The Two Missing People
As soon as I stepped into the Tang Clan’s audience hall, I saw the clan lord seated in the place of honor.
The Tang Clan Lord was nothing like I had imagined.
When people said Sichuan Tang Clan, they meant a family skilled in poison, hidden weapons, and assassination, so I had expected someone with a sly, snake-cold look, something like Tang Ak.
But the man before me had a gentle, physician-like presence.
The Tang Clan Lord dismissed all the attendants who had followed us in.
Once they were gone, only four of us remained in the audience hall: me, Sohui, Tang Jin, and the Tang Clan Lord.
When the room fell quiet, the Tang Clan Lord spoke.
“Welcome to Sichuan. I hear you need assistance with the Alliance’s mission?”
“That’s right. Lately, strange deaths have been happening all over Sichuan. I wanted to ask whether this might be the effect of a poison your clan developed internally.”
“I’ve heard there is a plague of sorts in which the blood of the dead has all dried up, but this matter has nothing to do with any poison developed or managed by the Tang Clan. I, Tang Seonyak, can assure you of that.”
“Understood.”
“To be honest, I’m not sure whether it has any connection to the plague, but recently the number of missing persons within Sichuan Province has also been rising.”
“Missing persons?”
“The Tang Clan takes public order in Sichuan seriously, so I’d like to think our internal security is better than most cities. Even so, reports of disappearances have been increasing lately, without regard for age or gender.”
“When did it start?”
“Let me see... roughly after the plague began, a little before the Martial Arts Tournament ended, I believe.”
After the plague began.
It was impossible to tell whether the disappearances were connected to it or whether they were an entirely separate matter.
“For now, we should investigate the two cases separately. There’s still no clear link between them...”
“I think that would be wise as well. We’ll investigate the disappearances separately on our side. We’ll assign the young clan lord to assist you, so you should examine the corpses of the dead and the locations where they were found.”
We agreed with Tang Seonyak.
So the plague was not being caused by Tang Clan poison, but the case was still shrouded in fog.
For the moment, Tang Jin led us to the Tang Clan’s underground research facility.
Inside, countless herbs and toxins had been neatly organized.
When we entered one of the rooms, a corpse, dried to a husk, lay on top of a research table.
“This is the most recent corpse from the plague. After receiving your letter that the Alliance would be sending investigators, we secured it for research.”
The corpse looked like that of an adult man.
Sohui began examining it from every angle.
While she did that, I had a few questions for Tang Jin.
“Has the Tang Clan figured out why all the blood disappeared?”
“Not yet. The remaining corpses show no sign of any fungus or parasite, so it seems likely to be transmitted through blood... but there’s no blood left to examine, which makes it difficult to predict.”
It seemed the Tang Clan had not been receiving the intelligence gathered by the Beggars’ Sect, probably because they were currently the leading suspects in this plague.
For that reason, they still seemed to think of it as a disease.
Then Sohui seemed to notice something and waved me over.
When I approached, she parted the corpse’s hair and showed me something.
“Brother, do you see this tiny hole here?”
Looking closely, I saw a small puncture, as if the hair itself had not simply fallen out.
“Doesn’t this hole look suspicious?”
“It does look like it was made deliberately.”
“It looks like the mark left by a needle. There are others here and there too, but I’m not well-versed enough in acupuncture to tell whether they’re medical or not.”
Then Tang Jin, who had been watching from behind, spoke up.
“Could you tell me where exactly these wounds are?”
Aside from the head, there were also marks on both shoulders, the elbows, and the knees.
After hearing the locations, Tang Jin thought for a long moment before speaking again.
“From the shape, it looks as though they were pierced with a long needle, but these areas have nothing to do with medicine. Aside from the head, they aren’t even vital points used for assassination, so the Tang Clan’s hidden-weapon techniques would not target these spots with thrown needles either.”
Then why in the world are marks like this left on the corpse?
As I was thinking it over, someone opened the door and came in.
It was a man who appeared to be an attendant.
“There have been a large number of deaths on the outskirts of the village. They’re all plague victims!”
Until now, the deaths had occurred sporadically, one person or a handful at a time. But for a mass death to happen the moment we arrived in Sichuan to investigate, something was clearly moving in the shadows.
“Since it just happened, there should definitely be clues left behind!”
I agreed with Tang Jin.
“Let’s hurry to the scene.”
To prepare for any unexpected danger, Sohui stayed behind in the research room.
If a fight broke out, someone like her, who knew no martial arts, could be in danger.
So Tang Jin and I rushed off at once.
The scene was an isolated village a little way from Sichuan City.
Because of the distance, a few hours had passed by the time we arrived.
When we entered the village, the village chief was waiting for us.
“Are you here from the Tang Clan?”
“Yes. How long has it been?”
“About five hours since we discovered them.”
Although quite some time had passed, the number of dead was large enough that there had to be something to find.
The dead were not all villagers.
It seemed the village chief had been startled by the sudden appearance of mysterious corpses and contacted the Tang Clan in a panic.
We first checked whether there were any traces of long needles.
But although there were more than ten corpses, not one of them had such a mark.
“There aren’t any long-needle marks on any of the bodies.”
“Then the needle marks aren’t why the blood disappeared.”
The case had slipped back into the fog.
We searched for any other traces, but there were no matching wounds or marks among the bodies.
Before long, it grew dark outside, and we decided to stay in the village for the night.
These weren’t even villagers, so why leave the corpses here of all places? Are they connected to the missing people?
While I was thinking it over alone, Tang Jin knocked on my door.
“Young Master Han, are you still awake?”
“Yes. You can come in.”
Tang Jin opened the door and stepped inside.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late. Something just came to mind.”
“What is it?”
“I think a few of the corpses we saw earlier may have been missing persons. I can’t say I remember every person reported missing, but the report seems vaguely familiar.”
Tang Jin said vaguely, but if he had come looking for me at this hour, then his memory was probably fairly accurate.
One of the missing people had turned up as a plague victim, and in a village with no connection to him at all.
I thought back to the bodies once more.
An old man, a frail woman, young children...
They had all looked like powerless commoners.
That made me wonder whether the culprit was someone who selected the weak to abduct or kill.
One thing was certain: the disappearance case and the plague case were connected.
“It seems the disappearances and the plague are related.”
“I think so too. For now, let’s return to the Tang Clan tomorrow and compare the missing persons with the victims from today.”
The next day, as soon as dawn broke, we organized the victims’ distinguishing features and belongings in order to identify them.
I had expected it to take a long time because there were so many bodies, but since the culprit had not bothered much with their possessions or clothing, it was not difficult to identify them, and we finished relatively quickly.
Tang Jin and I set off at once for Sichuan City.
As soon as we arrived, we headed to the lord’s office to meet the Tang Clan Lord.
As we walked there, the Tang Clan’s attendants were moving about in a frenzy.
Something seemed to have happened while we were away.
On our way to the office, we ran into Tang Seonyak hurrying out.
When he saw us, he said anxiously, “You’ve arrived just in time. Lady Jegal has disappeared.”
Sohui is missing?
“The attendants confirmed that she left the research room last night and went to her quarters, so she must have disappeared sometime during the night.”
Of all times, Sohui had vanished while I was away.
Could this also be connected to the disappearances? If so, then Sohui too...?
The many corpses I had seen in the outskirts village came back to me.
“How on earth could a disappearance happen inside the Tang Clan...”
Tang Jin started to speak, then faltered.
“Yes... if something like this has happened, then the culprit must be inside the clan.”
Tang Seonyak said bitterly.
Someone inside.
I quickly ran through the people in the Tang Clan who could easily approach Sohui and abduct her without being seen by the guards or attendants.
At that moment, one person came to mind.
“Where is Tang Ak right now?”
“He should be in his room, I suppose?”
I immediately followed Tang Jin’s lead and headed for Tang Ak’s room.
But Tang Ak was nowhere to be found anywhere in the Tang Clan.
“With Tang Ak missing too in a situation like this, where could he have gone?”
“Actually, there’s still one place left to check.”
“Where is it?”
At my question, the Tang Clan Lord hesitated.
“My second son has a secret research room. He thought he was keeping it hidden, but he couldn’t fool my eyes.”
“A secret research room? What is he researching there?”
“My second son’s research is...”
At my question, the Tang Clan Lord hesitated once more.
Then, at last, he spoke.
“Research into reviving the dead.”