The Palace Lord Gets a Beating
Squeeze—
Like always, Dang Jihwan had both my cheeks locked in his grip, firing off questions like a man emptying a magazine.
"You fought a bloody battle against monsters—are you hurt anywhere? And those bastards didn't pull anything strange on you, did they?"
I rolled my eyes sideways just enough to glance at the Beast Palace warriors...
"KIEEEEEK!!!"
"Ueee....."
Every one of them looked like a walking poison chart—one man had swollen purple all over like a ripe grape, another glowed green like an unripe one, and the rest ran the full spectrum in between.
Surveying the lot of them and mulling it over, though... truth be told, I'd merely thrown a one-sided tantrum. Those guys hadn't actually schemed a thing against me, had they?
I took a slow breath, smoothed down the temper that had been fraying lately, and looked up at Dang Jihwan.
"Well, you see..."
"Yes, tell me everything. Come, let me hear just what those men did to you."
He watched me with relief written in his eyes, his voice still trembling—and I opened my mouth slowly.
"Those men, wearing the skins of humans—"
"I'd already heard that part. Hawun was headed that way, so it should be all wrapped up by now."
"...Huh?"
What was that supposed to mean? Wrapped up—surely he didn't mean they'd killed them all? No, wait... if he'd already made his move, why bother asking me in the first place...
"Isn't it a simple matter? If they had done anything to you, Muyeong, I would have had to keep those wretches breathing."
So the title of Poison King wasn't just for show—the man apparently did mind-reading on the side now, too.
Caught with my thoughts laid bare, I put on a dumbfounded face and answered carefully.
"Me? Well... nothing really happened. Not a single scratch on me, see?"
"I see... Thank goodness.. Thank goodness, truly....."
At my words, Dang Jihwan let out a long, shuddering sigh and pulled me into his arms.
Pat— pat—
He squeezed me hard enough to grind my ribs together as he patted my back...
"Please, I'm begging you... stop doing things that drop your old father's heart straight through the floor....."
I said nothing, only nodded.
A man his age, and yet so embarrassingly sappy. Or no... was this simply what old age did to a person?
Forcing strength into my begrudging eyes, I stayed quietly in his embrace.
Because I knew, better than anyone, how much it hurts to lose someone precious...
Paying no mind to the men writhing and shrieking around us like worms, the tearful reunion of father and son carried on for quite a while.
A child who lost his mother the moment he drew his first breath.
And yet, drowning in the grief of losing my wife, I gave the child nothing but a name—and never once went to see him until he turned three.
The only one who looked after Muyeong was that boy, Mujin.
One day, that endlessly gentle Mujin of all people lost his temper at me.
"How long do you intend to carry on like this! What did Muyeong ever do to deserve this—why take your rage out on an innocent child!"
"If you have nothing better than that to say, then leave."
"You lost your wife that day, Father. I lost my mother."
"Did I not tell you to leave?"
"But Muyeong lost both of his parents that day! The boy is three years old and has never once seen his own father's face!"
".........."
"If you refuse to see Muyeong, then so be it. But do not dare attempt to play the pathetic father later on, no matter how late it may be."
With those parting words, Mujin threw the door shut behind him and was gone.
WHOOOSH—
How much force had he put into it, for half the door to go flying off its frame...
Cold wind poured in through the wreckage and swept across my body.
I hated it...
No—I hated it beyond all words. Myself, who had failed to protect my wife. Myself, who had then poured that failure out as rage on the child born after only seven months in her womb.
What a pathetic spectacle I was.
Her final words had been a plea to take good care of the child. What on earth had I been doing instead?
The instant my senses returned, I scrambled, breathless, to where the child lay.
And there, looking down at Muyeong—sleeping sound and soft in his bed—I saw her face.
"What... what have I been doing all this time....."
Tears I had thought long since dried up burst free, and I crumpled right there where I stood.
That night, my own forearm clamped between my teeth lest Muyeong wake, I sobbed until dawn and made myself a vow.
That I would protect my children, even if it burned my body to ash.
And now the frail little one I had sworn over had grown into this—when did that happen...
Perhaps I truly had grown old, for I felt tears about to spill.
Meanwhile, over at the Beast Palace, the unmistakable sound of grain being threshed echoed through the air.
THWACK— THWACK—
Dang Hawun, Master of the Enforcement Hall—the only warrior in the whole of the Dang Clan who fought primarily with a staff. Not that the choice was strange in itself; the clan was famous for wielding every weapon under the sun. So famous, in fact, that a child's lifelong specialty was decided by whatever weapon he happened to grab at his first-birthday feast.
By and large, though, the clan favored poison above all, hidden weapons after that, then blades—while the self-proclaimed oddballs trained in fringe weapons like the whip. Staff-users numbered exactly one: Dang Hawun. The tale of his father clutching the back of his own neck the day his son first took up a staff was famous gossip even within the clan.
In truth, Hawun had started out learning hidden weapons himself—specifically the Silk Sword—until, as a boy, he got into a squabble on the roadside with a beggar of the Beggars' Gang...
"Ack! I surrender! I swurrenduh!!!"
As fate would have it, that beggar happened to be an elder of the Beggars' Gang, and Hawun got thrashed like a stray dog that day. Armed with nothing but the single-minded vow to repay the favor someday, he threw away the Silk Sword and switched to the staff.
Of course, the target of his revenge died in an unfortunate accident a few years later—but how was Hawun to know that? By the time the news finally reached him, he was already saddled with the thoroughly unfunny nickname of Dog-Beating Staff Hero.
At any rate, Dang Hawun was laying into the Beast Palace men as though to vent every last drop of rage he had stockpiled over the past few years.
"Whew... nothing like a good sweat to lift the spirits. Isn't that right, Murin?"
"I don't believe it is, Hall Master, sir."
The two brats the Clan Lord had hauled over tucked under his arms were glaring at him with sour, glacial eyes, but what did he care.
There were things a person did, and things a person didn't. Creatures lower than beasts like these needed enlightening with a rod—that was only proper, no?
"AAAGH!"
"Ye rascal, don't go blocking me. You'll only get yourself hurt worse for nothing."
"Why are you doing this!"
"You're asking because you don't know? Then we'll beat you until you do."
"Spare me....."
"I told you I'm sparing your life, so why all the chatter? Just take your beating nicely."
And so Dang Hawun thrashed the so-called Palace Lord until the man's entire body had turned black and blue.
Just as the Clan Lord had said, not a single one among them was a warrior above the Transcendent Realm—so there was nobody alive who could have stopped him, whether he beat the Palace Lord to death or not.
"Still, the Clan Lord went that way himself, so that side should be about wrapped up by now..."
That had been a little while ago.
They had been tearing through the jungle for a good stretch when, all of a sudden, the Clan Lord turned to him and said:
"Enforcement Hall Master, you will stay behind and handle these men and the Beast Palace."
"Clan Lord, what do you mean by—"
"Not one of them is a warrior above the Transcendent Realm. It shouldn't be difficult."
And with that, the man had hurled Dang Mulin and Dang Giyeong straight at him and sprinted off toward who-knows-where.
"Hehe... Hall Master, sir. It's this way."
Giyeong wore a smug grin as he pointed a finger off to one side, and Dang Hawun followed his guidance wearing an expression of pure, concentrated displeasure.
"Who are you people!"
"Doesn't matter!"
He kicked the main gate clean off the beast village masquerading as the Beast Palace, stormed in, pummeled everyone in sight, and herded the whole lot of them into one place.
That was how the rough cleanup got finished, and he had been waiting—staff rising and falling on the Palace Lord's backside the whole time—when the ones he'd been waiting for finally arrived.
"Muyeong!"
At the sight of her little brother's face in the distance, Dang Mulin went sprinting over.
"Clan Lord, how come there are only two of you? Were there no Beast Palace bastards over there?"
With the Beast Palace warriors vanished without a trace and only Dang Jihwan and Dang Muyeong ambling leisurely toward them, the question came tinged with bewilderment...
"I killed them all, so don't worry."
Dang Jihwan replied matter-of-factly, his face the very picture of serenity.
"NOOOO!!!"
...followed, of course, by the Palace Lord's shriek ringing out across the clearing.
Now, back to a short while ago.....
Once the father's hot tears and the reunion embrace had finally run their course, Dang Jihwan asked me:
"What shall we do with them?"
"Well... those ones have to die. No point leaving loose ends behind, and I did take a request off someone, after all."
"Very well. Then how shall they die?"
"Even so, we ought to let them pass on gently, shouldn't we? There's no need to make them die in agony....."
"Muyeong. Are you aware that those men tried to bury you alive?"
".....Huh?"
When I heard the full story of everything that had happened before I clawed my way out of that pit...
"Wow... how do these bastards keep finding new ways to surprise me, right up to the very end?"
"Urk... you monsters... God will punish you all!"
"Give me a break. Just die already, you filth."
Apparently, they had scraped together every remaining master the Beast Palace possessed in order to fill in that pit.
So that was what all that stuff piled around me had been when I came to...
"Come to think of it—you're the ones who dropped those rocks on me too, aren't you?"
"That was... AAAAAGH!!!"
The instant Dang Jihwan snapped his fingers, dozens of dark-crimson flowers bloomed across the man's body, and moments later he was dead, still wracked with pain.
He did seem to have been about to say something, too.
"Ahem... Muyeong, let's head back now."
"Uh....."
"Everyone is waiting for us, after all."
"Yessir..."
Dang Jihwan turned and took the lead, and every step his feet planted on the ground was answered by a scream.
"Uuuuurgh....."
"KIIYAAAAAK!!!"
With every footfall, another warrior of Nanman breathed his last, shrouded in dark-crimson blossoms...
Crumble— crumble—
Like ripples spreading across a lake where a stone has fallen, the surrounding trees weathered away into powder in the blink of an eye.
And yet not a trace of that deadly toxin reached me, standing just a few paces behind him...
Wow... the previous Palace Lord was supposedly Profound Realm—how on earth did this guy manage to die?
Question mark hovering in my head, I trailed along behind my father's back.