Chapter 78

Chapter 78

The time it took to climb back up was shorter than the time it had taken to come down.

Because of this, Jin Ja-gang realized that it wouldn’t take him long to discover the source of his uneasiness.

Even as he climbed closer, strangely, he couldn’t hear any human voices.

The flames and smoke were still rising, but unlike before, there were no sounds of people searching for acquaintances and causing a commotion.

‘That’s strange?’

Jin Ja-gang immediately hid himself as soon as he felt uneasy.

Carefully crawling forward, he peered into the Shadow Bureau’s interior.

At that moment.

Jin Ja-gang was shocked.

It had been barely two hours.

That was how long Jin Ja-gang had been away.

In that short time, the villagers who had come to the Shadow Bureau were now corpses, rolling haphazardly on the ground.

‘Wh-what is this!’

Jin Ja-gang could only stare at the villagers’ corpses in bewilderment, feeling the hair all over his body stand on end.

***

***

Jin Ja-gang pondered with a grave expression.

A master had been here.

Someone Jin Ja-gang wouldn’t dare to even look at.

Moreover, their methods were incredibly cruel.

The villagers had died with their heads burst open, throats torn, ribs caved in, or limbs severed. It was clear they hadn’t been killed with precision, but rather slaughtered indiscriminately.

‘What happened?’

Could someone have survived?

He had thoroughly searched for and killed all members of the Shadow Bureau.

So why were there traces of yet another person?

Of course, there was something suspicious.

The owner of that killing intent…

Jin Ja-gang walked toward the burning house he had been watching earlier. The wall of the house was half-collapsed and broken.

The person who had slaughtered the villagers had definitely been here.

The beam that had broken through the wall, the footprints left on the ground, and the three corpses gathered nearby all proved it.

Jin Ja-gang couldn’t hide his bewilderment.

‘Is this person not from the Shadow Bureau?’

If he was from the Shadow Bureau, he wouldn’t have left Jin Ja-gang alone after he had killed his people.

‘Then why? Why did such a master hide instead of attacking me?’

His mind became complicated.

This cruel master had remained hidden until the end, then killed the villagers when they arrived and left.

They had shown Jin Ja-gang nothing but a slight killing intent, without causing him any harm.

‘Why?’

Jin Ja-gang was confused.

‘No… wait.’

While looking at the villagers’ corpses, something suddenly came to mind.

Rumors he had heard on his way to the Shadow Bureau.

Words he had heard and casually dismissed at the time.

‘They say he massacred hundreds of people from Stone Forest Gang and the surrounding villages?’

That was what the cook at the inn who had poisoned Jin Ja-gang had said.

‘I heard he killed all the members of Stone Forest Gang and even slaughtered all the nearby people?’

Words he had heard at a teahouse by the lake on the way to the Shadow Bureau.

At the time, he had thought they were just rumors, but…

‘Could it be… those words were true?’

Jin Ja-gang felt a chill.

‘Has someone been following me all this time?’

Cold sweat broke out all over his body.

What was this person’s intention in following him?

Why did he commit such acts?

He tried to stay calm, but his heart was racing.

‘Is he on my side?’

No, if he had goodwill toward Jin Ja-gang, he wouldn’t have sent that strange killing intent earlier.

‘An enemy?’

It was difficult to call them an enemy either.

If he was truly an enemy, he would have had numerous opportunities to kill Jin Ja-gang. At the very least, when Jin Ja-gang was trapped in the storage shed, he was completely defenseless.

Yet he didn’t kill Jin Ja-gang, which meant he had no immediate intention to kill him. This suggested that originally, he had planned not to interfere with Jin Ja-gang but only to clean up afterward.

Today’s direct and indirect encounter was probably a mistake on their part.

This was incredibly fortunate for Jin Ja-gang.

If he hadn’t come back to check, he would have continued unaware of these circumstances!

Jin Ja-gang thought for a moment.

The reason this person was following Jin Ja-gang must be because he was currently benefiting from Jin Ja-gang’s actions, or would benefit from them in the future.

The thought of being used didn’t sit well with him. Moreover, the other party was thoroughly concealing his identity, leaving Jin Ja-gang no trail to follow.

The fact that he refused to reveal themselves even when cornered in a burning house to the point of death proved this.

‘I need to think calmly. Just because someone is using me doesn’t mean what I need to do changes.’

However, now that he knew someone was following him, he would need to move more cautiously in the future.

Jin Ja-gang took a deep breath.

He had been trapped in an underground tunnel for eight years.

He didn’t know much about the current state of the martial world. He could barely guess the general situation, but knew nothing about the intricate details and relationships within it.

He just needed to kill those who deserved to die.

That was his only thought.

Avenging his enemies didn’t require complex political calculations. Or rather, he thought it didn’t.

Yet in the midst of this, someone was already trying to use Jin Ja-gang…

‘I don’t know who they are, but he’ll regret trying to use me someday.’

Jin Ja-gang clenched his teeth tightly.

* * *

Mang Ryo was leaving Fumin with his body scorched, burned, and in a complete mess.

Thud! Thud!

Every time he pushed his crutches, he leaped several steps forward, moving rapidly.

However, Mang Ryo’s expression was extremely bizarre.

His mouth was split in a wide grin, yet his face was deeply furrowed.

“Kekeke! What an audacious b*st*rd!”

It was truly a strange sight.

His expression seemed annoyed yet also incredibly exhilarated.

Of course, it made sense.

For the past eight years, Mang Ryo had been waiting for this moment.

He had lived busier than anyone else for this moment.

If Jin Ja-gang had turned out to be ordinary, Mang Ryo would have been greatly disappointed and torn him apart on the spot.

But Jin Ja-gang wasn’t ordinary. Rather, he had grown beyond Mang Ryo’s expectations.

To the point where Mang Ryo didn’t regret waiting at all.

Thanks to that, all the preparations Mang Ryo had made wouldn’t go to waste, so how could he not be pleased?

“Ah! This is something!”

Mang Ryo stopped walking. Having seen Jin Ja-gang in person, he was so excited that his heart was pounding wildly.

Seeing traces of Jin Ja-gang at Stone Forest Gang was nothing compared to encountering him in person, even from a distance. He felt so good that he was almost breathless, making it impossible for him to continue running.

He simply couldn’t contain himself. If he didn’t share this rising emotion with someone, he felt like he would burst and die.

But who could he share it with?

“Call me sentimental if you will, but I can’t help it! Let’s see…”

Mang Ryo, extremely excited, scanned the surroundings with his gleaming single eye, then suddenly leaped forward.

* * *

“…so I said… that’s why I…”

The old beggar woke up slightly. Someone kept noisily talking to him.

The old beggar struggled to open his eyes, which were crusted with sleep.

It was still dark outside. Rubbing his eyes, he realized he was in his usual spot under the bridge.

There, next to where he had been sleeping on his straw mat, someone was sitting.

However, who it was didn’t particularly matter.

Somehow, a bottle of liquor and a boiled chicken had appeared in front of the beggar.

The beggar swallowed hard as he looked at the man.

“Ah, you’re awake? Since you’re up, help yourself to this.”

The man appeared quite old, and his appearance was even more wretched than the beggar’s own. He looked as if he had just escaped from a burning house, wearing clothes with burn holes, and pitifully, he had no legs and was using crutches.

It was strange that someone who looked even more like a beggar than himself would offer sweet-smelling liquor and fresh chicken, but it wasn’t something to refuse. After all, a beggar should eat when food is available.

The beggar, having woken up mid-sleep, hurriedly tore into the chicken and drank the liquor.

“While you’re eating, may I continue with what I was saying?”

At the man’s gentle voice, the beggar nodded as if to say, “What do I care?”

The man looked at him with satisfaction and continued.

“I’ve been troubled. Wondering how to torment him in the most painful way. But you know, physical pain is actually nothing. Even I, when I lost both my legs, found it very difficult at first, but after some time, it became nothing.”

The beggar, tearing at the chicken skin, glanced at the man’s severed legs. The man continued.

“Besides, I was with that guy for about three months? He seems more resistant to physical pain than I expected. He’s not the type to feel pain from just a hit or two. So what should I do? It was quite a dilemma.”

The man’s tone was very serious and grave.

“But then, I had a thought. When was I most desperate? Do you perhaps know?”

The beggar shook his head and focused on eating. The man might change his mind and take the food away at any moment.

“Others might think it was when I lost my eye and legs. But surprisingly, the time I felt most desperate wasn’t when I lost my eye and legs. It was when everything I had worked hard to build turned to nothing. It wasn’t when my body hurt. It was when this hurt, right here.”

He poked his own chest repeatedly with his finger.

“Once I realized that, I thought I should do the same to him. But how? He’s an orphan with nothing to protect and nothing particularly accomplished.”

The beggar pretended to think for a moment, then took a swig of liquor.

“So I thought differently. I can’t take anything away from him, but I can make him feel exactly what I felt.”

The man continued speaking, regardless of what the beggar was doing.

“It’s a bit complicated to explain, but it’s like this. I felt as if the whole world was against me when I was helpless, as if the entire world was hostile to me. With nowhere to rest my body comfortably… feeling like an outcast in the world, with no one to listen to me, and no one on my side. That kind of anxiety. I felt like I was going crazy back then. So much so that even my colleagues looked at me with contempt, calling me insane.”

The beggar nodded in agreement.

“So I decided to do the same to him. Of course, it was a very difficult task. How could I bring that guy into this world…”

The beggar seemed to realize that the conversation was becoming increasingly strange, and his eating pace slowed a bit.

“Anyway, over the past eight years, though it was a bit of a struggle, I’ve sown seeds here and there. You could say I’ve been planting with the heart of a farmer hoping for a good harvest. There was a first seed I planted with special care, called Stone Forest Gang, and now I’ve successfully harvested it. It was the perfect sacrifice to celebrate his return.”

The beggar swallowed dryly. It seemed like increasingly dangerous words were coming out.

The beggar stopped chewing and glanced up at the man, their eyes meeting.

The man grinned, showing his teeth.

“Hehehe, this friend is quite perceptive. That’s right. These are words no one else should hear. Thanks to you, I feel much better now. I’m quite satisfied. Now I can live.”

The beggar felt uneasy and his hands trembled.

He dropped the chicken leg he had been eating onto the ground.

The man picked up the chicken leg. Despite the beggar having already eaten half of it, he put it in his own mouth without hesitation and stripped off the meat.

Pulling out only the bone, the man asked the beggar.

“Ah, are you done eating? Is this enough? I’m a bit busy.”

The man stabbed the chicken leg bone into the beggar’s head.

Thunk! The chicken leg bone went completely into his head, disappearing from sight.

Immediately, the beggar’s eyes rolled back, showing the whites. The beggar’s emaciated body fell to the side. Not a single drop of blood appeared. At a glance, it would be impossible to tell why the beggar had died.

“Thank you for listening to my story today. I just realized that I used to be such a talkative person. Somehow, I’ve been living with fewer words all this time.”

He chuckled heartily.

He felt refreshed.

It was for a day like today.

Everything he had done until now.

Sowing seeds…

The seeds that Mang Ryo had carefully planted over several years were gradually beginning to bear fruit.

* * *

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The time it took to climb back up was shorter than the time it had taken to come down.

Because of this, Jin Ja-gang realized that it wouldn’t take him long to discover the source of his uneasiness.

Even as he climbed closer, strangely, he couldn’t hear any human voices.

The flames and smoke were still rising, but unlike before, there were no sounds of people searching for acquaintances and causing a commotion.

‘That’s strange?’

Jin Ja-gang immediately hid himself as soon as he felt uneasy.

Carefully crawling forward, he peered into the Shadow Bureau’s interior.

At that moment.

Jin Ja-gang was shocked.

It had been barely two hours.

That was how long Jin Ja-gang had been away.

In that short time, the villagers who had come to the Shadow Bureau were now corpses, rolling haphazardly on the ground.

‘Wh-what is this!’

Jin Ja-gang could only stare at the villagers’ corpses in bewilderment, feeling the hair all over his body stand on end.

***

***

Jin Ja-gang pondered with a grave expression.

A master had been here.

Someone Jin Ja-gang wouldn’t dare to even look at.

Moreover, their methods were incredibly cruel.

The villagers had died with their heads burst open, throats torn, ribs caved in, or limbs severed. It was clear they hadn’t been killed with precision, but rather slaughtered indiscriminately.

‘What happened?’

Could someone have survived?

He had thoroughly searched for and killed all members of the Shadow Bureau.

So why were there traces of yet another person?

Of course, there was something suspicious.

The owner of that killing intent…

Jin Ja-gang walked toward the burning house he had been watching earlier. The wall of the house was half-collapsed and broken.

The person who had slaughtered the villagers had definitely been here.

The beam that had broken through the wall, the footprints left on the ground, and the three corpses gathered nearby all proved it.

Jin Ja-gang couldn’t hide his bewilderment.

‘Is this person not from the Shadow Bureau?’

If he was from the Shadow Bureau, he wouldn’t have left Jin Ja-gang alone after he had killed his people.

‘Then why? Why did such a master hide instead of attacking me?’

His mind became complicated.

This cruel master had remained hidden until the end, then killed the villagers when they arrived and left.

They had shown Jin Ja-gang nothing but a slight killing intent, without causing him any harm.

‘Why?’

Jin Ja-gang was confused.

‘No… wait.’

While looking at the villagers’ corpses, something suddenly came to mind.

Rumors he had heard on his way to the Shadow Bureau.

Words he had heard and casually dismissed at the time.

‘They say he massacred hundreds of people from Stone Forest Gang and the surrounding villages?’

That was what the cook at the inn who had poisoned Jin Ja-gang had said.

‘I heard he killed all the members of Stone Forest Gang and even slaughtered all the nearby people?’

Words he had heard at a teahouse by the lake on the way to the Shadow Bureau.

At the time, he had thought they were just rumors, but…

‘Could it be… those words were true?’

Jin Ja-gang felt a chill.

‘Has someone been following me all this time?’

Cold sweat broke out all over his body.

What was this person’s intention in following him?

Why did he commit such acts?

He tried to stay calm, but his heart was racing.

‘Is he on my side?’

No, if he had goodwill toward Jin Ja-gang, he wouldn’t have sent that strange killing intent earlier.

‘An enemy?’

It was difficult to call them an enemy either.

If he was truly an enemy, he would have had numerous opportunities to kill Jin Ja-gang. At the very least, when Jin Ja-gang was trapped in the storage shed, he was completely defenseless.

Yet he didn’t kill Jin Ja-gang, which meant he had no immediate intention to kill him. This suggested that originally, he had planned not to interfere with Jin Ja-gang but only to clean up afterward.

Today’s direct and indirect encounter was probably a mistake on their part.

This was incredibly fortunate for Jin Ja-gang.

If he hadn’t come back to check, he would have continued unaware of these circumstances!

Jin Ja-gang thought for a moment.

The reason this person was following Jin Ja-gang must be because he was currently benefiting from Jin Ja-gang’s actions, or would benefit from them in the future.

The thought of being used didn’t sit well with him. Moreover, the other party was thoroughly concealing his identity, leaving Jin Ja-gang no trail to follow.

The fact that he refused to reveal themselves even when cornered in a burning house to the point of death proved this.

‘I need to think calmly. Just because someone is using me doesn’t mean what I need to do changes.’

However, now that he knew someone was following him, he would need to move more cautiously in the future.

Jin Ja-gang took a deep breath.

He had been trapped in an underground tunnel for eight years.

He didn’t know much about the current state of the martial world. He could barely guess the general situation, but knew nothing about the intricate details and relationships within it.

He just needed to kill those who deserved to die.

That was his only thought.

Avenging his enemies didn’t require complex political calculations. Or rather, he thought it didn’t.

Yet in the midst of this, someone was already trying to use Jin Ja-gang…

‘I don’t know who they are, but he’ll regret trying to use me someday.’

Jin Ja-gang clenched his teeth tightly.

* * *

Mang Ryo was leaving Fumin with his body scorched, burned, and in a complete mess.

Thud! Thud!

Every time he pushed his crutches, he leaped several steps forward, moving rapidly.

However, Mang Ryo’s expression was extremely bizarre.

His mouth was split in a wide grin, yet his face was deeply furrowed.

“Kekeke! What an audacious b*st*rd!”

It was truly a strange sight.

His expression seemed annoyed yet also incredibly exhilarated.

Of course, it made sense.

For the past eight years, Mang Ryo had been waiting for this moment.

He had lived busier than anyone else for this moment.

If Jin Ja-gang had turned out to be ordinary, Mang Ryo would have been greatly disappointed and torn him apart on the spot.

But Jin Ja-gang wasn’t ordinary. Rather, he had grown beyond Mang Ryo’s expectations.

To the point where Mang Ryo didn’t regret waiting at all.

Thanks to that, all the preparations Mang Ryo had made wouldn’t go to waste, so how could he not be pleased?

“Ah! This is something!”

Mang Ryo stopped walking. Having seen Jin Ja-gang in person, he was so excited that his heart was pounding wildly.

Seeing traces of Jin Ja-gang at Stone Forest Gang was nothing compared to encountering him in person, even from a distance. He felt so good that he was almost breathless, making it impossible for him to continue running.

He simply couldn’t contain himself. If he didn’t share this rising emotion with someone, he felt like he would burst and die.

But who could he share it with?

“Call me sentimental if you will, but I can’t help it! Let’s see…”

Mang Ryo, extremely excited, scanned the surroundings with his gleaming single eye, then suddenly leaped forward.

* * *

“…so I said… that’s why I…”

The old beggar woke up slightly. Someone kept noisily talking to him.

The old beggar struggled to open his eyes, which were crusted with sleep.

It was still dark outside. Rubbing his eyes, he realized he was in his usual spot under the bridge.

There, next to where he had been sleeping on his straw mat, someone was sitting.

However, who it was didn’t particularly matter.

Somehow, a bottle of liquor and a boiled chicken had appeared in front of the beggar.

The beggar swallowed hard as he looked at the man.

“Ah, you’re awake? Since you’re up, help yourself to this.”

The man appeared quite old, and his appearance was even more wretched than the beggar’s own. He looked as if he had just escaped from a burning house, wearing clothes with burn holes, and pitifully, he had no legs and was using crutches.

It was strange that someone who looked even more like a beggar than himself would offer sweet-smelling liquor and fresh chicken, but it wasn’t something to refuse. After all, a beggar should eat when food is available.

The beggar, having woken up mid-sleep, hurriedly tore into the chicken and drank the liquor.

“While you’re eating, may I continue with what I was saying?”

At the man’s gentle voice, the beggar nodded as if to say, “What do I care?”

The man looked at him with satisfaction and continued.

“I’ve been troubled. Wondering how to torment him in the most painful way. But you know, physical pain is actually nothing. Even I, when I lost both my legs, found it very difficult at first, but after some time, it became nothing.”

The beggar, tearing at the chicken skin, glanced at the man’s severed legs. The man continued.

“Besides, I was with that guy for about three months? He seems more resistant to physical pain than I expected. He’s not the type to feel pain from just a hit or two. So what should I do? It was quite a dilemma.”

The man’s tone was very serious and grave.

“But then, I had a thought. When was I most desperate? Do you perhaps know?”

The beggar shook his head and focused on eating. The man might change his mind and take the food away at any moment.

“Others might think it was when I lost my eye and legs. But surprisingly, the time I felt most desperate wasn’t when I lost my eye and legs. It was when everything I had worked hard to build turned to nothing. It wasn’t when my body hurt. It was when this hurt, right here.”

He poked his own chest repeatedly with his finger.

“Once I realized that, I thought I should do the same to him. But how? He’s an orphan with nothing to protect and nothing particularly accomplished.”

The beggar pretended to think for a moment, then took a swig of liquor.

“So I thought differently. I can’t take anything away from him, but I can make him feel exactly what I felt.”

The man continued speaking, regardless of what the beggar was doing.

“It’s a bit complicated to explain, but it’s like this. I felt as if the whole world was against me when I was helpless, as if the entire world was hostile to me. With nowhere to rest my body comfortably… feeling like an outcast in the world, with no one to listen to me, and no one on my side. That kind of anxiety. I felt like I was going crazy back then. So much so that even my colleagues looked at me with contempt, calling me insane.”

The beggar nodded in agreement.

“So I decided to do the same to him. Of course, it was a very difficult task. How could I bring that guy into this world…”

The beggar seemed to realize that the conversation was becoming increasingly strange, and his eating pace slowed a bit.

“Anyway, over the past eight years, though it was a bit of a struggle, I’ve sown seeds here and there. You could say I’ve been planting with the heart of a farmer hoping for a good harvest. There was a first seed I planted with special care, called Stone Forest Gang, and now I’ve successfully harvested it. It was the perfect sacrifice to celebrate his return.”

The beggar swallowed dryly. It seemed like increasingly dangerous words were coming out.

The beggar stopped chewing and glanced up at the man, their eyes meeting.

The man grinned, showing his teeth.

“Hehehe, this friend is quite perceptive. That’s right. These are words no one else should hear. Thanks to you, I feel much better now. I’m quite satisfied. Now I can live.”

The beggar felt uneasy and his hands trembled.

He dropped the chicken leg he had been eating onto the ground.

The man picked up the chicken leg. Despite the beggar having already eaten half of it, he put it in his own mouth without hesitation and stripped off the meat.

Pulling out only the bone, the man asked the beggar.

“Ah, are you done eating? Is this enough? I’m a bit busy.”

The man stabbed the chicken leg bone into the beggar’s head.

Thunk! The chicken leg bone went completely into his head, disappearing from sight.

Immediately, the beggar’s eyes rolled back, showing the whites. The beggar’s emaciated body fell to the side. Not a single drop of blood appeared. At a glance, it would be impossible to tell why the beggar had died.

“Thank you for listening to my story today. I just realized that I used to be such a talkative person. Somehow, I’ve been living with fewer words all this time.”

He chuckled heartily.

He felt refreshed.

It was for a day like today.

Everything he had done until now.

Sowing seeds…

The seeds that Mang Ryo had carefully planted over several years were gradually beginning to bear fruit.

* * *

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