One Is Better Than Three, Right?
Composure is everything. People live at the mercy of mood and feeling, and the only way to keep from being swept along is to possess composure — and hold it. The first thing Sun Wukong had done was shatter theirs.
He had tangled them in a cunning weave of fabricated intelligence and genuine truth, then immediately brought his iron staff to bear. He poured killing intent out without the slightest restraint, drowning the room in terror, and manufactured a situation that left even the Three Azure Elders of the realm at a complete loss.
But composure always comes back, given enough time.
These were no children. They were elders who had grown as old as old gets — the Three Azure, men who had weathered the storms of the martial world with their own bodies. Given time, they would start picking out the strange details and the sloppy seams.
Admitting a mistake, though. That's never easy.
Even if they sensed something was off, they would not confess the error right away. The higher a man sat, the thicker that tendency ran.
They'll try to verify it to the very end.
How would the Three Azure confirm whether every word Sun Wukong had spoken was the truth? His claimed identity. The intimate circumstances behind it. Information about an organization they had no way of knowing. What would they have to do to learn those things?
A report. That was it.
Sun Wukong watched a messenger pigeon climb into the sky.
They'll report today's events to the people who need to know.
He couldn't help himself. A giggle slipped out. How could it not? Not a single thing had gone off-script.
That pigeon is headed for Honghaea, no doubt. Directly, or through some middleman. Doesn't matter.
So long as it reached Honghaea, that was enough.
He won't be able to sit still.
The talk of an Inspector had been invented on the spot. Whether such a position actually existed inside the organization was irrelevant. If the Inspector was nonsense, they would react immediately. And if an Inspector really did exist, that was no problem either.
As if that brat Honghaea has been doing honest work.
Sun Wukong knew Honghaea's nature better than anyone. The boy would have irons in every fire and a mountain of unsavory schemes already in motion. At the very least, as a superior, he could not sit idle while his subordinates were being audited. He would be sweating, wondering if the inspection was actually aimed at him.
One way or another, he would make contact. That much was certain. All Sun Wukong had to do was wait, as patient as a man who had already cast his line.
Still. Some things need tidying up.
A cold light flashed in Sun Wukong's eyes.
No one barred the path to the Three Azure.
Even the elders belonging to their faction were considerably shaken by the present situation. A fight had seemed ready to erupt at any moment — and then the Three Azure themselves had ordered that Sun Wukong be treated with every courtesy. How were they supposed to make sense of that? The whole affair was a fog, and even their closest aides could scarcely get an audience.
"Teacher Sun, just what did you discuss with the Three Azure?"
The Butterfly Sage fell in behind him, his face openly flustered.
"What, you think I threw in with their side?"
"......"
The Butterfly Sage was not a man who lied well. His silence served as answer enough.
"The Three Azure are still a pillar of the Wudang Sect. Is there any need to treat them as enemies?"
At Sun Wukong's reply, the Butterfly Sage's pupils trembled. The flavor of those words was anything but ordinary.
At this point, Sun Wukong was no longer merely an outsider, a guest of the Namgung Clan, or the master of the Namgung Clan's Young Lord. He was the true successor of Jang Sambong's vanished lineage. The return of a forgotten bloodline to the Wudang Sect was no small thing. And that was not all. He also possessed the standing to serve as a bridge to the Namgung Clan, the overlords of Anhui.
Under the Three Azure's grip on the current Wudang Sect, the successor — the Master of the Mugok Pavilion — had been working, quietly and persistently, to bring Sun Wukong over to their side. The man charged with that task was none other than the Butterfly Sage.
Sun Wukong's answer struck him like a blow.
"What... what do you mean by that, Teacher Sun?"
"I mean the Three Azure are still part of Wudang."
"Well, yes, but..."
"If we split into factions and glare at each other like we want blood, all we do is carve up our own flesh. Doesn't that just make us weaker?"
The Butterfly Sage's eyes slowly settled. Something in Sun Wukong's tone had given him a peculiar feeling.
"If you can take them in, you take them in."
"You're saying you'll bring the Three Azure over?"
"No reason I can't."
"It cannot be done."
The Butterfly Sage was categorical.
"I studied alongside them. I know. A man's nature does not change so easily. Their greed will never stop here. These are men who never liked bowing even to the current Sect Leader — and you think they'll bend the waist for the Mugok Pavilion Master, a successor decades their junior? It will never happen."
He was unyielding. This was not a matter of one or two years of acquaintance. He had lived it, firsthand, across decades that stretched well past thirty. This was no old man's stubbornness. It was conviction born of countless experiences and the weight of time.
In the Butterfly Sage's mind, the Three Azure were beings with whom one simply could not walk the same road.
"The only way they can still be of use to Wudang is if they step completely aside when the Sect Leader retires."
Once the Sect Leader himself stepped down, the Three Azure would have no remaining justification.
"The Sect Leader's decision to retire was because of the Three Azure's tyranny in the first place."
The only viable prescription, then, was a drastic one: retire, and force them to take their hands off Wudang's affairs together.
"How can you possibly take in men like that? The greedy never abandon their greed. They are not like you, Teacher Sun — men who have transcended everything, who have reached the Infinite, who have attained enlightenment."
The Butterfly Sage looked at Sun Wukong with eyes full of worry.
Sun Wukong snorted a laugh. The man seemed to think he viewed the world through nothing but warm-colored glass. He spoke as if it were nothing.
"It's because of that greed that I can bring them over."
"You're saying their greed actually helps?"
"The hardest people in the world to handle are the desireless sages."
A face flickered through Sun Wukong's mind. A creature like a vast, boundless ocean, who harbored not the slightest scrap of want.
"When a person has no desires, that's when they become the most terrifying thing in the world."
On the other hand.
"When they're full of greed, they're the easiest thing in the world to handle. Satisfy that one desire, and they're easier to tame than a beast."
A faint smile spread across Sun Wukong's lips.
The one who received Sun Wukong was Nokcheong.
He was the eldest of the Three Azure, but Yangcheong's arm had been severed and Hocheong's condition was a wreck. Nokcheong, the only one still more or less intact, had no choice but to move.
"Did you get your stories straight?"
Nokcheong tilted his head at the sudden question, then nodded with a grave face.
"We concluded that Yangcheong's arm was cut off and Hocheong suffered internal injuries while we were hunting the assassin who tried to kill the Sect Leader."
After their meeting with Sun Wukong, two of them had been left in a state anyone could see was serious. Naturally, they had not shown themselves in public. Who would want it rumored that a fight with Sun Wukong had done this to them? They had even been forced to faithfully follow Sun Wukong's order to get their stories aligned about how it had happened.
And yet...
Sun Wukong read the strange light that had risen in Nokcheong's face.
Now that the fear's worn off, he's had time to think it through.
A faint cast of suspicion. Questions he hadn't thought of at the time would be surfacing, one by one. It wasn't just Nokcheong. Yangcheong was the same. No matter how skilled a man was at hiding his feelings, the eyes were a door into the person. Sun Wukong watched the movement of their souls with a gaze that saw beyond appearances — the Fiery Golden Eyes.
Where you stand changes what you see.
Nokcheong and Yangcheong were no pushovers. Sun Wukong welcomed that, in fact. If they had been so stupid as to accept him at face value, if they hadn't harbored a shred of doubt—
They never would have sent word to Honghaea.
Sun Wukong stood on top of their heads. No — he stood in the sky itself. His field of vision was vastly wider.
The message will have reached Honghaea by now.
His gaze turned toward the two of them. For an instant, their eyes tangled in the empty air between them. The corner of Sun Wukong's mouth lifted.
"The story you cooked up is pretty sloppy, isn't it?"
"It was sudden. We had no choice."
"I can think of a better one."
"A better one?"
Nokcheong cocked his head. The moment he witnessed the smile catching on Sun Wukong's lips, right in front of his face, every hair on his body stood on end. A clinging, viscous dread coiled around him.
"Wouldn't it look more convincing if it turned out the Three Azure themselves were the ones who commissioned the Sect Leader's assassination?"
"...What did you just say?"
"Not all three of you, though. Just two of you plotted it. The third found out too late and couldn't let his senior brothers walk, so you tore into each other."
"What in the hell are you talking about?!"
Nokcheong's hand flew to his sword hilt. Yangcheong, catching up a beat later, bent at the waist. Meanwhile Hocheong, who had been half-reclined, shook his head with a look of complete incomprehension.
Even beneath the vicious killing aura crashing over the room, Sun Wukong spoke with perfect ease.
"In the end you carved each other up. Two died, one survived. But even the survivor was too badly wounded to be of any use. Like Hocheong over there."
Only then did Nokcheong understand what Sun Wukong was saying. His face hardened with terrifying speed. He opened the distance in a single motion and drew his sword.
"You were not an Inspector?"
"You're more naive than I expected."
"You—!"
Nokcheong's face flushed a deep red. Shame flooded in on the heels of the realization that he had been thoroughly played.
Sun Wukong cackled and cracked his neck left and right.
"It wasn't that I tricked you so well. You wanted to live, so you fooled yourselves."
"You shameless—!"
How shameless could a man be? To deceive them and then dump the blame on the Three Azure themselves. But then a look of puzzlement crossed Nokcheong's face. He had only just begun to suspect — so why would this man volunteer the truth now, of his own accord?
"Don't tell me...!"
Nokcheong's face went deathly white.
"We were never the target! Wudang was never what you were after!"
A groan tore out of him.
"You used us to summon the people above us!"
"Thanks for playing along so diligently."
Sun Wukong grinned. They had danced on the palm of his hand from start to finish.
Nokcheong's head snapped around. The story Sun Wukong had just proposed — that the Three Azure had fought among themselves until only one remained...
"Hocheong! You betrayed us!"
Killing intent dripped from Nokcheong's voice. Only then did Hocheong grasp the situation, and his face went as white as paper.
"I—I have no idea what you're talking about!"
"Of course you don't. I just made it up."
Sun Wukong's languid voice slid in between them.
"Anyway, calling Honghaea in went just fine."
His gaze settled on Nokcheong and Yangcheong.
"You two are just sharp enough that things moved along nicer than I expected. I'm genuinely grateful."
"What... what are you?"
Sun Wukong answered without hurry.
The name landed like a blade. Nokcheong's face went slack.
"The Arbiter Who Destroys Evil, bearer of the name you ought to fear. That's who I am."
He cracked his neck left, then right. Beneath brows drawn in a deep, elegant arc, the Fiery Golden Eyes scattered a chill light. Under that gaze — pouring down, steeped in a faint radiance — Nokcheong's face slowly twisted.
"I've been thinking it over, see. Three is too many."
"What?"
"If you want them backstabbing and checking each other, three seems about right. But three in name only — you move like one body. Three, and yet you act as one... In that case."
Sun Wukong smiled, looking straight into Nokcheong's face, which had warped into something out of a nightmare.