For a Cold Revenge
Chancellor Jang Mun-hyeok entered the palace as the sun was beginning to set.
When the eunuch spoke the name, a passage I had read in the novel came back to me.
An old man who had offered counsel at the Emperor's side more than once — and who, the moment the Emperor drew his sword against the murim, had laid down his office and retired to the countryside.
At the time, I'd given it little thought.
I simply assumed he hadn't wanted to die playing the loyal retainer.
Looking back now, that old man was the cleverest character in the entire book.
While the Emperor lay dead and blood ran through the palace, Jang Mun-hyeok was in his hometown, teaching his grandchildren to read.
I only remembered him because of a brief scene in the latter half of the novel, where Wi Jin-woo came seeking his wisdom.
He had been a power broker even the Late Emperor could not handle lightly.
His protégés sat in the key posts of the court, and it was not uncommon for reports arriving from the provinces to reach the Chancellor's ears before the Emperor's own.
At the same time, he was also the man who had taught me statecraft.
In this body's memories, Jang Mun-hyeok always wore a smiling face.
When I recited passages of the classics without a hitch, he praised me — and the moment I declared I would govern precisely by those passages, he would throw out some thorny question.
Who stands to lose if you do that? Will that man simply sit quietly? What does Your Highness intend to do about him? And so on.
The young Crown Prince often hated those lessons.
Because every time I thought I'd found the right answer, my old teacher changed the question.
"Grant him an audience."
A short while later, the doors opened and an old man with a white-flecked beard entered.
His steps were slow, but his back was straight, and he crossed the threshold without leaning on anyone.
He stopped before the desk and bowed.
"Your servant Jang Mun-hyeok greets Your Majesty."
I set down the report in my hand.
"How fares your health?"
"I beg forgiveness for troubling Your Majesty's concern. After some days of rest, I have much recovered."
"The news that you had not pressed your seal to the edict must have been a miracle cure."
Jang Mun-hyeok raised his head.
The old man studied my face for a moment, then bowed low once more.
"If Your Majesty wishes to rebuke your servant for feigning illness, I will accept it gladly."
"I won't deny it."
"I should have brought a walking stick when I came to the palace."
I snorted a laugh.
"Sit. There's no need to play the invalid at this point."
"Your Majesty's grace is boundless."
Jang Mun-hyeok took the chair the eunuch brought.
When a cup of tea was set down, the old man wrapped both hands around it.
He would have prepared what to say on the way here, yet he did not open his mouth first.
I drew out the imperial edict I had pushed to one side of the desk.
Jang Mun-hyeok's gaze went straight to it.
"You believed I could not be dissuaded?"
"I did, Your Majesty."
The answer came swiftly.
And he made no attempt to dress it up with words more pleasing to an emperor's ear.
"Even if the Chancellor had come?"
"Had I spoken, Your Majesty would have been all the angrier."
He wasn't wrong.
If another minister had tried to stop me, I'd have cursed him as a coward — but if Jang Mun-hyeok had done it, I'd have felt betrayed.
He had been my teacher since childhood, and he had stood beside me when I broke apart after losing Yu Ran.
If even he had tried to bend my will, I'd have asked myself who in the world was left to trust.
"So you simply did not appear at all?"
"If Your Majesty had rejected my remonstration, your servant would have had to either withdraw or submit the same plea again and again."
Jang Mun-hyeok released his hands from the teacup.
"Withdraw, and my word grows light at court. Plead again, and Your Majesty must cast me out. Either way, my chance to speak ever again disappears."
I looked at the old man's face.
The Emperor of the original story never managed to make use of him.
He'd dismissed the old man as one who would not bend to his will, and Jang Mun-hyeok had never tried to be won back twice.
Was it a shortfall of loyalty?
Perhaps.
This old man was not the sort to burn his own house down for an emperor's sake.
And, in truth, that was what I liked about him.
How good a guide can a man be to someone else's future, when he cannot even find his own path to survival?
"I have changed my mind."
Jang Mun-hyeok looked at the edict.
"So I have heard."
"I do not mean that I am giving up my revenge."
I waited until his eyes came back to me.
"I will not accept any plea that I forget Yu Ran. Nor do I wish to hear that time is a medicine."
The moment I spoke her name, my chest tightened.
I remembered the last words Yu Ran had said to me.
She'd told me to walk the Rear Garden together when I returned.
She'd said the flowers would bloom once the weather warmed, and that by then she would be up on her feet too.
I had said yes.
I had thought that if only I could find the right herbs, it would happen.
My fingers pressed hard against the corner of the edict.
"The Qingcheng Sect will be exterminated."
Jang Mun-hyeok did not lower his head. He looked me straight in the face.
"No disciple shall ever be accepted under that name again. And I will personally take down the plaque that hangs at their mountain gate."
"…Your Majesty."
"But I will wait."
The old man's mouth closed.
I smoothed out the crumpled corner of the edict with my palm.
A crease that has been folded once remains, no matter how you stroke it.
"If I send troops now, the Qingcheng Sect will cry out to the murim for deliverance. They will say the Emperor means to erase the martial world."
"Yes, they will."
"And if I had already issued this edict as well, their persuasion would have been all too easy."
I touched the section on the edict that ordered the surrender of weapons.
"Enemies of the Qingcheng Sect would have come running with blades in hand. From where they stand, it is better to fight alongside the other murim while they still stand, than to wait for the sect to fall and take their own turn next."
"So it would be."
"If I were the sect leader of Qingcheng, I would have copied the Emperor's edict and scattered it across the murim. Far more useful than any proclamation written by their own hand."
The corners of Jang Mun-hyeok's eyes shifted slightly.
I rolled up the edict and set it aside.
"But what if the fall of Qingcheng creates those who profit from it?"
The old man did not answer at once.
Jang Mun-hyeok took a sip of tea, set the cup back on the desk, and leaned forward.
"What manner of profit does Your Majesty speak of?"
"That is what I am in the process of finding out."
I gestured toward the reports the eunuchs had brought.
"There is one clan that quarreled with them over paddies at the foot of the mountain. But that alone is not enough. It's impossible to tell from this whether those who supposedly took Qingcheng to court hold any real power, or are simply the aggrieved crying injustice."
"I have looked into that suit myself, Your Majesty. Their opponent was a minor clan, and Qingcheng — fearful, I suspect — has since withdrawn even their petition."
"Then they are of no use at present."
"They could change, if Your Majesty stood behind them."
"Then my name would go in first, and that I cannot allow. Not yet."
A smile flickered at the corners of Jang Mun-hyeok's mouth and vanished.
The old man stroked his beard once.
"Pray continue."
"There will be sects on poor terms with Qingcheng as well. Some will be rivals squabbling over the patronage of the same merchant house, and there are those like the Sichuan Dang Clan who jockey for dominance over Sichuan itself. There was no need to press such people to lay down their arms."
In my past life, the party leader had once summoned me and asked which senior legislator I could bring down.
Before I went looking for that man's corruption, I first confirmed who could inherit his district seat if he stepped aside.
People who pretended to be clean turned out, surprisingly, to bring me a great deal of material.
The party leader had found it thoroughly delightful that day.
This time, I was the one sitting in that chair.
"If I take Qingcheng's side, they must stand to lose something — and if they hold their tongues, they must stand to gain. Once I've arranged that, then I'll knock on the mountain gate."
"In the meantime, Qingcheng may test Your Majesty's patience."
"They will."
"There will be talk that the throne has backed down. They will boast that even the Son of Heaven has acknowledged the doctrine of Guanmu Bulgapchim. They may even drag out the matter of Your Majesty visiting their mountain gate and put it about again."
My jaw tightened.
Jang Mun-hyeok saw it and did not stop talking.
My old teacher was changing the question again.
It is easy to say you will wait with words.
What he was asking was whether I could endure it even if they mocked me while dragging my dead wife's name through the mud.
I looked out the window for a moment.
The slanting late light hung from the eaves.
The Rear Garden I had promised to walk with Yu Ran was not visible from here.
"And yet if I send troops, you'll take to your sickbed again?"
"This time, I fear, the medicine will be costly."
I nearly laughed.
I turned my head away.
"I will endure it. But if I hear such talk, do not hide it from me."
"Can Your Majesty bear it?"
"I did not say I would forget and live on. I said I would hold it in my keeping — and return it to them, all together, in time."
Jang Mun-hyeok gazed at me for a long while.
I picked up my teacup.
The tea the eunuch had brought — too hot to touch at first — had gone cold without my noticing.
"They say revenge is a dish best served cold."
"I have never heard that saying, Your Majesty."
"Neither do I remember where I first heard it."
I took a sip, and a bitter taste lingered on my tongue.
"If I lunge at them now to vent this rage, the Qingcheng bastards become heroes. The disciples I kill become martyrs, and the money of the murim pours into the mountain gate they burned. Perhaps they'll rebuild it even grander than before."
Having said it aloud, I felt fouler still.
Even after my death, those men would have been able to leave behind, as proud history, the fact that they had abandoned Yu Ran to die.
We did not bow to the Emperor's tyranny. We punished those who violated the doctrine of Guanmu Bulgapchim.
I set down the teacup.
"I will not watch it come to that."
"……"
"A revenge left to grow cold cuts far deeper. I will wait — and when no one in the world will stand for those bastards, I will finish it then."
There was the sound of a chair scraping back.
Jang Mun-hyeok rose from his seat.
I thought the old man had stood to take his leave.
But Jang Mun-hyeok straightened his robes and knelt before me.
"Chancellor?"
He placed both palms on the floor and bowed his head deeply.
"That Your Majesty possesses such brilliance — it is a blessing for the ancestral shrines, the state, and all the world."
When the old man lifted his face, he was smiling.
The wariness that had clung to him since his entrance into the palace had melted away.
Joy shone plain and clear in the creases around his eyes.
"Presumptuous as it is, your servant had still thought of Your Majesty as a disciple who had need of further teaching."
"You seem delighted that I swallowed my rage."
"Yes. Delighted beyond measure."
He was so candid that, this time, laughter really did escape me.
Jang Mun-hyeok laughed along with me.
"Your Majesty was clever even as a child. Only, whenever your heart grew impatient, you would produce the answer before your servant had even finished the question."
"I am still breaking that habit. Rise and sit."
I waited until the old man had returned to his chair before asking.
"So — is your illness finally cured?"
"I can attend to state affairs from tomorrow."
"Not today?"
Jang Mun-hyeok looked at the reports stacked on the desk.
For a moment his face wore a look of faint regret. Then he picked up the ledger resting on top.
"We must clear this one away first, Your Majesty."
"Why so?"
"It is an old report. The clan recorded here as being at odds with Qingcheng entered into marriage with one of Qingcheng's lay disciples last year."
I looked down at the paper I had been reading.
Had I taken it at face value and made my approach, the very first move would have gone straight into Qingcheng's ears.
Jang Mun-hyeok turned his body toward the door.
"Someone outside — send a man to the Chancellor's residence. Tell him to fetch the ledger bound in blue silk, on the shelf to the right of my study."
A reply sounded from beyond the door.
I stared at the old man.
"You keep records of that sort as well?"
"When a man grows old, his memory clouds. One must write things down."
"And you intended to take them with you when you retired to the countryside?"
Jang Mun-hyeok's hand stopped.
Slowly, he turned back to look at me.
I smiled and pushed the cold teacup toward him.
"If you were going to teach me, then see the lesson through to the end."
The old man was silent for a moment. Then he took the cup.
"……Yes, Your Majesty."
This time, the answer came a little late.