The Shifting Balance of the Imperial Palace
The moment that heavy voice resounded through the underground chamber, it was as if every breath in the room had stopped.
Clad in radiant golden robes that seemed to bring a golden dragon to life, a tall middle-aged man strode into the cellar, the imperial dragon robes—symbol of the Son of Heaven—billowing behind him.
In his wake, like living shadows, followed the masters of the Emperor’s Shadow Guards.
“Y-Your Majesty…!”
Cheon Su-gong was the first to drop to the ground in full prostration, his voice thick with panic.
“W-we greet the Son of Heaven!”
Trembling voices. The Imperial Guard officers fell flat one after another, pressing their foreheads to the blood-soaked floor without a second thought.
“You idiot, get down already.”
I alone had been standing there in a daze until Cheon Su-gong’s rough hand seized me by the nape and forced my head down.
The remaining Blood Sect cultists who had been trying to turn the Crown Prince into their puppet exchanged frantic glances at the emperor’s sudden appearance.
“Clean this up.”
The instant Emperor Hongrak’s command fell, the Shadow Guard masters who had entered with him began harvesting the heads of every insolent soul who had failed to prostrate.
Shwik! Shhk!
With sharp whistles of cutting air, red lines opened across the cultists’ necks. Limbs were sheared off before they could even channel their blood arts, and the bodies collapsed to the floor like slabs of meat.
The chaotic underground chamber was brought to absolute order in the blink of an eye by the emperor’s will alone.
Clatter, roll…
Just like the Crown Prince’s head before them, severed heads tumbled across the cold stone.
“U-gi… my son…”
Empress Ga Hwiryung still cradled her son’s head, murmuring to herself.
That weak, cracked woman’s voice calling her child’s name pressed down on the air of the cellar heavier than anything else present.
“Are you very cold…? Why is your face so pale…”
She stroked her son’s hair, still refusing reality. She was unmistakably a villain, yet the sight made every onlooker’s chest ache all the same.
Good thing I took Cheon Su-gong’s advice.
He’d told me not to kill her—just restrain her—because of the aftermath. If I’d sent that head flying myself, my conscience would be jabbing me right about now.
With that thought I slid a glance at Heok-ho, the man who had unhesitatingly taken the emperor’s own son’s head.
Not so much as a twitch of an eyebrow. Truly the cold-blooded steel befitting the emperor’s secret protector.
“Say something, U-gi…”
The empress seemed thoroughly broken after witnessing her son’s death with her own eyes.
But it was all reaping what she had sown; I felt no great sympathy.
“M-Mother Empress…!”
Only Second Prince Ju Gachi, arriving late after the uproar near the empress’s palace, took in the utterly horrific scene and collapsed to the floor, face hollow with shock.
Even he was immediately ushered outside by a Shadow Guard master.
“All of you, rise.”
At the emperor’s single word, everyone carefully lifted their heads and stood.
Given the magnitude of what had just occurred here, every soul present was treading with extreme care so as not to offend His Majesty’s mood.
The empress, however, remained seated even after the order to rise, still clutching her son’s head.
Instead, she began pouring out bitter, resentful words toward the emperor.
“Did it truly have to come to this…?”
Her eyes were already red-rimmed. Empress Ga Hwiryung glared at her husband and sovereign with a gaze full of reproach.
“It had to be this way.”
Emperor Hongrak declared it to his wife without the slightest tremor of emotion—as if delivering a formal notice.
It was also a confession that he himself had been the one who ordered Heok-ho to take their son’s head.
“…Why! He could have been saved, Your Majesty!”
In fury she slammed her palm against the ground.
“By turning my son into a jiangshi worse than death, you mean?”
“Th-that is…!”
The empress’s words caught in her throat. She looked down at the son who, only moments earlier, had been swinging that bizarre blood-red water jar and unleashing blood arts.
“I never dreamed… that what they called treatment was turning U-gi into a jiangshi… not even in my worst nightmares…”
That much, at least, seemed genuine. When the Crown Prince had risen as a Living Jiangshi and torn free of his bed, her expression had truly looked as though the entire world had collapsed.
People, they say, are far too complicated to divide cleanly into good and evil. The woman before me seemed living proof of that.
As an empress she was the worst, yet as a mother she had loved her son—even if the direction of that love had been twisted beyond recognition.
“Ignorance does not erase the crime.”
Even not knowing, a sin remains a sin. At those words from Emperor Hongrak, Heok-ho behind him flicked a glance in my direction.
He was probably needling me over the time I had, in complete ignorance, stood by the lake and chewed out the emperor himself.
A little guilt pricked me. I scratched my cheek in silence.
“Ju U-gi was your son as well… How could you be so cold…”
“It is because he was my son that I did it.”
The Son of Heaven explained that precisely because he had cherished the boy, he had cut the life away as though severing his own limbs.
The two parents stood in completely opposite positions with completely opposite thoughts; only emptiness drifted between their words.
“Heok-ho.”
“Yes, Your Majesty!”
At the summons of his name the Shadow Guard master appeared at Emperor Hongrak’s side like a gust of wind.
“Recover the bodies and clean the scene. And as for Empress Ga Hwiryung…”
The emperor’s gaze lingered for a moment on the empress, who sat like a stone statue of a grieving widow, her spirit completely gone. Then his eyes squeezed shut.
“Confine her until her disposition is decided.”
“As you command!”
With Heok-ho’s shout the Shadow Guard masters began moving in a flurry.
They bound every Imperial Guard officer and figure implicated in the Blood Sect affair and gathered the Crown Prince’s remains for the funeral rites.
Only then did Cheon Su-gong, I, and the handful of surviving Eastern Depot masters straighten our backs and take stock of the situation.
What had looked like an impossibly tangled commission was being sorted out in an instant by the emperor’s arrival.
My own chaotic job this time also seemed, more or less, to have reached a conclusion.
Amid the cleanup I walked over to the lonely whistleblower who was still groaning by himself, ignored by everyone.
“Deputy Commander Jang Chun-sam, are you all right?”
The man who had risked everything to plant me inside the empress’s faction.
The same middle-aged officer who, upon our arrival in the cellar, had been undergoing severe torture.
“Urgh… Do I… look all right to you?”
He did not look all right at all. It had been a purely ceremonial question.
“Eh, it’s not that bad. A little spit and you’ll be fine.”
By the standards of my own body, anyway. The wounds I’d taken from the Blood Sect masters and the Crown Prince Living Jiangshi were already slowly closing.
“What nonsense…! Ghk!”
He still had the strength to yell, so thankfully his life wasn’t in danger.
Meanwhile the Imperial Guard officers were being bound one after another like strings of dried fish and hauled away. Looking at that, I supposed this gentleman had at least jumped onto the right side of the fence.
“The Crown Pr—ugh—Crown Prince Ju U-gi… has he found peace?”
He’d been tied to a chair facing away from the battlefield, so he had only the shouts and noise of combat to go on.
“Yes, well. He closed his eyes peacefully.”
His head had come off in a single stroke; in this brutal martial world that counted as a relatively clean death.
Of course, only I—through Salsung—knew how much he had suffered as a forced Living Jiangshi, screaming for someone to just kill him already.
“Good. That’s a relief. He was someone I once trusted and followed. He didn’t deserve to suffer like that.”
At the news of the death he squeezed his eyes shut, as though recalling the days when the prince had still been whole and had led them all.
“Heok-ho.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I have important words to speak. Once the cleanup is finished, gather the imperial clan and prepare a seat.”
“As you command.”
Emperor Hongrak, who had been quietly watching his son’s remains, issued the order as though he had reached some decision.
It looked like another storm was about to hit the Imperial Palace. And when a typhoon comes, the wise thing is to bend and let it pass.
Drawing any more attention here would only get me a bad end, so I tried to slip out of the cellar by blending into the line of bound Imperial Guards being led away.
“You will attend as well.”
But the tip of Emperor Hongrak’s index finger pointed straight at me.
Apparently he had been aware of me for some time. My attempt to ride the outgoing wave failed completely.
The words I’m not a member of the imperial clan, though? rose all the way to the tip of my tongue, but Cheon Su-gong, noticing my mouth working, hastily jabbed my arm.
“Because of you my head is splitting. You little pest.”
He seemed to understand why the emperor had taken notice of me after my report by the lakeside last time, and launched into a stream of grumbling.
Thus the Shadow Guards sealed the cellar incident, covered the Crown Prince’s body with black silk, and filed out one by one.
Emperor Hongrak, however, kept his gaze fixed on me and did not move.
Sometimes they say the most terrifying violence in the world is silence. The emperor of the empire staring straight at me without a word.
There was an unreadable, strange magnetism in those eyes that made me feel I had to say something—anything.
“Uh, sooo…”
I stammered, sweat pouring down my face. Hwang Geolgae had told me to be careful of this man, and I had gone and bad-mouthed him right to his face, claiming he was no good at his job.
This was probably the moment to drop flat and apologize. My mind went completely blank and I just spat out whatever came.
“Would it be all right if I asked permission to apologize right now?”
It was the purest gibberish of a man in total panic.
The emperor regarded my nonsense with an expressionless stare.
Please just say something.
“You will open your mouth no further.”
“Yessir.”
Better not risk another slip. Perfectly reasonable command.
I immediately shut my trap like a clam.
Some time later, in the emperor’s private study.
The private chamber where the emperor’s wives, sons, daughters, and clan members had gathered was filled with heavy silence.
Empress Ga Hwiryung stood with her hands and feet bound like a criminal, face deathly pale. Second Prince Ju Gachi stared only at the floor with anxious, shifting eyes.
Beside them, Consort Yang deliberately held her young son in her arms as if determined to catch the emperor’s eye, while the Imperial Noble Consort looked increasingly troubled as the affair grew larger than expected.
Multiple factions and figures with different aims and directions were all in one place, carefully watching one another’s faces.
Yet even these people who each dreamed of different things shared one common question.
Namely: why was an outsider like me sitting here so boldly in what amounted to a family council?
Every one of them raked me with looks that clearly said, What the hell is that guy doing here?
I myself found the situation somewhat absurd—suddenly existing in a place where the great and small affairs of the imperial clan were being decided.
“Cheon Su-gong.”
I nudged the arm of the one person who might still listen to reason.
“What is it, you pest.”
The Director of the Eastern Depot glanced sideways at me the way one looks at a problem child who might cause a disaster at any moment.
“Can’t I just leave?”
There weren’t many eyes watching at the moment—couldn’t I just quietly slip out? At my question Cheon Su-gong let out a short, incredulous snort of laughter.
“You may leave.”
“Oh, really?”
My face brightened.
“Just leave your neck behind.”
“Aw, crap…”
His expression said, The emperor told you to stay—where do you think you’re going?
My face instantly crumpled into a sulk.