The World’s Greatest Junior Martial Brother - Chapter 22

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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 (22)
Sichuan Uproar
“W-what?”
The young physicians stared at Jin Muok as if he’d lost his mind. They weren’t direct descendants of the Tang Clan’s main line, but they were close enough kin to the clan head that no one could afford to slight them.
And this outsider dared to scold them?
“Has he lost his mind?”
“Maybe you took us in out of concern for your senior brother, but we’re not the same as you!”
Thwack!
Dang Jong-ak, the one who had led the sit-down strike, seized Jin Muok by the collar.
“I was already sick of you poking your nose into everything. Now you think you can push us aside and play master of the house?”
Dang Jong-ak twisted his lips into a sneer and thrust his face toward Jin Muok, making his already thin lips look even thinner.
“Do you know where you are? This is the Tang Clan! The Tang Clan! And the people of our clan are the ones who run this place!”
Jin Muok, his collar still in Dang Jong-ak’s grip, met his gaze without flinching.
“And this is a sickroom.”
“What?”
“This may be the Tang Clan, but this is a sickroom.”
Crack—.
“Ow, ow! It hurts!”
Jin Muok pried open Dang Jong-ak’s fingers one by one, by sheer strength alone, then turned his head to look at the infirmary.
“A sickroom has only two kinds of people.”
Jin Muok’s lips moved slightly.
“Those who heal, and those who are healed.”
Quiet fury. Calm killing intent.
“Which one are you?”
Kwarurung!
The murderous aura he had shown at Jamnyong Market surged forth once more!
The hook-nosed man and the thin-lipped youth from the 3rd Mobile Squad had crawled on the ground back then, too terrified under Jin Muok’s pressure even to breathe.
And now, when that same force erupted again, the young physicians of the Tang Clan, Dang Jong-ak included, could not bring themselves to meet Jin Muok’s eyes.
“Choose.”
Overwhelming force. A suffocating weight pressing down on them.
“Damn it!”
In the end, Dang Jong-ak spat a curse and bolted from the infirmary, and the rest who had gone along with him scrambled out after him in a hurry.
“Tsk, what a pathetic man.”
“He’s always strutting around and throwing sly looks at people, and now he’s cowed by a little boy and runs off with his tail between his legs?”
The sickroom was steeped in scorn and mockery aimed at Dang Jong-ak. Yet Jin Muok’s sharp eyes caught something beneath the surface.
‘That man…!’
* * *
Damn bastard. Who does this brat think he is, a nobody who crawled in from who-knows-where, trying to play the lady of the house?
* * *
“It was Qingcheng!”
The Woomun Family warrior who had recovered the fastest shouted out. He was a man named Woomun Hancheol, who had overseen this entire journey.
“We set out having hired only cargo porters from Jeongan Escort Agency. We had no need for escort guards, not with men like us.”
As everyone knows, the Woomun Family is one of the Seven Great Families that commands the Martial World. And the men on this journey were twenty-six warriors recognized even within the Woomun Family, so they needed no one’s help.
Twenty-six bears moving as a pack. What was there to fear?
“The cargo was rather heavy, but
(carter: a person who drives a carriage)
we hired enough porters and carters to make the journey smooth. That held true right up until we entered the Yongmun Mountain Great Ravine near Chengdu.”
The Yongmun Mountain Great Ravine, as its name suggests, is a place of blessed scenery, where sheer cliffs and dense primeval forest unfold in an exotic display.
They said the attackers struck just as everyone was marveling at the mystery of the great ravine spread out before them.
“There were many of them. Seventy? Eighty? No, probably more than that.”
Woomun Hancheol recalled the scene with bloodshot eyes.
The assailants, numbering over a hundred, wore black light armor and masked their faces in black cloth, so that it felt as though a vast dark curtain had been drawn across the land.
And so the melee began.
Outnumbered, and burdened with protecting a crowd of laborers, the Woomun warriors fought desperately, their strength enough to uproot mountains and overawe the world.
Just as they were about to seize the upper hand, the attackers’ swordsmanship shifted.
“Their altered sword forms were somehow awkward, but…”
Streams of bitter resentment flowed from Woomun Hancheol’s eyes.
“It was certainly the Cheongun Jeokha Sword.”
The Cheongun Jeokha Sword. A famous signature sword art of Qingcheng Sect, needing no explanation.
A miraculous swordsmanship said to have been forged by blending the strengths of the Cheongun Sword with the principles of the Jeokha Sword.
“Hmm.”
Dang Ik, who had been listening, ground his molars together.
In truth, he had already known. The wounds on the Woomun Family’s injured bore the marks of the Cheongun Jeokha Sword, the Qingcheng Sect’s signature art.
But the matter was far too grave, so he had taken no position until the facts could be firmly established.
Though the Six Gates and the Seven Families were at odds, if Qingcheng, a member of the Nine Sects and One Clan that represented the Righteous Path, had attacked the Woomun Family, a fellow righteous house, for no reason at all, the entire martial world would be turned upside down.
“Those men attacked us because we were going to visit Kunlun. They must have felt threatened by our approach to a sect that keeps neutrality in the struggle between the Six Gates and the Seven Families.”
Coming after the wounds, the motive held up well.
Kunlun had long been one of the Nine Sects, but Kongtong had pushed them aside and taken their place, leaving relations between them strained.
Seizing on this gap, the Woomun Family, which had ties with Kunlun, sent a great pilgrimage of Incense Pilgrims to mend their friendship.
Of course, the Woomun Family’s true aim was that, should a clash with the Six Gates come, Kunlun would stand with the Seven Families, or at the very least hold to neutrality.
“The garments peeking out beneath the black cloth were unmistakably Qingcheng robes.”
This grim news reached the Woomun Family like an arrow.
Chengdu in Sichuan Province and Jeongan in Guizhou Province lay a long way apart, yet the household head, Woomun Jeonggi, led the finest of the Woomun Family’s forces and struck Tang Clan like a thunderbolt.
As one would expect, Tang Clan Head Dang Junkyu also dropped every engagement and returned to Tang Clan without delay.
“Uwaaahhh!”
A bear weeps. He wails so loudly that the whole of Sichuan seems to ring with it.
Woomun Jeonggi stroked the five coffins over and over with a hand the size of a cauldron lid. The Woomun Family had long been famed for its towering, hulking frames.
“Namgung Family, Foremost in Martial Arts; Jegal Family, Foremost in Strategy; Tang Clan of Sichuan, Foremost in Hidden Weapons; Woomun Family, Foremost in Brute Strength” was not a saying born of nothing.
“Agyeong! Agyu! How could you two go before your father?!”
Hunched like a great bear, Woomun Jeonggi poured out his tears. Beside him, Woomun Hanung, the young head of the Woomun Family, clenched his fists until they trembled.
The brotherly bond among the three Woomun sons was famous. Whenever the bear-like second son stumbled into trouble, the slender youngest would step in to shield him, and whenever the second and third sons found themselves in a fix, the eldest, Woomun Hanung, would plead for them with tears in his eyes.
Once they were finally forgiven, they would climb the back mountain and share the dumplings and roast duck they had quietly swiped from the kitchen.
And that was only the day before yesterday.
“Uuuuugh—.”
Woomun Hanung wept fat tears that dropped one after another, while Woomun Jeonggi wailed loud enough to make all of Sichuan tremble.
In the span of a single moment he had lost two precious sons. Just imagine how his heart must be breaking.
This was not a tremor of Mount Tai but an uproar across Sichuan, and this disturbance will not end with the capture of a single rat.
Dang Junkyu, who had been watching them in silence, stepped toward Woomun Jeonggi.
“They were good boys, aaah-hung! Good boys, every one of them!”
Though both belonged to the Seven Families, the Woomun Family and Tang Clan had never been especially close. Woomun Jeonggi and Dang Junkyu had been on nothing more than nodding terms, exchanging greetings whenever they crossed paths at the annual gatherings.
Still, calamity leaps clean over the gaps that exist between hearts.
“It isn’t just because they were my sons. They were truly good boys.”
Dang Junkyu nodded quietly.
What words could be needed before parents who had lost their children, and what comfort could possibly mean anything?
Woomun Jeonggi, who had been sobbing with a throat too tight to speak, suddenly jerked his head up.
“Qingcheng. Qingcheng. Qiiingchenggg.”
He raised a massive fist as if to smash it into the ground, then pressed a hand to his chest and forced himself to breathe.
Honest and simple—once he forms a bond, it never wavers, but once it breaks, he will never see you again.
And kindness and grudges alike are never forgotten, not until the day they die.
Reaffirming the creed and spirit of the Woomun, Woomun Jeonggi slowly rose to his feet.
Kuu-woong—.
Dang Junkyu was tall by ordinary measure, yet Woomun Jeonggi stood a full head taller. That alone told of how enormous the Woomun Family’s people were.
Wiping his tears with forearms thicker than a mortar, Woomun Jeonggi looked about, and his gaze came to rest on one spot.
“Are you the youngest disciple of Northern Advance Gale?”
Barely holding back his grief, Woomun Jeonggi called out to Jin Muok in a voice boundlessly tender.
‘Woomun Jeonggi.’
Calling to mind the man he had been ten years ago, Jin Muok nodded.
A man with no room for retreat. That single judgment was all Jin Muok had ever formed of Woomun Jeonggi.
“And you must be Myomyo of the Uipa.”
When Myomyo bowed her head respectfully, Woomun Jeonggi strode over to them and gently embraced the two of them.
“I’ve heard that you sent our Hangyu off in peace. I’m grateful. Truly, truly grateful.”
Once more his voice faltered, and after steadying his breath, Woomun Jeonggi continued as though pronouncing a vow.
“Even if our bones turn to dust, we will never forget this debt. And it is not only I who will remember—every person of the Woomun Family will do the same.”
Pat, pat—.
After patting the arms of Jin Muok and Myomyo, Woomun Jeonggi hardened his face and turned away.
“I will not forget the deep kindness of the household head. Once this business is finished, I will repay you handsomely.”
“Where are you going?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Woomun Jeonggi spoke in a booming voice.
“To Qingcheng, of course. We’ll collect the blood price for my sons and the people of the family from those cursed bastards.”
Kkwadeudeuk—.
As Woomun Jeonggi clenched his fist, a bone-chilling sound rose up and tore through the ears of everyone present.
“They’ll learn that they’ve touched something they should never have touched.”
Jin Muok stepped in front of him just as he moved to pull Woomun Hanung away.
“Wait a moment, please.”
This is the part that precedes the judgment that Woomun Jeonggi has no room for retreat.
That was the aspect of being ‘easily swept up in excitement and prone to being misunderstood.’
“Please, think it over once more.”
“Think over what?”
“There’s still no proof that the Qingcheng Sect is the culprit, is there?”
“My children were cut down and run through by the Cheongun Jeokha Sword. What more certain proof could there be?”
Woomun Jeonggi was unyielding.
“On top of that, those Taoist fools had more than enough reason to attack our family. There’s no room for reconsideration.”
Turning his head toward the direction of Qingcheng Mountain, Woomun Jeonggi bared his teeth.
“From now on, it’s war.”
The atmosphere turned gloomy in an instant.
In the current state, if the Woomun Family and the Qingcheng Sect came to blows, there’s a strong chance it wouldn’t stay a localized skirmish.
To a father who has buried his child in his heart, the shackles of belonging to the same camp mean nothing, and expecting mercy in his hands is out of the question.
Once the Woomun Family begins to fight, the remaining Seven Great Families will have to take sides, and the other sects of the Six Gates will surely rally together as well.
‘If that happens.’
A Great Bloodbath unlike any in history might break out!
“We gave up being human the moment we came here. So step aside.”
Woomun Jeonggi held back his emotions as he spoke, but Jin Muok did not give up an inch.
“Ugh, seriously, I’m telling you to think it over once more!”
“And this brat is still at it?”
Shoving aside Jin Muok, who was desperately trying to stop him, Woomun Jeonggi made to leave—!
Pi-eeing—.
Dozens of hidden weapons came flying straight at Woomun Jeonggi.
“How dare you!”
But Woomun Jeonggi saw through it. A single hidden weapon, through a strange trick of motion, could create the illusion of dozens.
So he ignored the phantoms and swung a fist as heavy as an iron mace at the one that was real.
Kwarung!
Struck by his overwhelming force, the hidden weapon lost its strength and dropped to the ground.
“Tang Clan Head! What is the meaning of this!”
An ambush from the Tang Clan—and with the Tang Clan’s hidden weapon arts, no less.
It was not Dang Junkyu who answered, but a figure standing outside the door.
“Just now, the Woomun Family Head was ambushed with the Tang Clan’s hidden weapon arts. Does that mean the Woomun Family has been attacked by the Tang Clan?”
“Senior Brother?”
“Unhak?”
A man standing unsteadily, supported by Byeok Eunsa.
It was Baekri Unhak.

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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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