My Father Is the Number One Under Heaven - 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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Episode 38. What Should Never Happen
“I am Ju Gwangdo, the master of Muhosan Stronghold!”
With his savage Qi pouring forth without restraint, his form—reminiscent of an enormous wild boar—was fearsome enough to make any ordinary person’s knees buckle.
And the monstrous strength he displayed was equally staggering.
Yet for all his entrance, Baekrangdae showed not a trace of fear.
Because among them stood something far more monstrous than he.
“Tsk, tsk. For a mere bandit to have such a loud mouth—how amusing.”
Gutaesan stepped forward.
As Ju Gwangdo huffed and puffed, his muscles straining against his skin, Gutaesan regarded him with utter indifference.
At that, Ju Gwangdo snarled viciously.
“I have never lost a test of strength to anyone, and yet you strut about like a cub who doesn’t know fear!”
To Ju Gwangdo’s boastful declaration, Gutaesan laughed heartily.
“Is that so? What a remarkable coincidence. I happen to share that distinction. Why don’t we settle here and now who the frog in the well truly is?”
“Hmph! You dare presume to challenge me?”
With those words, Ju Gwangdo launched himself forward with surprising speed, closing the distance to Gutaesan in an instant.
His movement was far swifter and sharper than his massive frame should have allowed.
Then he raised his weapon—a colossal Great Axe—high overhead and brought it crashing down with all his might.
As if determined to cleave his opponent in two with a single blow.
The force was such that the very air screamed beneath it.
Yet—
Crash!
The Great Axe that should have split Gutaesan’s skull in two buried itself in the earth instead.
Gutaesan had vanished, reappearing at his back.
Ju Gwangdo, his attack foiled, gnashed his teeth and hoisted the axe upright once more.
“Coward!”
“Coward?”
“Yes! You challenge me to a test of strength, then dodge like a craven dog! Have you no shame?”
“Hah. In all the world, you may be the only fool who calls a man’s evasion cowardice. Tell me—is it stupidity, or are you simply witless?”
“You wretch!”
This time, Ju Gwangdo swung the axe faster and with even greater amplitude, determined not to let his opponent slip away.
Yet Gutaesan evaded the blow with effortless grace.
“With swings like that, you’ll never land even a glancing touch. A tortoise moves faster than you. Tsk, tsk.”
“Silence! I’ll split your head in half! Die!”
Enraged, Ju Gwangdo whirled the axe savagely once more.
This time, the blow aimed directly for Gutaesan’s throat.
But—
Crash!
Gutaesan parried with his Greatsword wielded in a single hand, not merely deflecting but flinging aside Ju Gwangdo’s all-out assault.
“Nngh!”
Ju Gwangdo nearly lost his grip on the axe. His hands tingled with the force of the impact.
‘No—how is this possible? This can’t be real!’
Ju Gwangdo’s mind reeled with shock.
For him, who had never yielded in a pure test of strength to anyone, even once, this was an entirely new sensation.
It was nothing but bewilderment and disbelief.
“What’s the matter? Surprised? I think the true frog in the well might be you, after all.”
“What—what did you say? You arrogant cur! Just because you got lucky once, you act superior? Mark my words—I will tear you apart today!”
With Gutaesan’s words, Ju Gwangdo’s bewilderment and confusion kindled into raw fury.
He poured all his power into his next attack, sweeping the axe with devastating force.
Boom! Boom!
The axe carved through the air with a murderous sound.
With each tremendous arc, the ground cracked and trees fell severed in its wake.
Yet Gutaesan sidestepped every blow with absolute ease.
“Hiss!”
Realizing that this approach was futile, Ju Gwangdo abruptly unleashed a Secret Technique.
“I’m done holding back!”
His eyes gleamed with intensity.
“Daeryeok Cham!”
He twisted his body with violent force, summoning all his strength into a single reversed swing of the axe—a blow that seemed terrible even at a glance.
That devastatingly fierce attack hurtled toward Gutaesan, poised to split him cleanly in half.
Yet the expression on Gutaesan’s face remained unmoved.
“So he was less impressive than I’d imagined?”
But just as the Great Axe was about to strike him down,
“Ha!”
Gutaesan’s eyes flew open in an instant, and he swung his Greatsword diagonally to meet the oncoming blade.
Crash!
With a shattering pain that felt like his hands were breaking apart, Ju Gwangdo’s Great Axe flew through the air and buried itself in the ground with a dull thud.
“Ahhhhh!”
His palms had split open, blood pouring freely from the wounds.
While Ju Gwangdo trembled and writhed in agony, Gutaesan regarded him with a face of perfect indifference.
Ju Gwangdo now stood completely defenseless.
Gutaesan raised his blade high and let out a cold laugh.
“Is that truly all you have?”
“What, what?”
“Then let us end this. You no longer interest me. Farewell, frog in a well.”
“No, wait! Just, just a moment!”
Ju Gwangdo cried out in panic, but Gutaesan, finding nothing more worth observing, simply severed his throat.
Splash!
Gutaesan’s blade cut deep into Ju Gwangdo’s neck, but the thickness of his throat saved him from an instant death.
Still, the ground was already drenched with his blood.
“Gurgle.”
Death seemed inevitable now.
Yet as he choked on blood and foam, he suddenly began to laugh—a low, rasping chuckle.
“K-keh, keheheh!”
Laughing? On the threshold of death?
Everyone watching—Gutaesan foremost—wore expressions of bewilderment.
“You fools… not even knowing… you’ve stumbled into your own… grave……”
Ju Gwangdo pointed at the Baekrangdae with a twisted smile on his lips.
Even as crimson blood poured from his chest and mouth,
the sight of him sent a chill down the spine of every observer.
“You will all… regret coming to this place. You will all… die… gurgle.”
But soon enough his massive frame collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud, life finally abandoning him.
His face, for some reason, bore an expression of profound injustice.
But what had those final words of his truly meant?
Were they merely a simple curse born of bitterness? Or…
There was no way to ask him now that he lay dead.
In any case, Ju Gwangdo, master of the Muhosan Stronghold, had met his end.
Yet Yeo Unhwi, watching the scene unfold, had narrowed his eyes to slits.
Something felt wrong to him—distinctly wrong.
In the meantime, Gutaesan finished severing Ju Gwangdo’s head and held it aloft.
“I have taken the stronghold master’s head. The rest of you—lay down your weapons!”
Ordinarily, when such a moment arrived, the surviving subordinates would lose all will to fight and of their own accord cast their weapons to the ground.
Surrender was the natural course of action.
But this time,
“Huff! Huff!”
not a single surviving bandit lowered their weapon or surrendered.
Instead, gritting their teeth as if they could not possibly give up, they gripped their weapons all the more firmly.
It was profoundly strange.
Looking closely, their faces were etched with fear.
While fear was natural enough in such circumstances, the problem was that this fear did not seem to be fear of the Baekrangdae at all.
“If… if this goes on, we’ll all… we’ll all die.”
“Y-yes. Everything went wrong from that day. Everything. Damn it. Dammit.”
Incomprehensible words spilled from their lips.
“What, have these men all gone mad? Surrender, or do you all wish to die here where you stand?”
O Chaemu shouted again, yet the response remained unchanged.
It was the law of Peng Mu-gang, patriarch of the Peng Clan, to show no mercy to thieves; yet in circumstances like these—surrender without combat—it was standard to turn the remaining survivors over to the authorities rather than slaughter them indiscriminately.
Though the Peng Clan’s way was to spare no thief, severing the throats of those who had wholly surrendered their will to fight struck even them as distasteful.
Above all, it was not conduct befitting an orthodox faction.
Such punishment was best left to the magistrate.
But as matters now stood, even he found himself at a loss as to how to proceed.
This situation had never arisen before.
It happened then.
Crash!
The innermost building of the stronghold exploded.
The blast was so tremendous that the ground seemed to tremble beneath them.
As if an earthquake had struck.
Naturally, everyone’s gaze turned toward it.
But in that very moment,
“Tsk. Which fools dare disturb my afternoon rest?”
An old man appeared among the ranks of Baekrangdae—unnoticed by anyone until he was already there.
‘How did he…!’
O Chaemu’s eyes widened.
It was an elderly man with a face that smiled in a withered, bitter way.
Yet there was something sinister in his presence—a malevolent Qi that emanated from him.
The kind that made your skin crawl.
Hm?
In an instant, O Chaemu’s gaze caught an odd, crimson mark on one side of the old man’s face.
O Chaemu’s eyes grew even wider.
That man—why is he here…?
But in the next breath,
“You there, old man. Who are you? What are you doing here?”
Gutaesan, who stood closest to the elder, frowned and stepped forward.
O Chaemu cried out loudly.
“Gutaesan! Get back! That man is—!”
“…Yes?”
But the old man moved first.
He swept his hand once, and in that instant,
Boom!
Gutaesan’s body shot backward at tremendous speed and crashed into the opposite wall.
Crash!
“Cough—hack!”
Gutaesan collapsed where he landed.
All from a single gesture of the old man’s hand.
“Oho, I intended to end him in one stroke—yet his body is quite durable. Kekeke.”
At the same time, a vast and viscous Qi erupted from the old man’s form, spreading through the air with a sickening presence.
“Damn this cursed old wretch!”
The moment Gutaesan fell, as if on cue, the entire Baekrangdae swept forward like lightning toward the elder.
“No—stop!”
O Chaemu thrust out his hand and shouted, but it was already too late.
The old man spun his body in a complete circle, and in the next instant, the whole of Baekrangdae was sent flying backward like Gutaesan had been.
Nearly all of them lost consciousness or collapsed, blood spilling from their mouths.
Whoosh!
Seizing a brief opening, Do Gyeong’s arrow flew toward the old man’s head, but
Ping, ping.
The arrow shattered mid-flight, and Do Gyeong himself took the full brunt of an invisible wave of Qi, crumpling to the ground.
“Raagh!”
O Chaemu could no longer contain his rage and swung his Greatsword with all his might.
Yet the old man caught the blade between his fingers as easily as plucking grass.
Then, with a light flick of his other hand, the sword shattered and O Chaemu’s body was hurled backward.
“Ugh…”
O Chaemu barely managed to rise, only to cough up a mouthful of blood.
“Hrrk!”
They had all fallen to him.
It had happened in mere moments.
“Yes, yes. Tch, tch. I was bored anyway, and now this is perfect. I’ve grown weary of torturing those fools the bandits dragged in for me—it’s time for something fresh.”
The old man’s withered smile deepened.
And there was something horrifying in that expression—utterly chilling.
“…Geuk-ak Soma.”
The epithet escaped O Chaemu’s lips like a stone.
It was the name of a great demon who had soaked the Murim in blood decades ago.
Yes. The impossible had come to pass.

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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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