The Flower and Zhongnan Banquet
He moved at high speed, stepping from tree to tree.
Whoosh!
I heard the sound of wind slicing from behind me. I tilted my head just a little to the side, and a pebble slammed into a tree trunk.
“At this rate, I don’t think you’d even be able to touch a hair on my head.”
“....”
No answer came. Instead, another pebble came flying at me with even greater force behind it.
I shifted left and right, dodging it without any trouble, then casually flicked a pebble back at the one coming straight toward me.
A pebble. No, this wasn’t a pebble anymore. It was a dagger.
The way a martial artist used it could make a pebble into a dagger.
The pebble I threw shattered the incoming one and shot toward Dang Hye.
Bang!
“Urgh.”
I heard Dang Hye groan. At that moment, I stopped in my tracks and went to her.
“That’s dirty. Didn’t you say you’d train to my level?”
“I adjusted it to suit your level.”
“I saw you crush a pebble imbued with inner energy with my own eyes!”
“This is why the inexperienced are hopeless. The amount of inner energy in the pebble I threw and the one you threw was the same.”
“....”
Her brow twitched at my words.
Unfortunate as it was, everything I said was true. The pebble I had thrown carried only as much inner energy as the one Dang Hye had infused.
The difference wasn’t in quantity, but density.
A dagger wasn’t strong simply because it held a huge amount of inner energy. Density mattered.
“Still, not bad. Much better than a sword.”
At my words, Dang Hye’s mouth lifted slightly. But that smile vanished almost immediately.
“You’d move better without that bundle on your back.”
I pointed at the pack she was carrying.
“This is not negotiable.”
Dang Hye guarded the bundle as if it were a cub in her arms.
Inside were the poisonous herbs she had collected from the village of Fangce. She had painstakingly picked through the lot and taken everything she could carry.
“I’m going ahead this time.”
With my gaze still on the poison, she took the lead and started running ahead.
“As expected, poison really is her strong point.”
After acquiring Sodanhwa, we moved for three days while repeating training that was close to real combat.
By now, Dang Hye’s body was covered in bruises from the stones I had pelted her with.
And yet she never once complained.
“Shall we start again?”
Crack!
“Aaagh!”
For two days, the forest was filled with the sound of stones cutting through the air and Dang Hye’s rough breathing.
The screams gradually faded, replaced instead by the sharp sound of stones being knocked aside, and her footsteps grew faster by the minute.
Five days of training. It might sound short. But for Dang Hye, those five days would help her more than all the training she had ever done in her life.
Namhwajin.
While the training repeated itself over and over, the place where our steps finally stopped was a village called Namhwajin. Dang Hye looked at me.
“Why did we stop?”
“How about resting here for today?”
“Why all of a sudden?”
She had not rested once while running all this way, so her expression was guarded.
“Tomorrow, something interesting will happen here.”
“Interesting?”
“And you want to wash up too, don’t you? You kept sniffing yourself in between.”
“Shut up!”
She said it, but her lips curved up just a little. Dang Hye strode into Namhwajin without hesitation.
Namhwajin was a township set on the vast plains of Shaanxi. To the north, the steep peaks of Mount Hua rose faintly into the distance, while to the south, the blue ridges of Zhongnan Mountain wore the clouds like a crown.
“When I came here in my previous life, it was all burning.”
For a moment, the Namhwajin of my past life surfaced in my mind. By the time I had arrived then, no humans were left alive in this place.
All that remained was the thick stench of blood and collapsed buildings.
“Still, looks like we made it in time.”
To Dang Hye, it would probably seem like we had come here by chance. But going to Namhwajin was part of my plan.
Because I had seen what would happen here in the enemies’ coded words.
“What are you doing standing there? Aren’t you coming?”
“I am.”
At Dang Hye’s voice, I entered Namhwajin as well. Unlike the village in my memory, it was full of life. Children ran through the streets, and merchants hurried back and forth.
“Don’t just stand there and block the road! Move!”
A porter carrying a load on his back shouted at Dang Hye. I lightly tugged her aside.
“Why is it so hectic here? Is there some kind of festival?”
“A festival? Something like one.”
I nodded toward the village center, and her eyes followed.
“A dueling stage?”
What stood there was a massive martial arena. She turned back to me with a face full of questions.
“Namhwajin. Do you know where this place is?”
“How should I know?”
“It’s between Mount Hua and Zhongnan.”
“And what does that have to do with that dueling stage?”
“Have you heard of the Huazhong Banquet?”
“The Huazhong Banquet? You mean the martial exchange between Mount Hua and Zhongnan?”
“Exactly. It’s held once every five years, and every year it’s held here in Namhwajin.”
“Then that dueling stage must be for the Huazhong Banquet.”
“Right. And it’s tomorrow.”
Her eyes sparkled. She really was a martial artist through and through. But that didn’t last long. The color drained from her face, and in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, she said, “Zhongnan...”
There seemed to be some story behind Zhongnan. But did I care?
My gaze drifted to the dueling stage.
The stage where the Huazhong Banquet would be held. On that stage, the martial artists of Mount Hua and Zhongnan, along with the sect leaders of both factions, would die.
Tomorrow.
In truth, if I hadn’t deciphered the code words, I wouldn’t even have known it was tomorrow.
What I had decoded was this:
Bring the Huazhong Banquet forward.
According to history, poison would be released at the banquet five years later, and most of the people present would die.
As a result of that incident, the Dang Family would come under suspicion, and in the end they would be driven out of the Five Great Clans.
Why had the Dang Family been suspected?
Simply because poison was used?
No.
In the first place, no ordinary poison could have killed not only the two sect leaders but also the elders of each sect. But if the poison they were struck by was Invisible Poison, the story changed.
Invisible Poison was one of the Dang Family’s secret arts, passed down only to the family head. Back then, I had also believed that someone from the Dang Family had used a hidden scheme. But after decoding those code words, I became certain.
This, too, was the work of those bastards.
“Maybe this really is fate.”
I looked at Dang Hye. Perhaps meeting her and escorting her like this was fate after all.
For her to help me solve this problem.
“Fate?”
“No.”
Dang Hye seemed to have finished looking around the dueling stage, because she turned her head away. Then her eyes started moving quickly, as if she was searching for the fastest route to a bathhouse. But I gave her shoulder a light pat and shook my head.
“There’s somewhere we need to go first.”
“Can’t we move after washing up?”
“No. We can’t.”
She looked as though the sky had fallen. But what could I do? There were more important things to handle first.
Dang Hye glanced toward an inn for a moment, clearly having spotted one, but she soon fell into step behind me.
First, we headed to a clothing shop and had outfits made.
As for me, I could throw on almost anything, but Dang Hye was not the same. Now that she had decided to properly use poison and daggers, she needed clothing suited for it.
A tailor-made outfit for a Dang Family member was unusual. By my standards, it was just a robe with a wider fit. I had not expected the whole thing to be designed with hidden spaces for daggers and poison.
The shop owner, too, seemed startled, as though it was his first time making such clothing, and said with some hesitation, “It will take some time to make.”
“Will it be impossible by tomorrow?”
“That’s...”
I took out two silver coins and handed them over. The owner’s expression changed instantly.
“It can be done. I’ll have it ready by tomorrow morning.”
Money really was convenient. Enough to make up for lost time.
After that, we moved to the weapons shop.
The place was called Hwachuldang.
Hwachuldang was an ordinary weapons shop, the kind you could find anywhere. The one difference was that every weapon in the shop was a sword.
“Welcome. Are you looking for a sword?”
“Do you have daggers instead?”
“Daggers? We do, but please wait a moment.”
After a short while, the owner brought out a single dagger.
“Here you are.”
I handed it to Dang Hye. She examined it from different angles, weighing it in her hand.
To me, it looked like an utterly ordinary dagger. I turned to the owner and asked, “By the way, why do you only have swords on display?”
“Because swords are the finest weapons, aren’t they!”
“Really?”
“What other reason would there be?”
The owner’s expression stiffened awkwardly. His eyes flicked toward the door, and his fingers began tapping the counter for no reason at all.
As if he already knew someone would be coming through it any moment.
“This dagger doesn’t seem bad.”
Dang Hye handed the dagger back to me. At that exact moment, the door opened with a creak. The owner’s face froze for an instant before he hurried over to the entrance.
“Ah, welcome!”
“Owner, it’s much nicer without all those little odds and ends cluttering things up.”
“As you said, hanging only swords has really lifted the atmosphere of the shop. Thank you.”
Both Dang Hye and I turned our heads at once. And then her expression darkened.
White training robes, silver hero sashes.
They were disciples of the Zhongnan Sect.
“The Dang Family young lady? No, what was your name again? Dang... right. Dang Hye!”
“Hello, Lee Baekun-sogiom.”
“We really do keep meeting by fate. To think we’d run into each other again like this. So, did you do well at the Alliance Lord’s birthday celebration?”
“Thanks to your concern.”
Lee Baekun treated Dang Hye as though she were naturally beneath him. To me, they looked about the same age.
“Concern? I didn’t do anything for you, though. More importantly...”
Lee Baekun’s gaze drifted to the sword hanging at Dang Hye’s waist. Then he broke into a broad laugh.
“A sword suits you much better than a dagger, after all.”
“....”
Dang Hye seemed to twist her body, as if trying to hide the sword. From the look of it, there was no doubt. He was the reason Dang Hye had ever taken up the sword.
“Let me have a look. How much have you improved with the sword?”
As Lee Baekun slowly drew his sword, the air inside the shop turned cold.
When his eyes locked onto Dang Hye, the owner’s fingertips trembled faintly.
Dang Hye tightened her grip on the scabbard and drew a quiet breath, wavering as if she stood at a crossroads, unsure whether to draw the blade or not.
“I’m with someone.”
Lee Baekun gave me a slight sideways look, then turned back to Dang Hye.
“When martial artists cross swords, do the place or company really matter?”
Lee Baekun’s momentum surged. At that instant, the owner’s face, full of unease, flickered into my vision. At the same time, I snapped my fingers.
Whoosh.
The dagger flicked from my fingertips and grazed Lee Baekun’s temple in the blink of an eye.
With a soft clatter, his hero sash fell to the floor.
He blinked, as if he couldn’t understand what had just happened, and then his face twisted like a demon’s.
“You... fucking lunatic.”
Killing intent poured out of Lee Baekun toward me. But my eyes weren’t on Lee Baekun.
They were on the shop owner.
“This dagger’s not bad. I think I’ll take about a hundred of them.”
“...Do you truly want to die?”
Ignoring him, I smiled as Lee Baekun clenched his teeth and pushed his momentum even higher.
It still wouldn’t make the smile leave my face.