My Younger Siblings Are the Greatest Masters in the World - Chapter 3

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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3.

Bear Man, whose neck was strangled by the rope, groped behind him with his hand to grab the rope.

As he moved forward in that state, Seol Mujin, who was hanging in midair, was dragged upward.

If he continued to be dragged like this, Seol Mujin would inevitably fall.

Seol Mujin pressed both feet against the tree trunk and held his ground.

He bent his body backward as much as possible, but Bear Man’s strength was stronger than his resistance.

Scritch! Scritch!

His soles scraped against the tree as his body was dragged upward.

His right wrist, wrapped twice with rope, turned pale white.

Bear Man desperately tried to insert his fingers inside the noose around his neck.

Though he was using his strength to drag forward, the rope tightly wound around his neck made it impossible to breathe.

The fight between Bear Man dragging and Seol Mujin resisting was truly a death struggle.

Bear Man was suffocating and Seol Mujin felt like his arm would be torn off.

Seol Mujin’s feet were now almost level with the tree branch where the rope was hung.

Seol Mujin moved his left foot to below the tree branch.

“Ugh…”

His knees gradually bent.

His wrist wrapped with rope had long since lost all sensation.

Even superhuman willpower has its limits.

As Seol Mujin’s knees buckled, his body was suddenly yanked upward!

If his rope-wrapped hand hit the tree branch, his fingers would be crushed.

Just as he braced himself for that pain, his rising body suddenly stopped.

Thud!

At that sound, he turned his head to see Bear Man collapsed on the ground.

Bear Man, with his tongue hanging out long, was dead.

Seol Mujin, dangling in the air, caught his breath before climbing up onto the tree branch.

When he unwound the rope from his wrist, blood seeped out.

Fortunately, his stiff fingers moved little by little.

After climbing down from the tree, Seol Mujin confirmed Bear Man’s death once more.

He had finally saved both his own life and the Triplets’ lives.

“Kids!”

Without rest, Seol Mujin ran to where the Triplets had been abandoned.

“Where could this be? Kids! Try crying!”

The weeds were so thick it wasn’t easy to find them.

Then he heard sounds of “Waah! Waah!”

It didn’t sound like crying, but rather like they were calling for Seol Mujin.

Seol Mujin, who found the Triplets by pushing through the bushes, breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’re safe.”

They were safe, but something was strange.

The triplets were lying on top of an overturned basket.

“Why are you doing that?”

There was no way to get an answer from children who couldn’t even speak.

When Seol Mujin tried to lift the triplets off the basket, they slapped his hands away.

“Woo-woo—! Woo-woo-woo—!”

The triplets hit the basket.

As if there was something underneath the basket.

“What is it?”

Thud!

There was something there.

Seol Mujin checked inside through a small gap in the basket.

“A snake?”

It was a yellow rat snake that could be commonly seen in the mountains.

Seol Mujin looked around to confirm no one was there and asked.

“Did you trap it?”

The way they deliberately avoided Seol Mujin’s gaze seemed like they were playing innocent.

‘What are these kids?’

It had been two months since he found the triplets, but he had never seen them cry even once.

It was a bit strange, but he thought they were just gentle children.

But this current situation couldn’t be rationalized by any assumption.

Children who could barely crawl had overturned a basket to trap a snake?

No, recognizing that a snake was dangerous in the first place didn’t make sense.

“Who are you?”

The girl among the triplets tapped the basket urgently as if telling him to deal with the snake quickly.

Right. Let’s deal with the snake first.

Seol Mujin picked up a tree branch with a forked end.

“Thanks to you, I’ll have one meal sorted out.”

***

Hwayang Street in Jinan, Shandong Province was one of Jinan’s most bustling streets.

General stores, restaurants, and daily goods shops lined both sides of the street, tempting passersby with glittering accessories and savory food aromas.

Since it was a crowded place, beggars could often be seen as well.

There were various types, from beggars lying flat and motionless to those shouting loudly for spare change.

Hwa Seonhwa walked along as always, casually scanning the passing scenery.

Just as she was taciturn, her maid quietly followed behind without even opening her mouth.

Hwa Seonhwa’s steps, which had been cutting through the street’s commotion, stopped.

His appearance was unmistakably that of a beggar, but he was different from other beggars.

He appeared to be in his early teens, with disheveled hair and tattered clothes—exactly the appearance of a beggar.

But there were two things that set the boy apart from other beggars.

One was the basket placed beside the boy.

Three newborn babies, as emaciated as the boy himself, lay in a row in the worn basket.

“If you rolled those babies around, they’d turn out like rolled omelets.”

Maid Yeon Seobi said that.

In a dry voice, as if it were nothing.

The other thing that set the boy apart from other beggars was a sign.

At the top of the small sign erected beside the boy was written: ‘I’ll do anything you ask except bad things.’

And below that, in the list of things he was good at, the front part had been erased.

It was painted over so you couldn’t tell what had originally been written.

After erasing about four things, the last phrase written was ‘Many talents.’

And at the very bottom was a part emphasized as required reading.

—Must be a place that can care for these children.

In other words, he would work if they would feed the babies.

“They don’t seem like his siblings, do they? They don’t look alike.”

Since Yeon Seobi had sharp instincts, she was probably right.

How had that boy come to have children who weren’t even his siblings, and why was he trying to save them at the cost of sacrificing himself?

Hwa Seonhwa didn’t believe in human goodness and such things.

Starting as a courtesan at sixteen, she had lived fifteen years as a gisaeng and three years as the owner of a Pleasure House.

She had seen the depths of human evil, and good people were like spring weather—you couldn’t expect them to be consistent.

The curiosity of ‘Why?’ overcame the annoyance that wanted to just pass by.

Hwa Seonhwa went to the street across from the boy.

There was a stall selling Steamed Dumplings, so she sat there.

Without being asked, Yeon Seobi ordered two servings of dumplings.

Since they were taking up space, it was natural to pay.

Hwa Seonhwa watched the boy from there.

It was to resolve two curiosities: ‘Why?’ and ‘Until when?’

Until the sun slowly set, the boy didn’t move an inch.

There were only passersby who occasionally threw small change or clicked their tongues in pity, but no benefactor that the boy wanted appeared.

“Oh my, that child is doing that again today. It’s already been four days. Tsk, tsk, tsk…”

A kind-looking woman clicked her tongue as she passed by.

The curiosity of ‘Until when?’ got a half-answer: four days.

Now ‘Why?’ remained.

To find that out, she would have to ask the boy directly.

The dumplings that Hwa Seonhwa hadn’t even touched had all disappeared into Yeon Seobi’s mouth—not one was visible.

Though she worried whether she was doing something pointless, Hwa Seonhwa eventually went to the boy.

The boy, sensing the shadow cast over him, raised his head.

He licked his cracked lips with his tongue, but his mouth was so dry that no moisture came.

“You can do anything?”

“Except bad things.”

A simple answer to a simple question.

Hwa Seonhwa didn’t waste time asking ‘why?’

Whether she asked or not, she would end up taking the boy anyway.

Now a different ‘why’ followed.

‘Why me?’

The answer that she felt sorry for the boy and babies was cliché.

Most passersby would have felt the same way.

But the passersby just walked past while she embraced the boy.

“Let’s go.”

Hwa Seonhwa said briefly and turned around.

She expected the boy to hurriedly follow, but a question came instead.

“Is there someone to nurse the babies?”

“What if there isn’t?”

“I can’t go.”

‘What a bold little thing.’

Yes, let’s say it was because of those eyes.

She didn’t know the answer to ‘why me?’, but it was because of the boy’s eyes that were different from others.

“There is, so let’s go.”

Only after hearing that answer did the boy shoulder the basket containing the babies.

“Eat this. Drink water too.”

Yeon Seobi gave the boy dumplings and water.

She thought she had eaten everything, but apparently she had hidden some to give to the boy.

Yeon Seobi asked what Hwa Seonhwa found too bothersome to ask.

“What’s your name?”

“Seol Mujin.”

“How old are you?”

“Twelve years old.”

Fortunately, she didn’t ask about his hometown or his parents’ names.

That would have been tedious.

The name of the Pleasure House that Hwa Seonhwa owned was Yeonji-ru.

Lotus ‘yeon’ and pond ‘ji’.

But the meaning of lotus pond was buried by the last two characters ‘ji-ru’.

The joke ‘They say you can last long if you go there’ was now truly tedious.

They sold cheap liquor, the musicians’ skills were mediocre, and the courtesans’ beauty matched the musicians’ performance skills.

Yeonji-ru was that kind of Pleasure House.

As darkness slowly crept in, lanterns were lit.

People who worked like nocturnal animals busily moved around the Pleasure House.

“Take the children to Jang Shimi and feed them milk first.”

Hwa Seonhwa said those words and went into the Pleasure House to prepare for business.

“Follow me.”

Yeon Seobi led Seol Mujin to the back of the Pleasure House.

The building standing like an Annex Building in the Back Garden of the Pleasure House looked shabby, as if it had been converted from a Warehouse.

Still, it was quite spacious.

“Jangsim.”

At Yeon Seobi’s call, the door opened and a woman in her early twenties poked her head out.

“What?”

“You said you were suffering from having too much milk left over, right?”

Jang Shimi’s gaze turned to Seol Mujin and her eyebrows shot up.

“You want me to give charity milk? No way! How can I breastfeed a child I don’t even know!”

“What a load of crap. You don’t even know whose child yours is either.”

“You always have to say things like that…”

“It’s Madam’s order.”

“The, the Madam?”

“Madam said if those children starve, you’ll starve too… so keep that in mind.”

“How petty to threaten me over food. Ugh, disgusting. At least wash him before bringing him around.”

“You wash him since you’re just lying around with nothing to do!”

Seol Mujin spoke up.

“I’ll heat the water myself.”

“Good, I’ll show you the Kitchen so you can scrub off some of that grime in warm water too.”

Yeon Seobi took Seol Mujin to the Kitchen attached to the Annex Building.

“This is the Fireplace and the Firewood is behind the Annex Building if you go around back. The Well is over there beyond the corner of that building. Jangsim! Where are the Fire Embers!”

Jang Shimi’s voice could be heard.

“They’re left under the ashes in the Fireplace!”

“You heard her? I have work to do so I need to go. Do well. If that foul-tempered girl says anything, just think of it as a crazy person ranting and let it go in one ear and out the other.”

Starting a fire and drawing water to pour into the Cauldron wasn’t difficult.

These were chores Seol Mujin had done to death in the Performance Troupe.

In the end, Seol Mujin was the one who bathed the babies.

He let Jang Shimi’s words ‘You should have some shame for receiving charity milk. You give them baths!’ go in one ear and out the other.

Though her temper was foul, her milk flowed well, so Jang Shimi fed all three babies until they were full.

Since there was only one room, the babies shared the same room as Jang Shimi, while Seol Mujin spread Straw on the Kitchen floor and laid out his Blanket.

Though it was an utterly humble sleeping place, it was also utterly cozy.

It had truly been a long time since he slept properly under a real roof.

***

The Bed that Seol Mujin had built with his own hands turned out quite well.

Jang Sabong, who was carrying an armful of Blankets, burst into admiration when she saw the Bed.

“Wow! You made this really well!”

“The cold floor isn’t good for the children. Are you going to do laundry?”

Jang Sabong, well past forty, was someone who did odd jobs at the Pleasure House.

“Let me have those. I’ll come along too.”

“Should we? You don’t need to carry the blankets. We’ll have to load them on the A-frame Carrier anyway.”

Just hearing the word A-frame Carrier made him think of Wang Donggu.

‘I hope my fake ears weren’t discovered?’

The two loaded the A-frame Carrier full of blankets and headed to the Stream.

The Pleasure House’s Well couldn’t handle washing all the blankets.

The winter stream water was so cold it felt like his fingers might fall off, but Seol Mujin diligently did the laundry.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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