Translator: Nox

I Am the Youngest Disciple of the Martial Arts World’s Mastermind

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The Youngest Disciple of the Murim’s Hidden Mastermind

Chapter 30

“No, I mean….”

I opened my eyes, feeling sheepish.

Still, my shock hadn’t been an exaggeration.

If this was only one-sixteenth of its power, then the strength of the heaviest iron fan would be nearly….

“A rifle…?”

It would basically be a firearm.

As I muttered blankly, struck by a positive kind of shock, Gwangeum pressed the iron fan firmly into my hand and furrowed his handsome brow.

“What are you muttering about?”

“Oh, it’s nothing!”

“Forget it, just take this. You’ll need to practice using it. It’s a good thing I made some lighter versions just in case. I didn’t realize your external martial arts were so pathetic.”

“Hey!”

I instinctively started to pout, but then I caught something strange in his words.

“…Wait, did you make these specifically for me?”

I thought he’d just brought over some random ones he had lying around….

“Then what?”

As if asking something obvious, Gwangeum stood up and gathered the remaining fans, leaving only the one in my hand.

“Who else would use something this light besides you?”

“……!”

Now that I looked closely, there seemed to be faint dark circles under Gwangeum’s dark, handsome eyes….

Suddenly, a wave of emotion washed over me.

“Gwangeum Sahyeong….”

I’m sorry for complaining about your nasty personality. I didn’t know you’d do something like this for me….

I quickly scrambled up and gave Gwangeum a tight hug.

As I thought, befriending all my senior brothers was the right answer!

“Ugh, ugh. What are you doing…!”

I could feel his body stiffening like a stone in my arms in real time.

“Hehe.”

But so what!

Regardless of his reaction, I rubbed my face against his back and shouted brightly.

“Thank you so much!! I’ll put it to good use!!”

“Gah…….”

“Ah!”

After finally prying me off, Gwangeum rushed to the door, breathing heavily as he glared back at me.

“…….”

“What is it?”

I tilted my head, pretending not to notice the tips of his ears turning bright red. Gwangeum spat out his words as if grinding them between his teeth.

“…Hey. If you put too much internal energy into that, it’ll break. And if it breaks….”

“If it breaks?”

“It explodes. If that happens, bring it to Jinmyeonggak. I’ll teach you how to fix it.”

Having finished his piece, Gwangeum didn’t even wait for my answer before stomping away with heavy footsteps.

Looking at his retreating back as he headed toward Jinmyeonggak, I shouted with a mischievous, satisfied smile.

“Thank you, Gwangeum Sahyeong~!! You’re the best, Sahyeong!!”

Naturally, there was no reply.

Still, a warm feeling lingered in my chest.

The iron fan he gave me was the first mechanism I had ever come to possess.

---

Crack—.

The sharp sound of a whip rang out.

Inside a prison nestled within a dark cavern, a Centurion pulled back a whip infused with demonic arts, looking down at the slaves crawling on the floor.

Among them, one man whose clothes were relatively clean and whose appearance was somewhat decent grabbed the Centurion’s ankle, screaming in a hoarse voice.

“Please, let me go. I… I must carry on my family’s legacy….”

“Are you planning to give up on that desire to become strong?”

Clicking his tongue, the Centurion knelt down in front of him.

“Very well.”

“……!”

For a brief moment, hope flickered in the man’s eyes.

However, that hope was shattered into pieces by the Centurion’s next words.

“I shall erase all those useless memories for you.”

“Aaaaaagh……!”

The Centurion grabbed the man by his hair, pulling his head back, and seared his temples with demonic energy.

A sickening sizzling sound and a scream mixed together, echoing through the cave.

Thud. The man collapsed to the floor, twitching as he muttered in a dying voice.

“Memories… my memories are….”

His memories had been erased by the demonic arts.

Ten years ago, after the Demonic Cult lost its headquarters in the Hundred Thousand Mountains to the Orthodox Faction during the Great War.

The cult had split its forces and gone into hiding in secret locations.

They were waiting for the day their leader would rise again as the Heavenly Demon and bring the Great Heavenly Demon Sect back to its former glory.

Among them, Centurion Pyeonma’s mission was to kidnap the rising stars of the Righteous Factions over several years, erase their memories, and plant demonic arts within them to turn them into slaves of the cult.

Of course, nine out of ten could not accept the demonic energy and either went mad or became crippled.

However, occasionally, there were those in whom the demonic arts took root perfectly.

‘Like that brat.’

Pyeonma, while whipping those crawling on the floor, looked at a boy huddled in a small cage, his eyes shining intensely.

It was Ryang.

A hollow where a hundred people entered and a hundred demons emerged.

White Horse Cave was one of the secret locations used to train the slaves of the Demonic Cult.

However, not all one hundred tunnels in the cave were occupied.

This was because most died, consumed by the demonic arts, as soon as the Gu poison was planted. Thus, it was rare for White Horse Cave to actually hold a hundred people as its name suggested.

Consequently, most of those who had entered with him were now dead and gone.

“…….”

Huddled inside the cage, Ryang kept his head as far as possible from the frost-covered floor.

Although the Left Envoy of Light had looked after him as much as possible, he could not entirely escape punishment for failing to catch the witness in Hwangun County.

His entire body, deeply scarred by the whip, throbbed with a stinging ache.

“Ugh…….”

It had been so long since he lost his memories of the past that he no longer had a home to return to.

Hellish days spent obeying Pyeonma’s orders, never knowing when the Gu poison would consume his sanity….

And the most agonizing part of it all was.

‘…Did that girl escape safely?’

The girl he had met a few weeks ago kept flickering through his mind.

He would never see her again. It had been a mere brush of sleeves with a precious girl he could never touch again, a stroke of luck upon luck—so why was he still dwelling on it?

In truth, it was her mannerisms and movements that lingered in his head more than her face.

The gaze that looked forward without fear, her bold touch, the swift feet that led him….

“Soso…….”

Every time he rolled that common name in his mouth, his heart ached with a tingling sensation, as if it weren’t the first time he had called it.

Had they met in the past he had forgotten?

But for that to be true, she had looked a year or two younger than him….

“Cough.”

Ryang huddled closer, swallowing the blood rising in his throat. His blackened fingertips trembled.

He could feel the Gu poison rampaging violently within his dying body.

“…Kh.”

It was gradually gnawing away at his reason. He could feel that he didn’t have many days left.

After that, he would become a monster hungry for blood and battle, just like the others. He would become a slave in the truest sense of the word.

“…….”

Yet, at this moment, what he desired most fervently was not to drive out the Gu poison, nor to recover his memories, nor to take revenge on Pyeonma.

It was simply to see her.

If only he could see her just one more time….

Ridiculously, he wanted to meet that girl he had seen for the first time just a few days ago.

It was because a faint intuition wouldn’t leave his head—the feeling that she held some kind of clue.

How foolish….

There was no way she would come looking for him. She couldn’t remove the Gu poison, and she couldn’t find his memories.

“…Haa.”

As he remained huddled, the pain caused his vision to gradually blur.

Falling asleep as if losing consciousness had become his daily routine.

Just as Ryang was about to let go of his consciousness in resignation.

“Wake up!”

“……?”

Ryang blinked slowly.

He thought it was a dream.

“Wake up, hurry!”

A shadow was cast before his eyes.

A voice that sounded exactly like the hallucination that had been ringing in his ears called out to him in a whisper.

“Ah…….”

Was it a dream after all?

But at the sensation of a small hand reaching through the bars and tugging on his filthy clothes, Ryang realized this was reality.

“…How.”

He snapped awake.

“Soso?”

As he carefully called the name she had given him, as if handling a mirage that might vanish at any moment, the shadow nodded.

“Yeah. I came to save you!”

“…….”

“Wait a second. The door… Ah, there we go!”

Click, creak.

The iron bars of the cave that imprisoned Ryang opened.

“Come out quickly! There’s not much time!”

“…….”

But even though the door was open, Ryang could not easily take Soso’s hand.

The blackened fingertips he had instinctively reached toward her stood in stark contrast to her clean, fair hand.