Let the Muddy Water Settle

A week had passed since the Clan Head's life force had run its course.

Yet Namgung Cheon had taken no action whatsoever.

Because of that, a few of the elders still held out hope for the Third Young Master, but the majority could not shake off their worried gazes. The prevailing opinion was that no matter how brilliant his performance in the Martial Procession had been, Namgung Cheon was still too young and too inexperienced to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shoulder alone a tangled affair that reached all the way to the Four ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Black Alliance.

Particularly the mockery of the faction led by the Seventh Elder, Namgung Do, grew more brazen with each passing day.

"Tsk tsk. Where has all that frost-cold ferocity gone? The young lord holed himself up in his quarters and won't come out."

"He puffed his chest and made grand promises, but now that the work is actually upon him, his nerve has failed him, no doubt."

Their sneers spread through every corner of the clan, yet Namgung Cheon, the very subject of those rumors, showed himself nowhere.

At that moment, before Namgung Cheon's quarters.

Cutting through the chill of early morning, the swords of Namgung Cheon and Mujin crossed.

Clang—!

Blades met and parted in the empty air dozens of times. The instant Namgung Cheon's sword found an opening in his opponent's guard and leveled itself at his throat, Mujin's blade, too, stopped dead just short of Namgung Cheon's heart.

"Whew."

Mujin exhaled a short breath and wiped the sweat beading on his forehead.

"Sharper by the day. I suspect before long I won't even be able to stand against you for ten seconds, my lord."

It was a hard admission to believe coming from the disciple of Nangwang—a master of the Transcendent Realm.

Namgung Cheon answered nothing. He lowered his sword and walked toward the table, where the tea he had brewed earlier was going cold. With practiced hands, he poured two cups.

Mujin sat down across from him and drained his in a single gulp. Then, toying with the empty cup, he finally let loose the question he had been swallowing for days.

"My lord."

"Speak."

"Are you truly all right sitting idle like this?"

Mujin's gaze drifted beyond the quarters, toward the south.

"Word is all over town—that you've lost your nerve and gone into hiding, or that you've burned out and given up."

He frowned as though he simply could not understand it.

"With your skill, my lord, you could walk into Hefei this instant and cut down a few of those conspicuous unorthodox thugs, and that would shut every mouth in the city... Why sit so quietly, of all times?"

The Namgung Cheon Mujin knew was a man swifter and more relentless than anyone alive. And yet now, at what might well be the most crucial moment of all, he chose to sit still.

Namgung Cheon took a slow sip of tea. Only after savoring the faint bitterness spreading across his tongue did he set the cup down and speak.

"When a pond is stirred to mud, how do you discover what lies at the bottom? Do you know, Elder Brother?"

"...Mud, you say?"

"If you force your hand through the water and churn it, the water only grows cloudier."

Namgung Cheon's gaze turned to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠clear tea in his cup.

"You must leave it be. Given time, the heavy things sink and the light things float away. Only then do the stones clinging to the bottom finally show themselves."

Only then did Mujin grasp Namgung Cheon's true intent.

The Clan Head's return and Namgung Cheon's performance in the Martial Procession had churned up a vast mire of mud in the shadowed underside of Anhui. The unorthodox sects were now fighting one another while, at the same time, watching the Namgung Clan's every move in a state of extreme tension. To intervene rashly now and turn everyone into an enemy would be the worst of strategies.

Namgung Cheon was waiting—waiting until the weak ones, unfit to survive the chaos, tore each other apart and culled themselves.

"Then how much longer do you intend to wait?"

At Mujin's question, Namgung Cheon lifted his head and looked at the sky. The noon sun blazed down hot and merciless above them.

"A week, I'd say."

A cool smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

"By then even the coarsest of the dirt will have settled."

He rose from his seat.

"It's time to find out which stones remain."

The Hyeon-gigak—the Pavilion of Mysterious Mechanisms—the nerve center where all the Namgung Clan's information converged and every operation began.

Namgung Cheon's first step was to obtain information there.

As he approached, the doors opened as if in anticipation, and there appeared an old man dressed in the robes of a scholar: Namgung Hak, Lord of Mokhyeon, head of the Hyeon-gigak and strategist to the Clan Head.

"We have been expecting you, Third Young Master."

Namgung Hak led him straight inside. Within the Hyeon-gigak, dozens of strategists bustled ceaselessly, shuttling books and maps—a world unto itself.

Namgung Cheon looked up at the vast map covering the wall and came directly to the point.

"Bring me everything you have on every unorthodox sect known by name in Anhui."

Namgung Hak's eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly. He gave a silent order, and before long dozens of volumes were stacked in a mountain upon the table before Namgung Cheon.

"This is all the Hyeon-gigak knows."

With that, Namgung Hak quietly withdrew.

Namgung Cheon stood before the mountain of information. Then, without pause, he picked up the volume at the very top of the pile.

Swish.

His eyes ran down the lines of text without a single hitch.

Compared to the flood of dispatches during the Great War of Justice and Demons, this is but an itch on a dog's hide.

It took him barely a quarter of an hour to finish each volume. Having absorbed its contents, he began sorting: the useless ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he cast to the floor, the meaningful he set to his left, and anything requiring further judgment went to his right.

Half a day later.

When Namgung Hak, curious about his progress, slipped quietly back into the room, he doubted his own eyes. The mountain of books lay strewn in disarray across the floor, and upon the table remained only four volumes.

"...You have reviewed them all?"

Namgung Hak asked, his voice trembling despite himself.

"Thanks to you, it was an illuminating read, Pavilion Lord."

Namgung Cheon gave a brief answer, then silently looked down at the four books left on the table.

Not enough.

he thought to himself.

The Hyeon-gigak's intelligence faithfully depicted the overall state of each faction. And yet—

The most important thing is missing.

His eyes gleamed cold. Having rendered every judgment, he rose from his seat, inclined his head in a light bow to Namgung Hak, and left the Hyeon-gigak at once.

After Namgung Cheon had gone.

Left alone in the emptied room, Namgung Hak did not move for a long while. His gaze wandered back and forth between the dozens of books strewn across the floor and the four laid upon the table.

How, in half a day, did he do this?

The information he had handed over was everything the Hyeon-gigak had accumulated on Anhui's unorthodox sects over decades—within it, outdated records of sects long vanished, the convoluted alliances and betrayals between factions, and the rise and fall of countless figures, all entangled like a skein of thread. It was a mountain so vast that even the Hyeon-gigak's own strategists would need days of sleepless labor to read the present landscape from it.

And yet Namgung Cheon had sifted out the four most pivotal sects, without a single error, in half a day.

With trembling hands, Namgung Hak picked up one of the four volumes the young man had left behind.

"Truly... he has been concealing himself all this time."

And for a man like that to reveal his claws only now—

Namgung Hak's gaze turned, unbidden, to the window, toward the Changryonggak, the pavilion of the Young Patriarch. Until this day, no one had ever doubted that its master was the Eldest Young Master Namgung Hwi, who now served with the Wulin Alliance.

But—

...Perhaps things are about to change.

Namgung Hak swallowed, dry-mouthed despite himself.

The sun was sinking, and the oil lanterns hung along Hefei's bustling streets flickered to life one by one, pushing back the day's heat. It was around that hour that Namgung Cheon, having left the Hyeon-gigak, slipped out of the clan grounds with Mujin.

"You said the information was lacking—so where are we headed?"

Mujin asked as they walked through the darkened streets.

"We'll know when we get there."

Namgung Cheon's steps finally stopped in a back alley that reeked to high heaven, twisted several turns away from the grand avenue with its row of gaudy pleasure houses. And at the very deepest end of that alley stood an inn with a worn, paint-peeled plaque upon which the name Drunk on the Moon could barely be made out—a place as wretched and shabby as it was possible to be, utterly at odds with its poetic name.

Creeeak—

He pushed open the groaning door and stepped inside, and the smell of stale liquor and sweat and the roar of raised voices struck them all at once. The interior was already packed with rowdy ruffians shouting drunkenly at one another. The entrance of Namgung Cheon and Mujin—shimmering silk robes and paired swords—was more than enough to draw every eye.

The din of the inn fell silent in an instant, and every gaze turned toward the two men. Mujin's hand drifted, unbidden, to the hilt of his sword. Thugs of this caliber were no real threat, but it was better to avoid an unnecessary brawl.

But Namgung Cheon ignored every single stare, walked straight to the most secluded table in the corner, and took a seat. At that, a waiter approached with an oily grin.

"Will you be ordering?"

"Hundred Blossom Wine, and Seven Immortals Chicken."

Hundred Blossom Wine and Seven Immortals Chicken. A wine brewed from petals of every flower under heaven, and a chicken dish steamed with seven rare and precious ingredients.

The waiter pulled a baffled face.

"Nothing that fine in a dive like this, sir. Best try elsewhere."

As he turned to send them packing, Namgung Cheon drew something from his robe and tossed it lightly onto the table.

Chime.

With a clear ring of metal, five ordinary copper coins scattered across the wood.

The waiter's steps froze where he stood.

Namgung Cheon nudged two of the scattered coins aside with his fingertip, separating them from the rest.

And lastly—

Of those two, he turned one face-up and the other face-down.

At that moment, the waiter slowly turned around. The sly grin had vanished without a trace.

Hundred Blossom Wine and Seven Immortals Chicken. In principle, the passphrase for requesting contact with the Hao Sect. But far more important were the number of coins and their arrangement. And the count and pattern Namgung Cheon had just displayed—

Red Level.

The passphrase demanding the highest of the Hao Sect's intelligence grades—black, yellow, and red. The Red Level was reserved for information capable of shaking an entire city, and it required the branch chief to appear in person.

Not a waiter at all—cold sweat beaded on the forehead of Pyo Ryang, branch chief of the Hao Sect's Hefei branch. He decided to drop the act.

Scrape.

Pyo Ryang pulled out a chair and sat down across from Namgung Cheon. And the instant he took his seat, every sound in the inn died away. Then the men who had looked like drunken ruffians rose quietly from their seats. Without so much as a glance at Namgung Cheon, they bowed their heads silently to Pyo Ryang and filed out of the inn.

In the blink of an eye, the place stood empty. Only then did Pyo Ryang reveal his true face.

"Pyo Ryang, branch chief of the Hao Sect's Anhui branch."

He named himself first, studied Namgung Cheon for a moment, and then spoke.

"May I ask the reason the Third Young Master has sought out our Hao Sect?"

Namgung Cheon narrowed his eyes. Not asking a client's reason was the most basic tenet of the information trade. Yet Pyo Ryang was flagrantly breaking it.

"Is it the Hao Sect's way to demand why a man wants what he's ordered to drink?"

An unexpected parry. Pyo Ryang's gaze wavered.

Not your average brat, is he.

Brushing aside his probing move with ease and turning it around to seize the initiative—information about Namgung Cheon raced through Pyo Ryang's mind. The unremarkable youngest son of the Namgung Clan. Suddenly bursting into prominence at the Sword Selection, and then—a master of the Transcendent Realm who had snapped every expert in Hefei like kindling in ten days flat.

I'd assumed him a green pup who'd merely stumbled into a rare fortune and grown strong in the martial arts.

A grave mistake. Pyo Ryang cleanly withdrew a step.

"My apologies. I committed a discourtesy before an honored guest."

He returned to his proper role.

"Now then—what information do you seek?"

Only then did Namgung Cheon open his mouth.

"The Gwanghyeol Sect, the Black Tiger Gang, the Bisaal Bureau, and the Geumjeonbang. Everything there is to know about these four. The very private matters included."

The instant those four names left his lips, Pyo Ryang's expression hardened once more. These were the sects currently rising above all others in Anhui's underworld.

Pyo Ryang's mind began to churn.

A son of the Namgung Clan asking for information on the unorthodox sects? And a son barely past twenty, at that?

He shook his head inwardly.

Impossible.

Then a thought came to him unbidden. The Clan Head's return. And the Third Young Master's movements, ended as if timed to a deliberate cue. Besides, there's no way the Third Young Master could have known the Red Level passphrase on his own. Which means—

Every circumstance converged on a single conclusion.

...The will of the Namgung Clan itself.

In other words, the fact that Namgung Cheon had come here now, demanding even the most intimate secrets of the unorthodox sects, was itself the will of the Namgung Clan.

Pyo Ryang made his decision. No matter how orthodox the requester, a demand from the Namgung Clan in Anhui was something the Hao Sect could not refuse—and must not.

Having finished every calculation, Pyo Ryang spoke.

"Give me three days."

"And the price?"

"There is none."

Pyo Ryang said firmly.

"How could the Hao Sect in Anhui dare speak of price where the Namgung Clan's affairs are concerned?"

At those words, a faint smile touched the corner of Namgung Cheon's mouth.

The Namgung Clan's affairs, is it.

Exactly as he had intended. He had never imagined from the start that the Hao Sect would hand over information meekly. The Hao Sect was an organization that moved, without exception, by profit. To move them with anything other than money, he would have to show them something far greater.

And that is the authority the Namgung Clan wields here in Anhui.

The Clan Head's return, and his own course of action. His appearance before the Hao Sect at the very moment all of Hefei was watching the Namgung Clan's next move. Every one of these circumstances was the perfect bait to plant the grand illusion of "the Namgung Clan's will" in Pyo Ryang's mind.

And then, the final touch. The Hao Sect's Red Level passphrase—a thing no youth barely past twenty could possibly have known. It was the wedge that would turn Pyo Ryang's speculation into certainty: that what Namgung Cheon was undertaking was no mere personal whim, but a piece of a vast design set in motion by the entire Namgung Clan.

Everything was unfolding on the palm of Namgung Cheon's hand, precisely as he intended.

"Then I'll return in three days."

With those words, Namgung Cheon rose from his seat at once. Mujin, standing at his back, followed like a shadow.

The groaning door closed, and after the two figures had vanished entirely into the darkness—

Pyo Ryang, left alone, could not bring himself to rise from his seat for a long while. As the taut tension drained away, he realized that his spine was soaked through with cold sweat.

Namgung Cheon...

He recalled the young man's eyes. Deep, frigid eyes that seemed to see through everything. They had not belonged to a youth barely past twenty.

A storm is going to sweep through Anhui.

And at the eye of that storm would stand the young lord who had just crushed him underfoot. Pyo Ryang's eyes narrowed. His instinct spoke clearly: from this moment on, he must not let a single step of that man's path slip past his notice—not even for an instant.