Crisis at Daseogak - 1
The Dang Clan's secret history.
I couldn't make sense of it at all. A "secret history" usually meant some tale no one had ever known, or an affair they had deliberately hidden and buried.
Yet a middle-aged man had me by the throat and was shaking me like one of those dancing balloon figures in front of our newly opened shop, so the story written in Dangga Pungun must have reminded them of something they desperately wanted kept under wraps.
Was the tale of Dangga Pungun something they wanted to hide? Dang Jeong was a righteous hero. Hunting a lust demon was not a matter for censure; it was something to be praised.
Of course the cloud-and-rain scenes stuck a little, but there was no reason to wring my neck like wringing out a liquid monster just because a chivalrous hero shared a night of passion with a beauty.
I had taken special care with the protagonist's deeds when writing a story of the Sichuan Dang Clan. His actions left no room for scandal. If the protagonist's path was clean, then perhaps…
"Watch out!"
From somewhere a hidden weapon flew straight at the middle-aged man's hand that was locked around my throat. He instantly released his grip and twisted aside, dodging the projectile.
"Who goes there!"
The middle-aged man and the warriors who had entered the bookstore snapped their eyes toward the direction the weapon had come from.
"Who do you think? The owner, here to clean up the assholes throwing a tantrum in someone else's shop. Who the hell are you people?"
Hwarin strode out with a brazen confidence.
"Purple hair?"
The Sichuan Dang Clan people clearly had not expected her appearance; they simply stared, stunned, as she walked right up to me.
"Yunho. Are you okay?"
"Cough! Yeah… yeah, I'm fine."
I sat on the floor, gulping for air, and nodded. Hwarin looked me over with worry, then turned a face full of murderous rage on the surrounding martial artists.
"You lot. I don't know what kind of bullshit you came here for, but is it okay for people from a famous orthodox sect to go around terrorizing commoners?"
She had already guessed where they were from. One arm slipped behind her back and flicked a signal for me to get up. The middle-aged man studied her for a moment, then spoke.
"Purple hair. Are you a child of the Dang Clan?"
"What other child do I look like? Yunho. Stick to the wall."
Hwarin snapped the reply, shoved me against the wall, and planted herself in front of me. The warriors inside the bookstore naturally closed ranks and surrounded us.
"How coincidental. We came hunting Hopil, the author of Dangga Pungun, and here we find a child who carries Dang blood and uses Dang martial arts. Are you the author of Dangga Pungun?"
He looked Hwarin up and down, then wore the expression of a man who had just solved the puzzle.
"Hwarin."
I grabbed her shoulder in a panic. When she turned, her face was already set with resolve.
No. Hwarin. Don't.
She shot me the same look she had given me before—she would take the entire blame herself.
Hwarin, you can't start like that. We have to figure out what they want and what cards we still hold before we open our mouths.
Don't you dare say it. No—I'll take the fall. For a heartbeat Yunho and Hwarin locked eyes in a silent tug-of-war.
"The situation is as clear as day. If you insist on seeing blood before you confess, I will not stop you."
"I wrote it. I'm the Hopil you've been looking for."
One small threat was all it took to snap our precarious stalemate.
The middle-aged man introduced himself as the Pavilion Master of the Medical Pavilion—Uigakju—who oversaw medical arts for the Sichuan Dang Clan. Remarking that too many ears were listening, he led us upstairs with only a few trusted warriors.
"What is your name?"
So the interrogation began with personal details.
Uigakju sat in a chair and addressed Hwarin, who faced him with a sullen scowl.
"Dang Hwarin."
"A child I have never seen. You were using Dang martial arts; are you from the Outer Castle?"
The Inner Castle housed the direct bloodline of the Sichuan Dang Clan; the Outer Castle housed the collaterals.
As the overlord clan of Sichuan Province, their residence was not a mere manor but the size of a small fortress. What Uigakju was asking was whether she was a child of a side branch.
"I've never even set foot in Sichuan Province."
"That cannot be. A child who has never lived even in the Outer Castle could never have learned Dang martial arts."
"What, do I look like I'd lie about that?"
"You bitch!"
One of the watching warriors twisted his face at her insolence.
"Hold. If you have never lived in the Outer Castle, that means you are an unrecognized bastard. Did you learn from your father, then?"
"Dunno. Never once saw the guy's face."
Hwarin averted her eyes, clearly displeased by the mention of her father.
Of course I knew who her father was from the settings, but it was not something to volunteer.
"You don't know? Then who taught you martial arts?"
"……"
Hwarin shut her mouth and shot me an anxious glance.
I know what you're afraid of. That they might be connected to the Dokin experiments, right? It's fine. According to the settings those people are a tiny handful.
And these ones didn't come for that reason. They still don't recognize your name after hearing it.
Since we had already revealed ourselves as Hopil, there was no need to invite extra suspicion. I gave her a small nod that it was safe to speak.
"Dang Geoho… that uncle."
"Dang Geoho? Why that bastard? Is your father that dog Dang Geoho?"
The moment Uigakju heard the name, open hostility flared across his face. Good. As expected, not one of the Dokin crowd. If he showed enmity this fast, the relationship must be foul.
"He's my master, not my father."
Hwarin answered at once, voice iron-sure.
"Not of the Outer Castle, and a direct-blood master of the Inner Castle teaching a child who doesn't even know her own father… and that dog Dang Geoho of all people? Why? Wait… Dangga Pungun, bastard child, Dang Geoho, roughly twenty years ago… and this is Yichang… Could your mother have been a daughter of the Baek Family?"
Uigakju muttered under his breath, suspicion shifting into sudden realization as he stared at Dang Hwarin.
"Yeah."
"I see. So that is how it was."
His expression cleared as though every doubt about her had resolved into one neat conclusion.
That conclusion was nothing like the truth I knew.
"You wench. You are the daughter of the lust demon from twenty years ago."
What the hell kind of nonsense was this?
Dang Hwarin's father a lust demon? That clashed completely with the settings I remembered.
Dang Hwarin. Her father is also a Dokin.
That was all the character sheet had said, yet I remembered clearly: the reason Hwarin had become an incomplete Dokin included a bloodline factor.
It was not something I could tell her, so I had kept silent, but Dang Hwarin's father was no lust demon—he was a Dokin.
Uigakju had grabbed the wrong end of the stick entirely.
"Were you trying to avenge your father, slain by the Clan Leader's hand twenty years ago? In this fashion?"
The middle-aged Uigakju pointed a finger at Hwarin like a detective who had just cracked the perfect case.
I told you you got it wrong. I swallowed the explanation that would only force me to reveal how I knew, and kept listening.
"I already said I don't know who my father is."
"Impossible. Did you not imply in volume two of Dangga Pungun that the aphrodisiac had leaked from the Sichuan Dang Clan?"
"Why would that mean anything?"
"Are you pretending ignorance? Do you truly not know? Roughly twenty years ago, those pieces of trash in the Dang Clan used forbidden experiments to turn one collateral bastard into a Dokin. Fools. They demanded credit for successfully creating a Dokin. They never realized that even if the body remained intact, the mind did not."
"A Dokin twenty years ago?"
Wait. Then the settings actually matched.
Uigakju flicked a glance at my startled mutter and continued.
"The collateral bastard who became a Dokin could barely control his lust. And by misfortune his body carried a Dang Clan poison that inflamed women's desire. One day the Dokin broke free of surveillance and escaped, and began raping woman after woman. We had no choice but to form a pursuit team to eradicate both the poison and the Dokin our own clan had created, as swiftly as possible."
Having decided Hwarin was the lust demon's daughter, Uigakju laid out the full inside story of her father.
It's far too similar to the plot of Dangga Pungun.
I finally understood how the gears were turning. For the Dang Clan, the incident twenty years ago must have been a catastrophe on the level of a radiation leak.
A Dokin—taboo throughout the Murim—had been created inside the Dang Clan. That much they might have buried with sheer power. But the Dokin escaped and started raping women… while carrying a rape-inducing poison the Dang Clan itself had refined.
The Sichuan Dang Clan already lived under constant suspicion that a house of poisons and hidden weapons could not truly be orthodox. If a disaster of that magnitude had erupted, of course they would have wanted every trace of it erased.
The secret history of twenty-odd years ago.
The Dokin who became a lust demon, and the aphrodisiac the Dang Clan had crafted.
They had stormed into Daseogak not because of Dang Jeong, but because of the lust demon.
"I heard the daughter of the Baek Family bore the lust demon's child. Dang Geoho, who handled the cleanup of that incident twenty years ago, must have been the one who taught you martial arts, girl."
"What?"
Hwarin wore a look of pure shock at the revelation about the father she had never known.
"Why in the world would you commit such an act? I never heard the full details, but when your mother appeared with the token they supposedly paid her ample compensation. Don't tell me the payment was not enough?"
"I told you I didn't know! It was a coincidence!"
Hwarin shouted, voice raw with injustice.
"And you expect me to believe that?"
"It's just a novel! Triple Poison, Poison Killing Space—those techniques don't even exist in the Dang Clan. They're pure fiction!"
Right. A lust demon using aphrodisiacs is staple fan-service material. You still have to look at the rest of the settings.
"Yes. Sichuan's Number One Beauty, Poison Killing Space, Triple Poison—clearly fabrications of the novel. Yet the skeleton of the tale is built upon a true story, is it not?"
"What do you mean?"
"A lust demon born of the Sichuan Dang Clan, an aphrodisiac refined by the Sichuan Dang Clan, the young Clan Leader himself leading the pursuit team that chased that lust demon all the way to Hubei Province… even the part where the Clan Leader shared nights with a Joseon gisaeng resembling Du Eunghyang while he was in Hubei—it's all written there."
Uigakju flung volume two down in front of Dang Hwarin.
I was going to lose my mind. The man everyone assumed was the model for Dang Jeong was the Dang Clan Leader himself?
"Martial artists who tumbled with gisaengs can be found in any pleasure house."
"Do not try to wriggle free. The day twenty years ago when your father was forced into those experiments and driven mad! The day your father died by the Clan Leader's hand! The shame the Sichuan Dang Clan wanted sealed forever! Were you not trying to drag every last scrap of it into the light with this book!"
Today's wuxia math problem:
Calculate the probability that the lust demon's own daughter wrote the lust demon's story without knowing it.
My skull was starting to pound. With Sohee I had nearly died from getting her mother's name wrong; now Hwarin was getting the same treatment because she didn't know her father's identity properly.
I wanted to grab whoever wrote the character sheets and yell at them to fill the damn settings out correctly. Next time I met anyone who might be another heroine, I was investigating the parents first.
This knot had twisted itself into pure chaos.
"I will have both of you young ones escorted to the main castle and thrown into the underground prison. Punishment can wait until after. Vice Pavilion Master!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Don't come near me!"
The moment the warriors stepped forward, Hwarin whipped out hidden weapons and sprang to her feet. I stayed seated, eyes moving between her and the ring of men.
We've been thoroughly misunderstood, and there's no clean way to clear it.
I wanted to laugh at the sheer absurdity.
I wanted to scream that the whole thing was nonsense, yet every fact on the table pointed to us as liars.
Spin the brain. If they drag us off like this, we die. Find a solution, Kang Yunho. I am not rotting in an underground dungeon for the rest of my life. One wrong step and it's biological experiments.
A misunderstanding tangled past all hope of unraveling. But if it cannot be unraveled…
Then what?
In that instant a method surfaced.
"The reason we risked our lives for this was never revenge for Hwarin's father. It was for an entirely different purpose."
I circulated Soyun Shimsanggyeol once, letting the technique drop my voice into a low, steady register that cooled the overheated air as I spoke to Uigakju.
"What fresh lie are you spinning to save your own neck?"
He fixed me with a razor stare. Correct. I was spinning a lie to stay alive. Except I intended to tell the truth.
"I calculated that the moment we published Dangga Pungun, someone from the Sichuan Dang Clan who read the contents and remembered the secret history of twenty years ago would inevitably appear."
"You knew… and still wrote it?"
"Yes. I was certain a person of the Sichuan Dang Clan would come. And because the matter was a secret history, not some low-ranking warrior but someone holding real authority—someone who enjoyed the Clan Leader's complete trust. I published the book expecting exactly such a person to arrive."
"What are you saying? You speak as though you were waiting for me specifically."
I looked straight at Uigakju.
A man the Clan Leader trusted enough to send for the treatment of his own son's illness. A man who did not know Dang Hwarin's true identity and who held no trust for Dang Geoho. A man deeply skilled in medical arts, no less.
This was the method that would work on him.
"Hwarin. Take off the face veil."
"Huh? Oh… okay."
Hwarin pulled away the veil that looked even darker than usual today.
"Discoloration along the lower face? Traces of poison arts… No. This is…?"
Uigakju leaned in, studying the mottled skin; recognition of the symptoms was clearly dawning.
I needed certainty.
"Hwarin. Sorry, but roll up your sleeves and lift the hem a little so he can see your arms and stomach."
"Got it."
She seemed to have grasped my intent. Hwarin hiked her clothes and displayed the stains that spread across both arms and reached all the way to her navel.
"Stains covering the upper body? Wait. These symptoms…?"
From Hwarin's father all the way to Hwarin herself—the single affliction Uigakju would instantly recall.
The Gordian knot of misunderstandings was too tangled to untie. So I would simply cut it with a sword of my own.
"Sichuan Dang Clan. Are you aware that Dang Geoho and his faction have resumed the Dokin experiments that vanished more than twenty years ago?"
Answer misunderstanding with misunderstanding.
By laying a brand-new layer of misunderstanding over the old one.