Chapter 118
“The Danmok Clan, you say?”
After Danmok Hwaryeon caused a commotion at the Peng Family and left, Yeo Un-hwi commissioned Jin So-baek to investigate the Danmok Clan.
He didn’t want ordinary information, but a detailed account of any hidden secrets.
Why?
Before his regression, the Danmok Clan had flourished without clashing with the Five Great Families, much as they are now.
Eventually, they formed a close relationship with the Murim Alliance and re-emerged as a prestigious family with power rivaling that of the Five Great Families.
But a few strange rumors had followed them.
Yeo Un-hwi, who was the Blood Demon at the time, heard those rumors as well.
However, the Yeo Un-hwi of that time had no way of confirming whether the rumors were true or not, and he had chosen to pursue more certain villains rather than chase after rumors whose veracity he couldn't confirm.
And so, his past life had ended with no particular connection to the Danmok Clan.
But in this life, which he was living once more, a point of contact with the Danmok Clan had been made.
And as a bitter enemy, at that.
That day.
After being utterly defeated in her duel with Peng Seo-yeon, Danmok Hwaryeon left as if she were being chased away.
If she were an ordinary person, she would have accepted the result cleanly, or even if she couldn't, she would have been too ashamed to ever speak of it again.
But Yeo Un-hwi, who had faced countless villains over several decades, could sense it.
Danmok Hwaryeon was not the type to let this go.
And he could tell that there was something more to her, who seemed at a glance to be just a thoughtless young lady.
Thus, Yeo Un-hwi had thought it necessary to learn about the Danmok Clan in detail, and with certainty.
And not long after, upon receiving certain information from Jin So-baek, Yeo Un-hwi had smiled coldly.
Having left the Namgung Family, Danmok Hwaryeon was returning in a carriage with the warriors who were supporting her father.
It was already late, and they could have departed the next day, but she had no desire to stay a moment longer in Hefei, where she had suffered such a terrible humiliation.
Inside the moving carriage, Danmok Hwaryeon ground her teeth.
“I won’t let this go. Do you think I’ll just stand by?!”
She was a completely different person from the one who had wailed and begged Peng Mugang for forgiveness.
Her eyes red with fury, she had already returned to her usual venomous expression.
As expected, her apology and pleas for forgiveness had all been an act.
She was already racking her brain, plotting how to get revenge on the Peng Family and the other Five Great Families who had inflicted such a great humiliation on her today.
Even though the situation had escalated to this point because of a single lie born from her jealousy, she did not seek the cause of all this within herself in the slightest.
Just as they were leaving Hefei, Danmok Cheol regained consciousness.
“Kkeueueueu.”
“Ah, Father! Are you alright?”
Danmok Hwaryeon started in surprise and helped Danmok Cheol up.
Groaning in his wretched state, Danmok Cheol soon came to his senses and began to tremble with rage.
He was ashamed and resentful.
To have ended up in this state without even swinging his sword once!
“Peng Mugang… that bastard! How dare he ambush me and leave me in this state? I will never, ever forgive him! I will never forgive him, that man!”
Danmok Hwaryeon bit her lip and nodded her head as if in agreement.
Clasping Danmok Cheol’s trembling hand, Danmok Hwaryeon spoke.
“Don’t worry, Father. I have an idea.”
At Danmok Hwaryeon’s words, Danmok Cheol looked at her with eyes full of resentment.
“An idea?”
“Yes. We will report all of this to the Murim Alliance—the fact that they all ganged up on us and persecuted us.”
“The Murim Alliance……?”
Danmok Cheol’s eyes shifted.
The Murim Alliance.
It wasn’t a bad option.
The Murim Alliance had more than enough power to pressure the arrogant Five Great Families.
And though they pretended otherwise on the surface, the Murim Alliance was always keeping the Five Great Families in check, its nerves on edge, looking for a pretext to find fault.
However,
“Do you really think the Murim Alliance will step in over what happened to us?”
The Danmok Clan had recently begun to form various relationships with the Murim Alliance.
But they had only just begun; they were still far from having a close relationship with the Murim Alliance.
No matter how much the Murim Alliance wanted to find fault with the Five Great Families, using the Danmok Clan as a reason to clash with them lacked justification.
For the Murim Alliance, there was no reason yet to take such a risk for the Danmok Clan.
A clash with the Five Great Families was a matter that required extreme caution.
But despite Danmok Cheol’s worries, Danmok Hwaryeon’s expression remained confident.
“If they won’t step in, we’ll have to make it so they have no choice.”
“How do you mean?”
At Danmok Cheol’s question, Danmok Hwaryeon smiled darkly.
“We’ll say that the Five Great Families are plotting a conspiracy at this assembly and that they are preparing for a war with the Murim Alliance. Do you think they still won’t make a move then?”
It was the Danmok Clan, which had once listed its name among the Seven Great Families.
If they were to report that they had clearly heard this fact, the Murim Alliance would surely not dismiss their words lightly.
If things went well, the Murim Alliance and the Five Great Families might truly wage a great war.
It was not uncommon for great wars to start from very trivial matters.
It was a plausible scenario.
Upon hearing Danmok Hwaryeon’s plan, Danmok Cheol’s mouth fell open, and he soon laughed with pleasure.
“Oho! An excellent plan! Yes! That will do it! If that happens, those damned Five Great Families will shed tears of blood! Keh heh heh!”
“Yes. That’s right. I especially hope the Peng Family disappears completely this time. And when it is greatly weakened, I will...”
Danmok Hwaryeon paused for a moment, her eyes glinting with killing intent.
“Peng Seo-yeon, I will kill that wench with my own hands.”
She had heard that Peng Seo-yeon had a young daughter.
Then she would have to show that wench her daughter being torn to pieces first.
She would make her understand clearly what happens when one gets on the wrong side of Danmok Hwaryeon, and she would laugh triumphantly as she listens to the wench’s screams.
“Kukukuk.”
Danmok Hwaryeon smiled at the vicious fantasy she had concocted.
Danmok Cheol, far from stopping his daughter’s dangerous plot, laughed along with her.
While planning an act that could unleash a storm of blood across the entire Murim, the father and daughter showed not the slightest twinge of conscience.
Perhaps they had been driven mad by jealousy and rage.
But at that moment...
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“Truly alike. Like father, like daughter. What a spectacle.”
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“W-what? Who’s there!”
Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon were startled by the sudden voice of a third party inside the moving carriage.
*CRACK!*
The carriage was split in half.
Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon quickly threw themselves out.
Soon, the carriage they had been riding in was shattered beyond recognition.
If they had been even a moment late in escaping, they would not have avoided disaster.
Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon, who had rolled on the ground, got up and hurriedly looked around.
Their eyes widened.
Somehow, it wasn’t just the carriage that had been destroyed.
The warriors of the Danmok Clan who had been escorting the carriage were all collapsed on the ground.
Looking closely, they were already all dead.
“W-what is this?”
In the sudden situation, the faces of Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon hardened.
Then,
“As I thought. I knew you weren’t the type to back down easily, but I didn’t know you would plot something so terrible.”
At the voice that was directed at them, Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon felt a chill run down their spines.
It wasn’t because the voice was bizarre.
The voice, which seemed to belong to a young man, was rather pleasant to the ear, but what made Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon’s spines tingle was the aura carried in that voice.
*Step, step.*
Soon, a man appeared under the bright moonlight.
The man, who had a slender body like that of a mere scholar, walked calmly through the corpses of the fallen warriors.
And his two eyes, which stared straight at Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon, were glowing an unbelievable red.
“It seems I can’t let you be any longer.”
At the same time as those words, an immense aura erupted from the man, Yeo Un-hwi.
In that moment, Danmok Cheol and Danmok Hwaryeon gasped.
The man’s aura was so intense it made their entire bodies tingle.
Unbelievably, it was a power that far surpassed that of Peng Mugang, whom they had seen at the Namgung Family just a short while ago.
Yeo Un-hwi, who had unleashed an aura that dominated the area in an instant, continued.
“Above all, thank you. For being people who deserve to die.”
He smiled brightly.
But, though he was smiling, that smile felt more terrifying than anything they had ever seen in their lives.
How could a person’s smile look like that?
It was like the smile of a grim reaper, full of killing intent.
“W-who are you!”
Momentarily overwhelmed by Yeo Un-hwi’s presence, Danmok Cheol belatedly roused his spirit and shouted.
At that, Yeo Un-hwi, the protagonist of the chilling smile that had just appeared, tilted his head.
“Me? You should know me.”
“What are you talking about! I don’t know you!”
“Is that so? And yet you managed to call me a lowly man, and my wife a good-for-nothing wench.”
“W-what?”
It was a word he had heard somewhere before.
Those were the exact words Danmok Cheol had said to Peng Mugang at the Namgung Family just a short while ago.
Soon, Danmok Cheol’s face turned to one of disbelief.
He had heard he was a mere scholar who had just begun to learn martial arts, but he possessed such terrifying power? What on earth was going on?
“D-don’t tell me. The Peng Family’s……”
“That’s right. I am the son-in-law of the Peng Family and the Commander of the White Wolf Unit. And today, I am the one who will take your heads.”
“What? How dare you! Do you know who I am!”
At Yeo Un-hwi’s words, Danmok Cheol flew into a rage and shouted.
He immediately fumbled at his waist.
However, his beloved sword, which Danmok Cheol originally used, was already buried under the wreckage of the carriage, and he couldn’t find it.
*Shing.*
In the end, he picked up one of the swords of the fallen warriors.
“You bastard! You must think I’m a complete joke!”
Danmok Cheol thought that the reason he had been so soundly beaten by Peng Mugang was simply because he hadn’t been able to grab his sword.
Thus, now that he held a sword, Danmok Cheol was confident he would not lose to anyone other than the Twelve Venerables of the World.
Especially not to the likes of the Peng Family’s son-in-law.
“Today, I will show you a very harsh lesson!”
As if he had already forgotten the overwhelming pressure he had felt from Yeo Un-hwi, which surpassed even Peng Mugang’s, Danmok Cheol glared at Yeo Un-hwi with arrogant eyes.
And unlike with Peng Mugang, he took his stance first, pre-emptively.
Soon, the Danmok Clan’s prized Galaxy Meteor Sword Art was about to unfold from his hand.
But,
*Slice.*
Before the sword art could even properly leave its sheath, Danmok Cheol’s arm, which held the sword, fell to the ground with a soft thud.
For a moment, Danmok Cheol could not accept what had just happened to him.
“Huh? W-what… is this……”
Danmok Cheol stared blankly back and forth between his cleanly severed arm and the ground, and then a terrible scream erupted from his mouth.
“Kkeu, kkeuaaaaaaaak! M-my aaaaaarm!”