Chapter 29

“Let’s go up. I’ll take the lead.”

He was speaking politely, but there was something extraordinary about the atmosphere around him. The man hesitated under that sheer weight of presence, and in the meantime, Yoon Mujin stepped into the shadowy building first.

Even the men who had been mocking him fell silent under the strange pressure that had brushed down their spines. Without another word, they followed Yoon Mujin’s broad back.

His footsteps echoed heavily as he climbed the stairs of the old commercial building.

They reached the third floor quickly.

At the end of the hallway stood a tightly shut door beneath a sign that read Daehan Trading, the name of the shell company.

Yoon Mujin stared at the door, then jerked his chin toward it.

“Break it down.”

The command had barely left his mouth when one of the fixers behind him stepped forward with a crowbar.

Crack! Bang!

The crowbar slammed brutally into the area around the doorknob. The lock shattered, and the door swung helplessly open.

A wave of stale cigarette smoke immediately rolled out.

Inside the office, more than a dozen men who had been in the middle of a card game turned toward the entrance in surprise.

And at the end of their startled gazes stood Yoon Mujin.

“What the fuck is this bastard doing here?!”

The man closest to the entrance swore viciously and grabbed a metal pipe propped against the sofa.

He swung it without hesitation.

The pipe sliced through the air, aimed straight at Yoon Mujin’s temple.

At the very instant it was about to connect, his body reacted on instinct.

He shifted his head slightly, letting the pipe pass him by.

At the same time, Yoon Mujin’s waist twisted like a spring.

His heavy fist drove squarely into the man’s jaw.

WHAM—!

With a horrifying crack, the man’s body was launched through the air and slammed into the partition.

One punch was enough to knock out a fairly large man.

“……”

Yoon Mujin slowly exhaled.

His eyes trembled faintly as he looked down at the unconscious man sprawled on the floor.

When he had decided to leave the ring, he had thought there was nowhere lower for him to fall.

He had been wrong.

This was rock bottom.

All his life, he had only thrown punches inside the four corners of a boxing ring.

But now he had used the skills he had learned to become a boxer to hurt someone outside the ring.

A taboo no boxer should ever cross.

And just now, Yoon Mujin had shattered that taboo with his own hands.

The good man he had once been died completely in that moment.

All that remained was an obsessive determination to find Jeong Iwon—a determination so vicious that he was willing to drag himself straight into hell for it.

“What the fuck is that bastard?! Get him all at once!”

The men who had been caught off guard charged forward, murderous intent spilling from them.

Only then did the empty look in Yoon Mujin’s eyes flare with a sharp light.

Guilt was a luxury he couldn’t afford now.

He dodged the weapons flying toward him with movements of his shoulders and strode deeper into the office.

“Turn the whole fucking place upside down!”

The fixers belonging to Kwon Heeseong, who had hesitated behind him, finally snapped out of it and charged inside with shouts.

The fight instantly descended into a brutal brawl.

The office became a scene of bloodshed and chaos.

One of the hired men thrust a knife toward Yoon Mujin’s side.

Yoon Mujin didn’t dodge.

Instead, he stepped farther inside, struck the man’s wrist with enough force to nearly break it, and drove a merciless counter into his exposed abdomen.

Thud! Ugh!

The impacts knocked the breath from their lungs.

Every time his fists connected, men collapsed to the floor, foaming at the mouth.

Amid the chaos of breaking bones and splattered blood, Yoon Mujin kept advancing like a malfunctioning machine that couldn’t even feel pain.

There was only one thing in his mind.

Jeong Iwon.

‘Don’t skip meals. Eat properly. Your body is your most valuable asset, you know.’

‘Iwon. I don’t care if I destroy myself looking for you.’

For him, Yoon Mujin was willing to do any filthy thing necessary.

BANG!

Yoon Mujin drove a hook into the face of the last remaining man and sucked in a ragged breath.

The office had already been transformed into a literal hellscape.

The fixers stared at Yoon Mujin’s blood-soaked fists with fear in their eyes.

“Is that guy even human?”

The man who appeared to be the leader of the fixers clicked his tongue.

“Hey, tie them up for now. If anyone looks like they might wake up, give them a little more attention.”

While the fixers moved to restrain the men, Yoon Mujin immediately entered the room farther inside.

Apparently, the man who served as the shell company’s de facto owner was away.

The small room contained nothing but a desk and a large safe.

The safe was locked.

But that problem was quickly solved too.

“I brought a specialist.”

The man who had been giving orders outside entered with a small, middle-aged man.

“This guy is fucking amazing at cracking safes. Give him five minutes.”

The man’s boast wasn’t exaggerated.

The middle-aged man laid out several tools in front of the safe and grunted and struggled with it.

Before long, the door opened.

A whistle sounded.

“Whoa!”

There were ledgers inside, of course, but there was also a considerable amount of cash stacked inside the safe.

“As promised, take the cash.”

“I love working for rich people.”

The man grinned as he stuffed the money into a bag.

“By the way, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again. Don’t you want to know my name?”

“Not particularly.”

“Still, listen. My name is Park Hyeonsu!”

Even after being told nobody was interested, he stubbornly introduced himself anyway.

Park Hyeonsu even tossed Yoon Mujin an extra bag.

“Put the documents in there.”

Yoon Mujin took the double ledger from inside the safe and packed it away.

From storming the shell company’s office to withdrawing, it took less than twenty minutes.

They had blocked all communications before entering, so nobody inside had been able to contact the outside world.

“Of course, there is one downside. There are always idiots who get suspicious and start freaking out when they can’t get a signal.”

Park Hyeonsu waved toward the exit.

“So let’s get the hell out of here!”

He loaded the other fixers into the van.

“Where are you headed, big guy? If we’re going in roughly the same direction, I’ll drop you off somewhere along the way!”

Yoon Mujin didn’t bother refusing the offer.

He had deliberately approached from quite a distance to avoid leaving any trace that could lead back to Kwon Heeseong.

And with that, he had completed the entire task Kwon Heeseong had given him.

Dawn — Kwon Heeseong’s penthouse

Yoon Mujin stepped inside.

His clothes were torn and his lip was split.

He looked absolutely battered, but his eyes gleamed like those of a starving beast.

He tossed the double ledger onto the table in front of Kwon Heeseong.

“I brought it. The ledger you asked for.”

Kwon Heeseong didn’t even look at the ledger.

He simply sat there and silently stared at Yoon Mujin’s battered appearance.

Then one corner of his mouth twisted upward.

“Good work.”

His smile was bitter.

“How does it feel to shove your honorable fists into the gutter?”

“……”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Kwon Heeseong let out a low chuckle at Mujin’s dry answer.

Then he pulled a sheet of paper from an envelope and slid it across the desk.

“This is payment for what you brought back.”

He tapped the paper.

“While you were rolling around in the dirt, I wasn’t sitting around doing nothing either.”

Yoon Mujin’s eyes fell on the document.

It was a record of an airline ticket purchase.

“……America? San Francisco?”

“Travel records.”

Kwon Heeseong pointed to the paper.

“An economy-class ticket to America under Jeong Iwon’s name. The departure date was while we were coming back up to Seoul.”

For an instant, Yoon Mujin stopped breathing.

Jeong Iwon had said he was starting to like life in the countryside.

That even though tending the vegetable patch and cooking for himself took some effort, he enjoyed it.

He had said he wanted to stay there.

Snap.

It felt as though something inside Yoon Mujin’s mind had broken.

“Kang Taeon!”

He had threatened that man into leaving.

Rage surged through Yoon Mujin until his whole body burned.

His head felt like it was boiling.

But he had to endure it.

What could he do just because he was angry?

Yoon Mujin wasn’t in a position where he could afford to provoke Kang Taeon.

“Yeah. That fucking bastard did it.”

Kwon Heeseong’s voice was thick with fury.

“I’m going to send people to America immediately. We’ll turn the entire area upside down. I’ll order them to find Jeong Iwon no matter what it takes.”

His furious voice shook the study.

But then his eyes suddenly grew cold.

He tapped the document on the table and narrowed his eyes.

“Still, don’t you think something’s strange?”

Yoon Mujin looked at him.

“Would Kang Taeon really be careless enough to leave such an obvious trail?”

“……What do you mean?”

“It’s too blatant.”

Kwon Heeseong stared at the ticket record.

“It’s practically laid out like a perfectly prepared meal saying, ‘Look here.’”

His expression darkened.

“This could be Kang Taeon’s bait, meant to divert our attention somewhere else.”

Yoon Mujin’s brow twitched.

Bait.

The moment he considered the possibility, a chill ran down his spine.

“Even so, we have to send people.”

Kwon Heeseong leaned slowly back against the sofa.

“If there’s even a one-percent chance, we have to put our chips on the table.”

He paused.

“But it isn’t a completely fruitless haul either.”

Yoon Mujin had brought back the double ledger.

He would take it to his grandfather and earn himself a position within Ilseong.

He knew being the hunting dog wasn’t exactly a pleasant position.

But at least it could serve as a foothold to climb higher.

And if he could do that, he would be able to bring down Kang Taeon and find Jeong Iwon.

For now, that was all they wanted.