My Father Is the Number One Under Heaven - Chapter 9

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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 9. At the beginning of all suffering, he was there
Even the dwellings of the celebrated and mighty could hardly be more splendid than this.
A building so tall it seemed to touch the moon hanging bright above was adorned with enchanting light, glittering with ostentatious beauty.
This was Qinghua Tower.
The most lavish and largest pleasure house in all of Sichuan, and tonight Qinghua Tower’s air was thick with sultry laughter.
“Hahahaha!”
“Hohoho!”
On the highest floor of Qinghua Tower stood only two rooms.
These rooms were not for anyone to enter.
Only certain people could set foot within them.
Either those who held the greatest power in Sichuan, or those who possessed the greatest wealth.
From one of these rooms tonight, singing spilled forth.
“You seem to be in excellent spirits this evening, First Young Master?”
A man with sharp, penetrating eyes that cut through the decadent atmosphere occupied the place of honor, drinking steadily.
Around him, four or five sword-bearing men showed flushed faces, their intoxication evident.
At his subordinate’s words, the man in the seat of honor let out a low chuckle.
“Is that so.”
“Indeed. Something fortunate must have happened, sir.”
“Hmm, something fortunate, you say… Heh. Yes, there is. Something quite fortunate.”
“Might I inquire what it is?”
The man called First Young Master tilted the cup to his lips.
Then, slowly, he began his tale.
“There was a flower I had long admired.”
Ah.
Everyone in the room perked up, ears keen.
A love story from the First Young Master—how unexpected.
“Uncharacteristically, I was smitten at first sight. I thought, as always, my heart would wither quickly enough. Yet it persisted far longer than I imagined. A curious thing, truly.”
“Surely you jest, First Young Master. Such pure feelings in one like you?”
“Hmm. Pure feelings, you say… Well, perhaps.”
All around him wore expressions of surprise.
The man gave a low laugh, then continued his story.
“So I meant to possess her. I was rather curious, you see.”
“Curious about what, sir?”
To their knowledge, he was colder, more savage, and more tyrannical than anyone they knew.
Hearing such a man speak of pure love, they all leaned closer, ears straining.
And yet—
“If I were to keep that radiant flower beside me, crushing and trampling it slowly, slowly… what expression would cross her face? And what would I feel, I wonder?”
A chill ran through the room.
As the man smiled with those words, everyone present felt their hair stand on end.
Madness—it was a smile born of madness.
The kind that chilled all who beheld it.
He was not in his right mind, after all.
Their First Young Master.
And that was precisely what made him so terrifying.
This man.
His gaze, as though something fundamental within him had shattered, always awakened dread in those who looked upon him.
The First Young Master continued to sip his wine.
‘…But in the end, I could not have her.’
For all his confidence, he had never imagined she would simply vanish like that.
Least of all with some unknown scholar nobody had ever heard of.
‘Heh. An amusing world, isn’t it.’
Because of that incident, many had mocked him behind his back afterward, but he scarcely cared.
He merely felt regret.
That his desires could not be fulfilled.
Years had passed since then. And now, at last… he had found her.
The place where she was.
That flower would surely begin to wilt slowly, excruciatingly, in suffering.
And soon enough, she would lose that radiance.
Because he would make it so.
A twisted smile spread across his face.
The man laughed without realizing it.
Corrupted Blood Poison.
One of the most notoriously vile toxins among nerve poisons.
The poison’s symptoms progressed with agonizing slowness—so gradual that even those with considerable knowledge of toxins would rarely detect it without close scrutiny.
At first, vital energy drained from the body bit by bit, and then came suffering beyond imagination, with every limb and joint aching as though hammered repeatedly.
Next, the nerves would go numb, starting from the extremities and creeping toward the head, until finally the victim could no longer draw a proper breath—gasping, choking, suffocating at last into death.
Compared to poisons that granted a swift end, this was unquestionably a cruel and heinous death.
‘How much he will suffer. What expression will cross his face when at last his lungs seize and he chokes to death. Ah, ah.’
The mere thought of it sent the man into rapture.
Everything was satisfactory—save only for the single regret that he could not witness it himself.
Failure was never a question.
The man he had sent was among his most skilled subordinates, one of the earliest to pledge loyalty to him—deft in handling poisons and formidable in Martial Arts.
One of the elite ten within the entire family.
So he harbored not the slightest doubt that even the remotest chance of failure was impossible.
“Keh, keh keh keh…….”
The man at the head seat drained another cup of wine into his mouth.
Tonight, the wine tasted especially sweet.
***
“…Dang Gu-hui?”
Yeo Un-hui’s face clouded with confusion.
A name that had never crossed his mind had suddenly tumbled out.
And moreover,
“You mean the eldest son of the Sichuan Tang Family?”
“Yes, that… that would be correct.”
Hung-su, his body ravaged by Yeo Un-hui’s assault, nodded breathlessly.
‘Hmm. The Sichuan Tang Family, then…….’
The emergence of such a formidable name was unexpected.
The Sichuan Tang Family.
One of the Five Great Families that dominate the Martial World—so renowned for Hidden Weapons as supreme first, Poison Technique second, and Martial Arts third, that they are called unrivaled under heaven in the domains of concealed weaponry and toxicology.
And yet,
“Why would the eldest son of the Sichuan Tang Family wish to kill my wife?”
“You were not aware?”
“Of what?”
“That the eldest son harbored admiration for your wife is a matter of common knowledge among many. For that reason, the Sichuan Tang Family even pressed forward with marriage negotiations despite the obstacles.”
Had such a thing occurred?
This was the first Yeo Un-hui had heard of it.
He had simply fled, evading her family’s relentless opposition to his union with his wife.
He had never imagined there were other circumstances at play.
In any case, not long after the Sichuan Tang Family had extended those marriage proposals, Dang Gu-hui came to hear that the woman he had sought in matrimony had eloped under cover of night with a mere scholar.
‘And that scholar was me.’
Moreover, when it became known that the man she had chosen was but an orphan-born scholar without any noteworthy station, Dang Gu-hui’s standing was said to have become thoroughly ridiculous.
“…So he tried to kill her?”
“In the Martial World, men live and die for face. That alone is reason enough.”
“That is precisely why I despise you Martial World people.”
“What do you——”
Hung-su’s face twisted in incomprehension at Yeo Un-hui’s words.
Was he saying he was not a Martial World person?
When he possessed such Martial Arts?
“Hmm.”
Upon reflection, Hung-su thought the provocation was indeed sufficient cause for rage.
But the methods Dang Gu-hui had employed had long since crossed every conceivable line.
No matter how angered one became, what manner of man would resort to such abominable deeds?
And above all, Yeo Un-hui had already lost his wife once to Dang Gu-hui in his previous life.
It had begun then.
The start of that entire hell.
At the time, he could never have imagined.
That there existed another architect behind all of it.
His own helplessness and shame at losing his wife without understanding anything burned with fury.
And,
‘Dang Gu-hui…….’
The position of eldest son of the Sichuan Tang Family was once a figure that Yeo Un-hui could never have dared to challenge.
But now things were different.
Yeo Un-hui turned over Dang Gu-hui’s name in his mind.
“Then release me now.”
“Why should I?”
“Did I not tell you? I come from the Sichuan Tang Family. And all of this—every bit of it—was ordered by the eldest son of the Sichuan Tang Family.”
“So?”
“You’re not foolish enough to make an enemy of the Sichuan Tang Family, are you?”
There is a saying known throughout the Martial World.
The Sichuan Tang Family never forgets a debt.
Whether it be a favor or a grudge.
Moreover, the Sichuan Tang Family was a clan that would stop at nothing in pursuit of its aims, and to guard the secrets of their poison arts, even sons-in-law had to enter the family as permanent residents—a place where the very concept of mercy had long since died.
So among the martial practitioners, there was an overwhelming tendency to avoid making enemies of the Sichuan Tang Family at all costs.
No one wished to be poisoned by their hand, nor to have dozens or hundreds of Hidden Blades come flying at their face.
“You’ll regret this. Even now, if you abandon these foolish thoughts…….”
“Who says so?”
Yeo Un-hui cut short the words of Hung-su, who spoke with such arrogance despite his tattered state.
“The Sichuan Tang Family may never forget a debt, but neither do I.”
“……!”
“And let me make one thing clear.”
Yeo Un-hui’s eyes began to shine with an utterly frigid light.
“This began because of you. So this is vengeance. Vengeance for those who are mine, whom you dared to touch and harm.”
‘What… what kind of eyes are those…….’
Could these be the eyes of the legendary Heavenly Killing Star, said to bring bloodbaths of terror upon the Martial World?
Hung-su, meeting Yeo Un-hui’s gaze, found himself trembling without knowing why.
Though he was among the most skilled in the Sichuan Tang Family, before this man he was paralyzed like a rabbit facing a viper.
Step by step.
Yeo Un-hui drew closer to Hung-su.
“P-please… spare me.”
“Have you ever spared anyone you’ve spoken with before?”
“That is… I…….”
“You wouldn’t have had the chance to spare them. Not those people.”
Not even his wife from his past life.
“So be silent… and die.”
Yeo Un-hui’s hand covered the man’s face.
And then,
A terrible shriek tore through the air.
An enormous torrent of light poured forth from Yeo Un-hui’s hand.
“K-kuh, kughhhhhhhhhhhh……!”
A scream so dreadful that merely to hear it sent chills through the spine echoed through the forest for a long time.
It was certainly one of the most agonizing deaths in the world.
For a master of the Sichuan Tang Family—one of the Five Great Families of the Martial World—it was an end of utter degradation.
Yeo Un-hui dusted off his hands and then turned his gaze eastward.
“It seems I must make a journey.”
That direction held Sichuan.
And so it began.
The hour of vengeance.

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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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