Wake Up, Clan Head
Those who steel themselves for a great resolve tend to wear equally grim expressions.
We stood once more before the gates of the Tang Clan looking every bit as determined as people about to charge straight into the heart of enemy territory.
"...Haa, young lady."
"We already told you."
The gatekeepers of the Tang Clan let out heavy sighs and tried to drive us off again. Their eyes slid over to me standing beside her, then sharpened with the unspoken accusation, You're the one who put her up to this.
"Coming here to make a fuss with some wandering warrior won't do you any good."
"As long as the Young Clan Head is here, entry permission will never—"
KRAAAASH!
As if she found the noise irritating, Dang Yeohye's kick shattered the main gate outright. Internal energy seethed at the tip of her foot. The Poison Dog's face flashed with a murderous glint.
"Get out of the way before you die."
"...Yes, ma'am."
Once she decided to use force, there was nothing for lowly gatekeepers to do. The men who had been leaning on the Young Clan Head's authority hastily tucked their tails and fled.
The moment we stepped over the wrecked gate, a whole pack of people came thundering toward us from afar, drawn by the crash. They took one look at the smoking, demolished front gate of the Tang Clan and started yelling in pure panic.
"Who the hell are you...!"
"How dare you raise a ruckus in the Sichuan Tang Clan!"
"These scoundrels have guts for brains!"
Tang Clan martial artists closed in with killing intent rolling off them. Poison-laced murderous will rose from every direction, forming a neat circular cordon around the gate.
"I don't know who you are, but I'll break your arms and legs and—ah, wait... Young Lady Dang Yeohye?"
The man shouting at the front said it with a blank, poleaxed expression, like he had just spotted something that absolutely should not exist.
"You all look pretty surprised. What's so strange about a daughter of the Tang Clan walking into the Tang Clan?"
Dang Yeohye swept her gaze slowly around her with a cold little smile. The odd pressure and presence she radiated made the surrounding martial artists flinch back a fraction.
"B-but, young lady. Last time Young Clan Head Dang Ak said that..."
"He said the young lady is currently so smitten with a young, handsome wandering warrior that she can't tell heaven from earth..."
While they spoke, the Tang Clan martial artists shot me sidelong looks. Well, I was young and pretty good-looking. Looks like that Dang Ak bastard at least had eyes for faces.
"Hmph, and you believe that guy? The one who skulks around the back of the clan pulling shady little schemes...!"
"Well... compared to Young Lady Dang Yeohye, who throws fists first every single day..."
"He is the more trustworthy one, frankly..."
Apparently saying whatever was on their minds was just the Tang Clan personality. I glanced sideways at Dang Yeohye, who was hopping up and down in pure outrage. This felt a little bit like reaping what she'd sown, right?
"Eyes forward, little sister."
She must have read the meaning in my look, because she shoved my chin aside with a flick of her hand.
"I won't say it twice. All of you, move. Don't block a daughter's path to see her father."
Dang Yeohye's red-tinged eyes narrowed with pure fury. Her dark-green nails stood on end, and a vicious, murderous energy coiled out of them.
"...We cannot allow that!"
"We were ordered to stop the young lady!"
In the end the Tang Clan martial artists drew their weapons. Watching them, Dang Yeohye's expression froze over cold.
"Fine. So you want blood, is that it?"
Her eyes flashed. If a fight was unavoidable, the one who struck first held the advantage.
Taat!
Her body split the air. Like a bolt of lightning she dove straight into their ranks, and her knife-hands—cupped and loaded with internal energy—tore through the enemies without the slightest hesitation.
Chae-chaeng! Pa-kang!
The startled Tang Clan fighters swung their weapons in a panic, but it was useless. Blades and spears shattered and burst apart under the knife-hands of a woman who had already reached the Transcendental Peak Realm.
"Keu-heok!"
"Kkuk!"
In the blink of an eye, roughly ten martial artists screamed and toppled. Thankfully she seemed to have avoided vital points, but every one of them was clutching a broken arm or leg and moaning in pain.
"Since when... did the young lady possess this level of martial skill..."
"Such free and effortless control of qi..."
"C-could she have stepped into the Transcendental Peak Realm?"
Her martial prowess was on an entirely different level from before. Shocked voices erupted among the Tang Clan fighters who had just traded hands with her. Even at her tender age she had already set foot in the Transcendental Peak Realm—they couldn't stop murmuring. At this rate she had the talent to aim past the Blue Cloud Sword of the Namgung Clan and all the way toward the next Seat of the Strongest Under Heaven.
"I told you to move."
But regret after the fact was always too late. Dang Yeohye brought the iron hammer of justice down on everyone who had chosen the wrong side and stood in her way.
Peopeopeok!
Tiny fists slammed into faces. She knocked every last person who had opposed her clean unconscious. Just like that, we successfully cleared the Tang Clan's first wave charging the main gate.
"Mujin, what are you doing?"
"Cheering."
I quietly lowered the thumbs-up I had been holding high. With a Transcendental Peak expert around, there wasn't exactly room for me to jump in.
"Anyway, follow me, Mujin. I know the shortcuts and secret passages around here."
The instant the words left her mouth, I sensed the qi signatures of countless Tang Clan members approaching from far off. Horns were blowing, people were shouting, and the whole mass was closing in on our position.
"Let's go already."
Our goal wasn't to overthrow the Tang Clan. It was to raise Clan Head Dang Yangcheon back to his feet. We used the opening created by the fallen fighters and headed straight for the Hall of Reflection.
We crawled through a waterway on our hands and knees, then popped up in an unexpected place—me and Dang Yeohye.
"Hm?"
"Young lady, why are you—?"
Puk! Puk!
Like a scene out of a spy movie, we dropped every attendant guarding the Hall of Reflection with knife-hand strikes to the back of the neck. Martial artists who couldn't even put up a proper fight against a Transcendental Peak expert flying and leaping like a swallow simply crumpled in heaps.
"Mujin! Over there! My father is inside that building. I can feel his presence!"
Dang Yeohye's face lit up as she tapped my arm excitedly.
"Then let's get in there and wake him up already. This is going to get bad real fast."
With its main gate smashed and its secret passages compromised, the Sichuan Tang Clan was in complete chaos. Every martial artist had poured out into the open, shouting as they searched for the intruders.
"Shall we?"
We had been about to slip quietly into the Hall of Reflection when—
"Where are you two rushing off to in such a hurry?"
An unpleasantly familiar middle-aged voice stopped us dead in our tracks. We turned around at the entrance to the hall and found ourselves looking at Young Clan Head Dang Ak's thoroughly punchable face. He approached with the expression of a man thinking Of course it would be you, leading the elders and subordinates who had sided with him.
"Noona, you brought the Face-Spider Poison Spring, right?"
"Yeah. It's in my robes."
The item we had gone through hell to bring back from the Southern Barbarian lands just to restore the balance. She gave a small nod at my whisper.
"Even after administering it, getting it under control will take a bit of time, right?"
"Yeah. A little while."
Because she would have to pour the poison in from outside and then use the same poison arts to rebalance everything. Hearing that, I turned fully around at the entrance of the Hall of Reflection—facing the approaching group led by Young Clan Head Dang Ak.
"I'll buy time. Noona, go inside and wake the Clan Head."
"Hey, but..."
"If we both stay here, neither of us gets anything done."
There was no room for argument. She looked back and forth between me and the approaching Dang Ak, then bit her lip hard and sprinted into the building.
"If I'd known you were this crazy, I should have beaten you half to death and thrown you out of the Tang Clan from the very start."
Dang Ak let out an incredulous laugh as he pointed at the Tang Clan grounds, which were now thrashing around like a kicked beehive. Then his expression hardened completely.
"I expected my little sister to raise a foolish rebellion against me, but I never imagined some no-name wandering warrior would be reckless enough to help her."
He declared that the act of meddling in Tang Clan affairs was arrogant beyond measure, and that the price for that arrogance would be the complete destruction of the Sichuan Wandering Warriors' Association in a storm of blood.
"Rebellion, huh. Let's go with the cooler word—revolution."
I lifted my heavy iron staff as I spoke.
"Hah. To think I once tried to persuade a thug like this."
When I thumped the staff against my shoulder and made it clear I intended to fight them all, Dang Ak snorted. He muttered that he had never failed to win someone over before, but now he was starting to understand that particular failure.
"Lunatic."
With those three syllables he neatly defined the man standing against the entire Tang Clan. Hearing that kind of thing wasn't even new to me anymore. They should try dying once themselves and getting a crazy star jammed into their skulls. I wonder if they could still live like normal people after that.
"You're the one who pulled that important poison ingredient out of the Ten-Thousand-Flower Great Chaos Pill, aren't you, Young Clan Head?"
"What nonsense is this? Now you're even stooping to baseless slander..."
"The black-robed men you hired from the Southern Barbarian lands all sang. How else do you think we came straight to the Hall of Reflection?"
"..."
Truth be told, even that black-robed man had known how serious the matter was and never confessed that particular detail till the end. But this bastard had no way of knowing that.
"You... I can't leave you alive."
Dang Ak delivered a classic mastermind line and started pulling something from his robes. His subordinates spread out in a wide arc and began closing the distance, trying to split my attention.
Then Dang Ak flicked the round poison pellets pinched between his fingers in a rapid volley.
Peopeopeong!
They flew at bullet speed and scattered lethal toxins—the Tang Clan's signature attack.
"Hup!"
I held my breath and threw my body into the air. The moment I did, with a series of sharp pung! sounds, poison needles came bursting out of the thick toxic fog in a surprise volley.
Pupupuk!
I hit the ground like a porcupine, my entire body studded with needles.
"Keu-leuk!"
The poison's energy raced through me like fire, searing every inch of my body. I spat a mouthful of dead blood onto the dirt with my face planted in the ground.
"Even Peak Realm masters often fall this ridiculously to unfamiliar poison attacks."
That, Dang Ak snickered, was exactly why the Tang Clan was considered such a threat even among other martial artists. He drew the sword at his waist with a soft sreung and walked toward me, clearly intending to cut my throat himself.
"Kkuk... what kind of poison is this..."
"Heh heh. If you're going to barge into the Tang Clan so boldly, you should have prepared for at least this much poison."
He raised his sword high like an executioner. The moment he was about to finish me off with that thoroughly mocking smile—
Bbaak!
"Keu-heok!"
I bounced upright and sent his unguarded jaw flying.
"That was spicy, you bastard."
Trying to take me down with a poison weaker than the Face-Spider? Just like that, I neutralized one Peak Realm martial artist right at the start.
Dang Yeohye carefully ground the Face-Spider's poison into fine powder, poured it onto a paper, and gently tipped it into her father's mouth. Then she placed her hands on his vital points and circulated her poison arts—and something astonishing happened.
Saaaah—
As if he had been waiting for this exact moment, Dang Yangcheon absorbed the new poison with ferocious hunger. Before long his body seemed to complete the Ten-Thousand-Flower Great Chaos Pill on its own; the deathly blue cast on his face began to return to its original color.
Seeing that, Dang Yeohye clenched her fist in triumph.
Jjeojeojeok!
Then something strange began happening to her father Dang Yangcheon's body. His skin cracked open like parched earth under drought, then began peeling and sloughing away entirely.
"Wh-what?"
Udeudeuk. Udeuk.
The bones that came into view dislocated and began reassembling themselves in a grisly spectacle. It looked so much like the regenerative nightmare of Dan Mujin dying and coming back to life that she froze in panic.
Tseutseutseu—
Then his body, wrapped in a surge of intense natural energy, began to float gently into the air of its own accord. Only then did Dang Yeohye understand what she was witnessing.
"B-Body Reconstruction!"
Muscles unraveled and rewound themselves into denser coils; flesh fell away in wet clumps only to reattach in miraculous new forms. It was the sight of a body being optimized for martial arts—the dazzling moment when a human being shattered the limits of mortality and was reborn into the next realm.
"Ahh..."
Dang Yeohye watched the scene in silent, dazed awe. Having tasted even a fragment of that process herself not long ago, she could feel it all the more keenly.
After roughly half a ke of time, Dang Yangcheon's reconstructed body drifted gently back down to the floor.
"..."
And the Poison Man they had been waiting for—no, the man who had reached the Transcendent Realm—quietly opened his eyes. Dark-green light flashed in his gaze, powered by profound, ocean-deep internal energy.
While one martial artist shattered his limits, the outside world was still as noisy and chaotic as if under a full-scale assault.
"F-Father. So, um... what happened is..."
She needed his help right now, so Dang Yeohye began stammering out an explanation in a manner completely unlike herself—
"Enough, Yeohye. There is no need to explain further."
He told her he had never lost consciousness; his ears had remained open the entire time he was down. So he had heard everything, thought everything through, and continued his endless struggle against the remaining twelve poisons. In the middle of that struggle, she had given him the final piece he needed most—while the others were fighting like starving ghosts over the Tang Clan's power.
"Ahh, so that's how it was! Anyway, I'm so glad you're awake, Father!"
"Huhu. You look like you've been through a great deal, Yeohye."
The child who had followed his teachings more faithfully than anyone. Which was why, within the family, she had always drifted on the outside like a loner. He patted her back with a great deal of meaning packed into the gesture.
And right then—
KWAANG! Ujikkeun!
The wooden wall of the Hall of Reflection exploded, and a young man came flying through the air between them. He tumbled and rolled until he came to a stop right at the father and daughter's feet.
"Kkueung... Huh? You're up, Clan Head."
He was a young man Dang Yangcheon had never seen before in his life, yet the stranger took one look at the daughter standing beside him and seemed to guess exactly who he was. And when she realized he was unharmed, his daughter's face brightened like the sun.
"Who are you?"
Dang Yangcheon asked through half-lidded eyes.
Faced with a question from a Sichuan magnate who might become a future client, Dan Mujin carefully selected the most presentable answer he could think of.
"I'm the Beijing trouble—"
"He's the man who might become my husband."
But Dang Yeohye beat him to the punch.
"...Wh-what did you say?"
The moment he woke up, Dang Yangcheon was thrown into complete shock.