Deepening Night
Somewhere within the Luoyang Sword Family.
Having concluded the talks, the Grand Abbess of the Emei Sect climbed into her carriage.
"Were the negotiations to your satisfaction?"
The satisfaction was plain enough on her face, yet the deputy abbess still asked, seeking confirmation once more.
"Yes. Most satisfactory."
Only after carefully testing the Grand Abbess's temper—as one might tap a stone bridge before crossing—did the deputy abbess broach the real matter.
"…Should Daseonrang, at the cost of even their own families' sacrifice, make some childish choice… what then are we to do?"
She had thundered confidence before the other nuns, yet a kernel of unease still lingered within her.
"Those girls would do something so foolish?"
"…I would prefer that this be nothing more than my own foolish anxiety. But we have no way of knowing what words are being exchanged even now in the First Young Master's quarters."
"It does not matter."
The Grand Abbess's wrinkled face twisted into a smile.
"In the end, once the joint venture between the First Young Master and the Fourth Young Master collapses, Daseonrang becomes a horse they no longer need."
"Then—?!"
The Grand Abbess gave a soft, dry chuckle.
"When that happens, Daseonrang will have no choice but to return to Emei's embrace."
And she would personally carve an unforgettable lesson into those girls.
The Inner Court of the Luoyang Sword Family.
Every steward of the Inner Court lived out his entire life within its walls. That was why the residential pavilions there existed on such a vast scale.
Deep into the night.
Even the brilliantly shining moon had hidden its face behind thick clouds.
Fourth Rank.
One of the stewards walked the long corridor, lantern in hand. It had been a day of unusually late work.
A chill wind swept through the darkened residential corridor, making the lantern's light flicker uneasily. The creak of the wooden floorboards under each step grated on his nerves more than usual. He had lived in this space for long years, yet tonight every detail seemed strangely, unpleasantly sharp.
The sharp bend at the corridor's end. The restless dance of branch-shadows beyond the papered windows. The dense darkness glimpsed through a carelessly left-open door of some lodging—each of them felt as though something were watching him. He quickened his pace.
Days of continuous overwork had left him exhausted, his nerves drawn taut. That had to be the reason, he told himself. Even so, by the time he reached his own quarters and grasped the lock, his palm was slick with cold sweat.
"…."
He turned the key and glanced around, but at this hour of the night the corridor was empty. Carefully opening the door, he thrust the lantern in first to scan the interior. Finding the room as ordinary as ever, he slipped inside at once and fastened the small bolt.
After steadying his breath for a moment, the sleep he had been too tense to notice crashed over him all at once. Still in his clothes, he collapsed onto the bed and, before he could blink more than a few times, sank into a near-unconscious sleep.
How much time passed after that?
"…?"
For some reason he could not name, he swallowed hard and snapped his eyes open. His gaze darted about. The lantern he had brought was already out; the room lay dark. Only faint moonlight from the window sketched the interior.
The rough pounding of his own heart cut through the characteristic creaks of the wooden pavilion with startling clarity.
…Nothing?
His heavy eyelids began to close again.
I thought I heard something drop.
The memory returned, and he opened his eyes once more. His gaze fell upon the door of his quarters. The small bolt he had fastened to lock it now lay on the floor.
"…?"
He blinked twice. He was certain he had bolted the door. Or had he been so exhausted that he had failed to lock it properly before falling asleep?
He forced his heavy body upright to secure the door—and felt a sudden tightness at his throat.
"…Huh?"
A noose was looped around his neck.
"W-what—?"
In that instant the rope snapped taut and hurled him mercilessly to the floor. He tried to scream as he thrust his hands into the tightening noose. He managed to keep his throat from being crushed at once, but nothing could stop the rope from dragging his body out into the corridor with terrifying force.
The door he slammed into flew open outward with a crash. He was hauled along the corridor, his back and face scraping and striking the floorboards. At the bend, inertia flung him into the opposite wall; when he was dragged down the stairs, his entire body felt as though it were coming apart.
He wanted to scream, yet the noose throttling him without mercy allowed only choked, gurgling sounds to escape his lips.
After being dragged for what felt like an age, his body was forced down onto a chair fixed to the floor. His eyes flew wide as he frantically scanned his surroundings. Silhouetted against a roaring bonfire, figures in white hoods surrounded him.
"Y-you people…?!"
He tried to shout, but a gag was thrust into his mouth. He tried to thrash, yet ropes already bound his body tight.
They asked him nothing. They pressed him for nothing. The one who stepped forward simply drove a red-hot poker into his left eye.
"Ugh—aaaaaagh!"
Convulsions wracked his frame; blue veins stood out on his neck. The sizzle of searing flesh rose with a thick, acrid smoke.
One of the white-hooded figures approached and pulled the gag free. He wanted to speak, but the agony exploding from his ruined, burst eye left him able only to moan and drool bloody foam.
The central figure among the white-hooded ones stepped forward.
"Now you seem ready for a conversation."
Through the eyeholes of the white hood, a gaze of absolute cold looked down upon him.
"Tell us about the private organization that exists within the Inner Court."
"…!"
The steward's remaining eye flicked to the man's waist. Six golden tassels hung there, catching and reflecting the crimson light of the bonfire.
The Chief Administrator's secretary delivered his report.
"The Security Secretary's purge is proceeding smoothly."
A single lamp was far too little to push back the deep darkness inside the pavilion.
"Make haste. The time allotted to us is finite."
Within that darkness, the half-lidded eyes of the Chief Administrator of the Inner Court—seated in the lotus position—glimmered faintly.
"Yes. Of course."
Ordinarily the secretary would have withdrawn after the report, yet tonight something clearly remained unsaid.
"However…"
The Chief Administrator's half-closed eyes turned upon him.
"Your mind seems especially clouded today."
The secretary bowed his head.
"Is it truly enough that we merely watch the First Young Master's opening move like this?"
"And if we are not watching?"
Prostrate on the floor, the secretary lowered his head still further.
"The Second Young Master's faction is moving with unprecedented vigor. The Third Young Master's camp is clearly aiming at something as well. There is intelligence that the Grand Abbess of Emei met with one of the former Sect Masters."
"And so?"
Faced with question after question from the Chief Administrator, the secretary sought instruction.
"I require guidance for a response."
The Chief Administrator gazed quietly down at the bowed crown of his prostrate secretary, then spoke.
"The post of Chief Secretary is equivalent to that of the Chief Administrator's foremost disciple. It exists so that, should any mishap befall the Chief Administrator, the seat may be filled at any moment."
"…I hold that firmly in mind."
The Chief Administrator clicked his tongue.
"Yet looking at the way you carry yourself, it seems I shall have to pray that the day of any mishap never arrives."
It was a merciless appraisal. Still the secretary showed not a flicker of resentment, only continued to bow.
"I beg instruction for this unworthy one…"
The Chief Administrator unfolded his legs and rose with difficulty from his seat. His aged muscles had withered; his joints had long since worn away. What still held that skeleton upright was not the meager handful of internal qi remaining to him. It was a loyalty bordering on madness, dedicated for more than a century to the Luoyang Sword Family.
"A thief who dares treat the family's battlefield funds as his own pocket money goes about freely leaking the loan records of the family's legitimate sons…"
He spent more than half of every day in seclusion, yet how much information within the family could truly escape him?
"The entire house is seething at the once-in-a-lifetime chance to ruin the First Young Master's opening move and drive him completely out of the succession struggle."
An undisguised sneer rose across the Chief Administrator's wrinkled face.
"And still you claim you cannot see how this affair will end?"
His meaning was unmistakable.
"…You mean that events will unfold exactly as the First Young Master desires?"
Something in the secretary's tone still failed to grasp it. The Chief Administrator wiped the smile from his face.
"Fool."
He cut the words short.
"No one in this house can defeat the First Young Master in a direct contest of schemes."
"…!"
"No—not merely this house. Across the entire Central Plains there is no one who can best that First Young Master in a battle of wits. It was true ten years ago, and it remains true now."
"Then that means…"
Did it not sound as though the First Young Master would inevitably triumph? Cold sweat beaded on the secretary as he swallowed his words. The Chief Administrator snorted.
"What is the work we are currently undertaking?"
"We are eliminating the 'rotting husks' that still remain in the deepest reaches of the Inner Court."
"Precisely."
The Chief Administrator's mouth twisted in a grin. In the darkness that faint smile looked almost grotesque.
"All of it was made possible thanks to the First Young Master."
Punishing those who served rival successors as they pleased had always been an exceedingly awkward matter. After all, one of those successors would eventually become the Young Family Head of the Luoyang Sword Family. Yet after the First Young Master had turned the Inner Court upside down and the Council of Elders had issued its reprimand, the Chief Administrator had been handed the perfect justification.
"Thanks to him, we have now reached the stage of stripping away the final husk."
The Chief Administrator raised a bony hand and tapped his own temple.
"To be drawn into the First Young Master's schemes and answer him head-on is to face nothing but endless traps waiting ahead."
Yeon So-hyeon had once remarked that if one were to speak of the black curtains within the Luoyang Sword Family, this man must always be counted among them.
"What the First Young Master throws is never something to be struck back—only something to be caught and used."
The old monster's eyes gleamed in the lamplight.
"To strike at a First Young Master who has already set the board, one must wait until the very last moment—and thrust in from outside the board, from a direction no one could ever anticipate."
The force radiating from that bent, emaciated old man was almost impossible to believe.
"…."
What words could one dare offer? The secretary forgot even to swallow and simply received the teaching.
"Until that moment arrives, you will eliminate every last rotting husk within the Inner Court."
The old monster settled once more into the lotus position.
"That is the directive I issue to the Inner Court."
The night deepened further, and within the darkness each player's calculations crossed and intertwined.
The pieces had been arrayed.
All that remained was for another grand game to unfold.