Chapter 01
Getting stabbed was far more miserable than I had ever imagined.
As I writhed in indescribable agony, the man looked down at me with cold eyes and a mocking grin.
“You should’ve stayed away instead of coming back, Chairman.”
“…Do you really think… you’ll all get away with this?”
It hurt.
It hurt.
It hurt.
Everything hurt. I was terrified. The wound burned and froze at the same time. My body trembled, and I could barely breathe.
Even so, I wasn’t screaming like a coward.
Was it because I had accepted death?
Or because I wanted to preserve the dignity of the chairman of a conglomerate?
“…You can still… reconsider…”
“Twenty years. That’s probably what I’ll get. After all, I’ll be the man who murdered the chairman of the world’s greatest conglomerate. The case can’t be covered up, and no amount of connections will save me. Twenty years.
“But in exchange, my family will live happily for the rest of their lives. That’s not a bad deal.
“And after ten or fifteen years, once a couple of presidents have come and gone, I’ll probably get a quiet pardon.”
A dizzying sensation spread through my spine as my vision turned white.
Still clinging to a thread of hope, I forced myself to speak.
“I’ll give you… ten times more. Whatever those bastards paid you… whatever you’re getting… I’ll pay ten times that. Call… a doctor…”
“And then what? You’ll pretend none of this ever happened?”
“…Of course.”
“Chairman, do you really expect me to believe that?”
His mind was made up.
He had no intention of letting me live.
His words made that clear.
His eyes made that clear.
Even after realizing it, I forced my stiffening tongue to move.
“If I die… the company will collapse. You’ve already seen it happen… you know that.”
“That’s right, Chairman. The moment news broke that you were gone, the entire group started falling apart. Every subsidiary’s stock is already dropping.”
“Then…!”
“But so what? The company will eventually go under, but it’ll take time. By then, we’ll have taken everything we can, collected every last penny, and leave just before it sinks.”
For a moment, it felt like thunder exploded inside my head.
It wasn’t simply fear of death.
It was the terror, despair, and shock of knowing that the company I had built over an entire lifetime would be destroyed.
“You… bastards…! How dare you…!”
“We’ve talked long enough. I’ll skip your last words.”
The knife slid out of my body.
Holding it in a reverse grip, he raised it high.
“…!”
My life flashed before my eyes.
Starting with a tiny construction company that had only five employees.
Building a business from nothing with my own two hands.
Expanding it into the world’s largest big-tech corporation and defense contractor.
Being called “Steelman” and the “Real-Life Tony Stark,” doing business across the globe beyond Korea.
But in the endâ
Stab!
Several years passed.
Several years since Jeong Pansu, chairman of the world-renowned big-tech defense corporation Eclipse, died.
Several years since Dang Huiyeom, the eldest grandson of the Sichuan Tang Family, was born and began dreaming of his previous life.
Now, after years had passed, Huiyeom had recovered every memory of his former life as Jeong Pansu.
“…So I’ve been reincarnated into a martial arts world?”
Huiyeom looked down at his tiny hands.
He had always been called a child prodigy.
Now everything made senseâthe strange knowledge he had possessed since childhood had all come from the memories in his dreams.
“What rotten memories to recover…”
Shaking his head, Huiyeom looked up at the plaque hanging above the hall.
Sichuan Tang Family (ĺĺˇĺ厜).
Whether he had once been Jeong Pansu, CEO of Eclipse, or not…
Now he was Dang Huiyeom of the Sichuan Tang Family.
And the moment he accepted that fact, he found himself looking at his family not through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy, but through the perspective of Jeong Pansu, the chairman of a global conglomerate.
“Come to think of it… isn’t my family a complete mess?”
The Sichuan Tang Family had once been one of the Nine Great Families of the martial world.
But now its fortunes had declined to the point where it was on the verge of being expelled from that prestigious group.
Some people had even begun mockingly calling it Tang Village (ĺ厜é) instead of the Tang Family, implying that it was no longer worthy of being called a noble martial clan and was nothing more than an ordinary family settlement.
“A family that’s falling apart…”
Huiyeom suddenly remembered Eclipse from his previous life.
A family and a corporation.
Blood ties and business relationships.
They were completely different, yet strangely similar in one respect.
Both were slowly sinking.
With the instincts of a CEO who had spent his entire life managing, restructuring, and analyzing corporations, he naturally began analyzing the Sichuan Tang Family.
The root cause of the Tang Family’s decline is the destruction of the Hidden Weapon Sect.
Everyone knew that the Tang Family’s glory had come from poison and hidden weapons.
But decades ago, a bloody disaster had wiped out most of their secret techniques for crafting and using hidden weapons.
The greatest blow was the loss of Doban Samyang Gwiwongong, the cultivation method that had been passed down only to the direct bloodline.
Because of that, the family poured enormous amounts of money into restoring their lost techniques and martial arts.
That reckless spending had led directly to their decline.
They don’t even have enough capital for daily operations, yet they’re borrowing money to restore lost techniques. Of course they’re going bankrupt.
But the Tang Family is still a martial clan. They need military strength.
So what if I fill that gap with future technology?
At that moment, one idea came to mind.
Gunpowder.
“Come to think of it… this world doesn’t have gunpowder.”
This strange world possessed martial arts, so its history had diverged from the Earth he knew.
The broad outlines were similar.
But there was no Ming Dynastyâinstead, there was the Kingdom of Gyeong.
And black powder, which should have existed long before the Song Dynasty, had never been invented.
Is it because martial arts reduced the need for technological development?
On Earth, cranes were invented because people needed to lift what human strength couldn’t.
Cars were invented because people wanted to travel faster.
But here…
Martial artists replaced cranes.
Experts in lightness techniques ran faster than horses.
The same applied to gunpowder.
People could shatter boulders and slaughter hundreds of enemies without it.
There had simply never been a reason to develop it.
No gunpowder? Then if I create black powderâor better yet, smokeless powderâand manufacture firearms and artillery to arm the Tang Family…
It wouldn’t matter whether someone was a first-rate martial artist or not.
No one could survive a hail of bullets fired from long range.
It wouldn’t matter whether someone had an indestructible body.
A bazooka powerful enough to tear apart a tank would end them in a single shot.
Lost hidden weapon techniques? Lost supreme cultivation arts? What if they’re armed with modern firearms instead?
Even ordinary people would become terrifying if equipped with guns and grenades.
So what would happen if members of the Tang Family used them as hidden weapons?
“…It’ll work.”
The instincts that had allowed him to build Eclipse into the greatest corporation in the world told him the answer.
“This will definitely work!”
Moreover, the civilization and legal system of this era closely resembled imperial China.
There were no antitrust laws.
No monopoly regulations.
No securities laws.
No labor laws.
And with China’s culture of relationships, many things could simply be settled through connections.
Executives who contribute nothing and stab you in the back?
None.
Shareholders who panic over daily stock prices without seeing the bigger picture?
None.
Media outlets making endless noise, or market manipulators trying to take a bite out of everything?
None.
No Fair Trade Act, Labor Standards Act, Securities Act, Financial Supervisory Service, or disclosure regulations tying businessmen’s hands?
What is this? Heaven?
The moment he realized that, Huiyeom reached a profound enlightenment.
Family management…
…was the true path to happiness.
Huiyeom wrote “Family Revival Project” on a sheet of paper.
On the first line, he wrote:
Guns
Explosives
“If I’m going to build these, gunpowder alone isn’t enough. Steelmaking technology is essential.”
Below Artillery, he wrote:
High-quality steel
Metallurgy
“And to mass-produce firearms, I’ll need money… Hmm. Maybe I should sell steel? Or use the nitric acid and saltpeter from the Tang Family’s poison vault to make chemical fertilizer?”
He added Money and Chemical Fertilizer to the list before folding his arms.
“No matter what, I’ll need the support of the adults.”
No matter how mature he appeared thanks to his previous life…
He was still only seven years old.
A child couldn’t establish research facilities or factories alone.
He would inevitably need adults to help him.
And unless he produced undeniable results first, no adult would seriously listen to a seven-year-old talking about business.
“Ah… Come to think of it, the family’s management structure is also a disaster.”
Because the direct family had poured all their wealth into restoring their lost hidden weapon techniques and martial arts…
Their finances had collapsed.
The branch families, having financed the direct line, had gradually gained enormous influence within the Tang Family.
As a result, while the direct line remained the official leaders of the family…
They could no longer accomplish anything without the money of the branch families.
“So in the end… it all comes down to money. How do I produce convincing results…”
After thinking for quite a while while rubbing his chin…
An idea suddenly struck him.
“That’s it.”
Huiyeom immediately jumped to his feet and went to see his father, Dang Unsang, the current head of the Sichuan Tang Family.
As always, Dang Unsang sat at his desk with a deep frown, reviewing documents.
Eight years had passed since he became the head of the Tang Family.
Yet the family’s fortunes continued to decline, leaving him increasingly anxious.
Developing new hidden weapons.
Creating new poisons.
Restoring lost techniques.
Every one of those goals required immense wealth.
To make matters worse, word had gradually spread that the Tang Family was no longer as powerful as before.
Even rogue martial artists who would once have feared to breathe in their presence had begun quietly provoking them.
Punishing those people required large quantities of poison.
And poison was expensive.
The restoration project made little progress.
Their coffers grew emptier.
Their financial situation showed no signs of improving.
Even the Council of Elders, dominated by the branch families, had begun making unsettling moves.
“There has to be… some solution…”
Just then, the butler informed him that his son had come to see him.
Dang Unsang set aside the documents and smiled.
“A short break won’t hurt.”
For two years after his marriage, no child had been born, causing him endless worry.
That was why he treasured his eldest son, Dang Huiyeom.
Moreover, Huiyeom had displayed extraordinary talent since infancy.
Most children only began expressing themselves clearly at three or four years old, and could communicate properly around five.
But Huiyeom had already spoken clearly enough to express his own opinions at the age of three.
By four, he had mastered the Thousand Character Classic.
By five, he had nearly finished studying the Four Books and Five Classics.
Recently, he had even begun reading the Seven Military Classics, as well as The Doctrine of the Mean and The Great Learning.
How could a father not have high expectations?
His beloved eldest son had come to his office for the first time of his own accord.
How could he not be delighted?
“Father. Your son, Huiyeom, has come because there is something I wish to discuss with you.”
Hearing his son’s mature manner of speaking, Dang Unsang smiled warmly.
“Very well, Yeom-ah. What is it?”
But the smile vanished from his face after hearing Huiyeom’s next words.
“I would like to propose the production of a multipurpose universal ointment, Mannungggo (čŹč˝č).”
It was quite a bold…
…and utterly unexpected proposal.
