The World Is Unfair
Acting on Pi Jae-hyeon's orders, Pi Se-ha set about plotting Dang Hui-yeom's assassination.
Of course, if word ever got out that they had murdered a man who enjoyed the Emperor's favor, the blow to the Pi Clan of the Ministry of War would be irreparable. So Pi Se-ha proceeded with the utmost caution.
He even entrusted the commission itself to a steward who had served the Pi family for decades and could never be suspected of betrayal. Should the whole affair somehow come to light, they would simply claim it had been "the steward's private excess of loyalty" and nothing the clan itself had ordered.
The steward understood the arrangement perfectly and swore that no torture would ever make him turn on the Pi family. In return, the clan vowed to provide for his remaining family in a manner that would put any local magnate to shame for the rest of their lives.
Thus the loyal old steward, fully prepared to die if necessary, began discreetly hunting for someone willing to take the contract—someone far from prying eyes.
Surprisingly enough, Beijing harbored quite a number of underworld assassination societies. In a capital thick with dirty political schemes, hiring a killer was hardly an exotic choice.
The Pi steward therefore expected little trouble placing the job. Instead—
"Sorry. We can't take that commission."
"Try somewhere else."
To his astonishment, every reputable assassination outfit turned him down one after another. One place even exploded at him:
"You little bastard—are you a plant sent by the Salmak? Trying to set us up?"
He nearly got himself killed just for asking.
Frustrated, the steward finally snapped at a contact who claimed to come from the Ghost Valley after yet another refusal.
"What exactly is the problem? I've told you money is no object! How hard can it be to get rid of one brat who barely cleared his coming-of-age? Why does everyone keep turning me down?"
Even if Hui-yeom enjoyed the Emperor's favor, plenty of favored ministers had still fallen to assassins before. The coordinated stonewalling from the entire underworld made no sense to him.
The Ghost Valley contact answered in the tone of a man taking pity on a fool.
"Getting it done without getting caught is damn near impossible."
"Why?"
"First off, the cleanest way to kill someone without leaving a trail is poison. But the target is a direct blood descendant of the Sichuan Dang Family, so that route is closed from the start."
"What, does being a Dang make poison turn into a tonic or something?"
"Exactly that."
"…What?"
As the steward doubted his own ears, the contact casually piled on more.
"A direct heir of the Dang would naturally have trained in the Green Dragon Divine Art rather than the lost Triple-Yang Return-to-Origin Art. Poison doesn't work on anyone who has mastered the Green Dragon Divine Art. No matter how lethal the toxin, they simply digest it and convert it into their own internal energy. If that isn't a tonic, what is?"
"Does that even sound like common sense?"
"Judging martial artists by ordinary common sense is a bad habit, my friend. By that logic, is it possible for a man's bare hands to shatter jade or tear iron plate?"
"Mmm…"
The steward conceded the point.
"If poison is out, what about other methods?"
"Well, the Sichuan Crouching Dragon's personal martial rank probably isn't as high as his reputation suggests… but the people surrounding him are the real problem."
"Surrounding him?"
"First there are the Sichuan Dang Family bodyguards. Fifty Dokwadae operatives came to Beijing just to protect him, plus ten Sakpungdae agents handling intelligence. Simply getting close to the target without their notice is already nearly impossible. The Dokwadae are one thing, but the Sakpungdae operate a lot like assassin groups themselves. Completely slipping their eyes is hard."
"Mmm…"
"Suppose by some miracle you do slip past them and minimize any clash. Then you still have to deal with the Poison Phoenix standing right beside the target."
"Poison Phoenix?"
Dang Su-jeong had finished the Dokgyo-dae’s victory rites and come north to Beijing with Lee Jinmyeong, rejoining Hui-yeom.
"Her martial rank is estimated at the early Transcendental Peak. But factor in how vicious she is with poison and hidden weapons, and the actual difficulty of facing her is more like mid-Transcendental Peak. Years ago the Falling Star Sword-Arrow master of the Jeomchang Sect, Dojang Il-hyeon, couldn't even withstand a single exchange from her in open combat before he was on his knees. Winning a frontal fight would be tough even if you threw in a top-tier assassin. You'd need at least two—no, three—to guarantee success."
"Then just do that! I keep saying money is no object!"
"Even if you drop the Poison Phoenix and take Dang Hui-yeom's head, the aftermath is a bigger headache. Hui-yeom is the son-in-law of the Heavenly Commandery Sama Clan. On top of that the Eastern Depot is watching him so closely they've assigned a chief supervisor. Do you really think you can fight the Dang bodyguards and the Poison Phoenix in Beijing while simultaneously staying invisible to both the Sama Clan and the Dongchang?
"The fact that we were behind it would come out for certain."
"Urgh…"
The reason the Emperor never simply rounded up and wiped out the many assassination societies operating in Beijing—despite knowing they killed people—was that they stayed officially invisible. It certainly wasn't because he found them charming. The moment an assassination group surfaced, institutional power would move to erase it. And no organization in existence could hide from the bloodshot white eyes of a Sama Clan driven mad with vengeance, or from an Eastern Depot whose surveillance target had just been murdered in an unprecedented breach.
In the end the steward trudged home, already fretting over how to report the disaster. He requested an audience with Pi Se-ha, fully intending to bow his head and beg forgiveness—until Pi Se-ha clapped him on the shoulder with a beaming smile.
"Ah! Excellent work, I see! So, how much did it cost?"
"…Pardon? What do you mean, my lord?"
"Oh, don't play coy. The, ah… taking out the trash, of course."
"Pardon?"
Still failing to grasp the situation, the steward only cocked his head. Pi Se-ha explained.
"The Sama Clan is in an uproar right now—Dang Hui-yeom has been assassinated! They're hunting the killers with blood in their eyes. You did clean up after yourself properly, I hope?"
"…What?"
"? The trash—you… took care of it, didn't you?"
"Ah, no, my lord."
"? Then who in the world did it?"
"W-well… I have no idea…"
The two old men stared at each other in identical blank confusion.
Beijing erupted when news broke that the Sichuan Crouching Dragon—the hero who had saved Yunnan, Sichuan, and Qinghai—had been attacked.
Emperor Sungui made no attempt to hide his fury as he confronted the ministers in the Imperial Audience Hall.
"What in heaven's name has the Patrol Office of the Five Cities Circuit been doing?! Assassins are running wild in my Beijing and you simply stand by and allow it?!"
Under the enraged Emperor's voice, Minister of Justice Cheon Myeong-seung—who oversaw the Five Cities Circuit—bowed his head with a grim expression.
"Your Majesty, this unworthy servant reports with the deepest dread that the Ministry of Justice and the Five Cities Circuit, together with the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot, have already thrown every available resource into hunting down the vile band of assassins. We shall apprehend them shortly; I beg Your Majesty not to trouble Your sacred person with needless worry lest it harm Your precious health."
"This is a challenge to Us, the Emperor! How dare anyone attempt to assassinate one of Our subjects inside the very city We rule? Minister of Justice, you will seize those assassins without fail. Should you fail, We shall hold you personally responsible!"
"This servant is terrified of his own ignorance and incompetence."
The Minister of Justice ground his teeth as he withdrew.
The Cheon Clan—maternal relatives of the imperial house—already knew full well that the Emperor regarded them as a thorn in his eye. This assassination had just handed him the perfect pretext. Naturally, the look Cheon Myeong-seung shot at Pi Jae-hyeon upon returning to his seat was murderous.
No one said it aloud, yet not a single official present was unaware that Pi Jae-hyeon was the only man with both motive and means to order Dang Hui-yeom's death. The Emperor knew it too. By speaking as he had, the Emperor was essentially saying: if I can use this to punish the Cheon Clan for failing capital security, excellent; if the Cheon Clan digs up hard evidence against the Pi Clan, even better. Either way he held a winning hand and intended to play it for all it was worth.
That madman—if you're going to do it, at least don't get caught! What the hell is this circus?!
Pi Jae-hyeon himself was beginning to feel uneasy as the affair ballooned far beyond expectations. Openly antagonizing the Cheon Clan—imperial in-laws who controlled the Secretariat, pulled the Emperor's strings from behind the curtain, and held considerable influence inside the Ministry of Justice—was hardly desirable for the Pi family either.
Especially now that the scandal had grown this large, the Cheon Clan would move heaven and earth to catch the assassins simply to avoid taking the fall themselves.
Se-ha had better have handled everything cleanly…
I swear I'll make you regret splashing filth on the Cheon Clan, Pi Jae-hyeon!
From the high throne the Emperor watched the two ministers exchange murderous glances. His own face was twisted in what everyone assumed was barely contained rage. In truth, he was struggling not to laugh.
There is an old saying: when a crime occurs and no obvious suspect presents himself, look to the person who profits from it. Right now the only person in the Audience Hall who stood to gain was Emperor Sungui himself.
And he was remembering the young man who had come to him a few days earlier and proposed the entire scheme of a "false assassination attempt" against himself. The Emperor could only marvel.
To open a crack between the Eight Great Families this easily… the boy truly is a monster. Still, according to the cover story he is currently hovering between life and death… I wonder if he is finally enjoying a proper rest in bed for once?
The thought that Hui-yeom might actually be resting made the Emperor consider dragging the investigation out as long as possible. Not solely for Hui-yeom's vacation, of course.
The scheme had two real objectives. One was to drive a wedge between the Cheon and Pi Clans. The other was to build political capital for every move Hui-yeom would make afterward.
This was not a genuine assassination attempt; it was Hui-yeom's own self-staged drama. Naturally no culprit would ever be found. The longer the fruitless investigation dragged on, the heavier the pressure on the Cheon Clan would become. The stronger that pressure grew, the more the Emperor could whittle away Cheon power—and the deeper the grudge the Cheon would nurture against the Pi.
I wonder what the boy is doing right this moment…
Imagining the "critically wounded" Hui-yeom finally taking a break, the Emperor almost let out a laugh before he caught himself.
"As if."
The residence of Sama Seung, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue.
Having miraculously survived the assassination attempt, Hui-yeom was now recovering under the Sama Clan's protection in the innermost chambers of that house…
…or so the official story went. In reality Hui-yeom was still rifling through stacks of reports.
He handed the documents he had finished organizing to Sama Yun.
"Yun-mae, deliver these to the elder for me."
"What are they?"
"A planning proposal for the Beijing waterworks."
"Waterworks? Shouldn't Caffe the One and the railway project come first?"
"Those are those; this is this."
Emperor Sungui had long shown keen interest in reports of Sichuan's aqueducts, fountains, and carefully separated water-and-sewage systems. Even without Hui-yeom's insight it was easy to predict that the Emperor would eventually order him to rebuild Beijing's entire water infrastructure. Of course, constructing a modern water-and-sewage network for the whole capital was an enormous undertaking. So Hui-yeom had been drafting the plans in advance—while "confined to his sickbed."
"While we're on the subject, the Caffe the One opening is almost here, isn't it? Postpone it until I'm officially cured."
"I already gave the order. Honestly… the one chance we finally have to spend time together and all you do is work, work, work."
"Isn't that the man you fell for?"
"Well, yes, but still~"
Sama Yun let out a sigh that was half laugh.
"Fine. I'll help however I can so you finish the work quickly and we can actually have some time together."
"Thank you."
Accepting the honeyed tea she offered, Hui-yeom picked up a fresh report. As he skimmed the political intelligence summary the Sakpungdae had prepared on Beijing, a gleam of interest flickered in his eyes.
"…Hm?"