At Seong Jun-min’s icy voice, Hwang Min looked startled.
“W-why are you acting like that? You’re scaring me.”
She carefully reached out a hand as she spoke, but Seong Jun-min slapped it away.
“Tell me the truth! Who the hell are you? Why did you make me do all those things?”
At his interrogation, Hwang Min tilted her head.
“This shouldn’t be happening. How did my Soul-Bewitching Art come undone?”
Soul-Bewitching Art.
At those words, Seong Jun-min’s face twisted.
Because the Soul-Bewitching Art was an evil art that controlled a person’s mind.
“You used the Soul-Bewitching Art on me?”
At his furious shout, Hwang Min let out a sigh.
“Well, it can’t be helped. Once the Soul-Bewitching Art is broken, it won’t work on the same person again…”
Then, with an emotionless face, she nodded.
“Yeah. That’s right. I used the Soul-Bewitching Art on you.”
At those words, Seong Jun-min staggered in shock, then exploded in rage.
“H-how could you! How could you do that to me?”
“Do what? I only gave you what you wanted. You wanted to become the Deputy Merchant Lord, didn’t you?”
“I, I…”
Clang!
A sharp blade sprang out from her sleeve.
“I was hoping to get a little more use out of you, so this is a shame. I’d love to find out how you broke my Soul-Bewitching Art, but I don’t have the time…”
Hwang Min grinned, launched herself at him, and swung the blade hidden inside her sleeve.
Whoosh!
The blade flew straight for his throat.
Tak!
But someone blocked it.
“Wh-who… Hup!”
When he saw the person who had saved his life, he had no choice but to be stunned.
It was none other than his father’s Escort Guard.
Seong Jun-min turned his head.
His father was glaring at Hwang Min, his face filled with fury.
That fury was not aimed at him, yet it was enough to make his entire body tremble.
“How dare you use my son like a puppet! I must uncover who’s behind you. Capture her alive!”
“As you command.”
Clang! Clang!
Kakakang!
The longer the exchange between the Escort Guard and Hwang Min went on, the more Hwang Min’s expression hardened.
It was only natural.
There was a fairly clear gap between their abilities.
In the end, the Escort Guard’s sword reached Hwang Min’s throat. But Hwang Min merely smiled.
The Escort Guard urgently tried to seize her acupoints, but…
Thud.
Hwang Min’s body collapsed as though her strings had been cut, and flames soon rose from her body.
They hurriedly put out the fire clinging to her, but her breath had already stopped.
“My apologies. She is already dead.”
“Vicious wretch!”
The Merchant Lord glared at her before turning his head aside.
“Thank you, Deputy Merchant Lord Eun.”
At the Merchant Lord of the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group’s words, I stepped out into the courtyard.
The sun was already beginning to rise.
On the ground lay the corpse of the maid named Hwang Min, and beside it, Young Lord Seong Jun-min stood in a daze.
I recalled what had happened earlier.
After unleashing my Lightness Skill to its fullest and reaching the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group, I headed straight for Young Lord Seong Jun-min’s quarters.
I had been able to find their location thanks to Team Leader Do’s cooperation.
From him, asleep in his bedchamber, I sensed the Qi of the Unorthodox Sect.
But there was something strange about it.
It felt slightly different from the Unorthodox Sect Qi I had sensed before.
How should I put it?
It had no owner.
Every strand of Unorthodox Sect Qi I had felt until now contained its own will.
But the Unorthodox Sect Qi I sensed from Young Lord Seong Jun-min carried no will at all.
No will… Ah!
I remembered where I had felt this Qi before.
The Walking Corpses commanded by the people who had schemed a rebellion using them.
Those Walking Corpses had been exactly like this.
In that case, there was a high chance he was being controlled. And the one controlling him was probably the maid Young Master Yu-jin had mentioned.
Just then, the door opened, and a group of warriors barged in and dragged Young Lord Seong Jun-min away.
I immediately went to find the Merchant Lord. But if I barged straight into the Merchant Lord’s bedchamber, it would cause a huge commotion.
So I approached the Escort Guard who guarded the Merchant Lord at close range.
“Excuse me… I have something to tell you.”
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“I am Eun Seo-ho, Deputy Merchant Lord of the Eunhae Merchant Group. I have been protecting Young Master Yu-jin.”
“Ah! Of course. Forgive my rudeness.”
Since we had met once before, he recognized me quickly.
“What brings you here?”
“Young Master Yu-jin told me something important. That is why I came here despite the discourtesy. It seems the Fourth Young Lord is being controlled by the Soul-Bewitching Art. And his life is in danger right now.”
“What?”
“Young Master Yu-jin overheard the maid serving the Fourth Young Lord speaking to someone. She said she had used the Soul-Bewitching Art on Young Lord Seong Jun-min, and that if things went wrong, she would have no choice but to kill him.”
Of course, Young Master Yu-jin had never told me any such thing.
He had only told me her eyes had turned red.
But I felt I should not reveal that to outsiders, so I left that part out and explained it a different way.
Even so, what I said was close to the truth.
“It seems he lost some of his memory from the shock of falling into the water, but he just remembered it now.”
“I see!”
“Where are the Fourth Young Lord’s quarters?”
“Ah, the Fourth Young Lord is currently in the Underground Prison.”
“Which way is the Underground Prison?”
At my question, he pointed in a certain direction.
“That way.”
“I’ll go ahead, so please report to the Merchant Lord and come to the Underground Prison at once. The Young Lord’s life is in danger.”
I used my Lightness Skill again and headed for the Underground Prison.
Fortunately, the moment I arrived, I saw Young Lord Seong Jun-min walking out after a woman.
From her, I sensed the bloody stench of Unorthodox Sect Qi.
A blood stench far thicker than what I had sensed before.
And…
I could feel her Qi wrapping around Young Lord Seong Jun-min.
As I wondered what to do, the Supreme Yin Ice Sea Divine Art that I had learned came to mind.
This should work against the Soul-Bewitching Art, too.
When the Shaanxi Scorpion had controlled the courtesans through Straw Effigies before, I had easily broken it.
I sent the Qi of the Supreme Yin Ice Sea Divine Art into Young Lord Seong Jun-min, and the effect appeared immediately.
He came to his senses and demanded to know who she really was.
And the result was exactly as everyone had just seen.
I shook my head at the Merchant Lord’s thanks.
“Not at all. This is all thanks to Young Master Yu-jin regaining his memories in time.”
“Even so, you rushed here at dawn to deliver the news and saved my grandson, did you not?”
“I only did what anyone should have done.”
“Thank you. But… how did you break the Soul-Bewitching Art on my son?”
At that question, Young Lord Seong Jun-min nodded as well.
“Now that you mention it, my mind suddenly cleared as if I had woken from a dream.”
“It was thanks to this Artifact.”
“Artifact?”
“Yes. I came across it by chance, and it has the power to break evil arts like the Soul-Bewitching Art.”
As I spoke, I held out an ornament. It was one I had already broken at the gemstone beforehand.
“Unfortunately, it was single-use, so it can’t be used anymore. Hahaha.”
“Then you used such a precious Artifact for this?”
“It was to save a person. What reason would I have to hesitate?”
The fact that I had learned the Supreme Yin Ice Sea Divine Art was an absolute secret.
I could not say I had used that Qi to break the Soul-Bewitching Art, so I explained it this way instead.
“May I examine it for a moment?”
I readily nodded and handed the ornament to the Escort Guard.
After examining it, he nodded.
“It contained Qi from the ice art line. It seems that Qi broke the Soul-Bewitching Art.”
Young Lord Seong Jun-min nodded.
“Ah! So that’s why I felt so cold earlier. I was startled because I felt a chill I’d never experienced here in Sichuan.”
The Escort Guard handed the broken ornament back to me, and the Merchant Lord said with an apologetic look,
“Because of us, something so precious…”
“I did not want Young Master Yu-jin, whom my Brother saved, to be in danger. And I suppose I’ve grown rather fond of Young Master Yu-jin in the meantime. Hahaha.”
I scratched my cheek as I spoke, and everyone looked at me with deeply moved expressions.
“I think I finally understand why the world calls you the Handsome Young Hero.”
That epithet really is embarrassing, you know.
At that moment, perhaps having heard the news, Deputy Merchant Lord Seong Cheong-min came running over. Then, seeing the scene unfolding before him, he looked shocked.
“You’re here.”
“Yes, Father. What in the world happened?”
The Merchant Lord of the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group explained everything that had happened so far.
“Hah! Then Jun-min has been under the Soul-Bewitching Art all this time…”
As he closed his eyes with a bleak expression, Young Lord Seong Jun-min knelt before him and apologized.
“Brother, I am truly sorry. I deserve to die. Though I was under the Soul-Bewitching Art, that does not mean the things I did never happened. Whatever punishment you give me, Brother, I will accept it gladly.”
“No. I failed to trust you. If I had trusted you as my younger brother, if I had noticed that something was wrong, then none of this would have happened.”
He patted Young Lord Seong Jun-min on the shoulder and said,
“Get up. The person you should kneel to is not me, but him.”
“Pardon?”
“He saved me when I nearly died, and he is also the benefactor who saved my son when he went missing. Today, he even saved your life.”
Seong Jun-min knelt before me and bowed.
“Ah, no, why are you doing this?”
“This is the proper courtesy owed to a benefactor.”
He continued.
“I almost killed my Brother and my nephew with my own hands. No matter how much I was being controlled, those things truly happened. Thank you for stopping me before I could commit a terrible wrong.”
I scratched my cheek.
It was true that I had done it, but receiving such earnest thanks made me feel a little awkward.
“I’m all right, so please get up. We should settle things quickly before this incident grows any larger, shouldn’t we?”
“True.”
The Merchant Lord of the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group ordered the warriors to take care of Hwang Min’s corpse.
I watched them for a moment, then suddenly noticed something strange.
The bloody stench of Unorthodox Sect Qi had been so intense when she was alive, but now it had vanished without a trace.
In my experience, Unorthodox Sect Qi did not disappear the instant someone died.
But I did not have time to dwell on it, so I had no choice but to set that thought aside for now.
The Myeongmyeong Merchant Group quickly began cleaning up the situation.
First, in Young Lord Seong Jun-min’s case, the Merchant Lord and the Deputy Merchant Lord tried to make it as though nothing had happened, but he refused their offer.
Instead, he insisted that he would work as a low-ranking Supervisor. He even said that if they refused, he would cut off his own arm himself…
In the end, they had no choice but to accept Young Lord Seong Jun-min’s request.
Thus, a completely different future from my previous life, where Young Lord Seong Jun-min had become the Merchant Lord, began to unfold.
I had no way of knowing what effect this would have on my future, but it should not be bad for the Eunhae Merchant Group.
Come to think of it, in my previous life, after Young Lord Seong Jun-min became the Merchant Lord, the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group had openly kept the Eunhae Merchant Group in check.
Because of that, the Eunhae Merchant Group’s growth had often been stalled.
Honestly, I had wanted to keep the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group in check and give them a proper beating as well, but I could not bring myself to do it because of the favors my grandfather and father had received from them.
Only now did I learn that back then, he had not acted of his own will, but had been controlled by the Soul-Bewitching Art.
Separate from that, however, he had been extremely capable.
That was another reason the Eunhae Merchant Group had struggled against him.
The Assassin who had infiltrated the Sichuan Branch to kill Young Master Yu-jin and been subdued by me, as well as everyone who had infiltrated the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group through Young Lord Seong Jun-min, were all arrested.
Once everything had been settled, Young Master Yu-jin could finally return home.
“Young Lord, congratulations.”
At my greeting, Young Master Yu-jin smiled brightly and said,
“It’s all thanks to you, Deputy Merchant Lord.”
Then he turned his head and looked at Brother Jeong-ho.
“Mister. I’ll definitely visit Hubei next time.”
“Sure. When you do, I’ll introduce you to my son and daughter.”
“Yes.”
They were four years apart, so they would become good friends.
“And thank you so much, Mister. Thanks to you, I can safely go home.”
At those words, Brother Jeong-ho shook his head.
“What did I do? Don’t thank me. Thank that handsome guy over there.”
“I thanked him first, but he told me to thank you, Mister. He said he only moved because you wanted him to.”
At that answer, Brother Jeong-ho looked at me.
“You…”
I deliberately turned my head away and said,
“Ah, looks like he’s here now.”
Just then, Deputy Merchant Lord Seong Cheong-min was approaching the annex where we were staying.
Young Master Yu-jin ran toward him in delight.
“Father!”
“Yes. You’ve been through a lot. Let’s go home now.”
“Yes!”
Then he raised his head and looked at Brother Jeong-ho and me.
“I would like to formally invite the two of you to the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group.”
A little while later,
We rode a carriage to the Myeongmyeong Merchant Group.
As expected of a place that had never fallen outside the top five merchant groups for decades, its scale was considerable.
And it looked almost no different from the way it had in my previous life.
“Yu-jin!”
“Mother!”
Young Master Yu-jin had a joyful reunion with his family, who had come out to meet him, as well as the household members.
“I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Grandfather.”
Then one person approached him and knelt.
Thud.
“Yu-jin. I was wrong.”
It was Young Lord Seong Jun-min.
It could not have been easy to do that in front of everyone, and in a way, I found it impressive.
“U-uncle, why are you doing this?”
Young Master Yu-jin was flustered by his actions.
At that moment, Brother Jeong-ho approached Young Master Yu-jin, gently placed a hand on his shoulder, and said,
“He’s apologizing to you. What do you want to say to him?”
“Pardon?”
“Just say what you want to say.”
“Um…”
After thinking for a moment, Young Master Yu-jin said,
“To be honest, Uncle, I hated you. But Mister Seo-ho told me. He said you didn’t do it because you wanted to. He said a bad lady was controlling you.”
Young Master Yu-jin smiled and said,
“So I’ll forgive you. Because you didn’t truly hate Father or me.”
–TL Notes–
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