The Patriarch's Tutoring and the Returning Matriarch
"Ahem. Kheum! Kheum!"
It was Tang Saryeong, sitting quietly beside him and clearing her throat with exaggerated care. Sanlong had been staring blankly out into the courtyard, trying to calm the turmoil in his heart, and having his brooding interrupted made him want nothing more than to toss the little pest right out of his small, precious home—his mini-mansion—on the spot.
"Kheum! Kheum! It'll be fine……. I mean, they say it's dangerous, but… your martial arts aren't bad at all, and besides, it's the rear lines, so……."
"Yeah."
He had been on the verge of shooing her out, but realizing she was doing her clumsy best to comfort him, he decided to let it slide. She really was slowly turning into an actual human being. That was a relief.
"Huek… huek… huehuek……."
"Soso……."
Just then, someone beside them began to weep as though her heart were breaking. Tang Soso sniffled quietly at Sanlong's side.
And Tang Saryeong found that utterly grating.
"That dead fish has been at it since earlier! Don't ever get involved with a girl like that. I'm telling you, her outside and her inside don't match."
"Older brother… please stay safe."
"Well, seeing Soso worried does make me feel a little better."
The comfort of a beautiful woman.
Was that not, in the end, the finest antidepressant known to man?
"Hey, why do you react differently to her than to me?"
"Why. You were grateful, weren't you?"
"Hey!"
The comfort of a blood relative who merely happened, biologically, to be a woman, and the comfort of a woman who was no blood relative at all—these were plainly different categories of thing, and apparently she simply couldn't grasp the distinction.
"Third Young Master, the Family Head summons you."
Tang Yeonghui delivered the message flatly, and Sanlong rose as though he'd been half expecting it.
"Everyone clear out before I leave. Tang Saryeong, you stay with Oryong. Things have been absolute chaos since yesterday."
"Got it."
It was oddly the first time he'd ever seen her weep so mournfully.
And so Sanlong made his way, for the first time in ages, not to the Family Head's hall, but to the training ground behind it. He had come once before heading to Guya Forest last year, and this was his first visit since the new year began.
Tang Mun-seong, dressed not in his usual attire but in training garb, sat in seated meditation. Sensing Sanlong's approach, he slowly opened his eyes.
"You've come."
"Yes. I greet the Family Head."
"Call me Father. This is not the Family Head's hall."
At Tang Mun-seong's words, Sanlong hesitated briefly before answering.
"Yes, Father."
Whether the word Father sat rather well with him or not, the corner of Tang Mun-seong's mouth shifted ever so slightly.
Was that my imagination?
It had been so fleeting that Sanlong wondered if he'd simply seen it wrong.
"I've heard the news."
"Yes."
"The Imperial Ming… no matter how much martial might our Tang Clan wields, no matter how great an influence we hold over Sichuan, before the imperial throne we are nothing more than a candle in the wind."
Were the Emperor so inclined, theirs was merely one of the places he could erase at any moment. And that went not only for the Tang Clan but for every sect in the murim. The government stayed out of martial affairs only because it saw no particular need to involve itself. Besides, when the time came, the sects fought among themselves unprompted, thinning their own numbers—there was rarely much call for official attention.
The current Emperor, moreover, had state affairs enough on his plate, and had to contend with enemies pressing in ceaselessly from every direction—east, west, south, and north—along with the remnants of the old Yuan dynasty. He had no leisure to spare for them.
"Even I would struggle to hold back the Imperial Ming. I am sorry."
An apology, from Tang Mun-seong's own lips. Sanlong could only stand there dumbfounded.
"Ah… yes……."
At Sanlong's answer, Tang Mun-seong regarded him quietly. Complicated emotions passed through his eyes. And then, faintly, he smiled.
"And yet your mind seems already made up."
"I will return safe and sound."
Being redrafted into the army was painful, certainly—but his past life and his life on the battlefield had never been all that different, in the end.
Watching Sanlong, Tang Mun-seong drew a slow breath.
"Indeed. Perhaps it is better, after all, that you go somewhere—anywhere—away from here."
"I'm sorry?"
At Sanlong's bewildered reply, Tang Mun-seong spoke matter-of-factly.
"Soon, she and your brother and sister will return."
There was only one person she could be.
Tang Mun-seong's first wife—and mother of Tang Ilryong and Tang I-ryeong—Dang Sin-hye.
"Ah……."
Dang Sin-hye despised Sanlong every bit as much as Eon Jungmi had. Where Eon Jungmi had schemed openly to torment him, she had done it deftly from behind, prodding Eon Jungmi along and twisting the knife with elegant subtlety.
He wasn't even a bastard born outside the marriage—Sanlong was a legitimate child of a formal union—and still she loathed him to a horrifying degree.
Because Sanlong was a good-for-nothing? No. Judging by how thoroughly she hated Saryeong and Oryong as well, the reason couldn't be anything so simple.
Jealousy of the two other wives? That didn't hold up either—she didn't seem to love Tang Mun-seong all that much to begin with.
However he turned the question over, he simply couldn't locate the wellspring of her hatred.
'Father seems to know, though…….'
For some reason, Tang Mun-seong alone appeared to understand it. But short of the man offering the explanation himself, Sanlong felt awkward about asking.
"So the First Mother is returning."
"Yes. In her eyes, you will not look kindly upon at all."
"Well… that's hardly anything new."
And to Sanlong's airy dismissal, Tang Mun-seong answered in a heavy voice.
"Things are different now."
"In what way……?"
"Because you are no longer the good-for-nothing. You have become a serious rival to Ilryong and I-ryeong."
Sanlong replied as though the very idea were absurd.
"I have no intention of becoming Family Head. Once I finish my training at the Tang Youth Training Unit, I planned to apply to the Poison Hall or the Medicine Hall."
"I know you have no particular ambition. But will she see it that way?"
"I'm sorry?"
"In half a year, you rose from Third-Rate to the First-Rate realm. You rooted out one of the clan's long-entrenched cancers—a whole branch of the collateral line, the Tang Woo household. The Benevolent Dragon Unit will now fall under the leadership of another collateral branch, and the odds favor Tang Chiyeol, whom you're on good terms with… though of course, I intend to make that a reality."
Tang Mun-seong continued without softening a word.
"Never mind Tang Woo—Eon Jungmi was practically her hand and foot. Naturally, Eon Jungmi's own greed swelled until she slipped out of her grip and acted on her own whims, and that is what brought about her death. Yes… even that, she may well have anticipated."
Eon Jungmi would have refused to serve under anyone regardless, and would have run wild on her own soon enough. So long as her hatred pointed only at Sanlong and Yu Yanghui, Dang Sin-hye hadn't cared in the slightest what she got up to.
And this woman who moved with such foresight, calculating everything down to that level—there was exactly one thing she had failed to foresee.
"The single thing she did not expect: your sudden emergence. A direct-line son who sweeps away a collateral branch, stacks up one merit after another, and rises into prominence out of nowhere."
Now that he heard it laid out, it was easy to see how someone might conclude that Sanlong was angling for the Family Head's seat—and that Tang Mun-seong was backing him.
"Listening to you… I really must look lovely in her eyes."
If Dang Sin-hye returned to find things as they were, he had a feeling life in the Tang Clan was about to get considerably harder than before. Fortune's wheel, indeed—it had flipped so completely that leaving the Tang Clan now actually seemed like the better bargain.
Granted, he wasn't thrilled that the place he'd be fleeing to was an army camp, but he'd bought himself two years to grow stronger, and he decided to be satisfied with that.
'So there really is no paradise once you've run away, is there?'
Leaving the Tang Clan hadn't been his intention, of course—but he couldn't imagine that running from the current situation would land him anywhere better.
"Please look after my mother while I'm gone."
At Sanlong's words, Tang Mun-seong gave a small shake of his head.
"It is rather the opposite—I am the one who must be careful. Careful of protecting your mother, my wife."
"I'm sorry?"
Watching Sanlong, who couldn't hide the what kind of nonsense is that? written across his face, Tang Mun-seong spoke with evident conflict.
Sanlong was an adult now.
It was time he was told.
"The more interest I show in your mother, the more likely she becomes to target her. Surely you can understand what I mean now. Understand it, yes… though I imagine accepting it emotionally is another matter entirely."
"Ah……."
Cruelly enough, Dang Sin-hye hated Yu Yanghui and Namgung So alike. Namgung So, at least, was a formidable martial artist in her own right, with the ironclad backing of the Namgung Clan behind her—Dang Sin-hye couldn't easily touch her. But Yu Yanghui was different.
If Dang Sin-hye put her mind to it, she could make Yu Yanghui live the most miserable existence in the entire Tang Clan. And with the Family Head's favor now crowding onto her, too? There was no telling what Dang Sin-hye might truly unleash.
"I understand. But… yes, it's certainly hard to swallow."
He understood Tang Mun-seong's reasoning. But just as the man had said, accepting it with anything other than his head was beyond him.
"Still—please help her indirectly. Let me keep Tang Yeonghui at her side."
"Yes. I will arrange that."
"And please send medicine and the like under my name as well."
"Yes."
He'd received firm assurances on every point, but he wouldn't be there himself. All he felt was unease.
"And if the very worst comes to pass……."
"You needn't say it. If such a moment arrives, I will defend her with my life. Worry not."
"Ah… yes……."
Facing a father who showed more feeling, more sincerity, than at any moment he could remember, Sanlong found he couldn't press on any further.
'Thank goodness.'
To hear him swear so earnestly to protect his mother even in the midst of all this eased Sanlong's worry, if only a little.
"That's more than enough."
"Come to think of it, every request you've made concerns your mother. Is there nothing you want for yourself?"
"Me… well… maybe an elixir or……."
"Since you're headed to the northern front, find time here and there to search for things like North Sea Ice Crystal from the North Sea Ice Palace, or a Millennium Snow Ginseng from the region around the North Sea."
"That's a dream you're telling me to wake up from."
"It is."
Tang Mun-seong was resolute.
'Then… I can't really think of anything else…….'
Nothing in particular came to mind—and then, suddenly, he felt the cold touch of metal against his wrist.
'Oh?'
Come to think of it, he was standing right in front of the rarest creature in existence: a supreme master of the Tang Clan who also happened to be good at explaining things.
This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"There is a martial art I would like you to review."
"An art you'd like me to review?"
"A technique built around silver wire."
"Built around silver wire? You created it yourself?"
"Eldest Sister gave me the inspiration……."
Sanlong explained the Silver Net Wire in detail—a martial art built on the use of silver thread.
"Then unfold it for me."
"Yes."
At that, Sanlong unfolded the Silver Net Wire to the best of his ability, and Tang Mun-seong, watching, quietly closed his eyes and sank into thought for a moment. Then, before long, he opened them and spoke.
"The overall direction is sound, and your foundation for how to employ the wire is not bad. However—there are small things, in a number of places, that do not fit you."
"Does not fit me?"
"Precisely. Wi Sogun is undoubtedly exceptional, but she could only have taught you what lies within her own knowledge, no? So naturally, much of it resembles the arts of Mount Emei. And the martial arts of Emei were built for the female body. For a man to learn them, there is a certain… misalignment."
"Ah……."
So there had been a reason, every time, for that lingering sense that the Silver Net Wire fell short of completion.
Was this what the eyes of a genius—a true master—could see?
Sanlong looked at Tang Mun-seong with eyes full of expectation.
"There's nothing that needs drastic rework. Refine the smaller details, and you will have a thoroughly excellent martial art."
"Yes."
"In that case—rather, before you leave for the north, let us polish everything of yours, the Silver Net Wire included."
"Would that truly be all right?"
Wouldn't the collateral branches howl about favoritism? But Tang Mun-seong's face said worry about nothing.
"What parents wouldn't teach their son something before he's dragged off to a battlefield? And the collateral branches can no longer simply wail and insist as they once did. Once she returns, who can say—but until then, no complaints will be raised."
"I see."
"We haven't the luxury of time. We begin at once."
"I look forward to your instruction."
"Good. It will be short—but it will be brutal."
And so began Tang Mun-seong's one-on-one intensive tutoring.
"Hm."
The noblewoman read the letter in silence for a long while, then set it down slowly, as though it were nothing of consequence. The young wife seated before her asked, curiosity plainly written across her face.
"Is it good news?"
"Neither good nor bad, particularly. If anything… I'd call it interesting."
Her eyes were more chilling than they had ever been. But it lasted only an instant, and none of the noblewomen around her caught so much as a glimpse of it.
"Such a shame that Lady Tang will be departing so soon."
"If it were not a family matter, I would have stayed longer. I find it a great pity as well."
With those words, Tang Mun-seong's first wife, Dang Sin-hye, raised her teacup with elegant grace.
'I have been away far too long.'
Of the three years she had spent here, the last single year had seen the most upheaval of all.
'The Tang Woo household, gone entirely. For something that was, on paper, so small a matter… it feels like a beginning.'
Tang Mun-seong would never let such an opportunity slip through his fingers.
'I must operate on the assumption that the Benevolent Dragon Unit has already fallen into Tang Mun-seong's hands…….'
Her one consolation was the web of connections she had built here at the Murim Alliance.
"Hahaha!"
"Hohoho!"
Perhaps this was the reward for so diligently entertaining noblewomen who knew nothing of the world and did nothing but laugh.
'Hm…….'
The trivial chatter of the noblewomen around her had long since stopped registering.
'Tang Sanlong, once a good-for-nothing, reached the First-Rate realm in a single year. Captured Wi-do Samsal and earned renown as the Poison Hero. Played a major part in the purge of Tang Woo and Eon Jungmi…….'
It was all secondhand—reports she had already received and heard—but having never witnessed it herself, she couldn't quite believe it possible.
'Tang Mun-seong. Are you the one pushing him forward?'
But Tang Mun-seong was not a man who would go so far for anyone.
'Or… is it all simply true? For now, I must keep every possibility open.'
She had wondered, briefly, whether they meant to set Sanlong up as the next Family Head—but the letter she had just received had lowered that probability somewhat.
'Tang Sanlong… is being sent to the northern front. If Tang Mun-seong meant to make him Family Head, he would never have let him go so easily. A pity, that.'
All the plans she had roughly sketched out for handling Sanlong upon her return would need a complete overhaul. It was a shame to waste the effort—but plans, by their nature, were things where half a success was a jackpot, and merely getting started was a blessing in itself.
After all, schemes collapsing before they even began were the common order of the day.
'Shall I make use of Yu Yanghui? But Tang Mun-seong never gives me so much as a pretext—I can't even play the jealousy-blind fool of a wife…….'
She tapped a fingertip lightly against her footrest.
'Prodding her now would do nothing but backfire. It is not yet time to provoke Tang Mun-seong. Not until he returns.'
For one fleeting instant, as a certain someone crossed her mind, her eyes took on the look of a girl hopelessly in love—before a woman's voice snapped her instantly back to herself.
"Wouldn't you agree, Lady Tang?"
"What a delightful story. Hohoho!"
"Hohoho!"
Setting down her now-cold teacup, Dang Sin-hye shelved the matter of Tang Sanlong for the time being and resumed her tedious conversation with the noblewomen.