Chapter 159
Chapter 159
Iron Emperor — Chapter 159
As Dae Mu-deok left the Imperial Hall, leaving behind a deflated-looking Go Jin-cheon, his face bore a sense of accomplishment anyone could see at a glance.
His steps were so light they almost seemed to float like a feather through the air when a voice called out to him from one side.
"Grandpa Dae Mu-deok!"
TAP-TAP-TAP!
The short patter of running footsteps accompanied the youthful voice. In all of Gauri, only one person aside from Jin-cheon the Yeolje would dare call Dae Mu-deok's name like that.
Seeing Eulji running toward him with a face full of smiles, Dae Mu-deok bent deeply at the waist and offered his respects.
"Oh dear. Lady Eulji, you'll fall."
"Huff, huff! When did you get here?"
"Just now. Heh-heh."
When Jin-cheon's group had become embroiled in the South Roselin War, the person Eulji saw most often as she grew up was Dae Mu-deok, and he was the one she grew most attached to. So whenever anything happened, she would always come running to him like this.
"I-I-I, you know! Waaah!"
The moment she saw Mu-deok's warm smile, Eulji suddenly burst into tears. Mu-deok's eyes went wide with surprise and he asked her why she was crying.
"I can't draw this bowstring."
"This is..."
The bow in Eulji's hands was not the little bow she used to play with before. And its shape was familiar. It was a top-performance bow crafted from Minotaur horns.
The question was why this thing was in Eulji's hands.
"What became of the little bow you had before?"
Mu-deok's question struck right at Eulji's welling emotions.
"Hic, hic, His Majesty the Yeolje said, hic-hic-hic..."
Eulji's effort to hold back the sobs and the sorrow that kept spilling over made a pitiful sight for anyone watching.
After listening for a long while, Mu-deok lowered his head. He could guess exactly what had happened. Jin-cheon must have said he would give her something good to replace the broken little bow and issued a command.
'Have the finest bow crafted.'
If he had ordered it that bluntly, then naturally the finest bow meant the bow with the greatest power, and there was absolutely no way Eulji could draw a bow with that kind of power.
And Eulji's complaints, pouring out as if tattling to her grandpa, were twisting Mu-deok's face into an expression caught between laughing and crying. Listening to Eulji's chattering voice, he glanced back toward the Imperial Hall he had just come out of.
'Heh-heh, Your Majesty...'
Mu-deok understood.
Jin-cheon too was trying to grow closer to Eulji.
The problem was that his methods were clumsy. But holding onto the hope that even that would slowly change, Mu-deok let Eulji tug him by the hand and followed her outside.
* * *
"Huh..."
Gye Ung-sam's mouth fell slightly open. Then he glanced sideways at Buyeo Gi-yul standing off to one side. Ung-sam was not the only one doing this. Even Samdopyo and Mong Ryu-hwa had their gazes fixed on Giyul.
"What..."
Flustered by the burning stares, Giyul asked for an explanation. But the ones who had been staring at him soon turned their heads, feigned indifference, and started muttering to themselves.
"Well now, Giyul's gone and joined the club too."
"Hmph, indeed he has."
Ung-sam's and Dupyo's voices drifted over. Following after them, Ryu-hwa walked up to Giyul, patted his shoulder, and offered words of consolation.
"Well, try challenging it at age six, friend."
"What in the world are you talking about!"
Giyul finally exploded.
The wedding of Go Jin-cheon and Eulji was the greatest celebration in Gauri. But beneath the surface, the age gap between the two was a huge topic of gossip.
Twenty-four years.
Of course, the age gap itself was hardly a problem. Old nobles marrying young noblewomen and the like happened frequently enough here too.
However...
For a young bride with a twenty-four-year difference to be a mere seven years old was exceedingly rare, and the fact that the groom was the Yeolje of Gauri made it a sight never before seen.
Would the Yeolje of a nation lack for women?
When they crossed over from Gauri, some who had heard the contents of the letter understood, but to the great majority, it was a matter that left them speechless.
In the end, there were even those who concluded it was simply the Yeolje's taste... and because of this affair, a situation unfolded where all the girls who normally flocked around Giyul were dragged away by their mothers. Probably because he was categorized as having a similar taste.
Though, on the other hand, there was no shortage of girls who now set their sights and aggressively pursued him either.
Riders carrying news of the royal marriage galloped out from the Yeolje Hall toward every fortress. And once the official notices were posted, only then did people discover the phrasing declaring that this honored the will of the late Yeolje, clearing up some(?) of the misunderstandings, and they began to genuinely rejoice.
A festival is an opportunity to bind together the people who make up the nation. Among those, nothing serves as a better pretext than a royal wedding. The people who had been toiling day after day for the sake of development set their work aside for a moment and began the festivities three weeks before the wedding.
And that was not something the state officially initiated.
The existing Gauri soldiers, out of joy for their idol, started celebrating one by one, and it spread to the families of the Hawk Corps members, who had been slash-and-burn farmers and fought alongside them.
And when the South Roseliners and Northerners who had fled the ravages of war began to genuinely join in the first national celebration they had ever encountered, it spread into a nationwide festival.
In response, Dae Mu-deok released stockpiled grain and liquor to encourage it, and each commander held ongoing hunting competitions village by village. With that, Gauri soared into days of continuous festivity and merriment.
The Yeolje Palace grew busy in tandem.
This was the first royal wedding to be held since arriving in this place.
But problems were piling up. It was a royal wedding conducted in the total absence of the nation's elders, and there was a complete lack of people to officiate over it. Difficulties were bound to arise in the ceremonial procedures and everything else.
So the one who worked the hardest, rolling up his sleeves, was once again Dae Mu-deok. He dashed this way and that as if it were his own affair. Elder Jang and the dwarves built an altar to proclaim the marriage to heaven.
The soldiers scoured the entire mountain range, roaming to hunt the animals to be used for the feast, while the cooks grew busy marinating the caught meat in sauces to make maekjeok.
Liquor, too, was impossible to leave out.
Because the people came from many different places across the continent, the varieties of their liquors were likewise diverse. Gauri's own traditional liquors and other unusual liquors gathered and competed for rank, and this too became a part of the festivities.
While inside and outside the nation buzzed with frantic activity, Go Jin-cheon simply shut himself away, remaining secluded, while Eulji spent her days delightedly trying on beautiful dresses brought by the court ladies day after day.
To Eulji, marriage did not hold any great significance. This was the result of Dae Mu-deok's efforts.
Thanks to the brainwashing education instilled in her ever since she began to crawl and walk, she felt no aversion to the marriage itself.
Watching the entire nation stir with festival fervor, Risel and Gowin felt a strange sensation.
Festivals existed everywhere on the continent. But a nation becoming one and celebrating like this was something they were seeing for the first time. In particular, at the expressions of the common people — expressions he had never once seen in the Kingdom of Haian, which had been tossed about and battered by foreign powers — Gowin wore a bitter smile.
Perhaps it was because, even though he had turned his back on it, a thread of affection remained. But conversely, he felt that settling in this nation called Gauri had been the best choice, and one he would never regret.
The most excited ones were the Stone Trio.
Dwarves were an absolute necessity at any feast. The ones most passionate about the banquet of liquors were these three. And since even their master Elder Jang joined in and enjoyed the drinks, there was nothing to hold them back.
"They are without worry."
At Haidia's voice, Eulji Uru answered with a broad smile.
"Isn't a feast for casting off your worries?"
At Uru's reply, Haidia held a serene smile and continued.
"Humans are a race that live always burdened with worry. But perhaps it is because festivals like this exist that they are able to go on living."
"Festival? Ah, feast! That's right. You've got to make some noise to shake off your worries."
Uru answered Haidia, clapping his palms together. At his guileless demeanor, Haidia smiled with her eyes and quietly looked upon the smiles of the people.
'The halted history of the continent... The return of the Ancients who will set its wheels turning again...'
A story no one else would know slipped through Haidia's mind.
A clear, refreshing sky.
An altar erected beneath the pure sky where the waves of the blue lake lapped gently.
Around it, Gauri's commanders and soldiers stood arrayed in antique-looking robes. Their indomitable martial spirit spread forth boldly beneath the heavens.
"His Majesty the Yeolje, Supreme One of All Heavens and the one who embraces all people and all things, enters!"
Doong! Doong! Doong!
The short bursts of the drumbeats soared through the space between heaven and the people. Escorted splendidly by the Imperial Guards, Go Jin-cheon moved step by step, and each of his steps carried a weightiness and strength as though he were shifting Mount Tai itself.
The sight of dozens of people following step by step behind Jin-cheon even brought onlookers the illusion that they were a single mass moving together.
Walking before the altar, Jin-cheon paused briefly, then began to ascend the steps. As he moved with steps neither too fast nor too slow, music proclaiming the spirit of the continent flowed forth.
Because the musicians were not the official court musicians, it was rough and unpolished, but it was a melody suffused with an aggressive spirit that transcended that.
'Your Majesty.'
Tears welled up in Dae Mu-deok's eyes as he watched Go Jin-cheon planting one foot after another up the steps, and he barely held them back.
Broad, solid shoulders.
Thick eyebrows and eyes of immeasurable depth.
A towering height exceeding six cheok and firmly pressed lips that displayed his stubbornness.
As the supreme sovereign of Gauri spread across this land, he lacked for nothing.
Behind him, Dae Mu-deok saw a strength he had never witnessed in the Bojang Yeolje.
The fact that a man this strong and imposing had spent all that time prowling nothing but battlefields made him resent the rotten high nobility all over again.
'No longer!'
Mu-deok's mouth clamped shut.
Gauri had risen once more. Even if this was another world, Gauri existed. Even if the road that stretched ahead became a road of blood, Mu-deok no longer harbored any worry whatsoever.
'Gukgangsang-Gwanggaeto-Gyeong-Pyeongan-Hotae-wang.'
Gauri's great Yeolje suddenly surfaced in his mind.
It was as if the image of Hotae Yeolje was projected before him — Hotae Yeolje, who had raised the Hwandudaedo toward the continent and charged, leading the steel cavalry.
'Did Hotae Yeolje of old look like that...'
In the end, a single tear rolled down from Mu-deok's eye. Behind Go Jin-cheon's ascending back, he saw the forms of the commanders and the people ranged in formation.
A man who knew well the weight resting on the Yeolje's shoulders.
The being who possessed the most stalwart-looking back in the world — Go Jin-cheon.
He was walking forward for the wedding that would carry on his bloodline.