Imperial Palace Commission
The Emperor of the Empire.
The seat above all men, ruling everything under Heaven.
Who would not covet that throne? Who would hesitate to take a single step toward that power?
A soft rustle of silk.
As the elegant noblewoman in soft hues turned her head, her ornate ornaments chimed with a muted, refined sound. Traces of the years lingered faintly on her face, yet those very marks only deepened the imperial dignity of the Empress.
“Ju Gachi. Raise your head.”
She looked down without expression upon her second son, the Second Prince Ju Gachi. He was not as gifted as the first, yet he was still the blood she had carried in her womb for ten full months.
By rights, at his age he ought already to have been enfeoffed as a prince and sent far away to govern his own fief. But the Son of Heaven’s whim had kept him tethered here, leaving him with nothing to show for the years.
“My son, what do you believe the Son of Heaven intends?”
Of late the Crown Prince’s condition had grown grave. Even so, the Emperor showed no sign of naming a successor. When the Empress asked what he thought the man was planning, the Second Prince kept his head bowed low.
“This humble son dares not presume to fathom His Majesty’s will.”
It was the sort of answer that made her long for her clever, frail firstborn.
“This mother believes she understands a little…”
He desired it—a struggle that would cull the weak. Surely, after watching the legitimate eldest son suffer for six years only to die, his thinking had changed. Like selecting the strongest scorpion from a jar, this time he meant to cull the more powerful. That was why he had gathered in one place those who by rights should have been banished far away to prevent rebellion, and why he was now fanning the flames of a power struggle.
And if her conjecture was true, then the Son of Heaven was truly…
“Out of his mind.”
“……”
At his mother’s open insult of the Emperor, the Second Prince swallowed hard, not even daring to breathe. She regarded him with colder eyes still and posed another question.
“So how can we, who serve such a Son of Heaven… remain in our right minds?”
The imperial physicians said the firstborn she had labored to bring into the world would soon draw his last breath. She had watched him languish on the sickbed for so long that her heart was prepared—yet now the Emperor suddenly wished to choose a successor by ability rather than bloodline. How resentful, how heartless that made him.
“If His Majesty truly wishes to see the Imperial Palace burn in a war of flesh and blood, then we shall give him exactly that.”
To the Second Prince she looked like a woman holding a torch before a pile of dry hay; before he knew it his voice trembled as he asked,
“What… have you done?”
The Empress answered with silence, gazing toward the Third Princess’s palace. The Second Prince himself had long engaged in obstruction and intrigue—most of it ending in failure and only earning him her disappointment—yet he had always stopped short of the final line.
“What you should have done first.”
This mother did it in your stead, out of sheer frustration. Her eyes made no effort to hide the disappointment as she spoke. Under that frigid gaze that seemed to measure him against the brilliant firstborn, the Second Prince clenched his molars until they ached.
“What mother would ever hand what is hers to a child born of another woman?”
That was something she would never accept. The Crown Prince’s seat that the firstborn had held must, no matter what, pass to the second. That was the natural order of Heaven and the common sense of this world.
“Follow your brother and become Crown Prince.”
“……I shall do my utmost.”
Looking into a mother’s eyes that held more naked ambition than affection, the Second Prince bowed deeply.
“You must succeed, by whatever means necessary.”
“Yes.”
He clenched his fist and answered that he would. Only by answering that ambition could he feel, even for a moment, his mother’s love. No matter how ruthless the path, he would walk it—so the Second Prince steeled his heart.
Something I only learned this time:
When a person is startled badly enough, they can bounce like a spring.
“I-I’m not!”
At my sudden accusation of guilt she shot up from her seat with a look of pure horror, easily clearing three feet of air.
“What kind of nonsense is this…!”
Every eye in the room swung toward the maidservant. Her face drained paper-white as she scrambled to defend herself, and a restless murmur rose among the palace attendants.
“Sohwa is the poisoner…?”
“What is this all of a sudden?”
“She’s been working here for over two years.”
The poisoner’s name was Sohwa. She had clearly spent those years carefully building trust; the reactions around her were nothing but shock and confusion. Whether she had turned traitor midway or been planted from the very beginning for this day, I could not yet tell.
While the room remained in disorder, the poisoner took stock of the atmosphere and the faces around her—then suddenly flung herself before the head maidservant.
“Head Maidservant! How could I ever…! This is a false accusation! That new eunuch must have misunderstood something…!”
She poured every ounce of strength into her plea of innocence, insisting she had served the Princess’s palace with loyalty for more than two years. The head maidservant stood trapped between us, looking thoroughly distressed—caught between a maidservant she had worked with for years and a newly arrived eunuch who was calling that same woman a poisoner, and not knowing whose word to trust.
“Head Maidservant Yeoncheong! He’s the problem! A eunuch who’s only been here a few days!”
This was the same head maidservant who had guided me when I first arrived. She had struck me as loyal and sharp, yet in the end even she seemed swayed by personal feeling. Well, people do lean toward those they have known longer.
“New eunuch… do you have evidence? Physical proof?”
She asked me carefully on Sohwa’s behalf. Evidence? Of course I had none. My killing-intent radar—the Heavenly Kill Eye—was not something that could be explained in the realm of ordinary perception.
“Mujin, that maidservant. There’s been a strange poison smell coming off her since earlier.”
Just then Dang Yeohye, whose nose for poison was as keen as a hunting dog’s, offered advice at my side.
“She’s probably hiding something in her clothes.”
They had searched every corner of the Princess’s palace and found no poison—yet she had been bold enough to keep it on her person? When a master of poison arts said that much, it was time for me to apply a little force.
“Physical proof? I have it. Right inside that maidservant’s clothes.”
All I needed to do was subdue her, find the evidence, and hold it up for everyone to see. With that thought I strode forward—only for the head maidservant and the other attendants to remain planted in my path, still unwilling to believe me. A faint smile touched the poisoner’s lips, as if she had expected exactly this.
“Are you certain?”
But this was ancient China. Public opinion, popular will—none of that mattered here. One word from Cheon Su-gong of the Eastern Depot carried far more weight.
“I saw it clear as day.”
I answered Cheon Su-gong as he stepped up beside me, telling him it was every bit as certain as the affair at Baekyang Village—and I put on that same expression of having seen something with my own eyes.
“Search inside that maidservant’s clothes.”
Apparently satisfied, Cheon Su-gong jerked his chin and ordered his subordinates to search her. The maidservants had no choice but to give way, and palace attendants and eunuchs began closing in on her.
“You damned eunuch bastard…”
The poisoner’s face twisted; her true nature finally showed. She seized the head maidservant by the throat from behind and, with a swift motion, retreated a full ten paces in a single “whoosh.” That was no ordinary movement. She was unmistakably a martial artist. So she had not turned traitor—she had infiltrated with this goal from the start.
“Heavens.”
“Sohwa really was…?”
Her sudden change sent the entire Princess’s palace into an uproar.
“Stay back! You ball-less eunuch dogs!”
Her personality seemed to have flipped a full hundred and eighty degrees as well. She glared in every direction with killing intent and hurled indiscriminate insults at the eunuchs.
“Whoa, that’s a bit much.”
Watching from behind, I shook my head at the excess. Leave it to a poison-using martial artist to have a temper just as foul as a certain someone I knew.
“Hey, you’ve said lines like that a few times yourself.”
Dang Yeohye poked my arm and spoke up.
“……Come on, I never meant any real malice.”
“That’s even scarier, you idiot.”
Not even the same level—she was ranking me worse. I glared at her with pure injustice. She simply answered with a look that said, So what?
“Cough, cough!”
Meanwhile the poisoner, now surrounded by the Eastern Depot men, pulled something from her clothes and poured half of it down the head maidservant’s throat. Whatever the contents, Yeoncheong’s face went deathly pale as she broke into dry, hacking coughs. Trust the wrong person and this was the suffering you got.
“This is Ten-Li Soul-Severing Powder!”
The poisoner held up the empty bottle and shouted.
“I put it in yesterday’s meals as well, so all of you are already poisoned! The concentration is light, so there are no symptoms yet—but given time you’ll all cough up blood and die!”
Another time-delayed poison, was it? When the Eastern Depot sealed the Princess’s palace so no one could leave, she had laced the attendants’ food as a bargaining chip for just such a moment. The faces of the palace staff blanched.
“This is the only antidote!”
She brandished the bottle containing the antidote, threatening to smash it if anyone took another step closer.
“Without this, every one of you will vomit blood and die within three days! Still want to come at me?”
The Eastern Depot men would have charged even if they themselves were poisoned without so much as blinking. Ordinary maidservants and palace attendants, however, could not. They trembled and cried out for the others not to approach. And above all, Princess Dohwa’s expression—watching the entire scene from a distance—had grown deeply dark. She cherished her people; the poisoner knew that well and was using it for leverage.
“No one follows me until I leave the Princess’s palace!”
But I had never once seen negotiating with a terrorist end well.
“Noona, that Ten-Li Soul-Severing Powder—can you make the antidote?”
I asked just in case. The maidservant beside me nodded as if it were obvious.
“Of course I can. Who do you think I am?”
A master of poison arts who had grown up drinking toxins since childhood. The Poison Claw Blood Maker of the Sichuan Tang Family, no less. The poisoner could never have imagined that a Tang Family heir would be standing right here.
“But I need to confirm it’s really that poison.”
She knew the formula for the antidote, yet the woman might be lying, so she needed certainty. At those words I started walking forward at a measured pace.
“You, you son of a bitch…!”
The moment she recognized my face, the poisoner looked ready to die of rage. Her whole body shook as she poured curses and fury at me.
“If it hadn’t been for you! I would have finished the job perfectly and walked away clean!”
She named me the starting point of every disaster, retreating even as she glared as if she wanted to kill me.
“What the hell are you?! How did you figure out my identity?!”
“You just weren’t skilled enough to stay hidden, that’s all…”
“Don’t give me that crap—!”
She screamed that in two years of infiltration she had never once made a mistake, that this made no sense.
“You got caught because you were sloppy. And that poison of yours is a bluff too, isn’t it? Looks to me like you scooped up some latrine water and decided to act tough.”
“Ha! Then check it yourself!”
The poisoner flung the remaining poison from the bottle straight at me with a splash. I deliberately stood still and did not dodge.
“Hahaha! It works through the skin too—so now you’re on a timer as well!”
As the deep-green liquid soaked into me she burst into delighted laughter, as if the sight were delicious.
“Noona, is this the real poison?”
I ignored her reaction and asked Dang Yeohye. She sniffed the scent, dabbed a drop on her tongue to taste it, then even circulated her poison arts to examine it.
“Yeah. It’s the real thing.”
The instant I had confirmation I unleashed Whirlwind Steps.
The ground blurred beneath him as he slid forward like a gust of wind.
Papak—!
The woman who had thought me an ordinary eunuch was thrown into complete panic as I skated across the floor toward her.
“W-what the hell are you?!”
She flung more poison and even launched a palm technique, but I simply took every strike on my body and drove a kick squarely into her midsection.
Thud!
“Guh!”
Her waist bent like a shrimp as she flew more than thirty feet through the air and crashed hard into the ground. Dust billowed up; everyone stared in shock at the new eunuch.
“You… what the hell… are you…”
“Just a troubleshooter passing through.”
I answered quietly enough that only she could hear, then swung my fist.
Crack!
The poisoner slumped, her face twisted with bitter resentment. In that moment the would-be assassin of the Princess was captured alive.
The Imperial Pharmacy truly lacked for nothing.
After the incident, Dang Yeohye skillfully prepared the antidote for the Ten-Li Soul-Severing Powder and averted a disaster that would have wiped out a large portion of the Princess’s palace staff. It was a rare poison from the Poison Valley, I was told—and I was deeply glad I had brought her here.
With everything resolved, we finally stood before Princess Dohwa and our client, Cheon Su-gong. Only then did the Princess hear the full story, and she looked at me with open astonishment.
“So that was why the voice sounded so familiar…”
She traced my face with her fingers, then carefully began to peel away the human-skin mask, as if seeking the boy from her past.