The Reincarnated Hunter Sweeps Up All Fortunes - Chapter 41

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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 41
41
Im Gang regained his senses and headed toward the Market District.
Property values falling was inevitable.
If something couldn’t be avoided, the prudent thing was to make the best of it.
But.
Even that showed he’d failed to grasp how serious things had become.
Slash!
Just before entering the Market District.
As he passed beside an alley, a blade of light suddenly lashed out from within it.
“……!”
Im Gang twisted his head by instinct. The blade whistled past, so close it nearly grazed his nose. Had he been a heartbeat slower, his face would’ve been split open.
His hand flew to his sword hilt. But the assailant stood frozen in the alley, sword still raised, looking more startled than Im Gang himself.
‘A member of the Heterodox Sects?’
His clothing marked him as part of some martial sect. Im Gang couldn’t identify which one exactly, but it was clearly one of Hangzhou’s Heterodox Sects.
The Heterodox Sect martial artist stood there stammering, unable even to lower his blade.
Im Gang fixed him with a cold stare.
“Why did you attack me?”
“That is… I…”
“Why did you attack me!”
The sharp edge in Im Gang’s voice made the Heterodox Sect martial artist flinch.
Passersby scattered around them, averting their eyes.
No one stepped in.
Everyone in Hangzhou’s Market District understood how things worked.
“Do you know who I am? Do you know!”
“I-I’m sorry! I thought you were one of the Hoxue Sect!”
At Im Gang’s assured demeanor, the Heterodox Sect martial artist quickly bowed.
He’d mistaken him for someone with actual backing.
‘The Hoxue Sect?’
He’d never heard of them. Why did that matter anyway? If he’d attacked the wrong person, he should apologize first—not start blaming the Hoxue Sect.
‘I should just beat him down while I’m at it…’
Im Gang seriously considered it.
In the current atmosphere, one more dead Heterodox Sect member would raise no eyebrows.
Besides, the man had threatened his life first—self-defense was entirely justified.
But this time he decided to let it slide. He didn’t want to get tangled up in complications. And if he was going to kill someone, he’d find them at night and do it quietly, without witnesses.
Killing him here in broad daylight would only invite trouble.
“Fine. Get out of here. And tell the others—don’t attack me. Next time, I won’t be so generous.”
“Yes, sir!”
The Heterodox Sect martial artist bolted without even sheathing his sword.
Im Gang exhaled deeply and resumed his path. To his usual spot—the noodle cart.
But.
“…Shop owner?”
When he reached the noodle cart, the proprietor looked half-dead.
The ladle in his hand hung limp and useless, his eyes vacant and hollow. The usual vitality was gone; he looked like a man with his soul torn out.
“Ah… welcome, customer.”
“What happened?”
“Just now… a regular customer who was eating noodles here… was stabbed to death right before my eyes.”
“…….”
Im Gang fell silent for a moment. This was serious. Seriously serious.
‘Don’t these Heterodox Sect bastards have any limits?’
People had grown numb enough to overlook brawls between Heterodox Sect factions because such violence typically happened in the Slums, back alleys, taverns, and weapon shops—places where the common crowd didn’t venture.
The Market District was Hangzhou’s commercial heart.
A killing here rippled through the entire district.
Merchants grew too anxious to conduct business, customers too frightened to come.
In the end, it devastated Hangzhou’s entire economy.
This crossed every line imaginable.
‘What are the authorities doing?’
Im Gang’s brow furrowed.
Before, a single rumor about a drug den operating in a Heterodox Sect slum was enough to mobilize the authorities—they’d swept it clean without a second thought.
It had been the same even during the Yan Wang Chai incident.
This time, people are dying in the streets, and the authorities aren’t lifting a finger.
It doesn’t make sense by any rational measure.
‘Wait… could it be…?’
Something clicked rapidly into place in his mind.
The authorities weren’t moving.
They weren’t unable to move—they were choosing not to.
With so many people dying, they had to know what was happening. Yet they turned a blind eye.
There could only be one conclusion.
‘The Hangzhou Three Tyrants have made a deal with the authorities.’
If the Three Tyrants had started this to clean out some of the Heterodox Sects, then the authorities had agreed to look the other way until the job was finished.
In Hangzhou—and throughout the martial world—this was a common practice, a standard transaction.
One could call it collusion without exaggeration.
Both the Three Tyrants and the authorities stood to gain, which made it possible.
From the authorities’ perspective especially, having troublesome sects eliminated without lifting a hand was the ideal arrangement.
Pocket a suitable bribe, grow richer for it, and smile all the way home.
He exhaled slowly.
Im Gang finally grasped the full gravity of the situation.
It was far worse—far, far worse—than he’d realized.
This wouldn’t settle down until the cleanup was completely finished.
With each passing day, things would only escalate.
The sects marked for elimination would fight tooth and nail for their survival.
‘Maybe I really should leave Hangzhou for a while…’
As Im Gang finished his bowl of noodles, he turned the question over seriously in his mind.
He began to regret rejecting Baek’s offer to leave together. But it was too late now—Baek had departed yesterday.
‘Should I leave now?’
But where would he go?
Im Gang considered it.
Leaving immediately wasn’t practical.
He’d never traveled anywhere but Hangzhou.
The farthest he’d ventured was to a neighboring village, and there was truly nothing there—just a few hundred villagers, mostly elderly, with few young or middle-aged people to speak of.
It was a self-sufficient place, producing only the bare necessities for survival.
What would he even do there, or how would he live?
No commissions, no treasure, no dungeons… or rather, no secret formations either.
Literally nothing.
‘I need to think this through more carefully.’
Im Gang set down payment for the noodles and stood to leave.
On the way back, he bought groceries and cooking utensils. Staying out would only invite danger, so he planned to stay indoors for a while and prepare his own meals.
In the meantime, he’d think about where to go if he decided to leave Hangzhou.
By evening, he’d retrieved old memories from his past life and begun cooking.
“Right, I’ll cut this one like this, stir-fry that one like so…”
He’d never been skilled at cooking in his previous life, but he wasn’t incompetent either.
He’d spent a month inside a Gate before.
Cooking was practically a necessity in such circumstances.
So he’d developed a decent hand at it—or so he thought.
“…Huh?”
But as he actually cooked, something felt off.
He added soy sauce but the color wouldn’t deepen; he minced garlic but the aroma was strange; he seared meat but the texture was off and a gamey smell lingered.
‘Maybe it’s been too long since I cooked…’
Im Gang assumed his touch had grown rusty and took a taste.
“—Blegh.”
No. That wasn’t it.
He was simply terrible at cooking.
The truth was simple.
He’d tried to make Korean dishes using Chinese ingredients.
The soy sauce was a different base entirely; the garlic had never been selectively bred; the meat came from animals raised on natural feed, not modern grain. Korean recipes from his past life simply wouldn’t translate directly—the chemistry was all wrong.
He exhaled heavily.
Not understanding the reason, Im Gang simply stared vacantly at the ruined dish.
A whole pile of ingredients wasted. A few coins gone with it.
For the first time in a while, he felt the sting of losing money.
‘I’ll just have to eat out…’
Never again… I swear I’ll never cook again!
* * *
While I kept my outings to an absolute minimum.
“Aaahhh!”
Bang!
“S-somebody, help…….”
From outside the house came repeated sounds of people being struck down by blades and collapsing.
About five times, give or take.
‘…I can practically hear my property value tanking.’
Im Gang lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, and heaved a long sigh.
He’d scraped together money diligently to buy this place, and with Hangzhou in this state, he could practically watch his home’s value plummet before his eyes.
Lying around staring at the ceiling all day left his back sore and his mind restless.
‘Ugh… when will this ever end…….’
The next day, boredom was driving him mad, so he decided to exercise in the courtyard.
If he just lay there, the ‘property-value-destroying’ chaos happening outside might start happening inside too.
What they call dying alone, in other words.
He went straight to the courtyard and did a workout: one hundred squats, one hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, and more.
“Ahhh. This feels good!”
It wasn’t exercise for its own sake. The Great Power Breaking Technique was fundamentally built on the External Cultivation Method. The more you trained your body, the better the results showed.
Besides, stronger muscles meant faster sword work. In games, archers pour points into agility, but in reality, without the arm strength to draw the bowstring, you’re finished.
Martial artists followed the same principle.
After finishing his workout, he practiced the techniques he’d recently acquired. Anything below the second tier barely registered as impressive when you used it—he couldn’t tell what the big deal was supposed to be.
But the moment you crossed into the third tier, you could really feel the difference.
‘First… the Wall-Breaking Finger Technique.’
Shang-sheng Academy’s Wall-Breaking Finger Technique had already reached the third tier, so he could exercise fairly precise control over its power.
He fired it weakly at first.
Pssh—!
A finger gust no larger than a booger flew out and struck a thin branch.
The severed branch fell to the ground.
The cross-section was jagged, as if torn away by sharp claws.
‘So this is what the third tier can do.’
The Wall-Breaking Finger Technique was primarily a wind-based martial art, but it wasn’t limited to using wind alone.
‘Launched, it becomes finger gust; not launched, it becomes finger energy.’
Finger energy was, in simple terms, like sword energy projected through your fingertips.
He picked up a stone and pressed it smoothly with a finger wrapped in finger energy.
Whirrrr—!
“…Oh.”
It made a drilling sound, boring a hole straight through the stone.
If you didn’t concentrate it on a single finger but spread it wide across the palm and struck with it, that was palm technique; if you used the back of your hand, that was fist technique.
Since the power wasn’t amplified by running through acupoint meridians, it was weaker than true palm or fist techniques.
‘Next…… the Chasing Thunder Palm and the Responding Wind Hand.’
Im Gang deployed the Chasing Thunder Palm first.
Crash—!
The Chasing Thunder Palm lived up to its name.
Rather than opening his palm fully as he extended his hand, he kept it half-closed until the very last moment, reducing air resistance and making it faster.
This time he threw a branch and released his internal energy. The palm force of the Chasing Thunder Palm split the branch into several pieces like lightning.
Next came the Responding Wind Hand.
Whish—!
The Responding Wind Hand was unpredictable, like wind that could come from nowhere.
A hand sweep wasn’t where the technique ended. It twisted slightly, then swept in another direction, and when his elbow turned, it spiraled away in yet another path.
The form wasn’t simply a hand sweep—it constantly shifted, utilizing the wrist, elbow, and shoulder all at once.
Ding!
[The First Tier Chasing Thunder Palm skill has risen to Second Tier.]
Ding!
[The Second Tier Responding Wind Hand skill has risen to Second Tier.]
‘Oh.’
Im Gang’s eyes widened.

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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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