Abolition of the Wicked - Chapter 153

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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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#Episode 153

“The Triad leader was also with the Merchant Association, or so they say.”
“The Triad leader—you mean Kang Chan-sik?”
“Yes.”
“What was the Triad leader doing at the Merchant Association?”
“He was accompanying them on the way to meet his younger sister, who lives in Hebei Province.”
“So what happened to Kang Chan-sik?”
“That’s the problem—his fate is still unknown. You’d need to speak with someone named Deung Ga-sik at Yeon-un Port in Jiangsu Province for the details.”
Go Seo-bang spoke carefully.
“We’ll depart immediately.”
Do Pyeong-su stopped him.
“We’re going ourselves.”
“Sir? You mean to dirty your hands dealing with mere Nok-rim bandits?”
“The Nok-rim bandits, you can handle them. But this is Kang Chan-sik. We brought him here by force, and if he dies like this….”
He didn’t say “I’m sorry.” Such words had no place coming from the Bloodwind Four Lions.
“They touched someone we brought in. We answer for it.”
Go Seo-bang anticipated what Do Pyeong-su hadn’t spoken aloud and understood his heart.
The Bloodwind Four Lions were known across the Murim as the greatest villains alive, and sometimes they acted the part. But in truth, they were far different from what the Murim believed.
“I understand. Shall I prepare for your depart—”
Before he could finish, the Bloodwind Four Lions vanished. Go Seo-bang watched the direction they’d gone and muttered to himself.
“How many of the Seventy-Two Nok-rim Hideouts will survive?”
Perhaps they’d dwindle to merely five hideouts.
The Bloodwind Four Lions ran at full speed, and it took them less than two double hours to reach Yeon-un Port.
Upon arriving at the Oseong Merchant Association’s Yeon-un Port branch, the Bloodwind Four Lions found Deung Ga-sik.
“Who are you people…?”
Before Jong Seo-gil could finish his question, Do Pyeong-su revealed himself.
“We are the Deathly Situations of Hangju.”
“What?”
“We received your carrier pigeon.”
Jong Seo-gil, who’d been skeptical, let out a short laugh.
“Who do you bastards think you’re imitating? Want your necks twisted so far your heads lodge in your rear?”
“Huh? That’s actually a pretty creative threat.”
Seo Seok-san bellowed suddenly.
“Why does a fool who doesn’t even know our faces call us fakes!”
Jong Seo-gil roared right back.
“You sent that carrier pigeon this morning! Even if someone heard the news and rode the fastest horse, they wouldn’t arrive until dawn tomorrow! There’s no way you got here this fast!”
“We’re just that fast!”
Yeon Geum-hong shoved Do Pyeong-su and Seo Seok-san aside, reached out, and seized Jong Seo-gil by the collar. Her movement wasn’t particularly swift, yet somehow he couldn’t evade it.
“Ack!”
“Bring me Deung Ga-sik. Now.”
The moment the words left her mouth, an inner door flew open and Deung Ga-sik emerged.
“Run!”
At Jong Seo-gil’s cry, Deung Ga-sik spun around, but before his feet left the ground, Do Pyeong-su grabbed him by the back of the neck.
“Why do you have to make this so complicated! We’re the Deathly Situations of Hangju!”
It wasn’t entirely Jong Seo-gil’s fault for thinking logically. Do Pyeong-su forced Deung Ga-sik into a chair.
Seo Seok-san took a seat across from him.
“Whether you believe us or not, we are the Deathly Situations of Hangju. And whether we are or aren’t, if you don’t answer our questions, you die.”
The logic was contradictory, but there was no time for clarity. All they wanted was the fastest answer.
“Where were you attacked by the Nok-rim bandits?”
Do Pyeong-su’s hand, gripping Deung Ga-sik’s shoulder, tightened with sudden force.
“Ahhh!”
A cry of pain tore from him, and Seo Seok-san shot a reproving look at Do Pyeong-su.
“Only enough to make him talk. You never know when to dial it back.”
“At… at Eori Gogae….”
“What happened to Kang Chan-sik?”
Deung Ga-sik recounted what had happened at the time, his words measured and deliberate.
“So you’re saying you didn’t see them get captured by the bandits? Then they could’ve shaken off their pursuers and escaped on their own, couldn’t they?”
Do Pyeong-su’s words were taken up by Seo Seok-san.
“If they’d escaped safely, they’d be here by now.”
“Are they dead?”
“Let’s head to Eori Gogae first.”
Seo Seok-san turned to Jong Seo-gil with a question.
“Which hideout is closest to Eori Gogae?”
“About two double hours north, there’s a place called Jeongwang Hideout, but it’s not grand enough to strike at the Oseong Merchant Association like that.”
“Still, we have to start there. Ah, one more thing—how was the body disposed of?”
He’d already said the important things, so there was no reason to hesitate now.
“I sent word by carrier pigeon to the nearest Oseong Merchant Association branch not to touch the scene.”
“Well done.”

The Bloodwind Four Lions reached Eori Gogae one double hour later, right where the attack had occurred.
In the mountains where the sun was sinking low, five men were draping burlap over corpses.
Until then, only Kang Chan-sik had occupied his thoughts, but the moment he saw the bodies of the Oseong Merchant Association laid before him, anger began to simmer.
At least Kang Chan-sik wasn’t among the twenty-two corpses—a small mercy in a disaster.
“Did you search this entire area?”
“Yes. We combed through it thoroughly, but no other bodies turned up.”
“Then we need to head to Jeongwang Hideout.”
It was supposed to be two double hours north, the time it would have taken Jong Seo-gil—but for the Bloodwind Four Lions, it was less than a quarter hour.
For the roughly thirty bandits who were in the middle of preparing supper, it was a bolt from the blue.
“Aaaagh!”
As the Bloodwind Four Lions stormed the hideout, whatever they threw, the bandits flew through the air in every direction.
Finding the hideout master wasn’t difficult. Enter the biggest house, look for the healthy-looking one, and that’s your man.
The hideout master, a man in his mid-forties with a stiff beard and massive build, went flying through the window and tumbled outside.
Seo Seok-san captured the hideout master, while Do Pyeong-su went to the warehouse to inspect the goods.
“No silk, tea, or saegiuju?”
He hadn’t expected much, so there was little to disappoint him. Seo Seok-san, watching the hideout master struggle to his feet with groans, asked him a question.
“You’ve never hit the Oseong Merchant Association at Eori Gogae, have you?”
“Ah, if you already know, why ask?”
Seo Seok-san seized the hideout master’s left ear and tore it clean off. Blood sprayed in a thick stream, and the hideout master’s scream rang through the mountain stronghold.
“If you don’t stay quiet, I’ll tear off your other ear too.”
Seo Seok-san’s voice was low, but the hideout master choked back his cry, swallowing hard.
“You know the Oseong Merchant Association was attacked at Eori Gogae, don’t you?”
“Yes, I heard the rumors. But it wasn’t us, absolutely not.”
“I believe you. So who did it?”
“I don’t know.”
When Seo Seok-san reached for the one remaining ear, terror flooded the hideout master’s face.
“Don’t be frightened already. There’s so much of your body that can still come off.”
“I—I really don’t know! There’s no hideout strong enough in this area to rob the Oseong Merchant Association!”
“Why not? There are the Seventy-Two Nok-rim Hideouts, aren’t there?”
“Even the closest one to here, the Guwan Hideout, is fifty li away. Every bandit has his own territory—they don’t like venturing far. If a bandit travels that far to steal, is he even a bandit? He’d be a common brigand. No different from a horse thief.”
That much was common sense even to the Bloodwind Four Lions. Which was why they found this situation so strange.
“You know the locations of all the Seventy-Two Nok-rim Hideouts within two hundred li of here, don’t you?”
They had to know their larger competitors’ whereabouts—their survival depended on it.
The hideout master drew a map on the ground and pointed out five locations.
“Not many, then. Each of you take one and handle it, and we’ll meet at Unryong Hideout.”
Before he left, Seo Seok-san drew Kang Chan-sik’s face on the ground. His skill was so sharp that it was more precise than what a master painter could achieve with brush on paper.
“If you see this man, protect him well. If anything happens to him, you die.”
“I’ve never seen this person in my life.”
“Are you the only wronged man in the world? Remember this: his name is Kang Chan-sik, and if he dies, you die.”
The Bloodwind Four Lions scattered in all directions. As they leapt over mountains and raced across the land, their hope was singular and desperate.
‘That bastard Kang Chan-sik—he has to be alive.’

***

Fever and chills wracked his body in an unbearable dance. Kang Chan-sik’s lips, cracked and parched, moved against his tongue as he pushed through the forest, breath ragged.
The will not to die kept him moving forward, but his chances of survival were far from promising.
First, they’d lost their way in treacherous mountains. Then came the bandits in pursuit. Cracked ribs, venom coursing through his veins from a snakebite—he was so close to death that getting any closer would have been redundant.
Kang Chan-sik moved on instinct alone. He’d crossed countless deathly situations this way before, simply flowing with whatever his body demanded, and now was no different.
Then his foot caught a root. He stumbled. His effort to rise was barely perceptible, and soon it ceased altogether.
‘Just a moment’s rest. Just a moment.’

***

Two hundred and ninety-eight subordinates, twelve thousand silver coins’ worth of goods in the warehouse, five concubines.
Jang Seong-bang, master of Guwan Hideout, considered himself a satisfied man.
With command of one of the Seventy-Two Nok-rim Hideouts, few dared touch him. He harbored no ambitions of becoming supreme master, and as long as he avoided the Gudaemun Faction and the Five Great Families, danger was remarkably rare.
At forty-two, he could enjoy this life for another fifteen years.
After that, he’d gather enough wealth to retire to some prosperous town and run a roadside inn.
Content with the present, secure in the future—there was nothing more to wish for.
That was Jang Seong-bang’s life until that day.
“Ahhhhh!”
He was pouring fine wine with Go Wol-i and Yeo Mi, his two concubines, on either side, when a long scream pierced the air.
At first he thought nothing of it. With nearly three hundred men in the hideout, fighting was commonplace.
When the second scream came, Jang Seong-bang’s brow furrowed.
“Those fools making a racket while their master drinks…”
Screams erupted in rapid succession. The moment he sensed something wrong, a subordinate came hammering at the door.
“Master! We’re under attack!”
Jang Seong-bang seized the broad sword hanging on the wall and bolted outside.
“Who are they? Government troops?”
There’d been no recent conflict with Murim forces and he’d robbed no merchant convoys, so only the authorities would raid the hideout.
“What were the lookouts doing? How did the government army reach us without raising the alarm?”
“It’s not the government!”
Jang Seong-bang turned his eyes toward the screams. Darkness had settled quickly over the surroundings, but torches and fires blazed throughout the hideout, casting everything in a fitful glow.
Through that dancing light, his subordinates were flying in all directions.
“How is their Lightness Skill so exceptional?”
Men sailing twenty zhang in a single leap from heights of ten zhang left him speechless.
Of course, it wasn’t Lightness Skill at all—he realized that at once. No one using true Lightness Skill would scream like that, and certainly no one would land with their entire body taking the impact as brutally as these men did.
And then he saw the man hurling his subordinates like pebbles.
The one who’d raided the hideout was a single middle-aged man with a rather distinguished beard.
Yet it became immediately clear that one man was more frightening than a thousand soldiers.
His subordinates flew away the moment they drew near the middle-aged man, and the rare few who managed to land a sword blow felt a flash of pride.
But every blade shattered like straw when it struck him—reduced instantly to splinters.
“Who is he?”
A man with a body that no blade could penetrate, capable of hurling dozens of men dozens of zhang—such a figure was rare even in the Murim, where eccentrics were commonplace.
At most, there might be the Gudaemun Faction’s patriarch or a handful of legendary masters from generations past.
But this man was neither the Gudaemun Faction’s patriarch nor anywhere near that age.
No matter how hard he thought, no name came to mind. Besides, that wasn’t the pressing matter now.
Whether his subordinates numbered three hundred or three thousand, they couldn’t stop this enemy.
Flight was his only option. He’d survived this long doing all manner of wicked deeds precisely because he could think and act this quickly.
Jang Seong-bang’s mind was swift, but the middle-aged man’s movement was swifter.
As he bolted toward the secret passage at the back of the hideout, one of his subordinates suddenly dropped in his path.
“Oof!”
The man, tumbling backward from the impact, writhed in pain and blocked Jang Seong-bang’s way.
That brief delay, however, made no difference. Escape from the middle-aged man’s grasp had been impossible from the start.

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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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