, it seemed he had arrived.
Step. Step.
Without even trying to conceal his footsteps, the opponent walked straight toward where I was.
The guild leader’s residence. Inside the dark room.
Only a single flickering candle faintly illuminated the interior.
Creak.
The door soon opened, and someone stepped inside.
“Oh ho. So that’s your true appearance.”
“……”
The opponent flinched.
A tall, slender frame and quite a handsome face.
A man whose looks could easily be called beautiful depending on the viewer.
“What are you talking about?”
“Aha… Why are you acting like this? I already know everything. Just looking at those eyes of yours tells me.”
His eyes glowed red.
Proof that he was a demonic practitioner.
No matter how hard he tried to hide it, he could never fool my eyes.
After all, only I could see that crimson glow.
“……”
Yu-cheong—no, Sa-an Gwi-gun’s eyes instantly transformed into the cunning, snake-like slits of a viper.
“How did you know?”
“How? You left something important behind, so of course I figured you’d come.”
“……Hah.”
“Jin Yu-cheong.”
It was Sa-an Gwi-gun’s real name.
“That’s your true name, isn’t it?”
His expression hardened like stone.
At the same time, his pupils trembled faintly.
But that only lasted a moment. He soon walked slowly toward me.
Then he sat down with perfect composure.
Staring straight through me, he asked,
“How much… have you figured out?”
“Who knows.”
I revealed a triumphant smile and released my killing intent.
Constricting Sa-an Gwi-gun’s entire body with murderous aura, I spoke in a low voice.
“That you’re the world’s most worthless piece of trash. Is that enough?”