The Youngest Son of the Nanyang Jin Family - Chapter 62

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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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The Youngest Son of the Nakhyang Jin Family – Chapter 123

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Another fortnight had slipped away.
During that time, I continued refining the martial techniques I had newly created, and while there remained a certain sense of incompleteness, I had managed to elevate them to a respectable standard.
Though some movements still felt unfamiliar to my hands, reaching a level suitable for actual combat felt like the fruit of blood-soaked effort.
Or perhaps, the contribution of those who had been bloodied in the process.
I turned my head and surveyed my surroundings.
Familiar faces lay sprawled about, gasping for breath.
Watching them tremble with bodies devoid of even the strength to twitch a single finger, whimpering softly, I couldn’t help but smile wryly.
“That concludes today’s session. You may return and rest.”
“Re… really?!”
“Yes, Uncle.”
The one who sprang to his feet at those words was none other than Baek Ja-hyeon. Despite his position as the head of security for Sega with considerable responsibilities and standing, being beaten down in my training grounds daily must have weighed heavily on his spirit.
Yang Jachun, equally disheveled, rose from his place alongside Baek Ja-hyeon and hastily began fleeing, apparently fearing he might be detained.
“Let’s not see each other’s faces for a while, you brat!”
“I shall be quite occupied going forward!”
Hearing their departing voices, laughter escaped me unbidden.
For them, these two weeks must have felt like hell itself, and I understood.
Yet there was no reason to view it negatively.
After all, they had gained experience and improved their abilities.
As the two hurriedly departed, I turned my gaze toward Jang Chuchyeong and Namgung Yeon, who still gasped for breath.
Unlike the two who had fled in haste, their eyes burned with fierce intensity.
Their narrowed gaze resembled that of someone consumed by resentment—and it was no illusion.
The glances they exchanged held sharp edges.
What had begun as mere observation of fellow practitioners had gradually transformed into a battle of pride.
Namgung Yeon, a genius who had mastered the Namgung family’s swordsmanship through solitary study and achieved his current prowess, and Jang Chuchyeong, whose talents and martial aptitude aligned well, had ultimately refined his skills under an excellent master.
Moreover, both served as my guards.
It was only natural that competitive spirit would kindle between them—who would collapse first, who would take fewer blows, who could mount a counterattack?
To demonstrate their superiority over the other, they both gritted their teeth and threw themselves into this training with greater intensity than anyone else.
“I won this time as well.”
“What are you talking about? We fell almost simultaneously!”
“Your back touched the ground first.”
“Your rear end hit first!”
Their childish quarrel, which had begun at some point, erupted once more.
Their voices, ringing out harshly, grew progressively louder, as if they believed that speaking with greater volume would grant them advantage.
I furrowed my brow listening to them.
Without someone to intervene, this would continue indefinitely.
It wasn’t simply a matter of things continuing as they were.
“Want to try again?!”
“Do you want to get slammed down again?”
And so it came to this.
They glared at each other with a growl, as if ready to clash at any moment.
I couldn’t simply dismiss it as mere posturing, because if I left them alone, they would grit their teeth and start throwing fists and drawing blades.
“Enough.”
“Hmph!”
“Huff!”
Watching them snort at each other and turn away, I pressed my hand to my forehead and sighed.
Yet I couldn’t say it felt entirely bad.
Having a rival so close at hand was no different than laying a foundation for even faster growth.
Jang Chuchyeong seemed displeased with losing each time, clenching his fists with burning determination, while Namgung Yeon appeared firmly resolved never to be caught by someone like Jang Chuchyeong.
“Stop fighting and go rest. We’ll be leaving soon, so pack your things carefully. It’s a long journey, so you need to prepare thoroughly.”
“Ah, are we really going there?”
“There? Isn’t it only natural to visit your sect at least once?”
“Well, still… it’s really far, you know.”
Jang Chuchyeong made a dejected face and slumped his shoulders.
I understood his feelings well enough.
Having traveled to so many places recently, he must have come to realize just how arduous and exhausting such journeys could be.
Moreover, Namman was incomparable to any journey we’d undertaken thus far.
It wasn’t a distance one could cover in merely a few months.
“Do you not want to go?”
I looked between Jang Chuchyeong and Namgung Yeon and asked.
Both remained silent.
It seemed they were quite well-matched in such matters.
From Namgung Yeon’s perspective, he probably wouldn’t want to go even if his life depended on it.
After all, we would have to pass through the territory of the Demonic Sect.
“What are you all doing there? Why aren’t you preparing?”
Just then, Chaeseoha’s voice came from somewhere.
At the sudden sound, I naturally turned my head toward it, and Chaeseoha came into view, her hands full of medicinal herbs and herbal decoction ingredients as she prepared something.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re going to Namman, aren’t you? Of course I have to go too. I keep wondering what kinds of medicinal herbs might be found there, so I can’t sit still for a moment.”
Chaeseoha smiled brightly, her expression full of excitement. I’d heard the name before, but Namman was a place she could never reach alone, even if her life depended on it.
She seemed to be brimming with anticipation at the prospect of being able to go there.
Chaeseoha smiled and looked at Namgung Yeon and Jang Chuchyeong.
“You need to prepare! You’re not going, are you?”
“Ah, no, we’re going.”
“Right! We have to go. Of course. Since you’re going, we should… we have to go. That way we can protect you.”
“Thank you both. It’s truly reassuring.”
In truth, the guards were meaningless to me—it was more accurate to think of them as Chaeseoha’s protection.
If the weakest among us, Chaeseoha, were to go, someone would need to protect her, and that role would fall to none other than Jang Chuchyeong and Namgung Yeon.
Moreover, Chaeseoha enjoyed the greatest trust from her father and the elders of Sega, so protecting her would require their utmost effort and willingness to stake their lives.
I turned away with a soft chuckle.
“Then pack your belongings with that understanding. And inform the elders as well.”
As I spoke and turned my gaze, I noticed someone hurrying across the threshold of the Annex toward me.
It was the gatekeeper who guarded the main gate of Sega.
He came to a stop before me, bowed respectfully, and then leaned in to whisper something carefully into my ear.
“In any case, it’s good that things are handled so quickly.”
I nodded and smiled.
I had business to attend to at Baek Jin-hwa’s guesthouse.

* * *

At the Unryong Inn, in the highest room, the lavishly arranged food and wine were so magnificent that one’s eyes could barely take it all in.
I sat there at leisure and raised a cup to my lips.
Each time the cup emptied, it was refilled, and before long, I had drained an entire bottle cleanly.
Just as I was about to uncork the second bottle beside me.
The door suddenly opened and Baek Jin-hwa entered.
Her elaborate palace dress and still-heavy makeup.
Her fragrance wafted in sharply, stimulating my senses.
Baek Jin-hwa entered slowly with measured steps, offered me a bright smile, bowed respectfully, and took her seat.
“This is always such a pleasant place.”
“There’s no better place than here for entertaining important guests. Both the host and the guest leave satisfied.”
“The Hwaseon Guesthouse is nice too.”
“True, I know. But no place can match the atmosphere here. There’s a reason wealthy old men keep coming back.”
“Hehe, I see.”
Baek Jin-hwa smiled and slowly filled the empty cup. After taking a sip, her eyes widened—the taste was incomparably superior to the wine she’d had before, and she seemed startled.
“What kind of wine is this….”
“It’s a trade secret; I can’t reveal it.”
“Hmph! If I wanted to find out, I could. I just choose not to.”
“It’s not that you choose not to—you can’t. If you laid a hand on the Nakhyang Jin Family’s suppliers, you’d see exactly what would happen.”
At my words, Baek Jin-hwa’s brow furrowed.
She poured another cup and downed it in an instant, then set the cup down roughly as if to display her displeasure.
Then she withdrew a bundle of papers from her bosom.
“Here, the information you requested, Young Master. It was quite difficult to obtain, I’ll have you know.”
“Is this all?”
“Yes, there’s nothing on that priest or whoever. In fact, we didn’t even touch that matter.”
“Well done.”
I nodded and quickly scanned through the information she’d brought.

His name was Mu Heo.
The man closest to becoming the greatest under heaven, known as Geomcheon.
No one knew where he came from. He had appeared suddenly in the Central Plains, crushed one by one those called the Ten Sovereigns, and received the title of the Divine.

Information I already knew was listed out in succession.
I skimmed past the useless details.
“Most of it is probably what you already know. To be honest, I dug and dug but found nothing, so I almost gave up.”
“Was it that little?”
“I had quite a bit of information about Mu Heo, but I’d never dug deeply into it before. So I tried digging a bit this time, but it’s as if someone erased all the traces—there’s simply nothing to find.”
I nodded in understanding at those words.
The ruler of the Divine Sect had killed Mu Heo.
Naturally, they wouldn’t leave traces behind, so the sect’s people must have quickly erased them one by one.
That’s why no matter how hard Hao-mun searched, there was nothing to find.
What I was curious about wasn’t whether he was dead or alive, but rather why the man called the Divine had to kill his own elder brother, and why this Mu Heo—or rather, this Gwanbaek—didn’t remain within the Divine Sect but revealed himself in the Central Plains, grasped the Ten Sovereigns, and made his existence known.
Even a small piece of information would have allowed me to speculate, but despite reading through the considerable amount of information Hao-mun brought, I couldn’t get a sense of anything.
What was written were merely deeds that any martial artist would have heard of.
As I frowned and turned another page, Baek Jin-hwa, noticing my focused gaze and saying nothing, let out a small cough and opened her mouth.
“…Should I return your money?”
Baek Jin-hwa surely knew how cheap this information was. It was the sort of thing one could hear not only in the streets but from the mouths of gossips.
She was apologizing for having received a large sum for calling such things information.
I focused again on the information without saying a word.
That was when it happened.
Information different from what came before caught my eye.
‘Six chi in height, with a body so lean one wouldn’t think him a martial artist.’
‘Deep ink-black eyes were distinctive, and an old sword scar ran from the left forehead to the right cheek.’
‘He possessed a strange talent, as if he were a fortune-teller reading the heavens, able to see through the inner nature and spirit of people.’
The moment I read that content, strength surged into my hands without my realizing it.
Thump—
I felt my heart racing wildly.

“Hehehehe. You there, you’re crossing a river made of blood. The dead are desperate to pull you down.”

I was walking through the streets with Jang Chuchyeong, unaware that my final hour was drawing near.
I remember an elderly man who passed by stopped and spoke those words to me.
Eyes dark as ink, a long scar stretching from his left forehead across to his right cheek.
He spoke like a fortune teller.
If there was one difference from what was written now.
Geomcheon’s martial power was so faint it was unbelievable, and rather than merely gaunt, he was so withered that “skeletal” would have been more fitting.
Even taking a single step, moving his hand—everything seemed to exhaust him.
A mere touch would have been enough to end his life on the spot.
Yet this man approached me and spoke.
A smile of unsettling depth played across his lips, his ink-dark eyes drawing me in as he gazed upon me.

“Your final hour, my friend, will soon become the salvation of us both. Uheehehehehe—!”

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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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