Chronicles of the Martial God’s Return - Chapter 37

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

***

Daru sat a short distance from Marketplace Street. Being one of Ak-yang’s more renowned establishments and considerable in size, it had been situated in a quieter location.
This allowed for a more refined aesthetic and served as a means to draw in the wealthier clientele.
In fact, this was Dan Somi’s first time visiting Daru.
Because of this, she moved with an eager, fluttering heart.
Then.
“Huh?”
“What is it?”
Dan Somi, who had stopped not far from Daru, tilted her head in puzzlement. Near Daru stood a stable built for the guests’ horses, and she noticed the straw piled there stirring restlessly.
“Over there……”
She pointed toward it with her finger.
It could have been a stray dog or a cat—such creatures were hardly rare in these parts. But the movement was unsettling, and she could hear a faint whimper.
“What is it?”
Hong Jin-rang asked with a dismissive snort. He had neither seen nor heard anything.
He reasoned that there was no way Dan Somi, who didn’t even know martial arts, could discern anything.
But Ji Yak was different.
Though she hadn’t known Dan Somi for long, she understood her well.
In Ji Yak’s eyes, this child was blessed.
Even when playing at the school, she would find a stray coin somewhere, and whenever the other children tried to bully her with a slingshot, a sudden gust of wind would blow and strike one of them square in the head instead.
One of those gusts had caught Hong Jin-rang’s head, and the one who’d fired the slingshot had come away thoroughly battered.
Even when flocks of birds flew overhead and unleashed their droppings indiscriminately, not a single drop ever soiled Dan Somi—such fortune was rare indeed.
Ji Yak smiled awkwardly.
“Shall we go look?”
Dan Somi nodded slightly.
Ji Yak glanced toward Hong Jin-rang, who sighed in resignation and made his way toward the stable. He picked up a wooden stick, gripped it in his hand, and began to prod through the straw.
“Huh?!”
“Oh!”
Three children gasped in alarm. A man emerged from between the strands of straw.
He lay drenched in blood, groaning weakly.
He couldn’t even muster the strength to open his eyes fully or move a single finger, his gaze unfocused as he stared at the three children.
“It’s… it’s a person!”
“Is he a martial artist?”
“My goodness……”
Hong Jin-rang recognized at once that he was a martial artist. Two short swords lay at his side.
Dan Somi was shocked to discover it wasn’t an animal but a human, while Ji Yak, seeing someone in such a dire state for the first time, went pale with fright.
“Ugh……”
“Is he dying? What should we do? Should we call the constables?”
“Calling them won’t help. This looks like a fight between martial artists—the authorities don’t intervene in such matters.”
At Hong Jin-rang’s words, Ji Yak nodded in understanding.
Ever since the imperial court had attempted to suppress the Martial World multiple times and failed, the government and the martial artists had maintained a strict separation of their domains.
At that moment, Dan Somi hurried toward the fallen man.
She was fearless.
No matter what the man might do.
Just as Ji Yak rushed to stop her in alarm, Somi spoke first, her voice gentle and quick.
“Sir, are you all right?”
“Ugh……”
“Does it look all right to you? Because it certainly doesn’t look all right to me.”
Hong Jin-rang asked bluntly.
It was clear at a glance his condition was grave. Without immediate treatment, death was certain. Yet there was nothing they could do about it.
The children here were scarcely more than seventeen or eighteen years old, and none of them had any training in medicine.
“Somi… Somi, come on. We should leave. This could turn into something terrible.”
Ji Yak stammered nervously. Witnessing someone in such a gruesome state was new to her, and the thought of possibly seeing a corpse terrified her.
But Somi shook her head.
“I want to save him.”
“What? Have you lost your mind? How on earth are we supposed to save this man?”
“Somi! No matter how I think about it, Jin-rang is right. What are we supposed to do……”
Dan Somi’s fists clenched tight.
Watching the man covered in blood, a memory surfaced unbidden.
The sight of her parents dying, the way they shielded her with their bodies as countless blades and spears pierced them, their death a grotesque tapestry of violence.
There was surely nothing she could do.
But shouldn’t she at least try?
After all.
‘I was like this too…….’
Dan Somi gripped her fists harder, and memories of that first day she met Dan Woo-hyun came flooding back. In truth, she hadn’t been as broken as this man, yet she had come to understand what death meant.
It was Dan Woo-hyun who had cast a ray of light into that darkness, and now she sensed that if not for her, no one else would offer this man any hope.
“Wait! Let me think first……!”
“Are you really going to do this? Wouldn’t it be better to go to the people in Daru……?”
Seeing Dan Somi hesitate, Hong Jin-rang moved to dash toward Daru. Surely this was beyond what children could handle.
But Dan Somi caught his wrist.
“No! The people there will definitely abandon him.”
“What? Abandon a dying man? That makes no sense.”
Hong Jin-rang and Ji Yak wore expressions of disbelief, but Dan Somi understood such things better than anyone. No one wanted a corpse appearing in their home or their place of business.
From their perspective, they’d rather he died somewhere else. Before she’d met Dan Woo-hyun, someone had left her broken and beaten in an alley to die.
Then Dan Somi drew a sharp breath.
“That’s it!”
“What…… what is?”
“Hemostatic herb!”
Once, when she’d climbed the mountain with Dan Woo-hyun, he’d taught her about it. He’d insisted she remember—it could at least stop bleeding.
Dan Somi had repeated it to herself countless times, burning it into her mind.
“I’ll be back in no time, so keep watch! Don’t tell anyone else, understand!”
“Y…… yes…….”
“O…… okay…….”
The two children watched numbly as Dan Somi bolted away. Hong Jin-rang scratched his head, completely at a loss about what she was trying to do.
Ji Yak felt the same.
Why not just leave and be done with it? Why was she trying to save a man who was already dying? The thought crossed her mind before she let out a short, quiet sigh.
Though she had to admit, it was something to admire about her.

***

Dan Woo-hyun arrived in Ak-yang to collect Dan Somi, but when he didn’t see her at Marketplace Street where she should have been, unease flickered through him.
She was always here at this hour.
“Where has she gone?”
He glanced carefully around the street.
When he spotted children of a similar age, his eyes found them instinctively. But each time, they were only similar in years—none of them was Dan Somi, running toward him with “Father!”
His brow furrowed.
She had never missed Academy before, not once. A dark premonition took hold of him—had something happened?
He grabbed the nearest confectionery vendor.
The startled merchant jerked his shoulders, realizing immediately that Dan Woo-hyun was not himself today. His grip on the man’s nape made that clear.
“A…… ah, g-good day to you, sir.”
“Have you seen Somi?”
“I…… I have, yes.”
The girl came for sweets without fail every day. Sometimes she came with friends or with Dan Woo-hyun, so the vendor’s face had grown familiar to her.
“The dumpling shop.”
“Yes, sir. She headed in that direction.”
Dan Woo-hyun released the vendor with a nod and made for the dumpling shop. But even there, he learned nothing definitive.
The children muttered something, but the crowd was so thick he couldn’t quite catch it. He exhaled sharply, his expression darkening.
“A boy and a child named Ji Yak—three of them together.”
The boy was likely Hong Jin-rang.
The description the dumpling vendor gave matched the boy he’d seen before. So it didn’t seem as though she’d been bullied by other children.
But where could these three have gone?
Dan Woo-hyun suppressed a groan and surveyed the surroundings. He would have followed a trail of footprints, but too many people had passed through—the traces were nearly invisible.
Yet not entirely obliterated.
He crouched and examined the prints carefully. If it had been about an hour ago as they said, he simply needed to find a few small, older-looking impressions among the rest.
“There.”
He found them.
Though barely visible, a faint trail of small footprints was discernible, leading eastward.
“The east?”
If you went east from Marketplace Street to its furthest end, you’d find the Red Light District. But there was no reason for three children to venture there, so they must have headed somewhere else instead.
What else was out that way?
“Daru…….”
A short, quiet laugh escaped him.
So the children had gone to Daru. The thought lodged pleasantly in his mind. It seemed that girl—Ji Yak, was it?—had led them there.
She was no ordinary child, that much was clear at a glance.
He walked toward the establishment at an unhurried pace.
As he imagined what three children might be doing at Daru, a rather amusing series of possibilities unfolded in his mind.
Perhaps they were mimicking adults and drinking tea?
Or were they sitting around sipping cheap tea and chatting away? Daru was hardly a modest establishment—it would cost them a fair sum.
Dan Woo-hyun made his way toward Daru at a measured pace.
The moment he arrived at the establishment.
His brow furrowed and he turned his head.
“Ah…… Father?”
Dan Somi stood before him, startled. Her hands were stained with blood, and the two children beside her had gone pale with fright.
“What’s happened?”
Dan Woo-hyun rushed toward Dan Somi and quickly seized her small hand. Fortunately, there were no wounds visible—the blood wasn’t her own.
His gaze drifted naturally to the side.
“……Who is this?”
A man, visible between bundles of straw. His upper body was exposed, whether from clothes torn by the children or something else.
Traces of hemostatic herbs—gathered from somewhere—had been applied here and there to staunch the bleeding, but projectiles still protruded from his back, making it impossible for them to remove his garments completely.
He understood now why the children’s faces had gone so ashen.
“Were you trying to save him?”
Somi nodded, tears streaming down her face. No matter what she did, she couldn’t save this man—he was dying. She’d hurried to gather hemostatic herbs from the mountain and applied them everywhere she could, but it had only slowed the bleeding slightly.
His color had never returned, and still he could not speak.
“Why?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I asked why you were trying to save him.”
Ji Yak and Hong Jin-rang shared the same question. Dan Somi had been so desperately determined.
She had touched his wounds and blood-soaked body with her own hands, and even when they called out for her to stop, she wouldn’t listen.
Why?
Dan Somi gripped her father’s collar tightly.
“But…… he’s so pitiful. Somi was saved too, and…… Somi doesn’t want to see people die anymore like Mom and Dad did, wahhh!”
Dan Woo-hyun pulled his sobbing daughter into his arms and sighed. The reason this child was so desperately driven to preserve life was the shock of witnessing her parents’ murder.
And so she wanted to save this dying man before her eyes as well.
Dan Woo-hyun patted the weeping Somi gently.
“You’ve all been through so much.”
“No, no. We were just watching…….”
Ji Yak murmured, her complexion still troubled. Her hands too were stained crimson with blood—from touching him when she’d removed his clothes.
Though after undressing him, she hadn’t dared touch him again.
Hong Jin-rang, by contrast, was if anything in worse condition than Somi. His entire body was drenched in blood. He seemed to have suffered considerable shock, his complexion far from healthy.
As the only boy among the girls, he must have rolled up his sleeves and gotten directly involved.
Dan Woo-hyun let out a quiet laugh.
“Thank you. Go inside Daru and wash yourselves. I’ll look after this man.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Ji Yak nodded and quickly led Somi away. Though Daru wasn’t an inn, it was no trouble to use their water if you pressed a few coins into the right palms.
Once the three children had vanished, Dan Woo-hyun gazed down at the man.
“Gwon Mu-jin, you said? Heaven truly has smiled upon you.”

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