Chapter 25: Whirlwind (5)

“Young Master, are you all right?”

“......”

“Young Master?!”

“Mm? Ah, were you calling me?”

“Yes. I was wondering if you were hurt...”

“I’m fine. I hadn’t even warmed up.”

“I—I see.”

Bewilderment showed on Shin Mo’s face.

Yeon Hojeong spoke with a hint of apology.

“I kicked up trouble for nothing and put you all in a spot. My apologies.”

“N-no, sir! Please don’t say that.”

“I’ve got plenty to think about today. I’ll buy you an apology drink tomorrow.”

“An apology drink? That’s out of the question.”

Shin Mo bowed his head.

“I’m relieved you’re unharmed. Please rest well.”

“You too.”

“I’ll station Azure Hawk men around the quarters just in case.”

Yeon Hojeong had been about to say there was no need, but he nodded. If there was no visible watch, Shin Mo would only worry more.

He didn’t want anyone fretting over him any further.

“Thank you.”

“Then I’ll take my leave.”

When Shin Mo stepped out, Yeon Hojeong turned his eyes to the window.

The banquet that had begun not long after midday had been canceled in less than half an hour. So daylight still remained.

As he looked outside, Yeon Hojeong’s gaze darkened to an icy shade.

The Ming?

He had shown nothing amiss to settle the matter, but his senses remained fixed on Ming Holim.

Same as before: not yet the stage for certainty like with the Je Gal or Peng, but...

It was a bit hasty, yet Yeon Hojeong trusted his instincts. He trusted his gut.

He felt a strong dissonance in Ming Holim’s inner strength.

More precisely, it differed from the inner force the clan’s killers had emitted. Judged only by the similarity of temperament, one could say it was a wholly different art.

Yet Ming Holim’s inner strength ran on a track apart from Central Plains disciplines. Like a wolf wearing a lamb’s fleece and introducing itself as a lamb.

Call it a rough, grim energy carefully dressed to suit Central Plains sensibilities. Inner strength takes on the color of the one who tempers it, but Ming Holim’s felt fundamentally not of the Central Plains.

Shame. If I’d truly pressed him, I could have seen his real level.

He sighed—and then tipped his head.

“How did the Ming Clan fall, anyway?”

After he learned from his master and descended the mountain, after pacifying the Demonic Path and turning his eyes to the world—

By then the Ming were already gone. Not destroyed by someone as the Yeon were, but ruined near overnight; within three years they had come apart.

Yeon Hojeong rubbed his jaw, face sour.

“How?”

If a house on the order of the Ming Clan of the Nine Provinces collapsed, there’s no way he—who had just begun to shake the Demonic Path’s history—would have ignored it. More precisely, news should have reached his ears.

Yet he had received nothing on the Ming. He had been run ragged laying the foundations of the Black Emperor’s Citadel, yes—but even so, wasn’t this a bit much?

“Did someone control the flow of information?”

The Demonic Path’s intelligence is sharper and faster than the Orthodox’s.

In the Citadel’s early days, Yeon Hojeong had also held the heavy post of intelligence chief. At least within the Demonic Path, there was no one who played with information who could slip past his eyes.

Could it have been the Orthodox?

Thoughts chasing their own tails.

He tried to shake it off and failed. All that mattered was whether the Ming were the killers or not, yet his mind kept drifting that way.

He was still turning the matter over when—

“Young Master.”

Shin Mo’s voice came from beyond the door.

“Mm?”

“The Je Gal Clan’s eldest daughter has come. What are your orders?”

Even with private familiarity, Shin Mo drew the line cleanly. Yeon Hojeong nodded.

“Show her in.”

Clunk.

As if waiting, Je Gal Ahyeon came in.

She had changed from a bright dress of willow green into something easier to move in, and looked livelier for it.

“What are you doing by yourself? Sitting there by the window.”

“Why are you here?”

Je Gal Ahyeon grumbled.

“A guest comes; you could at least say sit.”

“Sit.”

“Tea?”

“Brew it yourself.”

“Prickly, aren’t we.”

With a little “heave,” Je Gal Ahyeon sat down. She seemed a touch languid.

“How’s the body?”

“Fine.”

“So it is. I worried at your side for nothing; you look perfectly fine. Well, I never imagined you’d toy around with that Tang brat.”

No matter how sheltered, Tang Yangseon was the Tang Clan’s direct heir. A house like the Tang would not have trained their heir—a future standard-bearer—lightly.

Je Gal Ahyeon studied Yeon Hojeong’s face.

He was still staring out the window, expression giving no clue to his thoughts.

She had plenty she wanted to ask Yeon Hojeong.

How he had grown that strong, why he had fixated on Ming Holim, what was running through his head.

Hoo...

She sighed inwardly, then smiled clear.

“If something happens later, I’ll just hide behind you.”

“So what do you want?”

“You’re stiffer than the cudgel my father used to swing when I was little. I just came to see your face.”

Yeon Hojeong knit his brow.

Je Gal Ahyeon braced to grind her teeth, thinking another curt line was coming.

“Thank you.”

“...Eh?”

“I said thank you.”

Je Gal Ahyeon blinked.

“Thank me? For what?”

“For speaking up in time to defend me. Thanks to you, the matter could be closed. I owe you.”

“...That doesn’t suit you; why the sudden change? Gives me chills.”

“Your knack for hooking onto the tail of a word is exquisite. Je Gal is Je Gal.”

“Hooking onto the tail? Call it rhetoric, if you please.”

“With three inches of tongue you could make your career and your name.”

“Is that praise or an °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° insult?”

“Gratitude.”

“Ugh, forget it! Ptui, ptui! You might as well not have said thank you!”

“Then pretend you didn’t hear.”

“No.”

He turned his head away. The air said he was done talking.

Je Gal Ahyeon flushed a little.

Fluster had made the words pop out, but in truth she felt good. All the more because she knew he was not one to thank others easily.

She’d come to console him, to ease his mind if he seemed pent up, and instead she’d received thanks she hadn’t expected. She hadn’t planned to bring it up, but in this mood one word might be all right.

“Be a little more careful from now on.”

“Understood.”

“...Hehe.”

“What’s with that sly laugh?”

“Sly?!”

She bristled, then let out a limp sigh.

“Tch. I can’t even cuff you once since you’re stronger than me... Ah!”

Her face turned a shade serious.

“I have a question.”

“What.”

“At Choseong Pavilion—that Thunderfire Hall Lord.”

“What about him.”

“I’ve wanted to ask for a while: how did you injure him?”

Yeon Hojeong tilted his head.

“Is there some special way to injure someone? I swung with the will to kill. That’s all.”

“That’s not what I mean...”

Vvmm.

A strong inner force rose from Je Gal Ahyeon’s hand. At the same time, the scent of sandalwood drifted through Yeon Hojeong’s room.

“Our house’s Profound Origin Sandalwood Divine Art is called one of the few true secret arts. And my strike landed clean on his abdomen.”

Even without loading much inner force, the abdomen is a dangerous target. Packed with viscera; take a bad hit and you’re disabled—at worst dead.

“But he didn’t so much as go down—didn’t even show pain. And his inner strength wasn’t several times stronger than mine, either.”

“It’s the difference in the nature of qi.”

“Huh? Nature?”

Yeon Hojeong spoke like it was nothing.

“The Blazing Yang Skill he’d trained was at a very high level. That is, his inner strength itself carried Fire. But your inner strength centers on Wood.”

“...?!”

“You toss a log onto a blazing campfire—does the fire go out? It only burns hotter.”

Je Gal Ahyeon was at a loss.

“Even if the base natures differ, the difference in the arts was obvious...”

“His art wasn’t a mere bag of tricks. Once, it was an art that vied for greatest under heaven.”

“What?”

“Famed alongside the Yin-Cold White class as one of the Yin Deity’s twin peer techniques—the Yin-Fire Red class. That’s what he’d trained.”

Yin Deity? Yin-Fire Red class?

Je Gal Ahyeon frowned.

“I’ve never heard of such an art.”

No surprise. Yeon Hojeong himself had only learned of the Yin Deity after he became Lord of the Black Emperor’s Citadel.

The Yin Deity was the sovereign of the assassin world.

In the Citadel years the Yin Deity was a next-generation successor, and the record was murky. But the prior Yin Deity was a myth who succeeded in ninety-nine assassinations out of a hundred—failing only once.

And after that single failure, the Yin Deity vanished until a successor had been trained.

“Even so, to have taken no shock at all is—”

“That’s because neither of you has reached high enough.”

“Huh?”

“Even at the extreme, it’s hard to ignore counters by nature. That’s why there can be a ‘greatest under heaven’ but not an Absolute Unrivaled. Heaven never permits a sole supremacy.”

“......”

“Anyway, he didn’t look like he’d even inherited three parts out of ten of the Yin-Fire Red class, let alone the Yin-Cold White.”

“Three parts...”

Je Gal Ahyeon’s face grew grave.

“So that was only three parts.”

“Three or ten—what matters is digging as deep as you can into what you’ve learned. He and you both have only licked the surface of Divine Arts.”

“Getting lumped with the same kind doesn’t feel great.”

“Not my concern.”

“Tch.”

Je Gal Ahyeon let out a long sigh. She’d come to comfort him, to worry for him, and left feeling oddly unsettled.

“There can be a ‘greatest under heaven,’ but no Absolute Unrivaled? It’s true.”

“If you’re done—”

“But isn’t there one?”

“What?”

“One who was called Absolute Unrivaled in the Martial World’s history.”

Yeon Hojeong cocked his head.

“If you mean Bodhidharma, Shaolin’s patriarch—”

“No, not the great master Bodhidharma. Three hundred years ago, in what they say was the Martial World’s brightest age—there was a legendary warrior who quelled the Blood Sect Uprising.”

“Three hundred years ago? Who?”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t. I’m busy enough staying alive now—much less three hundred years back.”

“You really are a marvel. I thought you saw through the world’s workings like a ghost, and yet you don’t know the famous ones?”

“I dislike studying history.”

“Figures.”

“So who is this great person?”

His tone hadn’t changed, but to Je Gal Ahyeon it somehow sounded like a jab.

She snorted.

“You’ll slap your forehead when you hear it.”

“Just say the name.”

“The Four Martial Emperors of the Four Directions.”

“The Four Martial Emperors?”

“You truly didn’t know? That’s something, even for you.”

“What a childish epithet.”

“Don’t say that. To us of the Orthodox martial world, he’s judged higher even than the great master Bodhidharma. If he hadn’t quelled the Blood Sect Uprising, the world would be hell by now.”

Yeon Hojeong shook his head.

“The world is hell enough as it is.”

“Ugh, dark. You’re really dark.”

“Quiet.”

“Anyway—if his skill was as history tells it, then being called Absolute Unrivaled fits. Not one, but four different martial arts trained to the extreme.”

“Four arts?”

“Uh-huh. In offense, defense, and evasion, no art under heaven could match him. And I heard he even handled the Two Qi of Yin and Yang.”

Yeon Hojeong’s eyes flashed.

“Offense and defense, evasion—and Yin and Yang Qi?”

“That’s what they say. He’s been deified so much there must be exaggeration. Later they say he even commanded a golden dragon, so they called him the Yellow Dragon Emperor. Even I think that’s too much.”

“......”

“In any case! Don’t live so grimly. Live a little and you find all sorts of interesting—”

“......”

“Jeong?”

Je Gal Ahyeon faltered.

It was her first time seeing Yeon Hojeong look blank.

The Four Martial Emperors? Commanded a golden dragon?

Perfect offense, defense, and evasion. And Yin and Yang Qi.

And a golden dragon?

“Mm... I don’t know why, but I feel like I said something I shouldn’t...”

“Tell me more.”

“W-what?”

Lightning struck in Yeon Hojeong’s eyes.

“Tell me everything about that man you call the Four Martial Emperors.”