Changbong Hall - 3
"We have failed."
The Moyong Clan estate. The Young Clan Head's office. In a hall that had of late come to be called Changryongjeon, the Blue Dragon Pavilion, the Chief Steward of the Moyong Clan delivered his report to the Young Clan Head, Moyong Bi, his face dark as a storm front.
"What is that supposed to mean? You told me you were certain of it."
Moyong Bi frowned at the report.
The plan had been to use demonic arts to seize a Joseon merchant's mind and wreck the deal from the inside. He had approved the operation precisely because the man had spoken with such confidence—and now it had failed?
"We succeeded in inflaming the Joseon merchant's desires, but events did not unfold as intended."
"Was it so difficult to enrage that crazed bitch? The one who loses her mind the instant anyone insults her husband?"
Moyong Bi had heard the stories often enough—how Moyong Sang-ah had cut a man clean in half after he spoke ill of her dead husband. Throw a few humiliating words at his sister, have the merchant curse her husband, and the deal would collapse into catastrophe without the slightest effort. The Chief Steward had laid it all out so boldly that he had nodded right along.
Moyong Bi turned a reproachful gaze upon the Demonic Cult operative he had worked so hard to install himself, having shoved the previous Chief Steward out of the way to make room.
"This time, rather than cutting anyone in half, she burned the ginseng and used it to threaten them."
"That venomous woman. Does money simply rot in her hands?"
This was Joseon ginseng, weighed out and traded in silver and gold. To set a miraculous elixir ablaze like kindling—medicine that ought to have been sold for profit—was the act of a woman gone thoroughly, irretrievably mad. Moyong Bi could only click his tongue.
"Even so, it was not a complete failure. The Joseon merchants now harbor deep resentment over the death of their representative and the burning of the ginseng, and her notoriety will only spread further."
"Now that is some welcome news. Yes, let the infamy spread. However that wretch thrashes about, the legitimate claim rests with me, does it not?"
Moyong Sang-ah had come into wealth the likes of which Moyong Bi had never even heard of. With that fortune she had rebuilt a faction on the verge of collapse into one of the two great powers of the Moyong Clan, and by courting the Council of Elders she had even clawed back the decision-making rights of the direct line.
But that was where it ended.
However much wealth Moyong Sang-ah controlled, the initiative belonged not to her but to the Young Clan Head, Moyong Bi. No matter how she pressed them with her money, the rights of the eldest son, the authority of the Young Clan Head, were not about to vanish into thin air.
"Spreading the rumor of the Female Mantis throughout the Murim was a stratagem that would draw admiration from Zhuge Gongming himself, were he reborn."
"Hahaha! The more her infamy piles up, the fewer people gather at her side. The fool! If you want to become Clan Head, you don't bludgeon people with money—you wield schemes with skill, the way I do. Am I wrong?"
The one who had led the charge in spreading Moyong Sang-ah's infamy across the Murim was none other than her own elder brother, Moyong Bi.
Thanks to him, even though the truth of the Moyong Clan was a brother who had consented to Demonic Cult dominion and a sister who stood against him, the world saw the matter through a very different lens.
In the treason affair of the Kang family, Moyong Sang-ah bore no guilt—she had merely claimed the entire Kang family fortune for herself—and yet to the world it remained a scandal worthy of pointing fingers.
In this world, even if a righteous man lodging as a family's retained guest happened to overhear them plotting treason, quietly taking his leave of the household that had sheltered him was counted a virtue, for he owed them his keep. And Moyong Sang-ah had gone further still: she had reported her own husband's household for treason and driven a blade into her husband with her own hands.
The wicked woman. The Female Mantis. The enchantress. Moyong Sang-ah.
Even if Joseon had rewarded her for the report, in a world where a woman's proper lot was to be a wise mother and a faithful wife, it was self-evident that as a woman, as a wife, she had committed the most unforgivable of acts.
Moyong Bi, who held legitimacy as Young Clan Head. Moyong Sang-ah, whose vast fortune rivaled that legitimacy. Such was how the world currently judged the Moyong Clan.
"Truly worthy of the man who will one day head the Moyong Clan."
"Yes. Let the ginseng matter rest for now. We predicted all along that the deal wouldn't collapse, didn't we?"
Satisfied with the Chief Steward's flattery, Moyong Bi forgot the torrent of sarcasm he had just unleashed and spoke as though granting a royal pardon.
"Thank you, my lord. And there is word that Changbong Hall intends to bring in a physician for the Clan Head."
"A physician?"
"They say he is a physician who once served the imperial court as a court physician."
"...Is there a chance Father might wake?"
Moyong Bi asked with an anxious face.
He had poisoned his father with his own two hands and left him unconscious. If Father were to wake? He couldn't bear even to imagine it.
"The poison you employed, Young Clan Head, was devised by one of the Cult's poison masters who labored well over a decade to perfect it. Even were a Great Luo Immortal to come in person, a cure would be absolutely impossible."
Understanding the Young Clan Head's anxiety, the Chief Steward declared with unwavering confidence.
"Yes. That's what I thought."
"If you so desire, there is also a way to send the Clan Head into eternal rest, even at considerable risk."
"Chief Steward. Are you telling me to become the patricide who murdered his own father?"
Moyong Bi's face crumpled at once.
"No, that is not what I meant—"
"If Father were to die now, in the Moyong Clan's present state, whose way would the arrows point? If war broke out inside the family while I was cleaning up the mess, both factions would be left in ruins, and then I would never inherit the clan intact! Is that truly what the Cult wants?! Are you trying to make me the same breed of monster as that Female Mantis bitch?!"
Moyong Bi bellowed at the Chief Steward, his fury on full display.
The warriors of Changbong Hall guarded his father around the clock, in double and triple rings. If he meddled and left behind so much as a scrap of evidence, even the seat he had struggled so hard to seize could be shaken.
Moyong Bi would not, under any circumstances, let go of what he had.
"N-no, of course not."
"And Father, honestly... If he had simply promised the Clan Head's seat to his eldest son, I would never have needed to step in. Or he could have quietly released his attachments to this world when I made my decision. What in the world is any of this supposed to be?"
Moyong Bi muttered and lamented as though none of it were his fault—as though every last piece of it were his father's doing.
"Shall we permit the physician to enter, then?"
"How could a son bar a physician from his own father's sickbed? And yet."
"And yet?"
"It is entirely conceivable that a physician traveling under Changbong Hall's protection as an honored guest might, by the merest coincidence, meet with something along the lines of a bandit raid."
"...I shall make arrangements."
"Good. As I say every time, the legitimacy is mine. All we need do is slowly, patiently, leave that woman with no place left to stand even within the clan."
Moyong Bi fixed the Chief Steward with a reproachful glare for his rash remark.
"I will do my utmost."
The Chief Steward bowed his head to soothe the Young Clan Head's anger.
So he didn't want to be a patricide. The Chief Steward found himself recalling how Moyong Bi had mastered the demonic arts without a flicker of hesitation, and how he had poisoned the Clan Head without a moment's doubt.
Back then, they had believed the Moyong Clan would fall into their hands with ease. But they do say a person's true nature reveals itself in a moment of crisis. To keep his seat as Young Clan Head, Moyong Bi had become pathologically averse to any loss whatsoever.
'Did we choose wrongly?'
Would it have been better to throw their weight fully behind Moyong Bi from the start and seize the Moyong Clan outright with the Cult's masters brought in during those early days? The Chief Steward regretted it, but what was done was done. Moyong Sang-ah's schemes had already sent the Cult's people inside the clan to their graves.
Hoping for further active support from the Cult was a fool's hope—the Ten Thousand Great Mountains, where the Cult dwelled, were simply too far away. Even the operatives they barely smuggled in were devoured bit by bit by her schemes. Yet to sit idle was unthinkable too, with Changbong Hall's coffers so deep.
'The seat of Clan Head is not a seat for spinning schemes. It is a seat for making decisions.'
A true head must know how to gamble on danger, be ready to swallow losses, and sometimes act even knowing full well the world will point its fingers. His sister would shoulder any infamy rather than waver over a decision—when, with this attitude, would this man ever claim the seat of Clan Head?
"I shall take my leave."
Foreseeing that the battles ahead would only grow harder, the Chief Steward withdrew with a bitter taste in his mouth.
What the Changbong Corps' scouting party discovered was the carriage of the physician they had gone out to receive, under attack by bandits.
"My lady! The carriage carrying the physician is under attack by an unknown band!"
The Changbongdaeju urgently relayed the scouts' findings to Moyong Sang-ah.
Bandits who would not retreat even at the sight of the Moyong Clan's banner? It was suspicious beyond all suspicion. The Changbongdaeju recalled what his lord had said before they set out to receive the physician.
Changryongjeon had granted permission for the physician's entry—but that permission could well be a ploy to lull them into carelessness. They had sabotaged the ginseng trade; they could just as easily sabotage the escort. It would be a nuisance for everyone, but she would lead the Changbong Corps out to receive the physician herself.
The Changbongdaeju silently marveled, deep within, at how precisely Moyong Sang-ah had foreseen this.
"Follow me."
Gripping her horse's reins, Moyong Sang-ah drew her blade and shouted to the Changbong Corps.
"Stay back, my lady! We will handle this!"
"He is my guest."
"My lady! If anything happens to the lord we serve, we lose everything!"
"If I will not brave the danger myself, who do you suppose will step forward for me in my hour of need? Follow me!"
Without a shred of hesitation, the Changbong Corps charged out after their lord, eyes fixed on the figure galloping farthest ahead at the very front.
The enemies tenaciously hunted the physician in his carriage, but the crisis lasted only a heartbeat. The moment Moyong Sang-ah led the charge and split the enemy's center, the situation reversed in an instant.
The suspiciously formidable fighters embedded in the band, and the green-haired bandits who looked to be Green Forest men, pressed their attack without a hint of panic—but that was as far as they got. The Changbong Corps squeezed the bandits from within and without alongside their lord, and no force in all of Liaodong Province existed that could defeat the Changbong Corps.
"Is it all over? Hm? Young woman?"
Having finished the mopping-up, Moyong Sang-ah turned her head and regarded the man stepping down from the carriage with an air of easy composure. He was a middle-aged man entering his twilight years, with white threading through his hair.
"I am called Moyong Sang-ah. I beg your forgiveness for the alarm we caused in escorting you here, honored physician of great renown."
Moyong Sang-ah bowed her head politely to the physician whose life had been imperiled on her account.
"Ahaha. So you're the one from the rumors, are you? I'd assumed it was all exaggeration, but you strike me as even more remarkable than the stories made out."
"..."
Which rumors, exactly? The Female Mantis who devoured everything her husband had. The wicked woman who reported her husband's own household. Choking on the words she could not bring herself to ask, Moyong Sang-ah let her infamy grow by yet another measure.
Seeing her expression harden, the physician laughed sheepishly and tried again.
"I seem to have given the wrong impression. I was speaking of your looks. They say you are beautiful enough to cloud a man's senses—but to describe a beauty peerless under Heaven in such meager terms? If anything, the rumors undersell you."
The man, having meant only to compliment the young woman who had saved him and apparently given offense instead, praised her all the more extravagantly.
"You flatter me."
"Flattery? I merely spoke my impression. I served long years in the imperial court, where beauties of every description overflowed, yet in all my life I have judged only one person worthy of the name most beautiful under Heaven. No—with this meeting, that makes two."
"Thank you."
"Tch. I work up the courage to pay a compliment, and I suppose a face that hears them by the hundreds has gone numb to them entirely. Meeting bandits is clearly no rare occurrence for you either, and you seem scarcely bothered, so let us hurry and see to the patient's condition."
"Escort the physician!"
Having secured the surroundings, Moyong Sang-ah and the Changbong Corps successfully delivered the physician to the Moyong Clan.
"How is my father's condition?"
Moyong Sang-ah asked the physician in an anxious voice as he emerged from examining her father.
If her father could be treated and rise from his sickbed, everything would end. The moment she laid the truth of the Demonic Cult before him, legitimacy would return to her side.
Of course, there would be some commotion. Moyong Bi would thrash and lash out. The Demonic Cult would bare its true face. But it did not matter. She would be the first to raise her blade, ahead of anyone.
"Regrettably, treating this patient lies beyond my abilities."
Contrary to her hopes, the physician's words were no different from those of every physician before him.
"...I see."
Moyong Sang-ah forced the disappointment from her voice. So treatment truly was impossible. Would her father never wake, lost in that darkness forever?
Just as a small wave of despair rose to swallow her, an unexpected sound came from the physician's mouth.
"But I have discovered what ails him."
"What is it? What sickness?"
"The Clan Head is not suffering from any sickness. He has been struck by a poison so subtle that any physician alive would mistake it for disease."
"Did you say... poison?"
"I did. And I know of a place where there are people who can cure it."
"People versed in poison... could they be...?"
"How would it be to invite someone from the Sichuan Tang Clan to the Moyong Clan?"