TRDS 05

Chapter 5

Return of the Sword 

The maids waiting outside the room were startled by the sudden barrage of blows coming from inside, sounding like a downpour.

‘What the hell is that sound?’

‘What’s going on in there?’

They desperately wanted to check what was happening, but because of Heoncheon’s earlier order, all they could do was anxiously pace around outside.

Just then, a group of people arrived.

They were the martial artists of the Heo Estate, led by Im Ho-pil.

“What is going on here?”

“Chief Steward, it’s……”

One of the maids explained the situation.

After hearing everything, Im Ho-pil stared at the room with a grim expression.

“The Young Master…….”

“Chief Steward, shouldn’t we go inside and stop him, even now?”

One of the martial artists standing behind him spoke up.

The strange sounds of blows were still coming from inside the room, far too violent to be mistaken for ordinary treatment.

Honestly, if Im Ho-pil were not here, they would have already rushed inside to see what was happening.

The other martial artists felt the same way, even if they said nothing.

Im Ho-pil glared at them.

“Did none of you hear him? The Young Master told everyone not to enter. Are you seriously thinking of disobeying his orders?”

“But……”

“Everyone, wait quietly as you were told. Surely…… surely the Young Master has a reason for doing this.”

The last part was something Im Ho-pil was telling himself as much as anyone else.

He knew that Heoncheon had returned as an absurdly powerful martial artist.

But he had only confirmed that indirectly. He had never actually seen Heoncheon display his martial arts with his own eyes, so he could not help feeling uneasy.

Still, thanks to his many years of experience and everything he had learned from his long life in the martial world, Im Ho-pil could roughly guess what Heoncheon was doing inside.

‘It must be Pushing the Meridians and Passing the Acupoints!’

Pushing the Meridians and Passing the Acupoints was the best method for treating someone who had suffered internal injuries and fallen unconscious.

However, it required the practitioner to control their qi with perfect precision, neither using too much nor too little. It also took quite a long time, meaning it consumed a considerable amount of internal energy.

‘But is it really supposed to sound like that?’

The Pushing the Meridians and Passing the Acupoints that Im Ho-pil knew involved gently rubbing and striking the entire body, pushing and tapping to open blocked qi and blood pathways, relaxing tense muscles, and stimulating the blood vessels to return displaced internal organs to their proper positions.

He had never heard of anyone beating a person as violently as they were beating a dog.

‘There must be something to it. Some special method known only to the Young Master. Yes. That has to be it.’

He tried to reassure himself, but as time passed, Im Ho-pil grew increasingly anxious.

‘Please…… please let nothing go wrong……!’

The treatment continued.

The relentless barrage of blows, which seemed as though it would never end, finally stopped after another hour and a half.

The sudden silence filled the corridor with a heavy tension.

No one dared speak.

Then Heoncheon’s voice suddenly came from inside.

“Come in, Chief Steward. Everyone else stays outside.”

“Yes!”

At Heoncheon’s call, Im Ho-pil hurried inside.

The first thing he noticed was Heo Jung-man’s complexion.

After spending years bedridden, his face had normally been bluish, almost dull and dark.

Now, however, his complexion had improved noticeably.

His breathing was also much steadier than before.

He certainly did not look like someone who had just spent an hour and a half being beaten without mercy.

‘As I thought! It really was Pushing the Meridians and Passing the Acupoints!’

Relieved that his guess had been correct, Im Ho-pil soon turned his attention to Heoncheon.

Despite performing a treatment that should have consumed a considerable amount of mental energy and internal power for such a long time, Heoncheon looked completely fine.

He was not even sweating.

It was impossible to tell whether the treatment had been easy or difficult for him, but one thing was certain.

Heo Jung-man’s condition had clearly improved.

Im Ho-pil cautiously asked,

“Did the Estate Lord’s treatment go well?”

“More or less. We’ll need to keep an eye on him for a while longer, but he’s gotten past the biggest hurdle.”

“When you say he’s gotten past the biggest hurdle, does that mean……?”

Heoncheon nodded.

“He’s no longer in danger from his qi deviation.”

“Ah……!”

Im Ho-pil immediately let out a cry of relief.

For the past four years, he had lived in constant fear that Heo Jung-man might never wake up and could pass away at any moment.

Seeing how much hardship the old man had endured, Heoncheon quietly patted Im Ho-pil on the shoulder as if to say he had done well.

Then—

“Ugh!”

Heo Jung-man suddenly retched and vomited more than a bowlful of black, stagnant blood.

It was dead blood that had accumulated inside his body due to the internal injuries caused by his qi deviation.

Heoncheon hurriedly fetched a clean cloth and wiped away the blood, while Im Ho-pil helped him from the side.

Even then, Heo Jung-man vomited another mouthful of dark blood.

Worried that the blood might block his throat, Heoncheon and Im Ho-pil quickly and carefully raised his upper body.

A short while later—

“Ugh……”

“Estate Lord!”

“Father!”

With a low groan, Heo Jung-man slowly opened his eyes.

“Ch-Cheon……”

“Yes, Father.”

Heoncheon immediately answered when his father called him.

Heo Jung-man stared at him for a long while, his eyes filled with countless complicated emotions.

Then he finally asked,

“……Have you eaten?”

“Say that again. What happened to that Yeo brat?”

The leader of the Golden Tiger Gang, Jeon Baek-gwang, tilted his head in confusion.

The subordinate kneeling before him answered,

“He and his men are being held at the Heo Estate.”

“How did that happen? Isn’t the Heo Estate just full of a bunch of old men and second-rate nobodies? Even the Estate Lord, supposedly their strongest martial artist, has been living in seclusion for several years for some unknown reason.”

No matter how he looked at it, there was no reason for Yeo Chang-hae, who had reached the mid-First-Class Realm, to have been captured.

“According to what we found out, the eldest son of the Heo family returned this morning.”

“The eldest son? The guy who disappeared more than thirty years ago and was supposedly dead? Hah, he actually made it back alive. Then was it perhaps that guy who defeated Yeo Chang-hae?”

“Yes. Judging from the circumstances, that seems highly likely.”

“Tsk. An unexpected variable. This is getting troublesome.”

Hangzhou had no single dominant sect or organization ruling over the city.

Instead, numerous medium and small factions each controlled their own territories while keeping one another in check.

Because of that, if one faction attacked another without a proper justification, the other factions would immediately move to restrain them.

Jeon Baek-gwang had spent years in the dark side of the martial world before founding the Golden Tiger Gang with his men five years ago.

He had managed to expand their influence to a certain extent through gambling houses and loan-sharking.

But they had failed to grow any further because of this strange deadlock.

For Jeon Baek-gwang, who dreamed of eventually monopolizing the night of Hangzhou, this was an intolerable situation.

That was why he had decided to use Yeo Chang-hae.

Jeon Baek-gwang’s plan was simple.

Yeo Chang-hae’s ancestor and the founder of the Heo family had been fellow disciples.

Therefore, even if a conflict arose between the two sides, it could be regarded as an internal matter of the same martial lineage, making it difficult for outsiders to interfere.

But Yeo Chang-hae was actually affiliated with the Golden Tiger Gang.

More precisely, he had ended up tied to them through a debt after recklessly borrowing money from the Golden Tiger Gang’s loan-sharking operation because of his extreme spending habits and gambling debts, then failing to repay it.

Either way, putting Yeo Chang-hae at the forefront was convenient in many ways.

If he won?

They would simply absorb the Heo family’s influence.

If Yeo Chang-hae lost?

Then the Golden Tiger Gang could step in under the pretext of preventing the conflict between the two sides and take its share of the spoils.

Either way, there was nothing for the Golden Tiger Gang to lose.

But an unexpected variable had appeared in their smoothly unfolding plan.

“Should we mobilize the men right away?”

“Stay put for now. Yeo Chang-hae may be crazy about gambling, but he’s still quite formidable, isn’t he? If someone was strong enough to subdue him, then that person is certainly no ordinary fighter. There’s no need to rush. We can move after we find out exactly what kind of person we’re dealing with.”

His subordinate nodded at Jeon Baek-gwang’s cautious words.

“Yes. Then I’ll immediately contact Haomun……”

BANG!

Before he could finish speaking, he was struck in the head by the debris of a wall that suddenly exploded inward, knocking him unconscious on the spot.

Through the collapsed wall, a bamboo-hatted man in a black changshan slowly walked inside.

Rather than panicking, Jeon Baek-gwang quickly drew the willow-leaf saber leaning beside his chair and shouted,

“Is there no one outside?!”

“Shouting until your throat gives out won’t make anyone come. So stop wasting your breath.”

Flinch!

‘He took them all down?’

For a moment, Jeon Baek-gwang wondered if he had heard correctly.

Even Jeon Baek-gwang himself would have struggled to defeat all one hundred members of the Golden Tiger Gang by himself.

To have dealt with them this quickly was beyond imagination.

‘An expert! An incredibly powerful expert!’

With his throat dry from extreme tension, Jeon Baek-gwang swallowed hard and asked,

“You…… No, who exactly are you?”

“You don’t need to know who I am. You’re the gang leader here, right?”

“Judging by your voice, you sound younger than me, yet your manner of speaking is awfully rude.”

“I’m not the younger one here. You are, you piece of trash.”

“What?”

Thud!

“Ugh?”

The bamboo-hatted man disappeared from directly in front of him.

At the same time, a sharp sensation shot through Jeon Baek-gwang’s back, and his entire body suddenly stiffened.

Clang.

The willow-leaf saber slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

As he helplessly sank to his knees, the bamboo-hatted man—Heoncheon—placed his palm on top of his head.

“No matter how much I thought about it, that Yeo Chang-hae or Yeo Chang-hae-whatever guy didn’t seem like he could have planned all of this by himself. No matter how easy our Heo family might look to some people, we’re not exactly small enough for a guy like him to casually mess with.”

‘Small enough?’

Jeon Baek-gwang flinched at the strange expression, but Heoncheon continued without paying it any attention.

“There had to be someone else behind this. So I figured that was the case and beat some information out of a few of his men. Your name came up immediately.”

‘Damn those useless gamblers……!’

Yeo Chang-hae was severely addicted to gambling and frequented gambling houses as often as he ate.

Naturally, most of the men who followed him were gamblers addicted to the same vice.

Faced with death, they had probably revealed everything they knew just to save their own lives, loyalty be damned.

“I just came back to my hometown after a long time. It wouldn’t feel right to leave some stinking trash crawling around nearby, would it? So……”

Squeeze!

“I figured I might as well clean everything up while I’m at it.”

The moment he finished speaking, the pressure against Jeon Baek-gwang’s head increased.

Sensing his life was in danger, Jeon Baek-gwang desperately began pleading.

“P-Please spare me! I swear I’ll never cause trouble again! Please, just spare my life! If you want, I’ll give you everything I own!”

“Why are you so scared, you bastard? Do you think I’m some heartless killer without a shred of compassion? I once dreamed of becoming a wandering hero, so I’ll make a special exception and spare your life. Don’t worry.”

“R-Really?”

“Of course.”

At Heoncheon’s confident declaration, Jeon Baek-gwang’s expression brightened considerably.

“Thank you—no, thank you, sir! I’ll never forget this favor!”

“Hey, don’t thank me too much. You might actually be better off dead.”

“What?”

KRA-BOOM!

Just as Jeon Baek-gwang was about to question Heoncheon’s mysterious words, an earth-shattering thunderclap rang inside his head, accompanied by a pain so intense it felt as though his skull were splitting apart.

Heoncheon’s true qi had entered through his Baihui Acupoint and violently tore through his brain, creating a sound that only Jeon Baek-gwang could hear.

The brain was one of the most sensitive and important organs in the human body.

There was no need to explain what it meant for it to be damaged.

“Gaaah…….”

With an incomprehensible groan, Jeon Baek-gwang collapsed forward.

Heoncheon silently looked down at him as he writhed on the floor like a worm.

Then, at some point, Heoncheon vanished like smoke.

A short while later—

CRASH!

The building came tumbling down with a tremendous roar.

The next day, news spread throughout Hangzhou that Jeon Baek-gwang, the leader of the Golden Tiger Gang, had become a complete imbecile overnight.

There was no way such a rumor could remain hidden when the Golden Tiger Gang’s headquarters had been completely destroyed in the middle of the night.

With their leader gone, the Golden Tiger Gang disbanded immediately.

The gambling houses and loan-sharking businesses they had operated all shut down as well.

Countless arguments broke out over who could have done such a thing, but no one could reach a definite conclusion.

The Heo family’s name was briefly mentioned at first, but it was soon dismissed.

Although Yeo Chang-hae, who had recently clashed with the Heo family, was affiliated with the Golden Tiger Gang, few people knew about that connection.

Moreover, the martial arts of the Heo family’s strongest known fighter, the Estate Lord, were barely at the mid-First-Class Realm at best.

On the other hand, Golden Tiger Gang Leader Jeon Baek-gwang had already surpassed the late First-Class Realm and was approaching the Peak Realm.

There was simply no common sense in the idea that he had been defeated by the Heo family’s Estate Lord and reduced to an imbecile.

Thus, the Heo family was naturally removed from the list of suspects.

Meanwhile, Heoncheon spent his time sharing the joy of reunion with his family, whom he had finally met again after so many years.