I disagree with you. IMO he was beaten a second time and this time, it was the straw mat beating. Observe his hands are both bandaged. They weren't before. SH knew what the servant did. Sure, he holds grudges against SH because he was beaten before by him. However, a straw mat beating is terrible, a person can die, this explains why now he is suffering from a poor sight. Before, he had no problem.
And just like in the chapter 12, the straw mat beating was shown later in a flashback. I have the feeling that we will see it like that too.
I'll believe it when I see it. Right now your theory doesn't make sense to me at all.
I feel the same way. It does us no good to speculate too much.
Thank you, I totally agree and I thought I might be the only thinking that.
I love analyzing stories and it's alright to speculate a little but it's very silly to make stuff up and brand it as facts.
I see some confusion in the comments. This is when SH beat up the servant.
http://www.mangago.zone/read-manga/yahwacheop/uu/iur_chapter-30/pg-2/
It happened after NK escaped for the first time. SH beat up all the servants in the household but I guess this one suffered the most damage. We can see here that one of his eyes is completely messed up so that's when he became blind in one eye.
It's the reason why the servant hates NK so much. From his point of view, NK deserved to be beat up just as much for running away but he "got away with it". He thinks NK is a whore so he doesn't believe/care that he was raped half to death for running away. He thinks the servants are the only ones who paid the price.
And he's even more upset now because SH treats NK much better than anyone else and makes the servants serve NK as if he was a noble.
That's the only time SH beat the servant. He doesn't know that he put rocks in NK's rice so he wasn't punished for that. He cleaned up the mess because the old servant knows he's the one who did it so he forced him to clean up as punishment. It wasn't SH's decision because again, he knows nothing.