Possessing a Murim Clan’s Youngest Son - Chapter 4

Chapter 4. 108 Fates

Ehhh.

W- What is this? He’s only level 8 even though he’s from a noble family?

And I knew he was stupid, but a wisdom level of 4…and on top of that…what the hell is up with his -35 reputation? Is it even possible to get a negative?

Come to think of it, there was a knife hanging on his belt.

He took out the knife and looked it over.

It was…covered in rust.

Are you saying a person from the murim world didn’t even take care of his weapons?

Well, he was pretending to play dead without even drawing his knife.

Anyways, this crazy character.

Han Yibi bitterly clicked his tongue.

Still, I guess it’s better than nothing…

He moved his body around here and there.

In any case, his body felt a lot lighter than before.

‘But now…what do I do?’

All of a sudden Han Yibi remembered his mother.

After his father passed away it was just him and his mother.

She would be heartbroken if she found out he just vanished…

Her health isn’t that good either…ahhhh.

No matter what, I have to return.

I’ll return no matter what.

She spent her whole life with my incompetent father so this time I must bring a smile to her face.

But anyways, poverty is persistent and more likely to be passed down.

He promised himself that he wouldn’t become like his father, but in reality, he was already following in his footsteps.

If he’s able to go back then…this time it will be different.

Han Yibi bit his lower lip.

‘But what do I do…’

He tried his best to make the gears in his head turn which had gotten rusty after having been just a cog in the mundaneness of society.

‘Well. For now…I should listen to the crazy system lady.’

Han Yibi suddenly turned his eyes towards the shack that the man disappeared to. He didn’t like it but he couldn’t think of any other way.

He gradually walked towards the entrance of the shack.

It was then.

The ‘Ding’ sound resonated in his ear.

[Main Quest has appeared: Obtain the status of the shack man’s disciple.]

[Reward: You can take over the man’s progress.]

Huh? W-What’s this?

Become the disciple of the man who lives in the shack?

And…unlike the quest from before it doesn’t show the difficulty.

So it looks like regardless of the difficulty it’s a mission I must complete no matter what.

But…why is everything so subjective instead of clear?!

However, just a moment ago, he had promised himself.

That he would listen to the system and go back home.

He opened the shabby door of the shack and went inside.

‘Eeuk, did I come to a sauna?’

An extremely musty smell came to his nose. Han Yibi quickly looked around him.

He saw all kinds of grasses carelessly hung up around the walls.

It doesn’t look like siraegi…it was something he smelled in saunas or herbal medicine shops so they were probably herbs.

TN: Siraegi – Siraegi is a Korean ingredient prepared by drying the leaves and stems of a radish or, less commonly, of a napa cabbage.

Could he be a ginseng harvester…no, an herbalist?

Han Yibi looked around for the man.

He was soon able to find him.

A man was sleeping on a bed with his arm folded under his head.

The man wasn’t watching him.

He was completely ignoring him to the point that it began to piss Han Yibi off.

But he had to hold it in. He needed to go home.

Han Yibi remembered the firm’s ‘sales school’, he forced a smile on his face and walked towards the man and spoke.

“Have you already gone to bed?”

The man said nothing.

Was he sleeping?

“Excuse me…ahjusshi.”

Then the man suddenly opened his eyes.

“How dare you talk to me! And what do you mean ahjusshi?! Shut up! I was running while you were still learning how to walk. Get out! An elder is sleeping and you’re bothering him!”

Han Yibi chickened out and replied.

“Oh my. I’m sorry, elder.”

Then he thought.

‘Elder is what old men like to call themselves in a martial arts setting…Does that mean even though he looks like that he’s actually a grandpa? Is it some sort of bone restructuring?’

The man…well the one who claims to be an old man abruptly sat up.

“You! Who said you could come in here without permission?”

Han Yibi was shocked as he started to stutter.

“Ah…I…I…it’s not that but…ahaha. You know, that saying. As fellow people of murim…helping those in trouble…”

“Stop talking nonsense and get out!”

But Han Yibi thought that he couldn’t lose here.

Pretending that he was auditioning for an acting school he put everything he had into his fake tears and spoke.

“Elder…I’ve lost my whole family and become an orphan. You can kick me out anytime after but please have pity and let me at least avoid the wind.”

The man violently rubbed his ears as if he had heard something he didn’t want to and lied on his back.

“I’m telling you again, but leave on your own two feet before I kick you out on my own. I’m warning you.”

“Oh thank you! Elder.”

At least he wasn’t getting kicked out right then and there.

There was an awkward silence for a while. The man didn’t say anything.

He didn’t even ask why he was with him.

Darkness crept through the cracks of the door. As I thought, the sun sets quickly in the mountains.

The man looked to be really asleep now.

No. His breathing…sounds somewhat weird.

At any rate, there was no way there was an extra bed. Han Yibi went to a corner and carefully lied down.

As nighttime approached a chill began to fill the room. That might have been the reason why but the man had been shaking since before.

If he was cold he should at least use a blanket…

But the shaking got gradually worse.

Later like a shaking aspen tree, he was shaking violently as if he was going through a seizure.

Worried, Han Yibi, sat up.

The man who noticed this yelled at him.

“You! Stop being nosy and fuck off! No, if you try to get involved with me again, I’ll kick you out right away!”

What the. I just got up cause I was worried.

He didn’t need to be so harsh. After getting his feelings trampled on, he flopped down onto the floor. But he felt a little cold. He curled himself up into a ball.

Then the drowsiness kicked in.

It was a very…very tiring day.

He was almost fired from his job and after going through everything the tiredness he had been holding in all day poured out like a storm.

Now that he was looking at it, the man who was shaking profusely earlier seemed to be stabilizing.

‘Does he have some sort of long-term ailment? Anyways, I guess…you have to sleep in this world too…’

There was an ambiguous line between real life and a dream.

He remembered the careless times that he spent together with his mother and father. The tears that fell from his eyes without him knowing…

I must, I must return.

No matter what…

***

Maybe it was because of the way he was sleeping all night.

But he would wake up at the slightest noise. What time was it now…

The inside of the shack was still dark but he could vaguely feel the bluish dawn approaching.

‘Where am I? Who am I?’

Then he suddenly came to his senses and woke up.

The man was already getting ready to leave.

“Elder. Where are you going so early in the morning?”

He said nothing. Han Yibi spoke in an urgent tone.

“Elder. I…I’ll go with you.”

Then the man snorted and spoke.

“Hmph. Do you even know where I’m going?”

“Ah…I don’t know but…”

“Just sleep your ass off and leave.”

Was this young-looking old man impatient because he couldn’t kick him out?

Han Yibi decided to enter shameless mode.

“E-Elder…then is there anything for me to…”

“Ah! Yeah.”

The man continued as if he remembered something.

“There is one thing.”

Ohhh. Was he finally opening up to him?

Delighted, Han Yibi spoke.

“Please tell me.”

“Fuck off already.”

Wow…

The man left in a hurry leaving Han Yibi in shock.

‘Damn it. He’s a cold old man.’

Han Yibi, who had been sitting there blanky for a while, had a change of thought and went outside the shack.

But…

‘Gasp!’

He was so shocked he forgot to breathe.

It was a complete mess outside.

It was hell itself.

The dead bodies from yesterday still remained.

And on top of that…

‘Eeuk. What is this smell…’

A smell similar to that of food waste crept into his nose.

The gruesome corpses had been rotting all night.

Han Yibi knitted his brows at the horrific sight as his eyes landed on Jongri Kang’s corpse that was lying next to the side of a tree stump.

Unlike the other corpses, his face looked peaceful.

‘I don’t know about the others but…I should at least bury this Jongri Kang person. It’s Jongri Mae’s uncle so…but…there’s no way there would be a shovel in these mountains…and if I dig the ground with my hands I’ll probably have to do it for 3 days straight until my nails break off and that still won’t be enough time.’

As he was thinking, Han Yibi decided to look at the lay of the land and went out to inspect the area.

It might have been because this place was located deep in the mountains, but besides the flat ground, there wasn’t any rugged terrain in sight.

‘Damn it, it’s going to be easy to get lost. I have to be careful.’

Then…

‘Ah! That place looks promising.’

In the distance, there was a wide and flat boulder resting on a cliff…

If this was the real world it would be a perfect place for a selfie or to rest and drink makgeolli.

TN: Makgeolli – raw rice wine, makgeolli is a Korean alcoholic beverage.

If he couldn’t bury him he thought it would be better to throw him off the cliff.

It won’t be easy but…he wouldn’t be able to handle the foul odor if he just left the bodies as is.

Even if he left them he would probably be the one that has to do it anyways.

He needed to hurry and get rid of the bodies before the decomposing got worse.

For now, the motivated Han Yibi carried Jongri Kang’s corpse and quickly carried it over to the cliff.

He was so heavy that along the way he wanted to quit many times.

‘Pant pant! I think I get why serial killers in movies cut up the corpses before carrying them…’

Han Yibi laid Jongri Kang on the broad boulder, bowed his head, and said a prayer.

He didn’t really have a religion but he felt that this was the least he could do.

Then he pushed Jongri Kang off the cliff.

It was so deep that other than the occasional sounds of the rustling leaves as the body hit them there was no other sound.

‘Phew. That’s one of them…’

Han Yibi was drenched in sweat as he returned to the shack. No matter how many times he saw the gruesome corpses he couldn’t get used to them.

‘Damn it. That old son of a bitch, I seriously have the worst luck. I have an ominous feeling that he definitely isn’t a good person.’

First, he moved all the members of the Jongri noble clan to the cliff.

At one point he was shocked at how light one of the corpses was due to blood loss.

And then half a day passed…

He finally pushed the corpses of all the people of the Jongri noble clan off the cliff and held a funeral for them.

Now all that was left was the masked men’s corpses. All of a sudden a thought came to his mind.

‘Wait. If you kill an enemy in the game doesn’t something pop out? This…isn’t really like a game but still…’

Han Yibi held in the urge to throw up and began to search through the clothes of the dead masked men.

He felt uncomfortable doing this but just in case…

He couldn’t find anything on the first two masked men.

‘What the. They came for the sole purpose of killing people?’

This time he began to search one of the remaining two masked men.

It was the man who was swinging around the big sword with one hand as if it were a toothpick.

It looked like his hip was broken because his upper and lower body were in a twisted position that would have otherwise been impossible.

‘I’m only searching him briefly but he’s already too heavy. If I tried to carry him all the way over there then I would have died.’

Han Yibi held back the chills and was about to dig through his belt.

Ding.

There was a reaction from the system.

[Information about one of the ‘108 Fates’ has been detected. You can check the information through the ‘Status Window’. Would you like to check now? (Yes/No)]

Huh? 108 Fates?

Fates are a common cliche in the martial arts world and it’s something you must attain no matter what.

But…you’re saying that there’s a 108 of them?

‘Anyways, yes.’

The system reacted.