Chapter 110
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 110
Chapter Title: Clashing Schemes
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Hotel Leviathan was, excluding national facilities, one of the most heavily secured sites alongside the bases of the top ten guilds and the temples of various religions.
That was why dignitaries from each country, celebrities, and even criminals frequented Leviathan.
Any other hotel might be different.
But at Leviathan, no one ever had anything stolen or got ambushed. It was simply impossible.
Flutter!
Which made this moment all the more shocking.
The sight of a mysterious figure cloaked in black fabric slipping through a window into Leviathan was enough to make anyone gasp in horror.
Especially since the intruder hadn't broken into some ordinary room, but the penthouse on the top floor—the most heavily guarded suite in the entire hotel.
"Did everything go well?"
But the penthouse's sole occupant and owner, a girl with black hair, wasn't startled in the least.
She simply smiled faintly.
"Yep."
The intruder nodded nonchalantly.
Then he casually flung off the cumbersome black cloth and sprawled out on the sofa.
"Did you handle the bomb alright?"
"You think I wouldn't?"
"No."
Li Chingwei answered immediately.
She unwound the bandages from her hand and added, eyeing the young man with white hair who had returned to his true form.
"There's no way the Sword Duke couldn't deal with a single prisoner escorted by a mere security detail."
"Exactly. That's why I stepped in to dispose of the bomb myself."
He didn't want to be stuck babysitting Liu Gangcheol.
But he couldn't just leave him alone, either.
So this was the solution Rimon and Li Chingwei had chosen.
Intercept and eliminate Liu Gangcheol en route from the Shanghai Wang Family to Leviathan.
Like dismantling useless bombs by blowing them up in an open field instead of taking them apart one by one.
"No one noticed, right?"
"Those idiots thought I was a telekinetic player and came charging in excitedly."
"Can't really blame them."
Li Chingwei chuckled softly.
She picked up the bandages and cloth Rimon had discarded.
More precisely, the impossibly thin thread hidden between them, invisible to the naked eye, and continued.
"There aren't many experts who could spot sword thread made from the silk of an Invisible Spider—a level 90s monster—at a glance."
"Is that why you made this?"
"Yes. Masters of the Heavenly Net Formation Style love using it."
"What's that supposed to mean? Thread silk, maybe, but sword thread doesn't seem suited for Heavenly Net Formation."
"It's tougher and more discreet than any ordinary thread. Even if your psionics are a bit lacking, it's easy to handle."
"Well, now."
Rimon made a face like he'd just heard someone say they were shoeing a dog.
But only for a moment before he clicked his tongue.
"Kids these days have it easy living so comfortably. The Sword Hidden spent over a century struggling to find a weapon that suited his swordsmanship."
"Sword Hidden—you mean Lord Rashid?"
"Yeah. Rashid ad-Din Sinan. The man who synthesized the secrets of magic and alchemy to create sword thread."
One of the thirteen Sword Masters in history.
Not originally a swordsman, yet more threatening than any true bladesman—Rimon thought of him and murmured on.
"The first and last Old Man of the Mountain. The only one to become a Sword Master as an assassin."
"He was truly remarkable."
"Remarkable my ass. In the end, he was just a con artist who killed Saladin and stole his renown."
"Who's Saladin?"
"A guy who could've been a peerless hero, but met a Sword Master by bad luck and died screaming. Poor bastard with the worst fortune."
Li Chingwei tilted her head for a moment.
Instead of probing further into a figure she'd never heard of, she focused on the Sword Master.
"His swordsmanship was unique, though, right?"
"...Well, I'll give him that."
Even Rimon, who cursed Rashid as an assassin and fraud, nodded when it came to his swordsmanship.
In fact, he'd mimicked Rashid's techniques in this raid precisely because he was confident no one would recognize it as swordsmanship.
The art of binding threads for secret techniques.
Turned by the Sword Hidden into a swordsmanship where the threads themselves became blades—"Invisible Sword"—it was that bizarre.
Though if they were talking sheer oddity, the Sword Saint's "Unsheathingless Sword" took the cake.
"No one in this era would spot the swordsmanship that even in his lifetime, few could discern."
"Right."
"Then even the Wang Family head won't be able to hold us accountable."
"Probably not."
"In the end, everything worked out perfectly."
"Something like that."
So Li Chingwei was satisfied.
If he'd fought with a visible sword, maybe.
But with his appearance altered by constellation power and ambushing the escort as a mysterious assailant, no one would peg it as Rimon.
Ultimately, it'd be chalked up to the Liberation Brigade silencing him, leaving no political backlash for Li Chingwei or Rimon.
"...Sword Duke? Are you unhappy about playing the assassin?"
That was why.
Li Chingwei was puzzled because...
"Nah, it's not that."
"Then why the long face?"
Everything had gone according to plan.
Yet Rimon wouldn't smooth his furrowed brow. Li Chingwei eyed him curiously.
His answer to her question was simple.
"I figured out what those bastards are after. ...Or rather, I got a sense of their ultimate goal."
"Pardon?"
Li Chingwei's eyes widened.
Why the ghosts of the Liberation Brigade had attacked a Black Dragon Clan subsidiary.
Even she had no idea what their aim was.
"Did Liu Gangcheol talk?"
"No."
"Then how?"
"I knew when I cut that fucker down."
Before, he'd only encountered the corpses indirectly, or through wailing spirits, so he hadn't realized.
But meeting Liu Gangcheol face-to-face.
The moment he struck him down with his own hand.
Rimon instinctively knew.
"What I cut was just an empty shell. They were using it to set up one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems."
It was intuition born of experience.
Having personally taken countless thousands of lives, honing the "sense of reaping life," and thwarting myriad conspiracies—only Rimon could be this certain.
That he'd eliminated Liu Gangcheol, but not killed him.
It sounded utterly insane.
Yet Li Chingwei didn't dismiss it as absurd.
She just asked seriously.
"Which of the Thirty-Six Stratagems?"
"Does it matter?"
"...You're saying the key is that they tried to use one at all."
"And they're still using it right now."
Li Chingwei understood.
Whether Cha Shi Hwan Hon or Golden Cicada Shedding Its Carapace.
The Thirty-Six Stratagems seemed complex because they divided war into six situations with six tailored ploys each.
But at its core, there was only one principle.
Deceive the enemy!
Thus, even the most intricate plot becomes a fatal mistake if seen through, while the simplest tactic turns masterful if it fools the foe.
"As you say, Sword Duke... I can see what their goal is now."
Realizing Liu Gangcheol's very existence was a ruse let Li Chingwei piece together much more.
The type of ploy the fiends had used.
Why they'd used it.
Even their final objective.
She was the Black Dragon Clan's princess, inheriting the progenitor's blood thickest among a clan defined by intrigue and schemes.
"Of course, this is just my hunch. No hard evidence, so feel free to ignore it."
One problem.
The only basis was Rimon's word.
The Black Dragon Clan excelled at spotting plots, but that made such flimsy proof even harder to swallow.
Those skilled at deception naturally distrust others, suspecting they'll be deceived in turn.
"No, I believe you."
"...For real?"
"Of course."
Even so, Li Chingwei declared firmly.
Then she smiled faintly and continued.
"I'm your fiancée, Sword Duke. If I can't trust the man I'll spend my life with, who can I trust?"
"You might not trust anyone."
"Maybe. I used to think that way... but I realized it's pretty foolish."
Li Chingwei spoke plainly.
In truth, she might doubt her own judgment, but she absolutely trusted Rimon's instincts.
Passing up the golden chance to interrogate a Liberation Brigade high officer to simply eliminate him? That was because she trusted Rimon's gut.
This time would be no different.
Li Chingwei spoke calmly and confidently.
Rimon eyed her dubiously for a moment before chuckling softly.
"I only learned that lesson after turning two hundred, and here you are knowing it already. Guess I picked a smart bride."
"You're too kind."
Pleased by the praise despite her modest words, she beamed while tidying the bandages laced with sword thread and the black cloth.
Rimon tossed out a casual question.
"So, how do you plan to counter?"
"Do we even need to?"
"Hm?"
Rimon looked puzzled.
Meeting his gaze with her obsidian-dark eyes, Li Chingwei smiled quietly.
"Whoever orchestrated this seems to want to toy with us through schemes. So why not let them have their way?"
"Hm..."
Lost in thought for a moment.
The man with the braided hair slipped off a ring—an item from the flame series—from his finger.
He rolled it in his palm and murmured softly.
"Damn, the plan's gone to shit."
Up until Liu Gangcheol was being escorted to Leviathan, everything seemed to be going smoothly.
Then the bastard suddenly drops dead.
Honestly, it was an unforeseen twist.
"This mission's been going sideways from the start."
As a high officer in the Liberation Brigade, he'd traveled far and wide, completing countless missions.
Tangling with top guilds.
Destroying national facilities.
Even sparking full-scale wars.
No mission had ever been easy, and some had seemed utterly impossible compared to this one.
But things had never gotten this messed up before.
"It's not because we're up against the Seven Dragon Society... or at least, it shouldn't be."
A possibility flashed through his mind.
But the man dismissed it himself.
No matter how many experts or how wealthy the Seven Dragon Society was, that was it.
In the end, they were just dragons—clinging to outdated relics like psionics from a bygone era. No way they could trip him up.
Which only made this situation more intolerable.
"Looks like entrusting this critical task to that brain-dead fool was a mistake."
In the end, the man pinned all the blame on Liu Gangcheol.
Liu would've exploded in outrage if he heard, but he didn't care.
After all, it was a timeless military truth across East and West: credit the commander for victories, blame the grunts for defeats.
"I wanted to wrap this up quietly if possible... but no helping it now."
If they'd just not resisted half-heartedly, it would've ended with a few thousand dead.
Pitying the Seven Dragon Society's foolishness in prioritizing their gains and causing needless sacrifices, the braided man continued softly.
"If they want blood that badly, I'll give them blood—just as they wish."