The World’s Greatest Junior Martial Brother - Chapter 2

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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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Cheonha Jeil Sajae (2)
Gonna die
Kwaaang―!
Jin Muok’s body rocked under the powerful impact.
Wham―.
And somebody who’d been sent flying let out a bleat like a goat.
“Ouch!”
The middle-aged thug who’d been bleating sat sprawled on his backside and jabbed a finger at Jin Muok.
“Are your eyes just for decoration? Watch where you’re going!”
Huh?
Where am I?
Where did the Blood Demon go?
Jin Muok glanced around, bewildered.
Sipman Daesan, where the Baekgwi Squad and the elite of the Demonic Cult had piled up into a sea of corpses. There, he had forced a Dong-gwi-eo-jin with the Blood Demon.
Dumped into a place this peaceful, Jin Muok stared dumbly at the thug who was bellowing at him, too stunned to react.
Just then, a clamor rose from every direction.
“Silk on sale, cheap, cheap!”
“We’ve got yellow jade! Yellow jade brought in from across the sea!”
Eh?
This is Jamnyong Market, isn’t it?
It was. This was Jamnyong Market in Luoyang, Henan Province, where the Murim Alliance kept its headquarters. He had stopped by here many times with the 8th Mobile Squad, buying goods and tossing back a drink or two, so there was no way he could forget it.
But he had died in Sipman Daesan, in Guangxi Province. How had he ended up in Luoyang, in Henan?
As Jin Muok’s eyes went wide in confusion, the thug he’d knocked down came striding toward him.
“An elder is speaking, and some brat is talking back? I’ll knock the sense into this little bastard!”
Whoosh.
Jin Muok caught the arm reaching for him, wrapped it around, and wrenched it behind the man’s back.
“Ah! Ahh, ahhh! Let go, you little punk!”
“Hey, mister, you keep calling me this and that, but I’m forty years old this year…”
Eh?
Why does my voice sound like this?
The voice flowing from his throat was a child’s, and Jin Muok flinched in surprise.
“Ow, ow, ow, what the f—! Let go of this, I said!”
The moment his arm was released, the thug stumbled back, rubbing his shoulder, and glared at Jin Muok with eyes full of whites.
“Bastard with a body like a rock, and nothing else.”
“Hey, you.”
As he stepped toward the thug, Jin Muok finally noticed something strange.
‘Why is my eye level like this again?’
He had always been taller than average. The thug, by contrast, was short of average height.
So why did he have to look up at him?
Until his neck nearly snapped.
“W-wait a moment!”
Glancing around, Jin Muok spotted a water basin, leaned over it, and pushed his face toward the surface.
On the rippling water, the face of a boy of about ten slowly surfaced.
“I, I…”
I’ve been made young.
* * *
“This has to be a dream!”
Ten full years had passed.
It made no sense that ten years had gone by since he’d died with the Blood Demon at Sipman Daesan, and yet here he was, brought back in the body of a ten-year-old boy.
How could this possibly be real?
“It must be a nightmare!”
Jin Muok dropped heavily to the ground and sank into deep thought.
‘Could all of this be some punishment from hell?’
Maybe so. The rakshasas and yakshas of hell might be enjoying the sight of him thrown into this absurd situation and floundering in confusion.
‘Is all of this just an illusion?’
Travelers hurrying somewhere, peddlers laying out their wares and waiting for customers, a tavern waiter shouting at the top of his lungs to lure in guests.
Thinking that all of it was a mirage, a hollow laugh escaped him on its own.
“It’s all fake.”
As he shook his head, the scene of the market seeped into Jin Muok’s eyes like mist.
A mother smiling brightly as she held her child’s hand, and a peddler responding with a gentle smile to a customer choosing from his goods.
The tavern’s waiter puffs himself up, insisting that the dumplings, which are nothing special, are the most delicious food under heaven.
Where else could one find something so fierce and so beautiful?
If this is hell, I could happily stay here forever.
So this is real.
“It’s not an illusion!”
Jin Muok pinched his own cheek to confirm it was real, then clenched his fist and shot to his feet.
So he really had been given a second chance!
No, wait for a moment…
“Who on earth is this kid?”
Excitement won’t do. First, I need to find out what identity I’ve been reborn into.
“This is definitely Jamnyong Market.”
Of all the markets in the city, the only reason Jin Muok and the 8th Mobile Squad had favored Jamnyong Market was one.
Its name sounded cool!
“Well, at least now I know where I am. And then—”
Next, Jin Muok scoured the nearby village until his feet were sore, but he couldn’t find a single person who recognized him. Most of them were too busy pinching their noses and waving him off to do anything else.
And so, as a last resort, Jin Muok went looking for Gu Pa-pa.
Bubble-bubble.
Porridge bubbles in the pot, and vegetables sizzle in the wok.
The rich, fragrant aroma brings a contented smile to everyone in Jamnyong Market.
This was Gu Pa-pa’s roadside inn, a landmark of Jamnyong Market and a place every heavy drinker in Henan Province was sure to stop by.
Naturally, Jin Muok had visited often with his squad members.
‘If anyone knows who this kid is, it would be Pa-pa.’
After all, Gu Pa-pa is the Jibakryeong of Jamnyong Market.
When Jin Muok stepped into view, Gu Pa-pa, who had been stirring the pot, turned her head.
“What? Why did you show up so early today?”
Huh? So this kid has been searching for Gu Pa-pa’s roadside inn all this time?
“Good grief, you little rascal. I need to make my first sale before I can give you anything. The cash box hasn’t seen a single copper coin yet, and you’re already hanging around—what do you expect me to do?”
True to her standing as a native of Jamnyong Market, Gu Pa-pa seemed to recognize the boy, and Jin Muok, cheered that he had finally found a lead, settled into a seat as he always used to.
Plop.
“Pa-pa! Give me a plate of stir-fried pork and a jar of baijiu—”
…Ah, no, that’s not right.
Even without Gu Pa-pa’s blank stare fixed on him, he knew it was wrong, so Jin Muok quietly got up from his chair.
Why do I keep slipping into the habits of my Northern Advance Gale days?
“Pa-pa.”
“Well, come back a little later…”
“Who am I, then?”
Gu Pa-pa, staring at Jin Muok in bewilderment, flailed the ladle she had been using to stir the pot.
“What is this boy thinking? I’ve been feeding you for half a month, and that’s all you have to say?”
Half a month, huh…
“Stop talking nonsense and get out of here. Go sell your labor for a day’s wage!”
As Gu Pa-pa abruptly turned away, Jin Muok’s eyes fell on her back, bent like a camel’s hump.
Pa-pa, your back has gotten even more hunched.
More than before.
“Pa-pa.”
“Ah, you rascal!”
Just as Gu Pa-pa was about to turn around with a shout, Jin Muok gave her waist a few light taps.
“Flattery won’t get you anything!”
“I’m full.”
As if. He hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
Yet the mere fact that Gu Pa-pa had kept watch over this place for ten long years filled Jin Muok with a sense of satisfaction.
“So you don’t have to give me anything.”
“Oho, look at this brat? Aren’t you getting cocky, pulling that kind of trick?”
Gu Pa-pa scoffed, while Jin Muok, unbothered, kept busy tapping away at her back.
Tap-tap-tap-tap—.
“Ahh, that feels good. How can such tiny hands be so strong?”
I heard something similar ten years ago. Of course, back then she said my hands were as big as a cauldron lid.
After giving Gu Pa-pa a thorough massage, Jin Muok bowed his head, saying he should be going, and she abruptly thrust a plate toward him.
“You look like you’re about to leave, so eat this before you go.”
“They say it’s bad luck if your first customer of the day is a beggar.”
“You can’t lose what you don’t have in the first place, you rascal.”
After refusing a few times, Gu Pa-pa watched Jin Muok, who was now devouring the stir-fried pork as if he meant to scrape the plate clean, and clicked her tongue.
“I’m a miserable old woman myself, but you’re cursed with bad luck too. Orphaned at that age, of all things.”
Flash!
Jin Muok lifted his head, not bothering to chew, and asked.
“Wh-what did you say? Orphan… an orphan?”
“Chew first, then talk. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Cough, cough!”
Gulp!
“So I was really an orphan?”
“Did you eat crow for dinner or something? You’ve already forgotten what I told you the other day.”
Right, right!
When he came to, he was cold, hungry, and sleepy.
He had met all three of the classic conditions of a beggar to a tee.
On top of that, what if nobody recognized him?
‘In this life, I’m a total beggar!’
An orphan who survives day by day on whatever scraps people give him at the door!
With every detail clicking neatly into place, Jin Muok slapped his own thigh.
Smack!
“Well, that boy really does come up with all sorts of things.”
Gu Pa-pa let out a dry laugh at Jin Muok’s eccentric behavior, yet his heart had grown noticeably lighter.
Now at last he knew who he was.
“Do Murim Alliance warriors still come here to drink these days?”
The moment he asked, Gu Pa-pa’s face, which had been calm as a still pond, abruptly hardened.
“You’re asking such strange things today.”
She muttered it like a sigh and went back to stirring the pot with her ladle.
“They come. The Murim Alliance folks still come. But—”
She lifted her head to gaze at the setting sun, sinking lower by the moment, and murmured in a faraway voice.
“That boy doesn’t come anymore. No, he can’t come.”
Gu Pa-pa smiled, faint as the afterglow itself. It was the kind of blurred smile that lights up the whole world only to vanish in an instant.
“What was so great about Sipman Daesan that he went and buried his bones there?”
Clack.
Jin Muok, unable to breathe, squeezed his chopsticks until they nearly snapped and clenched his jaw. If he didn’t do this, he felt tears might come pouring out at any moment.
Suddenly, the last moments at Sipman Daesan came rushing back.
The title of Northern Advance Gale, the rank of Captain of the 8th Mobile Squad of the Murim Alliance: none of it meant anything before that monster called the Blood Demon.
When the Baekgwi Squad fell away like leaves swept off by an autumn wind, there was nothing he could do.
Damn Sima Yan. And even more damn the Murim Alliance’s spies.
He had thought that was the end, yet ten years later he had come back to life in the body of a ten-year-old brat. Was this a miracle, or was it inevitable?
“That’s right. Whoever he was, what could have been so great about Sipman Daesan?”
Gazing at the sunset alongside Gu Pa-pa, he whispered quietly.
“That’s why I came back alive.”
Even though I’m in this body for now, once I regain my strength, they’ll all have to be ready for what’s coming.
Vicious Sima Yan, and the Murim Alliance’s spies, too.
‘Just you wait!’
As Jin Muok closed his eyes, trying to steady his surging breath, Gu Pa-pa, having turned her gaze from him, began to speak of something strange.
“We’re famous for our bad luck, but that junior of his is no different.”
What on earth could she mean by that?
Just as Jin Muok was about to ask, two martial artists came swaggering in, loud and boisterous, and Gu Pa-pa flinched in surprise.
“Y-you’re here already?”
In other words, these were Murim Alliance warriors.
The men who came in were young. No, they were young enough that the word “youthful” fit them well.
At the very least they were in their late teens; at most, they were young men in their early twenties.
Their gaudy attire and insolent manner made it clear they were the sons of well-known martial families.
“Why is the table so filthy today?”
“Not cleaning up before taking customers, Granny?”
Even though it was an open-air stall, the table had been wiped clean. The young men were simply picking a fight over a tiny stain.
“Honestly, when you get old enough, you ought to just die, you know that?”
“Hehehe.”
With their blunt words, they insulted Gu Pa-pa right to her face and put on airs.
“What are you looking at?”
One of them, the young man whose eyes had met Jin Muok’s, barked at him. His hooked nose stood out so sharply that he looked unlucky at first glance.
‘Well, I’ll be.’
By rights, given his bond with Gu Pa-pa, he should have stepped forward and taught these green upstarts who knew nothing of the world a lesson. But this was not the time, so Jin Muok turned his head away.
At that, the hook-nosed one lifted his chin, drunk on his own sense of superiority.
“You want to die?”
Turning his head with an air of arrogance, the hook-nosed youth went right back to badgering Gu Pa-pa.
“Hey, old girl, when’s the food coming out?”
“Grandma, don’t you want to do business here or what?”
Egged on by the thin-lipped youth, Gu Pa-pa scrambled to start cooking. Even after grumbling at her for a good while, the two brats began to chat idly among themselves.
“Hey, what about Instructor Baekri?”
“Who? Baekri Unhak?”
“Who else would it be? Instructor Baekri, the one who trains our 3rd Mobile Squad, of course.”
At the mention of Baekri Unhak, Jin Muok’s ears perked up.
‘Ah! Unhak!’
With the strange reincarnation leaving me dazed, I’d completely forgotten about Baekri Unhak.
And to think a fellow like me became a master. Good grief.
Berating himself, Jin Muok soon found himself puzzled.
A mere training instructor, though?
Baekri Unhak used to say it over and over: once he came of age, he would follow his master, Jin Muok, into the Murim Alliance. He had vowed to raise the name of Bukcheon Sinmun high.
Now he was past his twentieth year. Baekri Unhak was more a man of letters than a man of martial talent, but with his gifts and the martial arts of Bukcheon Sinmun, entering the Murim Alliance should have been no trouble at all.
With that talent and the Bukcheon Sinmun arts, he should have been able to manage at least a squad leader’s post in the Alliance, if not a strategist’s seat. Yet here he was, merely a training instructor.
Jin Muok’s face twisted. But a more shocking story was waiting for him.
“So he ended up retiring to the countryside, I hear?”
As the hook-nosed one mumbled on while chewing his vegetables, the thin-lipped youth across from him picked up the thread.
“He hung on for ages, dragging himself along day after day. Tough bastard, that one…”
Thwack!
Jin Muok sprang up before the thin-lipped youth, as if he had dropped out of the ground.
Junma Sapung!
Closing the distance to an opponent in a single breath—the strongest Shenfa of Bukcheon Sinmun!
“What did you just say?”
“Huh?”
The two of them turned to look at each other, thrown by the sudden appearance of Jin Muok.
“Do you know him?”
“I don’t… know him…”
Thwip!
Seizing the thin-lipped youth by the collar and dragging him close, Jin Muok asked again.
“I asked you what the reason was for Unhak retiring to the countryside.”
“Who the hell do you think you are, glaring at me like that!”
The thin-lipped youth wrenched Jin Muok’s hand away roughly and was about to glare back, when…
Thud!
The instant he met Jin Muok’s eyes, the youth was struck by a shock that felt as if the back of his head had been punched clean through, and he dropped to his knees.
“Y-you… eek!”
A beast. A monster. The eyes of a wild animal starved for blood.
Trickle…
In that instant, the thin-lipped youth wet himself.
“W-what the…!”
When his companion lost his composure, the hook-nosed one flung down his chopsticks and shot up from his seat.
Just then…
“What are you looking at?”
Kwooooo—
A tremendous force beyond anything imaginable!
From behind Jin Muok rose an indescribable aura, billowing like a cloud, and the hook-nosed youth began to tremble like a reed in the wind.
Such crushing pressure!
As he froze, Jin Muok turned his head and added, spitting out each word, “You want to die?”
“You want to die?”

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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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