The Cloud Dragon Is a Fraud
I checked on the blonde girl, who had slipped back to her original spot before anyone noticed, and sent Ansi a thought-message. "Handled everything cleanly?"
"Yes! I snapped that Geuseundae's neck clean off and fed him to the fish! A paltry yokai like that is nothing at all to Ansi, Your Majesty's phoenix!"
"Good work. You weren't spotted, were you?"
"There was no one around the Geuseundae. The shamans will have noticed that I tore the talisman keeping it sealed, but that Maegu seems to have them thoroughly charmed."
"Charmed? What do you mean?"
"Wondering the same, this Ansi went and watched every single thing the Maegu was up to with her own two eyes! The Maegu lured all the gathered shamans away with foxfire and dunked them into the river, one splash after another!"
"Hold on—you said you'd just chase them off, not drown the lot of them!"
"Fear not! This Ansi confirmed that the Maegu soaked the shamans thoroughly in the river and laid them out on the far bank! Not a single one drowned. Though they may well freeze to death as they are."
"...Freeze to... no, never mind. I suppose if those criminals freeze out there, that's only what they deserve."
Even the last thread of my unease dissolved. Glancing over at the band, I found Seok-ran—back in her own body rather than a proxy by now—sitting primly and feigning complete innocence.
Meanwhile, the Crown Prince offered a toast to the final spirit tablet.
"Bow in reverence—!"
At the ritual officiant's cry, the Crown Prince bowed slowly and deeply, twice.
I handed the tray back to the officiant beside me and stole another glance at the Left State Councilor.
Now even his beard's gone pale as a ghost.
"Clear the altar—!"
The final rite of the memorial service. Before the ceremonial table was cleared away, the Crown Prince burned the eulogy with the sacred flame. Thin paper flared up, scattering black ash into the air.
And just as the solemn ceremony drew to its close—
"Blasphemy—!"
Someone leapt out, shrieking at the top of his lungs.
There we go.
It was Prince Waneon.
Behind the sniveling fool, his face blotchy red, stood the Left State Councilor wearing a meaningful smile.
And there we go again.
Just as the memorial service seemed set to end without a hitch and public sentiment toward the Crown Prince to turn smoothly, the Left State Councilor had evidently decided on one final desperate gambit.
So he's going to attempt a possession ritual outright, without even faking a Black Jade possession.
Right on cue, Prince Waneon recited the very lines his faction had rehearsed together.
"An impure and, and defiled offering has been made upon the sacred Jecheondo altar—Cloud Dragon will surely, surely be enraged!"
The stuttered proclamation, delivered through gritted teeth, carried not an ounce of dignity—but what happened next threw the entire assembly into turmoil.
"Wh-what is that!"
"The clouds...!"
Above the Jecheondo altar, the clouds began to swirl. The brilliant blue sky was blotted out, and in an instant darkness swallowed everything around us.
Prince Waneon, staring up at that sky, stiffened his trembling shoulders, thrust his hand high, and declared with all the bravado he could muster.
"Behold! The Cloud Dragon is truly enraged!"
Miraculously, thunder cracked at that exact moment. A boom like the wail of a furious dragon rolled across the heavens, rumbling long and low.
And the humans began screaming in panic.
"A d-dragon!"
"AAAAAH!"
"The Cloud Dragon descends!"
"The Cloud Dragon is enraged at Grand Prince Heukju!"
Did they really have to say 'Grand Prince Heukju'? There's a plant planted among the crowd.
In any case, at the heart of the churning clouds, a shape like a true dragon revealed itself.
A dragon of dark blue scales coiled through the clouds and began descending, slow and languid, toward the Jecheondo altar.
The King and Queen shot to their feet, and the Crown Prince's face went white as paper. Prince Waneon swelled with triumph, while the Left State Councilor's expression melted into relief.
"It-It's the Cloud Dragon!"
"Lord Cloud Dragon has truly come!"
Amid all the flustered humans, I had to raise a sleeve to hide the smirk tugging at my lips.
I wondered which god would bother putting on a show like this...
That's Gwangcheol-i, isn't it?
Not the Cloud Dragon at all, but the well-keeper of the neighborhood where dragons lived—in other words, the Celestial Realm's most notorious troublemaker, sentenced by his own mother to well duty after one disaster too many, now making his grandest possible entrance into the mortal world below.
The Cloud Dragon is the god who governs the clouds. His true name in the Celestial Realm is Unsa, the Cloud Master.
Unsa, together with the Wind Lord and the Rain Master, forms the core bureaucracy of Jami Palace, the Jade Emperor's seat, and the three of them jointly manage the weather of both Heaven and the mortal world.
Above those three gods stands the Dragon God, a mighty deity who holds dominion over all the waters of creation.
Beyond the three masters, the Well God who keeps the wells, the gods of rivers and lakes, and even the Dragon Kings who rule the seas all serve beneath the Dragon God's banner.
Among that Dragon God's many children, there was a dragon named Gangcheol.
True to his father's blood, Gangcheol was born with divine power of staggering magnitude—a tremendously strong dragon. The trouble was, he despised cultivating the Dao and detested studying for celestial office even more, so he spent every waking day galavanting about at play.
Had he done nothing worse than play, he might have been let off with a scolding. But one day, while out carousing, Gangcheol committed a catastrophe of epic proportions.
He punched a hole straight through the sacred well that stood at the very center of the dragons' settlement in Heaven and snuck down into the mortal world through it.
As the heavenly well water gushed out in full, a great flood struck the mortal world in the dead of night; and with all the water pouring down there, not enough remained to make rain, and drought gripped every other land.
And in the midst of it all, Gangcheol swiped a cask of miraculous dokkaebi liquor, drank it dry, and went staggering around dead drunk—until he vomited, magnificently. The dokkaebi liquor's enchantment turned his breath into fire, and the fire ignited a monstrous wildfire across the mountains.
Then, attempting to fly back up to Heaven to escape the scene, he wobbled drunkenly through the air and crashed into the ground—in full view of every human for miles around.
That's why, among humans, a legend even sprang up that an imugi who failed to become a dragon flies about in a rage spitting fire...
Even the Dragon God could only throw up his hands at the mess his son had made. His furious mother stripped Gangcheol of his dragonhood, demoting him to a mere imugi, and sentenced him to three hundred years of maintaining and cleaning the very well he had destroyed.
As his son set off to scrub wells, the Dragon God clicked his tongue and nagged, "You're no longer a dragon—you're barely an imugi now, so forget Gangcheol! From this day you are Gwangcheol, the Crash-Prone!" And from then on, he was known as Gwangcheol-i.
And that infamous, legendary troublemaker Gwangcheol-i had now escaped his well-duty sentence and was descending into the mortal world, impersonating the Cloud Dragon himself.
Demoted in rank though he was, a dragon was still a dragon by birth—and Gwangcheol-i's descent from the heavens looked convincing enough from every angle.
The long, massive body sheathed in dark blue scales. Golden horns jutting sharp and proud. A crimson mane and whiskers rippling like living flame. Golden eyes flashing like bolts of lightning.
Summoning clouds, lightning, and thunder for a backdrop, too... he's having the absolute time of his life, isn't he?
I'd wondered what kind of god would meddle in a human scheme like this—any respectable deity, no matter how lavishly fed with offerings, had a reputation to keep and wouldn't so easily play along with mortal theatrics.
But Gwangcheol-i? That explains everything. Stuck cleaning wells and desperate for any excuse to escape, this must have looked like a gift from heaven itself.
Even so, with an inborn rank like his, the price of descending should have been ruinous—yet an extraordinarily high-caliber shaman had evidently stepped forward to shoulder it.
Which means this, too, must be the work of the Yeonguijeong faction's Gwoeryeoknansin.
By peering into the Left State Councilor through the Three Deathworms, I'd been able to learn in advance where the Geuseundae and the shamans would be lurking.
But I hadn't been able to discover the site of the possession ritual or which god would descend—because the Left State Councilor himself didn't know.
Because a Gwansanggam official from Prince Waneon's faction handled the possession ritual alone.
The Gwansanggam, the office in charge of astronomy, geomancy, and weather observation, worked closely with shamans by the very nature of its duties. That official had taken the initiative in preparing the possession, and the Left State Councilor's role was simply to give the signal and push Prince Waneon forward.
...Come to think of it, the head of the Gwansanggam—the Yeongsa post—is held concurrently by the Yeonguijeong, isn't it?
I'd learned that while studying Woon's system of government. My suspicion of the Chief State Councilor hardened another degree.
While I was idly entertaining such thoughts, Gwangcheol-i, having descended from the heavens, alighted atop the towering ceremonial banners.
The clouds that had come down with him thickened into a heavy fog that swallowed the grounds of Jecheondo.
"My lady!"
The little Crown Prince came darting over and planted himself in front of me, shielding me with his body. He shoved me behind his back—and his arms were trembling like leaves.
...The tiny thing calls himself my husband, and even in the middle of all this, he tries to protect me first.
Shaking with fear himself, yet still resolved to keep me safe no matter what—it moved me a little.
The wedding itself was a shambles riddled with schemes, but... it seems I chose my husband well.
Fighting the urge to pat the little groom on the head, I peered out from beneath the Crown Prince's sleeve to take stock of the scene.
The frightened crowd, frozen mid-flight at the sight of the fog rolling over the hongsal gate, stood rooted in place, unable to move forward or back.
No one's been hurt, I hope?
As I watched anxiously, Prince Waneon bellowed grandly at the people.
"Fear not, all of you! The Cloud Dragon has come to punish Grand Prince Heukju—not any of you!"
The Crown Prince shielding me began to tremble harder.
Does this little thing actually believe he's about to receive divine punishment from a dragon? Isn't he blaming himself far too much?
"Your Highness."
I seized the Crown Prince's quivering arms with both hands and clung to them. Before I could even begin to soothe him, he looked down at me, and his expression hardened with resolve.
"My lady, flee at once with Bonbangnain."
"I'm sorry—what?"
"The punishment the Cloud Dragon delivers, I shall bear alone. You are innocent, my lady, so—"
"No, Your Highness! You mustn't give in to something like that! That thing is—"
I was beside myself, about to explain, when the blue dragon let out a thunderous roar and opened its jaws.
"Foolish, frail humans!"
Gwangcheol-i raised his head so that his whiskers and mane billowed magnificently, and continued in a voice that rolled like thunder.
"This humble body is the great Cloud Dragon! Master of the clouds, mighty god of heaven, and one of the Three Masters who govern the weather—"
As the dragon's voice rang on, the Crown Prince screwed his eyes shut with the grim face of a man preparing to die. And even then, he kept gesturing behind his back, telling me to run.
That wretched imugi—scaring my precious little husband half to death like this?
I bit my lip and fired a thought-message straight at the dragon.
Hey. Gwangcheol.
"This body has descended today upon this mortal world because— hk?!"