No—wait. So the son brings home a daughter-in-law he doesn’t like, and he tortures and imprisons his own son?

In the original novel The Returned Hero, Joo Pae-gun, the Heavenly Demon, was depicted as the ultimate mastermind—a shadowy figure pulling the strings from his throne throughout the early and middle arcs, conspiring with the Namgung Clan to swallow the martial world.

Yet, this supposedly grand villain was ultimately usurped and erased from the narrative by a sudden coup orchestrated by his seemingly docile son, the Lesser Cult Leader Joo Cheon-oh.

Befitting his ambiguous role, Joo Pae-gun’s personality and inner workings were never explored in depth.

Consequently, Cho Yoon only remembered him as a generic, conventionally evil tyrant—a man who supplied the Namgung Clan with lethal poisons and jiangshi, harboring the standard, greedy ambition to conquer the martial world and establish a demonic empire.

Cho Yoon could say with absolute certainty that he never expected Joo Pae-gun to be this specific brand of patriarchal, dramatic scum.

Then again… a normal human wouldn’t lock children in a cave and force them into a deathmatch until only the strongest survived, he reasoned.

Releasing a heavy sigh, Cho Yoon refolded the letter and tucked it into the corner of his medicine chest.

The anxieties he had buried began to claw their way back to the surface. When he descended the mountain four years ago, events had spiraled wildly out of his control, dragging him along in a chaotic tempest.

This current excursion, however, felt entirely different; he was willingly gathering burdens, embracing dilemmas that demanded agonizing deliberation.

When and how do I tell Cheon-oh? Cho Yoon agonized. I can’t keep this from him forever, but I have absolutely no idea how he’ll react.

He turned his gaze to the garden outside the window, his mind a tangled knot, when a strange sound drifted from the opposite room. It was Cheon-oh, sleeping alone across the courtyard.

What is it?

Cho Yoon focused his senses, staring intently through the closed doors. Immediately, the rustle of hurried movement against fabric and the ragged edge of anxious breathing painted a vivid picture in his mind. The ability to perfectly perceive actions occurring completely out of sight never ceased to feel surreal.

Cheon-oh had jolted upright from his sleep.

He threw off the covers and sat in heavy silence before exhaling a long, shuddering sigh. Cho Yoon heard the boy scrub his hands over his face, release a short, tortured groan, and finally rise from the bed.

Did he wake up again? He didn’t seem to be sleeping deeply earlier. Is he coming over here?

Recalling the boy appearing at his door with pillows and blankets in tow, Cho Yoon hurriedly scanned his own room. The letter was hidden, and the caretaker had left no trace of his visit.

There was nothing to trigger the boy’s anxiety.

I’ve already met with the informant. If he asks to sleep in here again, I’ll let him. Cho Yoon braced himself, listening intently to the boy’s soft footsteps.

However, instead of approaching, Cheon-oh retrieved something from his pack, bypassed Cho Yoon’s room entirely, and crept toward another part of the estate. He wasn’t circulating his internal energy, but he was actively utilizing a stealth footwork technique to mask his presence.

No matter how Cho Yoon analyzed it, the boy was deliberately trying to evade his master’s hyper-sensitive perception. The realization struck Cho Yoon like a physical blow.

He scrambled up from his seat in a panic.

Why… why? What is he doing?

For nearly ten years, Cheon-oh had hidden absolutely nothing from him.

From the moment the boy first poured his heart out atop that breathtaking cliff, he had been unfailingly honest. He had shared his deepest, most guarded thoughts—secrets he had never breathed to another soul. Whenever something caught his eye or sparked his curiosity, he brought it straight to Cho Yoon without hesitation.

Cheon-oh was naturally taciturn, but their relationship never lacked communication.

Haunted by the regret of not speaking more deeply with Sa-yeong and Sa-hyeon before their departure, Cho Yoon had fought against his character’s inherently stoic nature, persistently engaging the boy in conversation.

So why… why is he suddenly hiding something?

No, it’s normal… It’s perfectly normal, Cho Yoon tried to rationalize.

It was entirely expected for a teenager going through puberty to have secrets. He knew this logically, yet an inexplicable wave of profound emptiness washed over him.

The heavy dread regarding Joo Yeok’s imprisonment vanished, replaced entirely by this new, hollow ache. Cho Yoon debated whether he should respect the boy’s privacy, but ultimately swallowed hard and gathered his robes.

What if it’s something serious? he reasoned. If he’s in deep trouble but too afraid to tell me, I need to know.

Even if he ultimately pretended not to notice, he had to at least understand the situation. Cheon-oh was still under his protection; Cho Yoon had an absolute duty to safeguard him from every possible threat. Respecting secrets was important, but if those secrets endangered the child, a guardian had to intervene.

Locking himself in his room is one thing, but sneaking out in the middle of the night? I can’t just ignore that. Cho Yoon desperately piled on excuses, frantically rationalizing his decision.

Silently, he slid his door open and slipped into the night to follow his disciple.

***

Cheon-oh stared at the flickering light seeping from beneath his master’s door before retreating to his own room.

Being denied the comfort of sleeping beside his master stung, but he couldn’t stubbornly insist when Cho Yoon claimed to have work. More importantly, he was no longer an eleven-year-old child dragging his blankets to his master’s doorstep.

He was perfectly capable of sleeping alone now.

…Probably.

The room was opulent, adorned with exotic art and luxurious decorations, but Cheon-oh couldn’t have cared less. To him, it felt no different than a room in Estate of Deep Mists—in fact, he vastly preferred Estate of Deep Mists simply because it held his master’s lingering presence.

Feeling unexpectedly melancholic, Cheon-oh slid beneath the covers and curled onto his side.

The plush cotton and silken sheets offered no real comfort.

As he closed his eyes in the heavy silence, phantom sounds from his master’s room echoed in his ears. The soft whisper of cotton robes, the gentle scratch of a brush against paper, the quiet exhale as Cho Yoon blew out a lamp.

Cheon-oh remembered everything.

He hadn’t forgotten a single detail.

He could replay these memories at will, flipping through them like pages in a cherished record.

The only memories he struggled to process were the chaotic events of the past few days leading up to their arrival in Shaanxi.

Truthfully, he wanted nothing more than to cross the courtyard right now and cling to his master. When Cho Yoon had collapsed, Cheon-oh had spent the ensuing three days running like a rabid beast, a singular, desperate objective barely suppressing his sheer lunacy. Only when his master finally opened his eyes and leveled that familiar, light-brown gaze at him did Cheon-oh return to his humanity.

Even after conversing with him, sharing a meal, and retiring to this room, Cheon-oh couldn’t quell his gnawing anxiety. He was terrified he would wake up tomorrow to find his master unconscious once more.

But…

I have to trust him, Cheon-oh firmly commanded himself.

Failing to find peace here was tantamount to doubting his master. They just needed to endure a little longer, and they could return to their quiet life at Estate of Deep Mists. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Cheon-oh fought to banish the chaotic thoughts swarming his mind.

Gradually, the world expanded into a vast emptiness.

Cheon-oh easily recognized the transition into light slumber. He knew that if he simply allowed himself to sink deeper, morning would eventually arrive. He prepared to surrender his body to the stillness.

Plop.

A soft splash echoed through the void.

Startled, Cheon-oh whipped around. He found himself standing tall within a boundless darkness. Spotting a faint luminescence, he narrowed his eyes, and a deeply familiar scene materialized. Clear, gently flowing water rippled with the light of memory, illuminating the sunless void. Small droplets shattered into white foam, scattering across the surface.

And there, standing in the center with his back turned, was a solitary figure.

White hair, slicked wet and gathered over one shoulder.

Pale hands.

An elegant nape and delicate fingernails.

A slender waist and a perfectly straight back.

Cheon-oh knew exactly who this was. He knew precisely which memory this was. Even as he had lost his mind, solely consumed by the desire for this man’s safety, a corner of his brain had relentlessly replayed this exact scene. He hadn’t dared to consciously recall it; he feared that acknowledging it, truly facing it, would render him irreparably grotesque.

Yet, Cheon-oh also knew he was currently detached from reality.

And because of that, an overwhelming urge seized him—a desperate need to fulfill his desires, just this once.

Cheon-oh strode purposefully into the water. He approached without a shred of hesitation and reached out.

In this dreamscape, his body had grown large enough to completely encompass the figure. He wrapped his arms around those prominent shoulders and that impossibly thin waist, pulling the man flush against him. He buried his face in the nape of that turning neck and inhaled deeply. The man smelled of crushed, wet grass.

Cheon-oh had no doubt his violently thrashing heart was hammering against the man’s back. The figure simultaneously anchored him and set his blood boiling. As Cheon-oh dragged his lips over the delicate pulse point beneath the man’s ear, the figure tilted his head, baring his neck further. Delicate fingertips hovered over Cheon-oh’s hands before gently covering them.

Pathetically, that tiny, fragile movement made Cheon-oh want to regress into a beast.

He wanted to throw himself flat on the ground and beg for commands.

He wanted to fawn, to be praised, to lap at those pale palms.

And simultaneously, as if stripped of all human comprehension, he wanted to pin the man down and surrender entirely to his basest instincts.