The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 53

The state examination.

The only path by which one could obtain an official post in this country, Joseon. The only opportunity for advancement in one’s station.

Those gathered here were the three hundred passers who had broken through that murderous competition to reach this place.

To become members of the Administration.

Passers who had studied like madmen to become the officials who would lead Joseon’s future, and who had climbed their way here at last.

Thud!

But before them, a glossy black visor was radiating a grotesque light.

“Um, excuse me. Senior?”

“What is this? By the look of it, it seems like something worn on the face, but….”

After the most lavish welcoming ceremony they had ever experienced in their lives came to an end.

One of them picked up the helmet set before them and asked. The Administration official they had been calling ‘senior’ swept his gaze over the passers gathered at Gyeonghoeru Pavilion, and twisted the corner of his mouth.

“You’ve been spouting nonsense like ‘senior’ at me this whole time.”

“Yes? Yes?”

“S-senior? What do you suddenly mean by….”

“Exactly what I said. I am not your senior. Your seniors are…. these ones.”

At that, one of the palace attendants who had been silently serving them all along walked slowly forward to stand beside the official.

A palace attendant who had gone about their duties without a single word, as quietly as a machine.

Only then did the passers gathered in the banquet hall notice that the helmet fitted on his head was identical to the one they each held in their hands.

“Wh, what?”

“Wait. That, that’s—!”

“Have you figured out the situation now?”

The official shook his head slowly and addressed the passers assembled in the banquet hall.

“From this moment, you will be assigned to the Imperial Household Department of the Administration! This is the ‘samo’ you will wear, and it will remain with you for the rest of your lives from this instant on!”

For the rest of your lives.

Before they could even begin to grasp the meaning of those words, the official’s explanation drove itself into their minds like a verdict.

“The moment it is put on, it will be permanently fused and can never be removed. The mechanical device inside will extract your eyeballs and remove your vocal cords! You will never again be able to raise your voice, and you will never again be able to see!”

“……!”

“Wh-what did you say?!”

Eyeball extraction. Vocal cord removal.

The moment those horrific words were spoken, the color drained from the passers’ faces in an instant.

“Why, why would they do something so terrible……?”

“Because that is the reason you lowborn things were admitted to the palace through the state examination. The details, you will learn the moment you put on that ‘samo.'”

Of course, the aristocrats watching from the upper level already knew the reason.

King Gwangjo Yi Cheolheon, reduced to a half-corpse, keeping vigil at Geunjeongjeon Hall.

People were needed to manage the life-support devices surrounding him and to tend to the sovereign’s body itself.

‘Their distinguished noble lineage is too precious to waste a lifetime wiping down a corpse. But entrusting that maintenance work to machines carries the risk, however small, of being hacked….’

If the hands of machines could not be permitted to tend to the sacred person of the exalted sovereign, then the solution was simply to turn people into machines.

For reasons this absurd, they had gouged out the eyes and excised the vocal cords of some of Joseon’s finest minds.

The Office of Eunuchs, once abolished by King Gwangjo Yi Cheolheon himself, had been revived in its worst possible form.

“Your duty is one and only one. Follow the instructions output to your brain and act as you have been trained! From this day until you die of old age, that will be the only action available to you!”

“W-wait! Please, just wait—!”

As if unable to hear another word from the official, one of the passers cried out.

“Speak.”

Even that cry seemed familiar to him. The official permitted the outburst with an untroubled expression.

“What, what does all this mean? The Imperial Household Department…. Is this, is this what it means to be an official of the Administration?”

“Without exception, all those assigned to the Imperial Household Department become this.”

A sophistry.

Because the Imperial Household Department was the only place commoners could enter through the state examination.

“Then, then!”

They had every reason to grind their teeth at being called lowborn things, but they didn’t even have the composure for that.

One passer, face drained of color, pressed on:

“Then why, why did we sit that grueling state examination in the first place?”

“…….”

“If you needed blind, mute slaves, why did we have to endure that hellish studying, push through that brutal competition to come here?!”

The outrage of having their eyes and vocal cords torn out had been displaced by something else entirely — and even that, they did not notice.

Those who have nothing are robbed in exactly this way.

The official clasped his hands behind his back and gave a brief answer.

“Even those who work in the palace deserve a name to their position, do they not? We can hardly use illiterates who can’t read a single character.”

“Wh-what……?”

“On top of that, learning and internalizing the complex etiquette of the court requires a mind sharp enough to absorb it. That is precisely why we went to the trouble of selecting you through examination and calling you here.”

A suffocating silence.

But the official looked as though even that was nothing new. He continued with a faint smile.

“Or did you think that you, commoners without so much as a respectable station, would be sitting alongside us in the royal council, playing at politics? The talk going around must have truly ruined the manners of the lower classes. Preposterous.”

Deep ennui. A contempt aimed at no one in particular.

With eyes carrying that heavy, cloying emotion, the official looked down at the passers.

“Regardless of status, those who only work hard are recognized for their ability and rise to officialdom? Did those who call themselves educated in Joseon sit the examination believing that fairy tale about dragons leaping from the gutter? Did you think that sweet opportunity would be permitted to you lowborn creatures that crowd every street corner? Absurd!”

Having spat that out, the official looked at the passers seated before him and continued.

“This country, Joseon, is a country of nobles! A country that nobles protect, that nobles cause to prosper, that moves according to the will of nobles! That is Joseon! You are mere subjects, without so much as a scrap of phase power, living only on whatever food is scattered down from above. Do you understand what that means?”

“……!”

Whatever fervor had run through the passers had vanished without a trace.

What remained was deep despair.

Nothing but suffocating helplessness filled their faces entirely.

“If you cannot accept this, you may leave the palace at once. That much, I will permit…. but.”

The official settled down onto the floor with a grunt and spoke.

“Should you leave here, the fact that you passed the state examination will be erased as if it never happened, and you will have to return to that lowborn life at the bottom.”

“……!”

“The money your parents secured by mortgaging their own bodies to put you through your studies…. would be no different from having been thrown in the trash.”

Sitting the state examination required an enormous sum of money.

If a child from a poor household wished to study for the examination, their parents would have to mortgage everything, including their own bodies, just to borrow the funds needed to support their child. So much so.

And since those who failed the examination were not given a second chance, those standing here knew better than anyone what had become of the competitors they had stepped over to reach this place.

“But do not worry.”

Watching those who had bowed their heads in silence, the official spoke in a comparatively gentle voice.

“If you put on this ‘samo’ and become palace attendants, you will become official members of the Administration. You will receive a stipend far more than enough to make up for the losses your parents suffered.”

The official’s voice grew gradually softer, as if coaxing a small child.

“Your parents and family and kin will escape crushing poverty and be able to spend their remaining years in comfort and peace. And that is not all. Your children’s military service will be exempted, and those of you who were of slave birth may, upon review, be granted manumission!”

“……!”

“If you sacrifice your lives, your loved ones will be given the gift of a peaceful existence. Whatever else may be said, that much I can guarantee.”

Having said this, the official twisted the corner of his mouth and addressed the passers.

“Now choose.”

A merciless set of choices began pressing down on them without warning.

“Will you become palace attendants? Or will you turn your backs here and continue living that wretched, crawling life?”

Some time passed after those words.

Click.

One, then another.

Those gathered there put the samo on their heads in silence.

They placed on their own heads, with their own hands, the mechanical device that would tear out their eyes, seal their ears, and rip out their vocal cords.

A resolve so terrible it was unbearable to witness.

But the official overseeing the entrance ceremony watched the scene without any change of expression.

It had always been this way.

In all the long years spanning more than three centuries, not one person had ever refused this offer.

“Welcome to the palace.”

Krrrch!

With those words, a bone-chilling mechanical sound filled the entire palace.

“……!”

“……! ………!”

They screamed, but the voice-suppression device fitted to the samo smothered the sound.

Unable even to scream, the passers collapsed where they stood and writhed.

As I watched that scene, my visual interface displayed the post that would be conferred on me at today’s appointment ceremony.

“Junior Sixth Rank, Probationary Royal Inspector.”

A post given to those who placed first in the state examination.

The one amusing thing was that, unlike them, I had never once set foot in an examination hall.

---

“The induction ceremony is concluded.”

The moment the official announced it to the air, a group of people poured into the lower level of the banquet hall.

People wearing the same samo as the passers who had lost consciousness and collapsed.

Their true ‘seniors’ — the palace attendants of the Imperial Household Department.

“Take them away. There are unusually many passers this quarter…. you will have a great deal of work ahead of you.”

“…….”

The palace attendants, having received the official’s order, bowed politely and began collecting their new juniors one by one.

The sight of them ruthlessly seizing those still writhing in agony and loading them into transport drones had not a shred of humanity in it.

The ‘new palace attendants,’ led away by their hands to some unknown place.

Loaded up like parcels into salvage drones for transport — ‘collecting’ suited the scene far better than ‘supporting.’

That not a drop of blood was shed in all this madness somehow made the atmosphere more unsettling still.

“So this is how the palace attendants who come and go through the palace are produced. I had heard something of it secondhand from my father, but seeing it in person is something else….”

“Senior. What happens to those people now?”

When that question came from a genuine ‘junior,’ the official who had come up to the upper level opened his mouth slowly.

“The first processing is handled by the device on their heads, but it isn’t perfect. They’ll be admitted to the specialized training facility installed in the Imperial Household Department before long. After thorough training, they’ll learn the skills required of palace attendants and take over the management of the sovereign’s sacred person.”

“Training, you say?”

“Hm? Ah, is this something that falls under press guidelines?”

The official muttered that to himself, then continued as though it were of no consequence.

“A special training program prepared by the palace will be carried out. The brain is dismantled at the cellular level, then artificial neurons containing the necessary knowledge, along with emotional control devices and cognitive inhibitor implants, are grafted in.”

“Hmm.”

“Once that’s done, along with memory alteration and so forth…. those things probably won’t even be able to recognize their own parents. Well, since they’ll never set foot outside the palace again, it doesn’t much matter whether they lose their memories or not….”

Just hearing it made it feel as though whatever was in one’s stomach was trying to come back up — but the others showed little particular interest.

Their greatest concern was the post each of them had received today.

And all the various privileges that came with it.

But at that moment.

Boom!

Someone burst through the young aristocrats and drove a punch at the official with full force.

Jeong Jihoon.

A fist loaded with phase power — but it never reached the official’s face.

“Bold move for a civil examination passer whose induction ceremony isn’t even finished.”

The fist, stopped cold by the official’s hand and refusing to move.

Unlike Jeong Jihoon, whose face was twisted with rage, the official’s expression was utterly calm.