A Baby Cat Who Commands the Dog Clan - Chapter 120

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 120
“A few days ago, this child came and asked me if there was a way in the Martial Arts World to control someone according to their will.”
Excluding coercion and methods of creating actual marriage bonds.
In that moment, it was only natural that Poison King Dang Yi Mu recalled the Linked Soul Blood Moth.
“Indeed, there was another within the Dang Sect who possessed one of these besides me.”
He withdrew a small wooden box from his robes and displayed it.
Inside lay a male Linked Soul Blood Moth, identical to the one Dang Song Baek had just crushed to death.
It was an item Dang Yi Mu had obtained by chance during his travels through the Poison Sect’s territories in his younger years.
“A pair of Linked Soul Blood Moths that bred in my quarters several years ago disappeared. I wondered if it was the work of some poison-obsessed fool, but it turned out to be you, the Poison Sect Master.”
Nam Goong Ho clicked his tongue upon seeing this.
“Two pairs of Linked Soul Blood Moths—the kind only the Demonic Cult would use. The Dang Sect’s fortune has truly turned dark.”
Dang Yi Mu countered without yielding.
“Yet I never used this! It was purely for research purposes.”
“I’d sooner believe a snake grew legs.”
“One must know what the opponent uses in order to prepare a defense!”
Only then did Dang Song Baek grasp what was happening.
The Linked Soul Blood Moth fed to A Ran.
Someone had switched its male counterpart with the male Linked Soul Blood Moth that Poison King had been raising.
But how, exactly?
“It’s impossible. I never separated this from my body for even a moment!”
Believing no one, he had allowed no one near A Ran’s sickbed except the servant who had fed her the poison.
“I didn’t even allow a person’s shadow to approach carelessly, so how on earth….”
“Ah, you’ll have to ask that child about that. Though I doubt they’ll tell you.”
At Dang Yi Mu’s words, Hong Seol poked out her cute pink tongue slightly and spoke.
“It’s a trade secret, you see….”
She couldn’t easily reveal the identity of the Young Rats who were still hiding above the rafters, watching.
“I see.”
Dang Yi Mu shrugged his shoulders.
“Why!”
Dang Song Baek cried out, unable to contain himself.
“Why did you suspect me as the culprit who harmed Dang Bo Young from the beginning?”
His act of loving his daughter had been perfect.
Dang Song Baek couldn’t believe it.
“That was….”
This time, Hong Seol opened her mouth.
“At first, I thought it strange when I met the Poison Sect Master in the Flower Garden in the middle of the night.”
While a child hovered between life and death, yet he was calmly tending to flowers.
“But I thought perhaps it was to place flowers in Dang Bo Young’s sickbed.”
Yet those flowers were not present where he had gone to pay his respects.
The same was true of the Ancestral Shrine where he had gone to burn incense to pray for Dang Bo Young’s recovery.
Only the large bouquet Hong Seol had brought adorned the desolate Ancestral Shrine.
“Moreover, above all else….”
Hong Seol continued with measured composure.
“When I visited to inquire after her health, I noticed bruises and abrasions covering Dang Bo Young’s restless body.”
Those marks were unmistakably the result of prolonged neglect—a child unable to move herself left unwashed and unturned for far too long.
The Servant A Ran had always stationed herself at the gate, so turning the girl’s body would have fallen to the Poison King who remained at her bedside.
Yet he merely stood guard over the sickbed in name alone, showing his ailing daughter no genuine care whatsoever.
“Had the Poison King truly cherished Dang Bo Young, such neglect would never have occurred.”
Hong Seol’s eyes grew dim for a moment.
“I know what the gaze of a father who loves his daughter looks like.”
Hong Seol recalled a memory of her father presenting her younger sister Ga Ryung with a gold bracelet adorned with jade.
His eyes had been infinitely warm and generous.
She had stood on her tiptoes, peering through the crack in the Storage Room window to catch that sight.
Even knowing that watching only deepened the ache in her heart, she could not bring herself to look away.
It was around that time she had begun fashioning bracelets from twine and pebbles in imitation of his gift.
“Seol Ah….”
Nam Goong Ho, his heart aching, gently tried to stop her from continuing.
In that moment, something astonishing escaped Hong Seol’s full lips.
“Truth be told, I am now receiving similar affection from the Lord of the Nam Goong Family Estate.”
Hong Seol’s face flushed crimson as she abruptly dropped her gaze to her feet.
Even as the words left her mouth, embarrassment twisted her entire body.
Nam Goong Ho stared at her with an expression as though the heavens themselves had collapsed.
Sensing his gaze, Hong Seol hastily added:
“Ah! I—I receive the same affection from Grandfather Nam Goong Ho as well! Look, he even gave me a bracelet!”
As Hong Seol rolled up her sleeve and brandished the bracelet adorned with jade, Dang Song Baek’s expression turned incredulous.
His look suggested this was hardly the moment to boast of bracelets.
Yet for Hong Seol, nothing mattered more than not causing the Nam Goong Family any distress.
“Then how did you discover that I have been controlling A Ran?”
“Yi Woon told me that A Ran had her tongue cut out as punishment for failing to prevent Dang Bo Young from being poisoned.”
The atmosphere grew heavy in an instant.
Hong Seol paused briefly before continuing.
“Upon investigation, I found that A Ran had no family who could serve as leverage for coercion. Furthermore, the Poison King frequently absents himself while tending to the Flower Garden.”
Hong Seol lifted her clear eyes to regard A Ran.
“Yet the reason A Ran never fled is singular: she cannot escape.”
“Sob, sob!”
Tears streamed down the face of the voiceless, pitiful Servant.
Hong Seol was the first to understand her grievance.
“And I confirmed that it was a Linked Bloodline Poison.”
Dang Yi Mu spoke gravely toward Dang Song Baek.
“Now, will you not confess your crimes willingly?”
“….”
“Your sleeves hang loose, and it seems you’ve exhausted all your hidden weapons.”
A low growl escaped him.
Cornered, Dang Song Baek’s body began to emanate an ominous aura.
“The Dang Sect’s martial arts alone are insufficient.”
As he murmured quietly, the sleeves of his green robe suddenly billowed outward with tremendous force.
Crack.
The spectacles perched on his face shattered, unable to withstand the surge of energy.
Yet Dang Song Baek did not stop.
The energy he continued to amplify suddenly transformed into a murky, pitch-black hue.
Whoooosh.
Even Nam Goong Ho and Dang Yi Mu, who had roamed the Jianghu for countless years, felt this sinister aura for the first time.
Remarkably, its momentum rivaled that of Nam Goong Ho and Dang Yi Mu, masters of Hwagyeong.
To reach such a realm in mere moments—there could be only one answer.
Dang Yi Mu murmured in disbelief.
“Surely not… Demonic Qi?”
That which had not appeared once in the Central Plains for three hundred years was now rising abundantly from Dang Song Baek’s body.
“Impossible! Isn’t he a practitioner of the Dang Sect’s martial arts!”
Nam Goong Ho cried out in shock.
One who has mastered the martial arts of the Orthodox Sects cannot simultaneously cultivate demonic arts.
To do so would twist one’s meridians beyond repair.
“Yet there is no other explanation!”
Dang Yi Mu gripped the Broad Flame King Whip even tighter with renewed force.
That was when it happened.
“Hah!”
Snap, snap, snap.
With a shout, the Broad Flame King Whip coiled around Dang Song Baek’s legs shattered like rotted rope, severing into fragments.
“Futile!”
Nam Goong Ho drew his blade with lightning speed and thrust it forward.
Ting!
In that instant, steel clashed against steel.
Dang Song Baek, wreathed in demonic qi, raised his arm and deflected the blade.
But that was merely the beginning.
Tap, tap, tap!
Leaping into the air, Dang Song Baek aimed his heel at Nam Goong Ho’s shoulder blade.
Whoosh!
Nam Goong Ho retreated and evaded; then Dang Song Baek drove his knee upward toward his chin.
The movements were swift as an arrow in flight, yet Nam Goong Ho was no easy opponent.
“Futile!”
He snapped his chin back and instead thrust his blade between Dang Song Baek’s legs.
“I’ll cut you down right here!”
Though I shouted with bold confidence, my mind was already calculating something else.
‘This is a feint.’
The moment Dang Song Baek panicked and flipped backward through the air to evade, I would thrust lightning-fast into his exposed ribs.
It was a split-second calculation that formed in my mind.
But.
Ting!
With a metallic ring, Dang Song Baek deflected my blade with his bare hand once more.
My prediction shattered, and I stumbled slightly.
“Impossible!”
It was Nam Goong Baek’s single cry—he who had remained silent all this while.
This was no wandering swordsman, but the Sword King’s blade.
No matter how refined one’s external martial arts, for anyone to catch the Sword King’s blade twice with bare hands was something unheard of.
“It seems the young master of the Nam Goong Family is surprised by skills he deemed unremarkable?”
Dang Song Baek smiled coldly and glanced toward Nam Goong Baek.
I had seen it before—the boy’s aura and talent were extraordinary.
Moreover, standing before him was the Sword King Nam Goong Ho. If pursued, matters would become troublesome.
“I intend to leave now… but to avoid complications, it would be wise to tie up loose ends.”
Dang Yi Mu cried out.
“What can you do without a weapon!”
In that instant, Dang Song Baek pulled the wooden hairpin from his own hair.
Crack.
The wooden pin split in half, and something sharp glinted from within.
Dang Song Baek mercilessly slashed the hanging scroll depicting bamboo that was mounted behind him.
Whoosh!
The starched paper tore cleanly in two.
But that was all.
Nothing else happened.
Dang Yi Mu, tensing completely, narrowed his eyes.
‘What is he scheming?’
Usually, such an action meant dispersing hidden poison.
Could it be.
‘If that’s not a Dang Sect technique but a Demonic Cult method…’
In that moment, my spine went rigid. Without hesitation, I shouted loudly.
“Heavenly King’s Waste! Hold your breath!”
Heavenly King’s Waste was a colorless, odorless poison of scattered power used by the Demonic Cult.
True to its name, it was a poison even masters of high cultivation could not resist.
Legend had it that once afflicted, one could not use inner energy for ten days.
The materials were so rare and difficult to obtain, however.
“Be careful!”
Nam Goong Baek and Dang Yi Woon shielded Hong Seol, swiftly retreating to evade the poison spreading through the air.
Yet Hong Seol’s gaze remained fixed elsewhere.
“G-Grandfather!”
But Nam Goong Ho seemed to hear nothing at all.
“….”
His sword now lowered beside his knee, Nam Goong Ho’s eyes stared blankly at a single point.
As though he had suffered a tremendous shock.
The short blade that had just torn through the bamboo painting.
That dagger, originally Dang Song Baek’s hairpin.
It bore an identical resemblance to the one left behind by the fierce beast that had attacked the Nam Goong Family Estate three years ago.
The very dagger that had been lodged at the bedside of the fallen young Nam Goong Baek.
Medicinal Plague Poison.
Those three characters written upon a slip of paper alongside it.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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