First Phoenix of Emei
"How is the savage faring?"
"Ah... he has not yet regained consciousness."
At the words of Dang Hyun-seong, head of the Tang Clan's Medical Hall, the Clan Lord Tang Mun-seong gave a brief nod, as if to say that was enough.
"You've worked hard. Go and rest."
"Wasn't the Third Young Master's hand too heavy? He should have left the man fit for nothing more than interrogation!"
A man of a cadet branch family practically chirped with delight at having found a pretext to pick at the Third Young Master — only to be met with ice-cold glares from everyone around him.
At the very least, no one in this room right now was cadet branch or direct line. There were only members of the Tang Clan.
"Are you saying the Third Young Master should have treated that savage with mercy?"
At the chilly question that came from the direction of the Council of Elders, the middle-aged man broke into a cold sweat.
"That is not quite what I meant..."
"Leaving him alive should be more than enough. No matter what wrongs the Third Young Master may have committed in the past, in this matter he did nothing but right, a hundred times over."
"I believe he taught that man exactly what happens to those who touch the Tang Clan."
"Indeed! Dragging him through the streets like an insect — that must have been a warning to everyone! Now they all know what fate awaits those who cross the Tang Clan!"
Tang Mun-seong had never expected to hear praise for Sanlong in the Clan Lord's hall.
No matter how much the branches clawed at each other behind closed doors, an outside enemy had appeared — and so, like this, they closed ranks.
"Even if it takes time, it would be best to keep a close watch until the savage properly regains consciousness."
"It is a trying thing, but there is nothing to be done about it."
At Tang Woo's words — the Commander of the Inryong Squad — everyone nodded along in agreement.
Stalled for time as he was, all Tang Woo could do was pray that Il Sal took as long as possible to wake up.
They should be contacting me any day now... What are Qingcheng and Emei even doing?!
It had been quite a while since he sent out his letters, and with still no word, Tang Woo was beside himself with anxiety.
And that rat, the Geumo Merchant Guild Master — where the hell has he crawled off to?!
Worse still, the Geumo Guild Master, sharp-eyed as any man who had run a trading company had to be, had not shown his face since Sanlong's return.
There was no telling whether he had fled outright or was simply holed up inside his own home.
"Clan Lord! The Third Young Master requests an audience."
"Oh? Let him in."
So this was what it felt like — the day Tang Sanlong walked into the Clan Lord's hall not to be scolded, but to be honored. A once-in-a-lifetime occasion, truly.
"Tang Sanlong, greetings to the Clan Lord and the elders of the family."
"What an honor this is."
"You've shown the world exactly what kind of place the Tang Clan is!"
"If only you had done so sooner..."
Not everyone was friendly, of course — but compared to the mood of a few months ago, or even a few days ago, it had turned around completely.
"The people of Chengdu are calling the Third Young Master the hero of Seoksu Village! The Poison Hero, they say!"
"Hahaha!"
"Ho ho ho!"
Unable to adjust to the atmosphere, Sanlong answered with an awkward laugh — and as the room grew rapidly more uncomfortable, he decided to get straight to the point.
"Clan Lord. You must apprehend the Geumo Merchant Guild Master."
"The Geumo Guild Master? Out of nowhere?"
At his reaction, Sanlong drew a slow breath.
Ah... I tore that letter for nothing.
If he had known that letter would become this important, he would never have shredded it. Back then, of course, he hadn't imagined things would unfold like this.
"You will have heard that I broke away from the column at the time and went off on my own."
"I did."
"I followed yet another trail, and there I discovered a man from the Greenwood Bandits — one of those who attacked the Geumo Merchant Guild."
"Go on."
"He was carrying a box, one that appeared to hold something extraordinarily valuable. Naturally, the contents were already gone."
"And?"
"If you review the reports, Il Sal kept biting at us again and again about the location of a treasure. My suspicion is that the Geumo Guild Master ordered the Ghost Blade Three Killers to retrieve it."
"What?!"
"Come to think of it..."
"What?! The Geumo Guild Master hired the Ghost Blade Three Killers? What in the world was this object supposed to be?"
A Hundred-Year He Shou Wu, that's what.
But Sanlong could hardly announce the Hundred-Year He Shou Wu that had vanished into his own belly.
At Sanlong's sudden accusation, Tang Woo cried out in desperation.
"Is that not mere speculation? A far more thorough investigation is warranted first."
"The Inryong Squad Commander has a point. We must not make the blunder of naming the wrong party as the savage's backer."
"Indeed. He may simply have asked for the item to be recovered — the Ghost Blade Three Killers could well have acted on their own initiative."
"Whether they acted on their own or not! If the Geumo Merchant Guild truly hired the Ghost Blade Three Killers, then they must pay the price for it!"
"Come now! The Geumo Guild has traded with the Tang Clan for generations..."
Sanlong's bombshell split the Clan Lord's hall along the familiar fault lines, and the factions descended into squabbling, just as they always did.
Tang Woo's sweating over this.
Since he had torn the letter to pieces, bringing up Eon Jungmi now would only invite the blowback to land squarely on his own head — so Sanlong deliberately made no mention of her.
After all, once the Geumo Guild Master was in custody, the truth would come out anyway.
Whether you meant to or not, Eon Jungmi — you have laid your hands on people of the Tang Clan.
Not even Eon Jungmi would escape accountability for that.
"Enough, all of you! Whether or not the Geumo Guild Master hired the Ghost Blade Three Killers, I believe the man's story is worth hearing. What say you?"
"I agree."
"I agree."
Despite Tang Woo's efforts, the will of the majority had already passed to the Clan Lord.
"Then we are decided. Assemble a party and..."
"Clan Lord!"
BANG!
The great doors of the Clan Lord's hall swung open, and Chief Steward Im rushed in, breathless with urgency.
For a man like him to behave this way was all but unheard of — which meant the news he carried had to be serious indeed.
"Qingcheng and Emei have entered the Tanggata!"
"...Qingcheng and Emei have?"
At the arrival of such uninvited guests, a heavy silence fell over the hall.
"So this is the Tanggata."
A young man in the Taoist robes of the Qingcheng Sect, somewhere in his late teens, cast his gaze about in every direction as he stepped through the gates.
Handsome as he was, he strolled along with a reed dangling from his lips and a distinctly rowdy, slouching gait — and yet not a single soul saw fit to call out the young man's conduct.
He was none other than Cheong Song, the Pine Green Sword, eighteen years of age — second-generation disciple of the Qingcheng Sect and hailed as its foremost prodigy.
Though he had not yet undergone his coming-of-age ceremony, he stood at the very edge of the First-Rate realm — a genius among geniuses. His breakthrough into the Peak Realm was only a matter of time.
"Cheong Song. From this point on, mind your words and your conduct. This is not Mount Qingcheng — it is the Tanggata."
"Of course, Martial Uncle."
Despite the young man's assurances, Won Myeong, elder of the Qingcheng Sect, could not easily set his mind at ease.
With no rival to be found among his own generation, the boy had grown up altogether too free — or one might generously call it "unrestrained." To speak frankly, it meant his social graces were sorely lacking.
Within Mount Qingcheng, a slip-up could be waved away with tolerance. Outside its gates, that luxury vanished.
Nowhere more so than here, in the Tanggata.
Those snakes will seize on the smallest thing and make a quarrel of it. We cannot afford to enter these negotiations already on the back foot.
Gathered in the same region, Qingcheng had long been on less than friendly terms with the Tang Clan.
One might ask — if they were all living side by side anyway, why not simply get along? But wherever profit was at stake, every sect had to act in its own interest, and from that, friction was inevitable.
Such frictions, great and small, had piled up not over a day or two but over long years, until the grudges between the three great sects ran deep indeed.
"The grievance of Qinghe must be answered by our own hands."
With Il Sal — the man who had murdered Qingcheng's second-generation senior disciple — to be escorted back to Mount Qingcheng, any clash with the Tang Clan now would make the negotiations an uphill battle from the very first word.
"Yes, Elder!"
Hmph.
All of Won Myeong's solemn resolve aside, the truth was that Cheong Song could not have cared less.
What actually occupied his mind was the new sensation everyone in Chengdu was singing praises of — the Poison Hero of Sichuan, Tang Sanlong.
Until half a year ago he was supposed to be a worthless good-for-nothing, and now they say he's the one who captured Qinghe's killer?
It was nothing short of fascinating.
For Cheong Song, who found no rival in Qingcheng outside its senior disciples, the emergence of the Poison Hero Tang Sanlong — a man of his own age — stirred his competitive spirit for the first time in ages.
"They say the one who captured Il Sal is the Tang Clan's no-good Third Young Master... 'Poison Hero'? What a joke of a title. Where do they even come up with these?"
"He must have fought dirty with poison. Well, he is a Tang, after all."
The disciples trailing behind them held no high opinion of Tang Sanlong.
Cheong Song, who rarely spared a thought for anything beyond his sword unless it happened within Mount Qingcheng, could not contain his curiosity — and quietly dropped back to fall in beside the two disciples.
"My, my, what an interesting conversation, disciples? You two seem to know a great deal about this Poison Hero."
For Cheong Song — a man interested in nothing but his sword and himself — to ask about Tang Sanlong of all people was, admittedly, quite out of character.
"The Tang Clan's good-for-nothing? He's fairly famous in Chengdu."
"A son of a great house, and yet they say he spends his days in gambling dens and taverns."
"Isn't that par for the course for sons of great houses?"
In Cheong Song's experience, most scions of great families had wretched conduct anyway. And they rarely became famous for it, either.
"Well, the one story everyone knows is from two years ago — he got handsy with Wi So-gun, the First Phoenix of Emei, and had his arm broken for it. Quite the famous incident."
"Oh ho... something like that happened with the young Miss Wi? How delightful! Utterly delightful! Keep going."
And so their gossip session began.
Just then, a pebble came flying at them with all the menace of a tossed crumb.
"Huh?"
"Don't you dare insult our Poison Hero!"
At the shout of a grubby little boy, his face streaked with the marks of dried tears, every head turned.
"What's this?"
"You're from the Qingcheng Sect, aren't you?"
"You don't even know where you are, and you're stirring up trouble?"
In an instant, the air around them turned glacial.
This was the Tanggata. However poor Sanlong's reputation, he was still a man of the Tang Clan — and no one here would take kindly to outsiders hurling insults at him.
Won Myeong confirmed who had caused the incident and brought a hand to his forehead with a sigh.
He had told the boy, time and again, to watch his tongue — and the boy had gone and made a scene anyway.
The murderous atmosphere thickened. The situation stood one spark from an open clash.
Then Cheong Song let out a hearty laugh.
"Hahaha! My bad! My bad! That was a slip of the tongue on my part. I'm sorry."
"The Poison Hero saved me and my mother!"
Was the boy a survivor of Seoksu Village, then? If so, the reaction was more than understandable — and so Cheong Song bowed in a formal fist-and-palm salute and apologized as respectfully as he could manage.
"Truly, I apologize. What is your name, young hero?"
"I'm Ju Sang-jo! One day I'm going to join the Tang Clan and receive a courtesy name! And I'm going to become a great hero, just like the Poison Hero!"
"Oh, is that so? Impressive stuff, young hero Ju. Then, in keeping with your nobility, might you magnanimously accept my apology?"
Being addressed as a "young hero" put the boy in high spirits, and he nodded readily.
"Alright! But you'd better be careful next time!"
"I will. Understood. Thank you, young hero Ju."
"Hehe!"
Watching the boy scurry off on his stubby little legs, the faintest smile touched the corners of Cheong Song's mouth.
"Hah..."
Won Myeong breathed a sigh of relief at how smoothly the whole affair had been defused, while the disciples shot Cheong Song disapproving looks.
"Senior brother, there was truly no need to humble yourself before some urchin..."
Cheong Song replied with a look of utter disdain.
"Quiet. A wrong is a wrong. That urchin understands right and wrong better than the lot of you."
Just as they were about to resume their journey, a soft, melodious voice sounded — and it captured the attention of every last soul present.
"Your eloquence remains as sharp as ever, Taoist Cheong Song."
"Gah!"
"Is that a person, or a fairy descended from heaven?!"
The owner of the voice that had seized everyone's gaze had long, flowing black hair, flawless porcelain skin, a high straight nose, and exquisitely beautiful eyes.
Yet for all her delicate appearance, the aura she carried was that of a single, perfectly honed blade.
There was only one swordswoman in all of Sichuan blessed with such beauty.
Wi So-gun — the First Phoenix of Emei, one of the Nine Dragons and Eight Phoenixes.
Confronted with such an unexpected figure in such an unexpected place, Cheong Song could only stare at her, momentarily dumbstruck.
After all, this was the first time they had laid eyes on each other since the exchange gathering between the three great sects of Sichuan — Qingcheng, Emei, and the Tang Clan.
And that had been a full year ago.
"Miss Wi — what business brings you here?"
In answer to his question, the sharp voice of a middle-aged woman cut through the air.
"What? Is there some reason we are forbidden to set foot here?"
Hwasun Satae of the Emei Sect fixed Cheong Song with a gaze full of stubborn defiance.
"I meant nothing of the sort—"
Just as the old nun's brow began to furrow at the young man's faintly insolent tone, Won Myeong stepped forward.
"Hwasun Satae. It has been far too long."
"An elder now, and your neck has grown stiffer than ever, I see!"
"Hahaha!"
Despite her barbed provocation, Won Myeong merely smiled, offering no other reaction.
Why would Hwasun Satae come here of all places?
Beneath his impeccably courteous exterior, a dozen thoughts churned through Won Myeong's mind.
Just as the unfathomable standoff between Qingcheng and Emei stretched on, a young man's voice broke through the rigid atmosphere.
"Would you be the honored guests from Qingcheng and Emei?"
A tall young man of rather unremarkable features, dressed in the martial garb of the Tang Clan — that much, at least, was plain to see.
Most present could only wonder, who is that? — but one person alone knew exactly who he was.
It's you. It was always going to be you!
Cheong Song looked at the young man with eyes brimming over with competitive fire, while the young man — evidently having sprinted the whole way — paused to catch his breath before offering a formal fist-and-palm salute.
"Tang Sanlong pays his respects to the elders of Qingcheng and Emei."
The young man's true identity was the Poison Hero himself — Tang Sanlong.