The Way of Expediency
Sunlight seeped through the gaps between the windows, casting deep shadows across the floor in the afternoon hush.
The room was filled with hot, stale air, but the weight in the breath hanging there was not caused by that alone.
Through the drifting motes of dust, Dang Gangjin narrowed his brow and fixed the door with a hard stare.
Why on earth had the Alliance Leader, who should have been at the Murim Alliance Headquarters, suddenly appeared in Sichuan?
And not only that—he had openly set foot in the safe house of people standing on opposite sides of a razor’s edge.
He had no idea what Yu Baekheon intended by all this, but he had no intention of being dragged along at the man’s whim.
A moment later, the door rattled open, and Yu Baekheon stepped over the threshold.
One step, then another.
At first glance, his gait was no different from that of any ordinary man, yet only silence lingered in the air around him.
“Dang Gangjin, young clan leader of the Sichuan Tang Clan, greets the Alliance Leader.”
Even if their relationship was no different from hostility now, as long as they both still upheld the banner of righteousness, the minimum courtesy had to be observed.
Receiving such a simple yet flawless greeting, Yu Baekheon slowly inclined his head.
“I hear you have been carrying out the duties of acting clan head. I accept your courtesy with gratitude, but spare me any further formalities.”
When Yu Baekheon took his seat, Dang Gangjin quietly tilted the teapot over the tea leaves.
Water murmured low as the leaves rose and fell as though dancing, and a fresh, grassy fragrance spread thinly through the room.
“You’ve come a long way. Please, have some tea first.”
Even if Yu Baekheon had little interest in tea, he lifted the cup without hesitation this time.
“A fine aroma.”
As a mellow sweetness spread across his tongue, a satisfied expression came over his face.
“I’m glad it suits you.”
“There is no one in the Central Plains who would not find White Tiger Needle to their liking.”
As Yu Baekheon set the cup down, Dang Gangjin’s gaze, gentle yet unwavering, settled on him.
“Still, I am curious why you came to Sichuan without so much as a word of notice. Had you informed us in advance, I would have sent someone to receive you.”
“Word reached me about someone I had lost touch with long ago, and I came in haste. I searched the entire Central Plains, leaving no place untouched, but I was told that person had been working at an inn here all this time.”
After the Alliance Leader set foot in Sichuan, unknown men in black slaughtered a Tang Clan martial artist who had been working at that very inn.
And the acquaintance he had supposedly been searching for had also been working there.
At such a strange coincidence, the tea caught in his throat.
“I see. Then you must have been very pleased to reunite with an old acquaintance after so long.”
“I nearly wept when I saw the face.”
At the claim that the Alliance Leader had nearly shed tears, Dang Gangjin let out a silent, mocking laugh to himself.
The man’s mind was as sharp as any poison master’s in the Tang Clan—what ridiculous nonsense was that?
“I’m sure I would have been as well.”
He spoke words entirely unlike his true thoughts, and just as he was about to warm his hands around the cup again—
“That isn’t the question you truly wish to ask, is it?”
At Yu Baekheon’s bluntness, Dang Gangjin paused briefly before letting out a thin sigh.
“I’m still lacking if I cannot hide things from the Alliance Leader.”
A faint edge sharpened Dang Gangjin’s gaze.
“Still, since you’ve asked, I’ll answer. What was your true reason for coming to our main house?”
For a young master of the Tang Clan, he seemed a little too soft.
But seeing how he pressed forward the instant a crack appeared, without the slightest hesitation, Yu Baekheon allowed himself a faint smile.
“Must there always be a reason to come somewhere? I simply happened to be in Sichuan, so I stopped by to pay my respects as well. It is a slight shame that I missed your father, though.”
Dang Gangjin looked down at the still-steaming cup at those words, which mingled falsehood and truth so neatly they were impossible to separate.
If he couldn’t tell them apart, then he need only accept neither.
“...I see.”
With those words, silence settled over the room for a moment.
After the cups were filled once more and the two men moistened their throats a few more times, Yu Baekheon spoke first again.
“Anything else you’re curious about? Anything at all is fine. That was what I came for, after all.”
Dang Gangjin seemed to hesitate for a moment before asking carefully,
“Then, not as the young clan leader of the Tang Clan, but as a junior from the righteous sects, may I ask you something?”
The chill that had been as sharp as a perfectly honed throwing dart faded, and in its place sat a martial artist who had yet to find his answer before Yu Baekheon.
“I don’t know what others think, but I don’t believe the thing you seek to achieve is simply wrong. It’s only that...”
He swallowed dryly before continuing in a low voice.
“I’ve heard far too much blood has already been spilled. And the blood that must be spilled in the future will be no less. Can that path, stained as it is with blood, truly be called the righteous way?”
If the question had come from the Tang Clan’s young master, he would not have answered. But because it came from a junior asking earnestly, Yu Baekheon took care in his reply more than once over.
“The sages of old said there are two roads in the Dao. One is the righteous way, as you call it, and the other is the way of expediency.”
Yu Baekheon and Dang Gangjin’s gazes met in the empty air between them.
“Consider this. A ragged little pickpocket runs off with two steamed buns in his hands. But as he turns into an alley, he comes face to face with a constable wearing his plaque.”
The more Yu Baekheon spoke, the more Dang Gangjin felt the world around him darken despite the daylight.
“By the rules, he ought to have received ten strokes of the whip, but the constable knew the child’s mother suffered from a long illness. So he closed his eyes for a moment and let the boy pass. He even remembered to go pay the shopkeeper for the buns.”
With a slap-like surge, a black wave from the depths of his imagination washed over his feet.
“In the end, the constable violated the righteous way, but by doing so, he avoided becoming a beast. Do you understand what I mean?”
Before he knew it, seawater cold enough to reach his bones had climbed up his ankles and surged toward his chest.
“In order to preserve the banner of righteousness, there are times when one must step beyond the bounds of the Dao. You asked whether a bloodstained road can truly be called righteous, did you not? The question itself is flawed. The road I intend to walk is precisely this way of expediency.”
Now the water had risen to his throat, and he lifted his chin to breathe.
“If you lost someone precious to you, would people still be willing to keep walking that road?”
Dang Gangjin’s gaze seemed to ask whether you were prepared for that, and Yu Baekheon’s face stiffened.
“I, too, have buried many beneath the path. One of them could have been traded for my own life. This is not a matter of whether one can accept it. It is something that must be done. So...”
A fierce current from the Northern Sea rose and shaped itself into a wave that blotted out the sky before crashing down over Dang Gangjin’s head.
“No matter what sacrifices lie ahead, I will never stop.”
When the boat that had come up the Yangtze reached the ferry landing, the members of the merchant caravan shouldered their loads and crossed the bridge carefully one by one.
The dawn mist wrapped itself around the riverbank, and the boat tethered to the rope left only the faintest tremor behind.
“We should get off too.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once the commotion had settled and the procession had grown sparse, those who had been waiting at a step back finally set foot on land with a little more ease.
Perhaps because they had grown too used to the violent rush of the water, the stillness beneath their feet felt strangely awkward.
“There they are.”
After walking not far, the two joined the group waiting in the dark with their horse reins in hand.
“You must have been dampened by the morning dew. You didn’t have to wait inside.”
“Not at all.”
After exchanging a brief greeting, they mounted without delay.
“Let’s go.”
With a light flick of the reins, the horses’ hooves struck stone and kicked up dust.
The road was clearly not all that far, and yet for some reason it felt longer today than a journey of a thousand li.
Wet blades of grass rang softly in the wind, and the horses’ rough breathing gradually drove the darkness back.
After crossing several ridgelines, a red glow began to rise in the east between the mountain shoulders.
One by one, the stars vanished without a trace.
That fading light only made his heart more impatient.
“We’re almost there now.”
Perhaps because his anxiety showed on his face, the man who had come down from the boat with him spoke to him quietly.
On the boat, he had seemed so indifferent it was almost off-putting.
But as the distance shrank, the other man’s restless expression made laughter slip from him before he could stop it.
“Your heart is my heart.”
In truth, the man himself wanted nothing more than to pour every ounce of his inner force into lightness skill and race ahead this very moment.
He had tried to restrain himself as much as possible, knowing that a premature certainty could turn into crushing disappointment, but it was useless.
In some corner of his heart, he was already seeing a lost person in the face of a young woman whose face he did not even know.
If that young woman was truly his niece...
Just thinking it made his chest tighten and emotion surge up to the brink, so he clenched his lips hard.
Then, as they climbed the final slope without hesitation, the fortress they had longed for at last came into view.
“At last, I can see it.”
Banners atop the walls glimmered gold, and the drumbeats announcing dawn rolled outward across the broad land.
It was almost as though the city itself were welcoming their arrival, and the man leading the way found a smile forming at his mouth of its own accord.
“Welcome back to Chengdu.”