My Father Is the Number One Under Heaven - Chapter 157

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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 157. Confession
“Ha… hahahaha.”
A hollow laugh spilled from Jin So-baek’s lips.
He had seen it clearly.
Yeo Un-hwi’s impossible power.
He had known Yeo Un-hwi was formidable—the man who had already laid low even the Absolute Demon and Youling Shenjun—but he had never imagined anything on this scale.
It was so absurd that laughter was the only response.
“Truly… extraordinary.”
Bae Cho-jin could not deny it.
How could anyone be so powerful at that age?
And why had he been concealing his martial arts until now?
But there were no answers to be found just yet.
Of one thing, however, there could be no doubt.
From this moment forward, the Martial World would revolve around that man.
Not far from them, Namgoong Sanghyuk, Crown Prince of the Namgoong Clan, had approached Dang Jinwoo, Hwangbo Cheon-woo, and Jegal Ujin, speaking to them.
It had been a great battle, and they too looked the worse for wear.
“Is everyone all right?”
“Yes. Well, we’re fine. Ha.”
Yet for some reason, they all wore dazed expressions.
Every gaze was fixed on Yeo Un-hwi.
‘What exactly did I just witness?’
These four were each known as one of the Six Dragons, acclaimed as rare talents and heralded as the future pillars of the Martial World.
Naturally, they had never in their lives envied or yearned for the abilities and skills of others.
Their only aspiration had been to surpass their own fathers, the patriarchs of the Five Great Clans.
Nothing else had ever captured their attention.
But today, they learned just how naive and narrow their vision had been.
Their entire life’s purpose had been no more than inheriting their fathers’ positions as clan patriarchs and polishing their martial arts until they could join the ranks of the Ten Great Masters.
And once that goal was achieved, they had believed they would command the heavens itself.
Though the Twelve Supremes existed above them, they had regarded that realm as a world beyond the sky, a place they dared not reach for.
Yet now, Yeo Un-hwi—a man who appeared scarcely older than themselves—had dispatched four of the Ten Demonic Stars, beings evaluated as possessing strength on par with the Ten Great Masters, with terrifying ease.
Moreover, he had struck down Gwak Cheon-gang, the former Demonic Sect Master who had once been one of the Twelve Supremes before becoming a madman and returning to wreak havoc.
The Heart Sword. The Heart Sword itself.
To witness such a technique, achievable only by those who had reached the pinnacle of the blade—it seemed impossible.
And among them, Dang Jinwoo’s face was particularly hollowed out.
‘I crossed blades with a man of that caliber? I’m insane.’
He recalled his first meeting with Yeo Un-hwi at Qinghua Tower.
Back then, he had thought Yeo Un-hwi perhaps one step ahead of him.
But when the masked Yeo Un-hwi had confronted and cut down his brother Dang Gu-hwi, driven mad and rampaging, he had realized that calculation was wrong.
Upper-tier among the Ten Great Masters, he had wondered?
That alone would have been staggering, yet Dang Jinwoo had unconsciously harbored the belief that his own talent might one day carry him to that height.
But now—
‘I was completely wrong. That’s a realm I can never hope to reach.’
Superior talent, in truth, meant possessing a superior grasp of one’s own limits.
And now he understood. He would never reach that pinnacle.
And he could feel, more vividly than anything else, just how strong Yeo Un-hwi truly was.
He was living that realization in its rawest form.
Thus, Dang Jinwoo and the other Three Dragons remained trapped in profound shock, unable to escape it.
Then, quite suddenly, the youngest among them, Jegal Ujin, turned his gaze elsewhere.
His brow furrowed immediately.
There, corpses of Demonic Sect followers already dead lay stacked like mountains.
“Truly ruthless men.”
When all fighting had ceased, most of the Demonic Sect members who had survived that long bit their own tongues and chose death.
Already rendered unable to continue fighting by Yeo Un-hwi, they saw no hope of escape and resorted to that extreme measure.
Yet several among them lacked the courage for suicide, their bites failing, and they were taken captive instead.
Their fate would be decided later through a meeting of the Five Great Clans.
Whatever judgment came, they would never know an easy death.
They were merely armed brigands; mercy was a luxury they did not deserve.
Not the slightest sympathy arose.
What truly was lamentable was that the Five Great Clans, including the Peng Clan, had suffered no small number of dead and wounded.
War was always like that.
Someone dies. Someone is wounded.
Before that harsh reality, sorrow overshadowed any joy at having repelled the Demonic Sect.
“…Is that so? Did we truly repel them? The Demonic Sect….”
And just moments before.
Someone arrived here gasping for breath.
Quickly grasping the situation, he broke into a happy smile.
It was Jegal Gil.
“We’ve done it. We’ve done it. Thank heavens. Ha.”
He didn’t bother approaching Yeo Un-hwi to speak with him.
He might have managed a few words about arriving late but coming to help regardless.
For Jegal Gil, what mattered was simply this: the Peng Clan had not been wiped out by the Demonic Sect’s hand. That was enough.
He soon turned and walked away quietly.
Having confirmed the Peng Clan’s safety, there was no reason to linger.
Now he had to return to the Murim League to resume his own battle.
Exhausted though he was, a smile of relief had spread across his lips.
And so the war between the Five Great Clans’ alliance and the Demonic Sect had just come to an end.
***
The Peng Clan Patriarch’s hall.
Peng Mugang, Dan Hee-young, and Peng Sejin had gathered there.
Despite the exhaustion from the brutal war, not one of them showed any sign of discomposure.
If anything, they seemed somewhat tense.
The reason they had assembled here: Yeo Un-hwi had said he had something to tell them.
They hadn’t heard what it was, but they could sense what it might concern.
The martial arts displayed when dealing with the Demonic Sect members today.
This conversation would be about that.
How long had they sat there, each wrestling with their own thoughts about it?
The door to the hall opened quietly.
Yeo Un-hwi, Peng Seo-yeon, and Yul-i asleep cradled in Peng Seo-yeon’s arms entered.
Peng Seo-yeon’s eyes were swollen and red. She had heard the story beforehand.
“Forgive our lateness.”
“Sit.”
Seats had been prepared for them across from Peng Mugang.
Yeo Un-hwi and Peng Seo-yeon took their places.
Peng Seo-yeon grasped Yeo Un-hwi’s hand firmly without a word.
Though he had already confided in Peng Seo-yeon once, this story—something he had wrestled with all this time—was still difficult to voice.
Yeo Un-hwi’s gaze fixed on the table as he seemed to search for words, then his lips slowly opened.
“I have lost my wife and Yul-i before.”
From that opening, a story so astonishing and difficult to believe poured forth from Yeo Un-hwi.
A meeting between two people, opposition, flight.
It was a story known to everyone in this room.
But the forgotten past—when she fell to poison and breathed her last—or perhaps a future that would never come.
No one here knew the story that came after that.
“I was helpless and foolish. I thought that standing firm without retreating was courage.”
But it was not.
I didn’t know that sometimes letting go is also courage.
When Peng Seo-yeon died and Peng Mugang came to So-dam Village, I should have entrusted Yul-i to him.
But I was arrogant enough to think I could protect Yul-i alone, and in the end, I lost her as well.
As Yeo Un-hwi unveiled this shocking story, the faces of the Peng family members changed moment by moment.
When he spoke of Peng Seo-yeon and Yul-i’s deaths, Peng Mugang clenched his fists so tightly that veins bulged at his temples.
Yet before the sight of his family’s distress, Yeo Un-hwi maintained an unflinching composure throughout his telling.
It was still a painful memory, still one that stirred anger, but it was also a past he had turned over so many times that he had become detached from it.
“After my wife and Yul-i died, I lived half-mad. I thought only of finding and killing the guilty. This didn’t change even after I obtained ‘this power’—the Divine Martial Arts Opportunity.”
I didn’t see the opportunity as a blessing, but only as a tool for revenge.
As payment for that karma, I came to bear the name ‘Blood Demon.’
Countless evildoers. Endless slaughter.
I floundered in the swamp of vengeance my whole life and eventually met a futile death.
And yet.
“…When I opened my eyes, my wife and Yul-i were before me. Just as they were, happy, before hell came.”
Thinking of that moment alone makes my chest ache.
My beloved family, whom I thought I would never see again.
What could compare to the joy and happiness, the overwhelming emotion of meeting them again?
“I myself don’t understand how it became possible. I only resolved that with this second chance given to me, I would never repeat the same mistakes.”
And so everything that followed is as all know it to be.
He obtained the Divine Martial Arts Opportunity once more, and returned to the Peng Estate to protect Peng Seo-yeon and Yul-i.
Whatever treatment he received, whatever ridicule came his way—he paid it no mind.
Only.
Only for family.
Having finished his account, Yeo Un-hwi turned to look at Peng Seo-yeon beside him.
Her large eyes were already brimming with tears as she gazed at him.
Before revealing everything to the family, the two of them had spoken first, alone.
She had listened in silence to his entire story, then quietly bit her lip as tears fell.
It was a tale full of gaps and inconsistencies—difficult to believe.
One could raise any number of objections to it.
But she did not. Instead, she simply opened her arms and held him without a word.
And she spoke.
“Thank you. For protecting us. And I’m sorry. For making you carry everything alone.”
She felt not the slightest trace of betrayal or resentment at his having kept this secret for so long.
She only pitied Yeo Un-hwi, who had suffered and worried in solitude all this time.
How difficult it must have been. How painful and sorrowful.
Now he had laid bare this incredible truth to the family as well.
There was nothing left to hide.
Yeo Un-hwi studied the faces around him.
Shock. Bewilderment. All reactions he understood completely.
What could he say now?
Though Yeo Un-hwi feared nothing in this world, in this moment he felt afraid.
At last, someone spoke.
It was Peng Mugang.
“By your account.”
His low, heavy voice cut across the table and struck Yeo Un-hwi like a blade.
“For those of us who have not lived through such a thing, it is a difficult tale to believe. A person returning to the past—it is hard even to imagine.”
In that moment, his heart seemed to plummet.
Peng Seo-yeon gripped Yeo Un-hwi’s hand tightly.
Yeo Un-hwi answered as calmly as he could.
“Yes. I understand completely.”
He had anticipated this much of a response.
That they had listened to his story at all was already remarkable.
Regression—how absurd it sounded.
Had he not experienced it himself, he would have dismissed such a tale as fantasy.
“But.”
Yet Peng Mugang’s words were not finished.
“I can believe in the sincerity of your heart when you think of Seo-yeon, of Yul-i, and of our Peng Estate. And everything you have shown us for the sake of our Peng Estate—I can believe in that as well.”
“……?”
“And you are a person of our Peng Estate. I am Peng Mugang, the Patriarch of the Peng Clan. I trust the members of my family.”
Yeo Un-hwi, who had been staring blankly at Peng Mugang, felt his eyes waver.
Noticing the tremor in his emotion, a smile bloomed at the corner of Peng Mugang’s mouth.
Not the usual smile full of pressure and hearty laughter, but the tender smile of a father more compassionate than anyone.
“You have suffered greatly.”
“Thank you… I do.”
Moisture clung to the end of Yeo Un-hwi’s voice as he fought to hold it back.
But everyone pretended not to notice.
From that day forward, Peng Mugang and Dan Hee-young began to regard Yeo Un-hwi in earnest not as a son-in-law, but as their own son.
It was the moment Yeo Un-hwi became a true member of the Peng Estate in Hebei.

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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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