Namgoong the Sword Ghost - Chapter 39

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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 39. The Sword Demon Knows the World Does Not Change
“Guanyin Bodhisattva…… Eight-Armed Celestial King…… please…… please help me. I will do anything at all…….”
With everyone gone, Seo Cheon-gi had nothing left to do but pray to every deity he knew.
He was powerless.
It had never hurt this much, not even when he’d been caught cheating at cards and beaten for it.
‘With my own hands…… I couldn’t even protect one friend…… What am I?’
Crunch!
As his teeth bit into his own lip, the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth.
“Meow!”
Wol-myeo, left behind with him, cried out sharply as if in rebuke.
“……I’m sorry.”
“Mew-meow!”
Wol-myeo padded over and nestled into Seo Cheon-gi’s arms.
Finding comfort in that warmth, Seo Cheon-gi prayed again and again.
“Nangung… please. I beg you.”
* * *
Crack! Crackle!
“Hmm…….”
At that very moment, Ho Yeon held an assassin in night garb by the throat.
The assassin’s entire body trembled, but he was already past saving.
Whoosh! Thud!
As Ho Yeon released his grip, the assassin’s corpse convulsed and crumpled to the ground.
The skin beneath clothes scorched by lightning was covered entirely in branching burn scars.
“Yes! We won!”
“Ha! Did you see? I am Sung Hyo-wol, fourth son of the family patriarch!”
“Hehehehe! We have cut down the villains of Goe-dong Jidan!”
“The Just Path Knows No Gate! With righteousness burning in your heart, nothing can stand before you!”
The surrounding disciples were crying out in jubilation.
Most of them had merely struck down assassins weakened by Ho Yeon’s Cheon-noe-gi or delivered finishing blows to those already fallen, but that mattered little to them.
“……What is this?”
Amid the festive atmosphere,
Ho Yeon’s expression remained grim.
“There’s still too much room. This shouldn’t be possible.”
Ho Yeon sensed lightning crackling in his Gihai-hyeol and tilted his head in puzzlement.
There had been no sudden growth in recent days, yet the battle felt easier than anticipated.
If the reason lay not with him,
“The assassins’ level has…… dropped?”
A furrow deepened between Ho Yeon’s brows.
Just last night, he’d confirmed there were more than thirty first-class assassins.
Yet when the fighting actually began, though their numbers had increased, he’d sensed something hollow about them—like rice cakes with no filling.
“Something is wrong.”
As Ho Yeon muttered this, gripped by an ominous premonition,
a sharp cry tore through the courtyard.
“Brother!”
“Yul?”
“Huff! Huff! Gasp!”
The tousle-haired boy who came running, breathing heavily, was Mo Yong-yul, assigned to the rescue mission.
“The operation—did it succeed?”
“Well, that is…… it…….”
Mo Yong-yul, catching his breath, hesitated before answering.
Tears pooled in the blue eyes visible through his disheveled hair.
“The children’s condition is…… strange!”
“……What?”
“They’re unconscious…… lying as if their very souls have been torn away!”
“……!”
* * *
Ill omens rarely lead one astray.
Torch! Torch! Torch-light!
Do-hwa Ma-bang was surrounded by dozens of torches.
People from Baek-yak Sanjang, having received word, had arrived.
They were extracting children one by one from the secret chamber beneath the stable—all of them Silhonin, their souls stripped away.
“How could such a thing….”
“This isn’t work fit for human hands!”
“All those connected to this matter deserve extermination of their entire line!”
“This is no longer merely the Baekga Geomhoe’s concern! To perpetrate such atrocities here in Dandong!”
The people of Baek-yak Sanjang transferred the limp children onto stretchers, their fury mounting.
Though they were strangers—nameless, faceless—their small, fragile lives were guttering out before them.
“No! Please! Na-rin! Open your eyes! Na-rin!”
Seo Cheon-gi, clutching the stretcher bearing one small girl, collapsed into wrenching sobs.
Ho Yeon watched the scene in silence before speaking.
“What’s the cause?”
“I can’t say for certain.”
Dang Se-gi answered with his jaw set firm.
“What we can confirm is that it isn’t poisoning.”
“Malevolent sorcery, then?”
“That’s our best theory for now. Most likely the Soul-Seizing Art or Soul-Confounding Art variety.”
“Hmm, the Jinzhu Eonga didn’t attend the Baekga Geomhoe gathering. They’d know sorcery well….”
Sang-gwan Hae bit his lip as he spoke, and Ho Yeon turned to him with a question.
“The Jinzhu Eonga? Why would they know sorcery?”
“You don’t know them?”
“…Not in detail.”
“Remarkable—you’re a puzzle. The Eonga are keepers of corpse arts, originally a family of death-rite masters who transformed into a martial clan a century ago.”
Dang Se-gi added his own word to the explanation.
“They were treated as heretical at first, but given their righteous conduct and principles, Master Geom-je admitted them to the Baekga Maeng.”
“Still, there’s lingering suspicion, so they rarely attend such gatherings.”
“One who works with poison understands their plight. It’s the person that matters, not the instrument—the tool itself bears no fault.”
“In any case, we’ll need the Eonga’s help to understand the children’s condition precisely.”
Ho Yeon nodded at Sang-gwan Hae’s words and glanced to the side.
Mo Yong-yul stood motionless, watching Seo Cheon-gi’s anguished cries.
“Have you steadied yourself?”
“…Yes. I apologize for such an unseemly display.”
“It’s only natural—few children could bear such a sight.”
Ho Yeon turned his gaze toward where Baekga Geomdan Team Three had gathered.
The junior swordsmen, having dealt with the assassins and riding high on their success moments before, now stood uniformly stunned.
A frog peering out from its well faces only two choices.
Sink deeper into the darkness below, or scrape its way up the walls to escape the well’s rim.
“How do you remain so composed?” Mo Yong-yul asked, his voice trembling.
Ho Yeon glanced at him before answering.
Ho Yeon regarded him briefly, then spoke.
“Expect nothing.”
“From whom?”
“The world.”
Mo Yong-yul was struck hard by Ho Yeon’s blunt reply.
“There are things you needn’t understand yet. You’re still a child.”
“Adults have their reasons.”
Ho Yeon had always treated him as a child.
Mo Yong-yul had assumed it was mockery, but now he wondered if it might be something else.
‘What sort of life have you lived, to speak that way?’
Mo Yong-yul studied Ho Yeon’s face more carefully.
His expression was blank, yet somehow suffused with sorrow.
“I…don’t understand much of this.”
“Seeking answers to everything is a mark of immaturity. This world offers no answers.”
Footstep after footstep.
Ho Yeon turned and walked away toward some unseen destination.
“Where are you going?”
“Stay here. I’ll take a brief walk.”
“But…?”
Ho Yeon vanished from sight in an instant, and so Mo Yong-yul did not see them.
A pair of crimson eyes, gleaming brilliantly in the moonlight.
Once distance had opened between him and the others, Ho Yeon suddenly burst into wild, hollow laughter.
“Heh, hehehehe!”
Snap.
His laughter cut short abruptly, and Ho Yeon twisted his lips into a thin smile, muttering to himself.
“Everything remains the same. The world hasn’t changed one bit in three hundred years…….”
* * *
“Good evening.”
“Yes?”
“Do you stock medicinal herbs?”
Ho Yeon had arrived at the apothecary he’d found the day before and now addressed its proprietor.
“……Business is closed for the day. Please call again tomorrow.”
The proprietor, sizing up Ho Yeon with a dismissive glance, made a shooing gesture.
Step, step, step.
But Ho Yeon didn’t slow his pace and strode directly into the shop.
“What, what are you doing? I’ll call for someone!”
“Go ahead.”
“Who exactly are you—hack!”
The proprietor, about to protest, found himself completely overwhelmed by the piercing brilliance of Ho Yeon’s eyes.
Chill.
Those eyes blazed with an eerie, sinister aura—the eyes of a ghost itself.
“What are you doing?”
“……Your, your business here?”
The proprietor asked in a trembling voice, and Ho Yeon tilted his head with a questioning expression.
“You said you’d call for someone. I’m telling you to call.”
“I, I don’t…….”
“You’re Hao-mun, aren’t you?”
“……!”
At Ho Yeon’s words, the proprietor’s eyes widened in shock.
“How, how did you……?”
“Your friend told me.”
“That’s…… impossible…….”
The proprietor muttered in disbelief.
Ho Yeon drew a small dagger for trimming herbs from a basket on the display counter and smiled coolly.
“The sect leader ordered you to observe and report my every move and action directly, didn’t he?”
“…….”
“I don’t know who the current Hao-mun leader is, but are you truly eager to forge another grudge with me?”
Ho Yeon narrowed his eyes as he spoke these loaded words.
Had he still been the Sword Demon, this proprietor would not have lived to see another dawn.
To pursue someone who was a public enemy of the martial realm could never be called righteous intent.
‘Yet now I am Nam-gung Ho Yeon. My only grudge against Hao-mun is smashing their challenge tower in Simp-yang—and even that was self-defense.’
“To live is to forge connections. You have accumulated far too many bitter grudges, and sought only to sever them all with the blade. I pray that in your next life, you will cultivate good fortune instead…….”
Above all, it was the old man Nangung Cheon-gang’s words that echoed in Ho Yeon’s mind, which is why he spared this proprietor’s life.
“Choose. Will you bind yourself to me through bitter grudge, or will you attempt to build good fortune instead?”
“……What, what is it that you want? If it’s about what happened at Do-hwa Ma-bang just now, we truly know nothing of it.”
The proprietor glanced nervously at the dagger in Ho Yeon’s hand and spoke in a trembling voice.
Ho Yeon shook his head.
“Never mind that. I have a sense of who the culprit is anyway.”
“Yes?”
“Instead, relay this information as quickly as possible. Tell squads one and two that Goe-dong Jidan’s headquarters is located in Dandong.”
“That, that much we can do…….”
“And send word to Simp-yang as well—tell the Chul-geom Dae, those who grovel under Mo Yong Sega’s roof, that I’m summoning them.”
At Ho Yeon’s words, the proprietor’s eyes widened.
“If you directly mobilize the clan’s forces, you’ll be disqualified from the Baekga Geomhoe……?”
“I don’t care.”
“But……?”
“That Baekga Geomhoe business is starting to bore me anyway.”
With that, Ho Yeon turned and left the apothecary.
An hour later.
Three carrier pigeons took flight from the shop, their wings beating through the night sky above Dandong.
* * *
“Sigh…….”
Mo Yong-yul exhaled slowly, his trembling fingers reaching for the teacup.
This was an annex of Baek-yak Sanjang, and because of the Do-hwa Ma-bang incident, Team Four and Team Five had moved in here as well.
‘…I’ve touched the Salmak.’
Among the Nine Heavenly Murders, the Salmak—which belonged to the Salcheon category—had a notoriety in the Central Plains martial world that yielded to none.
From Baek-yak Sanjang’s perspective, it would be troublesome if a Baekga Geomdan member died in their territory.
‘Come to think of it, it’s strange. How am I still alive?’
Mo Yong-yul took a sip of tea and pondered.
Based on what he had directly witnessed and heard, by rights he should have been assassinated long ago during this gathering of the Baekga Geomhoe.
‘Someone is protecting me.’
Mo Yong-yul gazed into his teacup.
In the calm tea, his own reflection was smiling.
‘It can only be him. He dislikes pretense and formality, so he wouldn’t tell me even if he’d dealt with assassins.’
“If you stay by my side, at least you won’t die in your sleep with a blade through your heart. What do you say? Will you ally with Team Five?”
He was a man of his word.
The fact that Mo Yong-yul was still alive was surely because of his protection.
‘Him. Ho Yeon.’
Mo Yong-yul’s chest swelled with emotion as he closed his eyes.
Then Ho Yeon’s voice seemed to echo clearly before him.
“No matter what others say, don’t lose heart. Your eyes are beautiful as the blue sky. That’s the highest praise Nangung can offer.”
“Isn’t this like a swan in the midst of darkness?”
“It’s a compliment. I like them because they’re like clouds.”
The only one who had ever praised his blue eyes and pale skin.
Someone he wanted to resemble, to follow—someone he owed gratitude to.
“I…wanted to be helpful too….”
That’s why he’d gathered the courage to share one of his secrets.
The operation had been half a success.
Ho Yeon had succeeded in killing the assassins from Do-hwa Ma-bang, but Mo Yong-yul had failed to fully rescue the abducted children.
“Does he think I’m useless…?”
Sudden anxiety gripped Mo Yong-yul like a child, and he brought his thumb to his lips.
Then.
Click!
The door opened, and Ho Yeon spoke to Mo Yong-yul, who had startled.
“Yul. You still have the rat?”
“The, the Red Rat? Yes, I have it here. Seo Cheon-gi hasn’t come back from the Ui-yak-dang yet….”
“Squeak?”
As Mo Yong-yul rummaged through his sleeve, a red rat that had been gnawing at some grain and scraps tumbled out.
“Good. Yul. I need your help. Can you do it?”
Seeing the Red Rat, Ho Yeon nodded and spoke, and Mo Yong-yul’s face broke into a radiant smile.
“Of course! I can do anything!”

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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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