Clicking the Abacus Beads
Everyone had believed she would die, yet there was one golden-haired girl who overcame destiny and lived.
Even now, the memory of it was a story that still warmed the heart.
But the tale I had just heard was cut from an entirely different cloth.
The moment I heard it, a chill settled over my mind—this was a serious matter.
"That Crown Prince—wasn't he supposed to be at death's door any day now?"
Everyone had spoken of his death as a foregone conclusion, and I had been told he was truly one breath away from the end.
What on earth had happened while I was away in the North?
"Is this guy… not going to die?"
"Who knows. How is this old man supposed to know a person's heavenly fortune?"
Hwang Geolgae shrugged as if to ask why I was bothering him with such a question.
This fraud of a big-nosed Daoist. Always putting on the airs of some mysterious sage, yet utterly useless when you actually needed him.
"You're cursing this old man in your head right now, aren't you?"
Hwang Geolgae narrowed his eyes to needle slits and fixed me with a glare.
"Of course not. You're mistaken."
Having weathered every storm imaginable as a beggar, his instincts were devilishly sharp—especially when it came to catching people badmouthing him.
"Anyway, if that's true, we're in trouble on more than one front. If the worsening of his condition stops, and he actually starts recovering little by little…"
After the Yuan Youhui incident, the scales that had seemed to tip toward Imperial Consort Ma Ju-yeong's victory could swing wildly in some strange new direction.
I had thought we had finally driven that vicious Empress's faction into a corner—only for them to find a way out again?
Even without looking, it was obvious a peculiar atmosphere was already flowing through the Imperial Palace.
The officials would be frantically clicking their abacus beads again, recalculating whose side they ought to take.
"Hss… is the spark going to fly toward our office too?"
I had only moved because I accepted a commission—but would the other side see it that way?
I had disguised myself as a new eunuch, yet with the Embroidered Uniform Guard's information network rivaling that of the Eastern Depot, it would not be long before they realized our office was involved.
Or perhaps they already had.
From their perspective, though, with every eye fixed on the Emperor and the Crown Prince, they might not have the leisure to spare for small fry like us.
"If the Crown Prince actually recovers at this rate…"
Emperor Hongrak had originally sought to strip the Crown Prince of his status because of his health. If that health problem was resolved, everything could return to square one.
Of course, as Master had said, Emperor Hongrak was the sort of man who could bounce in any direction—there was no telling what he would do.
"Master, isn't this a little worrying for us too?"
If those who regained power came after our office and land with some ridiculous pretext and confiscated everything, we would truly be finished.
"Us?"
Hwang Geolgae stared fixedly at my face as he said it, snorting as if I had just said something amusing.
"…Wow. So you just coldly abandon your troubled disciple like that?"
My master was the type who cut off disciples with a blade's edge.
This was exactly the art of selling that the stock-market masters always talked about.
Pong.
When I protested in disbelief, he let my words go in one ear and out the other, and popped the lid off his wine gourd.
"You brat. This old man told you over and over not to get involved with the imperial family."
He gulped down the wine in great swallows, then pulled a strip of dried jerky from his robes and chewed it as a side dish.
"You ignored every last scrap of this old man's advice and did as you pleased—and now what? 'Us'? Don't make me laugh."
"…"
For a moment I was left speechless, with nothing to say.
But every matter has its light and its shadow. Even if I had become entangled with the imperial family, I had performed good deeds within it and rescued suffering beggars.
I had also lifted the burden and yoke that the former Dragon Head Sect Leader had been carrying.
"Isn't that right, Master?"
"…Hmph."
At least regarding the lifting of the Beggar Sect's ban on entering the capital, he did not deny it—as if he begrudgingly acknowledged it in an official capacity.
"And from what I could see, helping Princess Dohwa rather than the Empress was the good."
The Empress's people were all shady with poisonings and the like. Even if they had come as clients, I would have refused them.
Especially this time—trying to wipe out an entire imperial household with thunder bombs. That was crossing a line by a mile and then some.
"Heh heh. Nothing is more meaningless than trying to distinguish good and evil in politics."
Hwang Geolgae stroked his grizzled beard like an old man who had seen the whole world.
Everyone moved for their own interests, he said, so good and evil simply changed depending on where one stood.
Having once resided in the Imperial Palace, he seemed to hold a thoroughly cynical view of palace affairs.
"But trying to poison the Emperor's wife and children, and attempting to massacre an entire family—that's not a good deed, is it?"
The Seongun Simbeop regarded what I believed to be right as good. I needed no higher standard than that.
And after that incident, Princess Dohwa had begun to move because she felt she would die if she simply stayed put.
Simply put, it was the Empress herself who had stirred up a quiet person and created the present situation.
"So what do we do now?"
Junior martial artists sought knowledge and advice from experienced seniors as a matter of course.
Having received this complicated news, I sought counsel on our future course of action.
At that, Hwang Geolgae casually guzzled his wine as if wondering why I was fretting over something like that.
"What do you mean, what do we do? The high and mighty will take care of it themselves. Or what? Are you saying you'll actually leap into the middle of that imperial power struggle?"
Thinking about it, I did not particularly want to volunteer for that whirlpool, which was about to grow even bloodier.
And for a mere troubleshooter to stick his nose into Central Plains politics first when there was not even a commission looked more than a little ridiculous.
"Tsk tsk. Don't fight a current you cannot resolve. Just do what you can do."
Unless they came later with some tempting reward and proposal, I decided to look after my own interests first.
"Master, by 'what you can do,' you mean…?"
"That Yeolyanggi you brought back from this expedition. Train to master it and bring it under control."
Find a way, in other words, to govern the new neighbor that had entered my dantian.
Certainly, for now it lay quiet, crushed beneath the overwhelming weight of my Seongryeong-gi.
But in the worst case—if something happened that drained my internal energy to the last drop and left my dantian empty—who knew what it might do.
So I needed to prepare in advance and train to handle it.
"And take out that side dish you've been hiding in your robes this whole time, you brat."
"…I have no idea what you're talking about."
In the middle of Beijing's summer, without so much as a refrigerator, what was the value of ice confection?
At the very least, it was not something that ought to vanish as this drunkard's side dish.
"Just one bite."
"Get away from me. 'Just one bite'—what are you, a beggar?"
"I am a beggar, you brat."
A gift containing the essence of the North Sea Ice Palace.
Master or not, I shook my head in firm refusal.
Warm sunlight poured down in the height of summer.
Around this time of year, Huayang Palace would normally be a lively place, overflowing with plants and flowers in full bloom.
But lately, with the unsettling rumors drifting out of the imperial medical office, Imperial Consort Ma and her people had fallen into silence.
"This is truly troublesome. That the Empress's firstborn might improve…"
Imperial Consort Ma Ju-yeong made a troubled face at the news brought by the Eastern Depot agents who had infiltrated the medical office.
She muttered to herself, gazing toward the direction where the Son of Heaven resided.
"Mmm. If the firstborn shows signs of improvement, will His Majesty be pleased?"
The Imperial Consort was purely gauging her husband's intentions, without the slightest political calculation.
"…Mother. Right now, we are the ones who should be more worried."
When the Imperial Consort seemed not to grasp the present crisis properly, Princess Dohwa—who had been silent until then—stepped forward and spoke for everyone.
It was something they had not dared to say, and when she spoke up, the people on the Imperial Consort's side sent her grateful looks.
Princess Dohwa shook her head slightly at her mother's now-familiar demeanor, then sought out Cheon Su-gong to ask how this had come about.
"Cheon Su-gong. I find this somewhat hard to understand. Did they not say that even if Hua Tuo himself came, there was no way to save him?"
The imperial physicians had clearly said so.
Everyone had therefore believed his breath would cease—yet suddenly the worsening of his condition had stopped?
This implied the possibility that he might improve as well.
Thanks to that, the atmosphere in the Imperial Palace felt subtle and sharp, as if one were walking on thin ice.
"Princess Dohwa. Regarding that matter, we have discovered several somewhat suspicious circumstances."
The imperial physicians and attending doctors were no ordinary rabble.
The reliable head of the Eastern Depot laid out the results of the investigation so far before Princess Dohwa, saying that something beyond human reason had been at work.
"Strange individuals were coming and going from the medical office, you say…?"
"Yes. They disguised themselves as medical staff, yet they could not escape the Eastern Depot's eyes."
Not physicians, but beings of unknown identity had left traces of entering the Crown Prince's medical quarters—which no one visited—multiple times.
And according to the testimony of the Eastern Depot martial artists who had witnessed them, they gave off an extremely sinister feeling.
Moreover, looking at the eerie tools and materials they had brought into the medical office, it was possible that some unorthodox secret art or great method from outside the orthodoxy had been used upon the precious body of an imperial family member who might become the next Emperor.
"Not a single part of this story can be taken lightly. I wonder if the Empress would go so far, and yet…"
Given that there had already been such precedents multiple times, it was hard to easily deny the present situation.
If the person who would become the next Emperor were to have his mind controlled by some force through witchcraft or the like…
It would be no different from the entire Central Plains falling into the hands of a single faction.
"It seems that because we focused only on the Empress, we overlooked this aspect. I have nothing to say, Princess Dohwa."
Cheon Su-gong in his blue official robes bowed his head deeply.
His confession was that because the Empress had been scheming every sort of plot targeting the Imperial Consort's family, he had paid no attention whatsoever to the Crown Prince's side.
"It is fine. Now that we know, we need only devise countermeasures."
When he apologized, Princess Dohwa waved her hand as if to say it was nothing.
Her nature was to think first of the future that would unfold rather than of past matters, so she did not press hard on this either.
But with the present situation—where the board could be overturned at any moment—Cheon Su-gong could not take it so lightly.
Having fallen one step behind, he now had to get two steps ahead and accomplish something.
Should I call that guy…?
A young troubleshooter came to mind who, when summoned, would make a tremendous mess but at least earned his keep.
But he soon shook his head left and right. The present situation was far too serious to inform an outsider.
If word got out, the entire Central Plains could fall into shock.
"For now, I will try moving with the Eastern Depot alone, Your Grace the Imperial Consort, Princess Dohwa."
Cheon Su-gong's declaration that he would move quietly and secretly as always.
"Yes, Cheon Su-gong. I shall trust in you."
Just how far had the Empress gone mad?
Cheon Su-gong, head deeply bowed, exited Huayang Palace—where flowers bloomed in full glory—with an extremely serious expression.
Click.
The lid of an antique special wooden box opened.
At once the northern cold spread through the Beijing office in midsummer as if caressing the air.
A woman flicked the tip of her fan against her chin and let out an exclamation of wonder.
"My, my… Is this the Ten-thousand-year Ice Essence I've only heard about in stories?"
Facing bone-chilling cold and ice in the middle of summer, she could not hide her surprise.