The Reformed Genius of the Sichuan Tang Clan - Chapter 20

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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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Episode 20
The vagrants scowled at Dang You-hyun’s provocation.
“You insolent brat!”
Clang!
The vagrants drew their blades in a heartbeat and rushed at him.
“Given where we are, maybe we should keep the violence reasonable?”
Dang You-hyun crouched low and drove his fist into Lee Ho’s belly.
Thud!
“Gaaahhhhck!”
Lee Ho doubled over, clutching his stomach as bile spilled from his lips.
The other vagrants who witnessed this charged forward with even darker faces.
“All at once! Let’s teach him a lesson he won’t forget!”
Dang You-hyun casually extended his leg and swept it through Sam Ho’s abdomen.
Where his foot struck, the flesh caved inward like a crater.
Sam Ho coughed blood as his organs were crushed and his ribs shattered.
“Urgh!”
“Much obliged. You’ve saved me considerable trouble.”
These were supposedly Sacheon’s Greatest Vagrants?
A joke.
Men who hadn’t even reached Peak Realm, who were nothing but second-rate swordsmen—a stray dog would laugh to hear them called that.
Then who were they really?
‘Likely men connected to the Baek-hwa-ru or Gwol-weol-ru.’
The odds they knew anything about the Weol-yeong Sword?
Judging by their skill, nonexistent.
What good would interrogating or torturing them do if they knew nothing?
This would amount to nothing more than a pointless brawl.
Dang You-hyun clicked his tongue and grabbed the fallen Lee Ho by the scruff of the neck, hoisting him upright.
Just as he was about to hurl him at Sa Ho to disrupt the man’s advance, something caught his eye.
Blink.
O Ho, who had been hanging back, moved his eyes left and right.
As if sending some kind of signal.
It didn’t take long for Dang You-hyun to act on his understanding.
Whip—
Dang You-hyun turned his body but let his gaze follow the signal’s direction.
The target of those eyes.
The end of that gaze.
There stood Seon-woo Yun.
‘Did I misread?’
No. Impossible.
My eyes don’t deceive me.
‘Pretending ignorance. But you knew all along, didn’t you?’
From the moment he’d collided with Seon-woo Yun among the passing crowd, from the moment the man had been mistaken for a pickpocket who stole nothing.
From the moment he was brought to a space so clearly connected to the Gwol-weol-ru that anyone with eyes would see it—no matter how deep into Sacheon’s underworld one ventured.
‘A lead falling right into my lap. I’m fortunate.’
Unlike those fake vagrants, Seon-woo Yun might actually know the heart of the Gwol-weol-ru—and perhaps even the whereabouts of the Weol-yeong Sword.
‘For now, let him live.’
Dang You-hyun threw Lee Ho like a sack of grain, shattering Sa Ho’s balance before mounting the collapsed man’s body.
Sa Ho’s abdomen.
O Ho’s ribs and jaw.
The sound of splintering bone and dislocating joints echoed through the air, yet the merciless assault did not cease.
Click.
After reducing five grown men to pulp without so much as a twitch, Dang You-hyun tilted his head for the first time.
“Ah. I’ve become the rowdy one, haven’t I?”
He pulled a few silver coins from his pocket, placed them on the table, and donned his Black Hat.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
After leaving the establishment, Dang You-hyun entered a wine house he’d spotted on his way in.
Though it was decorated with red cloth like any proper tavern, at least it didn’t have two moons—which meant it was less under the Gwol-weol-ru’s thumb.
“I made you leave your food behind. Let me buy you a meal as an apology.”
Before Seon-woo Yun could say a word, Dang You-hyun had already ordered food and liquor.
Seon-woo Yun sat there dumbfounded for a moment, then let out a dry laugh and pulled a chair over to sit down.
“Do you know what sells best around here?”
“I may not know Sacheon well, but I know what moves anywhere else.”
“You must have visited the taverns quite a bit.”
“Here and there, yes.”
When he wouldn’t yield an inch, Seon-woo Yun let out an exasperated breath as if at a loss.
“Fine, fine. Suit yourself. But if you’re planning to stay long in Sacheon, don’t go near Deok-yang.”
“Is something wrong there?”
“They say there’s a particularly beautiful plot of land with good water and clean air near Deok-yang, and a mad swordsman lives there who kills every vagrant that comes near. Haven’t you heard the rumors?”
“Not a word.”
“I’m telling you out of fellow feeling—one vagrant to another. Even if it takes longer, take the long way around. That’s how you survive.”
“I’ll do that.”
Dang You-hyun drank the Du-gang Liquor the server had brought without a word.
The possibility that Seon-woo Yun had no connection to Gwol-weol-ru and hadn’t seen through Dang You-hyun’s identity?
Impossible. Not even if the heavens split in two.
Even now, wasn’t he avoiding using names, speaking only what he needed to say, perhaps for fear of slipping up with a title?
‘So there’s something hidden in Deok-yang. I need to go take a look.’
Exactly half a day after that thought, Dang You-hyun arrived in Deok-yang.
‘A stream flows through, and there are mountains behind—this must be the place with good water and clean air.’
But there was one thing: it didn’t smell good.
“Ugh! Why would anyone cook in the mountains? The stench of oil is overwhelming.”
Dang You-hyun frowned deeply and looked around.
Being near the mountains, there was no sign of anything that could be called a village.
“Hmm?”
Among the dark, densely forested mountains, shacks gleamed darker than the shadows of tangled trees and brighter than moonlight.
Not just one, but several.
Dang You-hyun drew closer, intrigued.
Drip. Drip.
The sound was not one you’d expect from a clean stream.
Dang You-hyun took the long way around the stream, staying alert for any sign of danger.
And when moonlight finally illuminated the mountain entrance completely, he saw it.
The several shacks were connected by oil-soaked rope.
His premonition was not good.
His senses, honed from pushing himself to the Peak Realm, stirred with dark possibilities.
“Please… let me go…”
“Shut up! Will you?”
From inside one of the shacks came the roar of a man in his mid-thirties.
Dang You-hyun expected impact sounds to follow, but what came instead was sobbing.
The weeping of people of all ages and both sexes.
The interior wasn’t clearly visible, as if a lamp had been lit, but there was no doubt about the situation.
‘Human trafficking.’
Having reached his conclusion, Dang You-hyun dug his fingernails into his palm from the inside.
Otherwise, he couldn’t contain the killing intent that threatened to seep out.
His eyes flashed with cold, understanding light.
Who dared conduct such business in my Sacheon?
As he gnawed at his lips and clenched his fists, trying to suppress the killing intent, the man from inside the shack came out.
“You bastard. I only meant to scare them.”
“Shut it. They’re squealing so much—do you think you’d get a sweet sound?”
“When did I say to get a sweet sound? If one of them dies, we’re finished. Hostages are only worth something alive—dead, they’re useless. Do you understand?”
“So you say we should use their families as hostages and work them like tools? That’s quite the head on your shoulders.”
Under the moonlight, the faces looked familiar.
Ma Sam-gu and Jang Do-pal—vagrants whose names he’d heard while passing through the red-light districts.
Dang You-hyun had picked up their names from tavern gossip.
“I don’t understand why that woman from Gwol-weol-ru keeps giving me such tedious jobs. Why not just kill them all and tell the families we’ll let them live if they behave?”
“Keep your mouth shut if you don’t want your head on the ground. If it reaches her ears, you’ll burn to death.”
“One of them will be dead soon anyway. Killing them all at the same time wouldn’t be so bad.”
“Ah. That beggar child?”
“That’s the one. Her older brother goes around licking other people’s feet trying to save her.”
“Isn’t he doing construction work these days? Someone said if he brings in a big catch, they’ll give him medicinal materials, so he went rushing off.”
“Some fool from the Dang Family? That’s not easy.”
“Not my concern.”
“She’s naive, that one. The proprietress of Gwol-weol-ru—that woman wouldn’t hand over medicine even if the Dang Family heir brought her an emperor.”
“Stupid, really. Getting played like that and learning nothing from it. Tsk, tsk.”
There was nothing more to listen to.
Dang You-hyun drew Poison Needles from his sleeve and hurled them at Ma Sam-gu and Jang Do-pal.
“Ugh!”
Both men collapsed with a stifled cry.
His gaze, gone cold and still, swept across them.
Dang You-hyun suppressed his aura lest innocent civilians nearby be startled, then activated the A-hyeol and Ma-hyeol pressure points in succession.
‘Think clearly.’
No. Stop it.
His mind was already running too sharp, too fast—it felt as though his skull might split.
Dang You-hyun clenched his fists to keep his hands from moving of their own accord.
The tremor in his fingers was the residue of passion suppressed.
What had begun as suspicion when he’d eavesdropped from the shadows had hardened into certainty.
The proprietress of Gwol-weol-ru, having spotted Seon-woo Yun’s talent on the street, had taken his sister as a hostage to exploit him at her whim.
And Seon-woo Yun was not alone. Other gifted youths too had their families seized and worked like cattle.
Yet she never spared a thought for whether those families lived or died—simply left them to rot.
It was the kind of thinking only those who saw people as tools could execute.
‘……Grow colder still. Killing these wretches now solves nothing.’
The desire to save the innocents trapped in that hut burned like a furnace in his chest.
But if he freed them, those who served Gwak Hwa like limbs would surely die.
To save them both, he could not afford to act rashly.
Why would they have sealed the hut together with oil-soaked timber if not for this?
At the slightest provocation, she meant to burn them all.
‘The root of this evil is Gwol-weol-ru. Only by destroying it can the poison be drawn out entirely.’
The false vagrant and Seon-woo Yun, Ma Sam-gu and Jang Do-pal—they are but branches.
A trap built for a tiger cannot catch a fox.
Dang You-hyun hauled the two terrified men upright, activated their Sa-hyeol pressure point, and hurled them into the stream.
Glug-glug-glug.
Air bubbles rose and churned from depths that were anything but shallow, then vanished.
Whoooosh.
Two corpses drifted away with the current.
There was a saying: If someone has wronged you, do not seek vengeance. Simply sit by the riverbank and wait. Before long, you will see their corpse drift past.
Dang You-hyun faded into the darkness, thinking as he went.
Perhaps tomorrow, someone who saw those two would stop shedding tears of rage.
Sacheon Dang Family: Reformation of the Genius
Author |
Lee Il-young
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editorial Director |
Editorial Department
Published by |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books
Address |
7F Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260615052
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
Twitter(X) |
@dreambookss
Submissions |
[email protected]
Without written permission from Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books, this book’s contents may not be used in any form or by any means.

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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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