The Art of Persuasion
The hidden stronghold where the Sword of the North was garrisoned sat surrounded by dense woods, and thanks to that, there was a rather decent wooden building on the grounds.
In the room of the largest building in the compound, a woman sat cross-legged, refusing her food.
Creeeak.
Just then, the door opened and a man stepped inside.
If a bear ate a bulb of garlic and turned into a man, would it look like this? Unkempt hair and beard, scars crisscrossing his face and body alike—a towering height of at least seven chi and a massive frame that would make a bear itself take a step back.
The man's name was Jyambaga.
He was the leader of the Sword of the North, and a Peak Realm master standing before the wall of the Transcendent Peak.
He approached Khulan with the ease of familiarity.
"Still stubborn as ever, I see, Princess."
"......"
"You fled in such dramatic fashion, only to be captured so utterly pathetically."
To Jyambaga's words, Khulan gave no reaction at all.
She simply continued her quiet meditation.
Even her body of tempered steel, deprived of food for nearly a month, had wasted away to a visibly alarming degree.
Watching the food rot with flies swarming over it, Jyambaga pulled up a chair and sat down across from her.
"Why on earth do you push yourself this far? You could at least lend a hand toward the restoration of the Great Yuan."
He could have granted her anything else, but there was exactly one thing Khulan could not accept.
"The Great Yuan? Ha! Everyone scrambling to become emperor, killing and being killed by the day; seizing lands beyond their means and failing to properly care for their own people; and when plague ran rampant, they did nothing, so Heaven grew wrathful and sent down its punishment. And such a country calls itself great? Even a passing dog would laugh."
At Khulan's words, Jyambaga's expression hardened into ice.
"Is that not better than bedding a Ming royal and bearing his child?"
"Hahaha! How amusing, hearing that from a man who reeks of a woman's quarters. The restoration of the Great Yuan? Says the man who keeps a harem in his own garrison!"
At that, Jyambaga's brow furrowed violently.
"And what makes you any better, raising my son—carrying Ming imperial blood—to the throne? You couldn't become emperor yourself, so you set up a proxy for your regency, and still you stand there so proud of it. Utterly laughable!"
At her taunting words, Jyambaga kicked back his seat and rose as if overcome.
It seemed Khulan had struck a nerve.
"Damn that legitimacy! Yes, no matter how hard I strive, it's always that cursed bloodline standing in my way! I can never be emperor!"
"Then just make yourself emperor. Isn't everyone and their dog already rising up in rebellion, howling about being heirs of the Yuan? Well then—shall I vouch for you, as a princess of a fallen nation?"
The veins on Jyambaga's forehead bulged as though they might burst at any moment.
"...Princess or not, I find myself thinking you would do well to watch your tongue. Whew..."
Sensing his own agitation, Jyambaga gathered his emotions.
"Say what you will—whether you starve to death or not, your son will become emperor. A puppet in truth, but in the annals of history, he will be recorded as the emperor of Yuan who reclaimed their lands."
"Hmph!"
Having said his piece, Jyambaga turned to leave the room—and then he stopped.
"Ah! Could it be that you carry on like this because of hope? Hope that some Ming prince might come and rescue you?"
"What?"
"Now that I think of it, I heard some rather entertaining news. A prince has slipped away from his column yet again! And they say the place is not far from here... Would it be the prince you once loved? Or another? Whichever one it is, I'll cut off his head soon enough and bring it to you as a gift."
"Jyambaga..."
"No sense wasting food on a corpse. See that she is given nothing more."
With those words to his soldiers, Jyambaga slowly left the room.
* * *
"He'll figure out it's me and come running, all excited."
"Hm..."
The prince stood with the darkness of night at his back, gazing down at the Sword of the North's garrison, when a voice spoke up behind him.
"Your... Highness..."
"Caught one, did you?"
Hwang Ung answered in place of Jeongcheon.
"Yes, Your Highness. We subdued him, but as you can see, he doesn't seem inclined to open his mouth."
The Sword of the North soldier who'd been ambushed while hidden glared at the prince as if he would tear him apart on the spot.
"Release his acupoints."
"Ptui!"
The moment the blockage cleared, the soldier spat at the prince—but he deflected it with a blade of grass, as if he had expected it.
"Common defiance. Where are the princess and the young prince your people took?"
"......"
"Cat got your tongue?"
Thuck!
Jeongcheon drove a blade into his thigh without a moment's hesitation, and a scream tore from the soldier's mouth.
"GRAAGH! You bastards!"
Fortunately, he could still speak.
Watching the man writhe in agony, the prince asked again, this time in Mongolian.
"I will ask you once more. Where are the princess and the prince being held?"
"Ptui!"
The soldier attempted another biochemical attack.
But once again the prince blocked it with a broad leaf, as though he'd anticipated this too.
"They'll start moving soon enough..."
It would be far safer to run the operation with the positions known in advance, but judging by the man's attitude, he wasn't likely to cooperate.
Just then, Samryong approached slowly.
"Let me persuade him."
"You?"
"Yes."
And so, for the purposes of persuasion (?), what Samryong produced was a leather bag bristling with medical needles.
"Lend me a hand, everyone. Somebody grab his arms and legs, please. No time to waste, so we'll do this briskly."
So persuasion meant torture? Samryong drew out a needle at an unhurried pace.
"There are any number of methods—jabbing between the fingernails, or between the toenails—but this one's likely been trained to withstand torture. A professional, in other words."
"I see."
"So I intend to be rather more thorough. Hold his legs tight."
Samryong flung the thin needle toward the man's most vital region.
"Mmmph! Mmmph!"
Gagged, the man couldn't even scream properly as Samryong approached him.
"Ah, my mistake—my aim's a bit off, it drifted slightly to the side. I'll try again. Perhaps it's the cold weather... Or did it shrivel up?"
"Tang physician, you are a truly terrifying man."
"Here it comes again. You're not going to answer anyway, are you?"
"Mmmph! Mmmph! MMMMPH!"
Thuck!
This time it struck home—the man's trousers turned red at the crotch.
"Ugh..."
Seol Mokyeon and Jeongcheon turned their heads away, and the rescue squad members winced in sympathetic agony, grimacing as though they could feel it themselves.
"Mmmph!"
Because the needle was so thin, the wound itself was minor—but the pain was enormous.
Toward the man shaking so violently his legs trembled, Samryong extracted the embedded needle at an exquisitely slow pace, then reset his stance.
Just before the man rolled his eyes back and fainted, Samryong produced something.
"Not going to answer? Oh, right—if he passes out, have him smell this."
"Tang physician... truly, you are a frightening one......"
"If anything happens where I cross the Tang physician, just kill me outright......"
"Right! Here we go."
"Mmmmmmph!"
As the process repeated again and again, the man's trousers soaked completely through with red.
Watching him, Samryong smeared something onto another needle.
"This persuasion business is harder than I expected. I'll need to use a stronger method."
"...Stronger than this?"
"Yes. I'll have to coat this with a poison that will render him permanently unable to function as a man."
"Monstrous!"
The prince's face registered genuine horror, but Samryong's eyebrows didn't so much as twitch.
"If you don't talk, you'll be a eunuch for the rest of your life."
At that, the Sword of the North soldier shook his head desperately, trying to say something.
"What's that? Still won't talk?"
The soldier whipped his head back and forth furiously.
"Oh, you think you can tell us where those two are?"
Nod! Nod!
The soldier nodded for his life.
Samryong slowly removed the gag.
"I'll—I'll tell you everything! Damn it! I was trying to tell you from the start!"
Watching the prisoner cry out in desperation, Samryong smiled with satisfaction.
Truly, it seemed that most things could be settled amicably, so long as one knew how to hold a conversation.
"Your Highness, the persuasion worked."
"Excellent. This is why people ought to talk things through."
As Tang Samryong said this with a grin, the prince nodded with an equally pleased expression.
'Terrifying. He's absolutely terrifying.'
Putting the collective terror of the rescue squad behind him, the soldier who had been persuaded (?) through conversation with Samryong told them exactly where the two were being held.
What's more, they learned there were other prisoners besides the mother and child.
"They're Ming subjects too. We save them."
Just as the prince was adjusting the plan, an earsplitting roar split the air.
"HYAAAH! HYAAAH!"
"BUWAHAHA!"
"Take the prince's head!"
Before the soldier's explanation had even finished, eight hundred Sword of the North cavalry poured out of the garrison at a terrifying speed.
"Tie him to a tree somewhere and knock him out."
And so, after waiting roughly one more shichen once they had departed, Samryong spoke.
"Time to move in."
"Agreed."
"This way."
Having spent the waiting time surveying the terrain, Samryong had already calculated the optimal route of entry.
It was a habit he'd drilled into himself every time he entered a dungeon in his past life.
"You know, you have the makings of a field commander. Good with people, too."
"I'll enter first."
Taking the rope, Samryong descended first, and one by one the rescue squad began to follow.
Thump! Thump!
The squad landed on the wooden roof.
Samryong slowly swept his gaze across the compound.
'Not a single one of them is ordinary.'
True to their reputation—men hastily raised on elixirs and forced growth in the flight after Yuan's fall—every last soldier was far from commonplace.
The rescue squad outnumbered them, but their realms were wildly uneven, whereas the two hundred Sword of the North remaining here were all first-rate masters at the very least.
If they clashed head-on here, the rescue squad would certainly find itself at a disadvantage.
Which was why a direct confrontation had to be avoided at all costs.
"There are more buildings than I expected. To think a garrison this size was hidden away like this."
If they hadn't known the exact location, they might well have walked right past it.
After surveying the garrison for a moment, the prince decided to execute the plan he had already drawn up.
"Proceed as planned. Team A seizes the signal tower to delay the enemy's return as long as possible. Team B secures the princess, the prince, and the prisoners, then withdraws. Team C throws the tear gas and sets the buildings alight to incapacitate or disperse the remaining forces, and blocks pursuit."
"Yes, sir!"
"Begin."
The prince was the first to hurl a tear gas canister, and from all directions the canisters came flying in a withering barrage.
"What is this?! Cough! Cough! Hack!"
"Poison! Enemy attack! Everyone, bite your anti-poison pills!"
The commander barked orders with impressive speed, but this was no ordinary lethal poison—merely an irritant to the bronchial tubes—so the pills were utterly useless.
"The pills aren't work... cough! Cough! Hold formation, all of you!"
"Steady! Weapons up!"
Even amid the chaos of men sneezing, tears and snot streaming down their faces, they managed to form ranks— elite troops, through and through.
But the rescue squad's objective was not to annihilate or capture them—only to disable them and scatter their attention.
"Light it up! Burn it all!"
"Burn it!"
Being wooden buildings, the fire spread with startling speed.
The smoke pouring from the burning structures, on top of the tear gas! It was as if hell itself had descended upon this place.
And so, while Teams A and C faithfully carried out their duties, Team B pushed into the building the prisoner had described.
"Pretty sizable."
The prince closed his eyes for a moment and began to murmur softly.
'Some manner of sorcery?'
No doubt related to the technique that had seen through the concealment arts.
A short while later, the prince slowly opened his eyes.
"Second floor."
"Enemies! Kill them!"
Just then, men inside the building burst out and came charging, and Samryong slipped a hand into his sleeve.
"Nine Calamities Salvation."
Shhhhrak!
Nine hidden weapons flew out, halting the charge in its tracks.
They were all first-rate masters, to be sure, and they hardly went down easy.
But Team B was not Samryong alone.
"Ice White Divine Sword!"
"Loyal Righteous Sword Art!"
"Silver Net Silk!"
While the swordsmen held the enemies at the front, Samryong backed them up from behind—flinging needles, seizing openings, subduing.
'Time to unleash it!'
Samryong was working out the frustrations of all those years he'd suffered as a melee brawler in his past life.