The Time-Limited Elixir of the Ruined Clan - 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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A Fading Clan’s Limited Promise — Chapter 39

“You wanted me to set these empty bottles aside, didn’t you?”
‘But why does he look at me like that……?’
There was something subtly unpleasant in the gaze, but Yeop Un, who had lived his whole life making no secret of his natural gifts, had never seen such a look before and failed to recognize it as the contempt one reserves for a fool.
“Right, we’re keeping those separate. Make sure these jars don’t get sent to the trading company.”
“Yes.”
When the boy nodded absently, Dan Mok Ryeon brushed the back of his hand across the boy’s cheek.
He did it as one might pet some small, delicate creature, though their heights were nearly equal, so he had to reach further.
The servant boy, whose face had remained largely impassive throughout, softened just perceptibly in that moment.
“Should we have breakfast first, then? You’ve been busy checking the morning shipments since before dawn…….”
Honestly, Yeop Un would have preferred to finish Dan Mok Ryeon’s errands quickly and move on to discussing martial arts, but his stomach gurgled so loudly that he found himself nodding despite his inclinations.

* * *

The morning air was cold and crystalline.
When the day of the Martial Match between Ryeon and Geum Jong Ha broke, crowds gathered beyond the estate’s outer grounds in noisy anticipation.
‘Burned through it all……in white.’
He’d even climbed the mountain once during the week. His Spiritual Energy had run dry.
‘Never thought a day would come when I’d be short on Spiritual Energy.’
In all honesty, remembering his past life—when he’d suffered so terribly because of Spiritual Energy shortage that he actually died—it felt almost unfair.
‘If only I’d known back then…….’
Ryeon stopped himself from pursuing the futile hypothetical.
For reasons he couldn’t explain, he’d been given another chance, and he was making good use of it now—that was what mattered.
‘We’re doing the Settlement right at the end of this month.’
Normally they settled accounts quarterly, but the Man Song Trading Company had sent word that the figures were growing so large they wanted to do a Settlement this month instead.
Just thinking about money that warranted such haste made him giddy—and then genuinely uneasy.
‘I’ll need to produce another month’s worth at this rate, I think.’
The past week had been a brutal education in what it meant to become a working cog.
‘Damn it…… this isn’t the time to be doing a Martial Match with Geum Ga Jang.’
Cheong Ryeon Su needed to be made and delivered even at this hour. Ryeon swallowed his regret and pushed the thought away.
‘Since it’s come to this, today I’ll face Geum Ga Jang, and then I absolutely have to spar with Yeop Un the Daoist…….’
Yeop Un, who had asked to study with Ryeon once his work was done, had spent the entire past week equally ensnared in the workshop’s machinery.
In fact, halfway through, Ryeon had tried several times to let him go, but Yeop Un had insisted stubbornly, and Tae Heo Jin In had laughed and declared that this sort of work was educational too, so Yeop Un had endured the labor.
Since they’d all been working together, Yeop Un hadn’t been able to ask him anything for a week, so today Ryeon was determined to repay the debt properly.
“It’s really getting noisy, isn’t it?”
“Seems like people came from everywhere. It’s exciting, I suppose. Even the Man Song Trading Company sent representatives.”
Hwa Ryun answered.
Though it was merely a Martial Match between youths, in Hangzhou, where nothing significant had stirred in recent years, even this counted as a major event.
How else to explain why Gyeon Eon Jo of the Man Song Trading Company had come rushing over the moment he heard the news?
“How did you manage to come when you’re so busy?”
“So it’s true that you’ve entrusted all the Cheong Ryeon Su work to Gyeon Wi Un?”
In the trading company, there was only one chief manager—Gyeon Eon Jo himself—and only one other manager bearing the Gyeon surname.
Only Gyeon Wi Un, who’d supported the trading company from its foundation, was called a manager. As for Gyeon Wi Jeong, he’d rolled into some trouble on the road not long ago and been rather badly hurt.
“If we lose this Martial Match, wouldn’t that be a serious problem?”
“What does it matter if we lose?”
If he was honest, he’d been nervous up until a week ago, but after a man has looked upon Mount Tai, smaller hills no longer trouble him.
‘Spent this whole week throwing myself into my livelihood so thoroughly that everything else feels trivial now…….’
Since survival and making a living matter more than anything else, a truly great person wouldn’t fret over victories and defeats in martial contests.
“Oh…….”
“If we lose this time, we win next time.”
“And if you win this time?”
“Then we win again next time. We crush them.”
Ryeon clenched his fist as he spoke. Hwa Ryun let out a laugh.
‘Geum Ga Jang…….’
Zhejiang Province and Hangzhou, which borders the Jing-Hang Grand Canal connecting to the sea and the Yangtze River, and boasts the beautiful West Lake, has never lacked a regional hegemon since ancient times.
Until two decades ago, the Dan Mok Family held that position, but as the Dan Mok Family declined, the rapidly rising new power in Hangzhou was none other than Geum Ga Jang.
Geum Ga Jang had earned its reputation through the graceful and flowing Geum U Do.
Hearing only that, one might think Geum Ga Jang was a gentle place, but in truth, Geum Ga Jang was notorious in Hangzhou for its ruthless methods.
Ever since Dan Mok Hyeon Seong, the eldest son of the Dan Mok Family, died in a Martial Match against the current leader of Geum Ga Jang several years ago.
Dan Mok Hyeon Seong was a man who, from childhood, displayed such talent that the entire city of Hangzhou expected him to become the next Greatest Under Heaven.
Yet he threw himself into war alongside his father to protect Hangzhou from Hyeol Ra Gok long ago, and he was not yet in his prime.
In Hyeol Ra Gok, there was a temple belonging to the Mo Cheon Gyo

—a treasure repository that even the Mo Cheon Gyo themselves did not know existed—that was excavated.
While the Mo Cheon Gyo rushed from ten thousand li away, it was Dan Mok Hyeon Seong and the men of the Baek Do Maeng who held the ground.
Even if it belonged to the Mo Cheon Gyo, they could not allow it to fall into the hands of Hyeol Ra Gok.
But the Mo Cheon Gyo arrived too late, and the Baek Do Maeng, clashing with Hyeol Ra Gok at that temple, paid the price in their stead. A star called Dan Mok Hyeon Seong was broken.
Some spoke of the meaningfulness of the sacrifice, saying that it led to the Mo Cheon Gyo’s participation, but no one in Zhejiang Province dared speak such words.
Because Dan Mok Hyeon Seong never recovered from the wounds he sustained that day, and the then-leader of Geum Ga Jang, knowing this, challenged him to a Martial Match and killed him!
Many still remembered that Martial Match. It was exactly the sort of tale gossips loved to spread about.
Dan Mok Ryeon’s pupils darkened. The men of Geum Ga Jang, their faces set firm, filed silently into the courtyard of the Dan Mok residence.
Dan Mok Ryeon glanced to the side. His mother Wi Ji Cheong and his grandfather Dan Mok Cheon Ki kept their lips sealed.
Yet they did not appear to be gazing at the killers of their son and husband.
‘Mother……?’
Since it was not the proper moment to fan the flames, Dan Mok Ryeon stole a glance at the earthen floor. Characters flickered across it.

Geum Jeok Geol
Traits: Sees only forward / Volcanic like / Burning competitive spirit / Birds of opposite wings
Geum U Do

: 10 Stars
Geum U Divine Art

: 7 Stars
Yu Yeong Bo

: 9 Stars
Talent and Five Stars: Medium-Medium
Concern: To think I’ve returned to this place / How do I resolve my son’s foolishness?
Guidance: Lower the walls in your heart and speak openly. Perhaps old misunderstandings can be cleared away.

Geum Jong Ha
Traits: Sees only forward / A seedling growing in shadow
Geum U Do: 3 Stars
Geum U Divine Art: 1 Star
Yu Yeong Bo: 2 Stars
Talent and Five Stars: Medium-High
Concern: I’ll clear my father’s name, no matter what!
Guidance: A seedling grows strongest in the light of day.

‘What? This Martial Match—the leader of Geum Ga Jang didn’t orchestrate it?’
He had assumed it was a move directed at him by Geum Ga Jang, but it seemed his son, Geum Jong Ha, had acted of his own accord.
‘His father’s dishonor?’
But whatever misunderstanding lay between them, resolving it would come not now, but after this Martial Match ended.
“It has been a long time…… I greet you.”
Geum Jeok Geol, the leader of Geum Ga Jang, bowed to Dan Mok Cheon Ki.
Dan Mok Ryeon detected a tremor of bewilderment in his voice—more precisely, in Geum Jeok Geol’s expression as he looked at him.
Dan Mok Cheon Ki swayed his sleeve and answered.
“You’ve weathered these years without mishap, it seems, Geum Jeok Geol.”
The exchange was too brief to be called a greeting between acquainted warriors, yet too cordial to be spoken between sworn enemies, though neither seemed to mind.
Geum Jeok Geol withdrew his gaze from Dan Mok Ryeon and spoke.
“My foolish son has taken to wielding a blade of late, proclaiming himself learned, and since there are none of his generation worthy of testing himself against, he came all this way. I should thank you for receiving him.”
Dan Mok Cheon Ki’s brow twitched. Geum Jong Ha, too, seemed to have words pressing at his lips, his face flushed with indignation, but at a glance from his father he clamped his mouth shut.
“A man of deep learning sharing his knowledge is both duty and obligation—a matter of course. As you yourself well know.”
In that instant, Geum Jeok Geol’s face flushed crimson, then slowly drained of color. Yet he could not prevent the fine dust rising quietly beneath his feet.
“Why not demonstrate this teaching to all who wish to witness it?”
He was suggesting they open the gates of the Dan Mok Family estate and hold the children’s Martial Match before the gathered crowd. Spectators had already begun to amass outside the compound walls.
Dan Mok Cheon Ki’s eyebrows shot skyward, but Ryeon spoke first.
“I’m game!”
“Ryeon.”
Wi Ji Cheong, standing a short distance away, called him over quietly. Ryeon turned to her with an unbothered expression and offered a slight smile.
Now that they’d gathered everyone and were about to open the stage, Ryeon found himself all the more welcome to the idea.
Geum Jeok Geol stared down at Ryeon, then twisted his mouth into a crooked sneer.

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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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