Chronicles of the Mad Demon - Chapter 5

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 5. Moyong Noble Family (4)

A memory from the past came to mind.

The conversation I had with Elder Brother when he came to the Martial Alliance during the time I was struggling with Neung Hyeong’s demonic energy.

‘Alliance Leader, you don’t look well.’

‘It’s because I didn’t wash my face.’

‘…I’m ashamed.’

‘Are you drunk? Why are you suddenly acting like this?’

‘How could the Alliance Leader’s hardships be because of the alliance members? How much mental anguish you must have suffered because of the Main Family House since childhood.’

‘Stop it. You speaking so formally to me is giving me goosebumps.’

‘You brat! Goosebumps!’

‘Hehe.’

‘Good grief, how can you still not distinguish between public and private matters at your age?’

‘Leave me be. This is just my nature.’

‘Would you rather quit being Alliance Leader and become the family head? At least the work would be somewhat reduced. They say people age rapidly when they suddenly retire.’

‘Well, it would be better than the Martial Alliance. If they don’t listen, I can beat them all up and no one would say anything.’

‘…’

‘I’m joking. Just pass it on to Dae Ho properly.’

From that time on, Elder Brother would jokingly say that I too was the head of the Main Family House.

It was literally a joke. But it seemed it wasn’t just a jest to Elder Brother.

‘Who asked you to do something like this?’

Co-family head.

Not only did he treat me, a mere illegitimate son who was mistreated by the family, as a brother, but he even established me as co-family head.

“…Damn it, making me all emotional.”

Moyong Cheon wiped around his eyes with his fist.

How embarrassing, shedding tears at my age.

After carefully setting down the ancestral tablet and extinguishing all the candles, Moyong Cheon left the Ancestral Hall.

“Have you finished your business?”

“Yeah.”

Sensing the unusual atmosphere, Guo Lao spoke even more carefully.

“I’ll escort you to your room.”

The two began walking again.

Whoosh.

The wind was cold.

His confused mind wouldn’t settle down. Well, he hadn’t even accepted the fact that he had suddenly dropped into the future twenty years later.

Just then, he heard some young girl’s shout from the distance.

“Hey! Don’t tell me you just came in now? You crazy bastard, really…!”

The young girl couldn’t continue her words. Because Guo Lao silently waved his hands to stop her.

The young girl who had been glaring at Moyong Cheon while breathing heavily pounded her chest and then spun around sharply.

Moyong Cheon couldn’t pay attention to their words and actions.

It felt as if Elder Brother’s hand was reaching up from underground, grabbing his shin and shaking it violently. His legs felt incredibly heavy.

How much time had passed like that?

“Please rest well, Young Master.”

“Hmm? Ah, thank you.”

“Perhaps a meal…?”

“It’s fine. Go and rest now.”

Watching him nod weakly, Guo Lao felt perplexed. He had been feeling it for a while now, but the attitude the Young Master was showing was completely opposite to before.

Normally, he would have told him to eat more and put on some weight, but now it somehow didn’t seem like the right situation for such words.

“I shall take my leave now. Please rest well.”

“Yes.”

After sending away even Guo Lao, Moyong Cheon got down from the bed chamber and sat on the floor. The cold air rising from the frigid ground made his mind snap to attention.

The clearer his mind became, the more vivid his tangled heart grew.

“Elder Brother.”

Though he had completely escaped the heavenly punishment after turning forty, Moyong Heon in his memories always had a face clearly marked by illness.

‘Father and the uncles committed unspeakable acts under the pretext of the Main Family House’s emergency. I don’t have the face to look at you.’

In childhood, whenever Elder Brother saw him growing more haggard day by day, he would shed tears.

Back then, Elder Brother seemed detestable to my eyes too. I thought he shed tears in front but behind the scenes would wag his tail to that person who was barely worthy of being called a father after throwing a few carrots.

But on the day the secret arts were completed, seeing Elder Brother’s actions in front of the adults who tried to kill me under the pretense of eliminating future troubles, I let go of all hatred.

‘Even beasts cherish their own young! Since when has the Main Family House fallen to become trash worse than the Dark Path Evil Sect!’

Elder Brother, truly enraged, was even prepared to strike down Father and the uncles.

If Elder Brother’s talent hadn’t been so extraordinary that it was hard to find in the Moyong Family’s history, the adults might have expelled him.

‘No, perhaps they might have killed him along with me.’

Afterward, that bastard of a father died from illness, and Elder Brother unleashed his hidden abilities without restraint, suppressing the uncles and became the young family head by asserting his legitimacy as the eldest son.

It was from then.

From then on, Elder Brother and I began changing the rotten family clan from its roots.

‘That’s how it was…’

Beside Elder Brother’s brightly smiling face, the face of nephew Dae Ho, whose spirited demeanor had been so pleasant to see, also came to mind.

Unlike the other nephews, he had a kind and resolute character like his father, a nephew I truly regarded as a son.

‘Uncle! Take good care of yourself and come visit again in a year! By then Su Jeong will be talking too!’

The sight of that young boy laughing heartily like someone who had lived half a century was truly remarkable.

“Dae Ho, it wasn’t one year but over twenty years before I came.”

A sigh escaped.

‘It would have been better to die than to see such a state.’

Whether it was heaven’s prank or not, I had returned to this land in the body of a great-great-grandson.

His face, which had been looking up at the ceiling with a troubled expression, gradually grew cold.

“No, that’s not right.”

Would it have been better to just die?

Yes. I had felt that way for a moment.

But thinking about it seriously, this was an opportunity given by heaven.

“Whether it’s divine mischief or the protection of my ancestors, I don’t know, but I’ve returned. Whatever happened, I can’t leave the Main Family House like this.”

How much had Elder Brother and I struggled to change this family clan?

If anyone committed even the slightest corruption, we cast them out regardless of whether they were blood relatives or loyal retainers. We straightened out the weak laws and systems, and elevated the martial prowess and spirit of our weakened warriors to the highest level in the Northern Martial World.

After becoming Alliance Leader, I couldn’t pay proper attention due to the war, but Elder Brother filled in what was lacking.

‘I absolutely can’t give up. No, I won’t.’

I will find out everything.

Why we moved from Yolyeong to Hubei, what the Ho Yeon Family is about, and how Elder Brother and Dae Ho came to die.

And also what kind of feelings the current descendants are living with.

‘To do that, first…’

He recalled the household buildings he had briefly observed.

‘No matter how I look at it, this doesn’t seem like a comfortable situation. Though I suppose that’s understandable.’

Moyong Cheon looked down at his own body.

‘The real problem is this.’

This body, that is, the great-great-grandson’s body, was clearly not normal no matter how he looked at it. Not to mention the muscles, even the internal organs were weak.

It was problematic both inside and out without exception. Seeing how he got short of breath with just a little movement, it seemed like he might be suffering from some illness, let alone being able to train.

‘Born as the eldest son of the Moyong Family, yet couldn’t properly learn even a handful of Martial Arts?’

Moyong Cheon closed his eyes and observed the inside of his body.

After a moment.

“Huh?”

He was startled.

“What is this? This utterly bizarre state?”

Moyong Cheon, who had been staring blankly down at his lower abdomen, closed his eyes again and observed his interior.

Sure enough, it was the same this time too.

“The dantian is crushed?”

The dantian is the core of Energy Accumulation, simply put, a storage space where Qi can be kept.

But that storage space was bizarrely crushed. Not only was its size so small it made him want to sigh, but its shape was even stranger.

‘How can this be possible?’

Qi moves back and forth or takes shape according to Mental Intent.

Naturally, a dantian can only be created when a person can feel Qi through constant Mental Intent and concentration.

Once formed, a dantian is a vessel that grows together with its owner, and while its shape varies from person to person, it generally takes on a round form as it develops. This is because the density of Qi increases.

‘To say it was originally made in this crushed shape, it’s too crude. What on earth…’

Did the family members not know that the dantian was in this state?

Even I didn’t know. Since it wasn’t originally my body and my Qi Sensitivity was too weak, the dantian’s presence itself was almost nonexistent.

‘I can’t understand this.’

Setting aside everything else, it was strange that with the eldest son’s body in this state, they hadn’t even called a physician for a pulse diagnosis. No matter how short on money they were, this clearly wasn’t a condition to just leave alone.

Moyong Cheon’s eyes narrowed.

It felt as if he had suddenly fallen into a world that shouldn’t exist. A world full of dissonance, where the common sense of Alliance Leader Moyong Cheon didn’t apply.

“What’s important is that I have to live in this era.”

He was still bewildered, but that didn’t mean he could just bash his head against the ground and die.

To not die, he had to live.

As always.

“To do that, I need to fix my body first.”

When the body has problems, the personality becomes sensitive and the mind becomes unstable. The sages’ words that a healthy mind dwells in a healthy body weren’t spoken for nothing.

“Damn.”

He unconsciously bit his lips.

“…No matter what I try to do, in the end I still have to learn that damned technique again?”

Destroying an already formed dantian and creating it anew was an extremely difficult task.

Of course, it wasn’t completely impossible, but it required a very long time and the chances of success weren’t high either.

But with ‘that technique’.

With that technique that could place both the physical body and qi under perfect control of one’s will from the very beginning, he could easily dismantle the existing dantian and rebuild it anew.

“Brain Gate Heart Technique.”

The worst secret art that the Moyong Family Estate had been hiding.

Originally, it was a secret art that humans could never learn. Eight or nine out of ten who learned it either became madmen or died with their brains turned to mush, and even those who survived couldn’t last a year due to rapid aging.

It wasn’t for nothing that rumors circulated calling that secret art possibly a demonic art.

“Damn it, will it be a bit easier this time?”

He had encountered the Brain Gate Heart Technique before the age of ten and was able to enter its basics in almost a year.

The initiation itself wasn’t the problem. Rather, it was such an amazing technique that he could feel his brain capacity increasing the more he learned it.

The problem was the madness that visited from time to time and the emotions that surged uncontrollably. The headaches that felt like his skull would split in half were a bonus.

He couldn’t count how many times he had attempted suicide because of that pain and uncontrollable personality.

“But it should be fine. When I was young, I learned it without knowing what it was, so that was the problem.”

Of course, learning it now wouldn’t be without problems either.

“Let’s learn it. I can’t wait for years, and I don’t want to either.”

Once he made a decision, he would go for it.

But there was something he had to do before that.

Moyong Cheon, who had been lost in thought for a moment, suddenly stood up.

Getting up suddenly made his vision spin again, but that dizziness couldn’t stop Moyong Cheon’s will.

“I should meet Su Jeong first.”

* * *

When he came out of his residence, the world had grown darker in the meantime.

The weather was somewhat humid yet chilly. With his body in this state, it might feel even colder.

Moyong Cheon pulled his collar tight and recalled Guo Lao’s words.

‘Acting family head, was it?’

All I remember about Su Jeong is her cute face as a baby.

Though he had never had a proper conversation with her, Moyong Cheon could feel a strange sense of affection. This feeling was even stronger because Elder Brother and Dae Ho were no longer there.

‘Rather than becoming the family head, why is she acting as interim family head for some reason.’

He felt both nervous and excited. It was truly a strange emotion.

‘Is this the place.’

Though the size was incomparable to before, the structure of the house wasn’t much different from the Liaoning Main House.

‘It’s small.’

Moyong Cheon’s wistful gaze gradually grew cold.

‘So this is the reality of the Main Family House, is it?’

Just as he was about to knock on the door leading to the office.

Thud!

A rough sound echoed from far away near the main gate.

“Hey there! Open the door!”

Moyong Cheon unconsciously frowned.

What’s with that pig-like squealing in the middle of the night?

Bang bang!

“We’re here to collect a debt! Open the door now!”

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