Accept the Demands and No Blood Will Be Spilled (2)
A meeting room had been prepared in a certain district of Beijing.
The Blood Brain and I followed our Chinese escorts to the venue, but the scene that awaited us was quite different from what I'd expected.
To be fair, China's higher-ups hadn't been bold enough to prepare an ambush.
Instead, the problem was that the Chinese representative who was supposed to sit across from us existed only behind a massive screen.
"A video conference, huh. If your trust runs this shallow, how do you expect any real conversation to happen?"
At my barb, the interpreter on the other side of the screen whispered urgently, and before long, the man who introduced himself as the President of the People's Republic of China—Chen Xiaoping—had visibly trembling eyebrows.
"This is merely a precaution for the safety of our leadership. Let us get to the matter at hand. What you people did in the heart of Beijing was an unmistakable act of terrorism."
So said Chen Xiaoping, his face frozen stiff.
Needless to say, hearing that through the interpreter, I couldn't help but let out a dry chuckle.
Honestly, I held no particular feelings toward China one way or the other.
Until the Gates appeared, I'd been nothing more than an ordinary high school student, and "a somewhat troublesome neighboring country" summed up the entirety of my impression.
Granted, that wasn't exactly a warm sentiment, but thirty years spent in Murim had a way of washing such feelings thin.
The man presenting himself as China's representative was, after all, just a stranger to me.
The problem was his attitude.
"Terrorism? Funny. Apparently these days you can attack someone first, get your teeth kicked in, and still call it terrorism."
I murmured those words quietly at the Chinese delegation's claim, and soon enough I could see the man's face crumpling.
This was supposed to be a venue for negotiation, yet the hostility between the two sides was only souring by the moment.
The one who stepped in to untangle it was, as ever, the Blood Brain.
"Terrorism or otherwise, our Cult pays such labels no mind. We merely delivered an appropriate response to an attack on our Cult's own disciple."
"An— an appropriate response?! Do you have any idea how many of our Awakened you people killed?!"
"And why would that be our concern?"
So spoke the Blood Brain, gazing coldly at Chen Xiaoping through the screen.
The Chinese officials on the other end visibly seethed, but none of them offered any immediate resistance.
After all, the hilt of the sword was clearly in our hands.
"Let me skip the pleasantries and state our demands. Surrender ground for our Cult's disciples to settle. Designate the area around Beijing, including the Forbidden City, as territory of our Cult, and lease it to us free of charge for the next hundred years. Furthermore, you must recognize our Cult's autonomous jurisdiction and right to enforce its own laws within that zone."
And the Blood Brain was wielding that blade to its fullest.
Naturally, the faces of the Chinese officials twisted at his demands.
"Y-you're telling us to hand over the Forbidden City? Autonomy as well? That's nothing short of carving out another nation inside China!"
"If you dislike that, we could always make the nation itself disappear."
So replied the Blood Brain, wearing a relaxed smile as he watched his counterpart lose his composure.
And that was not the entirety of his demands—it was only the beginning.
"We'll leave the territorial question there for now. Next, you will pay tribute in cash and goods equivalent to one trillion yuan at current valuation. You will also issue identification papers to every member of our Cult, exempting them from all laws of your nation, and there must be no restrictions whatsoever on the movements of our disciples."
With a perfectly calm tone, the Blood Brain began pouring out one lopsided demand after another.
He'd wrung similar concessions from the Young Emperor of the Central Plains, after all—this was hardly his first rodeo.
But from the Chinese side's perspective, it was another matter entirely.
With each new condition the Blood Brain laid out, the faces on the other side of the screen flushed a deeper and deeper red.
"Ins—insane! This isn't negotiation at all! Unless you intend to treat us as a colony, how could you possibly make such absurd demands—"
"He's not wrong, though. Our Cult possesses more than enough force to occupy this country outright. What you're receiving is mercy."
At the Blood Brain's shameless audacity, Chen Xiaoping's expression contorted.
Having listened in silence all this while, Chen Xiaoping could apparently bear it no longer—he slammed his fist on the desk and shouted.
"That's quite enough! No matter how strong you are, this is a nation of 1.4 billion people armed with nuclear weapons. If you insist on pushing us this far, then we too will have no choice but to mobilize every ounce of our strength and fight—"
"Fight?"
When I interjected quietly, resting my chin on my hand, I could see Chen Xiaoping's eyebrows twitching.
"And you think you'd win? Let's be honest here—the only reason you're all posturing like this is because you assume you'll be safe. Because even now, you believe you're tucked away somewhere the fighting can't reach."
"What—what nonsense is this? Do you really think intimidation will make us accept these outrageous, unequal terms?"
Chen Xiaoping glared at me and shouted back.
The Blood Brain translated more or less faithfully at my side, though the words hardly deserved the effort of listening.
[Samsik. Go pay them a visit.]
Rather than answering the Blood Brain, I sent a sound transmission to Samsik instead.
The moment those bastards had connected by video, hiding had become meaningless.
It was the same with Kuroda Sho—Seoyeon's broadcast alone had been enough to open the door, and as long as there was footage of the site, Samsik's ability could forge a door leading straight to it.
"If you continue like this, then our side will have no choice but to resist until the very end—"
"Huhhh?"
That was the exact moment chaos erupted on the screen.
Samsik, who had been standing beside me, had crossed over to the other side of that screen in the blink of an eye, and in rapid succession came gunshots from the panicked Chinese bodyguards and the sound of things shattering.
"H—how?!"
Chen Xiaoping, visible through the screen, was muttering in a drained voice as he stared at Samsik, who had appeared directly behind him.
"Cult Leader. What shall we do?"
It took barely a minute for Samsik's brutish hand to close around the back of Chen Xiaoping's neck.
Chen Xiaoping, ranked first in the entire Chinese power hierarchy, was pinned under Samsik's grip, unable even to breathe properly, his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets.
"Go on. Finish your sentence. You were saying something about fighting to the very end?"
At my words, a servile smile crept across Chen Xiaoping's face.
"O—our nation accepts your demands."
I merely nodded with a satisfied smile at the answer.
"Good. Should've done that from the start."
The Hunter Management Department situation room, Seoul, South Korea.
Park Jaehyun, sleep-deprived for days on end, was glaring at the large monitor in front of him with hollow, sunken eyes.
The gate rampages that had torn through Seoul and the greater capital region were only now being wrapped up.
It was true that the Yeongdeungpo gate break and the S-Rank gate in Gangnam had been contained far more easily than expected, thanks to Lee Jaeseong's help.
But problems had erupted in numerous other locations besides, and moreover, the Hunter Management Department's real work only began after those gates had been cleared.
Restoring buildings collapsed in the destruction, accounting for the missing and the dead, sorting out the ownership of the mana byproducts that had spilled out, managing the displaced—
The entire capital region might as well have been one colossal disaster site, and every scrap of the department's administrative power and available personnel was currently buried in that work.
Which meant guild affairs had no choice but to take a back seat.
Even as the Iron Wall Guild in Gangnam wavered and other guilds circled hungrily for its position, all the department could do was mediate—just enough to keep anything catastrophic from breaking out.
If Seoul itself was in this state, the situation in the provinces went without saying.
It pained him to admit it, but with the resources the Korean government currently had, simply putting out the fire in the capital region—the heart of the nation—was already more than they could manage.
"Team Leader, we have a problem."
Just then, an employee rushing up to Park Jaehyun shouted, his face drained of all color.
"...What now?"
"B—Busan, sir. An S-Rank gate has appeared near Busan."
"What? S-Rank?"
Park Jaehyun shot to his feet at the report.
The provinces might be a lower priority, but an S-Rank gate was not something that could be handled that way.
After all, the S-Rank gate in Gangnam had been flatly impossible to clear without Lee Jaeseong, and it was hard to imagine Busan possessing that kind of firepower.
"How is that even possible? A gate that big should have shown mana anomalies days in advance—why is this report only coming in now?"
"That's the thing, sir—it's not an official report. One of our friendly guilds in Busan slipped us the information quietly."
"...Slipped you? You're telling me the official report was withheld? Deliberately?"
The lines between Park Jaehyun's brows deepened dangerously.
The gates in the Busan region were managed by the Busan Guild Association, and if an S-Rank gate had appeared, they were naturally obligated to notify the Hunter Management Department immediately.
"According to the friendly guild's tip, the Busan Guild Association deliberately manipulated the mana detector readings and blocked all information. The warning signs appeared more than three days ago."
"Have they all lost their minds?! There's a bomb about to drop in their own front yard, and they what—?!"
Park Jaehyun's shouting stopped abruptly.
Because a piece of information surfaced in his mind—about who had been aggressively swallowing up Busan's key commercial districts and guild shares in recent months.
And there weren't many candidates who could be behind it.
"Japan?"
"...Correct, sir. The tipster says the Japanese side promised the Busan Guild Association enormous funds and concessions, and incited them to leave the gate untended and cover it up."
As the puzzle pieces clicked together, Park Jaehyun felt a chill run down his spine.
"Those traitorous bastards..."
He could roughly guess why Japan had pulled something like this at precisely this moment.
They'd already tasted humiliation once, in North Korea, through Lee Jaeseong—and that had to have wounded their pride badly.
No doubt this time they intended to deploy their elite forces, swoop in as Busan's saviors, and carve out their influence over the southern half of Korea.
"Pull together every guild in the capital region that has the capacity to deploy, right now. And I'll contact Hyeolcheon myself."
Having issued his orders, Park Jaehyun strode straight out of the situation room.
Japan clearing the gate as they pleased and tightening their grip on the south would be the lesser evil.
The true worst case was Japan's confidently dispatched forces failing to clear the gate at all.
If an S-Rank gate went on a rampage in the southern region, no one could even begin to predict how far the fallout would spread.
Even if it costs me my dignity, right now I have no choice but to beg.
Having left the situation room, Park Jaehyun steeled himself as he got into his car.
It bothered him to come crawling to Lee Jaeseong with yet another request, but there simply was no other way.
If nothing else, as long as they had that man—Kang Samsik—he felt certain they could avert the absolute worst.
The problem was that when he called, Lee Jaeseong's phone was switched off.
"Ah, my brother-in-law isn't in the country right now."
"I'm sorry—what?"
Arriving at the house in person only to be hit with this unexpected news, Park Jaehyun had no choice but to stand there, utterly dumbfounded.