The Grandson of the Heavenly Demon

Chapter 26

Chapter 2610. Live-in Son-in-law (1)Tremble, tremble, tremble—

Bang-rip's thin hands shook.

It had been over 10 years since they'd shared a bed. It was true that he still harbored foolish feelings for his wife, Hyeok Seol-hwa, who didn't even treat him as a husband.

But even so, Bang-rip had never once considered killing his wife with his own hands.

Damn it. They should have done this themselves……

Bang-rip resented Gwan Tae-ho on one hand.

Honestly, he was fine with it as long as he wasn't the one doing it. How wonderful it would be, for instance, if an assassin were sent to quietly kill his wife without anyone knowing.

How very human of me, harboring such an absurd sentiment, Bang-rip thought, walking somewhere.

The night had already grown very late.

"Huuu."

The Heavenly Demon Cult's Inscription Pavilion.

Hyeok Seol-hwa resided on the second floor of this building. Originally it was a building where Bang-rip lived as well, but his entry had been refused at some point.

It wasn't that access had been explicitly banned. Somehow, before he knew it, Bang-rip had simply stopped being able to sleep here. Naturally.

It truly has been a long time since I've been here, then.

Stepping inside the Inscription Pavilion, everything was pitch dark on all sides.

As it should be. At this hour, not only cult members but servants, household staff, and maids would all be asleep.

It was already the Hour of the Tiger, after all. The only one still awake would surely be himself alone.

Carefully concealing a blade inside his robe, Bang-rip climbed the stairs.

It was then.

"Master?"

Flinch! Bang-rip startled and snapped his head around.

At the foot of the staircase landing, a young maidservant with a familiar face was looking up at him.

She was rubbing her eyes, which suggested she'd woken from sleep to use the privy.

"What brings you here at this hour?"

"What about you—still awake and doing what? Don't you know the Heavenly Demon Cult's rule that everyone must sleep once midnight has passed?"

"S-sorry. I needed to relieve myself urgently."

Gazing down at the back of the maid's bowed head, Bang-rip thought.

Should I kill her? If someone knew he had come here at this hour, he would be the first suspect when Hyeok Seol-hwa's body was discovered.

I must eliminate the witness……

No, but then there would be 2 bodies. That would simply mean he had killed 2 people outright.

They say the biggest reason murderers get caught is their failure to hide the body.

While Bang-rip hesitated, the maid raised her head again and quietly scurried away.

"Then I'll be taking my leave."

"Ah, hmm."

She left without him even managing a reply.

Bang-rip reproached himself. How can I accomplish anything being this indecisive!

Hyeok Seol-hwa. Tonight I must surely kill you!

His anxiety about himself turned, strangely, toward his wife.

Silencing his footsteps and climbing the stairs again, Bang-rip passed through several bends and turns before finally slipping into the room where Hyeok Seol-hwa would be sleeping.

Swiish—

There was Hyeok Seol-hwa, her quilted blanket pulled all the way over her head.

At least there was that mercy. If he saw her face, he might not be able to kill her.

Huu. Huu.

After steadying his breath, Bang-rip drew the blade from his robe. With a blade the length of a full foot, it was a sword a bit large to call a dagger.

Kill her in one thrust. Then flee.

"……"

Yet even then, Bang-rip stood rooted to the spot and agonized for another quarter-hour.

Then at last, having made up his mind, he strode forward.

Thunk!

"……!!"

With the mindset of to hell with it, he stabbed down into the blanket.

But the sensation was strange.

What is this?

Bang-rip had once been a swordsman. He had cut people before.

This was not the sensation of stabbing a person!

Yanking back the blanket revealed what lay inside—a wooden headrest and a cotton pillow stacked atop one another.

"What. Where is Seol-hwa…"

Where did she go? The moment that thought crossed his mind.

Shwick!

Something flew toward Bang-rip.

Before he could even raise his blade to block, it crashed into Bang-rip and sent his form toppling.

"Ugh! Y-you?!"

"You wretch!!"

It was none other than the Heavenly Demon, Hyeok Je-un.

.

.

.

Before Jeong-min had departed for the Blood Cult.

When Hyeok Je-un had sought out Jeong-min, called him over, and given him the Heavenly Ascent Sword, Jeong-min had said something.

"Grandfather, there is something I must tell you."

And the story he heard that day was one that struck Hyeok Je-un across the back of the head.

It was a bizarre tale of Jeong-min reporting his own father.

"At minimum, it will take me half a month to travel to the Blood Cult and back. During that time, Father will certainly kill Mother."

"Wha—what did you… what?"

First, stupefaction.

Second, bewilderment. How on earth do you know of such a preposterous thing?

"I saw Father receiving a letter from someone."

At this point, Jeong-min lied to Hyeok Je-un.

He had seen no such thing. But surely it had happened. Because he already knew that Bang-rip was colluding with the Martial Alliance.

And surely, around this time, Hyeok Seol-hwa had died. It was a fact he'd traced back after piecing together long-buried memories.

Only, Jeong-min hadn't known whether it was Bang-rip who killed his mother, or whether the Martial Alliance had separately sent an assassin.

Even so—for now, let's put it on Bang-rip. If it turned out to be an unfounded worry, it could be corrected later.

"……I see."

Hyeok Je-un's third reaction was resignation.

Perhaps he had always dimly known, in some form.

Perhaps, from the very moment he had accepted Bang-rip—that drifter from the roadside whom his daughter brought home as a live-in son-in-law—he had sensed where this story would lead.

And in the end, both Hyeok Je-un's intuition and Jeong-min's precaution proved right.

"You wretch……!"

Ka-ka-crack—

Hyeok Je-un, having pinned Bang-rip's body beneath him, drew a sharp breath. He was trying to suppress his fury.

Bang-rip was barely holding Hyeok Je-un back with his blade. But he couldn't push him off—that was his limit.

"Father-in-law…!"

"I had hoped otherwise. That you would not—that you truly would not kill your wife, my daughter, with your own hands! I could not believe it. And yet it was all true. It truly was!"

"Ngh, get… off me!"

Bang-rip wrung out every last ounce of strength and shoved Hyeok Je-un off.

He barely managed to rise. 

Why is the Heavenly Demon Hyeok Je-un here? Where has Hyeok Seol-hwa gone?

Damn it, what's going on?

Bang-rip chewed on his lip as Hyeok Je-un, trembling with fury, worked his lips open.

"How—how could you do this. I took you in and gave you clothes on your back. And now you move to seize the cult leadership!"

"Father-in-law! Don't make me laugh."

Something seemed to have scraped a raw nerve in Bang-rip, and he raised his voice.

"Do you think I don't know? All this time! These 20-some years I spent here! Do you think I don't know how I was looked down upon? Well?!"

"What nonsense are you—!"

"Look at this very moment! You suspected I would kill Seol-hwa, so you moved her to different quarters and hid it from me. Then you waited as if in ambush. What is this if not entrapment?!"

Hyeok Je-un's words caught in his throat. What is this drivel? If he resented being distrusted, he should never have picked up a blade and come to Hyeok Seol-hwa's quarters in the first place.

Left with nothing to say against that miraculous logic, Hyeok Je-un fell silent—and Bang-rip took his silence as confirmation that he was right.

"I am tired of being looked down on in the Heavenly Demon Cult. My father-in-law, my wife, and even my 3 sons! How far must you all look down on me before you're satisfied? I won't stand for it any longer!"

Bang-rip's face flushed a deep crimson.

He raised his blade and charged at Hyeok Je-un.

Before Hyeok Je-un could fully collect himself from the shock, Bang-rip's blade flashed in the moonlight and drove into the fold of Hyeok Je-un's chest.

"You wretch—!"

"Go to hell, Father-in-law!"

Stab, stab, stab!

.

.

.

Late in the night, a commotion from the Inscription Pavilion lit lanterns throughout the compound.

Cult members and servants came out one by one, and among them was Hyeok Seol-hwa, who had been sleeping with her 2 sons in their quarters, the Demon Studies Pavilion.

"What is this disturbance……"

"Mother."

Hyeok Jang-ho and Hyeok Mun-ha had also woken, and appeared in the room where Hyeok Seol-hwa slept, rubbing their eyes.

A few days prior, Father had suddenly told Hyeok Seol-hwa to sleep together with her 2 sons for the time being.

He had told her to do so without giving a reason, so she had. And now, out of nowhere, a commotion was breaking out in the Inscription Pavilion, her original quarters?

"Let us go quickly."

"Yes."

Escorted by her 2 sons, Hyeok Seol-hwa stepped into the Inscription Pavilion.

On the first floor, servants who could not go up despite the noise from above were visible. It was likely because that floor held Hyeok Seol-hwa's bedchamber.

Hyeok Seol-hwa parted through them and climbed to the upper floor.

And inside her very room—

"Eek! F-Father! Husband?!"

She saw Bang-rip standing with a blade in hand, and Hyeok Je-un, who had been stabbed by it.

Tremble, tremble— Bang-rip's hand shook. He had stabbed a person. Truly for the first time in a long while.

And yet.

"Urgh?"

Why won't the blade come out?

Stabbed in the shoulder joint, Hyeok Je-un neither retreated nor showed any sign of pain, and simply stood there.

Only his expression was contorted like that of a death god's wrathful face.

"Damn it, why won't the blade—!"

"……"

Hyeok Je-un's fist tightened.

Crrrk— Demonic energy loaded into Hyeok Je-un's fist.

Bang-rip knew instinctively what it was. The Demon Palm Piercer.

"Oh, hell—"

The moment Bang-rip finally let go of the blade and tried to flee.

"You fool!!"

THWOOM!!

His fist loaded with internal energy finally slammed into Bang-rip's face.

Bang! Bang-rip shot into the air and was hurled into the wall. The wooden wall shattered and the stone wall behind it cracked.

Bang-rip survived, not dead, but the wound was critical enough that he could not raise his body from where it was crushed against the stone wall.

"Kugh, kk-heuk."

Such power!

As far as Bang-rip knew, the Demon Palm Piercer was an art of the 1st Stage of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. And yet this overwhelming force—was this even possible?

Even a tiger that has aged and lost its fangs was still a tiger, was it?

"Bang-rip. Do you know why I never recognized you as my son-in-law?"

Step, step— Hyeok Je-un approached Bang-rip.

His fist still carried demonic energy.

"It is because of that vile energy you possess."

"Ha! Laughable. Do you know what the world calls the Heavenly Demon Cult? They drop 'Heavenly' and 'Divine' and call it the 'Demon Cult'! What gives a group that has nothing to rival it in vileness but the Blood Cult the right to call me vile?!"

Shwick—!

THWOOM! KRA-CRACK!

Hyeok Je-un's fist struck Bang-rip's skull once more. The stone wall behind crumbled as Bang-rip was driven even deeper into it.

"Kugh, kkk."

"Be grateful I'm leaving you alive."

"Father!"

At that moment, Hyeok Seol-hwa's voice rang out.

Hyeok Je-un turned to look—and there was his daughter, together with his 2 grandsons.

"What in the world is happening."

"……You chose the wrong husband, Seol-hwa."

It was then.

Thud, thud— The sound of crumbling stone dust, and from within it, Bang-rip revealed himself with the breath of a man half-dead.

"I… kk-heuk. Did you think I would fall to something like this?"

"You haven't lost consciousness?"

"I am, in my own way, of Orthodox Faction origin. Being treated like a ruffian by a Demon Cult is something I cannot tolerate."

In that moment, what Bang-rip held in his palm—Hyeok Je-un saw it too.

And so Hyeok Je-un's eyes narrowed.

"That is……?!"

A small, round black pill. It was nearly devoid of color.

Bang-rip willingly placed it into his own throat and swallowed.

Gulp!

Hyeok Je-un's expression turned deathly pale.

"The Black Pellet……!"

"You know of it. Then this will be quick."

With a face twisted more viciously than ever before, Bang-rip looked back and forth between Hyeok Je-un and Hyeok Seol-hwa.

"I will kill you both. Right here."