Third-rate Martial Family Becomes the Best Under Heaven - Chapter 331
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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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Third-rate Martial Arts Family, Greatest Under Heaven – Episode 331
“Brother Yeong-pung. What are the terms?”
“One hundred jin. How about it?”
“Sounds good to me!”
Yang Hwi and Yeong-pung-rang took their stances.
A subtle tension hung over the faces of Chu Dal and Seolha as they watched.
Depending on how the confrontation unfolded, they too might need to unleash their martial power.
-Sister, get ready.
-Got it. Chu Dal, you secretly deploy your Heavenly Silkworm Technique as well.
Seolha was prepared to even use Chu Dal’s Heavenly Silkworm Technique as a backup combination move if things went south.
This was the territory of Cheonmu-sip-jon—considering the possibility of being intimidated by force, it was best to prepare as thoroughly as possible.
-Ah, it looks like they’re about to start.
-Let’s get ready.
It was then that Seolha and Chu Dal quietly prepared themselves.
“Here come one hundred jin, delivered!”
Innkeepers carrying A-frames on their backs streamed out from the nearby tavern.
The cargo loaded on the A-frames was… alcohol bottles.
“Huh?”
“Alcohol?”
Yang Hwi and Yeong-pung-rang openly took their stances.
That is, they plopped down on the ground and prepared to drink their fill.
“Innkeeper! One bottle for me first!”
“Yes! One bottle for Brother Baek!”
The round part of the bottle was the size of a child’s head.
Yang Hwi popped the cork with a sound and tilted his head back as far as it would go.
Rather than drinking, it was more accurate to say he was opening his throat and pouring it down.
“Ahhhhh! This liquor tastes fantastic!”
“Heh, Brother Baek knows his way around drinking? I won’t lose!”
Yeong-pung-rang gripped bottles in both hands and shoved the spouts into his mouth.
“Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!”
“Hey, Brother Yeong-pung! It looks like nearly half is spilling out? Isn’t that cheating?”
“Hahahaha, looks like Brother Yeong-pung got scared. Playing tricks from the start!”
While the onlookers cheered loudly, Chu Dal and Seolha silently exchanged glances.
-Chu Dal, weren’t those two supposed to be fighting?
-That’s what I thought?
The atmosphere certainly felt like something was about to happen.
-That’s not it! You’re in charge of intelligence—how could you not have gathered information about Nangsi?”
-No… the documents clearly stated that in Nangsi, one can easily secure contract work by breaking an assassin’s spirit…
The easiest way to break a warrior’s spirit is to imprint the gap in martial prowess into their mind.
That was certainly the case.
“Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Bring the next bottle!”
“Baek Hyeong’s on his sixth bottle!”
“Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! My turn next!”
“Whoa! Yeong-pung-rang, you’re only on your fourth! You need to step it up!”
“Ugh, I can’t lose! Bring two bottles!”
“This time, try not to spill it all over yourself?”
“Puhahahaha!”
Yeong-pung-rang hurled the bottle into the air and released a gust of wind to shatter it.
The alcohol inside drenched the head of an onlooker who’d been mocking him.
“Oops, looks like I spilled it all by accident!”
“Ahahahahaha!”
Yang Hwi clutched his belly in laughter—not the polite kind, but genuine, unrestrained hilarity.
“Yeong-pung-rang, you’re quite the rule-breaker, aren’t you? It looks like my victory is assured!”
“You can’t measure acorns until the very end!”
Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp! Gulp!
Both men simultaneously hurled their empty bottles behind their heads, and at the clanging signal, they began draining fresh bottles.
“Ugh, my belly’s getting full. A moment…”
Steam rose visibly from Yeong-pung-rang’s entire body.
I wondered if he was expelling the alcohol toxins through his inner energy.
-Sister, I don’t think that’s alcohol toxins.
-Right. It just feels like he’s emptying a full bladder.
If that’s the case, why not just go to the bathroom…?
“Baek Hyeong, if you need to relieve yourself, feel free to go whenever.”
“To suggest such a thing—you haven’t properly learned the way of drinking, Yeong-pung-rang.”
“Ahahaha, that’s right! Leaving your seat during drinking is something only unmanly fellows do!”
-…Chu Dal, is that true?
-No, ma’am. My brother often leaves to relieve himself during drinking too.
In other words, this was it.
Going to the bathroom first would wound their pride, so they were using their inner energy to empty their full bladders instead.
“….”
“….”
As Chu Dal and Seolha fell silent, shattered porcelain fragments piled up like mountains.
“Baek Hyeong’s on his thirty-second bottle!”
“Yeong-pung-rang’s on his thirtieth!”
It took only two hours to consume a hundred catties of alcohol.
This wasn’t drinking—it was binge drinking in its truest form.
“Uuuugh…”
“Uuugh…”
Yang Hwi and Yeong-pung-rang staggered to their feet.
Though Yang Hwi was at the Transcendent Realm and Yeong-pung-rang was a Master at the Peak, bodies that shouldn’t be intoxicated by mere alcohol, neither man was using their inner energy to counteract the alcohol’s effects.
In other words, I was holding my ground having consumed a pure hundred catties of alcohol.
“It seems we won’t reach a conclusion through drinking alone.”
“I agree, Yeong-pung. Shall we move on to the next event?”
Both men turned their heads simultaneously, and the Innkeeper approached carrying something.
On a wooden tray sat a single die.
“A die with only twos and fours marked on it. Shall we roll?”
“Right now.”
“A man has no time for rest—that’s a luxury.”
“Yes!”
The die was thrown, and the face marked with four dots appeared.
“The event is decided!”
“Four after drinking a hundred catties! Haha, this should be entertaining!”
“Yeong-pung! I trust you won’t lose to some kid like Baek!”
At those three words—”some kid”—the onlookers’ gazes shifted toward Yang Hwi.
They seemed to expect the righteous anger that should naturally follow from calling a direct heir of a prestigious family a mere child.
“Puhaha, if I lost to a kid at my age, I’d have to go around with my tail between my legs!”
Yang Hwi shouted loudly, and after a brief moment of silence, the atmosphere became lively again.
“Krahaha! Young Master Baek truly understands how the world works!”
“Right, gotta lose it! Just like So Chu-rang!”
“Now that you mention it, does the ‘Chu’ in Chu-rang use the character for falling?”
“Want to end up in a latrine? It’s the character for autumn, you fool!”
In the meantime, Yang Hwi and Yeong-pung-rang had reached an agreement.
“We start here, touch the flag hanging from the roof of that tallest pavilion over there, and return.”
“Excellent! Don’t forget it’s four, Yeong-pung!”
The moment the Innkeeper threw a wine bottle as the starting signal and it shattered.
Both men drew their inner energy to its absolute limit.
“The ‘pung’ in my name Yeong-pung-rang means wind! I won’t lose in lightness martial arts!”
“Have you heard of the Thousand-Wind technique!”
Two figures kicked off the ground and leaped. Two figures unleashed their lightness martial arts.
It was an ordinary martial arts competition in lightness technique.
But….
-Chu Dal.
-Yes… Sister….
-Do all men really play around like that?
-No. I don’t.
Humans walk on two feet. That’s how we’re born.
Surely that’s true. It was the principle that humans, standing tall between heaven and earth, must follow.
And yet….
“Woof! Woof woof!”
“Hey! Yeong-pung is taking the lead!”
“Of course! Even if you’re Baek Hyeong, this is the first time you’ve run on all fours like a dog, hahahaha!”
“Baek Hyeong, hang in there! You said you were supreme! Losing to a peak master means you’re worse than a dog!”
-It seems the four on the dice matched the four legs, sister.
-Why on earth is he doing such a thing?
Seolha couldn’t comprehend it at all.
As a direct descendant of the Jegal Family, one of the most prestigious clans under heaven, the sight before her eyes was utterly inhuman.
He was running like a dog, after all—hardly human behavior.
-Kiiiiiaaaaaa!
-Kiiiiiaaaaaa!
The cry of a hawk erupted continuously from Yang Hwi’s entire body.
It meant he was unleashing the Thousand Responses Divine Technique.
It meant he was employing the supreme movement technique he’d created by mastering the Thousand Winds that Eum Hu had transmitted to him.
…On four legs.
‘Why is the hawk running on four legs?’
Ah, he’d lifted off into the air. He was treading through the void using the Void-Treading technique, running through the sky.
Yet still on four legs.
“…Sigh.”
As Seolha sighed, Yang Hwi arrived at the flag marking the turning point. He’d started slower than Yeong-pung-rang, but had somehow overtaken him.
“Ahahaha, I am the greatest prodigy under heaven!”
“No way, I can’t lose!”
Yeong-pung-rang’s face turned crimson. He looked like he was straining with all his might, as if passing something massive.
“Woof woof woof! I am the wolf that flies through the heavens!”
Though his cry sounded more like a dog’s bark than a wolf’s howl, Yeong-pung-rang’s form as he leaped into the air did resemble a wolf.
Until he landed.
“Urgh, uuuurgh!”
Had the impact of landing stimulated his insides?
Yeong-pung-rang’s crimson face turned pale green.
“Urgh, ack!”
“He’s vomiting! He’s vomiting!”
“Surely not? Yeong Hyeong! If you puke there, you’ll be the butt of jokes for three years!”
“Shut u… Bwuaaaaagh!”
Dozens of bottles of alcohol consumed. No matter how much internal energy he’d pushed it down with, his stomach and bladder were both sloshing full of liquid.
“Bwuaaaaagh!”
“He vomited!”
“Yeong-pung-rang vomited!”
“At that level, isn’t it more of a reverse flow than vomiting?”
“Ahahaha!”
Meanwhile, Yang Hwi had returned to the starting point.
Staggering, he wiped his mouth and shouted.
No, he’d reversed the flow.
“Yeong-pung! My victory—eeeek!”
“The dam burst!”
“We’ve got a flood!”
The crowning moment of the duel.
Everyone burst into laughter.
“Puhahahaha!”
“Baek Hyeong wins!”
“Though it’s a pyrrhic victory!”
“The Young Master of a prestigious clan, drunk and crawling on all fours, only to vomit—what a pathetic sight!”
“Puhahahaha!”
* * *
“Oh dear. Oh dear.”
I felt like I was dying. Or rather, actually, it felt comfortable.
Perhaps I was already dead.
No matter how supreme my physique was, carrying dozens of bottles worth of alcohol toxin in my body was suicide.
“Chu Dal. Mix me some honey water…”
Chu Dal flatly refused.
“Honey water? You’d be better off dying and coming back to life.”
This time I reached out desperately toward Seolha.
“Seol Ha-ya… channel some qi into me… if I do it myself, I’ll fall into qi deviation.”
“Brother, you reek of vomit, so please don’t speak.”
“…”
Yang Hwi, now a drunken fool instead of a honey-tongued one, let out groans of agony.
Jegal Seol-ha approached with a sigh, covering her nose.
Her cool hand grasped my pulse point.
“Why on earth did you do something so insane?”
“Ugh… thank you…”
Seol-ha’s qi pushed the alcohol toxin accumulated in my body to one side and revitalized me.
“Ah, now I can live again.”
“I’m asking why you did that.”
I looked at Seol-ha for a moment, then chuckled.
“It was fun.”
“Fun?”
“Doesn’t it look fun?”
“Well…”
Certainly, it did look fun.
If it had been on two legs instead of four, Seol-ha herself would have wanted to try it directly.
“Life is best when it’s fun. At least we wanderers think that way.”
“We wanderers?”
Ah, not anymore.
“Seolha. Nangsi is a city that follows Baek Heon-nang-wang, the greatest assassin of all time. Do you understand what that means?”
I continued without waiting for a response.
“A life drifting like duckweed, walking the edge of a blade—no one knows when their thread will be cut.”
Cheonmu-sip-jon Baek Heon-nang-wang actually had another alias.
The assassins called him this.
“The alpha wolf walks at the back of the pack. To protect them all.”
Cheonmu-sip-jon Baek Heon-nang-wang, Tae-rang.
He was born on a battlefield and given the name Jeon-il, but when he survived and resolved to pursue his first purpose, he changed his name to Tae-rang of his own accord.
Thus Tae-rang was both his true name and his affectionate name, and it was his path.
“Yeong-pung-rang once demanded a hundred nyang a day for his services. Now ten nyang would suffice.”
“Did you win, hyung-nim?”
Yang Hwi shook his head.
“No. We became close. We played together in that dull, heavy way. Victory or defeat doesn’t matter.”
Those who take payment and sell their blades are assassins.
Thus assassins are deployed to the most dangerous places, and their lives are their price.
This is why Baek Heon-nang-wang proclaimed it when the name Nangsi was first given to the city.
“In Nangsi, negotiation is established through friendship.”
To reduce the commission, the employer must become close with the assassin.
They must share meals and drink together, testing each other’s humanity.
A minimal safeguard to prevent the hired assassin from being discarded like a useless card.
“….”
“….”
Seolha and Chu Dal fell silent, watching me.
“Seolha. Chu Dal. Was it lively? Did it seem beneath your station? Like we were playing around like ruffians instead of truly enjoying ourselves?”
“…Honestly, yes.”
“A young master from a prestigious family doing such things…? That’s what it felt like.”
Yang Hwi shrugged and grinned.
“We sell our bodies for coin and pay with our blades. But an assassin must never squander romance—it is the assassin’s final pride.”
This is why the assassin Baek Yang-hwi could stake his life on a single verse sung by the courtesan So Wol-hyang.
The way of the assassin that Nangjoong Jeil-geom Baek Yang-hwi learned from So Tae-rang in my past life was precisely this.
“If you both found it that exhilarating, a response will come soon. It means we were true assassins.”
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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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