In Case of the Worst
Immediately after the successful conquest of the Valley of Sin. The command post of First Young Master Yeon So-hyeon's faction.
Outside, the celebrations of victory were in full swing.
But the atmosphere inside the command post was something else entirely.
"Big Brother. What on earth is all this about, down here in a basement where not even sunlight reaches…?"
Fourth Young Master Yeon Bi's gaze followed the maids of Wongak Pavilion as they hurried about, transforming the underground space.
"Can you not tell by looking?"
Yeon So-hyeon gestured to the maids, directing the placement of a massive tactical map, and answered his younger brother.
"It is a new command center."
"Well, yes, even this little brother grasped that much at once, but…"
Yeon Bi let his words trail off and flicked a glance behind him.
Gwak Nopin, the Sleeping Dragon of the South; No-gunsa of the War Advisory Group; the strategist Tang Ye-rin—and the rest.
The leadership, still clearly exhausted from the battle they had just finished.
None of them dared put the question directly to the First Young Master, so they were casting pleading looks at the unfortunate Fourth Young Master instead.
"Big Brother. We have only just finished conquering the Valley of Sin."
Yeon Bi suppressed a sigh and spoke on their behalf.
"Is it really necessary, right this moment, to prepare and furnish a whole new command center underground?"
Yeon So-hyeon, who had been giving the maids precise instructions down to the smallest detail, turned a look on his brother as if he had said something absurd.
"Furnishing a new command center?"
"Do you truly think I summoned every one of you merely to decorate a room?"
He gestured toward the military advisors and strategists.
"All of you—begin drawing up defensive strategies for the Valley of Sin at once. Assume every possible contingency."
At first the advisors and strategists had been shuffling toward the tactical map with weary faces.
"Hold on—if you dig in the fortifications like that, won't the flanks be completely exposed?"
"The flanks are left open deliberately. When the enemy pushes in, they walk straight into a natural encirclement. It's a basic application of military strategy."
"A basic application of military strategy? Don't make me laugh. Theory and reality are different things. This is exactly why greenhorns who've never fought a proper battle are useless."
"I may be young, but I've walked through more bloodbaths than you think!"
"At least fight a real war—not a skirmish—before you start talking like that."
Sparks flew at once; they began building the strategy with blue steel in their voices and blades in every word.
"…Big Brother. The old saying goes 'better prepared than sorry,' but is there a reason you're being this thorough?"
Yeon Bi asked, watching them with a look of pure disbelief.
"It's as if you're certain the Second Young Master's side is about to cause some enormous disaster."
In the past, before Daseonrang, the Sichuan investors, and the Emei Sect had arrived, those who had attended Yeon So-hyeon's meetings had once predicted that the Second Young Master might resort to force.
But they had been talking about assassination or limited armed provocation—nothing more.
"Are you predicting that the Second Young Master's faction will launch a full-scale war, or something equivalent?"
An extreme assumption by any measure.
By common sense and by logic, Yeon So-hyeon's actions seemed excessive.
"Even if I can read the future as though it were written before me, I cannot know every possibility."
Yeon So-hyeon's eyes, watching the advisors and strategists argue from a distance, seemed to be looking somewhere far beyond them.
"You shape the board to limit the enemy's options. And within those limits, you prepare for ten thousand contingencies—as many as your ability allows."
What did he see?
How far did his gaze reach?
What did the world look like beneath the great roc's wings?
Yeon So-hyeon spoke to Yeon Bi in a quiet, measured tone, as if delivering a lesson.
"And when the moment finally comes—if only ten of those ten thousand preparations prove useful—"
His voice was soft, yet absolute in its certainty.
"Those ten preparations will turn certain defeat into the seeds of victory."
"…Yes, Big Brother."
Yeon So-hyeon's preparations did not end there.
"Relay the order to every unit: they are not to disarm even while resting. They must be ready to fight at any moment."
"That will draw complaints for certain. They won't be able to rest properly—"
As though he had not heard a word, Yeon So-hyeon continued.
"And after the evening meal, conduct training for the entire force in rotating shifts."
"Training…?"
"Mobilize the military advisors, the strategists, and the martial artists of the War Advisory Group."
At some point Yeon So-hyeon's words had ceased to be instruction and become command.
And that command was so absolute that even the Fourth Young Master dared not object.
"Through them, deliver the after-action review of today's battle and teach the entire force the defensive strategies being developed right here."
"Yes, Big Brother."
In that moment he had answered as he was told.
Even later, during the discussions concerning the Imperial Capital—
"…What is the likelihood of a physical assault?"
Kang Ho shook his head.
"If they did that, the Second Young Master's faction would hand every faction a perfect justification to tear them apart from all sides."
Yeon Bi crossed his arms.
"Then it's political pressure after all…"
"Most likely."
In the end, on that day, the Fourth Young Master had been utterly unable to understand Yeon So-hyeon's arrangements.
Completely.
Now he understood.
"…If we had still been over there—"
In the new underground command center Yeon So-hyeon had prepared—now renamed the Allied Headquarters—the civilian officials of the Fourth Young Master's faction peered out through a small window and murmured among themselves.
"We would all be crushed to death by now."
A deep, rolling boom.
Far downstream, the joint project headquarters building was collapsing in a thunder of dust and rubble.
"…Artillery."
"We knew the Second Young Master's bastards were lunatics, but this…"
Yet that day, the new command center Yeon So-hyeon had established sat upstream—and underground.
They were safe from the bombardment.
"Forces stationed in the lower and middle reaches are falling back according to orders!"
"Dispersal?! They're dispersing properly, yes?!"
"Full dispersal complete across all units! Martial artists of the War Advisory Group are controlling the field!"
"Arriving forces are regrouping upstream!"
In the chaotic tide of reports and orders, the middle-aged woman standing beside the Fourth Young Master let out a long sigh.
"Aigoo. I've got a mountain of work waiting for me, and these madmen…!"
The owner of that sharp tongue was none other than the Red Poison Spider.
As the administrator of Yeon So-hyeon's Administrative Building, she had come to the Valley of Sin to deliver a report—and now found herself stranded.
"The First Young Master told me to come report, so I raced out here in the middle of the night without even wiping the sleep from my eyes! And it turns out the First Young Master himself has gone back to the main house…!"
Was she simply incapable of tension?
Even in a situation like this, her manner remained almost recklessly casual.
"Still," the Fourth Young Master said, emerging from his thoughts, "having a force like you stuck inside the main house right now would have been an enormous waste."
The Red Poison Spider nodded with a sour expression.
"…Well, that's true enough."
She was brilliant enough at administration that Yeon So-hyeon had entrusted her with the Administrative Building—
but administration was not her true specialty.
Was summoning her to the Valley of Sin at this hour simply a mistake or a coincidence on Yeon So-hyeon's part?
"What if," the Fourth Young Master began.
"What if?"
His eyes narrowed.
"Yes. What if."
He looked at the strategic map where markers were being frantically repositioned, and spoke to her.
"What if we had not drawn up defensive strategies in advance, trained the troops on them, and kept every unit ready to fight at a moment's notice?"
"Why bother saying it? Annihilation."
The Red Poison Spider shrugged and pointed in the direction where their project headquarters had stood.
"We'd be looking at the entire command staff buried under that rubble by now."
Those of high enough cultivation—or simply lucky enough—might have survived.
But the command structure itself would have been paralyzed.
"Then," Yeon Bi continued, "what if we had not conquered the Valley of Sin this quickly?"
"Ugh."
The Red Poison Spider shook her head as though she refused even to imagine it.
"We would be fighting enemies pouring in from both above and below right this moment."
There would have been no leisure to regroup and reorganize in the safety of the upper reaches, free from the bombardment.
"Then," the Fourth Young Master pressed on, "what if Amcheonjonza had not cleaned out the Valley of Sin once before?"
While the entire Luoyang Sword Family's attention had been fixed on the book-price incident in the Inner Court and the movements of the secluded First Young Master—
Amcheonjonza had already put the Valley of Sin in order.
"Then…"
The Red Poison Spider thought carefully before answering with caution.
"…the conquest of the Valley of Sin would still be ongoing, wouldn't it?"
She added,
"Or we might never have even attempted the conquest at all."
The Three Five Tongbang, the Heukgang Clique, the White Bone Sect—
the underworld organizations they had recently crushed in the Valley of Sin had only settled there after Amcheonjonza's purge.
And because they had been split into three rival factions fighting among themselves, their defenses had been correspondingly fragile.
"Or we would still be preparing for the conquest even now…"
Her voice trailed off.
She was beginning to understand that the Fourth Young Master was not posing these "what if" questions for no reason in a moment like this.
"What if we—"
Watching her expression gradually change, Yeon Bi continued the chain of assumptions.
"What if we had not cleaned out the spies who had been swarming inside our own ranks?"
That, too, had happened even before the book-price incident in the Inner Court.
What if, last winter, when Yeon So-hyeon had met the Fourth Young Master after so long apart—
he had never given him the quiet notice that he intended to move again?
And what if, because of that, Yeon Bi had never thoroughly reorganized his entire organization in order to support his elder brother?
"…We would have left those spies alone, so as not to provoke the Second and Third Young Masters' factions."
That had been the tacit consensus of a faction that, at the time, possessed neither real power nor a solid foundation.
"Then. And so—"
"And so if we had left those spies alone," the Red Poison Spider finished for him, having finally grasped the shape of his successive questions, "the Second Young Master's side would know every one of our movements by now."
Even imagining it made her eyelids tremble.
"And if, in that situation, they had resorted to methods as extreme as this… we would…"
She stopped, closed her mouth for a moment, then forced herself to continue.
"We would…"
But she could not finish the sentence.
In her place, the Fourth Young Master completed the assumption.
"…We would have lost everything."
Yeon Bi's forces were formidable in open battle—
but by their very nature, they were poorly suited to pure defense.
And if the enemy's armed surprise attack was something no one had even imagined—
"We would never have been able to rise again."
In his heart, Yeon Bi posed one final assumption.
What if Yeon So-hyeon had never decided to step back into the world?
How would history have flowed then?
All of it was only hypothesis.
Yet inside the Fourth Young Master's mind, the ending of that hypothetical story painted itself as vividly as a picture.
"Big Brother!"
He would have been screaming outside Wongak Pavilion.
"They destroyed everything I had! Without blood or tears, they slaughtered people who didn't even know a single martial art! They butchered them!"
Toward the cold walls of Wongak Pavilion—
toward an elder brother who never showed his face and never answered—he would have poured out that bitterness.
"Big Brother! Show your face just once for your little brother! Big Brother!"
But now a faint smile touched the Fourth Young Master's lips.
Those things were only what-ifs.
The present was utterly different.
"Enemy forces confirmed as belonging to the Six-Person Society! Field units are delaying them!"
"Allied forces rushed in by armored carriages have successfully covered the rear of the retreating units! Engaging now!"
It was not only the Fourth Young Master's elite combat strength that had coiled itself inside the Valley of Sin.
"Our troops hold the qualitative edge! Tell them to exploit that thoroughly!"
Government soldiers from the central offices, the War Advisory Group, the martial monks who had joined from the Emei Sect, the maid corps of Wongak Pavilion, Hyeonwol Pavilion, the young heroes of the Spring of Luoyang, the elite forces of the House of Compassion—and more.
The forces Yeon So-hyeon had gathered and bound into a single allied army were truly overwhelming.
And so the response to the enemy's surprise attack was proceeding with startling smoothness.
"Report from the observation post!"
Then came the report the Fourth Young Master had been waiting for.
"Enemy bombardment position identified! The enemy is a fleet near the Third Pier!"
"Transmit the calculated firing data to every battery based on the confirmed enemy positions!"
On the roof of the headquarters, signalmen with flags waved their arms in a frenzy.
"All batteries ready for anti-ship fire!"
This was the moment when the siege catapults Yeon So-hyeon had prepared for the conquest of the Valley of Sin—
became engines of war for its defense.
"To all batteries—orders from the Fourth Young Master, acting temporary commander!"
Yeon Bi rose from his seat and shouted.
"Open fire!"