Chronicles of the Martial God’s Return - Chapter 38

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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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What Dan So-mi had discovered was Heavenly Fortune for this man.
Listening to his faint, labored breathing, Dan Woo-hyeon shook his head slowly. From the wounds covering his body, it was clear he’d been attacked by his own people.
The Poisoned Darts were the same ones he’d seen that day.
Dan Woo-hyeon brushed away the Hemostatic Herb and pulled out the remaining Poisoned Darts embedded in Kwon Mu-jin’s back.
Each time a dart came free, the body that had lain motionless as a corpse convulsed slightly.
When he exposed the cloth still clinging to the wounds the children hadn’t been able to uncover, the full extent of the damage became visible.
“Remarkable that he’s still alive at all.”
Even Dan Woo-hyeon couldn’t hide his astonishment. By any normal measure, injuries of this severity should have meant death long ago, if not immediate cessation of breath.
And yet this man lived.
Though his breathing was shallow, it seemed that with proper care, he might endure another hour or so.
It was truly extraordinary vitality.
“Haa… haa……”
Breath came audibly.
And something remarkable happened.
Kwon Mu-jin, whose gaze had been vacant and unfocused, reached out with his hand for the first time, grasping Dan Woo-hyeon’s collar.
Dan Woo-hyeon allowed it.
After a moment, his weak voice emerged.
“P-please… save me… I beg you.”
“Give me a reason why you should live.”
“Haa… haa… I cannot… die in a place… like this…”
“Living and dying rest in Heaven’s hands. It matters not where one falls.”
At Dan Woo-hyeon’s words, Kwon Mu-jin’s grip tightened slightly. The light that had been fading from his eyes suddenly blazed with fierce determination, and his voice grew stronger than before.
“I will… I must… become the greatest!”
After those words, he collapsed once more.
Final Radiance.
The faint, gasping breath ceased, and his pupils slowly became entirely still.
Dan Woo-hyeon let out a soft laugh and moved his hand.
“Playing games, are we?”
Thump!
His palm struck directly over the heart.
Kwon Mu-jin’s body jerked violently, and the breath that had stopped gradually returned. Now it came down to how much treatment could be done within the next hour.
“If fortune favors you, you’ll live. If not, you’ll die. If you wish to survive, endure.”
Dan Woo-hyeon pressed Kwon Mu-jin’s vital points and activated the Cheon-il Jo-hwa Gong.

***

“Lost him? Lost him?!”
“I… I’m terribly sorry!”
Ma Dok-jin, his right eye wrapped in cloth, kicked savagely at his subordinate with a furious growl.
Thud!
The man flew backward, but Ma Dok-jin’s rage was far from spent. He stalked after him and stomped viciously.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“One wounded man—just one—and you let him slip away? You lost him?!”
“Ugh! I apologize, but the man was barely clinging to life. Without Hua Tuo’s return, survival would be impossible.”
“Damn it all……”
Such reasoning meant nothing to Ma Dok-jin.
He needed the corpse. Unless he could tear that man’s body to shreds before his own eyes, this fury would not be sated.
He wanted nothing more than to send his men out again to find him immediately, but circumstances forbade it.
His injured right eye needed treatment.
Indeed, the mere passage of this time had already cost Ma Dok-jin dearly.
He had to master himself.
For now, his own safety took precedence over rage.
“Do you truly believe he’s dead?”
“Of c-course. The Poisoned Darts were laced with poison, and he took at least six direct hits. While the wounds weren’t particularly deep, the trauma was severe enough that no ordinary human could survive. And as you know, he already suffered from serious Internal Injury.”
Though it galled him that he couldn’t tear that corpse to pieces with his own hands, anyone bearing wounds of that severity and still drawing breath would have to be considered a monster beyond the realm of human capability.
Ma Dok-jin steadied his breathing several times.
The man’s death was certain.
Further deliberation would only waste time.
“Don’t forget. He betrayed me and paid for it with his life.”
“I understand.”
“If word of this spreads within Wu Huang City, I won’t show any of you mercy.”
“Yes.”
Losing a single subordinate ought not to matter much, yet Kwon Mu-jin’s father held him in extraordinary favor.
‘Here I am, past forty, and still watching my father’s face.’
Crack!
Ma Dok-jin ground his teeth and turned his back.
He needed to find a physician as quickly as possible.
The mystery of the master who had appeared here could be unraveled at leisure afterward.

***

“…….”
“What’s troubling you?”
Returned to the Jang Estate, Dan Woo-hyeon noticed something amiss about So-mi, who sat perfectly still and silent. She wasn’t laughing or chattering as she usually did—it was as though he were looking at a different child altogether.
“Do you think that man will live?”
So-mi glanced back toward a room, peering into its darkness. Even if she could see through walls, the figure lying within would remain hidden, yet her face was clouded with worry.
She desperately wanted him to live.
That determination was written plainly across her features.
“Hard to say…… Surviving wounds that grave would be nothing short of Heavenly Fortune.”
Flinch.
One might have offered comforting lies, but his unflinching honesty left Dan So-mi speechless.
“Still…… I really hope he does live.”
Dan Woo-hyeon scratched his head awkwardly.
“Young master, that fellow’s practically a corpse, isn’t he?”
Just then, Jang Sam-tae appeared, wiping his bloodstained hands on a cloth. He had changed the bandages and washed the body with fresh water.
At Jang Sam-tae’s matter-of-fact words, Dan So-mi’s face fell.
“He’s really…… going to die?”
“No, no, no! He’ll live. He won’t die. No, he absolutely won’t. As So-mi says, he’s definitely going to live.”
Jang Sam-tae broke into a cold sweat, scrambling for reassuring words.
Yet by any honest reckoning, the situation was dire. A physician had already come and departed, shaking his head; even Jang Sam-tae, untrained in medicine, would have wagered his entire fortune that this man was dying.
The sword cuts and lacerations were one thing, but the Poisoned Darts had driven themselves far too deep. He’d managed to extract them all, yet the damage to the organs remained irreversible.
And worse still, the wounds carried poison.
Truth be told, Jang Sam-tae was astonished that Dan Woo-hyeon had managed to keep the man breathing long enough to bring him here at all.
The fact that he clung to life at all meant Dan Woo-hyeon had done something extraordinary.
‘A monster of a man, truly.’
Jang Sam-tae shook his head slowly, stealing a glance at Dan Woo-hyeon.
“If So-mi tends to him diligently, perhaps he might yet survive.”
Then Dan Woo-hyeon smiled faintly and spoke.
Hearing this, Jang Sam-tae tilted his head.
His expression made clear his confusion—why lie to a child like that?
From Jang Sam-tae’s perspective, Kwon Mu-jin could only die; nursing care and such were pointless.
Yet Dan So-mi’s face suddenly brightened.
“Really?”
“Yes. You were born under Heavenly Fortune, after all.”
“What?”
“Ha, that’s all it means.”
Dan So-mi jumped to her feet and rushed toward the room. What Jang Sam-tae had already seen to would yield nothing new, yet her resolve was unwavering—she would do whatever she could to help.
Jang Sam-tae watched her go, then fixed Dan Woo-hyeon with a disapproving look.
“If he dies, won’t she grieve terribly?”
“Perhaps she’ll grieve, or perhaps she’ll rejoice that he lived. Who can say?”
“If he survives in that condition, I’ll surrender everything I own.”
Jang Sam-tae scoffed, speaking with absolute certainty.
He had seen with his own eyes how hopeless the case truly was.
Even if Hua Tuo himself returned from the dead, he couldn’t save this man.
Then Dan Woo-hyeon’s eyes suddenly gleamed.
The gaze he fixed upon Jang Sam-tae was remarkably sharp.
“Do you mean it?”
“What?”
“I’m asking if you’d truly stake your entire fortune.”
“No, I mean…….”
Something felt wrong.
To be perfectly frank, it was a wound that anyone could see meant death—and yet Dan Woo-hyeon spoke as though he were about to perform some miraculous revival.
With anyone else, Jang Sam-tae would have let it pass. But this was Dan Woo-hyeon himself—and more to the point, a man who couldn’t resist money if his life depended on it—asking with complete seriousness.
In that moment, Jang Sam-tae’s mind shifted entirely.
‘That bastard will live.’
For Dan Woo-hyeon to speak with such conviction, his Heavenly Fortune couldn’t have run its course yet. And if the wager proceeded as things stood, even the meager sum he’d scraped together would be lost.
Barely ten silver taels—but Dan Woo-hyeon would surely take them.
“He’ll live. He will live. So I’m betting on him living.”
“……That doesn’t make a wager.”
‘Look at you, you little bastard.’
Jang Sam-tae broke into a cold sweat of relief.
If he’d carelessly spoken without thinking, disaster would have struck. The man had to possess some sort of certainty—why else would he speak of living?
Jang Sam-tae exhaled a sigh of relief and opened his mouth.
“But do you really think so? No matter how I look at it, he seems about to perish.”
“Ha, do you know what it means to be born under Heavenly Fortune?”
“What is that?”
“There are rare people in this world born with severed meridians, and others blessed by the protection of the stars.”
Those born with nine severed meridians are called the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, and just as Dan Woo-hyeon carries the fate of the stars, there naturally exist those born beneath Heavenly Fortune as well.
Dan So-mi was a child born under Heavenly Fortune.
However, it is said that those born with Heavenly Fortune suffer misfortune until that luck begins to shine.
Perhaps losing her parents and nearly dying of starvation was precisely that.
Once her Heavenly Fortune began to shine through meeting Dan Woo-hyeon’s life-force, everything Dan So-mi touched turned to prosperity.
That is why Dan Woo-hyeon believed Kwon Mu-jin would live.
His wish would reach Dan So-mi, and her Heavenly Fortune would lend strength to Kwon Mu-jin.
He lifted his head with a faint smile.
Tonight the moon shone with unusual brilliance.
‘Fortune alone could not be this exquisite……wouldn’t you agree, Eight Immortal?’
The light in Dan Woo-hyeon’s eyes deepened profoundly.

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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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