Light Novel: Volume 14 Episode 8
Manhwa: N/A
The news of the Sword Blossom Pavilion’s attempt in falsely accusing Pyo-wol of raping a woman, and then having it backfire on them, quickly spread throughout Jiangsu.
Those who witnessed the incident at the inn proudly gossiped about it, and there’s nothing the Sword Blossom Pavilion could do to stop them.
In just one day, the said sect faced severe criticism.
After Go Yeonsu destroyed Eum Yujeong’s dantian and kicked her out of the Sword Blossom Pavilion, Eum Yujeong, whose hand had also been crushed by Pyo-wol, had no choice but to leave Lake Tai like a fugitive.
After driving out her disciple, Go Yeonsu locked herself in her residence and did not come out. Some said Go Yeonsu cried all day in her residence, while others spread rumors that she had gone mad.
No one knows what the truth was, but one thing was certain.
The Sword Blossom Pavilion’s standing as a powerful faction had come to an end.
As surprising as the downfall of the Sword Blossom Pavilion was, what was even more terrifying was the existence of Pyo-wol, who was responsible for the whole thing.
Any man would have his reputation ruined if he had fallen into the trap set by Go Yeonsu. After all, there was nothing more terrifying than being labelled as a sexual predator especially to the honor-conscious warriors of Jianghu.
However, Pyo-wol proved his innocence by breaking through Go Yeonsu and the Sword Blossom Pavilion’s conspiracy head-on, and not only that, but he also brought about the Sword Blossom Pavilion’s complete downfall in the process.
Pyo-wol’s boldness and brutality instilled fear into the hearts of the people. The perception that one would ruin their reputation if one dared to provoke Pyo-wol took root in people’s minds.
The person who was most shocked by the incident was Tang Ik-gi, the young master of the Cheolsan Workshop.
“So you’re telling me that Lady Eum, the one and only esteemed Eum Yujeong, was chased out of her sect like a stray dog?”
A look of disbelief was written on Tang Ik-gi’s face.
To him, Eum Yujeong was like a flower that bloomed high up, in an unreachable place. Hearing the news that such a person had been kicked out by Pyo-wol was unbearable.
“Damn it!”
Tang Ik-gi paced around the room all day long.
No matter how much time passed, he couldn’t calm down, and his anxiety only grew.
“I can’t do this.”
Unable to withstand the pressure, Tang Ik-gi stepped outside.
He didn’t like staying in the manor because it was stuffy, but he couldn’t go to Lake Tai either, even if that’s where he usually went, for fear of running into Pyo-wol.
In the end, Tang Ik-gi decided to go to Cheolsan Workshop.
It was a place he had grown up in, so he was familiar with it, and most importantly, there was a person named Do Yeonsan who was good for venting his frustrations.
Tang Ik-gi didn’t even tell his father, Tang Cheolsan, that he had confined Do Yeonsan. He was afraid of facing punishment.
‘Perhaps it would be better to kill him so I could silence him…’
If his father found out that he had hidden the fact that Do Yeonsan’s parents were dead and set their house on fire, he would be furious.
It would be better to destroy the evidence before that happened.
‘Yes, that might be better.’
He didn’t want to suffer any more headaches from this troublesome situation.
With malicious intent, Tang Ik-gi headed to the workshop.
As soon as he arrived in the workshop, he was greeted by the shopkeeper.
“Oh, welcome, young master!”
Tang Ik-gi noticed that the shopkeeper’s attitude towards him was strange.
He seemed visibly flustered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Huh?”
Tang Ik-gi’s face contorted at the shopkeeper’s startled appearance.
“What is it? What happened?”
“Well, um–”
Slap!
Consumed by anger, Tang Ik-gi slapped the shopkeeper across the cheek.
“Can’t you speak properly?! What happened?”
“Uh, well, Do Yeonsan has escaped.”
“What?”
Tang Ik-gi’s eyes blinked for a moment, completely taken aback by the unexpected response.
“We only discovered this morning that he escaped.”
“How? Didn’t you lock him up?”
“I definitely locked him in the warehouse. But he just disappeared.”
Whack!
Tang Ik-gi kicked the shopkeeper.
As the shopkeeper received the blow in his stomach, he rolled across the floor.
“You call than an explanation?! You bastard! How could he just have disappeared mysteriously like that?! Why didn’t you report it immediately? Huh!”
“Well–-“
“Damn it!”
Tang Ik-gi continuously struck the shopkeeper, who couldn’t come up with a good excuse.
The shopkeeper couldn’t muster the courage to make excuses so he just continued to get beaten. But even after hitting the shopkeeper for a long time, Tang Ik-gi’s anger didn’t subside.
“What happened? Tell me the truth!”
“Actually…”
The shopkeeper finally began to reveal what happened the day before.
As the shopkeeper finished his story, Tang Ik-gi had an incredulous expression on his face.
“So, you’re saying a man named Pyo-wol came to visit you, and he found out that Do Yeonsan had been confined?”
“Yes!”
“What did the two of you talk about?”
“Well, they spoke in a very low voice, so I couldn’t hear properl–”
“You damn idiot! You call that an excuse?”
“I’m sorry.”
“And so, Pyo-wol let that bastard escape?”
“That’s not the case. Pyo-wol only said a few words and then left. Do Yeonsan escaped much later.”
“Fuck!”
Tang Ik-gi slammed his fist down on the table.
The shopkeeper swallowed dryly as he watched the table broke into two pieces and collapse onto the floor.
For a moment, he felt a hunch that his fate would be the same as the table. Fortunately, however, Tang Ik-gi no longer had the intention to exercise violence against him.
“So, you’re tracking him now?”
“Yes!”
“You’d better find him, or else, I’ll rip your head off first.”
“W-We’ll definitely find him, even if it means putting in a request to the Hao clan.”
“Damn it! Of all people, he had to be involved with that bastard–”
Tang Ik-gi gritted his teeth.
What bothered him most of all was Pyo-wol.
The fact that Pyo-wol was involved in this incident made him uneasy.
The sudden downfall of the Sword Blossom Pavilion, which had boasted tremendous power in Lake Tai, was by no means an ordinary occurrence.
The shopkeeper’s lips quivered as he watched Tang Ik-gi tremble. He wanted to say something, but the words just wouldn’t come out.
Several things had disappeared from the warehouse where Do Yeonsan was previously confined. Among them were minerals brought in from outside the Central Plains.
‘Let’s just not say anything.’
If he spoke now, he might not be able to get out of this place alive, so he tightly sealed his lips.
* * *
Do Yeonsan carefully lifted up the cloth which was covering an object.
The moment he saw the object under the cloth, his eyes turned red and bloodshot.
“Heup!”
He clamped his mouth shut.
The lifeless body, swollen and unrecognizable, submerged in water was undoubtedly his younger sister.
Thick teardrops rolled down Do-yeon-san’s cheeks.
He thought all his tears had dried up, but there were still tears left to flow.
Do Yeonsan gently touched his sister’s face.
He couldn’t believe that his sister, who was more beatiful than a flower and brighter than the moon, was lying here as a cold corpse.
If this was a nightmare, he wanted to wake up from it as soon as possible, but he knew all too well that this was not a dream.
“Who on earth did this?”
Do Yeonsan closely examined his sister’s lifeless body.
Just as Pyo-wol had said, there were clear signs of torture on his sister’s body.
Whoever the perpetrator was, Do Yeonsan knew that they had tortured his sister after thoroughly violating her. The contorted expression on his sister’s face was enough to let him know just how much pain she had to suffer.
After examining the body for a while, Do Yeonsan noticed a strange mark on his sister’s forearm.
At first glance, it looked like an insignificant wound, but upon closer inspection, the marks came together to form a character.
“Zhao?”
It was evident that the character was engraved on the forearm using a sharp stone or iron tool.
While the mark or scar may have appeared as a simple injury when his sister was alive, the character becomes more distinct and visible as the body stiffened after death.
It was a character painstakingly carved into the flesh in a life-or-death situation, so such a mark couldn’t be meaningless.
Someone’s face suddenly came to Do Yeonsan’s mind.
“Zhao Yiguang!”
Do Yeonsan gritted his teeth.
Tang Ik-gi was a person with a loose tongue.
He harbored resentment towards the members of Golden Heaven Society, so he often gossipped and spoke ill of them even when he was trying to join them.
Among them, he mentioned Zhao Yiguang the most.
Tang Ik-gi would say that, although Zhao Yiguang seemed dignified on the outside, his sexual preference were actually messy, with how he always targeted young girls. Tang Ik-gi would even tell how many girls had been ruined or lost their lives because of Zhao Yiguang.
At the time, Do Yeonsan dismissed it as nonsense, thinking it was impossible.
Common sense told him that there was no reason for a scion of a prestigious family like Zhao Yiguang to engage in such sordid affairs, so Do Yeonsan just assumed that Tang Ik-gi was slandering Zhao Yiguang.
But now, seeing the character, “Zhao,” he regretted not paying more attention.
If Do Yeonsan had been more cautious, his sister wouldn’t have been abducted by Zhao Yiguang, and his parents wouldn’t have met their deaths at his hands.
By now, Do Yeonsan concluded that Zhao Yiguang was the culprit.
He carefully picked up his sister’s body.
Although he couldn’t provide closure for his parents’ bodies due to Tang Ik-gi, he wanted to ensure that his sister would be buried in a proper place.
“Be careful.”
When Do Yeonsan emerged carrying his sister’s body, the official looked at him with a pitifying expression. Although he frequently encountered bodies drowned in water, he had never seen such a gruesome corpse like Do Yeonsan’s sister’s.
It was impossible to guess the extent of Do Yeonsan’s sorrow at this moment.
Normally, when they discover such bodies, they would ask for a small amount of money before returning the body to the family. But, the official couldn’t bring himself to make such a request to Do Yeonsan.
The official just silently watched Do Yeonsan walk away, carrying his sister’s body.
Do Yeonsan carried his sister’s body to a nearby field in Lake Tai.
At the spot where the field and the lake met, there was a small boat waiting. It was something Do Yeonsan had prepared in advance before picking up his sister’s body.
The boat was loaded with the items he had stolen from Cheolsan Workshop.
Do Yeonsan laid his sister’s body on one side of the boat and started rowing.
Lake Tai had a total of forty-eight large and small islands. Some of them were inhabited, but most were not.
The place where Do Yeonsan was taking the boat was one of those uninhabited islands.
It was a small island located at the deepest part of Lake Tai.
After docking the boat in the small island, Do Yeonsan unloaded his sister’s body and all the items he had brought with him.
The first thing he did was gather wood from the island. He stacked dry branches to build a makeshift altar and placed his sister’s body on top of it. Then, he lit a fire.
The bright red flames quickly engulfed his sister’s body.
“Heuk! Hick!”
Do Yeonsan collapsed to the ground, wailing.
He thought his tears had dried up, but they hadn’t.
His tears continued to flow until his sister’s body was burnt to ashes.
It was only after a long while when the fire had extinguished did Do Yeonsan finally raised his head.
He was no longer crying.
His tears had finally and completely dried up.
After collecting his sister’s ashes, he personally ground them into fine powder. Afterwards, he scattered the finely ground bone powder over Lake Tai.
“May you be reborn in a good family. Not one with such an incompetent brother, but one with a family that can protect you.”
Do Yeonsan then turned around.
After cremating his sister’s body, the first thing he did was build a furnace.
He stacked the stones he had collected and filled the gaps with mud from the riverside.
Even though his fingernails were torn and blood trickled, he continued persevering in building the furnace, without uttering a single groan.
As the sun began to set, the furnace was finally completed.
Do Yeonsan immediately threw wood inside the furnace and set it on fire. Once the flames grew, he tossed the white coal he had taken from the Cheolsan Workshop into the fire.
The white coal produced by the Cheolsan Workshop had the effect of maximizing firepower.
As the white coal was added, blazing white flames shot up.
Do Yeonsan secretly put the minerals he had stolen into the flames.
“I will never forgive you.”
The flames in Do Yeonsan’s eyes were as intense as the fire in the furnace.
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