The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 92

‘Suhan. Do you know what I saw on the Japanese archipelago? Mountains of corpses, piled high.’

In the ashen ruins swept clean by artillery fire.

Father Jeong Suhan, who had been running alone toward the outer district, caught his breath in ragged gasps as old memories rose to the surface.

Childhood. The days of learning theology and doctrine under their teacher’s guidance.

Donghyeon, returned from the Royal Investigative Bureau after enduring some terrible conscripted service, stood with shoulders slumped low.

“They spout fine words about subjugating monsters, but…. Joseon’s Administration has no intention of actually doing it. On the contrary, they’re using the rifts and the monsters to preserve their own supremacy.”

“…….”

“Then who suffers the greatest loss in that laughable game of politics? Always people like us, ordinary people. Always, forever and always!”

A piercing voice, eyes shot through with blood.

As he gathered the bodies of those swept away by bullets, the Baek Donghyeon of those days had seemed to steel something within himself.

“Suhan. I’m going to change things. I can’t…. keep living like this.”

He would find a way to shatter this rotten structure.

If not in Joseon, then abroad.

No matter what.

Having said that, Baek Donghyeon had reached out his hand toward him.

On that battered hand, clotted dark red liquid had dried, whether the blood of a friend or of some stranger there was no knowing.

“So, Suhan. Will you…. stand with me?”

At the time, Suhan had not taken that hand.

He had shaken his head and stepped back.

He had no choice.

Just days before, the teacher dragged off by the Royal Investigative Bureau had returned half broken.

With his teacher’s tormented body vivid before his eyes, how could anyone ask him to go to that dangerous place?

He had not wanted to end up like that. Being tortured, fighting back against them. He had thought it an impossibility for someone ordinary like himself.

So Donghyeon, without a word, merely looked back at him once with eyes full of deep disappointment, then turned and disappeared without another sound.

And now, fifteen years later, the friend he had met again….

“Ah, Suhan. Is that you?”

Atop a heap of corpses from which black smoke rose. He was looking at him, smiling like a triumphant general returning from conquest.

At his feet lay bodies still warm, it seemed.

“Dong…. hyeon?”

Jeong Suhan’s voice cracked, as though he could not believe what he saw.

“I knew you would come, but I did not think you would come alone. You must have been in quite some danger during all this chaos, without even an escort…….”

Grab!

Before Baek Donghyeon could finish speaking, Father Jeong Suhan ran to him in a single bound and seized him by the collar with trembling hands.

He could feel his friend’s heart beating beneath his palm.

“What have you…. what, what on earth have you done?!”

“It is not something I did. It is what the corporate city did.”

Donghyeon’s voice, answering Suhan, was simply calm.

“They slaughtered elders and children without a shred of reluctance, people with no will to resist. Any number of those who had nothing to do with the Society died as well. Like beasts…….”

“You knew it would happen!”

Jeong Suhan cut off Baek Donghyeon’s words and cried out, as though spitting blood.

“The Young Master told you! That they would come! That everyone here could die! Then you should have taken these people and fled. If you had, even one more person…. even one more might have been saved……!”

“That is the logic of the defeated. Suhan.”

Baek Donghyeon brushed aside that cry with an easy smile and went on, his gentle expression unchanged.

Not a trace of guilt could be found in his eyes.

“Why can you not understand that you cannot accomplish anything by only running away?”

“……What?”

At Suhan, who had no words left, Donghyeon spoke on slowly, in a tone of careful guidance.

“Thousands of innocent lives were extinguished here today. This is an outrage the corporate city has committed that cannot be forgiven, and at the same time…. it has become a martyrdom that will endure in the history of our Society.”

Martyrdom.

On the face of Baek Donghyeon who said it, there was no shade of grief whatsoever.

“Just as Shotaro, who became a martyr at the banquet hall, their deaths have become a cornerstone for the future. It was not in vain. Never.”

Rather, what surfaced on that face was a look of satisfaction.

The face of a victor, watching everything on the game board move exactly according to his intentions.

In that instant, Suhan recalled the moment he had first encountered Donghyeon upon arriving here.

“From the very beginning…. was this what you aimed for?”

The charity clinic built to treat the sick, the free soup kitchen and the night school opened to draw the children in.

And finally, the bombing.

“You gathered them together through charitable works, then incited the corporate city to kill them? To stoke the survivors’ desire for vengeance?”

“Ah, so the Young Master already knew everything, did he? As they say, his mind is sharp.”

Baek Donghyeon admitted it readily, then looked out over the ruins where the shock had not yet fully settled.

“The corporate city, which lorded over the masses in merriment despite the great calamity of the rifts. And Joseon’s nobles, who colluded with them, slaughtering innocent people and building their dominance atop those corpses! To bring all of that crashing down, a spark is needed, my friend. A spark to consume everything and begin again!”

“……!”

“And this massacre that took place today…. has finally lit that fire.”

Looking at Baek Donghyeon as he rattled on, Suhan felt his teeth begin to chatter.

“This is what I truly sought to gain! The screams of believers who have lost their families! The fury of countless people who have witnessed this atrocity! I had it all filmed and scattered across the communication networks. There were so many people pledging to join that I could not tally them all! Ha ha ha!”

The laughter Baek Donghyeon let loose mixed grotesquely with the sounds of weeping all around.

His head swam. The world seemed to spin. That the person standing atop all those corpses, talking with such pride, was his own friend. He did not want to believe it at all.

“Just what…. happened to you?”

Jeong Suhan tightened his grip on the collar and demanded of Baek Donghyeon.

“You, who crossed to Japan to save more people, who swore never to let even a trivial death go unanswered…! What did you see that made you do something so unforgivable?! There is no way the Lord would sanction something like this…….!”

“I saw the truth.”

Baek Donghyeon’s face twisted cold for a moment.

An expression one could not tell from smiling or weeping.

As though something that was not human were writhing just behind that face.

“What rifts are. What lies beyond them…. I saw it with these two eyes. Suhan.”

“The truth……? What on earth do you….”

At precisely that moment.

“The Holy Leader…! The Holy Leader has risen again!”

At someone’s cry, breaking with emotion, people who had been hiding throughout, behind crumbled walls, inside burning buildings, beneath heaps of corpses, began to crawl out.

“He lives! Our savior is alive!”

“He took a shell from a multi-legged tank head-on, and rose again…?”

“He has resurrected! The Holy Leader has himself resurrected, and come back to protect us from those demons!”

The suppression forces, their work finished, had long since withdrawn to their main camp in scattered groups.

Amid the bodies strewn on every side, the wails of a believer who had lost a child echoed out.

The cries of a child who had lost its parents followed. The roar of a young man who had lost someone he loved shook the earth.

One, ten, a hundred, a thousand.

Their cries gradually transformed, into fury, into fanatical screams.

Every single person who had witnessed this massacre that defied all heaven was pouring out every ounce of their resentment onto Baek Donghyeon.

As some time passed like that.

In the end they lost even their interest in the bodies of their dead families and began directing wordless, incomprehensible screams toward Baek Donghyeon atop the heap of corpses.

“……!”

The fury of a crowd driven to madness.

Sensing it, Baek Donghyeon raised his hand conspicuously toward the assembled people.

A grotesque faith began to smother with anger and fear the grief that should have taken up residence where families were lost.

His presence seemed to swell in some abnormal way.

‘I have to stop this.’

Father Jeong Suhan slipped a hand inside his breast pocket and, with trembling fingers, drew out the personal defense pistol.

The cheering crowd, the Society of Truth’s officials fanning the flames.

And in the center of it all, watching his own friend claim the image of God, the resurrection of a saint, Father Jeong Suhan thought.

Left like this, Donghyeon would truly become a monster beyond any turning back.

At the very moment that thought led his finger toward the pistol trigger.

“It has proceeded exactly as you foresaw, Young Master. Retrieving him now.”

An emotionless voice, from directly behind him.

Thud!

With a dull impact felt at his back, Jeong Suhan’s consciousness was cut off without a sound.

‘Wh, why…… am I……?’

The bodyguard Taewoong caught the falling priest’s body with precise and gentle hands.

Turning back, Baek Donghyeon, bowing with courtesy, wore a meaningful smile.

“My gratitude for your cooperation. I had run dry of phase power, so if that friend’s shot had found me it would truly have been dangerous.”

“Do not address me so freely. If not for the Young Master’s orders, I would have killed you with my own hands.”

“Ha ha ha, is that so? Then the Young Master has now saved my life twice over, it would seem. Please do pass along my thanks.”

Having said that, two women approached from behind Baek Donghyeon.

Pouring out streams of phase power.

It was a warning that they would not stand idle if anyone laid a hand on the Holy Leader.

‘Lower in rank than Mooyoung, but phase power users nonetheless. Engaging while carrying a burden would be unreasonable.’

Having made his assessment, Taewoong raised an arm to signal no intent to attack.

Baek Donghyeon, bowing politely at that, slowly.

Very slowly disappeared into the crowd.

“So these lunatics are the blade that will stab the corporate city in the back.”

Taewoong murmured to himself as he felt the weight of Father Jeong on his shoulder.

What on earth was the reason for being told to leave that alone.

Why he had been told to keep Jeong Suhan, a mere priest, alive.

Taewoong did not know. But it did not matter.

His only duty was to follow orders.

He hefted the man’s body over his shoulder, then activated the artificial body that was his remaining arm.

A blue light seeped out from the arm as sensors began to operate, detecting the heat around him.

“Young Master.”

He opened communications again.

Enraged crowds charging headlong without thought or sense, in the thousands. In their hands were wooden clubs and iron pipes, and even weapons that appeared to have been seized from security robots.

‘Armed robbers taking advantage of the chaos to loot, in the hundreds. And above, still circling and searching for survivors, anti-personnel drones that had not yet withdrawn….’

After swiftly surveying the situation around him, he exhaled a brief sigh and spoke.

“I apologize, but it seems I will be approximately two minutes behind schedule.”

The moment he finished speaking, Taewoong’s body launched upward like a cannonball.

His next destination: Fukuoka, within the border zone with the Japanese mainland.

If he missed the boat again this time, the Young Master would be put to considerable trouble, one way or another.