Chapter 318: Journey to the End of the Night (1)

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The night deepened, but our steps did not halt. For people of Su Je-heon’s and my level, this degree of darkness posed no obstacle to walking.

The problem was my father. My father’s martial arts level was at most a smattering learned from the Blood Cult. He could not possess the senses and vision to pierce this degree of darkness.

My father said he had never walked at such an hour in his entire life. In pitch-black darkness, an uneven path rather than an official road was more than enough to frighten him.

One could not call my father a coward either. Possessing his own pride, my father had simply walked without saying anything to me, only to stumble and roll several times. Naturally, becoming cautious in his steps was only to be expected.

“Say, he is your father, so why not hold his hand as you walk?”

To the point where Su Je-heon, unable to watch any longer, meddled. Before I could reply, my father beat me to it.

“Forget it. This rascal hates me terribly.”

“Haha. It seems you have done some wrong to your child as well.”

Thinking about it, my father and Su Je-heon were around the same age. I felt a strange sensation for some reason.

Until yesterday, my father was someone I had left behind in my previous life and never sought out.

Yet Su Je-heon was one of the people I had clashed with most in this life.

Though it was definitely not so, it felt like people from different timelines were meeting and conversing. Father and Su Je-heon stood in a relationship that far apart.

“Wrong, you say. Aren’t all parents sinners?”

“That is true too. For that is an inevitable sin. Children never know it until they become parents themselves. Truly insolent rascals.”

Su Je-heon chuckled. Because it was dark, Su Je-heon’s face could not be seen. Even if one sharpened one’s vision, one could only perceive outlines of surroundings and distance, not what kind of expression he was making.

“We seem to understand each other. It seems you did not gain the sobriquet of Ink Sword Hero for nothing.”

“As for me, I have lived without a single shred of shame before Heaven.”

As someone who disliked both of them, I was dumbfounded. Hating the sight of the two hitting it off, I snatched my father’s hand.

“Do you have excess stamina? To engage in small talk. From here to Yicheng, we must walk all night.”

“Small talk, you say? It is a conversation between fathers.”

“Just as being born does not make everyone human, giving birth does not make everyone a father.”

I spoke heartlessly. My father’s mouth closed. In the dark silence, I thought about Su Je-heon’s family relations.

Frankly speaking, it was information I had neither cared about nor thought to investigate.

However, I usually remembered the human relationships of those closely connected to me to some degree. Because that served as a major clue when dealing with that person.

As I remembered, Su Je-heon had no children. Not even a wife.

“Deputy Palace Master. Do you have children?”

I asked Su Je-heon. A chilly wind blew. When he did not answer, I added words.

“If you don’t want to speak, never mind.”

“I did.”

Su Je-heon answered. In that past-tense reply, I felt deep remorse.

“I see. Understood.”

I could not approach further from there. We were not in a relationship to share human empathy. That was where our respective positions stood right now. Rather, if personal feelings entered, there was a high likelihood both would go astray.

“You must have suffered a great tragedy.”

The one who chimed into the conversation was my father, whose hand I held. Unconsciously, I glared sharply at my father, but my father was someone whose senses were so dull he did not even know I had turned my head.

“Nothing hurts as much as sending a child before oneself. Is it not so painful that there is not even a word to describe a parent who lost a child?”

“Thank you. It is all an old story now.”

Su Je-heon answered. His voice was hollow. I squeezed my father’s hand tightly. It was a sign to stop talking.

“……”

A chilling wind blew. Su Je-heon fell silent, and my father and I kept quiet as well. Only the regular sound of stepping on dirt ground echoed.

“Having to travel a long distance, is it not too desolate?”

After walking for about an hour, Su Je-heon spoke.

“I needlessly brought up strange talk and made things awkward. Well, whatever reaction I show after hearing your words, until then, aren’t we traveling companions?”

“That is not wrong either.”

I retorted. Unlike daytime, such a deep night offered no scenery to enjoy, so it was just around the moment of growing tedious.

“Right. Why do you dislike your father?”

“What dislike? Just, as fathers and sons usually are, we become distant.”

“No. There are plenty of fathers and sons who are not like that.”

“Now the Deputy Palace Master is making me uncomfortable.”

“Still, am I not your senior in life? I might present a good solution, who knows.”

“I have plenty of seniors to seek advice from besides the Deputy Palace Master.”

“Aren’t most of those people Daoists who have never raised a family? I am different.”

It seemed Su Je-heon had indeed had a family. Then again, if he had a child, it was only right to assume he had a wife as well.

“Forget it. It seems I should refrain from speaking now.”

However, I refused. In the first place, it was ambiguous to call Su Je-heon my senior. Because I too was someone who had reached near fifty years of age.

Of course, I lacked experience in raising a family and might be deficient in that regard, but I felt no need to fill it either.

“Then I must ask your father. What do you think is the reason your son dislikes you?”

“What else could it be? Likely because I could not care for him much in his childhood.”

“If he dislikes you to that degree, it seems there must have been some other incident.”

“Originally it wasn’t to that extent. It became like that ever since I spoke of sending him as a Wudang Sect lay disciple.”

“What nonsense is that again? What is wrong with being a Wudang Sect lay disciple?”

Su Je-heon spoke in a bewildered voice. Encouraged by Su Je-heon’s reaction, my father continued speaking confidently.

“Indeed. Think about it. In our impoverished circumstances, being selected as a Wudang Sect lay disciple was truly a blessing from Heaven, was it not?”

“Indeed. Just how many people in the Central Plains wish to become a Wudang Sect lay disciple?”

“Exactly. Yet he acts like that. Thinking of my son’s future, I sent him to Wudang, but that must have been thoroughly displeasing to him.”

“Oh dear.”

Infuriatingly, my father and Su Je-heon matched each other perfectly. I wondered if my disliking both of them in common was not a coincidence.

“I don’t understand. If not for being a Wudang Sect lay disciple, you wouldn’t have reached this position, would you? You wouldn’t have met that little Daoist named Myeong-gyeong whom you hold so dear either.”

Su Je-heon said slyly. I replied in a blunt voice.

“That is entirely different. My father sending me to Wudang was a wrong choice. It just so happened that things worked out well for me at Wudang.”

“In a way, isn’t that also your father’s merit?”

“Merit, my foot.”

I snorted. At that, I could not bear it without scoffing.

“Do I not know my father? He is someone far removed from merit.”

Even at my blatant ridicule, my father could not reply. Perhaps having at least a minimal conscience, he did not refute my words.

Yet whether intentionally or not, Su Je-heon kept saying words that provoked me.

“If he donated to the Wudang Sect for a long time, merit is not an incorrect statement. Was that not how you became a lay disciple?”

“My father did not pay money out of reverence for the Wudang Sect. Shrewd as he looks, he put it in as an investment concept.”

“Viewing people in such a twisted manner is also a bad habit.”

“Even so, could I not know my own father?”

I asserted firmly. My father said nothing. Where would my merchant blood have come from? Bloodlines did not lie.

My father was a lazy man, but he possessed merchant talent. Exactly like me in the previous life. Someone who had merchant talent but no martial talent. That was my father.

“Am I wrong?”

I looked at my father. Emitting such hostile energy while actually holding my father’s hand could not have been more uncomfortable.

After a brief silence, my father opened his mouth.

“That’s right. I put it in as an investment. That wasn’t wrong, was it? I invested for my son to do well.”

“It was not an investment I desired. And……”

I paused briefly. Because I knew that if I said this, the journey to Yicheng would become extremely uncomfortable. That was why I stopped for now.

“Forget it. Let us leave it at that. Deputy Palace Master, please stop as well. It is unnecessary meddling.”

“Is it about your mother again?”

Yet unexpectedly, the one who brought it up first was my father. A biting wind blew between us.

“I thought you wouldn’t bring that up, Father.”

“Why?”

“If you had a conscience.”

I halted my steps. Holding his hand, my father knew it and halted as well. I glared at my father, and though it was dark, it was so blatant that my father seemed to feel it as well.

“Did you hate me that much because of that?”

My father asked. Acting as if hearing it for the first time, my father made me utterly dumbfounded.

“You speak as if it was nothing.”

I spoke.

“When Mother was ill, is hoarding that money and continuously sending it to Wudang something to be proud of?”

I knew. In such a countryside, just how long an effort had to be invested to have the child of a peasant without backing accepted as a lay disciple.

My father had been pouring that money into Wudang even before Mother passed away. Suffering from poverty, eventually falling ill, until Mother passed away. Knowing that, I could never forgive my father.

“Mother’s illness was typically caused by malnutrition. Was stealing the food money of your son and wife to invest truly for my sake? It was probably to satisfy your personal craving for martial arts, Father.”

“……So, that was why. The reason you hated me so much.”

My father spoke in a dazed voice. It was the first time I laid everything bare before my father like this.

It wasn’t that I had never thought of listing the reasons I hated him before my father. Rather, I had thought of it countless times. But naturally, merely thinking and actually doing it were worlds apart. So I had left it in the realm of imagination.

“Haa.”

I let out a sigh. But somehow things had ended up like this.

I turned my head toward Su Je-heon. Su Je-heon would know I was looking at him.

“Are you satisfied now, Deputy Palace Master?”

“……Ahem. Such circumstances were there, I see.”

Su Je-heon spoke awkwardly.

It was better this way. Living my second life, I always had thoughts about the untrodden path.

And I had always wanted to say this to my father, so it wasn’t bad. Just as I was comforting myself by taking the void filling my heart as relief.

“It seems you have misunderstood something.”

Just then, my father slowly opened his mouth.

“The one who first began sending money to the Wudang Sect was not me, but your mother.”

And that was a story I could hardly believe.