The Reincarnated Hunter Sweeps Up All Fortunes - Chapter 23

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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 23
Episode 23
According to scholarly consensus in the Martial World, over fifty percent of all Fortuitous Encounters occur on cliffs.
You might think that makes no sense, but remarkably, it does.
Even a gentle hillside behind a village, if you fall from it, will have a cliff steep enough somewhere to break a bone or snap your neck — that’s the baseline.
Go higher, and your odds of death climb to seventy percent. At places famous as great peaks, the cliff beneath is so sheer you can’t see the bottom — ninety-eight percent fatality rate.
If you’re lucky, you live.
How?
Sometimes trees grow partway down the cliff, or there’s a cave tucked into the rock face. Land there instead of the bottom, and you might survive. Headfirst is still a death sentence, but a fall on your arms or legs means broken bones — survivable, at least for the moment.
And when the scholarly principle holds true, you gain a Fortuitous Encounter.
That’s the real nature of cliff Opportunities.
‘A Fortuitous Encounter you have to nearly die to claim. The entry fee is steep.’
The cliff Im Gang had been hired to explore wasn’t some gentle hillside — it rose considerably higher.
By mortality rates, it hovered around seventy percent. That meant seven out of ten would die on impact, and three would crawl away with shattered bones.
Those three wouldn’t be in good shape either. They’d be dead within days.
The one mercy was that a Plank Road existed here.
A Plank Road is a narrow path carved into a cliff face, built from wood and stone wedged into the rock.
They’re sometimes installed in places where crossing is otherwise impossible, but when maintenance lapses, you end up betting your life with every step.
Creak.
An ominous sound with each footfall.
The wooden boards beneath him groaned like sun-bleached bone.
Iron bolts driven into the support columns had rusted, and any one might give way at any moment.
Im Gang pressed himself against the cliff face, moving with meticulous care, one step at a time.
‘God, this is terrifying.’
Terror came from more than just the abyss.
Looking up or behind, mercenaries moved before and after him — and nearly half were affiliated with the Nanginyeon, a gang notorious throughout Hangzhou.
These men looked like they’d swallowed something all morning. Their eyes had the glassy, unfocused stare of addicts.
Not a single pair of eyes looked sane.
‘What was the hiring party thinking, bringing in scum like this?’
By pure skill, they were worth hiring. There were five second-rate fighters here, and the third-rate ones reeked of blood so thickly he didn’t need to draw a blade to see it. Their eyes told him everything.
They’d killed before. Killed many times.
The problem was their reputation.
Drug trafficking, rape, human trafficking — the list went on.
According to rumor, they were involved in every atrocity a vicious gang could touch.
Hearsay, perhaps, but still.
‘…… Though it feels genuine enough.’
Im Gang studied the back of a Nanginyeon member walking ahead.
Dried blood was vivid on his sword hilt.
There were two kinds of men who didn’t wash blood from their blades.
Those too lazy to bother, and those who refused deliberately.
The former were idiots. The latter were sadists.
From what he could tell, these fell into the latter category.
Actually.
Forget intuition — those eyes alone left no doubt whatsoever.
Men like this were fundamentally dangerous.
During a contract, they might draw steel on an employer or fellow mercenary for no reason beyond boredom, or simple lust for violence.
Because of this, Im Gang couldn’t relax his vigilance for a single moment.
The non-Nanginyeon mercenaries felt the same tension.
Before sunset, they abandoned their search of the Plank Road and returned.
At the Campsite, the group naturally split in two.
The Nanginyeon men lit a bonfire and drank, their laughter crude and loud.
Im Gang and the other (supposedly) regular mercenaries gathered on the opposite side.
No one had decided it; they simply gravitated away, an instinctive divide.
The Nanginyeon men noticed and smirked at the sight.
“Hey, look at those little rats over there.”
“Hehehehe. Scared, are they?”
“Later, we’ll drag some of them over…….”
‘Damn…… I can’t slaughter all of them.’
Im Gang ground his teeth in silent fury.
“Hell, I wouldn’t have come if I’d known these bastards were in on it.”
“Me too.”
“But the work’s dried up in Hangzhou lately, so I came.”
“If I’d known those bastards were here, I wouldn’t have shown up.”
“……That’s true enough.”
As the mercenaries muttered among themselves, Im Gang added another thought in silence.
‘That Baek bastard sold me out…….’
He’d mentioned there were troublemakers in the area. But aside from that, he’d said the job would be quick and the pay was good.
When Im Gang got back, he had a mountain of things to settle with Sa Hyung.
* * *
Early the next morning.
The search resumed. He didn’t know what he was looking for. It was absurd, but true.
The client’s instructions had been simple.
-Find anything suspicious.
Find what, exactly?
Da Mu Mun, buried in that cave, suddenly came to mind.
The feeling was oddly similar to that time.
His master had once told him about how to find Opportunities.
-You don’t find Opportunities. They just happen to roll your way.
So in a way, this was like that.
Being told to find something suspicious meant honestly not knowing anything at all.
Something’s out there. Here’s money—search hard for it.
Basically something like that, probably.
If that was right, then Da Mu Mun’s luck in discovering that cave was ridiculously good.
‘What about here?’
Im Gang activated his Map Skill and Treasure Exploration, moving along the Plank Road.
The entire morning yielded nothing remarkable.
A few white dots appeared on his map, but they were Normal Grade—he ignored them. He did find one Jade Orb in a bird’s nest caught on a branch, but it wasn’t even worth equipping as an item.
He picked it up anyway since it would fetch some money.
As time passed and the sun began its descent westward.
A yellow dot appeared on his map.
‘……!’
Im Gang’s heart began to race.
There wasn’t just one yellow dot.
Roughly six of them were clustered close together.
‘Oh, shit.’
All Yellow Grade Items.
In terms of martial arts, that meant six Peak Grade items.
But why were so many gathered in one place like this?
When he’d found the Great Demonic Technique, there’d been only one Yellow Grade Item. Six clustered together meant someone had deliberately stored them there.
Or they were forced to gather in one spot.
‘A secret cache? Or a Reclusive Hermit’s hideaway?’
He checked the location. Roughly ten zhang—about thirty meters—ahead and below. Soon the exact position locked in. And he discovered a major problem.
The yellow dots were far, far beneath him. So far that even stretching his head out wouldn’t let him see them. And there was no Plank Road either.
Honestly, the absence of a Plank Road wasn’t surprising.
Everyone who’d tried to install one must have died doing it.
He considered climbing back up and descending with a rope.
Even a standard rope wouldn’t be long enough.
It’d need to be over fifty meters. There was no way he had rope that long. Even if he could make it, the descent wouldn’t be simple.
While Im Gang wrestled with the problem.
“Kyaaaagh!”
A scream echoed from above.
And then.
Whoosh—!
A shadow flashed past his eyes and plummeted downward. Startled, he looked down to see a figure flailing and falling. Soon came a dull thud, and the screaming stopped.
Then silence.
“W-what happened?!”
“Someone fell from above!”
“Above? Don’t tell me there’s a fight going on?!”
The mercenaries searching along the Plank Road erupted in confused murmurs.
In that chaos, another person fell.
Not just one this time. Multiple.
Some bore the marks of Nanginyeon, while others wore unfamiliar robes entirely.
Two shadows tumbled down entwined together, which meant they’d grappled before plummeting from above.
“Up—there’s fighting happening up there!”
There was no doubt.
A battle was raging atop the cliff.
Against whom?
Everyone wondered. But it hardly mattered. Not to the wanderers treading the Plank Road.
There was only one course of action.
“Move! Move faster!”
“Ah—aah! Don’t push! Don’t push, or we’ll fall—aaaahhh!”
One of the wanderers moving frantically lost his footing and plummeted.
Only after this sacrifice did the group fall into proper order—how true to form for wanderers. Though their panic-stricken rush was entirely understandable.
If enemies above so much as hurled stones, there was nowhere to hide. Standing on the narrow, difficult Plank Road was as good as being pinned to a target.
They would simply take hits until they fell to their deaths.
“C-careful! The bridge is swaying!”
……
The wanderers moved forward, cold sweat streaming down their faces.
They picked their way carefully so the Plank Road wouldn’t shake, crawled up the steeper sections on all fours, and with each moment the clash of steel, shouts, and screams drew closer.
The instant the wanderers reached the flat ground atop the cliff, their eyes widened.
“……The Beggar Gang?!”
Figures dressed in beggar’s rags were tangled in combat with members of Nanginyeon.
‘No…… they’re not the Beggar Gang.’
Im Gang swallowed, shaking his head. They looked like beggars, but that was wrong. The smell wasn’t what he knew from the Beggar Gang—it was something else entirely.
Acrid and stale.
Like dried blood set aflame—a sickening stench.
‘Demonic Beings!’
Those who had cultivated Demonic Martial Arts.
That feeling his master had described.
That unmistakable sensation he’d been told one could recognize at a glance.
Every hair on his body bristled as a visceral revulsion washed through him.
“Demonic Beings! Everyone, be careful!”
“D-Demonic Beings?! Why are they here?!”
“Damn it. Does the reason matter? Get ready to fight!”
The wanderers drew their weapons and charged. The battle between Nanginyeon and the Demonic Beings was already well underway. This was an awkward insertion into the melee, but there was no choice.
To retreat, they had to move forward.
Behind them was only cliff.
[Ranged Attack Enhancement and Ranged Homing Skill activate.]
Im Gang did not throw himself into the chaos. Instead, he hurled his Flying Blade from the rear. A lesson learned from the war between the Crimson Blade Faction and the Black Blade Society: the safest position in a chaotic melee is the back.
Screech!
The Flying Blade cut through the air and pierced straight through a Demonic Being’s brow. The blade lodged deep as the creature’s eyes rolled back—normally such a wound meant certain death.
But.
“……What?”
The Demonic Being did not die.
Its head tilted backward with sickening, mechanical jerks—creak, creak, creak—and both eyes snapped directly toward Im Gang, fixing him with a dead stare.
Then it charged forward, black blood streaming from the wound where the blade protruded.
The wanderers ahead tried to run it through with their swords, but it did not slow. Instead, it only grew more frenzied, thrashing wildly.
Its arms flailed indiscriminately at the wanderers blocking its path.
Even allies—other Demonic Beings—became targets if they got in the way.
“Madness……!”
“Why won’t it die?!”
The creature bled black from every wound.
The amount of blood loss was enough that any living creature should have fallen.
Then.
The Demonic Being’s body began to swell.
“……Everyone, get back!”
A bone-chilling sensation seized Im Gang, and he cried out a warning.

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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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