The Reformed Genius of the Sichuan Tang Clan - Chapter 14

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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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Chapter 14
Yeo Hong Ran’s eyes trembled wildly as they followed the movement of Dang Yu Hyeon’s fingertips.
He was asking her to stamp her fingerprint on blank paper—paper that held no written words yet.
He was deliberately reminding her that this same paper could mean her death, or a life worse than death.
When Yeo Hong Ran bit her lip in silence, Dang Yu Hyeon spoke again, his voice cold as frost.
“You’d better do it quickly. If you don’t cooperate willingly, I’ll tear apart everyone connected to you—including wherever your sworn sister is.”
“No, please—not where my sister is!”
Yeo Hong Ran reached out desperately and grabbed Dang Yu Hyeon’s sleeve.
“Strike Jeok Ho Chae instead. That’s the stronghold I’ve been backing!”
“Why? Is there something at Gua Yue Lou—the establishment your sworn sister runs—that I shouldn’t know about?”
……!
“I thought as much.”
Dang Yu Hyeon brushed away her hand coldly and placed the paper before his eyes once more.
“I won’t waste words. Stamp it.”
Yeo Hong Ran bit her lip, trembling violently.
But realizing she had no other choice, she drew blood from her less damaged hand and pressed her fingerprint onto the paper.
“Ugh…”
Whether Yeo Hong Ran wept or not made no difference to Dang Yu Hyeon—he examined the print with an unmoved face to ensure it was clear.
‘A creature without blood or tears….’
Yeo Hong Ran cursed him inwardly, but on the surface she feigned wretchedness, whimpering as she collapsed face-down on the floor.
Her pride was wounded, but she had to think of the future if she ever wanted revenge.
“Now… you’re letting me live, aren’t you?”
“You’ve been saying strange things since before.”
Thwick—
A poison needle lodged itself in Yeo Hong Ran’s skull.
“I never said I’d let you live. Don’t assume what wasn’t promised.”
“That… ugh…!”
Yeo Hong Ran glared at Dang Yu Hyeon with bloodshot eyes.
A black mark, like a flower blooming, spread from her head across her body.
The fast-acting poison consumed her in seconds.
“Agh… ugh…”
Her body, convulsing from the toxin, went still like a puppet with cut strings.
Dang Yu Hyeon gazed down at the corpse—so disfigured it was barely recognizable—then turned his head toward the broken window.
“I know you’re watching. Lock Luaju in prison and clean up the rest. Let Gi Lou keep its puppet show running. The people will follow Mother’s decision.”
From the darkness beyond the window came a voice.
“Understood.”
It was the shadow the Dang Family had attached to him.
They had likely been watching his every move since the moment he left the Dang Family Estate.
All the better, in fact.
He had shown them exactly what the Dang Family wanted to see.
‘This is why blood cannot be trusted.’
A faint, hollow laugh—whether mocking or pitiful, he couldn’t say—rose and faded.
“Return immediately once the work is done. I have somewhere to stop by.”
“As you wish, sir.”
They said so, but a few of them would follow him regardless.
That was their job, after all.
‘No matter.’
He wasn’t studying lost martial secrets or raiding some stronghold colluding with Baek Hwa Lou—nothing that required particular caution.
“In all my days, I never thought I’d see Gi Lou and a Mountain Stronghold join hands.”
Dang Yu Hyeon laughed dryly and bolted into the darkness.
* * *
“Haaaah…”
At the entrance to Jeok Ho Chae, the guard Wang Chil yawned so wide his mouth seemed to tear.
‘It’s night anyway—nobody’s coming. Yet they dump this on me and make a fuss. Should’ve curried favor with the right people. Tsk.’
Originally, he’d belonged to a different Mountain Stronghold near Jeok Ho Chae.
But when Jeok Ho Chae suddenly appeared and began growing its forces, he and his comrades were absorbed in a single raid.
The fact that he stood guard alone now was because the original Jeok Ho Chae members had dumped the duty on him.
‘Those from Luaju team up with them and feel no shame at all.’
For him, whose Martial Prowess was his only proof of worth, it was a bitter blow to his pride.
As if some merchant’s calculations and words should have any place in a fistfight.
Just as he was clicking his tongue at grievances he couldn’t voice aloud, a man appeared before him.
“Excuse me, I’d like to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Is this Jeok Ho Chae?”
Wang Chil didn’t answer right away, instead scrutinizing the stranger from head to toe.
Though the darkness made it hard to see clearly, his upturned eyes and sharp, defined features marked him as a young man of quality.
‘By his looks, he’s a nobleman’s son….’
That was actually perfect.
Better to squeeze him dry myself before some other bastard got a taste.
Intimidating naive young masters and wringing them to the marrow—that was my specialty.
Wang Chil chuckled and nodded.
“Well now, you say?”
“Then you’ve found the right place.”
“Huh?”
The young man smiled.
In that same instant, Wang Chil’s vision tilted.
Thud.
Only when the young man’s face vanished from sight did Wang Chil realize he’d fallen to the ground.
‘What just happened?’
Pain bloomed in his neck.
But his arms wouldn’t move—they’d gone rigid.
‘When did that happen?’
Wang Chil gasped and threw his eyes wide open.
Only then did he see what the darkness had concealed: a glint of something embedded in flesh.
A green robe embroidered with an ornate pine—unmistakably the Dang Family’s own.
“Figured it out now?”
“……!”
The young man—Dang Yu Hyeon—smiled coldly, and Wang Chil’s vision went black.
* * *
‘Only one guard posted. Ridiculously careless. Or perhaps they’ve grown complacent.’
Dang Yu Hyeon retrieved the Poison Needle from Wang Chil’s neck, his mind already moving ahead.
Could the funding Baek Hwa Lou had been providing really have made people this dull?
It seemed unlikely.
There had to be something more to it.
“Wang Chil, you bastard—time to switch out. The ones who were supposed to come from Baek Hwa Lou still haven’t shown, no signal or… What the—!”
Jang Bok, who had been creeping out from deeper within Jeok Ho Chae, spotted Dang Yu Hyeon and recoiled in shock.
“Attack! We’re under attack!”
Had he chosen to, silencing that loudmouth would have been trivial—or he could have unleashed poison and turned the entire stronghold into rubble.
But Dang Yu Hyeon did neither.
The more people gathered, the easier it would be to test the true limits of his strength.
Swift as wind.
By the time he’d pushed up on his knees, roughly ten more had emerged.
They came armed with spears and swords, poised to attack at any moment.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Well, well. Just a young master, aren’t you?”
“Did you lose your way? Either way, you’ve touched one of us—you won’t be walking out of here unscathed. Heh-heh.”
To their crude provocations, Dang Yu Hyeon offered no response.
He merely swept his gaze over them as one might regard small children, then flicked a finger.
“Why aren’t you attacking?”
“You little bastard—!”
The foremost bandit lunged forward, thrusting his spear with murderous intent.
Dang Yu Hyeon didn’t so much as blink, holding the attacker’s gaze steady before unleashing the Poison Needle.
Whoosh!
The Poison Needle flew swift and true, piercing straight through the man’s forehead.
“Ugg….”
The hulking brute crumpled in an instant.
“Tch. Too slow.”
He felt it again—that peculiar lag whenever his body’s reflexes couldn’t quite keep pace with what his mind perceived.
It was a stark reminder: he truly inhabited a different body now.
‘Still only First Class. If I don’t resolve this quickly, it’ll turn messy.’
Dang Yu Hyeon rolled the corpse over with his foot, thinking ahead.
I need to get used to moving like this while I have the chance.
“You bastard! You killed my brother!”
Dang Yu Hyeon watched the bandit charge at him anew and drew the Poison Needle again.
Slice. Slice.
The sound of cutting, not piercing—a sound he never thought would come from the Poison Needle.
“Cough!”
In just two strokes, the spear that had been held rigid snapped, and a neck, veins bulging, fell to the ground.
He wielded the Poison Needle like a sword, each movement clean and without waste.
‘What in the world is this man?’
Now that he thought about it, the fact that this youth had come alone to the stronghold in the dead of night was strange from the start.
But they had dismissed it, fooled by his appearance.
Just a foolish young master who knew no fear of bandits, who had underestimated the rising might of Jeok Ho Chae and the Baek Hwa Lou that backed it.
Yet the warrior before them shattered that assumption utterly.
By his relatively small frame and thin voice, he was clearly not yet in his twenties, not yet a man—yet the cruel precision with which he targeted the neck belied his years.
Unless he had rolled in the gutters since birth, no child so young should have grown so familiar with killing.
Gulp.
An uneasy premonition sent out a warning.
They had touched something they shouldn’t have.
Though no one spoke it aloud, their faces said it all.
‘This can’t be real.’
While everyone stood frozen, one bandit who grasped their inferior position quietly brought a whistle to his lips.
Even the greatest martial artist couldn’t overcome a numerical disadvantage, or so he thought.
‘I have to blow it fast—’
Whoosh.
But before he could draw breath into the whistle, Dang Yu Hyeon gripped the Poison Needle like a sword and pierced his chest.
He crossed the distance of nearly ten feet in a single bound, appearing before them in an instant.
Hiss.
Then, twisting his body slightly, he kicked away the falling whistle in one smooth motion, without a moment’s hesitation.
“Keep it quiet.”
His voice had shed all boyish quality—low and clipped—and the bandits’ eyes trembled.
“A m-monster!”
At the careless words of one of them, Dang Yu Hyeon turned his head.
They all expected merciless slaughter and death to follow.
But Dang Yu Hyeon let out a soft chuckle, as if mocking their expectations.
“It’s been a long time since anyone called me that.”
……
“Everyone who’s ever called me a monster has ended up buried in the ground and never come back out.”
Their incomprehension only deepened the chaos and terror.
Dang Yu Hyeon flicked the Poison Needle, scattering blood across the floor.
“Well, never mind that. You’re a mountain stronghold, so you must have hidden plenty of valuables somewhere, right? Whether from commoners or young nobles, you’ve robbed people, haven’t you?”
Crack.
As Dang Yu Hyeon flexed his fingers, his knuckles crackled in response.
“In a place that Sa Cheon Dang Moon openly protects, no less.”
A chilling Ghost Energy radiated from him.
“You all deserve to die, but I’ll indulge the impetuousness of my youth and at least show you a way to die comfortably.”
Dang Yu Hyeon gestured with his chin toward the Jeok Ho Chae behind them.
“Where did the stronghold master hide his treasure? Do you know?”
……
“I thought not. You wouldn’t know.”
“B-but surely it’s hidden somewhere in the Jeok Ho Chae!”
“Then there isn’t any, is there? Who do you think you’re fooling?”
“Ahhh! Please spare us! We’ll live righteously from now on!”
“What? Do you think this is a schoolhouse? That because people say ‘yes, yes,’ you can spout any nonsense, and saying sorry makes everything disappear?”
Dang Yu Hyeon threaded Poison Needles between his fingers.
“I don’t believe your words.”
Whirrrrrrrt!
His sleeve fluttered as he unleashed dozens of Poison Needles.
“Aaaahhhhh!”
“Screeeeeech!”
Cries erupted from all around.
Those who believed they were outmatched abandoned all pride and fled.
Dang Yu Hyeon gave them no quarter, pursuing the fugitives deeper into the stronghold.
Those cornered by desperation always sought the comfort of the inner sanctum.
Thud. Thud.
Corpses mounted along his path, yet not a single mark appeared on his body.
His stride, leisurely as a stroll through a garden, only halted once he reached the heart of Jeok Ho Chae.
“……So it is true—I’ve been draining the Dang Family’s coffers! Kha-ha-ha-ha!”
“As expected of you, Master!”
“There’s no one in all of Zhong Yuan with ambitions as grand as yours!”
They were reveling.
Dang Yu Hyeon kept his glacial gaze fixed as he kicked down the door concealing the pleasures within.
Crash!
The door panel flew away with a thunderous boom.
Dang Yu Hyeon surveyed the startled faces surrounding him, one corner of his mouth curling upward.
“Why has the mood grown so tense? Did someone speak ill of me?”
Sa Cheon Dang Moon: Genius of Redemption
Author |
Lee Il Young
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editor-in-Chief |
Editorial Department
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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dream Books
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7th Floor, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsaro114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260615052
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
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Submissions |
[email protected]
This book’s contents may not be used in any form or by any means without written permission from Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dream Books.

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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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