Misdirection
"The detoxification unit dispatched by the government army has arrived!"
"Open the main gate at once!"
The constables brightened at once and heaved open the massive front gates. A company of men poured into the Security Branch Office of Luoyang's Central Administration. True to the name of a detoxification unit, they were swathed head to toe in some unidentifiable material, their faces completely sealed away as well.
"...Never thought I'd be this glad to see the army's face."
One of the constables muttered it, and the rest nodded in unspoken agreement. Relations between the government army and the local constabulary were never warm. But the men of the Security Branch Office would have borrowed a cat's paw if it would help them now.
"As of this moment, the Security Branch Office is under complete lockdown."
Even though the detoxification unit's commander held no formal authority over them, the constables immediately began stringing red cord around the grounds—the signal for restricted access. That, too, was for the same reason.
While the army's detoxification unit worked meticulously around the corpse of the old merchant who had collapsed and died from poison, a junior constable—soaked through—sneezed hard and grumbled at one of the unit's officers.
"Achoo...! Is this Je-dok-su—this Detoxification Water—always so viciously cold?"
Je-dok-su was a specialized solution used throughout the Central Plains, capable of neutralizing as many as a hundred different kinds of poison.
"If you don't like how cold the Detoxification Water is," the officer replied without so much as glancing at him, his voice flat, "next time you can just live with the poison exposure."
"...Harsh, aren't you. I was only asking."
No man could live not knowing what poison might be eating him from the inside. The junior constable roughly dried himself with a cloth that had been set out for the purpose and tossed it into a waiting crate. The moment he did, a soldier from the detoxification unit stepped up, took the entire crate, and carried it off. The same fate, no doubt, that had already claimed the clothes he had been wearing and everything he had been carrying—they were all headed for the incinerator.
"...What the hell. Feels like I've got the plague."
Muttering his disgust, he stepped out of the temporary tent. Outside, his senior constable was already speaking with the detoxification unit's commander.
"...The Sichuan Tang Family's blood poison, you say?"
"That's right."
The senior constable asked again, disbelief plain on his face. "Not just Tang Gate—the main Tang Family itself?"
"Judging by the state of the corpse, nearly certain. Of course, we'll need the full investigation before we can declare it." The commander added, almost as a warning, "I don't know what is happening in Luoyang right now, but if I were you, I would take my hands off this at once."
"........."
Through the glass lenses of his poison-proof mask, a cold gaze fixed on the senior constable.
"This time the blood poison killed only a single man. There is no law that says your luck will hold the next time."
As the commander's footsteps receded, the junior constable approached his senior with careful steps.
"...Tang Family blood poison. Looks like the First Young Master really is tangled up in this mess."
In Luoyang, mention of Tang Family poison brought only one name to mind: the Fourth Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family. And that Fourth Young Master was, at present, standing with the First Young Master.
"Tang Family blood poison... far too blatant."
The senior constable reached into his robes for tobacco, only to remember that his tobacco case had already gone up in smoke with the rest of his clothes.
"...A warning, then. Stay out of this if you want to live."
The junior looked at him with something like dread. "Senior—you're not actually going to stick your head into an investigation over something like this, are you?"
The senior snorted. "I don't know what you usually make of me, but if I'd wanted to kill myself, I would have done it when my wife took the children and went back to her parents."
He gazed toward the Central Administration building and went on. "The highest levels will order us off this case anyway. When it comes to the powerful, the heads of Public Security never go anywhere near the trouble."
"Of course, that order will come through unofficial channels—"
"Bak Po-kwae!"
As if on cue, before he had even finished speaking, his superior—the constable captain—came striding toward him in a hurry.
"Yes, yes. You don't even need to say it. I already know." Bak Po-kwae, the senior constable with the surname Bak, shrugged. "I won't so much as piss in the First Young Master's direction. So you can rest easy—"
"Bak Po-kwae, are you out of your mind? What are you saying?"
"...Sir?"
His direct superior spoke with a rigid face. "In broad daylight, in Luoyang—and not just anywhere, but at the Security Branch Office—something this monstrous has occurred."
To the two constables who still failed to understand, the captain said, "And you think we can simply not investigate the prime suspect? That is out of the question!"
"...So what you're saying," Bak Po-kwae scratched the back of his head, double-checking, "is not that we should drop the investigation, but that we should pursue it?"
"Exactly. Right now, both of you will join the investigation headquarters and begin looking into the First Young Master! The headquarters has already been assembled!"
"........."
His superior steadfastly ignored the look his subordinates gave him—the look one gives a madman—and finished what he had come to say.
"This is an order from the Chief of Public Security himself!"
Watching the captain's retreating back after he had delivered only what he needed to deliver, the junior constable spoke with a sour expression.
"What on earth is going on...?"
"...One thing is certain." Bak Po-kwae swallowed dryly. "Somewhere above us, something very wrong is unfolding."
He wanted a smoke so badly he could scream.
Half a shichen later, near the entrance of the Valley of Sin.
"...The upper ranks really have gone collectively insane."
Fully armed, Bak Po-kwae muttered as he climbed down from the covered carriage.
"This is an enormous force..." The junior constable who followed him out looked sick. "This is on the level of pulling every security unit from Tanryung District and Gahyo District combined."
There was not a shred of exaggeration in his words.
"This isn't investigation scale..."
The entrance to the Valley of Sin was so packed with ordered ranks that one could barely see past them.
"...Do the higher-ups actually mean to wage open war against the First Young Master?"
In Luoyang? Against the First Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family? With nothing but constables? And on suspicion alone?
It was absurd—and yet the sight of the gathering force was enough to leave a man rattled.
"...We'll have to check."
Bak Po-kwae started toward the command group clustered to one side. Soon enough, at the outer edge of the gathering, he spotted a familiar face.
"Bak Po-kwae!" The middle-aged man who had noticed him put on a forced smile even in the gravity of the moment. "Come to join this mass suicide party yourself, have you?"
"...Captain Dan." Bak Po-kwae addressed his former superior. "What in the world is this? The investigation has barely begun, and what are all these troops for? Have the upper ranks truly lost their minds as a group?"
A force of this size was effectively every unit under Tanryung and Gahyo Districts—the very districts that held administrative authority over the Valley of Sin. And considering the armed clashes already flaring across Luoyang—
"Have they decided to abandon public order altogether?"
His voice may have risen a little; nearby heads turned their way.
"Ah, don't start with such dull talk. Tell me instead about your wife leaving."
"What...?!"
"Shut your mouth and follow me."
Captain Dan seized his shoulder and dragged him into a corner.
"The district magistrates of Tanryung and Gahyo themselves are here right now."
"The magistrates themselves?!"
They stood directly beneath the Luoyang Deputy Governor—the highest administrative authority in the city—as the most senior officials under him.
"That's right. Whatever this is, it seems to be turning extremely serious."
"...Those magistrates can't actually mean to fight the First Young Master with force, can they?"
"Of course not."
Captain Dan's expression hardened.
"The magistrates have probably received some kind of 'request' and mean to pressure the First Young Master with it. Even I don't know the details."
Cold sweat beaded on Bak Po-kwae's brow.
"Men of a magistrate's rank took a request from someone? From whom?"
"Naturally I don't know for certain either. But the one who placed that request—"
"—is someone on this soil of Luoyang who does not fear the First Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family. That much is certain."
"...This is enough to drive a man mad."
"Agreed."
What, exactly, had they been dragged into?
"Then... are the magistrates meeting with the First Young Master right now?"
"No."
"...Why not?"
"The magistrates lost their nerve. They've locked themselves away somewhere, holding a meeting among themselves."
"They came all the way here? Gathered this entire force—and then got scared?"
It made no sense. Captain Dan raised a hand and pointed up toward the valley.
"See it for yourself, and you'll understand why."
A short while later—
"......!"
Passing through the ranks and climbing to the mouth of the valley, Bak Po-kwae's mouth fell open of its own accord. The hair on his scalp stood on end.
"Th-this is insane...?"
He understood at once why the magistrates had been afraid. How could he not.
In the middle of the path leading up into the valley—
"........."
—stood a tower.
It was a tower of severed heads, delivered from every corner of Luoyang and stacked higher and higher. At a rough count, there were well over a hundred skulls.
"...Ugh!"
He retched on the spot.
Under the spring sunlight, thousands of flies thronged and buzzed. Blood that had poured from the heads was drying into a thick crust, and in the mild weather the stench of corpses rotting in real time was nothing short of hideous.
The Fourth Young Master, Yeon Bi, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down through the window at the tower of human heads. He was the one who had ordered it built.
"........."
In those clasped hands he held hair ribbons—two strands of the very ribbons his twin elder sisters, Yeon Da-eun and Yeon Da-hye, had once used to tie his hair.
"...With this, I have bound the two magistrates' movements for now," his lips moved. "But it will not last long. The Second Young Master's side will lean on them somehow or other."
He turned back into the room. His gaze found his eldest brother.
"Elder Brother, you wanted them held only for a little while—there must be a reason for all of it."
"Yes."
The spring afternoon sun was bright, and to Yeon Bi's eyes, still adjusted to the outside light, Yeon So-hyeon sitting in the indoor shadows looked as if he were submerged in darkness itself.
"Elder Brother..." Yeon Bi paused a moment, then spoke again. "You seem certain that the Second Young Master's faction stands behind both the attack on our sisters and the hands that moved the magistrates and Luoyang's Chief of Public Security."
"Yes."
"And you are also certain that this is not their main offensive?"
"Yes."
The Fourth Young Master ventured to put Yeon So-hyeon's thoughts into words. "Since everyone who attacked our sisters will be smashed to pieces anyway, the Second Young Master's side never needed to keep any promise they made with them in the first place."
"That's right."
"They were discarded pieces, then."
"Yes." Yeon So-hyeon nodded and added, "Just like the magistrates outside."
A crease formed on Yeon Bi's brow. "...They're using even the highest ranks as discarded pieces to cast this misdirection—so the Second Young Master's side is hiding something that important?"
"Yes."
"Elder Brother—how can you be so certain of their play?"
"Originally I judged the probability that their attack was misdirection at about sixty percent." Yeon So-hyeon slowly laced his fingers and rested his chin upon them. "But."
His gaze shifted to the figure seated across from him.
"Now that this man has shown himself before me in person—the probability is one hundred percent."
Yeon Bi's eyes followed Yeon So-hyeon's. There sat an old man so gaunt he called to mind a sapling that had withered without surviving the winter. And yet his eyes alone were piercingly alive, generating a dreadful sense of wrongness.
Yeon So-hyeon smiled at the old man. There was not a speck of goodwill in that smile.
"Is that not so—Nae-won-chong-gwan?"
The man who commanded the Inner Court. The one who had served both the previous Family Head and the Family Head before him. The most faithful servant of the late Family Head. The black curtain most feared within the Sword Family.
The Chief Administrator of the Inner Court answered Yeon So-hyeon in a tone as if he meant to chew him up and spit him out.
"...That is so, First Young Master."
Neither of them released even a thread of killing intent—and yet the Fourth Young Master, Yeon Bi, swallowed dryly under a tension so thick it strangled the air.
The Chief Administrator of the Inner Court and the First Young Master. At last, the two of them had met before his eyes.