Monopolizing Fortunes (116)
Monopolizing Fortunes (116)
"Huh? What did you say?"
The physician in black asked again, thinking they had misheard.
"I said go to the imperial palace and look after the emperor."
Do Tong-dal repeated exactly what he had said before, without changing a single syllable. The physician in black, who had been blinking at Do Tong-dal for a long moment, let out a snicker.
"If that's a joke to mark your trip to Beijing, it's actually pretty funny. Keu-heu-heu......"
Do Tong-dal stared blank-faced at the physician in black as the laughter leaked out. Sensing something unusual, their laughter died down.
"It...... wasn't a joke?"
"No, it wasn't."
The moment the answer came, the physician in black shouted in outrage.
"Say something that makes sense! How does it make any sense for me to become a royal physician again?!"
"I pulled some strings."
"Who asked you to pull strings?! I'm not going! I am absolutely not going to the imperial palace!"
"I already told them you would go."
"I said I'm not going! I like it here! I'm not going!"
The physician in black shouted that they were not going, repeating it ten times over. Around the time the echo bouncing off the walls faded away, Do Tong-dal spoke.
"What happens to someone who refuses to treat the emperor's illness?"
The physician in black grabbed Do Tong-dal by the collar.
"You little bastard! What grudge do you have against me?! Why are you doing this to me?!"
The physician in black, spitting out the cry, looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
"Do you hate becoming a royal physician that much?"
"I hate it! Especially right now! They say the emperor's life is hanging by a thread! Being a royal physician at a time like this is no different from dancing on a knife's edge! If the emperor up and dies, the first person to get struck by lightning is the royal physician!"
"I didn't say to cure the emperor's illness."
"Huh?"
"Just make his dream of extending his life come true a little."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Even if Hua Tuo came, curing the emperor right now would be difficult. So you just need to buy the emperor enough time to hold on."
"Why in the world would I have to do something like that?"
"Do you really want me to tell you?"
The physician in black shook their head from side to side and released Do Tong-dal's collar.
"What you don't know about palace affairs can't hurt you. Do I really have to go?"
"Yes. Once this job is wrapped up, you'll be sleeping on a pile of silver."
Even though he had offered the money the physician in black loved so much, their face did not brighten.
"I'll just be glad if I don't end up buried under that silver and dead. To have to go back into that suffocating place."
For a moment, the thought 'Should I run away?' crossed his mind, but he soon dropped it. He had no confidence in going somewhere unfamiliar and starting over from scratch. Compared to that, waiting out a stretch of misery while anticipating sweet fruit was a far better choice.
"Where do I go?"
"Go find Censor Yang Su-pan. I'll give you the address, so leave right now."
"Right now?"
"You have to go before the emperor dies."
After practically shooing the physician in black off to Beijing, despite their protests that it was no way to treat their regulars, Do Tong-dal went to the Red Tiger Society headquarters.
The people who had received word to gather at the appointed time were all present without a single absence.
Namgung Seol-rin, Jang Yu-seom, Won Dae-yeon, Wang Chil, and Jo Jin-ho waited with faces full of curiosity for Do Tong-dal to open his mouth.
"First, there's something I need to tell Brother Wang Chil."
"Me?"
"I think it would be best to disband the Red Tiger Society."
At the unexpected words, all five people were startled.
"Why would you disband a perfectly fine Red Tiger Society?"
Do Tong-dal bowed his head toward the five.
"First, I should apologize for going ahead and doing something without discussing it with you."
"I need to know the inside story before I decide whether to accept your apology or throw it away."
He had agonized over it the whole time, but he could not persuade them without telling the truth.
"If what we're doing now goes wrong, we could be branded traitors."
"Tr...... traitors?"
Jo Jin-ho asked.
"A bunch of lowlife thugs branded as traitors? What does that mean?"
After much deliberation, Do Tong-dal decided to tell the truth. It was hard to hide, and they had a right to know. And he trusted the weight of their lips.
So he laid bare everything about what had happened in Beijing and the events to come.
After hearing the whole story, the five people remained silent for a long time. They had spent their entire lives as martial artists and gangsters, so the idea of supporting an emperor was not something they could readily accept as real.
After a long silence, Jang Yu-seom opened his mouth.
"So if the Third Prince rises to the emperor's throne, we become meritorious subjects, but if we fail, we become traitors."
"That's right. So I'm trying to prepare for the possibility of failure."
"Doesn't that mean you're going to get us to safety and have Coordinator Do take the fall alone?"
"Since this was decided on my own authority, it's only right that I alone bear the danger."
Wang Chil spoke.
"Don't talk bullshit. If what you say is true, then what are we to you?"
"Brother......"
"We may not have sworn brotherhood or anything like that, but you're no different from a real younger brother to me. And Jin-ho here would feel the same."
Jo Jin-ho nodded in agreement.
"You'd leave yourself alone in the middle of a brutal storm and tell us to run? Is that really all you think of us?"
"I'm trying to prevent pointless sacrifice."
"What sacrifice? Thanks to you, I've enjoyed the luxury of being the Red Tiger Society's Society Leader, so I should share the bad times too. If I ran away here, what would people say about me?"
"No one would know."
"Even if no one else knows, I would! Are you telling me to die of shame?"
"Brother, don't be stubborn for nothing. You should get out of the rain while you can."
"Fuck, if you get rained on, I get rained on with you. Don't give me that bullshit. And do you think I'd give up the Society Leader seat? I'd rather die than hand this nice position to someone else, so get that through your head."
"I'm not giving up the Deputy Society Leader seat either. Hmph!"
Namgung Seol-rin chimed in too, saying, "I'm not stepping down from Protector either." Jang Yu-seom and Won Dae-yeon felt the same way.
He had expected they would not be easy to persuade, but this felt like talking to a wall.
"Why are you all so desperate to die? Just stay out of the way until this is over."
Won Dae-yeon asked.
"Do you not have confidence in putting the Third Prince on the throne? The Do Tong-dal I know doesn't do things he isn't confident about."
"Of course I'm not without confidence. But there's always that one-in-ten-thousand chance."
Of course, the probability of failure was far higher than that. Namgung Seol-rin patted Do Tong-dal on the shoulder.
"If it's you, you'll succeed."
"Hey, no one can know that."
"I believe in your abilities."
Amusingly, the person in this room least confident of success seemed to be Do Tong-dal himself.
"Fine. Let's all get on the same boat and push through the rough waves together."
Wang Chil asked.
"But there's one thing bothering me."
"What is it?"
"The hidden faction. Why did you choose such an uncertain path? If we can't find those bastards, we fail from the very start. There must be easier ways."
"There are. But I have a debt to repay to those bastards."
"A debt?"
Do Tong-dal pulled up his outer garment and showed his chest. A bright red scar that had not yet fully healed ran long from his chest downward.
Startled, Namgung Seol-rin asked.
"What is this wound?"
"A warning those bastards left behind."
"Those sons of bitches! How dare they do this to my man?!"
"'My man' is a bit....... Anyway, they have to pay the price for touching me."
Jo Jin-ho spoke.
"Is there a way to find that hidden faction?"
"I have one lead."
"What lead?"
"The Beggars' Sect."
Won Dae-yeon asked.
"You're going to commission the Beggars' Sect? They're probably searching with bloodshot eyes themselves right now."
"The Beggars' Sect doesn't know there's a rat in its own house."
"Oho! So you're going to find the mole hidden in the Beggars' Sect."
"They're certain to be in a high position, so if I tell the Beggars' Sect Leader, he should be able to point out the suspicious person."
Won Dae-yeon nodded.
"If it were another sect, I wouldn't know, but in the Beggars' Sect it would definitely show. A beggar who doesn't look like a beggar is bound to stand out. But meeting the Beggars' Sect Leader won't be easy, will it?"
He wasn't some Wang the shopkeeper in the marketplace. Meeting the leader of the Beggars' Sect, which stood shoulder to shoulder with the Nine Great Sects, was certainly difficult.
"Wouldn't it be possible if it were the Northern Unorthodox Alliance Leader?"
"You're going to ask Alliance Leader Hwang? Will he listen?"
Do Tong-dal grinned.
"If I asked him to pull out his liver, he'd pull it out. And this......"
Do Tong-dal took three secret manuals out of the bundle beside him.
"I brought these from the Imperial Palace Secret Archive. All three of you practice sword arts, so use them if you need them."
"The Imperial Palace Secret Archive? Does a place like that really exist in the imperial palace?"
"Yeah. Turns out it does."
Namgung Seol-rin and Won Dae-yeon, who saw the secret manual on top, were startled.
"The Manwon Sword Art!"
"Looks like it's a sword art you know?"
Namgung Seol-rin shouted in excitement.
"Of course! It's the sword art of Cheonun Seonnyeo, who was the greatest swordswoman in Henan seventy years ago! It was lost after she died, so how could I not know this famous sword art?"
When Do Tong-dal stared blankly at her, Namgung Seol-rin muttered, "Right, you're not a martial artist, you're a gangster."
Won Dae-yeon's hand, which had been flipping through the Manwon Sword Art, stopped.
"Heo-heo! This keeps getting surprising. The Jeolhae Sword Art, of all things."
"What? Is it really the Jeolhae Sword Art?"
"If a successor of the Jeolhae Sword Sect still existed, they'd foam at the mouth and collapse."
Do Tong-dal asked.
"I take it that's a famous sword art too?"
"It's the signature sword art of the Jeolhae Sword Sect, which stood shoulder to shoulder with the Nine Great Sects a hundred years ago. The Sect Leader left no disciples, and the manual vanished as well, so the family declined sharply and finally disappeared forty years ago. A tragic sect. I'm curious what the next manual is."
Won Dae-yeon's eyes trembled faintly as he opened the Jeolhae Sword Art. That trembling gaze fixed on Do Tong-dal.
"Did you know what this was when you brought it?"
"What?"
"The Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword."
"I did skim through it. Actually, I brought it because I thought it might help Protector Won......"
"This is the martial art I trained in."
Everyone was startled at those words. Won Dae-yeon had earned the name of the greatest hero under heaven, but no one in the martial world knew his background precisely.
"The Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword is a single-successor martial art."
Namgung Seol-rin spoke.
"Honestly, I've never heard the name Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword before."
"I'm the first person to learn the Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword and come out into the martial world. My master and grandmaster spent their whole lives only researching martial arts before passing away. This Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword manual is a compilation of what my master realized in his later years."
Won Dae-yeon's hand holding the manual was trembling faintly.
"But it disappeared. During the one year I left my master alone and went out into the martial world, my master passed away and the manual vanished."
Do Tong-dal asked cautiously.
"Was your master murdered?"
"No. He was too strong to be killed by anyone. It seems he overexerted himself trying to break through his limits and fell into qi deviation. After my master passed away, I searched for this manual, even turning the house upside down to the rafters, but I couldn't find it. And to think it was in the Imperial Palace Secret Archive......"
Wang Chil spoke.
"After going around and around, it finally ended up in Won Dae-yeon's hands. This must be fate."
"Indeed. Heaven has given me the chance to complete the Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword."
Namgung Seol-rin was startled.
"Then Won Dae-yeon's Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword isn't complete?"
"My talent was lacking, so I stalled between seventy and eighty percent."
"Then this manual is truly a fortuitous encounter."
Won Dae-yeon looked at Do Tong-dal.
"It's a fortuitous encounter that Coordinator Do gave me."
"Who says I'm giving it to you?"
"Huh?"
"I'm the one who brought it from the Imperial Palace Secret Archive, so I'm the owner."
"No, are you really going to fight me over ownership?"
"It's a joke."
"This guy!"
"Then the Invincible Inch-Heaven Sword is Protector Won's, and you can take the Manwon Sword Art, Seol-rin. There's no rule saying a child of the Namgung Clan can't learn another sword art, is there?"
"That's true."
The fact that Cheonun Seonnyeo had risen to the position of the greatest swordswoman in Henan as a woman alone showed that the Manwon Sword Art was extraordinary.
"The Jeolhae Sword Art is Protector Jang's."
Jang Yu-seom scratched his head.
"I'm not sure I should accept this."
"I brought these because of the three of you, so just take them for now. If they help, that alone is a relief."
"Didn't you bring anything for yourself, Coordinator Do?"
Do Tong-dal grinned.
"Of course I did. It turns out the second half of the Three Severings Blade Art I've been training in was there."
"What? The Three Severings Blade Art that was in the Namgung Clan was only half?"
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