Chapter 39. Twin Swords of the Wind and Clouds (14)
Although Woo-Moon was curious, he didn’t bother to stop and talk.
If, by chance, the girl wasn’t following him and just happened to be on the same path, he would only be putting himself in an awkward situation.
Woo-Moon cleared his mind about Hyeon Yu-Yeon following him and focused only on exploring the Northern Wind Steps.
‘Aha! If I circulate my qi like this and explode forth right at this moment, I’ll be able to travel even faster! Yes, yes, just like this... my footwork needs to be like this, too!’
Although he had created the Northern Wind Steps himself, he had yet to leisurely put it into practice like this. Now that he was fully focusing on testing the Northern Wind Steps, which he had only ever done in his imagination, he was able to feel and understand it a lot more. His speed was slowly going up, bit by bit.
Yu-Yeon had been staying near Unhan, intending on observing Song Woo-Gang’s biological family, including the Palm Emperor. She was indeed following Woo-Moon, but it was out of sheer curiosity. Thus, she had seen the young hero inquiring into the Inksmoke Gang and then suddenly leaving the village.
Following Woo-Moon because it looked fun, she wasn’t worried in any way about losing track of him even though he seemed to be working on a movement technique, as what Yu-Yeon was most confident in was her movement technique.
As expected, she wasn’t struggling in any way, and she was able to follow just by using her own Pure Cloud Steps.
However, as they continued forward, Woo-Moon’s speed was only increasing.
‘What is this? How is that movement technique both stable and evolving so rapidly?’[1]
Yu-Yeon quickly increased her qi flow, taking the Pure Cloud Steps from the first level to the second. Moreover, she only stayed on the second level for a moment, even going so far as to move to the third level directly.
She had initially written off Woo-Moon, who, although he was the Palm Emperor’s grandson, had not established any sort of reputation yet, even at his age. Moreover, from what she had heard in Unhan, he had even been called the village idiot till not so long ago. Naturally, she had looked down on him, heavily disregarding his abilities.
As his speed gradually increased, she thought to herself, ‘Oh ho, how impressive. He’s become faster.’
It didn’t take long for her thoughts to change entirely, however, as she had to go up to the seventh level of the Pure Cloud Steps in order to even keep up with his speed.
‘W-what the hell is he?! I thought he was called the village idiot until just a short time ago! There were only a few people in that village who even knew he had some kind of martial arts training! Just how is he this fast?!’
Then, when she had eventually surpassed even the tenth level and couldn’t even keep up even after reaching the twelfth step of the Pure Cloud Steps, Yu-Yeon stopped in place and felt a severe sense of defeat and despondency, with a sense of betrayal even mixed in.
‘T-that bastard! He was a hidden expert! He must have known from the very beginning that I was following him! What a snide little asshole! He even pretended not to notice and just gradually increased his speed just to mess with me!’
Because of her excessive use of her movement technique, Yu-Yeon had even suffered some minor internal injuries. She had never felt so infuriated in her life, even going so far as to grit her teeth and say, “You evil bastard. You...you dare to play with me?! Let’s see if I let this go!”
She already knew that Woo-Moon was heading to the Inksmoke Gang, so even if she lost sight of him, she had nothing to worry about. She could just catch up to him if she went to the Inksmoke Gang.
* * *
From the beginning of the day, Yeop Ji-Jil had been sitting on the second floor, drinking and looking out the window, thinking that his life was truly satisfactory.
Immediately after he had joined the Inksmoke Gang, he had been fortunate enough to be assigned to the brothel department, so now he spent every day listening to beautiful women calling him ‘big brother.’
“Ahhhh! It’s so nice~”
It really was a good thing that he had left his home and joined the Inksmoke Gang.
People who didn’t know anything thought that the Inksmoke Gang was involved in many dangerous things as a part of the Black Hand, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The power of the Inksmoke Gang in this region was truly great, however, so much so that people on the street would start kowtowing whenever a warrior of the Inksmoke Gang would bluster about with a scary look on his face.
Under these conditions, even though he was still the youngest and his martial skills were still weak even after five years after joining the gang, things were going quite fine.
“You! Go get me some water.”
“Pardon? Me?”
“What, do you need me to smack you to know I’m talking to you? Hurry up and get it.”
“I mean, you should be ordering Jeom So-Yi. Why are you ordering me...”
His only subordinate went down the steps, muttering as Ji-Jil sipped his drink again as he looked down the street nonchalantly. Suddenly, he saw someone rather familiar walking by his window.
“Huh? Wait, is that bastard.... Isn’t that the idiot Woo-Moon?”
Although he was momentarily happy to see someone from his hometown while in a foreign city, Ji-Jil’s first thought was that this was an opportunity to establish his authority by kicking Woo-Moon around in front of his subordinates. This way, the bastards would start behaving a little.
‘If I step on that guy, they’ll be more afraid of me, right?’
Ji-Jil was thrilled to be given such a great occasion to establish dominance, but he was soon left absolutely disappointed; in the short time it had taken for him to go down the stairs, Woo-Moon had disappeared.
“W-what the hell? You b-bastard. Wh-where did you go?”
Ji-Jil had developed a habit of stuttering whenever he was embarrassed or anxious.
“D-damn it.”
As Ji-Jil scratched his head, he went upstairs and sat down in his recliner again. He had no idea that the object of his ire, Woo-Moon, had just jumped over the wall of the Inksmoke Gang’s stronghold. He quickly found his way to the largest building and hid himself from sight.
***
“Boss! Are you really going to be like this?” said Deputy Head Chae Oh-Cheol, Chae Noh-Cheol’s paternal cousin and the right-hand man of Bang Mu-Shim, the head of the Inksmoke Gang.
He glared over at Mu-Shim, who didn’t even blink at his suggestion that they go and immediately bury the members of the Leebi Merchant Guild.
“Who the hell do you think you’re glaring at, you bastard?! Do you wanna die? Tell me straight, who is that bastard Chae Noh-Cheol or whatever? Is he your son or your dad or what? How do you think it would look if I had the entire Inksmoke Gang move out just because your dumbass cousin kicked the fucking bucket?”
‘You bastard, how dare you deny me this single favor after all I’ve done for you?!’ Oh-Cheol thought in his heart. The words that came out of his mouth, however, were in a completely different tone.
“The girl from the Leebi Merchant Guild is an incredible beauty. Let me tell you, if everyone talks about her beauty to this extent even though she always wears a veil, then how beautiful is she actually? At the very least, she wouldn’t lose to your wives or concubines.”
These words piqued the interest of Mu-Shim, who always lusted after a new toy.
“Oh, oh, is that so?”
“Sure is! Just think about it! We can just go, trample those bastards, take all they have, and bring her back to make her your fourth wife!”
Mu-Shim mused on the idea for a moment.
‘He said that the guild was pretty much ruined already, right? Although this bastard is worried about that young brat or whatever who took care of those merchant warriors and martial hall disciples by himself... You can’t compare our gang members with those country bumpkins.’
Even if they were to use only half of the power of the Inksmoke Gang, he was sure that they could easily overturn all of Unhan. Mu-Shim couldn’t care less about that mysterious young genius.
“Ahem, ahem. Now that I think about it, how many years have you been working so diligently as my right-hand man? There’s no way I can forgive those bastards who killed your cousin. Alright, get up! Let’s go to Unhan!”
Mu-Shim was clearly just trying to justify his own lust. In spite of his superior’s obvious intentions, however, Oh-Cheol said nothing.
They were just about to get up and leave when a young man suddenly entered the inner courtyard of the hall.
“Tsk, really now. You people are absolutely disgusting. I just can’t listen to you anymore.”
At first glance, the young man didn't look like an expert. Looking at him, Mu-Shim shouted, “Who the hell are you? How did you get in here? Also, the hell did you say? Disgusting? You bastard, I’m going to chop your head off and drink wine from your skull!”
Bang Mu-Shim was the typical Black Hand type. He always made sure to pepper the opponent with slurs before anything else.
Woo-Moon grinned, then he pointed a finger at himself and said, “Me? Oh, no one important. I’m just the Palm Emperor’s grandson.”
Mu-Shim and Oh-Cheol instinctively froze at the words “the Palm Emperor.” Their next thought, naturally, was that the kid was trying to pull a fast one on them.
“W-what?”
“Are you crazy, you bastard? You’re facing the King of Hell and you still spout bullshit?”
There were definitely more than one or two people in this world who would go around bragging that they were so-and-so’s son or so-and-so’s grandson. With that said, Mu-Shim and Oh-Cheol were completely dumbfounded at Woo-Moon’s gall to come all the way to the Inksmoke Gang’s main hall and say it to their faces.
“You little bastard! What, you have no one else to scam, so you come all the way here?”
Woo-Moon shrugged. “Well, if you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do.”
As Mu-Shim was pondering the best method to split Woo-Moon in half with his broadaxe, Woo-Moon slowly moved and stood in front of Oh-Cheol.
“Hey, you. I heard that you’re the one who gave poison to Chae Noh-Cheol. He tried to use that poison to kill my family. What are you going to do? We have to even the score, right?”
Oh-Cheol couldn't help but be surprised by Woo-Moon's words. It was true, he had given Noh-Cheol the poison himself as a favor. Noh-Cheol had been trying to swallow the Leebi Merchant Guild, and he had asked for the poison in order to deal with a person who stood in his way.
“Then, you’re that bastard...!”
The moment that Oh-Cheol started saying something, Woo-Moon suddenly stretched out his hand.
‘What?’
Unlike Noh-Cheol, Oh-Cheol had learned martial arts. Granted, his skills weren’t that outstanding, barely reaching the Second Class. Still, even with such meager skills, it was more than enough to show off in such a remote area.
Although someone of this level would be ignored at best and seen with contempt at worst if they went to where the Justice Coalition, Hegemon Clan, or the Black Bull Gang interacted with their second-class cultivation, in this remote area, this meager level of power would be considered fairly strong.
Still, Oh-Cheol hadn’t even been able to see how Woo-Moon moved.
Moreover, he couldn’t even understand how he was being held by the throat right now.
Woo-Moon glared coldly at Oh-Cheol.
“What, you even go so far as to try to exterminate a family that never had anything to do with you? How can you be this evil?”
That Chae Oh-Cheol couldn’t see Woo-Moon move was one thing, but it was the same for Mu-Shim, who could be said to be an upper-tier expert.
‘The hell is up with that bastard?’
As Mu-Shim was taking a good look at Woo-Moon, Oh-Cheol swung his arms wide to try to push Woo-Moon away.
However, Woo-Moon simply let go of his throat and nonchalantly stepped back. Both Oh-Cheol and Mu-Shim were puzzled.
Sensing the commotion, the Inksmoke Gang’s subordinates belatedly came running.
“What’s going on, Head?”
There were about 120 people in total, and among them was Ji-Jil, who had returned to the manor of the Inksmoke Gang in the meantime.
“Huh? What is this? Why is the village idiot here? What are you doing?”
Hearing those words, Woo-Moon frowned as he looked over at Ji-Jil’s face.
‘Ah, it’s this guy. Hasn’t he heard about his father?’
Woo-Moon’s thoughts were right. Ji-Jil had practically disowned his father, Yeop Gu-Saeng, and he hadn’t yet heard the news.
“What is this? Hey, stutterer. Do you know him?” Mu-Shim asked Ji-Jil.
“Yes! He’s some kid I used to mess with when I was younger.”
Mu-Shim had a vague idea who Ji-Jil was. He was one of the pieces of trash that he had accidentally accepted among his gang members. Ji-Jil had said something about his father being the head of a martial hall, but as he didn’t seem to be able to show off any martial skills properly, Mu-Shim had just left him to take care of the brothel.
‘He actually got bullied by that stutterer? Him?’
Mu-Shim glared at Ji-Jil as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Really? Are you sure you aren’t seeing it wrong?”
“Yes, I’m sure! Hey, you idiot! You’re Song Woo-Moon, right?”
Woo-Moon slowly grew angry.
‘I’m getting really tired of that bastard calling me an idiot.’
Without hiding his anger, Woo-Moon spat through his teeth, “Yes, I am precisely that idiot. Wanna keep calling me an idiot?”
When he heard that Ji-Jil was right, Mu-Shim thought that he must have seen things wrong earlier, while Oh-Cheol felt that he must have let his guard down and made a ridiculous mistake.
“Ah, damn it. Fuck me. For a moment there, I really thought that he was a hidden master or something.”
Mu-Shim was furious at the thought of being deceived by a guy who had suffered under the hand of a piece of trash who couldn’t even speak well. He wanted to take care of Woo-Moon himself, but thinking that he had to save some face, he yelled at his subordinates instead.
“Hey! Damn it, kill that bastard!”
The leader of the Inksmoke Gang’s assault team, Do Gwi, responded, “Understood, Boss! Boys, kill him!”
“It’s time to die, you fucking bastard!”
“How dare this son of a bitch make our hyung-nim angry?!!”
As random shouts and curses colored the air of the inner courtyard, the members of the Inksmoke Gang rushed at Woo-Moon from all directions.
“Tsk, I think I’ve heard more curses in this hall than in the rest of my life. Once I’m done with you, I’ll have to go home and wash my damn ears.”
As he finished speaking, the members of the Inksmoke Gang swung their vicious weapons at him.
To their shock, Woo-Moon’s figure suddenly blurred and disappeared.
"Huh?"
While the guys who attacked first were embarrassed as they lost their target, Woo-Moon appeared in front of the person who had called him ‘son of a bitch.’
“You know what, I don’t even care about anything else. But how dare you insult my mother?”
Translator’s thoughts:
Jeom So-Yi is another weird name. If you group it differently, jeomso-yi becomes a glycoprotein that forms mucus.
Bang Mu-Shim’s name means “to be ignored.” That worked out well for him.
1. Generally, in wuxia/murim novels, you’ll see cultivators warn others about practicing an incomplete technique because it's dangerous. Techniques that are stable while still having room for growth are rare treasures. ☜