Chapter 223
After finishing their sparring session with the heirs of the Five Great Families,
Yeo Un-hwi had decided to spend some time with his family for the first time in a while, and had come out to browse the market, which Peng Seo-yeon and Yul-i both loved.
The Four Great Protectors had come along as well.
Yet, their normally warm and harmonious group seemed a little… strange?
Yeo Un-hwi wore a somewhat nervous expression, while Peng Seo-yeon looked pouty.
And Yul-i… wore the happiest expression in the world.
What on earth……?
“Hehe. Candied fruit. Candied fruit.”
“Yul-i. I told you, eating that much candied fruit will make you sick.”
Peng Seo-yeon sighed as she watched Yul-i beam happily, both hands full of candied fruit.
“But it’s delicious.”
“Even delicious things have to be eaten in moderation. You can’t just gobble them down so excitedly. You’ll get a stomachache.”
“Still. Dad bought it for me, so I have to eat it all.”
“Good grief. Honestly. What were you thinking, buying her enough to fill both hands? While I looked away for just a moment, honestly.”
“Haha… W-well, she wanted it so badly. And there seemed to be so many different flavors, so before I knew it……”
Yeo Un-hwi scratched his head and gave an awkward smile after being scolded by Peng Seo-yeon.
Then Yul-i spread both arms wide, still holding the candied fruit, and stepped in front of Yeo Un-hwi.
“Mom, don’t scold Dad. It’s not Dad’s fault.”
“Then whose is it?”
Peng Seo-yeon had naturally expected her to say, ‘It’s my fault for asking him to buy it.’
But Yul-i’s gaze turned somewhere entirely different.
“It’s all the fault of the candied-fruit uncle who made so many incredibly delicious things!”
“Huh? M-me?”
The man selling candied fruit beside them looked startled.
Yul-i nodded.
“Yes! Your candied fruit looked so delicious and tasted so good that Dad got scolded!”
“……”
Was that a compliment or something?
The man selling the candied fruit was left wondering whether he should thank her or apologize to her.
But wasn’t something missing here?
What about the part where you asked him to buy it?
Everyone burst out laughing at the adorable little girl who had tugged on her father’s clothes and asked him to buy her such tempting candied fruit while her mother wasn’t looking.
“You just keep coming up with more and more strange little schemes.”
“Hehe.”
“I’ll let it slide this time, but next time we come, candied fruit is forbidden. You ate far too much.”
“Aah! Waaah! How can you do that……”
Yul-i looked as though the world had just collapsed.
Yeo Un-hwi patted Yul-i and winked at her.
As if to say Dad would secretly buy her more, so she needn’t worry….
“And if you secretly buy her some again without my permission, you’d better be prepared. Got it? I won’t make your favorite potato noodles either.”
“N-no, wait. What did I even do?”
The potato noodles Peng Seo-yeon occasionally made were one of Yeo Un-hwi’s favorite dishes.
At those thunderbolt-like words, Yeo Un-hwi’s expression also became one of utter despair.
Seeing them like this, he suddenly thought that Yul-i really did resemble her father quite a lot.
Their expressions were exactly the same.
“Yul-i ate a lot of candied fruit today, so she’ll have to skip the next visit. When we come after that, I’ll allow her one piece, so keep that in mind. And don’t secretly buy her candied fruit like today when I’m not looking. If you do, you can forget about seeing potato noodles for quite some time.”
“……”
“……”
At Peng Seo-yeon’s words, Yeo Un-hwi and Yul-i both remained silent, their faces downcast.
How could they look so much alike?
“Both. Of. You. Understand?”
When Peng Seo-yeon repeated herself with a smile, Yul-i and Yeo Un-hwi could only nod.
There was something frightening about the sheer pressure she radiated.
Fortunately, Peng Seo-yeon did not even take away the candied fruit in Yul-i’s hands.
Thanks to that, Yul-i was able to bid a tearful farewell to her candied fruit.
“My candied fruit. Oh, my candied fruit. I won’t be seeing you next time.”
Munch, munch, munch.
Yul-i looked particularly forlorn as she ate the candied fruit today.
The Four Great Protectors accompanying them smiled as they watched her.
“They really are adorable, aren’t they?”
“Indeed. Just looking at them warms my heart and lifts my spirits.”
White Tiger, Azure Dragon, and Black Tortoise all wore thoroughly satisfied expressions.
Since they were always surrounded by a grim atmosphere and dealt only with terrifying faces, Yul-i’s cuteness and lovability were like rain upon their hardened hearts…
“Aren’t you guys leaving? How long are you all planning to stay here, anyway? Go on, go. The Saintess is going to collapse from overwork if she has to do everything herself.”
Vermilion Bird, who found the sight of those older folks grinning blissfully revolting, began nagging them.
“Good grief. We’re going, we’re going. We were planning to leave in a few days anyway.”
“A few days from now?”
“When will we ever get time like this again!”
“Exactly. Do you have any idea how we feel, knowing we’ll have to go back and look at nothing but the faces of blood-soaked bastards for a while?”
“So stop nagging us for these last few days. Good grief. My ears are going to grow calluses.”
“What’s he talking about?”
The protectors spoke as though returning to the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult were like being dragged off to prison.
Vermilion Bird thought the end times had to be near.
On another note, the market was incredibly crowded.
“Fresh vegetables! We have fresh vegetables that came in today!”
“Sweet and tangy fruit! Discounted for today only! Come on over!”
“Give me two fish over there!”
“Come on. The price has gone up since last time. Ma’am, you can’t do this to us. We’ve been regular customers for more than a year or two. Give us a discount.”
Recently, the villages around the Hebei Peng Clan had been filled with vitality.
That was probably because, thanks to the Peng Clan, murder, robbery, and every other kind of illegal activity in Hebei had been completely stamped out.
Naturally, anyone who might have committed such acts had also left Hebei.
If they tried anything funny here, they would have trouble even keeping themselves alive.
The people of Hebei had naturally begun praising the Peng Clan even more.
The Peng Clan had already taken the lead in handling various problems the authorities ignored through the armed forces under its banner, and thanks to the clan’s recent, bold actions, Hebei had become a better place to live than anywhere else in the Central Plains.
It was only natural, then, that people felt great fondness not only for the Peng Clan but also for its members.
“Look over there. Aren’t those them?”
“They are! They sure are!”
By now, Yeo Un-hwi and his family had become famous figures in Hebei.
They were the commander of the White Wolf Unit, who had beheaded countless fiends—including the Extremely Evil Demon—without hesitation; Peng Seo-yeon, the eldest daughter of the Peng Clan; and their lovely daughter as well.
To the people of Hebei, they were truly precious treasures.
“Please try some of our dumplings. No payment necessary.”
“Our vegetables are especially fresh today. Please take some. Take as much as you like.”
“Thank you as always. Thank you!”
One after another, people approached Yeo Un-hwi and his family with smiles and spoke to them.
Every one of their eyes held gratitude and respect.
“Ha, hahaha.”
White Tiger let out a hollow laugh at the sight.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just so fascinating.”
“What is?”
“I never even imagined that the person we’d been waiting for would be someone like that.”
A benevolent presence whom every child, woman, elderly person, and merchant in the market smiled at, spoke to first, and willingly showed goodwill.
Who could have known that he was actually the Heavenly Demon?
Probably no one could have imagined it.
“Hmm. That’s true.”
After hearing White Tiger say that, it did seem to be the case.
No one could have expected their lord to be such a radiant person.
So did they dislike it?
Far from it.
They were grateful to the heavens.
For allowing them to meet such a lord. Truly.
Thus, they continued enjoying their market outing to the fullest.
Meanwhile,
“……”
In a corner of the market far away,
there were people watching them.
***
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes. I’m certain.”
By now, dusk had fallen and the alleyways had grown dark.
Inside a building some distance from the market,
the mysterious merchant caravan Jegal Mun had encountered before was engaged in a thoroughly serious conversation.
At the man’s words, a woman nodded.
That woman was Lee Jina, a member of the Heavenly Ghost Corps whom Yeo Un-hwi had once saved from the Mind-Reading Five Ghosts.
That was right.
The identity of this suspicious merchant caravan was none other than the Heavenly Ghost Corps.
But why had they come all the way to Hebei?
That was because ‘he’ had said this to Lee Jina when they parted.
‘If you want to meet me, come to the Hebei Peng Clan anytime. I’ll be waiting for you.’
So the woman had returned to the Heavenly Ghost Corps and reported exactly what she had seen and heard.
Then, under assumed identities, she had infiltrated Hebei along with several other members, including two fighters of squad-leader caliber.
“To me, he just looked ordinary. He didn’t seem particularly skilled in martial arts either.”
“I agree. There’s no way he could fool my eyes. To do that, he would have to be in a realm far above mine, and only the Corps Leader could possibly have reached such a level.”
But no one seemed entirely convinced by Lee Jina’s words.
Most of the squad leaders thought she must have seriously misunderstood or imagined something.
An heir of the Martial God, huh.
There was a limit to how ridiculous someone could be.
The heir of the Martial God, who had never appeared even once in all those years, had suddenly shown up out of nowhere like this?
Even by the time the fourth-generation Heavenly Demon had appeared, the heir of the Martial God had never once shown themselves.
The Heavenly Ghost Corps had therefore reached its conclusion long ago.
There was no power left behind by the Martial God.
Rather, it was far more likely that a descendant of a member who had gone missing from the Heavenly Ghost Corps long ago had learned its martial arts.
And perhaps, knowing what the Martial God meant to the Heavenly Ghost Corps, they were trying to deceive them.
Though that possibility was remote too, it seemed more plausible than the claim that an heir of the Martial God had actually appeared.
So the squad leaders had not come here to meet the heir of the Martial God. They had come to see what the scammer looked like.
But then,
‘What was going on?’
The person they were dealing with was none other than a member of the Hebei Peng Clan?
Moreover, according to what they had learned through their intermittent investigations, he was the Peng Clan’s son-in-law as well as the commander of the White Wolf Unit.
Naturally, they had been steadily gathering information on the martial world of the Central Plains during the war with the Black Abyss.
Thus, they had heard the name of the White Wolf Unit mentioned here and there.
Yet the man claiming to be the heir of the Martial God was the commander of that White Wolf Unit?
What on earth was going on?
“Either he’s pulling off one hell of a scam.”
“Or he may simply be a raving lunatic.”
The burly man and the man posing as the merchant caravan’s representative came to that conclusion.
Just then,
“You’re treating me as a scammer and a lunatic without even talking to me? That’s harsh.”
Someone’s voice suddenly rang out.
The entire Heavenly Ghost Corps was startled and quickly assumed battle positions.
“Who goes there!”
They had failed to sense him.
Someone had come this close without them noticing.
A master—and an incredibly powerful one.
The hearts of every member of the Heavenly Ghost Corps pounded.
Then, someone slowly emerged from the darkness.
At the sight of him, Lee Jina’s eyes widened as far as they could go.
“Y-you are……"
“I told you to come find me yourself. I didn’t tell you to hide and watch me like this.”
A tall, handsome young nobleman flashed a grin.
It was Yeo Un-hwi.