The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 67

“The more I look at this, the more impressive it is.”

After stepping inside the quarters, I studied the footage Bune mask had sent me.

Seong Ryeoun handing military supplies over to the Jurchen.

The Jurchen using those supplies to raid traveling merchants and cargo trucks, and the companies from the Central Plains buying weapons from Seong Ryeoun to defend against those same Jurchen raids.

Watching the footage, the full picture the Defense Commander had arranged came into sharp focus.

“He sells intelligence on the supply convoys and pockets the money, then takes a cut of the plundered goods as tribute. Double profits.”

“Right. The Jurchen use the supplies they get that way to keep hitting the cargo vehicles passing through the Northeast Frontier.”

“And the Central Plains companies and traveling merchants who get raided will place weapon orders at the nearest 3rd Forward Base. With the Defense Commander himself.”

Selling arms to both the Jurchen and the Central Plains warlords, collecting the commission from each, he had turned the Forward Base into his own private kingdom.

All while keeping things at just the right threshold so the Iron Tiger Army’s main garrison defenses against monsters wouldn’t falter, and feeding the Jurchen intelligence to quietly eliminate potential rivals.

‘A genuine tightrope walk between monsters and Jurchen. Coordinating all that information and all those deals with one hand.’

Simple to describe, but the business structure was extraordinarily delicate.

Embezzlement elevated to an art form.

Not said as a joke. It was structured well enough that I found myself wanting to take notes.

“Goes to show corrupt officials aren’t for just anyone. Indeed, indeed.”

“Stop admiring him and get angry. Can’t you see that man is gambling with soldiers’ lives?”

‘They’re not even my soldiers, so what does it matter…. Ah. No, no, no.’

Perhaps it was the warmth of meeting a kindred spirit after so long.

The Kim Changwoon buried deep inside me had been sleeping soundly, and now he was whispering in starlight, urging me to embrace the life of a corrupt official.

Can’t do that. Can’t.

This kind of corrupt-official mindset is no good for the healthy moral development of a bright and clever traitor-in-progress.

Good thoughts. Good thoughts.

I watched Bune mask perched on the windowsill and slowly brought my hand to my chin.

“If you’ve already gathered intelligence this far, couldn’t your side handle it directly? Why leave a scandal like this untouched when you know about it?”

“I asked the same thing because it frustrated me too. Apparently it’s not that simple. If we expose it carelessly, the people here will suffer.”

“Ah……..”

Recalling what the Defense Commander had said at the reception, it made a rough kind of sense.

From what I’d heard, he had been a representative of the locals who had lived in the region long before the Iron Tiger Army ever settled there. And this military procurement corruption, running for years, was no different from a business with dozens of tangled vested interests. Just the people with even a foot in this corruption would number well over a thousand.

Those who had fed on that black money had become a support base that revered the Defense Commander….

“If someone tried to oust him by making the procurement corruption an issue, it would set off internal conflict within the Iron Tiger Army. And if that happened, Iron Tiger Fortress, already struggling with a shortage of manpower, would become endangered. So even knowing about this corruption, no one can touch it carelessly?”

“Oh, exactly. That’s almost word for word what they said.”

“Which means he’s a stone wedged in so deep there’s no budging him. Bloody hell, what a mess.”

Ah, this is a pattern I’ve seen many times in history books.

It feels just like watching a certain Naval Commander of Gyeongsang Right Province from the fifteenth century.

As the ancient sages said, among every five people there must be one scoundrel. Could it truly be so? Even now, centuries later, does the will of ‘corruption’ live on still?

That inner lament had barely finished shaping itself into verse when.

“By the way.”

Bune mask, who had been scanning the nearby network, turned to look at me.

“It’s certain Seong Ryeoun is human trash. But… is he really the Administration’s traitor you mentioned?”

“More or less.”

“Hmm…….”

Watching Bune mask tilt his head in puzzlement, I spoke again.

“You find it hard to believe?”

“I can’t stand the man any more than you can, but… he still doesn’t seem like a traitor to me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because he knows the Iron Tiger General made it back alive from Hanseong. And he has information about Arin too.”

Has he gotten close enough to call her Arin?

That’s a bit surprising.

As I turned that over in my mind, Bune mask continued.

“Arin is of royal blood. Her very existence is like a reverse scale, something that could shake the entire power structure of Joseon. On top of that, she’s been fighting on battlefields all over the country, which makes her enormously well known among the soldiers.”

“Yeah. That much was obvious.”

It was even more apparent seeing her in person.

At the moment of absolute crisis, the sky had split open, and Yoo Arin had descended from it, radiating golden light.

Slaying the monster. Raising her sword over its carcass. That image was, in every sense, like a hero out of legend.

“And yet the Administration, rather than moving to stop it, is sending you, a Secret Royal Inspector, to offer Yoo Sanghyeon a carrot. The story doesn’t add up.”

“You want to say: if the Defense Commander had been brought into Andong Kim’s fold, then it makes no sense that the Administration would be unaware of Yoo Arin’s existence?”

“Exactly.”

Every word was correct.

Befitting an executive of the Hahoe organization, sharper than I’d given credit for.

I admitted it freely and spoke.

“You’re right. That man hasn’t betrayed anyone yet.”

“……What?”

Bune mask asked again, as if unable to believe what he’d just heard.

“That’s different from what you said before. You called the Defense Commander a traitor.”

“I never said when he’d betray anyone.”

“No, but that’s not……”

Perhaps it was frustrating, being led in circles like a riddle game.

Bune mask stepped forward, then suddenly stopped. He looked at me.

“……You’re not saying he already is a traitor. You’re saying you’ll make him one. That’s why you came as a Secret Royal Inspector?”

Hahoe people are always easy to talk to.

I opened my mouth with a satisfied smile.

“A wildcat eyeing the territory where the tiger fell. To lure that wildcat out and tame it into a house cat.”

“……!”

“That is the true order my family gave me.”

It’s only now that I’m saying it, but I had been acquainted with the Defense Commander before.

Not in this life. In my past one.

I had been tasked with making contact with a suitable insider candidate within the Iron Tiger Army.

‘Kim Changwoon…? They sent you instead of Young Master Hyunwoo?! Good grief! Even for Andong Kim, sending a halfwit like this to receive a regional commander…!’

A lowly wretch fit only to wipe the backsides of noble sons.

That was what the Defense Commander had called me as he looked down on me, and I had appeased him anyway, turning him into a chess piece for Kim Jungheon’s plan.

Which is why this meeting was, from my perspective, a rather entertaining experience.

‘In my past life, that man carried himself with such insufferable pride, and now he was barking like a dog guarding its food bowl. If nothing else, that part alone was worth seeing.’

In my past life, I made contact with the Defense Commander and turned him into a traitor.

And Defense Commander Seong Ryeoun, in place of Yoo Sanghyeon who had been killed at the confrontation, came to reign as the new Iron Tiger General of the Northeast Frontier.

‘And naturally, Seong Ryeoun was killed by Yoo Arin when she returned, sharpening her blade for revenge.’

I cast my mind back to what had happened in that life.

Yoo Arin, the daughter of the Iron Tiger General, returned from hell.

What greeted her was the Defense Commander exercising his power over her father’s corpse, and Yoo Sanghyeon’s loyal retainers imprisoned and being tortured.

Yoo Arin stormed in alone and rescued those ‘loyalists’ who had followed her father. The officers of Iron Tiger Fortress who had been loyal to the late Yoo Sanghyeon began to rally around his daughter, Yoo Arin.

What followed inside Iron Tiger Fortress was, in every sense of the word, a massacre.

‘Wh, what?! Why are those people here……! Kugh?!’

‘Stand down, Garrison Commander Jeong! I understand the grievance fully, but if we break down this gate, the monsters will…! Ugh, aaaah–!’

Those who had seized Iron Tiger Fortress by force slaughtered every officer who had followed the Defense Commander.

In the process, the Great Defense Wall collapsed, and countless monsters began to ravage Iron Tiger Fortress.

‘Monsters…! The monsters are flooding in!’

‘Contact the royal guard! Quickly! The Iron Tiger Fortress forces alone aren’t enough!’

‘When are the reinforcements actually coming?! Send Young Master Kim Hyunwoo or the Administration’s tactical modules! Right now that woman is demolishing the entire Great Defense Wall…! No, please! Spare me! Aaaaaaah–!’

Seen through a screen, Iron Tiger Fortress was nothing short of hell.

The opportunists who had latched onto the Defense Commander hoping for a path to the capital.

The moderates who had tried to maintain a fragile peace through negotiations with the aristocratic class in Hanseong.

All of them were branded as traitors who had sold out Yoo Sanghyeon, and they became fodder for monsters or were burned to ash.

Before marching on Hanseong under the name of revolution, the revolutionary army had set fire to their own home first.

And when that gruesome slaughter was over, what remained were only the hardliners, screaming that every aristocrat and every person in Hanseong had to die.

[We are lives discarded by Joseon, blades forged in the blood of our kin]

[The only thing this life must cut is our own homeland]

Once it ignited, the fury began endlessly searching for its next fuel, like a flame that cannot stop.

Feeding on the grief of a daughter who had lost her father, which had long smoldered inside Yoo Arin, those who followed Yoo Sanghyeon poured their hatred and resentment endlessly onto Hanseong.

Vengeance upon vengeance.

Blood upon blood.

Ceaselessly consuming those poisoned things, Yoo Arin had finally become a monster.

Not a wish to change the world, nor a sense of duty to save the suffering common people.

Simply a monster that burned everything in Joseon while staring at nothing but revenge.

That was the true face of the ‘hero of the revolution’ as I remembered her.

“But not this time.”

Why was I surviving this life, going through pointless suffering I was never meant to endure, plotting treason beneath the surface?

To survive.

To step away from a fight I was certain to lose and leech off those on the winning side.

And now that I had joined the winning side, I had only one goal.

Complete victory.

Without a single sacrifice. Without a single casualty.

A perfect victory with no side effects at all.

Joseon’s dazzling wealth.

The gleaming skyscrapers the nobility had built up.

To seize those intact, and laugh down at the ones who had been thrown into the gutter.

That was the ultimate goal of a lowly illegitimate wretch who had been granted a second life.

And for that reason.

“In this organization that will become the engine of the revolution, a source of instability like Seong Ryeoun has no place. Before the revolution begins, let’s first cut out the rot within the Iron Tiger Army.”

“……Wait. What?”

Startled by that calm and deadly sentence, Bune mask asked again.

“You’re saying, kill him? The Defense Commander?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t just say ‘yes’! What have you been listening to? If we touch the Defense Commander, it’ll cause chaos inside Iron Tiger Fortress! You said that yourself just now!”

“It’ll be fine.”

There was no need for Yoo Sanghyeon to oust him and cause chaos.

No need for Yoo Arin to kill him and dirty her hands.

“I’ll do it.”

“……!”

Right.

I’ll handle all of it.

The internal traitors who stand in the way of a clean revolution.

The dangerous elements destined to betray in the future.

The opportunists looking to fill their own pockets by exploiting the name of revolution, and the hardliners who get consumed by hatred and resentment and cross the line.

The Iron Tiger Army. Hahoe. All the revolutionary forces and their members scattered across Joseon.

I know them.

I know their faces, and I know what each of them will do next.

As a savior from some absurd novel once said, only I know how this history ends.

‘So I’ll kill every last one of them myself.’

For complete victory.

Tolerating not a single side effect.

For a perfect and flawless revolution.