CLS-Chapter 507

Chapter 507:

Jang-il kept rubbing his stomach with his right hand.

‘I can’t digest it, I can’t digest it.’

This was impossible.

He was a beggar.

A superior beggar among beggars, at that.

What was the reason the beggars of the Beggar’s Sect could maintain their vast numbers?

Wasn’t it thanks to that vitality that allowed them to endure starvation for a month when they had to go hungry, and to chew and digest even iron when they could eat?

Yet here he was with indigestion.

If the King Beggar heard this, he wouldn’t just get angry—he’d cough up blood. A Small Beggar suffering from indigestion was unprecedented in the history of the Beggar’s Sect.

“Grooooan.“

Jang-il let out a pained moan and looked at the cause of his troubling indigestion.

Wei Yan-ho had a face that said ‘What is this thing called indigestion?’ as he crazily stuffed dumplings into his mouth. How those big dumplings managed to fit through that small mouth all at once was completely beyond understanding.

Jang-il was confident he wouldn’t lose to anyone in the world when it came to eating, but he had absolutely no confidence he could handle that guy.

‘Come to think of it, he’s been like that from the very beginning.’

As Jang-il was reminiscing about those distant memories of the past, he suddenly shook his head.

‘Wait, thinking about it, it hasn’t been that long, has it?’

Come to think of it, it was only a few months ago. There was no way Jang-il, who could vividly remember what he had for dinner ten years ago, would find memories from just a few months ago distant.

How terrible must those memories have been for him to be forcibly erasing them?

Jang-il shuddered.

‘I should have just run away back then.’

When Wei Yan-ho first appeared in Wuhan, if he had just pretended not to know him, maybe things wouldn’t have come to this point. No, they definitely wouldn’t have.

His interest in that strange beggar he had never seen before in his lifetime was the beginning of all misfortune.

Cursing his own meddlesome nature, Jang-il weakly opened his mouth.

“Does the food even go down your throat?”

“Mmf whai mfnt…“

“Swallow first and then talk! Swallow!”

Wei Yan-ho, who gulped down the dumpling in his mouth, started yelling.

“Then don’t talk to someone who’s eating!”

“Grooooan!“

Jang-il clutched his chest.

“Hey, you bastard! Does food go down your throat in this situation? You’re going to the Demonic Cult and food goes down your throat?”

“What’s there not to eat? If I’m going on a long journey, I should at least eat well.”

Jang-il’s insides boiled over.

There might be one or two carefree people in the world, but even if you searched the entire world, you wouldn’t find anyone as carefree as Wei Yan-ho.

‘At least it’s fortunate I managed to hold him down for now.’

It was fortunate that he had pressed Wei Yan-ho to sit down when he seemed ready to depart immediately. But he couldn’t be entirely happy about it. Because the reason Wei Yan-ho was sitting still wasn’t to think things over again, but to wait until Wei Jeong-han’s preparations were complete.

‘Why are all rich people like this!’

Well, that’s probably why the saying “like father, like son” came about.

Jang-il grabbed his head. He already knew Wei Yan-ho was hopeless, but with Wei Jeong-han, who should be stopping and controlling such a Wei Yan-ho, acting like this too, he was going insane.

“What exactly are you planning to do by going to the Demonic Cult?”

“I told you. I’m bringing him back.”

“Who? Your brother… Wei San-ho?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s there of his own will, so how are you going to bring him back? He doesn’t want to come!”

“My mouth is getting tired, seriously.”

Wei Yan-ho’s eyes filled with annoyance.

“Fine. I’ll beat him, I’ll beat him. But you can’t spend your whole life beating and confining someone, can you? San-ho isn’t a child, is he? He must have had his own thoughts when he chose that path!”

“What thoughts?”

Wei Yan-ho glared.

“Is joining the Demonic Cult something a person with thoughts would do? Huh?”

“Well…”

Jang-il couldn’t properly refute that.

What could he do when reality was like that? But if he said that, he might get beaten to death.

‘No matter how angry you get, shouldn’t you come up with a solution!’

Normal people, when faced with this kind of situation, would consult with the Righteous Martial Alliance or, if not that, try to find a way to deal with the Demonic Cult. The typical reaction would actually be to give up on responding, but if they were determined to respond, this approach would be common sense.

But the Guangdong Wei Family was shouting ‘My child, my brother—I’ll handle them myself’ while charging toward the Demonic Cult, completely ignoring the Righteous Martial Alliance and everything else.

‘Is this the reaction of a normal person!’

No matter how much he was ‘that’ Guangdong Wei Family, wasn’t this too extreme?

“By the way, you.”

“What?”

“Do you know the way to the Demonic Cult?”

Wei Yan-ho answered indifferently.

“I’m a beggar.”

“Huh?”

“Have you even thought about who I’m waiting for right now?”

“…”

He got it.

Even if Wei Yan-ho didn’t know, Wei Jeong-han would know. Since it was already decided that Wei Yan-ho and Wei Jeong-han would go to the Demonic Cult together, these kinds of questions were meaningless.

He had tried to grab onto their ankles and hold them back, but even those ankles wouldn’t let themselves be grabbed.

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Demonic Cult isn’t some den where neighborhood thugs gather, so what is that place that you’d crawl into it on your own two feet?”

“Is there another way?”

“Huh?”

“So what do you think is the best method I should choose here?”

Jang-il clamped his mouth shut.

A method?

‘As if such a thing could exist.’

People often make mistakes. They think every problem in the world has its own answer. They believe that even if they haven’t found that answer yet, there’s a solution somewhere that could be optimal, or at least the best possible choice.

But Jang-il knew better.

There were far more problems without answers than problems with answers in this world. When Wei San-ho had chosen the Demonic Cult himself and decided to move under the shadow of that Demonic Cult, where exactly could a solution be?

There was no way to solve it without crushing the Demonic Cult. And there was no method anywhere in the world that could destroy the Demonic Cult. So there was no answer.

“I can’t know the exact answer, but I don’t think this is the answer.”

Wei Yan-ho clicked his tongue.

“Will a persimmon fall into your mouth if you lie down and wait for it to drop? If a tree is too high to climb, you should at least kick the trunk. That’s why you’re living as a beggar.”

“Grooooan.“

Jang-il let out a heavy sigh.

The words were all correct. The words were all correct, but not everything in the world goes according to words.

‘Ah, this won’t do. At this rate…’

Urgency appeared on Jang-il’s face.

The order he had received from the King Beggar was to never leave Wei Yan-ho’s side no matter what and to help him. To be precise, rather than helping, it was an order not to lose track of his whereabouts.

But if Wei Yan-ho went to the Demonic Cult?

‘I’d have to go too, you crazy bastard!’

This was unacceptable.

It would be better to carry firewood and jump into a fire pit.

If you fell into a fire hell, you’d suffer the pain of burning in flames, but if you fell into the Demonic Cult as someone from the righteous faction, you’d suffer even greater pain. There would be plenty of suffering to endure even after dying and going to hell, so why would he receive that suffering while still alive?

But…

Looking at Wei Yan-ho shoveling food into his mouth, everything felt utterly futile.

‘This guy can’t be stopped.’

Looking back, he had never once successfully stopped Wei Yan-ho.

Whether he tried to persuade with logic, threaten, or even cling and squeeze out tears, Wei Yan-ho had never once moved according to his intentions. Jang-il was also a human being with learning ability. Even after going through all those experiences, he wasn’t stupid enough to cling to impossible tasks.

‘The only hope is that person.’

The person he needed to persuade wasn’t Wei Yan-ho but Wei Jeong-han. If only those who had rushed to Wei Jeong-han could persuade him?

Jang-il’s gaze turned toward the pavilion where Wei Jeong-han was.

Could his earnest prayers possibly come true?

“It’s useless even if you try to stop me.”

“…No, my friend.”

Zhuge Yeom’s insides were burning up.

There were people in the world who couldn’t be reached with words. They were like natural enemies to Zhuge Yeom, whose specialty was persuading opponents with words and logic. The sad thing was that these kinds of people always caused problems, and Zhuge Yeom had to persuade them.

It was the same now.

“Let’s think sensibly, I’m telling you. I’m not being unreasonable by saying you absolutely cannot go. Think about it, think! What would change by going to the Demonic Cult? You’d only throw away your precious life.”

“That might be so.”

Wei Jeong-han nodded greatly as if he understood everything.

“Then, then?”

“But rather than preserving that life while being unable to do anything and rotting away with worry, I’d rather do what I must do, even if it means dying.”

“My friend!”

Steamy vapor burst from Zhuge Yeom’s head.

‘No, shouldn’t this guy become more mellow as he ages? How is he even worse than before!’

A Righteous Hero Sword wasn’t called a Righteous Hero Sword for nothing.

If words worked on him, he wouldn’t be a Righteous Hero Sword.

It had been the same in the past. No matter how many times Zhuge Yeom, along with Divine Strategist and Quan Ji, tried to stop him, hadn’t Wei Jeong-han dumped all their attempts to dissuade him into the trash with a single word: ‘righteousness’?

He had thought that now that he was older, he would have changed to be more reasonable.

‘Why hasn’t anything changed! Nothing!’

His insides were exploding.

If Wei Jeong-han was going to charge into the Demonic Cult alone, he wouldn’t have tried to stop him.

He would have just laughed once and said, ‘Tsk tsk, that guy hasn’t changed even after getting older.’ Because he knew there was no point in trying to stop him. And because he had no obligation to exhaust himself trying to stop him.

But if he was going with Wei Yan-ho, that was a different story.

Wei Yan-ho was no longer simply the second son of the Guangdong Wei Family. He was the focal point and core who should lead the Sichuan martial world, starting with the Heavenly Alliance. But taking such a Wei Yan-ho where? To the Demonic Cult?

“Don’t you think that the Guangdong Wei Family might be destroyed? From what I can see, San-ho doesn’t seem to be your child, and if both Yan-ho and you die, that would be the end of the Guangdong Wei Family. And you still want to go to the Demonic Cult?”

Wei Jeong-han, who had been packing his luggage, straightened his back completely.

“Continuing the lineage is of course important.”

“That’s right! What greater lack of filial piety could there be than failing to continue the lineage? Think of your deceased father.”

“That’s exactly why I must go.”

“Huh?”

Wei Jeong-han glared and said:

“My father valued continuing the lineage. But what my father valued more was continuing the soul of the Wei Family. No matter what anyone says, San-ho is the eldest son of the Guangdong Wei Family. The eldest son is in the Demonic Cult, but to ignore that fact and hold our breath to continue the lineage? If my father knew about this, he would try to beat me to death. It would be better to break the lineage by opposing the Demonic Cult. My father would rather praise me, saying I did well.”

“…”

He had momentarily forgotten.

Wei Jeong-han was Wei Jeong-han, but his father was also from the Guangdong Wei Family. If Wei Yan-ho had inherited Wei Jeong-han’s blood and become such a person, then whose blood had Wei Jeong-han inherited?

“So you’re really going?”

“What have you been listening to until now?”

“Listen here. You’re an envoy of the Righteous Martial Alliance. Then what about your duty? Divine Strategist elder…”

Before Zhuge Yeom could finish speaking, Wei Jeong-han shouldered his packed luggage and said:

“Ah, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Huh?”

“I submitted my resignation to the Righteous Martial Alliance. The Guangdong Wei Family is no longer affiliated with the Righteous Martial Alliance.”

“…”

“So…”

Wei Jeong-han’s eyes glinted.

“You’d better give up any thoughts of stopping me.”

“…”

Zhuge Yeom resolved that once this matter was over, he would never associate with anyone bearing the surname Wei again.