I'm the King of Running My Mouth
The single line Hwiyeom tossed out was more than enough to enrage every elder of the Elder Council.
"Such arrogance…!"
"How dare the Young Master spew such crude words in a place like this!"
"Even the Family Head never treats us elders so carelessly, yet a child who hasn't even completed the rites of manhood dares…!"
Hwiyeom simply watched their bristling fury in silence.
He let them rant for a good while, then raised one hand.
The gesture alone made them fall quiet without thinking. Hwiyeom gave a short snort of laughter.
"If a mess is a mess, what else do you call it? The elders who are supposed to be the Family Head's brain trust are falling over themselves to denounce him. Keep it up and you'll be proposing we drag him down and put an elder in his seat instead, won't you?"
"Watch your tongue, Young Master!"
"The one who needs to watch his tongue is you! How dare a mere retainer raise his voice in front of the Family Head!"
Elder Gong Duchan, bristling at Hwiyeom's bluntness, shouted back—only for Hwiyeom to roar right over him.
When something is truly beyond belief, words fail you.
How loud could a child's shout be when his internal energy was still shallow? Yet the sight of that child bellowing reprimands at a man nearly sixty was enough to leave anyone speechless.
For a moment the elders forgot even to condemn Hwiyeom. Their eyes bulged and their mouths worked soundlessly.
"Y-you… you…!"
"Ugghhh…"
One elder actually groaned, clutched the back of his neck, and collapsed; servants had to half-carry him out.
Hwiyeom did not stop berating the speechless elders.
"Where is this place? The Sichuan Dang Family! Who is the master of the Dang Family? The blood of the Dang! And what are you? Retainers of the Dang!
Before the Family Head decides, counsel him toward the right choice. After he decides, even if it differs from your own view, pour every scrap of wisdom into making his order succeed—that is the Elder Council's duty!
You dare threaten the Family Head? And you still call yourselves retainers who eat the Dang Family's salt!"
"We have devoted decades to this family. No Family Head in history ever slighted us elders this way. And a mere Young Master dares…!"
"Speak properly, Elder Hong Ilgon. Past Family Heads treated the elders with respect because the elders knew their place!
Even if Grand Patriarch Grandfather or the late Elder Council Head, my great-grandfather, still stood among us, do you truly think the Elder Council would have dared raise its voice before the Family Head like this?!"
"…The Young Master seems to believe that so long as the Family Head alone is sound, this family will run just fine."
"Elder Hong, that sounds an awful lot like a threat—that unless the Family Head plays the obedient little child in your grasp, you will make certain the family does not run smoothly?"
The older one grows, the more skilled one becomes at roundabout political rhetoric—and the thinner one's skin becomes against naked insult.
Because one simply never has to endure it anymore!
Hwiyeom's raw, gutting sarcasm set Hong Ilgon's white beard trembling.
What Hwiyeom had said was the Elder Council's true heart, yet it was something that could never be spoken aloud.
Hong Ilgon forced down his blazing rage and answered in a cold voice.
"How could that be? I am merely saying that for the family to run smoothly, the help of us elders and the branch bloodlines is also essential. Oppressing us this way is not right."
"And what exactly is that 'smooth operation'? Sitting around making snide remarks about decisions the Family Head has already made? Once the Family Head points the way, you are supposed to present concrete methods."
"It is the duty of a true scholar to remonstrate even at the risk of his life when the lord is about to take a wrong path."
"A wrong path? Have you walked it? Have you even seen it?"
"What did you say?"
"How can you so confidently declare that going to treat the Emei Sect's cholera is a wrong path? Have you tried it? Did you try it first and only then conclude it was wrong?"
A faint sneer touched Hong Ilgon's lips.
"The Young Master is still young and does not know how terrifying cholera is. Do you imagine any of the elders here has never witnessed it?"
In other words: after living decades, do you think this is the first time we've seen cholera spread? Hwiyeom snorted a laugh.
"I can picture it perfectly. Every time cholera hit, you locked the gates like terrified turtles and lived as quiet as the dead just to scrape by."
"Now see here, Young Master!"
"Enough!"
Dang Un-sang, who had been listening in silence, suddenly bellowed. Every mouth snapped shut.
"Elders acting like this in front of a child—what kind of disgrace is this! And Hwiyeom! What kind of manners are those for a boy speaking to his elders! Apologize at once!"
"I cannot."
"What?"
Dang Un-sang had never imagined his own son would defy even him. He stared blankly as Hwiyeom spoke.
"If this son of yours begs their pardon, it would mean condoning those who dared denounce Father. Until they first apologize for their rudeness to you, I cannot apologize to them."
"You little…!"
"No—the Young Master has a point in part. Family Head, some of us elders did make a spectacle of ourselves. Yet it was only because our hearts for the family burned too fiercely. Please forgive us."
Hong Ilgon suddenly overlapped his sleeves and bowed at the waist. The other elders, reading the room, hurriedly followed suit.
The one left most uncomfortable was Dang Un-sang.
He could not fathom what these old foxes were after by suddenly yielding.
"…I accept the apology. Elders, do not act rashly again. Select the physicians to dispatch to the Emei Sect and report to me."
"About that matter, Family Head—this old man has a fine idea."
"What is it?"
"For the medical team bound for Emei, why not send the Young Master as its leader?"
"What!"
Dang Un-sang lost his composure; his eyes flew wide.
"Send the Young Master into a place where cholera is raging? Did I hear you correctly, Elder Hong?!"
"You did. This old man has heard that the Young Master himself devised the 'oral rehydration solution' said to treat cholera. Would it not set the finest example for all if he took the most active lead in the matter?"
"But—!"
"Exactly so. If the very person who invented the treatment turns tail, who will trust the method enough to use it? Please grant it, Family Head!"
"Please grant it!"
In short, they were telling the Young Master to go out and die. Dang Un-sang trembled with rage.
This was precisely why they had hurried to apologize.
"You bastards dare…!"
Dang Un-sang's face twisted with fury; killing intent flooded out for an instant.
A crushing pressure, as if a thousand-catty boulder had dropped, filled the hall. The wooden floorboards began to creak.
Hong Ilgon gasped for breath under the choking weight.
"F-Family Head…"
Damn it—I let that little brat's provocation push me past the line…!
The elders' faces turned ashen under Dang Un-sang's killing intent. Hong Ilgon bit his lip in regret—when suddenly
"Ahahahaha!"
Hwiyeom's bright laughter rang through the council chamber.
At the sudden clear peal of mirth, Dang Un-sang, still radiating killing intent, and the elders still bent and trembling all froze in bewilderment and turned to look at him.
What crazy scheme is that lunatic cooking up now?
Hong Ilgon felt a deeper, nameless foreboding at the laughing Hwiyeom than at the Family Head scattering killing intent.
Hwiyeom said,
"Yes! That is exactly the attitude an elder ought to have. At last you seem to understand your proper duty."
"W-what flattering words you… speak?"
Hong Ilgon, who had been choking only moments earlier, stammered. Hwiyeom kept the smile on his face and turned to Dang Un-sang.
"Father."
"No."
Dang Un-sang scowled as though he had bitten into bitter gall.
"This son will go."
"I said no!"
"Elder Hong is right. It is a treatment I proposed. If I myself do not step forward, no one will dare use it.
Do not worry, Father. Trust me."
"What idiotic nonsense is this! What reckless behavior!"
But… if I didn't do it this way, you never would have let me go, would you?
Appearing at the full assembly, needling the elders with provocative words, snapping back as if spoiling for a fight—all of it had been calculated to wring exactly this reaction from them.
He had goaded the elders until they snapped and essentially ordered, "You go to Emei yourself."
In other words, once again the elders had danced on the palm of Hwiyeom's hand.
From that point the rest of the meeting took on a truly bizarre shape.
Hwiyeom led the charge, pressuring Dang Un-sang to send him into the jaws of death, while the elders tilted their heads with looks of "Is this right?" or "Has the boy lost his mind?" yet kept rolling their eyes to watch Dang Un-sang's reaction.
Elder Bak Chang-eon, who had been staring at the spectacle like a bewildered outsider, found himself slapping his own cheeks and muttering,
"Did I overdo the medicinal wine last night…?"
In the end, unable to break Hwiyeom's own logic, Dang Un-sang granted permission for him to join the medical team.
Even within the main family's Family Head's Hall they tried desperately to stop it, yet when Hwiyeom himself rampaged like a madman insisting he would go, they had no legitimate grounds to block him.
Had Hwiyeom been an ordinary child they might have dismissed it with "What does a kid know? Just nonsense," and shut it down. But the track record of the things he had already accomplished was far too extraordinary for that.
"Ah, since I'm going, the Elder Council will take full responsibility for providing the dispatched physicians and all necessary supplies, yes? Surely you wouldn't leave your Young Master to burn himself out alone, right?"
"O-of course. We shall prepare everything needed without shortfall."
"And the people? Am I supposed to go treat them by myself?"
"Ahem! We shall prepare them."
"That's more like it. Finally sounding like proper elders."
"…"
"? What is it?"
"It is nothing."
Thus the Elder Council proceeded with the matter even as the situation unfolded exactly as they had wanted—yet with the uneasy feeling of "Something's off… this feels wrong."
And the main family?
The atmosphere in the Sichuan Dang Family's main house, the Family Head's Hall, was that of a funeral.
Dang Un-sang was so furious he raised a switch against Hwiyeom for the first time in his life.
Yet even as blood ran down his calves from the welts, Hwiyeom gritted his teeth, smiled, and said,
"Hit me more! Harder! If I end up unable to go, the prestige of the Family Head's Hall will collapse completely, and the Elder Council will milk this incident for a full sixty-year cycle!
If that is what you want, then hit me more! This son is fine with it!"
"You little…!"
Dang Un-sang, who had always been displeased that his son—so precious he could put him in his eye without pain—was considered so detestable among the elders that they wanted to thrash him to death, later said that on that day he finally understood a little of how the elders felt.
The medical team for dispatch to the Emei Sect was assembled the very next day.
It might have looked hasty, but with so many already sick at Emei, every moment from now on was a race against time; further delay was impossible.
As Hwiyeom scanned the faces of those gathered for departure to Emei, he tilted his head.
"Why are you here?"
Ye-eun bowed her head in greeting.
"Wherever Young Master goes is where this servant must be."
"Stop posturing and stay behind. Does this look like a game to you?"
"If I may be so bold—did Young Master throw that tantrum because this matter looked like a game to you?"
Having his own words thrown straight back at him left Hwiyeom briefly speechless. Then he looked into Ye-eun's unwavering eyes and gave a short laugh.
"Ye-eun."
"Command me."
"How about you drop the bodyguard role and become my secretary from now on?"
"Secretary? What is that?"
"Something like a chief steward. Only instead of managing the whole family, you manage one person's time and health—mine.
Assisting with work, managing diet and schedule… the person who supports me from the closest place."
Ye-eun blinked once, then bowed her head.
"If that is your wish, I will obey."
"Good."
Hwiyeom turned toward the quarters of his father and mother—who, heartsick, had not come out—and performed a deep formal bow, then raised his voice so it carried.
"I swear this! Not a single person here will be taken by the plague god!
The Sichuan Dang Family is the family of divine physicians!
The Dang Family's poisons and medical arts are first under heaven!
You will all return as heroes! One day you will sit your grandchildren down and tell the tale of this day with pride!
Father! Mother! Though I will be unable to see you for a short while, do not worry!
This son will carry out Father's will, save our old friends, and return!"
"Waaaaaaah!!"
The household members watching all roared their support for the departing party.
In contrast, the physicians unlucky enough to have been chosen for the Emei expedition merely stared at Hwiyeom with dark faces.
Still, the fact that the Young Master himself was going gave them the thinnest thread of hope that it might not be pure bluster.
"Great Sichuan Dang Family! Move out!"
And so, under Hwiyeom's command, the ten physicians dispatched by the Sichuan Dang Family set out for Mount Emei.