Tales Of The Nine Dragons [EN]: Chapter 152

Nine Dragons Chronicle (152)

The men dressed in white and black were warriors from the Hainan Sword Sect, which controlled the Hundred and Eight Islands of the South Sea. The trouble started when they killed the young lord of the Taewon Clan over a minor disagreement.

“Hmph! That lecher deserved to die a hundred times over,” a sharp voice declared from the woman dressed in white.

“A lecher? Rumor had it that the young lord of the Taewon Clan was acting like a tyrant, relying on his clan’s power. Seems the rumor was true,” Baek Gun-seong remarked, looking at Hwa-rin.

“Why are you looking at me? I can’t interfere in the affairs of the martial world. You guys made me this way.”

Baek Gun-seong stared at Hwa-rin, dumbfounded.

“Then, should I get involved?”

“I can’t interfere.”

“Which side should I help?”

“You have to figure that out yourself. Do I have to tell you everything? Use your head a little!”

Baek Gun-seong’s face flushed red at Hwa-rin’s nagging.

“Then, as an inspector, if you lift the seal just this once, I’ll step in.”

“Hmm…”

Baek Gun-seong nodded, seemingly lost in thought. Hwa-rin took that as tacit permission and moved immediately.

“Hey… hey!” Baek Gun-seong called out belatedly, but it was already too late.

As Hwa-rin reached out and drew a sword seemingly from thin air, Baek Gun-seong flinched. ‘Sorcery?’ he wondered.

Then, Hwa-rin joined the fight, and contrary to Baek Gun-seong’s expectations, he began cutting down the warriors of the Taewon Clan.

“Kuh-uhk!” Baek Gun-seong’s eyes widened at the sight.

“Ah, that’s not the side I meant to help!” Baek Gun-seong shouted, trying to intervene, but in an instant, Hwa-rin had cut down six of the Taewon Clan’s experts.

The Taewon Clan’s experts looked at Hwa-rin with aggrieved eyes, wondering why he was attacking them. Hwa-rin grinned and said, “I’m more interested in that side than you guys.”

“Hey, the Taewon Clan asked for help, but what are you going to do if you kill them all?” Baek Gun-seong asked Hwa-rin angrily.

“They say their young lord is a lecher. I can tolerate everything else, but I can’t forgive a guy who treats women like toys.”

“Haa…” Baek Gun-seong sighed deeply and asked Hwa-rin, as if trying to reason with him, “That’s just that woman’s one-sided claim.”

“That claim is what started this fight. And you also said he was a womanizer, right?”

“That’s…!” Baek Gun-seong started to speak but then clamped his mouth shut.

“Thank you for your help,” the man and woman dressed in white and black said, bowing to Hwa-rin and Baek Gun-seong.

“Help? I didn’t help you,” Baek Gun-seong said, wondering what Hwa-rin was planning this time.

“Then?”

“I saved you from danger, so now you have to tell me what I’m curious about.”

“What are you curious about?” Hwa-rin looked around the inn.

“The only decent table and chairs are the ones we were sitting at. Let’s sit down there and talk.” Hwa-rin walked to the table, sat down, and gestured to them. “Come and sit down. Innkeeper, bring us another bottle of wine.”

The owner looked like he was about to cry at Hwa-rin’s words.

“Just bring it for now.” Hwa-rin said that and went to the dead warriors of the Taewon Clan, rummaging through their belongings. He recovered everything that looked valuable and gave it to the owner.

“What are you doing?”

“If warriors come and wreck the place like this, the merchant suffers. Does the Taewon Clan compensate for the damage?”

“That’s…”

“I don’t know why they cause damage to other people’s businesses and then act all high and mighty. That’s why I don’t like martial artists very much. They’re not reasonable.” Baek Gun-seong had never thought about this before. As Hwa-rin said, the Taewon Clan had entered the inn to capture the two, destroyed the furniture, and kicked out all the customers, causing enormous damage. Moreover, it would cost a lot of money to clean up the interior and repair the broken tables, chairs, and decorations.

“Innkeeper, give me a bottle of wine and quickly take these to the blacksmith and sell them off.”

“The Taewon Clan will be furious if they find out about this.”

“Don’t worry about that. This friend will take care of it.” Baek Gun-seong looked at Hwa-rin with wide eyes as he tried to drag him in, but he felt a sense of futility at the sight of him nodding and grinning. ‘What kind of guy is he? Is there really something I can learn from him?’

The owner brought the wine as Hwa-rin said and took the swords used by the Taewon Clan’s warriors out of the inn.

“What are you two doing? Come and sit down,” Hwa-rin gestured to the man and woman dressed in white and black.

“What should we do?”

“Let’s go and listen to what they have to say for now. The force he showed for a moment is not something we can handle.” The two sat opposite Hwa-rin and Baek Gun-seong.

“You’re from the Hainan Sword Sect?”

“To be exact, we are from the Hwaryeong Clan of the Hundred and Eight Islands, which belongs to the Hainan Sword Sect.”

“Hwaryeong Clan?” Hwa-rin had never heard of the clan’s name before, so he asked again.

“We are a clan based on an island called Hwaryeong Island.”

The man dressed in black readily answered Hwa-rin’s question.

“Then, does the number engraved on your chest represent the clan located on the hundred and eight islands?”

“That’s right.”

“So, the number six means the sixth largest island in the hundred and eight islands? Or the sixth strongest clan?”

“The largest island.”

“So, the size of the island and the strength of the clan are separate.”

“That’s right.” Hwa-rin nodded. Through their answers, he could roughly guess the system of the Hundred and Eight Islands of the South Sea and the Hainan Sword Sect that reigned over them. ‘It would be convenient to manage and identify many islands,’ he thought. Just by knowing the number on their chest, he could tell which island and which clan they were from, so he thought this would be of great help in managing each clan.

“But did the young lord of the Taewon Clan really make advances on her?”

“Yes, he made shameful remarks about my junior sister’s beauty without any hesitation. At first, we were just going to quietly take care of our business and leave, but he tried to kill me using sleeping pills and aphrodisiacs and defile my junior sister.”

Hwa-rin and Baek Gun-seong’s gazes turned to the woman dressed in white.

“I told you I was right, they didn’t do anything wrong.” Although she was wearing a veil, they could guess her appearance to some extent.

“So, you killed the young lord and are being chased by the Taewon Clan?”

“That’s right.” Hwa-rin asked the question he really wanted to know to those who answered readily. “But why did you come here? You said you had business to take care of earlier, can you tell me what it is?”

Baek Gun-seong was taken aback by Hwa-rin’s straightforward way of speaking.

“Hey, there’s no way they’ll tell you that, right? You should ask the right questions.”

“We are looking for someone.” Surprisingly, they readily told them their purpose.

“Someone?”

“We are looking for the successor of Gwonma Cho Dan-un [Gwonma is a title meaning ‘Fist Demon’]. We need to meet him and deliver the invitation from the Lord of the Hainan Sword Sect.”

“Why him?”

“Two hundred years ago, the clans of the Eight Hundred Islands, including the Hainan Sword Sect, suffered great humiliation at the hands of Gwonma Cho Dan-un, and I heard it was to repay this.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“Yes.” Baek Gun-seong looked at Hwa-rin. He didn’t know what he was thinking, but the information he had just heard was quite useful.

“Then, since it will take a long time for the two of you to find him, there must be more people out there.”

“Warriors from the Hundred and Eight Islands are looking for him in each province.”

“Aren’t you telling us too much?” Baek Gun-seong sent a telepathic message to Hwa-rin.

“It’s nothing that others can’t know. Did you hear anything in their answers that could cause a big problem?”

“Not really.”

“Then just listen.” Baek Gun-seong, who was scolded by Hwa-rin, picked up his glass and poured the wine into his mouth. ‘I’m not a fool, so why do I get tongue-tied when I talk to this friend Hwa-rin?’

“Then, let’s say you meet him and deliver the invitation. What if he doesn’t go to Hainan Island?”

“The Hainan Sword Sect will enter the martial world to meet him directly. Our job is only to deliver the invitation to him.”

“Without fighting him?”

“It’s a matter of restoring honor, so the Hainan Sword Sect will handle it directly.” Listening to their words, Hwa-rin thought that the Hainan Sword Sect was quite a respectable clan.

“I should visit the Hainan Sword Sect later.”

“Why there?”

“They’re respectable. They’ve been sharpening their swords to repay the humiliation of two hundred years ago, and when the opportunity came, they immediately set out to find him. And they say that the Hainan Sword Sect will repay the humiliation directly. So how cool is that? You can be friends with a clan like this. There’s a certain romance to it.”

“Is that so?”

“Then why would I bother to visit the Hainan Sword Sect if I didn’t have any connection with them? There are respectable people everywhere, so if I go there and make connections, it’ll be good for both of us.”

“You’re a merchant, so you tend to think simply.”

“You’re a warrior, so you tend to think complicatedly. But those are all useless thoughts.” Baek Gun-seong, who was scolded once again, admitted that he could never win against Hwa-rin with words.

“Then what are you going to do now? Are you going to look for him in Shanxi Province?”

“Since it’s our mission, we’re thinking of looking for him for now.”

“You might keep running into the Taewon Clan.”

“That’s a problem to think about when the time comes. Right now, what we have to do is our priority.” Hwa-rin nodded as if he liked the two. “You’re really different from someone.”

“Someone?” Baek Gun-seong asked.

“There’s a place where they run to their parents and tattle after getting beaten up a few times. The parents are funny too. They step in and say something in a children’s fight.”

Baek Gun-seong frowned, realizing that Hwa-rin was talking about the Eumsa Clan and the Blood Demon Clan.

“You’re surprisingly vindictive.”

“I can’t feel better until I return what I’ve suffered tenfold, and that’s why I can’t let it go.”

“Then you should become as strong as my father!” As Baek Gun-seong retorted, Hwa-rin pouted and changed the subject.

“Then it would be better to leave this place quickly. It will take some time for the Taewon Clan to clean up this mess…” Hwa-rin stopped talking and spoke regretfully. “Why can’t people accept kindness when you show them kindness?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something like that. You two go up to the innermost room on the second floor. Hide there until I tell you to come down.” The two exchanged glances and nodded.

“Go up quickly. There’s no good in being seen by people.” As Hwa-rin said, the two went up to the second floor and entered the room that Hwa-rin had secured.

And after a while, a group of people entered the inn. They were martial artists with swords at their waists.

“Are those the guys?” The man in front pointed to Hwa-rin and Baek Gun-seong and asked.

“They are the man and woman dressed in white and black. And those two helped them kill the warriors of the Taewon Clan.” The owner of the inn confessed to Lee Cheon-soo, the lord of the Taewon Clan, about what had happened at the inn a little while ago.

“Tsk tsk, I misjudged the owner. I was showing kindness thinking of the owner.” The owner of the inn flinched at Hwa-rin’s words, but he straightened his shoulders confidently, believing that Lee Cheon-soo, the lord of the Taewon Clan, was by his side.

“Where did those bastards go?”

“They already left through the back door of the kitchen. They wouldn’t have stayed until now.” Hwa-rin knew that the other person was the lord of the Taewon Clan, but he spoke comfortably rather than showing respect.

“What?”

“What, is there a problem?” Lee Cheon-soo sat down, thinking that the young men sitting there didn’t recognize him, so he asked, “Don’t you know who I am?”

“How would I know that? Do you know me?”

“What, you…!” Baek Gun-seong laughed as he watched Hwa-rin toy with Lee Cheon-soo, but he had to hold it back.

“Why should I know you when you don’t even know me? Are you a famous person?”

“You…?”

“Do you know that person?” Hwa-rin asked Baek Gun-seong, who was next to him.

“Are you really asking me because you don’t know?”

“How would I know someone I’ve never met before?”

“He’s Taesan Sword Lee Cheon-soo, the lord of the Taewon Clan.”

“Really? But do I really need to know that person?”

“You bastard!” Lee Cheon-soo was furious and shouted as Hwa-rin continued to speak as if he was ignoring him. The inn shook as if he had put internal energy into his voice.

“Hey, can you handle us?”

“What? Handle?”

“This friend is Baek Gun-seong, the son of the Lord of the Four Evils, Baek Mu-gi, the leader of the Saheol Alliance [Saheol Alliance is likely a martial arts alliance]. Can you handle it if you shout and act like this?” Baek Gun-seong’s head turned sharply towards Hwa-rin. ‘What the hell is this bastard doing?’

Hwa-rin grinned as he looked at Baek Gun-seong and said, “You know I can’t interfere in the affairs of the martial world, right? So take care of it yourself.”