My Dad Is the Strongest Under Heaven
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
- He Stood at the Origin of Every Agony
Could even the dwellings of the land’s most illustrious figures boast more splendor than this?
Soaring high as if to brush against the luminous, full-risen moon, the magnificent pavilion glittered in a mesmerizing sea of decadent lanterns.
This was Cheonghwaru.
The grandest, most lavish pleasure house in all of Sichuan, alive tonight as ever with the thick, sultry murmur of laughter.
“Hahahaha!”
“Hohoho!”
On the highest floor of Cheonghwaru lay only two private chambers.
They were not suites just anyone could enter.
The guests permitted within those doors were strictly few.
One had to wield the greatest power in Sichuan—or command its vastest fortune.
Tonight, melodies of song and strings drifted from one of those two rooms.
“You seem in exceptionally high spirits tonight, Grand Young Master.”
A man with a decadent aura and sharp, prominent eyes sat at the head of the table, sipping his wine.
Around him sat four or five men bearing blades, their faces flushed from the rising warmth of alcohol.
At his subordinate’s remark, the man at the head of the table gave a faint smirk.
“Is that so?”
“Indeed. It seems something splendid must have occurred.”
“Hmm, something splendid, you say… Heh. There is. Something very splendid.”
“May we be so bold as to ask what it might be?”
The man addressed as the Grand Young Master tossed back his cup.
Then, at an unhurried pace, he began to speak.
“There was once a flower I coveted for a very long time.”
Ooh.
Those present pricked up their ears.
A tale of romance from the Grand Young Master himself?
“Quite unlike me, I suppose one could say I fell for her at first sight. I thought the feeling would wither away quickly as it always does, yet it lingered for quite some time. A truly curious thing.”
“Goodness, to think our Grand Young Master possessed such pure devotion.”
“Hmm. Pure devotion… Well, now…”
Every face in the room mirrored surprise.
Seeing this, the man chuckled softly and continued.
“So I resolved to have her. I was quite curious, you see.”
“Curious about what, my lord?”
To their knowledge, this man was colder, crueler, and more tyrannical than any other.
Hearing such a seemingly innocent tale of yearning from the Grand Young Master only made them listen more intently, utterly intrigued.
And yet—
“If I kept that radiant flower at my side and slowly, thoroughly crushed and trampled it underfoot… I wondered what kind of expression she would make, and what kind of delight it would bring me.”
A cold chill ran through the room.
As the man smiled alongside those words, the hair stood on end across everyone present.
Madness—it was a smile drenched in sheer madness.
Chilling enough to freeze the blood of anyone who looked upon it.
He truly was not in his right mind.
Their Grand Young Master.
And that was precisely why he was so terrifying.
This man.
That gaze of his, as though something vital inside had long shattered, never failed to inspire dread in those who beheld it.
The Grand Young Master continued to sip his wine.
‘…Well, in the end, I never got to have her.’
Even for someone like him, he never imagined she would vanish so completely.
And to think the man she fled with was a nameless, nobody scholar.
‘Heh. What an amusing world it is, truly.’
Though many had mocked him behind his back because of that incident, he had never truly cared.
He only felt regret.
Regret over the fact that his desires had been thwarted.
Then, years later… he finally found it.
The place where she resided.
Now, that flower would inevitably begin to wither away in excruciating agony.
And before long, she would lose her luster entirely.
Because he had made it so.
A smirk crept onto his lips.
The man grinned in spite of himself.
Blood-Rot Poison.
One of the most infamous and insidious nerve toxins in existence.
Its symptoms progressed at such a gradual pace that ordinary folk—no, even masters with considerable knowledge of poisons—would find it nearly impossible to notice until it was far too late.
At first, one’s vigor would slowly drain away, followed by unfathomable torment as the entire body began to throb as if struck by a hammer.
Next, numbness would claim the nerves from the limbs upward to the neck, until finally, unable even to draw breath, the victim would gasp and choke before succumbing to a horrific death by suffocation.
It was undeniably the most vile and merciless of poisons—so much so that toxins killing in an instant seemed an act of pure benevolence by comparison.
‘…Ha. Just how much agony will she suffer? And what face will she make when her breath is finally cut off? Ah, ah.’
The mere thought of it sent him into ecstasy.
Save for the single fact that he could not witness it with his own eyes, everything was utterly satisfying.
Naturally, failure was out of the question.
The assassin he dispatched was the most adept in handling poisons among all the subordinates who had pledged loyalty to him, and his martial prowess was formidable in its own right.
A master who ranked among the top ten in the entire clan.
Thus, not a shred of doubt crossed his mind that the mission could ever go awry.
“Heh, heheheh…”
Soon, the man at the head of the table drained another cup of wine.
Tonight, the liquor tasted exceptionally sweet.
“…Tang Guhwi?”
Yeo Woonhwi’s expression grew dubious.
A name he had not anticipated in the slightest had just slipped from the man’s lips.
What was more—
“Are you speaking of the Grand Young Master of the Sichuan Tang Clan?”
“Y-Yes, that is correct.”
Battered and broken beyond recognition by Yeo Woonhwi’s hands, the culprit nodded, gasping for breath.
‘Hmm. The Sichuan Tang Clan, of all people…’
An unexpected colossus had stepped onto the stage.
The Sichuan Tang Clan.
One of the Five Great Clans representing the Murim, renowned as First in Hidden Weapons, Second in Poison, and Third in Martial Arts—a prestigious martial lineage hailed as unrivaled under heaven when it came to concealed armaments and the toxic arts.
Yet—
“Why would the Grand Young Master of the Sichuan Tang Clan seek to kill my wife?”
“Did you truly not know?”
“Know what?”
“It is common knowledge among many that the Grand Young Master coveted your wife. The Sichuan Tang Clan even went so far as to forcefully propose a marriage alliance.”
Had such a thing occurred?
It was the first Yeo Woonhwi had ever heard of it.
He had merely fled with her to escape her family, who opposed their union to the bitter end.
To think there was such an underlying history.
At any rate, not long after the Sichuan Tang Clan sent their marriage proposal, Tang Guhwi received word that the woman he had sought had fled in the dead of night with a nameless scholar.
‘And that scholar was me.’
Worse still, once it became known that the man she chose was an orphaned scholar with no backing whatsoever, Tang Guhwi had been turned into a laughingstock.
“…So he sought to kill her for that?”
“Martial artists kill and die over face alone. That is more than enough reason in our world.”
“And that is precisely why I detest you people of the Murim.”
“What are you…”
Baffled by Yeo Woonhwi’s words, the culprit stared with an uncomprehending gaze.
Was he claiming he was not a martial artist?
With martial prowess like that?
“Hmm.”
Hearing the full tale, Yeo Woonhwi could see how a man might feel humiliated and enraged.
Yet the methods this Tang Guhwi chose had crossed the line by far too great a measure.
No matter the grievance, what manner of monster would orchestrate such a horrific fate?
And above all, Yeo Woonhwi had already lost his wife to Tang Guhwi once in his past life.
It had begun back then.
The genesis of all that living hell.
At the time, he had never even imagined it.
That there had been a singular mastermind behind the origin of every single tragedy.
Rage flared within him at his own past helplessness and ignorance—at having lost his beloved wife without understanding a thing.
And…
‘Tang Guhwi…’
To the past Yeo Woonhwi, the status of the Sichuan Tang Clan’s Grand Young Master was an insurmountable presence he could never dare touch.
Yet now, things were entirely different.
Yeo Woonhwi chewed over Tang Guhwi’s name.
“Now, release me.”
“Why should I?”
“Did I not tell you? I hail from the Sichuan Tang Clan. And it was their Grand Young Master who commanded this entire affair.”
“And?”
“Are you truly daring to make an enemy of the Sichuan Tang Clan?”
There was a famous adage in the Murim.
The Sichuan Tang Clan never forgets a debt.
Whether of grace or of vengeance.
Moreover, when pursuing their goals, they stopped at nothing, and to safeguard their secret methods regarding poisons, even a son-in-law was forced to marry into the household and reside within their walls. Such was the nature of the Sichuan Tang Clan.
Hence, martial artists universally harbored an extreme reluctance to cross paths with them.
No one wished to wake up poisoned or find dozens upon hundreds of throwing daggers embedded in their face.
“You will regret this. Give up these foolish thoughts while you still…”
“Who says so?”
Yeo Woonhwi cut off the culprit, who was still spouting arrogant threats despite his wretched, broken state.
“That only the Sichuan Tang Clan remembers its debts? I am the very same.”
“…!”
“And let us make one thing clear.”
Yeo Woonhwi’s eyes began to gleam with an absolute, merciless chill.
“You people started this first. Therefore, this is vengeance. Vengeance for daring to touch and harm what is mine.”
‘Wh-What in the world is with those eyes…’
Was this the gaze of the legendary Heavenly Murder Star, said to usher in catastrophic bloodshed across the Murim?
Meeting Yeo Woonhwi’s eyes, the culprit shuddered involuntarily.
Though he boasted skills counted among the finest even within the Sichuan Tang Clan, in front of this man, he found himself paralyzed like a rabbit cornered by a venomous serpent.
Step, step.
Yeo Woonhwi closed the distance between them.
“Urgh… S-Spare me.”
“Did you ever spare those who spoke those same words to you?”
“Th-That is…”
“They likely were never even granted the chance to speak them. Any of them.”
Just as his wife had not been in his past life.
“So shut your mouth… and die.”
Yeo Woonhwi’s hand enveloped the man’s face.
And then—
Fsshhhh!
A blinding, overwhelming radiance erupted violently from Yeo Woonhwi’s palm.
“Gk, aagh, AAAAAAAAGH…!”
A horrifying shriek that sent shivers down the spine echoed long through the forest.
It was undeniably one of the most agonizing deaths in this world.
For a master heralded by the Sichuan Tang Clan, one of the Five Great Clans of the Murim, it was a wretched, miserable end.
Soon dusting off his hands, Yeo Woonhwi turned his gaze toward the east.
“It seems I must pay a brief visit.”
Toward the land where Sichuan lay.
And so it began.
The hour of vengeance.
