The First Step
Yeon So-hyeon, who had turned his back on the world and chosen seclusion.
Gang Sang, who had been forced into retirement to prevent a defeat.
Kong Ryang, who had fought alone after losing every last comrade and finally collapsed upon his sickbed.
All of them had returned.
“…Then.”
Kang Ho’s extraordinary mind, still reeling from the shock, naturally arrived at the next conclusion.
“The First Young Master did not simply exclude me from the operation targeting the Great Immortal Merchant Group….”
Kong Ryang nodded.
“The First Young Master was protecting you, and beyond that—”
Kang Ho finished for him.
“Beyond that, he was protecting my grandfather in the Imperial Capital.”
“Yes.”
Yeon So-hyeon answered.
“Word that your grandfather is returning to the palace has already begun to spread through the capital.”
“Among the power brokers of the Imperial Capital, there is not a single one who does not know that Elder Gang Sang treasures you like a jewel.”
As if to reinforce Yeon So-hyeon’s words, Kong Ryang looked at Kang Ho as he spoke.
“I understand.”
Kang Ho nodded slowly, carefully.
“From now on, I will have to be thoroughly careful with myself.”
“From now on?”
Yeon So-hyeon gave a short, dry laugh.
At that reaction, Kang Ho’s face went blank with confusion.
“…Did I just say something wrong?”
The answer came from Kong Ryang.
“Not from now on. You should have been careful from the very beginning.”
“…From the beginning?”
“First Young Master.”
Before the old man could finish, the maid Il-ryeong’s voice carried in from outside.
“Lord Tang Baek requests an audience with the First Young Master.”
“Show him in.”
Tang Baek. Kang Ho had never heard the name. He knew the great houses of the Central Kingdom and those who carried their blood, but he was not so well-informed as to know the name of every cutthroat from Sichuan.
But if the First Young Master is allowing him into this room, then he must be someone important, someone with a reason to be here—
Kang Ho’s thought broke off right there.
The door opened, and a foul, choking stench rolled in. He had to clamp a hand over his own mouth.
"......!"
Tang Baek was carrying severed heads.
“Set them here.”
At Yeon So-hyeon’s command, Tang Baek approached.
With a heavy thud, the heads landed on the table.
Their hair had been gathered and knotted together for easy carrying. They had not died only moments ago; the blood on them had already dried black. The heads, beginning to rot, gave off a stench so terrible it was almost unbearable.
"......"
Kang Ho’s face went white, but the words that followed from Tang Baek stole even his breath.
“As ordered. The heads of the Luoyang information brokers who were watching the one called Kang Ho.”
Kang Ho screamed inside his mind. They were watching me?!
“Were they purely carrying out a surveillance contract?”
“No.”
Tang Baek’s barren voice filled the room.
“They had long since finished preparations so that the moment word came from the Imperial Capital, they could immediately kidnap—or assassinate—the one called Kang Ho.”
Why the heads wore expressions as if they had borne every agony in the world upon a single body. And how Tang Baek had learned every detail of their contract. Kang Ho understood it all in an instant.
“Well done.”
At Yeon So-hyeon’s words of praise, Tang Baek shook his head.
“I merely recovered the heads as I always do. All the real work was done by the agents of Hyeonwol Pavilion.”
That was as far as Tang Baek’s words went. He knew all too well that a mere cutthroat had no place lingering in a gathering like this.
“Then.”
Tang Baek clasped his hands respectfully, bowed to those present, and withdrew.
"......"
Until the maid Il-ryeong moved quietly to throw the windows wider open and closed the door behind her as she left—
"......"
—Kang Ho could not speak a single word.
“They look as though they’ve been dead for some time.”
Kong Ryang examined the heads with an air of complete unconcern, then continued,
“I thought you intended to deal with them from now on, but you already finished the matter? As expected of the First Young Master.”
He even looked intrigued. It was not the look of a man admiring a work of art as he studied the heads.
“This Tang Baek is a subordinate of the Fourth Young Master, is he not? And he said Hyeonwol Pavilion did the work. In that case….”
Yeon So-hyeon took a calm sip of tea and nodded.
“It is over now, but until yesterday Hyeonwol Pavilion was holding off the Great Immortal Merchant Group’s attacks alone. I sent the Fourth Young Master’s men to support them.”
“And while you were at it, you had these dealt with as well? Excellent. Truly excellent.”
At Yeon So-hyeon’s work that stayed yet another step ahead, Kong Ryang brightened like a delighted child.
“I simply handled them in advance while we were about it.”
Yeon So-hyeon acted as if it were nothing, as he always did.
“The First Young Master is remarkable enough, but those subordinates of the Fourth Young Master—and Hyeonwol Pavilion as well—are no ordinary lot.”
Kong Ryang clicked his tongue.
“The children of my own house ought to learn a little of this. They lean so hard on the power they already hold that they’ve all grown lazy as sin. Tsk, tsk.”
“In the war we are fighting now, they too will learn a great deal.”
“True. They must.”
“If they fail to learn, they will simply be left behind.”
Yeon So-hyeon and Kong Ryang. Both of them. Neither paid the heads on the table the slightest mind.
"......"
In that moment, Kang Ho felt more vividly than ever before just how far these two men stood from him. Of everyone seated around the table, he alone seemed to be drifting farther and farther away.
Kong Ryang, once the leader of the Imperial Capital’s reform faction, a man some still called the greatest of the old warhorses. And Yeon So-hyeon, First Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family, who clearly carried a darkness so deep that Kang Ho dared not even try to measure it.
“Well?”
At Kong Ryang’s gaze turning toward him, Kang Ho snapped back to himself.
“Have you learned something?”
Kang Ho drew a long, deep breath. The stench stabbed through his nasal cavity as if it meant to pierce his brain, but as he inhaled deeply, his nose began to go numb instead. A trick he had learned from the coroners back when he served in the Censorate.
“…The reason you two did not need to confirm it yourselves, and even went so far as to have the heads of men who had not just died brought here—”
Kang Ho might still lack experience, but he was by no means lacking in ability.
“—is because, as Elder Kong Ryang said, there is something I must learn.”
“Oh?”
A smile that said look at this one curved Kong Ryang’s lips. Without looking away from that smile—or from the empty stares of the heads on the table—Kang Ho continued.
“Men of the Imperial Capital who went so far as to watch me even in Luoyang, a man who had already refused public office, and who intended, in a crisis, to carry out an assassination.”
Behind his glasses, the corners of Kang Ho’s eyes began to tremble finely.
“An obsession that borders on madness, and a thoroughness that will not tolerate even a single variable.”
Under the circumstances, there could be only one such group. Before speaking the name, Kang Ho swallowed dryly.
“…The current heads of the Sixteen Noble Families now residing in the Imperial Capital.”
In preparation for a crisis, they had meant to kidnap Kang Ho—or kill him—to strike a blow against Gang Sang.
“They have been keeping my grandfather in check all this time, even while he was retired and doing nothing but hunting.”
If only he could manage a bold, empty laugh. Instead, the hand that adjusted his glasses was trembling hard.
“…From that day’s hidden history, it was not only you gentlemen here and my grandfather who never reached an end.”
Kang Ho looked at the heads of the men who had watched him and who, at any moment of need, had been ready to kidnap or kill him. Through their empty eye sockets he saw the highest powers of the Imperial Capital.
“The current heads of the Sixteen Noble Families in the capital likewise finished nothing from that day’s hidden history.”
“Yes. Just as you say.”
Kong Ryang nodded.
“And when a day like today arrives—”
By “a day like today,” Kong Ryang meant the day Kang Ho’s grandfather re-entered the palace.
Kang Ho took up the sentence as if he understood.
“They would have kidnapped me, or killed me.”
Yeon So-hyeon.
"......"
Kong Ryang as well.
"......"
Neither bothered to answer. No answer was needed. And that silence drove itself even deeper into Kang Ho.
“…I have learned a great deal from today’s events. No.”
Kang Ho shook his head and corrected himself.
“I have realized a great deal.”
Until then silent, Yeon So-hyeon finally spoke.
“Then what must you do now, Kang Ho?”
Stay in the safest place possible? Distinguish those who could be trusted from those who could not? A hundred thoughts flashed through his mind, yet what left Kang Ho’s mouth was this:
“…I must give warnings and cautions to those close to me, and make them safe.”
Beneath his glasses, Kang Ho’s eyes shone with a cold light. The intellectual gleam was the same as before, but the chill in it marked the growth of the man called Kang Ho.
“Now that they can no longer strike at me directly, they will use those around me in order to reach me.”
That was his prediction: they would drag him out by any means and try to entangle his grandfather, Gang Sang, through him.
“A fine answer.”
Kong Ryang nodded in satisfaction. Kang Ho also saw a smile touch the corner of Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth.
“Yes.”
Yeon So-hyeon refilled Kang Ho’s empty cup as he spoke.
“Now, Kang Ho, you have earned the right to take your first step into the struggle for power at the very summit of the Central Kingdom.”
Yeon So-hyeon looked at Kang Ho, who held the teacup carefully in both hands.
“From this moment, you will serve as my secretary. Follow me, watch my every move, and learn everything.”
Kang Ho’s eyes went wide.
“You mean to make me the First Young Master’s secretary?”
“Yes. You must learn everything as quickly as possible.”
At first startled by Yeon So-hyeon’s generosity, Kang Ho then felt an unnameable urgency in the man’s words.
“As quickly as possible, you say?”
It was Kong Ryang who answered.
“Elder Gang Sang has remained vigorous enough until now to put his age to shame.”
Gang Sang was old enough that even Kong Ryang—who was carried about in a chair—had to address him as Elder.
“The two of you…!”
Kang Ho understood everything Kong Ryang meant to say and his mouth fell open.
“The two of you have already begun preparing, in this very moment, for what comes after my grandfather as well…!”
The Imperial Capital.
An emergency council of the Second Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family, Yeon Ja-cheong, and the current heads of the Sixteen Noble Families.
The longer the meeting stretched, the denser the smoke hanging against the ceiling became.
“What of that Gang Sang’s grandson?”
Another family head blew out a long stream of smoke and nodded.
“I sent men to Luoyang with orders. Kidnap him if possible; if not, kill him cleanly.”
Even if only the beloved grandson Kang Ho died, Gang Sang would take a heavy blow in both body and spirit.
“And if the wretch has already gone to ground—what is the contingency?”
“Then we comb through everyone around that grandson of his as thoroughly as if we were hunting lice.”
“When those close to him suffer, he will have no choice but to crawl out on his own.”
“Preparations are already under way.”
One family head ground his teeth.
“Paternal side, maternal side—it makes no difference. From his milk-brothers to his academy friends, we will turn over every last one of them.”
“As for the Luoyang Sword Family….”
Quietly, from behind his golden mask, Second Young Master Yeon Ja-cheong had been watching their exchange. He nodded.
“Leave that to me.”
He had heard that the wretch Kang Ho belonged to the Central Investigation Department, a place where the Second Young Master’s own influence did not easily reach. But if the man was still inside the Sword Family, Yeon Ja-cheong was confident he could manage something.
“Then we will take it as settled.”
The family head chairing today’s meeting spoke, then rapped the round table with his long bamboo pipe. When every gaze had gathered, he looked around the room and opened his mouth.
“By now, all of you must be sensing that something is wrong.”
Everyone nodded at once. Among them, of course, was Second Young Master Yeon Ja-cheong.
“However much we may have been distracted by those old warhorses—”
“—the fact that Gang Sang, that mad old man, could re-enter the palace without a sound or a rumor is strange.”
“Especially here, in the Imperial Capital.”
The Imperial Capital was the administrative heart of the Central Kingdom; every piece of business moved with a ponderous slowness that matched its sheer size. Yet Gang Sang’s appointment as Grand Chancellor had been pushed through as swiftly as roasting beans over a flash of lightning.
“The reformists, after losing that old warhorse Kong Ryang, splintered into any number of factions….”
“And a great many of the royal loyalists have already been purged; they no longer have the capacity to handle something like this in complete silence.”
Whether a man thought it through alone inside his own head, or whether they put their heads together and thought it through as a group, every path led to the same place.
“Then….”
Everyone nodded.
“…His Majesty the Emperor moved in person.”
The Emperor.
After all those long years, the Emperor of the Central Kingdom had at last taken his first step.