Whispers Behind the Wall
Nanobot deployment ready. Estimated time to target: five seconds.
With a faint tremor, he felt something slip free of his body.
Invisible to the naked eye, the nanobots sailed over the fence and made for the annex.
Entering… gap in the window frame located… penetration successful.
Mm-hm…
Cold sweat ran down the length of Ouyang Qiangang's spine. Feeding energy to Akasha while simultaneously maintaining his qi circulation proved far harder than he'd imagined.
At first there was nothing but the sound of the wind and a faint, indistinct murmur. He tightened his focus further.
Synchronizing audio data… filtering in progress… reception sensitivity calibrated.
Then, all at once—as though a fog had lifted—crisp, distinct voices began to resonate through his mind.
He held his breath and listened.
Dong Yeon-hwa's trembling voice reached him first.
"How dare you pull something like this in my own house! Are you out of your mind?"
The voice was thick with fury. Ouyang Qiangang's eyes went wide—it was nothing he had anticipated. It was so utterly different from the cold woman he'd seen before that he could hardly believe it belonged to the same person.
"How could you send assassins after Gang-ah without so much as my permission!"
He heard Dong Seol-ah laugh in open disbelief.
"Hohoho, Aunt. Why on earth would we do something so unnecessary? You must be misunderstanding something."
"Misunderstanding? You're seriously going to play innocent in front of me? If you believe you can slip anything past my eyes here in the Ouyang Clan, then that is a gravely serious miscalculation on your part!"
Dong Seol-ah fell silent for a moment, then spoke again in the same icy tone.
"Even supposing it were our doing, I fail to see why you'd fly into such a passion over it, Aunt. We were merely trying to assist efficiently with the grand design you and Grandfather share."
"And you thought that was helping me?"
The edge in Dong Yeon-hwa's voice sharpened as she pressed on.
"Did it never once occur to you what that half-baked 'efficiency' of yours would bring about? What kind of corner it would back me into?"
"If Cheon-gang the eldest son dies, then Cheon-gi naturally becomes the heir, doesn't he? Isn't that exactly what you wanted, Aunt? Besides, the boy keeps dragging out Grandfather's grand design, taking far too long to be of any use."
Dong Yeon-hwa's reply brimmed over with rage.
"You foolish, arrogant little brats! Have you not stopped to consider what happens if you kill him now—a child already doomed by the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, with hardly any time left to live?"
"He's just one sickly boy fading away. What's the fuss—"
"The moment Gang-ah dies, every last one of them will suspect me! Whose son stands to gain the most when the first wife's child turns up dead? My own Cheon-gi, that's who!"
Mm…
"Does it truly never cross your minds that your precious 'efficiency' and your reckless 'judgment' would turn this aunt of yours into a monstrous mother willing to take her stepson's life just to clear the road ahead of her own boy?"
Dong Yeon-hwa continued, her voice cold as a sheet of ice.
"If Gang-ah is murdered, do you imagine a single soul in this wide world wouldn't suspect that I stood behind it?"
Dong Seol-ah spoke as if sneering.
"Aren't you borrowing trouble, Aunt? No one knows I sent the assassin."
"You fool!"
An explosive outburst—and then a brief, heavy stillness. When her voice came again, it was lower.
"Where in this world does a perfect secret exist! Gu-yang Baek is no fool. The moment he begins to suspect… the moment he begins to suspect me…"
Suddenly, Dong Yeon-hwa's voice shook. It sounded less like anger than fear—or perhaps something even deeper than that.
Just then, Dong Ha-jin, who had been listening in silence, finally spoke up.
"Now, now, Aunt, please calm yourself. And Seol-ah—I understand your devotion to Grandfather, but this affair was unquestionably reckless of you."
He turned his words toward Dong Yeon-hwa.
"Aunt, we apologize if our actions have troubled your peace of mind. However…"
He paused, then resumed.
"That task Grandfather entrusted to you. It's been thirteen years now, hasn't it? And there seems to be no progress to speak of. How long do you intend to test Grandfather's patience?"
Dong Yeon-hwa's breathing grew ragged.
"That is… that is my affair to manage. It is no business of yours."
"This is no time for stubbornness, Aunt. You know perfectly well that without the manor's backing, neither you nor Cheon-gi can ever stand securely in this fading Ouyang Clan."
Mm…
"Seol-ah's little escapade, if you look at it one way, was an attempt to move things along precisely because you've dragged your feet for so long. Of course, I'll admit the method was rather… heavy-handed."
Dong Yeon-hwa's breathing grew harsher still. He could almost feel her shoulders trembling ever so slightly.
"Enough!"
Her resolute cry rang through the annex.
"You will never—not ever—lay a finger on Gang-ah again. That is the one and only command I give you."
Dong Seol-ah cut in, unable to comprehend.
"Aunt, keeping Cheon-gang alive does nothing but obstruct Grandfather's grand design and your own task. Do you truly not grasp that?"
Dong Yeon-hwa shot back with unyielding firmness.
"Then consider why your father sent Gang-ah a hair ornament carved from Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade. The Nine Yin Severed Meridians are a punishment laid down by Heaven itself—until that boy dies the natural death Heaven ordained, no one may lay hands upon him. That, too, is the way to preserve Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor's honor."
There's the mention of Ten-Thousand-Year Warm Jade. So Dong Hyeon-do isn't entirely cold-blooded. Given the flow of this conversation, he may have other intentions as well.
Dong Seol-ah sounded distinctly displeased.
"So how long are we expected to wait? Even with the Nine Yin Severed Meridians, he's got years left in him—"
"That is for Heaven to decide. All you need do is obey my commands. Do not harm Gang-ah again—not by any means, in any fashion."
A heavy silence settled.
Doctor, every time Dong Yeon-hwa says 'Gang-ah'… her speech pattern is genuinely strange.
I felt it too. It doesn't sound like mere pity or a sense of duty.
Agreed. The data pattern closely matches that of a mother desperately defending her child. But if that's true—why does she labor so hard to hide her feelings from you, Doctor?
Dong Ha-jin's cold voice rang out once more.
"Very well, Aunt. We give you our word—we won't touch Cheon-gang again. But what are we to report to Grandfather? That after thirteen years there is nothing to show for it? That thanks to Cheon-gang, there will be no progress for years to come?"
"I will finish it soon enough. Tell him that."
Footsteps sounded. Someone seemed to be leaving the annex.
"Ah—and one more thing, you two."
Dong Yeon-hwa's voice turned to ice.
"Do not ever scheme behind my back again. I'll let it pass this time—but if you commit another such foolish act… then I truly will not forgive you."
He heard the door close.
Then Dong Seol-ah spoke.
"Brother, with the skill of the assassin I sent, Cheon-gang should be dead. Even if he somehow survived, there's no way he should be walking around unharmed…"
Bewilderment hung in her voice—she simply could not make sense of it.
Dong Ha-jin clicked his tongue.
"The man must have blundered somehow. Or he was simply worthless. Either way, don't touch him again until we've left this place. It would be a problem to provoke Aunt too far."
"Haah… fine."
Ouyang Qiangang hurriedly recalled the nanobots and halted his qi circulation. His face was pale, his whole body drenched in sweat—the price of burning through every last drop of the inner power he'd banked.
He let out a long breath.
Akasha, what we just heard…
Shocking on multiple fronts. Dong Yeon-hwa has spent thirteen years carrying out a secret mission for the Lord of Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor—and it is possible she married Patriarch Gu-yang Baek for that very purpose.
It's startling enough that the Dong siblings sent assassins after me, but their motive is even more absurd. They did all that while claiming to be helping their aunt. Is that really the only use a clever mind like theirs can find for itself?
Their raw intellect notwithstanding, their situational judgment and capacity to understand others' emotions appear severely deficient.
Akasha continued in a puzzled tone.
But the hardest of all to parse is Dong Yeon-hwa's reaction. We clearly observed emotional agitation suggesting genuine affection for you, Doctor—so why conceal it so completely?
Ouyang Qiangang rose unsteadily to his feet, his mind knotted with a tangle of information and questions.
Could Dong Hyeon-do be watching her? If so, I can partly understand why she'd bury her feelings so deep…
There could be some other reason entirely. Please move to a safe location first. If you're caught, it will be a serious problem.
He hurried out of the shadows and headed for his quarters. The trip to the main hall was off. He had nearly exhausted the inner power he'd gathered, and his whole body hung limp as waterlogged cotton—walking into Gu-yang Baek and Dong Hyeon-do's presence in this state would do nothing but worry them.
As he moved, his eyes sank deep into shadow. What he'd just overheard was enough to overturn everything he thought he knew.
Dong Yeon-hwa might not despise him after all. The mystery-shrouded task she had begun thirteen years ago. The precarious tightrope she walked between Gold Pagoda Mountain Manor and the Ouyang Clan—
Something very, very tangled is going on here…
The eavesdropping operation—pulled off by Akasha and the nanobots working in concert—had handed him possibilities beyond anything he'd imagined, along with a thicket of complicated feelings.
Covert intelligence gathering via nanobots. What would have happened in the twenty-first-century South Korea he'd lived in? Setting ethics aside entirely, it would have been a serious crime tripping every statute on the books—invasion of privacy, violation of communications secrecy laws, illegal intelligence collection—with the police kicking down his door and slapping on the cuffs at any moment.
But this was Murim, a world where the logic of power outranked the rule of law. A world where sheer survival counted for more than ethical anguish. In a place this brutal and unpredictable, was there anything more vital, more precious, than the ability to quietly take the measure of one's enemies and seize the hidden information at the heart of it all?
Perhaps more than any rare elixir or secret martial manual, this intelligence-gathering ability was, right now, the most valuable and powerful weapon he possessed.
Information is power.
It was an unchanging truth he had learned to his bones through his life as a scientist. Collect the data, analyze it, form a hypothesis, and derive the result—his method would serve him no differently here in Murim. And Akasha, at his side, was a specialist in intelligence collection and analysis superior to any information network the world had ever known.
Based on what we just overheard, the Dong siblings' attempt to assassinate you is beyond dispute. But with our current strength, we cannot yet hold them accountable.
Ouyang Qiangang nodded silently at Akasha's cool analysis. Only days had passed since he'd awakened in this body; he couldn't even map his surroundings properly, and his health was in the worst possible state, ravaged by the Nine Yin Severed Meridians.
Akasha, remember everything about today. Every last detail.
Yes, Doctor. As they say—though a gentleman's revenge takes ten years, it is never too late.
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes went cold and dark.