I Am Not Your Son
Uigakju was still alive.
I quickly scanned the man who had appeared so suddenly. For someone who had volunteered to be bait while we were being chased by the men in black, he looked completely unharmed—not a single body part missing or blown off.
"It's Uigakju!"
"Wasn't he missing?"
I wasn't the only one startled by his abrupt entrance. Everyone granted audience status at the Elder Council meeting held high office in the clan. There was no way they wouldn't recognize Uigakju, the Clan Leader's closest confidant, so the stir that rippled through the hall was only natural.
The only quiet spot was where the elders who had been supporting me had gathered. They watched Uigakju with smug, triumphant smiles.
So that was why things got noisy midway—Uigakju showed up.
"You been well?"
Uigakju brushed off the stares pouring over him and used the commotion to ask after me.
"I wanted to be well, but the people around me wouldn't leave me alone."
I kept my words edged even as I failed to hide the gladness on my face. To think he would appear in this situation and back me up. It was support fire on the level of an assist for the winning goal in a World Cup final.
"Seems more like you are the one who wouldn't leave the people around you alone."
Uigakju gave me a crooked little smile.
"I just wanted to stay well, so it turned out that way. Anyway, you've got one tenacious life. No—looking at how intact you are, I'm actually a little disappointed."
"The sins I committed are mine to settle, after all."
Sins? Before I could even ask, Uigakju clapped me on the shoulder with a hearty shove of curses, then strode forward to stand before the Elder Council.
"Uigakju. When did you arrive?"
Il-jangro asked the suddenly appeared Uigakju.
"Just now. I wanted to rest easy, but word reached me that you lot were up to some dog's work, so I came running."
Uigakju's words sure pack a punch. The Elder Council held the highest authority in a martial clan after the Clan Leader himself.
"Calling the Elder Council's actions dog's work! Even if you are the Clan Leader's closest confidant, we cannot overlook that remark!"
"Then what would you call it if not dog's work? Dozens of children died at Dang Geoho's hands. My Medical Pavilion members and I spilled blood gladly to protect the one child who survived that hell. And yet look at this situation now! A child who returned to the family's embrace after wandering the edge of death—you ought to be comforting her with open arms, yet instead you turn your faces away!"
Uigakju roared without hiding his fury.
"Handing over the Human-Faced Spider's Poison Core is not a matter to be spoken of lightly!"
"Then were the lives of my subordinates who were sacrificed such a light matter?"
"Kh—!"
"That child Hwarin is the closest our clan has ever come to the secret wish. With only the Human-Faced Spider's Poison Core, we could witness the birth of a perfect Dokin in our generation—so how can you refuse to yield it?"
"Th-this gathering is for determining whether that self-proclaimed bastard is truly a child of the Dang Clan! That matter can be discussed next!"
Changing the subject because you're cornered?
Uigakju seemed to decide that pressing the core further would get him nowhere. He snorted at Il-jangro and opened his mouth again.
"Kang Yunho is the son born more than twenty years ago between the Young Clan Leader and the Joseon courtesan Hyang-ah. I guarantee it."
Uigakju faced the Elder Council with a bold expression and vouched that Dang blood flowed in my veins. To think he would give a guarantee that even brothers wouldn't offer each other.
I'm so grateful I could cry—I almost want to ask him to be the joint guarantor on Daseogak's debts.
Even a cunningly constructed bad bond can turn into a solid one depending on whose name is on the guarantee.
You Elder Council lot, just acknowledge it already. Uigakju's guarantee, the Medical Pavilion members' guarantee, and even the freakish food—isn't that enough?
"Do you think that makes any sense? Not a single person on the Elder Council has ever heard that the Clan Leader has a bastard!"
Across every era, fathering a bastard isn't exactly something you announce proudly. Still, I was curious myself. Why did Uigakju know when the Elder Council didn't?
"We sealed the Clan Leader's mouth."
Uigakju looked between me and the Elder Council, then began to recount the events of more than twenty years past to the elders.
"We?"
"Some of you on the Elder Council will remember—at the time, the current Clan Leader's position as Young Clan Leader was precarious. Between various clan problems and the Lust Demon incident, there was even talk of stripping him of the Young Clan Leader seat."
"I remember."
"Filled with chivalrous spirit, the Young Clan Leader insisted that correcting the clan's wrongs took priority over his own standing, and he went after the Lust Demon. But those of us who attended him felt otherwise. We all admired him, so we planned to use the situation of the Young Clan Leader personally resolving the clan's misdeeds in a grand fashion to solidify his position. Then a problem arose."
"Speak in detail."
Uigakju cast me a brief look clouded with regret, then turned back to the Elder Council.
"The Clan Leader fell in love for the first time. But it was a love that could never be. At the time the Young Clan Leader was obligated to formalize his engagement with the fiancée the clan had chosen. If he brought that courtesan back, even solving the Lust Demon affair would not have preserved his seat—that much was obvious. So we conferred in secret, without the Clan Leader's knowledge."
"What sort of conference?"
"That if the Joseon courtesan came looking again, we would drive her away saying the Young Clan Leader had abandoned her. And we kept that from the Young Clan Leader as well."
So that was how it happened. It wasn't my actual past, so I wasn't deeply wounded, but as the tragic figure sacrificed to a succession struggle I frowned and looked at Uigakju.
If it had been my business I would have been furious, but as a third party I can coldly understand. In this era a wife's family holds power beyond imagination. There's a reason people bring in strong maternal relatives when succession is at stake.
A Young Clan Leader seat hanging by a thread. The fiancée's family is propping up that shaky engagement—and then the fiancé goes on a trip, finds his true love, and comes home with the woman he intends to marry?
They'd draw blades and turn the wedding into a bloodbath.
The Young Clan Leader's subordinates hadn't wanted that, so they drove the Joseon courtesan away.
"Heavens… such a thing, more than twenty years ago…"
"The Young Clan Leader resolved the Lust Demon incident, consummated the marriage, and amid all the turmoil eventually became Clan Leader. However…"
Uigakju glanced at me once, then lowered his head as if guilty and continued.
"We did not know the courtesan was pregnant. Had we known, we would never have cast her out onto the winter ground like that."
On Uigakju's face that I could see, regret and torment were plain.
A heavy silence crushed the assembly.
Has it now been proven that I am the Clan Leader's bastard? Then shall we move to the next plan? While I was thinking that, the Elder Council set out to prove they were no pushover group.
"Not knowing of the pregnancy at the time simply means there was no pregnancy, does it not?"
Il-jangro struck like a viper finding a gap and sinking its fangs into Uigakju's confession.
"What nonsense is that?"
Uigakju jerked his head up and stared at Il-jangro with an incredulous expression.
"That Hyang-ah girl was a lowly courtesan! How do you know she didn't sleep with some other man and then dare to claim Dang blood?!"
I can't just sit still for that remark.
"What did you just say!!!"
Hey, you bastard. I may be immune to the 'your mother is a whore' jab thanks to my fake identity, but I still can't take my mother being insulted.
I shouted in a voice full of the fury of Hyang-ah's son. Then, deliberately brushing past Uigakju, I lunged toward Il-jangro.
Uigakju. You know that if I hit Il-jangro here it's a problem, and if I get hit it's also a problem, right?
"Hold yourself."
Fortunately Uigakju caught my shoulder and restrained me.
"Let go! Do you expect me to hear that and stay quiet?"
Please make me stay quiet. Uigakju barely managed to hold me as I struggled, then sighed softly and spoke to the Elder Council.
"I heard of it later by chance. That she was pregnant is true."
"Heard by chance? Everyone says they didn't know—how exactly did you hear it? Doesn't that seem strange?"
But the Elder Council was not about to release prey once they had sunk their teeth in. Another elder tore at Uigakju's weak point as if ripping into the meat.
"Isn't it ridiculous to believe a courtesan's word?!"
"He may not be a bastard at all—he could be a demonic cult spy trained to eat pineapple pizza!"
"How can we trust the words of such a lowly bastard and hand over the Human-Faced Spider's Poison Core?!"
The Elder Council raised their voices, seizing the opportunity. This is bad. How did he hear it? Come on, Uigakju—say something. You're not about to claim you learned it from me, are you?
"That is…"
Just as Uigakju opened his mouth with a troubled look, the doors opened and someone shouted.
"I told him."
A powerful baritone. The voice, steeped in profound inner energy that hammered into every ear at once, made everyone look toward the doorway.
"The fact that Hyang-ah had been pregnant."
The man who appeared in the doorway was a face I knew well from the game.
Without anyone needing to say who, they all cried out his identity toward the figure at the door.
"Clan Leader!"
Clan Leader of the Sichuan Dang Clan. Dang Baek-ho.
If Dang Geoho had been a venomous serpent with a tiger's build, Dang Baek-ho was, true to his name, a pure white tiger whose very presence seemed to radiate spiritual majesty.
The Elder Council can't even move.
So the rumor was true that the current Sichuan Dang Clan was completely under the Clan Leader's grip. From the moment he appeared, the Elder Council could not hide their fluster.
When the Clan Leader swept his gaze once across the Elder Council, those who had been unwilling to yield the Human-Faced Spider's Poison Core dared not meet his eyes.
Usually a clan's Elder Council is made up of the family's elders—yet they're this cowed.
I didn't know if he had once been a precarious Young Clan Leader in the past, but right now his influence was every bit as formidable as I'd heard.
Il-jangro fussed and yielded the highest seat to the Clan Leader.
To think the Clan Leader would appear here.
Did he come with Uigakju? Judging by Uigakju's expression, that seemed to be the case.
What do I do? The board has flipped again. I had finally managed to put the Elder Council on the board, only for someone else to overturn it completely.
A meeting with the Clan Leader is a situation I already anticipated.
From the day we set out for the Sichuan Dang Clan I had envisioned countless scenarios of meeting the Clan Leader. Unexpected situations kept unfolding one after another, and the board kept changing, but I had no intention of watching helplessly from the sidelines.
Kang Yunho. Find a method you can use in this situation. The board has changed, but this isn't an unanticipated scenario.
We go as planned.
It began with a silent clash of auras.
I looked up at the Clan Leader without a word.
So I finally get to see the Clan Leader.
Handsome, as expected. He looked exactly like what a manly martial-arts-novel protagonist would become after aging into middle age.
Martial arts themselves would have kept aging at bay, yet the weight of countless political struggles, the burden of the clan, and every storm he had weathered had carved itself into his face.
He must have made a lot of women cry in his youth. Well, that would be why Hubei's greatest courtesan Hyang-ah lost her mind and fell for him.
As I stared at the Clan Leader's face, whispers rose around me.
"Don't they look alike?"
"They do seem alike."
"Alike…? Well, both of them are handsome, at least."
"The son's side is more…"
"Well, he is the son of Hubei's greatest courtesan, after all."
It's an illusion. The situation and atmosphere are forcing me into the role of the Clan Leader's son, so that's how I look.
I swallowed the urge to fire back at the muttering and kept staring fixedly.
The Clan Leader met my gaze without flinching, his expression stern and unreadable, and instead sent me a look that seemed to pierce straight through me.
"Do you intend to keep staring forever?"
When I still did not speak and only kept looking, the Clan Leader finally opened his mouth.
I've been waiting for that question!
I took a deep breath inside. I am Hyang-ah's son. Yunho. The bastard abandoned by his father. The man who, after more than twenty years of hellish suffering, has finally arrived at the Sichuan Dang Clan.
If I were Hyang-ah's son, how would I speak?
Father. Waaah. I missed you! Those people are bullying me. Please save our Hwarin. Should I say that?
No.
"I was just taking a look at the bastard who made my mother suffer for a lifetime."
I'm the bastard abandoned more than twenty years ago. There's no way I'd have warm feelings.
"You cur!!!"
The confidants around the Clan Leader bellowed and looked ready to leap at me on the spot. The Clan Leader raised a hand lightly and stopped them.
Where do you think you're butting in? This is a family quarrel on a rather large scale. It's none of your business.
The confidants were furious, but they clearly found it hard to ignore the Clan Leader; they simply glared at me as if they wanted to devour me.
If something that mild could make me flinch, I never would have made it here. If you want me to shrink, try unleashing killing intent on the level of the Heavenly Killing Star.
"Are you truly Hyang-ah's son?"
"I am."
"Then are you truly…"
The Clan Leader could not finish the sentence and looked at me with a gaze that seemed to search for something long lost.
"No."
I declared it firmly to the Clan Leader.
Whether the Clan Leader wants to dig his twenty-year-old past out of me or search for traces of his old love, I have no intention of giving him time.
"What did you just say?"
The Clan Leader's stern mask wavered slightly.
Clan Leader. Nostalgia peddling is all well and good for you, but this side is in a hurry.
I have to overcome this crisis and save Hwarin's life. For that, this is the best method.
I hardened my expression and opened my mouth to play the card I had prepared.
"I am not your son."