I Became the Successor of the Martial God Chapter 135

I Became the Successor of the Martial God

Chapter 135.  

“The truth? What do you mean…?”  

Choi Gun-woo was bewildered.  

His younger sister had been involved in a traffic accident on her way home from school when she was a child.  

She was severely injured and hospitalized, and the enormous medical bills were covered by Im Woo-do.  

“Is that really the truth?”  

“……”  

It was only natural to ask.  

Im Woo-do had even brought rare medicine to help his sister recover quickly, taking care of her personally.  

His benefactor.  

That was what he had believed all this time, yet the man before him was now claiming it was all a lie.  

“Enough.”  

Choi Gun-woo spoke firmly.  

“Stop it. Im Woo-do is my benefactor. Insulting my benefactor is…”  

“Can you still say that after seeing this?”  

“What the hell are you trying to say?!”  

“I’m telling you to learn the truth.”  

Yoo Baek-jun flicked his finger. Han Seong-ah, as if she had been waiting, took out a laptop.  

“Look. This is the information I’ve gathered.”  

“What kind of information could that be?!”  

Choi Gun-woo exploded in anger.  

There was no need to look, no reason to. So it was only natural to ignore it. Natural, and yet—  

“Tch!”  

The words ‘learn the truth‘ held him back, preventing him from turning away.  

His trembling hand gripped the mouse. The laptop screen turned on slowly, painfully slowly.  

What was displayed there was—  

“This…!”  

‘Evidence.’  

Proof that someone had paid to have a job done.  

The job requested by those who paid was to deliberately cause a traffic accident.  

And the victim was Choi Gun-woo’s sister.  

“Th-this… No, that can’t be. A frame-up… This is a frame-up! You’re trying to slander the branch leader!”  

“Does it feel like a frame-up to you?”  

“What else could it be?!”  

“I told you. The truth.”  

Yoo Baek-jun pointed at the laptop.  

“That is the truth. The truth you didn’t know—the truth you must know from now on.”  

“And this truth is what? That the branch leader paid to have a traffic accident staged, and my sister was the victim?!”  

“Why? Does it sound impossible?”  

“This could be fabricated!”  

Yoo Baek-jun smiled quietly.  

“I swear on the heavens, I did not fabricate this information. In fact, I only recently uncovered it.”  

“How can I believe—!”  

“Then verify it yourself. With your abilities, that shouldn’t be too difficult, right?”  

He slowly rose from his seat.  

If he had uncovered this information, someone as capable as Choi Gun-woo could do the same.  

“See for yourself and judge. And once you’re convinced… come find me again.”  

“……”  

Yoo Baek-jun did not force anything on Choi Gun-woo. He simply left those words behind and walked away.  

Left alone, Choi Gun-woo stared blankly at the laptop screen.  

As he read the information displayed there, his expression began to change—bit by bit, ever so slightly.  

“Is he gone?”  

Just then, Im Woo-do returned.  

“Hey, Choi Gun-woo. Is that guy gone?”  

“Huh? Ah, y-yes! He’s gone.”  

“What’s with the laptop?”  

“This is…”  

Choi Gun-woo hesitated.  

Should he tell Im Woo-do the truth? That the man was slandering him, trying to drive a wedge between them?  

‘I should tell him.’  

But the words wouldn’t come out.  

In the end, Choi Gun-woo closed the laptop.  

“It’s nothing. Just personal stuff…”  

“Oh? Well, whatever.”  

Im Woo-do, seemingly uninterested, changed the subject. Should they report the conversation with Yoo Baek-jun to Yoo Tae-rang or not?  

Choi Gun-woo slipped the USB into his pocket.  

“I see. Then…”  

He smiled and answered the question.  

The seed of distrust planted by Yoo Baek-jun had taken root in Choi Gun-woo’s heart.  

Bit by bit—but swiftly.  

***

Yoo Baek-jun decided to stay in Busan for a while. Considering the time it would take Choi Gun-woo to verify the information, he had no choice but to remain.  

“Min Yi-jae.”  

“I checked. He’s verifying the information you gave him. It shouldn’t take too long…”  

“That’s good.”  

Min Yi-jae appeared like a wraith, but this time, neither Yoo Baek-jun nor Han Seong-ah was surprised.  

He seemed visibly disappointed.  

“Hey, you look kinda disappointed?”  

“Me? No way…”  

“That’s how it looks to me, too.”  

Min Yi-jae fell silent.  

“Anyway…”  

He blatantly changed the subject.  

Both Yoo Baek-jun and Han Seong-ah noticed but decided to play along.  

“The people tracking you… the Intelligence Division, was it? Some of them are watching you… If you want to execute the plan you mentioned, now might be the time…”  

“Oh, really? That’s good.”  

It was welcome news.  

The timing couldn’t be better. Coincidentally, Choi Gun-woo also had ties to the Intelligence Division.  

To be precise, he was someone Yoo Baek-jun wanted to recruit from the Intelligence Division as his own asset.  

A close friend, you could say.  

‘I was planning to use Choi Gun-woo to extract someone from the Intelligence Division, but this way, I can kill two birds with one stone. Not bad.’  

Yoo Baek-jun hummed a tune.  

He already had too much on his plate, so anything that reduced his workload was more than welcome.  

“Should I call Sister first?”  

And he would make sure the Intelligence Division learned that he and Yoo Jung-yeon were meeting in Busan.  

Then the bugs would come swarming.  

Bugs drawn to honey.  

***

“……”  

After his first meeting with Yoo Baek-jun, Choi Gun-woo spent days gathering information.  

He needed to confirm whether what he had heard was true.  

“…I never doubted him, not even once.”  

Until now, that had been the case.  

He had believed his sister’s accident was simply due to misfortune—the other party’s carelessness.  

So he never even considered investigating.  

He had trusted Im Woo-do when he said the other party had been duly punished.  

“But this… 

BAM!  

Choi Gun-woo slammed his fist on the desk.  

“They deceived me?!”  

The information Yoo Baek-jun provided was not false.  

Choi Gun-woo had verified it through every channel he knew, and the results were the same.  

This information was the truth.  

It hadn’t been fabricated.  

“No, how stupid…!”  

Choi Gun-woo buried his face in the desk.  

THUD! 

He hit it so hard the desk shook, and blood trickled from his forehead.  

“I never even thought to doubt them…!”  

He had only seen them as benefactors.  

So he never doubted them. And they had exploited that trust thoroughly.  

Yoo Tae-rang and Im Woo-do—the two of them.  

‘I don’t know how, but they figured out I was talented when it came to operations and logistics.’

At the time, Yoo Tae-rang had been pushing to make Im Woo-do the branch leader of Busan.  

But his weakness was that he was too emotional and incapable of handling practical affairs.  

So they reached out to Choi Gun-woo and bound him to them with a debt of gratitude.  

An enormous one.  

“They… they used me…”

Choi Gun-woo bared his teeth.  

His eyes fell on a photo on the desk—a picture of himself, Im Woo-do, and his sister.  

With an animalistic growl, he struck the photo with the back of his hand as hard as he could.  

“If that’s how it is… then I…”

Drip, drip.

Falling blood.  

Clenching his fist, Choi Gun-woo picked up his phone.  

“Yes, young master. It’s me. Let’s meet tomorrow.”  

His eyes gleamed darkly.  

“There’s something I must tell you.”  

***

Late at night.  

Yoo Baek-jun went straight to the rooftop.  

“Oh, what a killer view. Don’t you think?”

—Meow. 

From the rooftop, the view of Haeundae was spectacular—a true masterpiece.  

Since he had rented the entire bar for the night, the place was empty and quiet.  

He liked that.  

“Mmm, the scent of success.”  

—Nom nom, munch munch…  

Yoo Baek-jun fed Seol-yeong a piece of meat while sipping his wine.  

This was a luxury ‘I’ could never enjoy.  

But if asked whether he liked indulging in such luxuries, the answer was complicated.  

‘I don’t need luxuries or anything else, so just send me home already.’  

That was all he could say.  

Yoo Baek-jun sighed. The scent of success? More like walking on thin ice every day, living in constant peril.  

“So this is where you were.”  

“Ah, you’re here? I’ve been waiting quite a while.”  

“…Huh?”  

Choi Gun-woo had arrived.  

He probably expected to hear ‘I wasn’t waiting long.’ Yoo Baek-jun gestured for him to sit across from him.  

“So, what about the information I gave you? Did you verify it thoroughly?”  

“Sigh… Yes.”  

“I figured there’d be no lies.”  

“Right. It was all true.”  

Choi Gun-woo let out a heavy sigh.  

As if his insides were burning, he poured himself a full glass of wine and began gulping it down.  

“Since when…?”  

His voice trembled.  

“Since when was I being deceived?”  

“From the beginning.”  

“Im Woo-do—no, Yoo Tae-rang—why the hell did he target me? What did he want from me?”  

“You know why.”  

Yoo Baek-jun pointed at him.  

“He coveted your ability.”  

“My ability…?”  

“Don’t overthink it. Yoo Tae-rang has someone by his side who can see a person’s ‘talent,’ and he used that.”  

“Someone who can see talent?”  

Choi Gun-woo’s eyes widened.  

This was the first he’d heard of it. In all his years with the Sword Saint family, he had never once heard of someone with such an ability.  

And as Im Woo-do’s closest aide, he had access to high-level intelligence—yet this was news to him.  

“How—do you know that?”  

“I have my sources.”

The ‘sources‘ were a lie, of course.  

It was knowledge from the game. The fact that Yoo Tae-rang had a trusted aide—one with the ability to see talent—and that he had used this to recruit capable people to his side.  

“That’s you.”  

“I…”

“When you first joined the Sword Saint family, passed the tests, and were training as a disciple. Yoo Tae-rang saw you and recognized your talent.”  

“So he’s been targeting me since then.”  

Choi Gun-woo let out a hollow laugh.  

It was absurd. Back then, he had thought his swordsmanship talent was mediocre—that he might even be expelled from the family.  

He had been on the verge of that very fate when, for some unknown reason, he was allowed to stay.  

Could that have been Yoo Tae-rang’s doing too…?  

“Should I be happy? That I caught the eye of the notoriously selective Yoo Tae-rang?”  

“Not really. Because of that, your sister’s life was ruined.”  

“…Right.”  

Grind.

Choi Gun-woo clenched his teeth.  

“My sister… Because of that accident, she lost the use of one leg. Every time I see her, it feels like my heart is being torn apart.”  

“Yeah.”  

“And yet, we thought… we were lucky it wasn’t worse.”  

Blood dripped from Choi Gun-woo’s hand.  

He had clenched his fist so tightly his nails had pierced his skin. But he felt no pain.  

“To think that the ones who caused that accident were Im Woo-do and Yoo Tae-rang… All this time, I thought I was indebted to my enemies.”  

He laughed bitterly.  

Yoo Baek-jun knew this was the perfect moment.  

“Hey, Choi Gun-woo.”  

He spoke slowly.  

“Wouldn’t you like to become the branch leader?”