Mount Beimang
Part Fifteen: Mount Beimang
Luoyang Sword Family Elders' Court, Grand Assembly Hall.
With the session about to open, an unusually quiet, restrained mood hung over the Grand Assembly Hall.
"Quiet in here…"
One elder, sitting still and flipping through documents, muttered the words half to himself.
"Well. The loudest ones aren't here."
At his colleague's remark he looked up and cast a sidelong glance around the chamber.
"The elders of the Third Young Master's faction have been scrambling since the day before yesterday to clean up that 'accident' at the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering arena site."
"Doesn't look like something that ends easily."
Over by the Third Young Master's seats, only one or two elders sat murmuring in low conversation.
"And thanks to that…"
Their gazes swung to the opposite side.
"…the Second Young Master's faction means to seize the opening and scrap the joint venture between the First and Fourth Young Masters entirely."
"As good as declaring total political war…"
In the Second Young Master's direction, a single elder—Elder Son—sat holding the seats alone.
With proxy votes from the absentees, balloting would be no problem; both camps had clearly left only the bare minimum of elders behind.
With no one to speak to him, Elder Son simply sat arms folded and eyes closed. The watching elder murmured,
"…So the Jiangnan faction really did take a hit from the Luoyang faction. The intelligence was true after all."
"Their own house is a mess too."
The two men's conversation stopped.
"…Damn it."
When the day's agenda refused to settle on the page, the elder finally shoved the papers aside and spoke first.
"You don't often see 'the calm before the storm' fit a situation this perfectly."
"Uneasy. Damn uneasy."
Why did the air feel so strange?
"…The Second Young Master's side has committed everything. By rights this should be a fight only they can win. Isn't that so?"
"…It is. They call the First Young Master's wisdom divine calculation, but even that has limits when you're trying to settle everything with ingenious schemes alone."
"It's the whole body of elders. The Second Young Master has mobilized every last elder of his faction."
"He has."
It was a blunt declaration of will: he would not let this chance slip, and he meant to crush the First and Fourth Young Masters underfoot.
"…He has."
And still the mood in the Grand Assembly Hall held a strange edge.
The Second Young Master was pouring every political resource he had into the fight. By any objective measure, the combined strength of the First and Fourth Young Masters was a mere handful beside him.
"…I hear the First Young Master left seclusion for the first time."
"So I heard."
And yet.
Among the murmuring elders ran a current no logic could explain. They were not cheering for the First Young Master, nor were they green enough to be swept along by some unconscious fondness for the underdog. Still, one question kept tickling at their insides—illogical, irrational, born of pure instinct.
Can the Second Young Master truly grind the First Young Master down with overwhelming force, the way all their calculations say he should?
At the same hour.
Somewhere in the Luoyang Sword Family.
The highest operations council was in session.
"Then, regarding the disturbance that broke out on the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering arena grounds…"
"For the time being, it would be best to watch the Third Young Master's response a little longer."
"The Third Young Master's camp has never been on good terms with the Luoyang administration, so against any contingency…"
"Very well. We'll handle it that way…"
Distorted voices echoed through the stone cavern.
"Next agenda item, then…"
They rustled and opened new documents.
"The deadline for the emergency order supporting Wongak Pavilion ends today…?"
"…Today."
Silence settled over the cavern for a moment, and the chairman's distorted voice drifted out.
"You will all have received word that the First Young Master has gone out."
"We have, but…"
Even while the council sat, every piece of critical intelligence still found its way to them. Information from the Luoyang Sword Family's intelligence bureaus was passed to The Agency, and The Agency in turn delivered it to each of the Supreme Commissioners.
"This chairman interprets that to mean the First Young Master has finished all his preparations."
The newly appointed female Supreme Commissioner spoke carefully.
"Even so, even counting the Fourth Young Master's strength together with his, the First Young Master's side is still at an enormous disadvantage. That much is certain."
The newly appointed male Supreme Commissioner opened his mouth with equal reluctance.
"With the Second and Third Young Masters presently holding a pretext they find acceptable, wouldn't it be better to concentrate a little more support for a while longer…"
They were by no means taking the First Young Master's side in the succession struggle—but neither did they want him crushed outright.
"Sound points, all of them, and yet…"
At that, another Supreme Commissioner's shadow shook its head.
"If the emergency order keeps the support flowing beyond this, it will only give the other factions a handle to use against the First Young Master."
"But with the Second Young Master's offensive beginning now, even if it does little good, support for Wongak Pavilion ought to be maintained…"
"That may be true, but…"
The chairman, who had been listening, cut in.
"Do you believe the First Young Master has no chance of winning?"
The new male and female Supreme Commissioners hesitated.
"Well…"
"It would be difficult, wouldn't it? We know what the First Young Master is capable of, but—"
Soft laughter rippled here and there at their words.
"Ahem."
"…We would have liked to laugh with you, if we could."
The chairman gave them a wry smile.
"…If we could share our memories with you, that would be ideal. As it is, I can only tell you to watch the First Young Master's next steps."
The First Young Master's ability was something that could only be called uncanny. What he could do, and the achievements that ability had wrought, existed somewhere between incomplete records and mutable memory—and so the imperfect medium of language could never fully convey them.
Silence wrapped the assembly for a moment. The chairman unfolded a slip that had come through the metal tube installed in his chamber. After reading what was written there, he smiled faintly.
"Have the information passed to every Supreme Commissioner."
At his leave, slips arrived through the metal tubes set in each small chamber.
"…This?!"
"Hmm…"
The new male and female Supreme Commissioners could not hide their shock. Even the other Supreme Commissioners, without quite meaning to, let out low murmurs of their own.
"Have you seen the First Young Master's opening move?"
Looking again at the slip in his hand, the chairman laughed softly—ha, ha.
"You, too, will come to understand this time around."
Luoyang Sword Family, Second Young Master's camp.
The grand council chamber.
"I trust each of you is coming along nicely with your predictive scenarios for the First Young Master's movements?"
Elder Xiahou paced the chamber, swinging the cigar in his hand.
"As I said from the start—at this stage there is no need to share opinions! Don't do it at all! Stretch your imaginations to the limit and wipe out every blind spot!"
He moved about, stoking their morale.
"We have resources the First Young Master's side does not—resources that border on infinite! In the next room nearly every one of our elders is wringing out their wits just as you are!"
The strategists packing the grand chamber sweated freely as their brushes flew. They were constructing in advance every possibility the First Young Master might pursue while advancing the joint venture.
"Good! Excellent!"
Elder Xiahou broke into a broad grin and clapped.
"Elder Xiahou!"
A messenger burst in and held out a slip to him.
"Urgent report!"
Every eye fixed on Elder Xiahou.
"From now on there is no need to deliver these to me in secret!"
Without taking the slip, he snapped his orders at the messenger.
"Announce it at once so everyone in this chamber can hear! Understood?!"
"Yes, sir!"
The messenger unfolded the slip and read in a loud voice.
First Young Master — currently passing the entrance to Mount Beimang!
Elder Xiahou's body went rigid.
"…What?"
He set the cigar back between his teeth and snatched the slip from the messenger's hand.
The grand chamber fell silent.
Elder Xiahou did not bother asking the strategists who had been imagining the First Young Master's moves for any prediction about Mount Beimang. Even he had never accounted for it.
Instead he shouted at the messenger.
"Get every last elder from the next room in here—now!"
At that same hour, the Emei Abbess—meeting with an elder of a neutral faction—was holding her discomfort under the tightest rein she could manage.
"…Rights and interests in Sichuan Province, is it."
The Luoyang Sword Family elder seated across from her shook his head with a look of mild indifference.
"Not a deal that particularly whets the appetite. For Sichuan business, the Tang Family is still the better partner. Or the Dali single-price houses."
The Emei Abbess barely kept the force out of the hand lifting her teacup. Against the worst case, she needed every scrap of strength she could borrow.
"…It may not look appealing now, but looking five years ahead—"
The persuasion she had been forcing along was cut short by arrivals bursting in without warning. A messenger from behind the elder and a messenger from behind the Emei Abbess appeared almost in the same instant.
"Hmm."
Taking a slip from his own messenger, the elder watched the Emei Abbess receive hers with a faintly dazed expression, then gave a slight nod.
"The Third Young Master's side is certainly thorough about sharing intelligence. Ha, ha."
The Emei Abbess swallowed a low sound—how had the Third Young Master's people known a destination she had done everything to conceal?—and unfolded her slip.
"…!"
"This is—!"
The old woman's eyes flew wide in the same instant a gasp of astonishment left the elder's mouth.
That First Young Master bastard has entered Mount Beimang?!
Whether the old woman trembled or not, the elder kept nodding in open admiration.
"The First Young Master indeed…. Mount Beimang. Well, well. He goes and does the unimaginable as if it were nothing."
He studied the Emei Abbess's face—veins standing sharp on her brow—and let a quiet smile form.
"…You know what Mount Beimang is, of course, Grand Abbess?"
Her reaction alone would have been enough; even without it, a person of her standing could hardly be ignorant of the mountain.
"My, my. The ultra-luxury estate district of Mount Beimang!"
Still, the elder launched into a discourse on the place.
"It is the very ground that every family which has ever risen to the highest ranks of the Central Kingdom's imperial court makes certain to secure."
From ancient times, Mount Beimang's feng shui had been so exceptional that high ministers and great officials sought its auspicious sites for their tombs. For that reason the mountain was crowded with ultra-luxury mansions—complete with ancestral shrine halls—and served as a kind of retreat where those retired from the imperial court spent their later years enjoying Luoyang's luxury and abundance.
"Mount Beimang, where those who never reached the highest ranks for generations cannot so much as claim a single plot of earth…."
At first the elder had only been laying on the exaggerated admiration to needle the Emei Abbess; before long, even he began to feel a genuine chill.
"The families there wield the most formidable political power in the Central Kingdom."
He let out a low breath.
"Even a successor of our main house cannot come and go among them as he pleases…."
Houses that for generations had served the Emperor at the closest possible remove. Retired titans of the Imperial Capital whom even the heir of the foremost family under heaven could not simply choose to meet.
"How in the world did the First Young Master…?"
Heavy silence settled over the tea room.