Changbong Hall - 4
Did you truly want the seat of Clan Head that badly?
Moyong Sang-ah had suspected as much ever since her father collapsed, but to have her own brother's unforgivable treachery confirmed to her face left her unable to summon a single word.
"You cannot neutralize it yourself?"
Changbongdaeju stole a glance at his liege, who sat struck dumb with shock, and put the question to the physician in her stead.
"I flatter myself that I know a thing or two about poison. But this particular toxin is not one to be purged carelessly — a rash attempt could leave the patient worse than before. Better to entrust him to a physician whose knowledge of poison surpasses my own."
"If it is the word of one who served as a royal physician, then there can be no mistake."
Having recovered from his own shock, the physician heard the trust in Moyong Sang-ah's voice and went on with an apologetic look.
"In all the Central Plains, there is no house to rival the Sichuan Tang Clan in the study of poison. I make no pretense of knowing the ways of the Jianghu, but I understand your Moyong Clan is counted among the great martial clans, just as the Sichuan Tang Clan is. If the two families share ties of friendship, inviting someone capable of unmaking this poison is hardly an outlandish notion."
"The Sichuan Tang Clan..."
Contrary to the physician's hopes, hesitation had crept into Moyong Sang-ah's voice.
"As the physician suggests, might we send someone to the Sichuan Tang Clan?"
"To do that, Father's poisoning would have to be—"
Sang-ah bit off the sentence mid-word and cast a guarded look at the physician.
This was family business, and family business alone. If an outsider like this physician overheard, word might yet reach other ears. Her eyes were heavy with that worry.
"Those who serve long as physicians to the imperial house know the rule well. Once we step out of a patient's chamber, everything we heard, everything we saw, everything we said — all of it is forgotten."
What den of scheming could rival the imperial court itself?
The physician had come only to see his patient and showed no interest whatsoever in whatever went on inside the Moyong Clan. On the strength of that, Sang-ah chose to trust him.
"We would have to confess to the Sichuan Tang Clan that my father has been poisoned. And should they ask why, we would have no easy answer to give. Beyond that, there is no certainty they would help at all."
Word of the Demonic Cult could leak its way to Sichuan. Moyong Sang-ah wanted nothing of the clan's present circumstances slipping past its walls.
The Moyong Clan's cooperation with the Demonic Cult was no deviation confined to a few.
The Young Clan Head had joined the cult. Cult agents had infiltrated the clan. And the clan's own people had been stepping, one unwitting pace at a time, deeper into the cult's affairs.
And the Moyong Clan was not the Sichuan Tang Clan.
It was no martial clan claiming hegemony from Chengdu, where the Nine Sects and One Union held court — merely a house that could barely style itself hegemon in Liaodong Province, itself a forgotten edge of the Central Plains.
If the martial world ever learned that the Moyong Clan had aided the Demonic Cult, the clan's fate — the fate she herself would live to see — would be extermination, root and branch.
Moyong Bi did not wish to inherit a Moyong Clan ruined by mutual destruction in an all-out war against his sister.
Moyong Sang-ah did not wish to see her clan annihilated through the exposure of her brother's crimes.
The strange standoff between the two siblings unfolded for precisely these reasons.
"The present head of the Sichuan Tang Clan, Lord Tang Baek-ho, is renowned for his righteous chivalry across the whole of the Central Plains and far beyond Sichuan itself. The circumstances would need some careful trimming in the telling, but he will certainly lend us his aid."
"..."
Would he truly help without prying into reasons? Moyong Sang-ah knew Tang Baek-ho's illustrious name well enough. Even so, she could not bring herself to agree readily.
"Even if a messenger left for the Sichuan Tang Clan this very day, more than a year and a half would pass before we could bring the guest home. For the Clan Head's sake, the sooner you decide, the better."
Liaodong Province, seat of the Moyong Clan, lay directly above the Joseon peninsula. The Sichuan Tang Clan, by contrast, sat at the far western end of the Central Plains.
It was a distance of over a year even by forced march, there and back. And beseeching a stranger to save the Clan Head's life was nothing like knocking on a neighbor's door to borrow a tool.
To dispatch a delegation in proper form and escort the guest back with due ceremony, a year and a half might well prove a conservative estimate.
Should she shoulder the risk and send word to the Sichuan Tang Clan? Sang-ah deliberated, and the decision would not come.
'Live on — and take back the Moyong Clan.'
What settled her deliberation were the words of her husband, fastened upon her heart like a spell that would never break.
He had laid down his very life for her sake. How could she waver at a mere risk like this?
"Can Father endure a year and a half?"
Only after long deliberation did Moyong Sang-ah put the question to the physician.
"Have no fear. The poison cannot be dispelled, but through proper treatment I can hold him in his present state. And if the most precious Joseon Ginseng may be used as freely as licorice root, he will endure far longer than that besides."
"Understood. Then Changbong Hall will assemble a delegation and send it to the Sichuan Tang Clan."
"A wise decision, my lady!"
It had been a few days since the decision to quietly assemble the delegation for the Sichuan Tang Clan when Changbongdaeju came calling with important news for Moyong Sang-ah.
"The Council of Elders has been convened. They summon its convenor to attend — you, my lady."
"How quickly they move. How go the delegation's preparations?"
"Nearly finished. We will form the delegation from the most trusted of Changbong Hall and send it off with the very finest grade of ginseng and gifts besides. I am certain good news will follow."
"Thank you for your trouble. Let us go to the Council together."
Moyong Sang-ah made haste for the hall where the Council of Elders had gathered.
Disgusting old buzzards.
To smother the revulsion climbing up her throat, Sang-ah swept her gaze across the chamber with a face carved from ice.
Seated within were the Council in its entirety — and her brother, watching her with open displeasure.
Moyong Bi could hardly feel otherwise. It had been Moyong Sang-ah who propped up the Council of Elders precisely to gnaw away at his authority.
By tradition, the great and small affairs of the Moyong Clan were decided by the Young Clan Head, with the Council offering counsel.
Sang-ah had showered the elders with silver, let them savor the taste of power, and whetted their greed to a razor's edge.
The Council of Elders had since degenerated into a litter of greedy swine, waiting to gorge on whatever scraps tumbled from the siblings' war.
"Moyong Sang-ah. State the reason you wished to convene this Council."
The chairman of the Council of Elders asked her purpose in calling the assembly.
Sang-ah let her gaze travel once around the room, confirmed that every eye in it had settled upon her, and spoke.
"I come to request leave to search the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives."
"The Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives?"
"Do you speak of the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives — the lost archive of our martial arts?"
"What lunacy is this?"
The Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives. A single sentence from Moyong Sang-ah, and the council chamber boiled over in an instant.
The Moyong Clan carried more than a thousand years of history, reaching back to the imperial throne of Yan. In ages long past, its ascendancy had been so overwhelming that men named it the Number One Clan Under Heaven.
The Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives was the place gossips had babbled of for centuries — the repository, some claimed, where every martial art of the Central Plains was gathered; where, others swore, lay the one art that could unmake all others.
Whatever the truth of such tales, in the age of the Number One Clan Under Heaven the Hall had been the vault that enshrined the very essence of the Moyong Clan.
It was also, however, the seed from which the clan's decay had first sprung.
"Do you not know that the Clan Heads of generations past searched for the Hall as well, and that not one ever found so much as a clue?"
Long ago, the Moyong Clan had lost its Clan Head and Young Clan Head together in a single sudden calamity. With them vanished, forever, the hidden location of the Hall.
"It is not that no clue was ever found. The bounds were simply too vast."
Sang-ah corrected the chairman.
"Generation after generation chased those clues in search of the Hall, and no one ever found it. And in doing so the Moyong Clan squandered fortunes and manpower past all counting, tumbling from a martial clan that commanded the world onto the road of ruin. Does the Council not know this?"
Losing the Hall's location had not ended with the loss of one archive.
Countless peerless teachings handed down through the generations — the pride of the Moyong Clan — had been erased along with it, and the family fortune had rotted away in the searching.
"I am aware."
"Five years ago, the very pavilion housing the clues and the research records burned to the ground."
"Of that, too, I am aware."
"Hunt for the Hall from nothing, and you will need a well of coin with no bottom to it. Pour and pour, and it will never be enough."
"I possess funds that flow forth without end, however much I draw upon them."
"..."
At her brazen declaration, every elder in the chamber sat mute for a long while.
"Even were you to find the Hall, entry has been granted, generation upon generation, to none but the Clan Head and Young Clan Head of the Moyong Clan."
Sang-ah held no such qualification. The Council had just made a point of informing her.
"To be precise, only one who has attained Small Completion of the Moyong Clan Head's direct-lineage martial arts may pass through its doors."
She returned the shot to the chairman, her tone level as still water.
"You cannot mean you attained Small Completion at the tender age of twenty?"
"..."
Moyong Sang-ah stood where she was, calm and unhurried, and inclined her head in a nod.
"Th-that cannot be."
"Do not lie! Never once in our history has anyone reached such attainment at that age!"
"Not even the Clan Heads of old managed it."
"If you wish, I can show you."
She let the qi she had kept veiled within her body flow freely forth, as naturally as drawing breath.
In a single instant, astonishment flooded the entire Council.
"Is it true, then?"
"What impossible talent is this?!"
Clap, clap, clap.
It was the sound of Moyong Bi's applause that stilled the murmuring hall.
"How clever our little sister is. She will find the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives, master the arts the Clan Heads before us trained in and lost, and claim her legitimacy as Young Clan Head. That is what you mean, is it not?"
By rights, the Clan Head alone names his Young Clan Head. But Moyong Bi had seized the title in the chaos of their father's collapse into a coma.
Were Moyong Sang-ah to enter the Hall, she would hold the unanswerable justification to become Young Clan Head herself. Everyone gathered in that room understood it perfectly.
"That is my intention."
She would find the Hall and take her justification. Even if they refused her here, she would find it all the same.
Resolve rang through Sang-ah's every word.
"Very well. Do as you please."
"Young Clan Head!"
"The Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives. The fervent wish of every Clan Head before us — unfulfilled to the last, even the records turned to nothing. And now my little sister offers to hunt for the archive with money that never runs dry. How could the holder of the Young Clan Head's seat refuse her?"
"But, Young Clan Head!"
"The search for the Hall is the great undertaking of the Moyong Clan. Only by recovering what was lost can we ever reclaim our former might. And who can say? If my sister devotes her whole life to it, then perhaps by my children's generation, or my grandchildren's, the Hall will stand found at last. Let her try."
Moyong Bi could not suppress the sneer as he looked upon his sister.
Foolish woman. After all that agonizing, she plays the reckless move.
For Moyong Bi knew the truth of it: the fire that consumed the pavilion five years ago had been their father's own doing, kindled so that not one more coin of the family fortune would be fed into the futile Hall.
Finding the Hall was never a matter of merely hunting down a single needle dropped upon an endless beach.
And now she meant to begin again from nothing — to squander assets enough to beggar the house a second time. How could he possibly fail to rejoice at his sister's blunder?
"Very well. I grant permission for the search."
With even the Young Clan Head — the heart of the opposition — lending his approval, the Council had no grounds left to refuse.
"Little sister."
Moyong Bi called out to his expressionless sister.
"Yes, Young Clan Head."
"From this day forward, the search for the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives is your charge alone. Once begun, you will not be permitted to stop. Halt it carelessly, and I will cast you out of this clan."
Squander your assets without end. The ending was ruin either way.
Picturing his sister fading away into some forgotten corner of the Moyong Clan's long history, Moyong Bi could not conceal his delight.
"As you wish."
Having secured exactly what she wanted, Moyong Sang-ah turned on her heel.
"My lady! Why on earth would you make such a decision?!"
Changbongdaeju, walking back at his liege's side, burst out in a stunned voice.
"Everything is proceeding exactly as expected."
"What?"
"My brother surely knew that Father was the one who burned the pavilion. He permitted this believing the search would drain my fortune down to the last coin."
"Then all the more reason you should never have agreed!"
"There is one thing my brother does not know. The pavilion burned — the records did not."
"What do you mean, my lady?"
"They are all here, in my head. Every record of the Hall of Accomplished Martial Archives that Father showed me when I was a child."
Tapping a finger against her temple, Sang-ah let her childhood surface. The lost archive of the Moyong Clan, and the stories of the ancestors who had hunted for it.
To a young Moyong Sang-ah, those stories had been irresistibly, wondrously enchanting.
"Hoh..."
"It is the price of the life my husband gave. I have no intention of letting a single coin of it go to waste."
The money would have to pour in without pause — but this time, the well would have a bottom.
The moment she found the Hall and stepped across its threshold, no one in the clan would be able to deny her legitimacy again.
Only then did Moyong Sang-ah let the mask fall from her face, a quiet smile of victory curving her lips.
One day, with the delegation dispatched in secret to the Sichuan Tang Clan and the search party for the Hall still being assembled—
"My lady. Important news has arrived from Joseon."
The news Moyong Sang-ah had been waiting for had flown into Changbong Hall.