A Worthless Father’s Revenge

The darkness felt like home.

As Neung Je-gang leapt into the darkness, it felt as if he were returning to the Forbidden Demon Prison. The structure was surely different, and the people within must also be different, but the single fact of darkness gave him that same sensation.

The Forbidden Demon Prison had been the place of his rebirth.

He lightened his body to prepare for possible attacks, but the passage downward contained no traps.

Perhaps because he moved slowly, though the corridor was not long, he felt as if he had descended into a very deep underground.

Light appeared ahead. Assassins were human too, and living without light was difficult.

“There must be more passageways than just this one…”

Certainly. Even animals made multiple exits for their dens; humans would not live in a place with no escape routes.

Neung Je-gang halted where the corridor ended.

‘If I so much as stick out a hand, they’ll unleash every kind of attack to turn me into a beehive.’

He was not afraid of enemy attacks. Facing assassins always required such resolve. He trusted his cultivation and the martial arts he had mastered.

What concerned him were those rare supreme hidden weapons that sometimes appeared in the martial world. Even the Protective True Energy could be nullified by them; even the world’s Secret Shadow, Neung Je-gang, could be helpless.

Neung Je-gang removed his robe. Without it, he was dressed entirely in stealth garb. Contact with the outside air where the robe had been gave the outfit a cool sensation against his skin.

Among martial arts, there was a skill called Iron-Cloth Robe. People classified it as an external art and dismissed it as nothing special. But Iron-Cloth Robe was a peerless energy art, wholly different from such ordinary external skills.

Infusing qi into a garment until it became hard and resilient as iron plates—how could that be called an external art? Yet because third-rate peddlers who sold remedies in the markets claimed to have mastered it, the art had been relegated to a third-rate skill.

Though it was not true Iron-Cloth Robe, Neung Je-gang infused his discarded robe with qi. It was said that once inner energy reached the stage of “Five Energies Returning to the Origin,” one could even inject true energy into a blade of grass; a robe would be even easier.

Pachuchut!

For Neung Je-gang, who had already reached the stage of manipulating qi freely, this was no difficult task.

Shweeeek—

He flipped the stiffened robe upside down and hurled it downward with force.

Papapak, shushushu, shwishwishwik!

At that moment, arrows and every kind of hidden weapon flew toward the robe. The human-sized black robe seemed so lifelike to the assassins that their prepared attacks shredded it into rags.

The assassins waited for the dust raised by their volley to settle.

Wooong—

Just then, the assassins of the Soul-Summoning Temple raised their heads with a sense of foreboding. They stared in shock.

The man who should have been reduced to rags was hanging upside down from the ceiling, preparing some unknown attack.

“Go! Heaven-Shattering Strike!”

A forbidden martial art revealed itself once again. Though he did not dare call it Thunderclap, the sheer might of the Heaven-Shattering Strike, the strongest palm art, manifested fully and proudly.

Puhbububububuk—

Screams? None.

Resistance? None, of course.

The Heaven-Shattering Strike, which had nearly driven Neung Je-gang to death at just the fifth star, now erupted with the power of the seventh star. Who could withstand that?

Whoooosh.

Though underground where no wind should blow, a cold draft seemed to pass.

Darkness reclaimed the underground. The gale of the Heaven-Shattering Strike had scattered every flame.

Neung Je-gang descended slowly to the ground.

“Tsk, tsk!”

He clicked his tongue as he picked up the robe. It was so shredded that even a beggar would not wear it.

He raised his qi to scan the surroundings. He could not tell how vast the underground space was, but he sensed no living presence.

“Could the master of the Soul-Summoning Temple have died too?”

That he could not know.

He walked slowly, examining every corner of the underground. Since he had failed to collect the penalty fee, he had no choice now but to steal.

He left in the same appearance as he had entered. He even slipped on one of the black robes worn by the assassins inside, so he looked no different outwardly.

Yet not everything was the same. The left chest bulged as if it belonged to a woman.

“Heheheh!”

A laugh escaped him for no reason. His mood lifted.

“It seems the Assassin Pavilion wasted much money building the Famen Temple tower. The Soul-Summoning Temple, which I thought ran a petty business, has much greater wealth. Heheh!”

That was why he was pleased. He had thought the Soul-Summoning Temple barely scraped by with petty dealings at the Bao Gong Shrine, but in truth its fortune surpassed even the Assassin Pavilion’s.

“Perhaps steady small jobs are better than large ones that fail. At least I can make sure Master never worries about money again.”

That was what truly gladdened him.

“If I’d known this, I would have set other conditions with the Martial Alliance…”

Who could have known such a thing would happen? Only gods could foresee the future.

Neung Je-gang departed Hefei at once.

He leapt over the city wall in a single bound and strode down the moonlit avenue toward Anqing. What happened after—the discovery of corpses at the Bao Gong Shrine—no longer concerned him.

Bang!

Neung Je-gang was furious. The dining table shattered under his palm and sank into the stone floor.

The detached annex of an inn in Anqing.

Having returned from Hefei, he was consumed by a tangle of emptiness, anger, and guilt. Those feelings boiled over into rage. The heavy table pierced two inches into the hard stone floor.

The one quivering under his gaze was a young boy. Neung Je-gang remembered him—the youngest slave he had rescued from the pirate ship, the boy so stricken with social fear that he even trembled before his rescuer.

And yet, though he trembled and sweated, the boy did not flee from him now.

The reason for his anger was this:

The day after he left for Hefei, some of those he had told to wait took back the advance they had paid to rent the annex and disappeared.

Because of that, the rest were driven out of the inn. Starving for days, they had scattered and become beggars.

Only the boy had begged for food while waiting for Neung Je-gang’s return.

“Haa—! Do you know who took the money and ran?”

The boy shook his head.

“What’s your name?”

“Gwan-an.”

“Gwan-an? Is that your real name?”

“No, the men…”

The pirates had named him. Of course, that explained why his name meant “ogre.”

“Do you like that name?”

Nod, nod.

Neung Je-gang wondered if the boy even knew its meaning.

He led the boy outside. The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen—likely he had run, fearing reprisal over the refund. He had surely skimmed plenty when returning the deposit. Perhaps when he returned to see the broken table and stone floor, he would faint.

Neung Je-gang crossed the Yangtze by boat. Gwan-an followed silently behind him.

‘Because of a few greedy ones, dozens became beggars. I should have made it clear there would be no refunds… Haa. Does this count as betrayal?’

In a broad sense, it did. Betrayal—something Neung Je-gang hated most.

That was why his fury had been so great—because he felt betrayed.

‘Did I really trust them in that short time?’

If he had not trusted them, he would not feel such resentment.

‘Perhaps my heart has grown weak. I must retreat to the mountains and train to steel it again. But surely this boy won’t betray me too?’

He glanced at Gwan-an, head lowered, eyes fixed only on Je-gang’s heels.

‘Come to think of it, I should buy him proper clothes.’

The boy wore oversized adult clothes folded over his small body, which made him look clumsy.

Reaching Cheongyang County, Neung Je-gang sought a clothing shop to buy him garments.

He bought new clothes for Gwan-an and himself, and went further to purchase a horse and carriage. The wealth taken from the Soul-Summoning Temple seemed inexhaustible.

Since he carried much gold and silver ingots rather than promissory notes, he had no need to visit the money exchange.

When they climbed into the carriage, he heard Gwan-an sigh. For a boy still only fifteen, after walking for days, it was natural to sigh when at last he could just sit.

‘Wait, I don’t even know his age.’

“Gwan-an, how old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

Neung Je-gang looked at him in surprise.

Memory struck him. At fifteen, his own clan had been destroyed, leaving him an orphan. Their fates were alike.

But unlike the frail boy, Neung Je-gang had already been large enough to be called a man.

“How did you end up on the pirate ship?”

“From the start.”

The boy’s reply was brief.

‘From the start? Does he mean he was born among them? Or was he taken so young that he remembers nothing before?’

His curt answers only deepened Je-gang’s thoughts. Still, even that little company lightened the long journey.

Traveling along the official road, their trip was peaceful. Had they chosen rougher paths, they might have met bandits and seen mountain scenery, but then they would have had to abandon the carriage.

After a long, tedious journey, they at last reached their destination—Zhejiang Province. Four months had passed since they had left it, and now they returned.