BXBX NOVEL Chapter 253. Epilogue (1)
Chapter 253. Epilogue (1)
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
The other boy in front of the shouting boy quickly blocked his ears.
Then, their second mother appeared from thin air.
“Hey, you’re being noisy.”
After scolding the crying child, she turned to the one who had caused the crying.
“I told you to stop bothering him.”
The second mother was the scariest. Her words were short, and her temper even shorter. The moment she appeared, both the crying child and his brother ran away screaming.
“Aaaghh!”
“I was wrong!”
“You two, stop right there!”
While she shouted at them, the seemingly angry second mother didn’t chase the children. She just smiled faintly and looked at the children vanishing in the distance.
The arm of a man wrapped around the slim waist of Ma-Ra. Even though many years had passed, she still looked as if she was just in her early twenties.
“Aren’t they cute?”
Ma-Ra put her head on his shoulder.
“Yeah. But it’s also a little gross.”
“What?” asked her husband.
“With this many brats that take after their father, the gangho is going to suffer.”
“Hahaha! Well, the gangho should be suffering a little, don’t you think?”
While Woo-Moon and Ma-Ra talked, the children fled as fast as they could until they eventually arrived at a tree large enough that even a grown man couldn’t fully grasp the trunk with his arms.
“It’s all because of you, fifth brother! I almost got punished by Second Mother because you hit me!”
“It looks like you still need to be punished!”
As the two squabbled, they heard a voice coming from the tree.
“Hey, dummies! There isn’t a single day that you guys don’t get in trouble, is there?” said a cute girl who looked about fifteen as she peeked out through the branches.
“Second sister!”
“Hehe, second sister! What are you doing there?”
Instead of responding, the girl showed the Analects she held in her hand.[1]
“Oh, so you were studying...”
“W-we should... be studying, too...”
The voices of the two children grew smaller and smaller. Considering they had gone to play every day without studying, they were already anticipating the scolding they would get from their older sister.
The girl smiling slyly, Song Hye-Min, threw them a letter she had kept inside the pages of the Analects.
Her younger brothers caught it.
“What is this, Nuna?”
“Yeonie sent it to you from the South Sea. It arrived yesterday. Well, maybe you should give it back to me after all. I’m not sure you’ll be able to read it.”
“Wow! Yeonie sent it?”
“T-t-there’s no way we wouldn’t be able to read it if Yeonie sent it. I’m older than her by two whole years!”
Hye-Min smirked.
“Okay~ But if you can’t read it, then you stop being Yeonie’s elder brother.”
Irked by the idea of losing his place as an older brother, Woo-Moon’s fifth son Song Ha-Sung tried to take the letter from Song Ha-Do, the sixth son.
“Let me see it. I’m going to read it.”
Then, Ha-Do urgently pulled the letter back.
Crinkle!
In that short time, the letter exchanged hands four times.
“You little... Alright, you wanna go at it?! Let’s go then!”
“Pfffffrrrrttt!”
After blowing a raspberry at Ha-Sung, Ha-Do turned around and fled.
He was incredibly curious to hear how their sister Hye-Yeon, who had been gone for a whole year, was doing.
After chasing each other like that for a while, they eventually stopped in front of a group of five men and women.
“Huh? Oh, it’s you, Ha-Sung and Ha-Do.”
The two children smiled brightly as if they hadn’t just been fighting.
“Hello, second uncle! Hello, second aunt, third aunt, third uncle, and fourth aunt!”
They had run into Woo-Gang and his wife, Bi Yeo-Jung; Cho-Ah and her husband, Ah Sam; and Gun-Ha, who rejected countless men who came to court her every day.
Because of her biological brother, Jae-Hwa, and her adopted brothers, Woo-Moon and Woo-Gang, her standards were just too damn high, so what kind of man could catch her eye? Moreover, thanks to the incredible physique and comprehension she had obtained after assimilating the Heavenly Sacred Orb, she was already a Paragon by this point. That made the pool of eligible bachelors even smaller.
Cho-Ah caressed her rounded belly. “You should make sure you also study instead of playing all the time, alright?”
“And you have to be careful not to get hurt. Or I’ll get scolded by Hyungnim.”
“And if you meet a decent unmarried guy, bring him by, okay?”
The two children nodded her heads at Cho-Ah, Woo-Gang, and Gun-Ha’s words.
“Yes, yes! Understood!”
Then, Ha-Do bolted off again, leaving the surprised Ha-Sung to chase behind.
***
The Heavenly Demon Cult.
It was the strongest of the sects within the gangho, and it ruled with an iron fist.
Within the estate of that terrifying Heavenly Demon Cult, a boy was walking nonchalantly on a path built at the center of the Heavenly Demon Shrine. He had dark hair that contrasted with his pure white face, and a cold expression that made him look mature beyond his years.
He was Song Ha-Gang, the second son of Woo-Moon.
Dozens of cultists followed meekly while reporting to him about recent developments.
“Reporting on the training of new talents for the new Mad Demon Squadron.”
“The amount of compensation received from the Flying Fan Gate was twenty-seven thousand taels, of which twelve thousand were spent on compensating the believers who lost their lives or were injured, and three thousand...”
“The report on the changes in the Shaanxi region’s awareness of our religion. Compared to last year, the number of friendly responses has increased...”
Song Ha-Gang listened to their reports simultaneously without missing a single one and gave clear instructions to each and every subordinate. It was obvious that this was not the first time doing it; his organizational abilities showed not just talent, but plenty of experience.
“...and that’s it.”
When the last subordinate’s report was finished, Song Ha-Gang finally took a breath and let out a sigh of relief.
“Now the hardest part is over. Oh, what is Mother doing, by the way? It seems like there was more to do than usual.”
“That is... she wanted us to convey her apologies, Young Master. She left early in the morning to go meet the Grand Duke. She said she would return in three days.”
Song Ha-Gang’s expression looked rather ugly.
“What? Are you saying she left today at dawn? And she’s not coming back tomorrow, but in three days?! She’s really enjoying herself, isn’t she?! Even as her own flesh and blood is suffering here, doing the hard work! I want to see Father, too!”
The Little Heavenly Demon of the Heavenly Demon Cult was grumpy for a while.
After wrapping up the meeting with his subordinates, he headed toward the Returning Demon’s Nest, where the Cult received its guests. There, he was welcomed by three beauties.
“It’s been a while!”
“Our dear little Ha-Gang seems to have gotten cooler~”
“That’s what I’m saying. He’s old enough to get married now. Hehe, you’ve become an adult~”
Listening to the three women—Princess Namar, Su Ran, and Hye-Rim—Ha-Gang blushed. He was clearly embarrassed, and his face displayed none of the coldness he usually showed in front of outsiders.
“Aunties... why are you teasing me again?”
After Woo-Moon took Martial Heaven down, the Heaven Slaying Alliance was naturally dismantled. Afterward, those who followed the three beauties gathered together to form a new force called the Chivalrous Sword Alliance, which had now grown into a force of the Righteous Faction on par with the Justice Coalition.
With the dismantling of the Heaven Slaying Alliance, Woo-Moon ended his master-servant relationship with the three beauties and took them in as sworn sisters, which naturally made them Song Ha-Gang’s aunts.
“Well, so the Chivalrous Sword Alliance... uh... We sort of need funds right now.... It’s pretty urgent....”
Song Ha-Gang’s expression turned serious.
“I will have to apologize, but the budget is a bit tight....”
“What? I’ve already looked into it all. What’s with the fa?ade? I heard that the Heavenly Demon Cult’s merchant company made a lot of money after that massive deal they did abroad. Are you really going to be like this to your own aunts? Why can’t we eat and live together?”
“W-we can’t. There are a lot of things we need that money for!”
“Hey, hey, don’t be like that. If you keep acting like this, we might have to pinch your cheeks again and teach you a lesson!”
“A-anything but that!”
Fuck, I can’t win. Mother needs to be here to properly negotiate with the aunties.
Song Ha-Gang continued to sweat as he continued to squabble with his aunts.
***
Tension was higher on the ferry than even the top of the great mast.
About twenty pirates with swords and rugged expressions had just appeared in front of the people who had gathered to disembark.
“Now, come on. Give me everything you have. If any of you hides anything, you get a stab for every single tael of silver.”
Twenty years had passed since Woo-Moon, and his will had wiped out all of the Black Hand from the gangho.
Yet where there’s light, there’s darkness. That is the immutable law of nature.
After the majority of the Black Hand disappeared, the Righteous Faction, Evil Faction, and the Heavenly Demon Cult continued to manage their own territories as usual. Even under such circumstances, however, those of the Black Hand continued to pop up out of nowhere, doing the same thing they always did.
The Water Dragon Gang assaulting the ferry right now was one of those groups.
The Water Dragon Gang was led by the Yangtze River King, who called himself the son of the Great Leader of the Eighteen River Gangs of Yangtze. They had been rapidly growing in power in the Yangtze River area in recent years and had been uniting numerous river pirate gangs, as if they were trying to recreate the Eighteen River Gangs of the past.
“Quickly! Hurry up and hand it over!”
The Water Dragon Gang members wanted to collect their spoils and leave quickly, but they met with some unexpected resistance.
“Excuse me, well....”
It was a young man with a pale and handsome face, wearing a white robe.
He looked around with an odd expression, as if he had never experienced this sort of situation before.
“If you want me to excuse you, then shut the fuck up and hand over your money.”
“I believe that is a bit of an issue.”
“What?”
“I’m actually from the North Sea, so I’m not that familiar with the customs of the Central Plains, but why should I give you my money again? Are you... Are you all beggars, by any chance?”
“W-what? Beggars? Are you insane?!”
“I-is that not it? In the North Sea, they say that there are a lot of people in the Central Plains that go around begging for money. Seeing you all....”
The boy looked around at the pirates with a pitiful gaze in his eyes.
“I mean, look at yourselves. There are many of you standing around half-naked, isn’t it because you can’t afford a shirt? You smell as if you haven’t taken a bath since last year, you have black dirt smeared all over your faces, and you look very hungry. No matter how I look at it, you all really seem like beggars....”
The faces of those who were listening crumbled in an instant.
“Y-y-you bastard! Hey, hurry up and kill him!”
“How dare you look down on us and call us beggars?!”
One of the pirates rushed to the boy holding a massive saber and exuding an immense amount of bloodlust. Seeing it, the boy’s eyes grew round.
“As expected, Mother was right. If they get too hungry or the other person doesn’t respond in the way they want, sometimes, even beggars turn into bandits!”
The boy nodded to himself as his respect for his mother increased; what Yeo-Seol had told him was clearly correct.
“But whether it’s Father or Mother, they both say the same thing. If someone shows bloodlust toward me, I can’t let them keep a weapon in their hands.”
The Little Palace Master of the North Sea Ice Palace and Woo-Moon’s third son, Song Ha-Yeom, moved his hands.
Woosh!
The saber in the hands of the pirate moved into Ha-Yeom’s hands, and at the same time, the pirate’s face turned to see his back, at an angle obviously incompatible with life.
Not a single one of the pirates was able to see Ha-Yeom’s movements.
With one of their comrades dead, the rest of the pirates grew even more incensed. Even though the young man had moved so fast that none of them had been able to follow his hands, seeing how young he was and the fact that he was alone, they still thought of him as a child. If they rushed at him, how could he not get scared?
“Everyone, attack him together!”
“Die, you brat!”
Ha-Yeom bowed to them.
“I must apologize. Since you appear to be intent on hurting me, I will have to prevent you from doing that.”
Crack, crack, crack!
The aura of the Divine Frozen Soul Palm blasted out of his hands and passed through the entire group of pirates, leaving behind eighteen ice statues.
“Agk! A-a-a-AHHHH!”
The surviving pirate trembled as if he was facing the King of Hell.
Ha-Yeom turned to him and asked, “Where is your boss? Is there a Great Bandit or something like that?”
Of course, there was no such thing as a Great Bandit in the Water Dragon Gang, but the pirate could tell what Song Ha-Yeom wanted. He quickly told the young man where the Water Dragon Gang’s boss was.
“Thank you for the information. Oh, but I must apologize again. My father told me that I shouldn’t leave behind anything that could hurt me.”
Right as he finished his sentence, the last pirate also became an icicle.
Ha-Yeom jumped off the boat and crossed the Yangtze River by using Floating Duckweed Crossing Water.
A number of people who had come to save the passengers but almost ended up robbed blind by the pirates looked at him go, absolutely dumbfounded.
Not long after, all sorts of screams echoed from the Water Dragon Gang’s ships, and in the end, even the Water Dragon Gang’s chief, the so-called Yangtze River King, let out a squeal like a dying pig.
“Ahh!! You, you bastard, who the hell are you? How is a pipsqueak like you so strong? How is this even possible?”
Meanwhile, three people were watching Ha-Yeom from the shadows: Jin-Jin, Dae-Woong, and Sang-Woon.
“Looks like our grandson really fights well,” said Dae-Woong.
Jin-Jin nodded.
“Yes. I was worried that his personality was too gentle, so I’m glad that he was able to overcome it when it mattered.”
From the side, Sang-Woon quipped, “Of course he was! After all, he’s blood of my blood. I was worried about him inheriting the personality of my stupid son-in-law, but it’s a relief that the kids are smarter than that.”
Jin-Jin glared at Sang-Woon.
“And how does someone who is oh so smart have absolutely no tact?”
“Tact? What do you mean, tact?”
Sang-Woon avoided his daughter’s gaze, clearly embarrassed.
“Why did you come along when this was supposed to be a couple’s trip?!”
“D-dear, don’t be so hard on your father....”
“Dear, you stay out of it!”
“U-understood! I’ll be quiet now.”
Sang-Woon pouted.
“Don’t you think you’re being too much, Jin-Jin? What happened to wanting to live with me forever? Do you really want to go everywhere and be all lovey-dovey with your dear husband while leaving behind this sick, hurting, poor, and pitiful father of yours?”
“No shit. If you’re sick, hurting, and whatnot, then what am I supposed to say? You’re clearly going to live longer than me!”
“T-that’s not true. I’m going to die soon.”
“...”
Screams continued to echo from the Water Dragon Gang, but the three just ignored them and floated down the Yangtze on their bot. It was a fun trip in its own way.
1. The Analects is a compilation of Confucius’s sayings, compiled by his contemporaries. ☜