Return Of The Mount Hua Sect [EN]: Chapter 1543

His hands were like ice. “Haaaah…” He breathed on them, but it didn’t help much. His fingers stayed red and hard with cold. “Haaaah.” The boy kept breathing on his hands, one after the other, and frowned. If he didn’t have something on his back, he could hold both hands together and warm them with his breath. But even warm hands wouldn’t fix everything. When the sharp pain of the cold went away, a worse pain would start: hunger, biting at his stomach.

“Haaaah…” Still breathing on his cold hands, the boy pushed open the rough door made of reeds and went inside the shack. Inside, a man and some boys, each smaller than the last, were close together around a tiny fire in the middle.

They were all very skinny, like sticks. The man in the middle looked especially thin and angry, maybe because he was old.

*Sound of bubbling gruel*. A pot hung over the fire. The boy watched the watery soup bubble and swallowed hard, his mouth full of water.

“You’re back?” the man asked.

“Yes,” the boy said quietly.

“Did you find anything?”

“Well…” The boy froze, his body becoming stiff.

“Not really… there wasn’t much…”

“What? So many dead people, and you found nothing?”

“Yes… it looks like… like others took everything already. Not even clothes, let alone food.”

“Damn it!” The man’s face became hard with anger. “More than a hundred dead from the fight, and not even a coin or a grain of food left! The fighters wouldn’t take things from the bodies. It means others came like hungry animals and grabbed everything first.”

“What’s that on your back?” The boy jumped and put down the bundle he was carrying. The man’s face twisted when he saw the rough cloth.

“You…?”

The boy spoke fast, like he was making excuses. “N-no, it’s just… he was holding something in his hand really tight. I was trying to open his hand, but he wouldn’t let go.”

The man’s face turned red. “B-but he seemed alive. He’s still young… and alive, so I couldn’t just leave him there…”

*SMACK!* Before the boy finished, the man hit him hard across the face. The boy’s thin body flew like a light branch and hit the wall of the shack.

“You useless fool!” Still angry, the man kicked and stomped on the boy on the ground. “Everyone else is trying to find something to survive, and you, you weak idiot, bring back a person? Alive? You say he’s alive?”

“I-I’m sorry…”

“Shut up!” Kicks hit the boy’s face again and again. This wasn’t to teach him a lesson. It was just the man’s anger exploding, not caring if the boy lived or died.

“Gah!” Finally, the boy’s lip split, and blood ran from his mouth. Only when the boy stopped moving after a long beating did the man stop kicking. Heavy breathing filled the shack.

“Trying to be a hero, are you? You can’t even feed yourself, but you worry about others? You useless thing! We are all starving, and now there’s another person to feed? Do you even understand what that means?” The boy lay still, not answering.

The man, not waiting for an answer, looked at the child wrapped in the dirty cloth. He looked about ten years old, maybe younger. Poor people often looked younger because they didn’t have enough food. Especially here. Looking at his pale face, he wouldn’t live long. In this world, a helpless boy was worth less than a dog or a pig. At least you could kill animals for food later.

“Wh-what should we do?” another boy asked quietly, just as thin as the one who was beaten.

“About what?” the man snapped.

“Should we… put him outside?” The man frowned and looked at the door of the shack. The reed door moved in the freezing wind. It was a cold that went deep into your bones, even inside. If they put him outside, he would probably freeze to death in less than an hour.

“Just leave him in that corner.”

“But…”

“Just leave him, you idiot! Don’t you know how heavy a frozen body gets? Who will move a body that’s frozen solid and too heavy to carry?”

“Ah…” The boys nodded quickly. They had moved frozen bodies before and knew what he meant.

“He’ll die anyway if we leave him. But more important…” The man looked at everyone with cold eyes, and the boys shrank back in fear.

“What are you all doing?”

“We’re… what?”

“Look!” The man pointed to the door. Every time the reed door moved, snow blew in. Snowstorms were rare here. This winter was very bad.

“This won’t stop in a day or two, will it?” The boys nodded without thinking. They had never seen a snowstorm like this and didn’t know when it would stop. But they knew arguing with the man now would be dangerous.

“What will you eat while we wait?”

“Outside…” one boy mumbled.

“Oh, so you think we should just sit here for three or four days, with our stomachs empty?” The boys couldn’t answer. They wanted to say they could save the soup that was cooking, but they knew. That soup was not for them.

“Get out there! Break a fence, kill a dog, or if you can’t do that, break the ice and catch fish! Do something to find food! And don’t even think about coming back with nothing! Understand?”

“M-maybe we should wait until the snow gets a little lighter…”

*SMACK!* The boy who spoke without thinking had his head jerked to the side.

“What?”

“W-we’ll find something! We will!”

“Get out of here now!” The scared boys quickly helped up the boy who was hit and rushed out of the shack.

The man mumbled angrily. “Useless kids… Damn it.” It wasn’t just because he was mean. He had lived this terrible life for more than twenty years. That’s why he knew. He knew this winter would be terrible.

The fighting between the wild fighters, who would draw their swords for anything, was getting worse. People who couldn’t farm anymore ran to the mountains to burn forests and plant crops, and then bandits would attack them. This had been happening for years. The roads were full of dead bodies, people killed by swords or hunger, all mixed together. And now, a winter worse than anyone remembered had come.

The man took the pot off the fire, annoyed. It was a pot of watery soup, made with a little bit of grain and lots of water. It was hardly soup at all, but even this was important to him. *‘Many will die before winter ends.’*

He didn’t care how many of those young beggars died. People were dying everywhere in this world, and orphans were easy to find. Even parents were leaving their children to have fewer mouths to feed. So the man didn’t feel bad at all. The problem wasn’t those boys dying, but that he might die too. He was just barely living, but you can’t live without food.

He looked at his hand holding the pot. At his wrist, really. It looked so thin and weak, like it could break any minute. He felt a fear stronger than his anger. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Could he live through this winter eating this weak soup? No, would he even find this kind of soup later?

People called him many names: beggar, hooligan, thief, robber. It didn’t matter. He was just trying to survive, but this winter felt very hard.

Had there ever been a winter like this before? He thought there had been.

How had he survived then? Back then, he was even weaker, even more alone.

At that moment, something stirred in the man’s mind, and he slowly shifted his gaze to the side.

A young child was cast aside in the corner.

He looked as though he would soon die and collapse, but strangely, he wasn’t as skinny as the others.

The man swallowed hard, without thinking. A conflict flickered in his eyes, but he quickly regained his composure.

“Tch.”

If this was the first time he was thinking of stealing, he would feel terrible. If it was the second time, he would still feel bad. But this was not the first or second time, so there was no need to think twice.

The man slowly drew a sharp kitchen knife from the cheap holder at his waist.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel tense, and he licked his dry lips. The man’s eyes were meaningful as he approached the child.

The moment the man’s long shadow fell over the child, the child’s hand, which had been so stiff it seemed blood no longer flowed through it, twitched slightly inside his sleeve.

“…Are you alright?”

The beaten boy nodded with difficulty.

It was easy to see that he wasn’t in good condition. However, the boys who had asked if he was okay didn’t care anymore when he just nodded.

Many died from beatings, and many starved to death. To them, death wasn’t something distant and to be avoided, but something they had to carry with them at all times.

“Damn it. Where are we supposed to beg in this weather!”

Not even beasts would hunt in this weather. There wasn’t a soul to be seen, so where were they supposed to find food?

“If it keeps going like this, we might as well…”

“Stop it.”

Before he could finish his sentence, the other children shook their heads. They understood his feelings well enough, but they had no choice but to stop him.

If they killed the man, he couldn’t beat them anymore. But they knew they needed him. In this world, being alone was dangerous. Without a gang, they would be robbed of everything, even the little food they had, and they would die.

Nowhere was an easier target than a group without adults. For them to survive, that damned fellow had to stay alive, at least until they could stand on their own two feet.

Then, the boy who had been beaten spoke calmly.

“Wait a little.”

“…What for?”

The children, shivering in the biting wind, asked with puzzled faces, wondering if he had a way to find food.

The boy said calmly.

“Just wait a bit and then go in.”

“…What are you talking about?”

“You know perfectly well. At least we’ll have something to put in our mouths today.”

The children, who had been blankly staring at the boy, flinched after a moment, understanding later what that something to put in their mouths meant.

“Could it be…”

“Don’t act like it’s new. Are we the only ones doing this? Haven’t you heard the rumors about Wang Ho’s gang before?”

The rumors about Wang Ho’s gang… rumors of terrible things they did to people, things too awful to even whisper. The boys swallowed hard, recalling the terrible rumors they couldn’t bring themselves to speak of.

“So, it’s really…”

“It doesn’t matter if we go early or late. Just wait a little longer.”

Various emotions flickered across the boys’ faces: dread, despair, resignation, pain…

But no one condemned this. If they had to choose between their own death and someone else’s, wasn’t the outcome obvious?

“…How much longer do we have to wait?”

“It’ll be quick. How long will it take him to get rid of a weak, dying child?”

“Maybe he’ll hesitate?”

“That bastard?”

The boys fell silent.

After enduring the biting wind under the thin tree for the time it takes to eat a meal, the boys trudged back to the shack.

Soon, they could clearly sense it.

The smell hit them like a wall as they got closer to the shack – a disgusting, rotten smell. The sharp, metallic smell of blood pierced their nostrils through the fierce winter wind.

One of the boys swallowed hard and cautiously lifted the flap of the shack. And then, he froze like an ice sculpture.

“Uh…”

Blood was splattered everywhere.

Actually, this wasn’t strange. Even though it was more chaotic than they had expected, they had anticipated that there would be a lot of blood.

What exceeded their expectations was… the owner of this blood.

“B-Boss…”

The man who had chased them outside was lying still on the ground. His eyes were wide open, unable to close, a pathetic sight.

His chest was mangled, and a long gash was etched across his face. And his neck… was pierced by a short dagger.

The dagger, which appeared to have had its handle torn off, was very small, so small that it would be barely visible if a child gripped it tightly in their hand.

“Ugh…”

Everyone turned pale as they imagined the scene that had unfolded inside the shack.

Clink. Clink.

Beside the corpse, which had not yet completely cooled, an eerily calm sound could be heard. Turning around, they saw a small child, barely reaching the boys’ chests, sitting next to the corpse.

‘That is…?’

The sound the child was making was the sound of an old spoon hitting a pot.

Inside the bowl was the porridge the man had been about to eat.

The one eating the porridge was the child who had been wrapped in dirty rags and thrown into the shack.

The boys couldn’t move, as if they had been frozen solid.

Who killed the man? How did that child wake up? How could that child be so calmly scooping up porridge next to the corpse?

None of that mattered.

They were simply overwhelmed by the sight. The dead man was getting cold, his body still on the floor. And here was this child, eating his porridge. The boys watched, feeling sick inside. This was life now: death and eating, side by side. It was a harsh truth, colder than the winter wind.

And then.

Clink.

The child, having put down the pot he was holding, slowly turned his head.

Below the face, half-hidden by disheveled hair, his lips were visible.

Whether it was because of the warmth of the porridge that brought color to his face, or because of the strange heat in this space, those lips, which had been so pale they seemed about to die, were dyed as red as blood.

The boys couldn’t even think of exhaling.

In a moment of silence, a silence that felt both fleeting and eternal, just before they were about to suffocate, those red lips softly curved into a smile.

A smile that seemed flawlessly bright, but somehow sent shivers down their spines. The boys stared at the child’s smile, and they knew, deep down, that their lives had just changed forever.

❀ ❀ ❀

Jang Il-So woke up, the taste of porridge still faintly on his lips, but now it was the finest millet porridge, served in a palace, not stolen from a dead man. He slowly rose.

He slowly looked around at the ornate bed and the soft silk robe draped over his body, and the subtle incense burning, illuminating the surroundings.

Maybe they heard him move, because the doors to his room opened and maids entered.

“Did you awaken, Lord Leader?”

Jang Il-So, looking at them without answering, suddenly stared blankly out of the room. Then, he shifted his cold gaze to the maids.

“Is it snowing?”

The maids, startled for a moment, exchanged glances with confused faces.

Snow in this weather?

Seeing their reaction of not knowing what was going on, Jang Il-So chuckled and slowly waved his hand.

“It is nothing.”

Jang Il-So, who drank the water they brought him in one gulp, put down the cup and said.

“Porridge.”

“…Yes?”