Abolition of the Wicked - Chapter 235

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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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#235

Oseong Jang-won recovered swiftly to its former glory. Se-hwa spared no expense in her efforts, and with Do Pyeong-su and Jang Man-dok lending their strength, the Estate transformed by the day, piece by piece restored.
Maeng Mang-do, bearing his guilt, kept himself occupied helping to raise buildings and tending to the dogs, making for long and demanding hours.
The physical labor held no fatigue for him, yet caring for the animals proved far more vexing than he’d anticipated.
“You wretches! Why won’t you eat what I’m giving you!”
At Maeng Mang-do’s bellow, five dogs at some distance lowered their frames and growled in unison.
By temperament he would have seized one and forced its jaws open, but Do Pyeong-su’s warnings made such a course impossible.
“Maeng, I’ve told you a hundred times over—that’s not how you do it.”
Jeon Mi-ryeo chided him as she passed, carrying a basket of provisions. The epithet “Maeng” sounded strange to a man who once commanded respect throughout the Murim, yet repetition had made it familiar enough.
“These dogs of ours are remarkably intelligent. They absolutely refuse anyone who doesn’t care for them. You must approach them with genuine affection first.”
“How would dogs possibly know such a thing?”
“If there were anything unremarkable about Oseong Jang-won, name one thing.”
Beyond the mere fact that Hyeolpung Saja walked these grounds, there was the matter of their senior being nothing more than a girl of sixteen summers.
Eun Bi-yeon herself was formidable, and even the blacksmith who worked the forge had reached a mastery rivaling Maeng Mang-do’s own.
He racked his mind trying to think of one single flaw, when Jeon Mi-ryeo spoke again.
“Don’t waste the effort searching for nothing. Everything about Oseong Jang-won is simply exceptional. These dogs too.”
The truth was, their very appearance marked them as far from ordinary—at first glance, he’d taken them for tigers wearing dog-skin.
“How am I meant to feed them?”
“Approach them with sincerity. Then our little beauties will accept that sincerity in return.”
She left these riddling words behind and departed in quick steps.
Maeng Mang-do exhaled in frustration, then fixed his gaze on the five dogs. They’d suppressed their savage nature while Jeon Mi-ryeo was present, but now their hackles rose toward him, their eyes glinting with unmistakable hostility.
Maeng Mang-do, staring at them for a long moment, suddenly sank to the ground with a thud.
“Children, don’t make this hard on me. You don’t know it, but I’ve lived a painfully difficult life.”
From his earliest years—orphaned at two, shuffled between relatives’ houses, subsisting on scraps of sympathy—he began to unburden himself, recounting the sorrows of his path with every painful detail.
“Do you know what kind of monster my master was? He said building patience required it, so he starved me for half a month. I was thirteen, still growing. If I hadn’t suffered then, I’d be a hand’s-breadth taller now. Eight double hours of martial cultivation daily was standard; once a month, without fail, I had to harvest Spirit Medicine as tribute. Even at my worst, I had to find ginseng a hundred years old.”
Woof!
“What? Why do you have that contemptuous look? Regardless, my master—a Hyeol-ryun Gwi—was a vicious old thing not just to me but to everyone. Because I learned martial arts from him, the Murim branded me a villain from the day I emerged. I simply studied the techniques, that’s all.”
His lament poured forth without pause for a full double hour—stopping only to drink water when his throat grew dry, yet never ceasing his speech. The five dogs lay flat on their bellies and remained utterly still.
No hostility flickered in their eyes. Instead, those dark orbs held what looked unmistakably like compassion.
“Don’t tell me you actually understand what I’m saying?”
At that moment, a voice came from behind.
“If they couldn’t possibly understand you, why would you speak for so long?”
Maeng Mang-do turned to see Gang Seo Samak approaching, brushing dust from his shoulders.
“Haven’t we met somewhere before?”
“I’ve never seen you in my life!”
“I’ll have you know my memory is exceptionally keen. My own master gave up trying to master the Il-seom Hyeol-hong Sword, yet I perfected it through sheer fearsome recall. Now then… I’m certain I’ve seen you somewhere before…”
In truth, Gang Seo Samak remembered only the epithet ‘Bloodwind Killer’—her face escaped him entirely.
“How many times must I say we’ve never met!”
“Ah! The gambling den!”
In that instant, Gang Seo Samak’s heart sank like a stone.
“It must have been in Jiangxi Province, wasn’t it?”
“I… I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Come now, it’s coming back to me. You tried to swindle me there, and when I caught you, I beat you senseless on a rainy day, didn’t I? Was it not thorough enough?”
Gal Ma-pyeong and O Tong-su wished to deny it to the end, but Go Seo-bang would not.
“That man’s got a remarkable memory. Yes, we’re the same Gangseо Samak from back then.”
“Seo-bang!”
“Let’s wipe the slate clean and move forward. We’re bound to live together from now on—do we really want to go on feeling awkward about it, like we never finished wiping ourselves clean?”
“Heh heh… Right? My memory never lies. But how did you end up at Oseong Jang-won? Was it twenty-five years ago? Back then you were dregs of the Evil Path, weren’t you?”
“By chance, fortune found us and we became disciples of Hyeolpung Saja.”
The word ‘fortune’ was no exaggeration—it had been the greatest stroke of luck in their entire lives.
Once they had been nothing but refuse of the Evil Path; now they were addressed as Hang Ju-sa-ung, their very being transformed beyond recognition.
“I’m curious to hear the story of how you came to be disciples of Hyeolpung Saja.”
“We’d rather not say!”
All three spoke in unison. The honor of bearing the title of Hyeolpung Saja’s disciples was undeniable, yet the path to it remained a secret they could never share.
Maeng Mang-do did not press Gang Seo Samak further.
“You don’t harbor any resentment toward me over that matter, do you?”
“It was ancient history, and the fault was ours to begin with. There’s no reason for resentment.”
Maeng Mang-do, who had been studying Gang Seo Samak intently, allowed a smile to play at the corners of his mouth.
“You’ve truly changed. The disciples of the Bloodwind Four Lions becoming virtuous—anyone who heard that would think I’d lost my mind.”
“It’s all thanks to our Master.”
“Master? You mean that little lord—”
Gang Seo Samak’s aura suddenly turned savage, and the five dogs, sensing the shift in their masters’ energy, bristled their fur and bared their fangs at Maeng Mang-do.
“If you use a disrespectful form of address for our Master even once more, we won’t let it stand.”
“I hear you, I hear you. My, my—the Bloodwind Four Lions did the same, and now you. Your Geom Lord seems almost like some religious messiah.”
“He transformed not just us, but our masters too into people who’ve undergone individual transformation. Yes, he’s young, but he’s a finer person than anyone in this world. Speak of him with respect. You’ll come to understand naturally as you spend time with him.”
Gal Ma-pyeong gestured toward the five dogs, which had once again stretched out on their bellies.
“It seems tending the dogs is difficult for you, so we’ll take responsibility for them today.”
“You’d do that?”
“Maeng, just help with the construction of the house.”
For Maeng Mang-do, hauling materials was a hundred times easier than minding dogs.
“Understood. Much obliged to you, Overseers.”
Go Seo-bang watched the man called Bloodwind Asura sprint off, then turned to Gal Ma-pyeong. “Why do you show him kindness?”
“Because he’s pitiable. Bearing a false accusation, hunted by the Murim Alliance, and the only refuge he found was the Oseong Jang-won, where he’s just a dog-handler.”
“That’s true—at the Oseong Jang-won, that’s all he is. You never know how fate will treat a person.”
When Gal Ma-pyeong called out, “Come on, you lot—time to eat,” the five dogs wagged their tails eagerly and bounded toward their bowls.
“You five have better fortune than he does.”

Maeng Mang-do rattled on endlessly, his eyes fixed on the five dogs munching noisily before him.
“Ah! I should tell you about when I was sixteen too. Back then I wasn’t quite worthy of the title ‘master’ yet—”
“Please, stop talking. The dogs are going to get earwax buildup.”
At the voice that reached him, Maeng Mang-do turned and sprang up with a welcoming expression.
“Little one!”
“It’s So Gi-cheon, I’ve said it several times!”
“Right, ‘So’ meaning small, and ‘Gi-cheon’ means little—so little one.”
“That’s not the character at all! In any case, it’s good to see you safe.”
“What brings you here? Did you two know each other?”
Maeng Mang-do glanced back and forth between Geom U-bin and So Gi-cheon standing side by side.
“Ha! The little brother that this Geom Lord cherishes most is none other than me.”
So Gi-cheon was the only one who called Geom U-bin brother and himself brother’s younger kin, so there was truth in the claim.
“So you’ve got the most dependable older brother in the world!”
Geom U-bin smiled as he spoke.
“You’ve grown quite close to our dear ones, haven’t you?”
“These creatures have a good eye for people, I’ll say that much. The young lady was right—I love the dogs, and they love me for it. In that way, animals are better than humans. They never betray you, not once.”

With a complement of two hundred bandits, Sanuun Hideout was bursting at the seams.
Bandits from every corner of the realm had converged, their numbers reaching five thousand, and they filled not just the hideout but the surrounding forests as well.
With so many brigands gathered in one place, Do Pyeong-su wandered through unmolested and unnoticed.
Once Do Pyeong-su reached the upper chamber of Sanuun Hideout, he addressed six bandits seated in a circle.
“Where is Pyeong-sun?”
The men—who looked as though they had “I am a bandit” tattooed on their foreheads—glanced up at Do Pyeong-su.
“Hideout Lord?”
There was no title appended, but he let it pass. At moments like this, he realized just how much his temperament had mellowed.
“Yes, your Hideout Lord.”
Six men, ranging in age from their twenties to their forties, rose to their feet.
“Who are you, throwing around the Hideout Lord’s name so casually—aaaagh!”
Do Pyeong-su flicked his wrist, and the middle-aged man mid-sentence went flying, crashing onto the hideout roof before tumbling back down to the ground.
His temperament had mellowed considerably, but not entirely—he hadn’t even let the man finish speaking.
“Lord!”

The five remaining men were just reaching for their weapons when Do Pyeong-sun came running from deeper inside the hideout, calling for Do Pyeong-su.
Do Pyeong-su had been waiting for this moment, watching, and the instant he heard the scream, he rushed over.
“At last you’ve arrived!”
“You’ve gathered quite a crowd.”
“Once word spread that we’d pay ten silver coins per head, I brought everyone I could round up.”
“How many came?”
“About five thousand?”
“So the silver we need would be…”
“Fifty thousand coins.”
“Do you have it?”
“We’re short about forty-five thousand coins.”
Do Pyeong-su stared hard at him, and Do Pyeong-sun corrected the figure.
“If I squeeze every last coin we can gather, we might scrape together forty thousand—no, thirty-seven thousand coins. There’s nothing more to be had, no matter how hard we try.”
“What about the shortfall?”
“You’ll have to provide it, Master.”
“Where do you expect me to find that kind of money?”
“What then? If we don’t pay them, there’ll be a riot.”
“I’ll knock them all senseless.”
“All five thousand of them?”
“You think I can’t?”
Do Pyeong-sun studied him for a moment, then shook his head slowly.
“Of course you could. But wouldn’t finding thirty-seven thousand coins be easier than flattening five thousand men?”
“Beating down five thousand is the easier path.”
“Ah, I see. Still—just find the money, would you? I’d like to keep working as chief. Without men under my command, I can’t run this operation at all.”
Since Do Pyeong-sun had defeated the deputy chief, his standing within the Nok-rim had transformed entirely.
Everyone had assumed an upstart like him could only occupy that position with the impossible support of masters beyond reckoning. But Do Pyeong-sun silenced such whispers through sheer ability.
That five thousand members of the Nok-rim would answer to a single command from Do Pyeong-sun proved that if they hadn’t recognized him as their true chief, no amount of money would have assembled them. He had earned that loyalty.
For this reason, Do Pyeong-sun abandoned all thought of abandoning the Nok-rim and fleeing.
Since things had come this far, he resolved to become a chief whose name would echo through the annals of Nok-rim history. Of course, he would need to think more carefully about what deeds such a legacy would demand.
“Not far from here there’s a branch of the Oseong Merchant Association, so finding thirty-seven thousand coins shouldn’t be difficult. Since you understand, start gathering the men.”
Do Pyeong-sun issued the order to the hideout master to assemble all of the Nok-rim.
Five thousand outlaws scattered throughout the area streamed into the hideout.
They demolished several buildings and cut away the surrounding trees, and though the space was packed tight as a drum, they managed to fit all five thousand inside.
But in such a crush, there was no way to judge who possessed real talent.
Do Pyeong-su, standing at the far edge of the crowd, turned and extended his arm forward.
With a thunderous explosion, the dense forest ahead vanished, leaving a clear path carved straight through.
The brigands stood slack-jawed, watching Do Pyeong-su walk forward into that passage—a gap that stretched fifty paces through solid forest.

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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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