The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 77

There is a saying: send horses to Jeju, and people to Seoul.

And in the spirit of respecting one’s elders, people of Joseon hold it a virtue to revere those older than themselves.

Perhaps that is why.

Hanseong, the current capital of Joseon, had become a megacity housing more than fifty percent of Joseon’s population.

Residential districts stacked over a hundred stories high, and roads slashing through the gaps between them without mercy.

Steam billowing endlessly from enormous industrial zones, and a festival of neon signs blazing from the commercial district’s billboards.

The occasional tile ornaments and sky lanterns drifting in the air were the only reminders that this place was Joseon.

A tower of machinery, piled up like a great spire.

The gaps between those machines were filled by people.

Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Tens of millions.

A sea of crowds packed in from every direction, with not an inch of space to set a foot in front or behind, above or below.

This chaotic place was the heart of Hanseong.

The central tier, where the majority of Hanseong’s population lived.

“This way.”

The shaman who spoke those words briefly pushed her way with practiced ease through the endless crowd.

But I am a noble of a power clan.

An aristocrat whose legs would snap off if he walked more than three steps without a taxi, or more than five without a private vehicle.

“Wait, hold on……! There are too many people here……!”

“Ugh, what.”

“Move it, will you?”

Just pushing through a crowd packed so dense it threatened to burst was enough to drain the life out of me.

Following the shaman through the bustling middle-tier streets for what felt like dozens of minutes.

Before me stood the front entrance of a dilapidated, crumbling villa.

“Here…. you said?”

“Yes. This is the base of our shamans.”

Hearing it, I still couldn’t believe it. All I could manage was a hollow laugh.

Because the lodgings were squalid?

That was part of it, but the real reason was something else.

‘The ones the Royal Investigative Bureau is searching for with eyes blazing, gathered and living right here in Hanseong’s middle tier….’

They say to hide a tree in a forest, but this was beyond all reason.

Wasn’t this practically advertising: come arrest us?

But that thought lasted only a moment.

I pushed open the rundown door and stepped inside, and I had no choice but to take it back.

“What…. is all this?”

My dumbfounded expression seemed to amuse the shaman; laughter slipped out from behind her mask.

What had appeared to be a shabby cluster of villas was an elaborate disguise.

The moment I opened the door and stepped through, what greeted me was an enormous hollow space that dwarfed any sports field.

“We bored through dozens of connected buildings in the residential district all at once. A space that only we among all of Joseon’s people know about…. Our shrine.”

A shrine.

Hearing that, I looked again, and it was indeed exactly that.

Shamanistic decorations and paintings floating across the walls of the vast hollow.

And enshrined at the very center, like a spirit tablet, was an enormous mechanical apparatus.

Hmmm. Hmmm.

Rectangular metal filling the entire space.

From within it, a faint vibration flowed on and on without pause.

“A data server? One connected directly to the Hanseong city system……?”

“Oh, you recognized it at a glance. So you’re not entirely uninitiated in this field.”

The shaman had caught my murmur and nodded as if impressed, but I was in no mood to smile.

‘Unbelievable. A system larger than most corporations standing openly in the middle of the middle tier.’

Hanseong is a vast city, and at the same time a single complete computer unto itself.

A perfectly centralized control system designed around the Administration at its peak.

The kind of surveillance society where a Royal Investigative Bureau agent would show up the moment you so much as touched a streetlight sensor with a finger.

And in a place like that. In the middle tier, no less, not even the underground level, to have built a server of this scale.

‘How is something like this even possible? No, leaving aside whether it’s possible….’

“Why it hasn’t been discovered yet. That’s what you’re wondering.”

The shaman murmured as if she already knew the answer, and slowly raised a finger to point at a single location.

There were people there.

Dozens of people, their bodies connected to the massive mechanical apparatus.

Their faces held not a trace of vitality, as though they were hooked to life-support machines.

Surely those weren’t….

“Full cerebral upload? They uploaded their entire personalities into the server?”

“Ho, you can recognize that as well?”

Now a mild exclamation of admiration.

Nodding like a teacher praising an exceptional student, the shaman opened her mouth.

“They’re erasing the data traces of me and my fellow shamans. Even a moment’s delay and our trail gets caught, so dozens of them have been hard at work like that.”

“Ah…….”

Hearing that, I understood why they were hiding right in the middle of the middle tier.

‘At least a hundred of these living weapons capable of dismantling the Royal Investigative Bureau’s intelligence units with sheer willpower….’

It was a sight that left me utterly dumbstruck, but I couldn’t just stand there staring forever.

“This house has a visitor and no one’s said a word of greeting.”

I broke the silence first, and the shaman who had guided me from the beginning let out a faint sigh.

As though she hadn’t used her voice in a very long time, she cleared her throat a few times, and then.

“Hey! You good-for-nothing wretches!”

“Ow, hell, you scared me.”

With a completely different manner from before, she started bellowing profanity at the top of her lungs.

“You useless cretins, fry you in oil! Changhwa’s boy has come to visit and you’re all lying around dead?! Get up, now! Well?!”

“Huh?! What?! What’s going on?”

Like machines that had been dead suddenly all switching on at once, the shamans connected to the server began snapping to attention with a start.

“What is it, what happened?! Did the Royal Investigative Bureau finally track us down?!”

“No, not that, Eldest Sister just said….”

“Changhwa? She said Changhwa’s son? He’s actually here?”

Their eyes were hazy, as though they’d just woken from sleep.

Exhaustion still plainly written across their faces, and yet they came crowding over in a frantic rush.

“Hey, get a proper look. Is that really him?”

“He did grow up quite a bit. The last time I saw him was…. hmm, when was it?”

“When we hacked the surveillance cameras at that family’s estate.”

“Wow, he was just a tiny baby then, and he’s already grown this big?”

Most of them were women, and they looked to be at least in their forties or fifties.

They peered at me from every angle with curious expressions, as though meeting a long-lost relative, and then.

Thwap.

“……?”

In the next moment, their hands came darting in and began kneading my face every which way.

“Oh, being a power clan’s child does something for you, look at this skin. Where do you get your skincare? Is the jaw surgery?”

“Excuse me….”

“Have you ever seen aristocrats going under the knife for their own looks? It’s natural.”

“That…. grabbing someone like this all of a sudden….”

“Pretty-faced like a girl. Is he after his father?”

“That rotten man was handsome, I’ll give him that. That’s why Changhwa went with him, wasn’t it?”

“What do you mean! Our Changhwa was the one far more wasted on him….”

“All right, I get it, but those hands….”

Like I was some spectacle on display, the shamans grabbed my face and turned it this way and that.

Kneading my shoulders, feeling my jawline, patting my head, and one of them even pinched my cheek and pulled.

My brow furrowed on its own.

From what they were saying I could tell these were my mother’s acquaintances, but…. this was still a bit much, wasn’t it?

“Enough. Seriously, knock it off!?”

In the end I couldn’t take it anymore and shouted, shaking their hands off.

“How long have we known each other, and you’re turning me around like I’m some country mutt!”

“Oh! That tone!”

Even Taewoong, who had known me longest, never pulled anything like this.

But perhaps my furious reaction was actually welcome to them.

The shamans’ faces suddenly brightened, and they looked at each other, and then.

“That’s it, that’s it! Squawking like an insufferable brat all the time! Changhwa, that girl, was exactly the same! Remember?”

“And look at him now! Those dead fish eyes like everything in the world is a bother! Now that I see it, he’s the spitting image of his mother.”

“Puhahahaha!”

Now they were chattering away and cackling among themselves.

And after a little while, the conversation had somehow devolved into gossip about some laundry shop owner whose name I didn’t even know.

I squeezed my eyes shut to keep my reeling head together.

‘Living weapons capable of dismantling entire intelligence networks through sheer willpower,’ my foot.

This was just a housewives’ social circle.

“Anyway, everyone agrees then? This is Changhwa’s son?”

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah.”

“Look at that mouth sticking out five feet. That’s Changhwa’s son, all right.”

Being recognized as her son was one thing, but somehow everything I was hearing was unflattering remarks.

What sort of life had my mother led, exactly.

“The reason we invited you is simple.”

Amid all my suffering at the hands of so many shamans, the one who had first brought me here slowly opened her mouth.

“When I first came to find you, do you remember?”

“……I remember.”

She had neutralized Mooyoung and Taewoong simultaneously and come right up to my face. I’d genuinely thought I was going to die that day.

“Since that day, our shaman association has been watching your every move.”

“Watching? Me?”

“Yes. You’ve been busy in the underground tier. Charity work, moneymaking, all sorts of things to draw eyes away from you, but…. your real purpose is something else.”

The gaze of the woman called ‘Eldest Sister’ cut into me like a blade.

“Completely liberating Hanseong’s underground tier.”

“…….”

“Well. Am I wrong?”

It struck at the heart of it, but I saw no need to answer.

A reaction that could read as either confirmation or denial.

But she seemed set on making it clear, because the shaman who had been watching me slowly stepped forward.

“The casino’s profits are being skimmed off into accounts under assumed names under the name of charity, and the money skimmed that way is steadily being used to build up the Killing Pact and its affiliated organizations. Informants, peddlers…. and even the Iron Tiger Army of the Northeast Frontier.”

I had only returned from the Northeast Frontier today, and she already knew that.

In other words, she had accounted for my every move.

The gaze behind her mask turned toward me slowly.

And in the next moment.

“Are you plotting rebellion?”

At those words that followed, I felt the back of my head go cold.

“……I’m sorry to say. I don’t think I have any reason to tell you that.”

“Heh heh heh.”

I deflected again, and a few of the shamans laughed in a knowing way.

“When your inner thoughts are exposed, slipping back out of sight. That’s all his mother’s doing, too.”

“……Tch.”

A light attempt at a psychological feint, but it had been wasted effort.

The atmosphere was as if they already knew exactly how I would respond.

Just like with Kim Jungheon, the other side seemed to know me far too well.

Perhaps even better than I knew myself.

“Don’t worry. Even knowing your purpose, we have no intention of reporting this.”

“…….”

“We only wish to ask why you are plotting rebellion.”

‘Eldest Sister,’ having taken one step closer, spoke.

“You lived in the shadow of the power clans, well-fed and comfortable on the money and status they handed you. And yet, as though bewitched by something, you suddenly strayed from the path laid out for you and began gathering the dregs at the bottom of Joseon. The lowborn of the underground, the tigers of the Northeast Frontier…. every one of them dangerous beyond measure.”

Why is a power clan’s child plotting rebellion?

A sincere question, but my expression as I listened to it wasn’t particularly good.

The first reason was that I had already answered this question when I met Yangban Mask.

The second was that I was fed up with their attitude of summoning a person only to pepper them with questions.

‘These people can crack open my head and look at what’s inside. Lying is impossible.’

So this is why they say following strangers is how you end up in serious trouble.

Looking at the shamans surrounding me, I made my decision.

Information about my mother could only come from these people or from Kim Jungheon.

A situation where I might find clues about my mother, and about my return.

In a situation like this, dancing around the subject was only wasted effort.

“Because I came having seen the future.”

The moment I made my decision, words that could not be taken back slipped past my lips.

Words that froze the entire space.

In a brief silence, the sound of several shamans drawing sharp breaths reached me.

I paid it no mind and continued.

“I saw those who rose up to change Joseon, and I saw the nobles who ceaselessly bore down on them.”

“……!”

“I saw myself doing every manner of desperate thing to earn those nobles’ favor, and I saw the ones who had sworn to change Joseon burn this country to the ground, consumed by vengeance. Yes. I…….”

I drew a slow breath.

“……I have experienced death.”

A single sentence that I had not spoken to anyone came out of my mouth.

“So I want to survive. To survive, and to see an ending different from the future I witnessed.”

“…….”

“This is my reason for starting this laughable treason.”

As my last words fell, the tension that had blanketed the space grew thicker still.

“If I answer, you answer in return, that’s what you said?”

Now it was their turn.

Seeing the resolve in my eyes, ‘Eldest Sister,’ standing at the center of the shamans, slowly opened her mouth.

“Yes. You have answered us splendidly.”

Her voice was low, but filled with certainty.

“We will give you the answer we have prepared.”

The next moment.

Click.

Before I knew it, a shaman had come up behind me and plugged a wire into the nerves at the back of my neck.

“What are you doing, all of a sudden……?!”

I demanded frantically, but the wire burrowing into my neck did not hesitate.

A terrible sensation of electricity coursing through my entire body.

Before I could even scream at that foreign feeling, my vision began to wash with color after color.

“Changwoon, son of Changhwa. We invite you into the world we inhabit.”

The voice reaching my ears was strangely hazy.

“This is a gift we give to you, and yet it may also be a shackle for our long-held wish. We hope you return safely.”

“All of a sudden, what kind of non……!”

“Ah, and one more thing.”

In a scene scattering into dozens of fragments, her voice alone was holding my consciousness tethered.

A wish? A shackle? What do you mean?

Breathing was difficult.

My mind was growing hazy and dim.

“When you come back, if you keep speaking down to your mother’s friends…. you die for real. Understood?”

“What did you……!”

The moment I heard those last words, my consciousness sank into deep darkness.

My mouth would not move, and I couldn’t make a sound.

“Since when have you been acting like an aunt-!”

was a shout I could not finish.