Vol 2 Chapter 5. Past Ties Part 9

He had long since reached a realm where heat and cold no longer touched him, where even his senses dulled to the world around him, yet now, his body trembled.

Was that just the chill that comes with death?

But the sensation of the rain was far too vivid.

Maybe this was that last moment of clarity before death.

Once, he had stood at the top of the righteous martial world… and now, this was how he died.

Though he was still breathing faintly, his mind felt like it was drifting near the edge of unconsciousness.

What pulled Dan Woo Hyo back to reality was the body pressed firmly against his chest.

The heat from it, like a body caught in flames, was nothing like his own, which had already begun to cool.

As Dan Woo Hyo forced his eyes open, he saw through a blurry red haze a boy gasping for breath.

He’s alive. He really is alive.

But it was too early to close his eyes in relief.

Some time must have passed since the fall. The boy’s forehead was soaked with cold sweat, and his face was flushed. There was no mistaking it. He was burning with fever.

He looked around, but down here at the bottom of a cliff this deep, there was no way anyone could reach him. To make things worse, the rain was falling harder, and his limbs had no strength left in them.

Dan Woo Hyo examined his condition with as much calm as he could manage. The inner force he once used to crush stone had completely scattered.

Pushing his strength too far had left his core ruptured. He tried to stay composed, but a quiet panic had already begun to set in.

Most of the internal energy he had left came from his father, who had passed it to him before disappearing.

One of the few things Dan Baekhun had left him was now gone.

That’s enough. At least one life was saved.

Dan Woo Hyo forced himself to let go of any lingering regret. The rain was getting heavier. As the boy’s breathing grew more labored in his arms, he clenched his teeth. He couldn’t leave the child lying there in the open. His own end might already be close, but before that, he wanted to get this boy to safety.

A large leaf holding pooled rain tilted slightly. At the sound of water slapping down, Dan Woo Hyo turned his head and noticed something behind the brush.
It was a hollow in the earth, partially hidden by foliage, shaped like the entrance to something. It wasn’t deep, he could see the back wall even from here.

At the very least, they could get out of the rain if they reached it.

There was no way he could stand with a broken leg. So Dan Woo Hyo had only one way to move. He reached out, hands sinking into the soaked earth, and dragged his body forward.

His whole body screamed, still battered from the fall. The leg that had gone numb now flared in sharp, disorganized pain. Though he managed to crawl, it was barely enough. One arm had to hold the boy. The other had to push against the ground. It was not easy.

Even so, he kept crawling, palms pressed against the ground, dragging himself forward with desperate effort. His fingernails tore off one by one, blood seeping from underneath, but he didn’t care. His bloodshot eyes stayed fixed on the cave ahead.

He had no idea how much time had passed, but eventually, he managed to sit back against the wall, still holding the boy in his arms. He gasped for breath and was about to set the child down somewhere deeper, where the rain wouldn’t reach when something caught his eye.

What had looked like a natural dent in the cliffside now revealed faint marks.
It had been disguised well, but it was clear this place had been shaped by human hands.

A mechanical device.

He recalled the document that had led him all the way to Gansu. It was widely believed to be just a ledger book, but in truth, it was a map that pointed to a specific location.

The one who found it was Paeng Soso. While sorting through her late father’s belongings, she came across the paper and handed it to Dan Woo Hyo.

While following Dan Baekhun’s trail, Dan Woo Hyo had found the boy. Drawn by that clue, he had made his way to Gansu.

Because Paeng understood Dan Woo Hyo’s nature all too well, she was able to set the trap.

She knew that if his father were used as bait, Woo Hyo would leave Baekragung without an escort.

The handwriting was his father’s, so Woo Hyo followed without suspicion. And the one who had brought it to him was Paeng herself.

It was no secret in the martial world that Paeng had once harbored deep feelings for Dan Baekhun.

After falling into the ambush, Woo Hyo had believed even the map written in Dan Baekhun’s hand was a forgery. Had it truly been genuine?

Paeng had likely scouted the place in advance to prepare the trap, but she must have failed to notice the hidden mechanism beneath the southern cliff, and that was what had led Woo Hyo here.

His fingers slid across the mechanical device. Recalling the markings on Dan Baekhun’s map, Woo Hyo manipulated the mechanism.

With a grinding rumble, the stone wall shifted aside.

When a gaping black maw opened before him, Woo Hyo stood stunned.

A map drawn by Dan Baekhun himself. A hidden chamber beneath a thousand-foot cliff, sealed behind a mechanism that could only be triggered in this exact way…

His head was a mess. But there was no strength left to keep speculating.

Life was draining from his body.

“…it’s working…”

He held the boy as tightly as he could, pressing that burning-hot body against his own cold chest, hoping to draw out the heat. And then, he fainted.

It was the beginning of a deep, dark dream.

“Are you awake?”

A cold voice struck his ears.

In the hazy silence, Woo slowly blinked his eyes open.

A faint scent lingered. As he focused on it, his senses began to return, one by one.

As his vision cleared, the first thing he saw was a heavy stone mooring post where thick ropes had once hung. The edge was cleanly severed, as though someone had sliced it through with a single strike.

He’d thought for sure that he wouldn’t wake up again this time… and yet..

“Haa… Lord, why are you…”

Woo Hyo’s lips moved sluggishly.

Even at the brink of death, that captivating appearance was impossible to mistake. It belonged to Yae Jinrang, the Lord of Heukcheon, the one who stood in complete opposition to him.

He didn’t want to believe it, but the sight was too vivid.

“A trespasser entered my territory, so I came to handle it. And what do I find? The disgraced Lord of Baekragung and a boy with no martial training.”

At a time like this, how could Yae Jinrang have appeared?

It made no sense. Woo felt a weak smile tug at the corner of his lips.

Jinrang looked at him as if he were mad, but Woo didn’t stop smiling.

It was the first clear thought he had experienced since falling from the cliff.

“Your nephew. He is your nephew. The son of Yeo Jinseo.”

That was when Woo understood. The only reason he was still alive, the only reason he had awakened, was because Yae Jinrang had used some method to keep him breathing.

If the Lord of Heukcheon had suddenly appeared at a concealed hideout while he was dying, then he must have been kept alive in order to extract information from him. Besides, Yae Jinrang was known to have mastered every kind of sorcery. Judging by the fact that he couldn’t move a single part of his body, it even crossed his mind that these words might not be coming from someone who was truly alive. He wondered if he had been called back to the world of the living through a soul-summoning technique.

“The name… Kang Oh…”

“What? How do you know the name?”

Even if it meant going against Yae Jinrang, Woo was desperate to give him the name he had never been able to say, while he still had time.

Kang Oh… the one who was awakened with strength.

It was the name he had always wanted to give the boy, the one who had grown up in the dirt, always clinging to his chest.

The boy who once clung to his waist and said he wanted to become strong. Woo had always wanted to tell him that the strength he was searching for was already inside him.

But now, he knew that opportunity would never come.

A faint trace of moisture ran from the corner of his dry eye.

A faint smile had dried on his lips. His face, strained as if forcing himself to look down, showed a flicker of compassion heavy with despair.

Woo closed his eyes again. His body had no strength left.

Time passed without form. He could no longer tell how many days had gone by. He kept sleeping, yet also kept waking. Though his frail body still breathed, his soul remained only loosely tethered. His consciousness drifted, already half beyond the world of the living.

“Kang Oh!”

“No. Please. Please… open your eyes. Please.”

In the middle of that dreamless sleep, he heard the boy sobbing beside him.

He wanted to tell him it would be alright. But did he really have the right to say that?

“If you leave me too, I… I… you promised me.”

I didn’t leave you.

No matter how desperately he cried out, his lips refused to move. Woo was drowning in despair.

“No!”

Then he heard it. A single cry from Yae Jinrang.

And the ominous sound that followed, like something vital breaking apart.

A nightmare suddenly swallowed Woo whole.

He saw Dan Baekhun, who had always been strict with him. As a teacher, he had been perfect. As a father, he had been cold.

He had instilled a sense of duty in him, but what stayed with Woo more than any lesson was the image of his back, always turned and leaving.

Everyone praised him as proud and upright, but to the eyes of a child, his shoulders looked burdened with weight. Woo had once resolved to grow quickly, just so he could ease that weight for him.

The scene shifted.

Dan Baekhun was patiently correcting the sword technique of his junior disciple, Namgung Jiyeok.

Woo had once crouched at the corner of the building, wondering if, when he became better than her, Dan Baekhun might finally look his way.

Seol Buyeong, his mother, may have been kinder than his father, but she was rarely present. Woo never doubted her love, yet he had always felt alone.

Through those slow and lonely days, he remembered the last time he saw his father.

When he asked where he was going, Dan Baekhun told him to take care of Baekragung. He felt Woo’s pulse and transferred his inner energy to him.

By the time Woo had made that power his own, Dan Baekhun had already vanished.

Not long after, word of his father’s death reached him.

Wearing clothes still wet with blood, he ascended to the seat of Baekragung’s lord and forced himself to carry out every task that had been laid upon him.

Dan Woo Hyo’s ascension shook the entire righteous martial world. The burden weighed heavily on him, and yet, he could not stop chasing the shadow of Dan Baekhun.

He relentlessly pursued the last place his father had gone before his death and tracked every encounter along the way, again and again tracing the remnants of his father still left behind in Baekragung.

And that was how he met the young Kang Oh.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Yae Jinrang’s haggard face. Jinrang had brought the boy over and placed Woo Hyo’s hand in his. Through the flickering vision that swayed like the end of a storm, he could see Kang Oh wearing a head bandage.

The boy who once had such a vivid range of expressions now showed none at all.

“Could it be… is he really alive?”

When Yae Jinrang checked Woo Hyo’s pulse over and over and finally confirmed it, Kang Oh began to cry silently.

Woo Hyo tried desperately to move his fingers, but even that small effort consumed all the energy he had stored up. Before he could reach the boy, he slipped back into unconsciousness.

Each time he awoke, he saw Yae Jinrang. Sometimes he would pour medicine between his lips. Other times, he checked his pulse and passed energy into his body. Occasionally, he brought Kang Oh to his side. The boy would sometimes take hold of Woo Hyo’s hand.

That small touch told him just how badly Kang Oh was trembling. As if the very act of confirming that Woo Hyo was still alive was too terrifying to bear.

—

Jinrang was doing everything he could to keep Dan Woo Hyo alive, but his body was steadily breaking down. The fierce determination that had once made him crawl across the ground until his nails fell off, just to save the boy was now slowly fading. Now that Kang Oh had finally met his uncle, Woo Hyo’s will to live began to scatter.

But now that Kang Oh had found his uncle, the will that had sustained Woo Hyo began to scatter.

Living only brought pain.

That curse from Paeng, those words she had spat in hatred had turned out to be true, and they wrapped tightly around Woo Hyo like shackles. Even in dreams, the sight of Dan Baekhun’s back chipped away at the remnants of his life in this world, little by little.

“I’ve waited a long time for this day.”

Betrayed by one he trusted.

“A cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest. So the other bird raises them, thinking they’re its own.”

What did that have to do with anything? Woo Hyo couldn’t understand it. He didn’t want to. He covered his ears and shook his head, but the voice of Paeng Soso sank into his heart like poison.

“You were born from your mother’s affair with her dead lover. The very one who stole everything from the Lord’s heir. I despise your loathsome body.”

Woo-hyo shook his head. Paeng Soso’s face showed no sign of lying. Still, he didn’t want to believe it.

He wasn’t Dan Baekhun’s son? His mother had a dead lover?

Woo couldn’t even form words. He just kept shaking his head. He couldn’t see Paeng Soso’s face anymore. Only her voice, tinged with cold contempt, echoed in his mind.

“Shall I tell you something interesting? The former Lord died because of you.”

Because of me? Why?

“You were nothing more than a puppet Seol Buyeong put forward to claim Baekragung for herself.”

Puppet…

He wanted to deny it, but the words caught in his throat and wouldn’t come out. Whether his mother truly saw him as a son or simply used him as a tool, Woo-hyo didn’t know. Seol Buyeong had always been a distant woman. Maybe even more so than Dan Baekhun.

“Dan Woo Hyo, you were born from disgrace. You forced your way into the seat of the Baekragung Lord, indulging in wealth and splendor as if it were your right.”

The truth revealed by Paeng Soso, someone who was a loyal subordinate in name but revered like an aunt in private, crushed Woo Hyo. Even if this wasn’t reality and only a nightmare mimicking the past, his limbs went limp. He had no strength left to resist.

“Die, son of Seol Buyeong.”

Paeng Soso swung her sword at him, or rather at Seol Buyeong’s son. Dan Woo Hyo shut his eyes. No matter how tightly he clung to it, all he could see was the figure of Dan Baekhun walking away, never once looking back.

Was it because I wasn’t really your son? Is that why you always looked at me like that?
Was I nothing more than a burden to you?

Dan Woo Hyo’s heart seized for a moment. The boy who had once thrown himself from a cliff to protect him screamed his name, but the sound never reached him. It felt as if something had cut him off completely, like he no longer belonged to the world. He couldn’t even tell if this was still real or just the fading edge of a dream.

And so, Dan Woo Hyo experienced death once.

When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer lying inside the cave.

“I saved you. Now get lost.”

Yae Jinrang, the Lord of Heukcheon, was at his side.

The incense burning above the altar filled the night air with a strange scent Woo had never experienced while alive.

Woo Hyo barely managed to glance his way. Jinrang’s face twisted in disgust, as if even sharing the place with Woo was unbearable.

It was strange. Paeng Soso, who had held murderous intent toward him, had tried to kill him, so why had the Lord of Heukcheon saved him?

“I… I cannot go back.”

The voice that came out of Woo’s mouth was brittle and weak, like that of a dying old man. But his mind was far too clouded for him to be surprised by it.

According to Paeng Soso, Dan Baekhun was not his biological father.

His mother had a lover who died when she was married to his father, and according to Paeng, he was that man’s child.

The affection of the father he had longed for all his life was something he would never be able to obtain.

He couldn’t overlook Paeng’s curse toward his mother, who had kept her distance from Baekragung’s affairs due to her special status and had been living in quiet seclusion.

If his mother had truly tried to use the child of her dead lover as a puppet to seize control of the strongest faction in the righteous martial world, what could her reason have been?

She was not a martial artist. There was no reason for her to suddenly desire the seat of the Lord of Baekragung.

Seol Buyeong had once stood in a place where she could take anything the world had to offer. No matter how powerful Baekragung was within the righteous martial world, it was unlikely to have held much meaning for her.

Dan Woo Hyo’s mother, Seol Buyeong, had been the Imperial Princess of Yeongrin before she became the wife of the Lord of Baekragung. She had once contended for the imperial throne with her half-brother, Seol Seong Un, who now sat as emperor.

Because Seol Seong Un had ascended to the throne, no one believed Seol Bu Yeong still held any ambition for it. She had confined herself within Baekragung, cutting herself off from the outside world entirely.

“No. That’s just what I thought.”

Woo Hyo was tangled in confusion. Even though he was her son, Woo Hyo knew nothing about Seol Buyeong’s desires.

Raised by a nanny since childhood, Woo Hyo only met his mother once a month. Their time together was not filled with affection or coldness, but more like a report session where she received updates on his academic performance or martial progress. Seol Buyeong had been a strict mother. As a child, he had even found her frightening. The nanny used to say that Seol Buyeong was raising Woo Hyo properly, training him according to the standards of royalty, and that was why she was so stern.

Woo Hyo’s heart leaned toward Dan Baekhun. He hoped to receive from his father what his mother never gave him. At the very least, Dan Baekhun never turned him away when he visited, and though he was blunt, he would still respond.

For a child, it was only natural to choose the person who at least echoed something back, over the one who gave nothing at all. Seol Buyeong, who always taught him not to give his affection to others, never tried to stop him from seeking it from his father.

And so, Woo retraced everything he knew about his mother, piece by piece. To recall the history of his parents, he had to go back thirty years, to the time of the Hyeolgyo Rebellion.

Back when the struggle for the imperial throne was still ongoing, the Hyeolgo Rebellion broke out. At that time, the Imperial Princess of Yeongrin, who had led military forces to protect civilians and support martial artists, became tied by fate to the current Lord of Baekragung. Their connection was something widely known.

At the peak of the chaos, when the two of them fought back-to-back on their respective battlefields, no one doubted the affection that must have blossomed between them.

Even after Seol Seong Un became emperor and his older sister Seol Buyeong married the Lord of Baekragung, people continued to talk. Some couldn’t understand why a woman of royal blood would become the wife of a man without noble rank, someone born outside the aristocracy.

Some said that although they were half-siblings, Seol Buyeong had such deep affection for Seol Seong Un, who was still a prince at the time, that she voluntarily stepped aside and left the palace to ease the burden on him. After all, to the ordinary people of the Central Plains, the world of martial artists was as distant as the realm of immortals.

Even so, everyone said that Seol Buyeong and Dan Baekhun had truly loved one another. She had once declared that she no longer held any ambition for the imperial throne.

They said that a woman with a kind and pure heart made a good match for a man of the martial world, and gave their blessings to the union.

If Seol Buyeong still desired the throne, then this was the perfect disguise. Wasn’t she the one who had once stood closest to the imperial seat, only to give it up in the name of love and become the wife of a man from the Central Plains?

Woo thought of Paeng Soso, who had hurled curses at him. The more he thought about it, the more it felt like Paeng might have been aiming not at him, but at Seol Buyeong, the one who truly stirred her hatred.

What he had believed would always remain in its place was starting to fall apart.

He wanted to return at once and question his mother. But at the same time, he didn’t want to ask anything at all.

If he didn’t ask, maybe he could still believe Dan Baekhun was his father.

“There’s no place for you in Heukcheon. Not if you’re Dan Baekhun’s son.”

Yae Jinrang pulled Woo from his thoughts.

It was almost ridiculous, that of all things, this was the line he happened to hear at that moment.

“Then if I’m not Dan Baekhun’s son… what difference does it make?”

But the Lord of Heukcheon didn’t respond right away. When Woo Hyo lifted his head at the unexpected silence, he saw Jinrang looking at him as if he were pathetic.

“So, it’s come to this.”

A rough hand grabbed Woo Hyo by the chin and turned his face side to side.

“..Pathetic.”

It was as if Jinrang was checking for resemblance. After thoroughly scanning Woo Hyo’s face, a slight grimace passed over his own.

The man who had been rubbing his face over and over stood up and stormed out. His gait was harsh, as though if he didn’t leave immediately, the rage boiling inside him might explode.