Lady Guyang's Hell
Lady Guyang’s residence.
Across the vast garden, flowers bloomed in riotous abundance to greet the summer. Beyond the artificially crafted stream bed of white pebbles, ancient trees, meticulously tended, flaunted their lush green foliage.
Gardens that other clans would proudly display for guests numbered in the dozens within the Luoyang Sword House, the foremost house under heaven. Among even those renowned gardens of the Luoyang Sword House, this one ranked among the most beautiful—yet it neither caught the eye nor soothed the heart of the one pacing it in agitation, fretting over her own nails.
“Late… it’s late…!”
“Why has he still not come?!”
It was Grand Madame Guyang.
As though she had gathered every scrap of gold, silver, and precious jade in the world, her already extravagant garments and ornaments had crossed the line into vulgarity. If anything, they had grown even more gaudy now that she was under soft confinement than in the days when she had freely roamed outside.
“Why does no one answer me?!”
At her dignity-forgetting, ear-splitting roar of fury, her maids and stewards merely bowed their heads and bent their waists. Far from reading the room, they were so terrified they avoided even one another’s eyes. What use would dozens of mouths and twice as many lips have been? Not a single soul dared speak first.
“Why is everyone so silent?!”
In the past, knowing they had nothing to say because they knew nothing, she would have let it drop there. But now—
“Oh-ho.”
Lady Guyang’s eyes flared blood-red, spilling a murderous aura of pure malice.
“Now that I think of it… because my station has suffered a temporary fall…”
Her hand moved toward her waist. The faces of the stewards and maids blanched in an instant.
“Even you lowly bitches and bastards dare to mock me?”
In better days a fan crafted by the finest artisan in the Central Plains would have hung from that silk sash. What Lady Guyang’s grinding teeth now gripped was a bright-red whip studded with dozens of thorns.
How many had left this place maimed by that whip since her confinement began?
The stewards and maids longed to scatter in terror, yet they knew that fleeing the spot would cost them their very lives. So they stood rooted, even if they wet themselves where they stood, not daring a single step.
“Grand Madame.”
The long-awaited voice rang through the garden. Lady Guyang’s head snapped toward it like a serpent’s.
“Elder Son…!”
There stood Elder Son, once commander of the Jiangnan Division. As ever, the old man kept his long white eyebrows neatly combed and hanging.
“Tsk, tsk.”
He clicked his tongue at the whip clenched in her fist.
“If you keep thrashing the underlings day after day like that, soon there will be no one left to manicure those precious nails of yours, Grand Madame.”
Lady Guyang snorted at the advice.
“Underlings? Give them feed and turn them loose, and they breed on their own soon enough, do they not? Their numbers restore themselves naturally.”
At her words Elder Son pressed his lips into a thin line. It was not that her speech left him speechless with outrage. He, too, held a view of lowly underlings little different from hers.
“Surely not…?”
Thus Lady Guyang instantly grasped the meaning of the silence he had chosen for his answer.
“Those detestable curs of the Supreme Operations Council have gone so far as to choke off even the manpower for my residence?!”
“Ahem.”
Elder Son cleared his throat deliberately, then stroked his beard as he replied.
“At present, the rate of attrition among the underlings in the Grand Madame’s residence exceeds even the casualty rate of the martial artists dispatched outside Luoyang.”
In other words, more people were dying here than among the warriors sent out to fight.
“Those damned—!”
As she spat curses at the Supreme Councilors, Elder Son’s next words reached her ears.
“It is not them.”
Not the Supreme Councilors. Then who?
Avoiding her gaze, Elder Son pretended to admire the garden and nodded.
“It is a resolution of the Elder Council. And…”
He clicked his tongue softly and added,
“…the ones who first proposed the motion were the elders of our own side.”
Not every elder of the Second Young Master’s faction had been imprisoned. Like Elder Son standing before her, those who had participated only passively or who had outwardly kept their hands entirely clean of the recent turmoil still retained their seats.
“You… you… you…!”
Struck square in the back of the head, she could not even form coherent words. Her face flushed as scarlet as the light in her eyes.
“…They, too, must first survive if they are to plan for the future. There was nothing else to be done.”
The political arena of the Luoyang Sword House was perilous enough that merely surviving was an ordeal—even when blades did not cross directly.
A candle in the wind before the gale.
The elders of the Second Young Master’s faction, their standing and honor ruined by the recent affair, were in the position of men desperately clutching their own severed heads in place with their own hands.
“Yet loyalty still burns in their hearts—”
“Nonsense!”
She finally drew the whip and lashed the ground. A vicious sound shredded the air; flowers and grass flew in every direction.
“Loyalty?!”
Lady Guyang shrieked as though seized by a fit.
“In times like these they neither gather to forge strategy nor bolster one another’s spirits—they no longer even send formal greetings!”
How much she had screamed these past few weeks. Even the vocal cords of a body tempered by inner energy now produced only a ragged, ruined sound.
“What loyalty can such curs possibly claim?!”
Her whip cracked down again; this time the solid garden stone shattered.
“Then,”
Elder Son’s low voice cut clearly through the din of her tearing screams and the flying debris,
“will you cast even them aside?”
Covered in dirt and scraps of grass, Elder Son did not so much as blink as he stared at Lady Guyang.
From the moment matters had come to this, she herself had never possessed any real choice.
“…Enough of that talk.”
Her voice, as hoarse as her son the Second Young Master’s, was hollow and empty.
“Just tell me how my son is faring…”
She staggered and sank to the ground. Those who would once have rushed to support her or bring a chair had all fled the garden moments earlier, so she had no choice but to perch on a garden stone.
“Our lord’s condition remains as it was yesterday.”
The charges of admitting pirate bands into Luoyang to rain down cannon fire; of unleashing the underworld’s thralls to plunder the city streets and attack a fellow heir’s forces. As the ultimate responsible party, the Second Young Master was now confined in the dungeon, awaiting trial.
“Water and meals? Are the ones we prepare being delivered properly?”
“Yes. Our own dispatched security personnel deliver them to our lord personally and with the utmost thoroughness.”
“They must never pass through any other hands.”
The moment talk turned to her son, a sharp, venomous gleam settled on her face.
“When that child was burned and desperately needed help—what did that Yak bitch and that Dang bitch do?”
Yak referred to Yak Seon-nyeo, Yak So-yu—Yeon So-hyeon’s mother and Grand Elder Madame of the Luoyang Sword House. Dang was the mother of the Fourth Young Master, Yeon Bi.
“You know as well, do you not?”
“…Yes. I have heard it more than once.”
Elder Son’s expression suggested he did not entirely credit the tale he had heard from Lady Guyang.
“They used the pretext of helping treat my son’s burns to try to kill him.”
Whatever Elder Son’s face might say,
“If I had entrusted my son to their hands—what would have become of him?”
Seized by twisted memories of the past, she trembled violently as she continued.
“They would have claimed they did their utmost yet he died in the end. A perfect success with no further questions possible.”
Her gaze quivered uncontrollably, shedding a blood-red radiance.
“Without so much as staining their hands or shedding a drop of sweat, they planned to eliminate my son…!”
She bellowed,
“That day, those women who had always been so cold and distant—how they suddenly acted intimate and rushed in offering to help…!”
Lady Guyang shuddered.
“Elder Son, you should have seen their mad antics with your own eyes!”
They had come laden with medical kits, knocking and knocking at the door. Even when Lady Guyang refused and tried to send them away, they planted themselves at the main gate and refused to budge.
“If we do not treat him this instant it will be too late! The child’s life hangs by a thread!”
“Lady Guyang! Open this door at once!”
Bang, bang, bang!
The sound of them hammering for a day, then two, still circled inside Lady Guyang’s skull.
“When I saw through their black designs and kept refusing firmly, those detestable creatures even sent the family’s physicians to coax me!”
Spittle flew from her lips; her focus wandered through empty air; her gestures grew wilder.
“They thought I did not know every physician in this house had become one clique under that Yak bitch…!”
“I knew from the start that those ghastly burns themselves were the work of that Dang bitch’s secret schemes!”
Fresh scarlet blood ran from the face she clawed at with her own nails.
“I held out and held out until the renowned physician from Sa-pae-cheon finally arrived!”
Terrifying madness.
“I staked my life—everything—and held on!”
Even Elder Son, who had not flinched before the whip or the flying dirt, took a discreet step backward.
That the Second Young Master Yeon Ja-cheong had survived with nothing more than emergency treatment while covered in severe burns across his entire body, until the physician completed the long journey—there was no explanation save heavenly fortune.
“The son I protected with these very hands… so this time as well I must protect him—!”
“Please set your mind at ease.”
To prevent her madness from escalating further, Elder Son hastily cut in.
“Because we never committed our direct forces to the end, the trial situation has been kept from the absolute worst.”
Had they committed those forces, the situation in the Valley of Sin might have unfolded differently—yet in the end the Third Young Master’s side would simply have reaped the fisherman’s profit.
“Those who stepped forward within the main house, including the Gi-gwan, did so of their own volition.”
The Second Young Master’s side had created a situation in which they had no choice but to act, yet the final decision had been their own.
“They must bear responsibility for their own actions.”
He continued swiftly.
“As for the events in the Imperial Capital, the current heads of the Sixteen Imperial Families cannot be pressed. In the end, investigation on that front will simply fizzle out.”
Elder Son spoke of relatively positive prospects, yet Lady Guyang did not miss the subjects he deliberately avoided.
“And the law officers of the Judicial Court, or those in charge of the investigation? Could they not be moved after all?”
Anyone capable of normal judgment would know that at this stage no power-holder or functionary within the main house would willingly step forward for the Second Young Master.
“…At present we are working with the finest specialist personnel we can still contact, doing everything possible to reduce the charges and delay proceedings—”
“That will be too late!”
Lady Guyang shot to her feet and shouted at Elder Son’s deliberately vague words.
“What good is dragging out the investigation and trial?! In that time the other heirs will have pulled so far ahead that catching them will be impossible!”
She advanced as though she meant to seize him by the collar at any moment.
“Do we not still hold many of their weaknesses?! Are there not still many whose long-term interests align with ours?!”
Her trembling hands looked ready to snap the old elder’s neck on the spot.
“Are you simply failing to make proper use of all those people?!”
Elder Son squeezed his eyes shut.
There was no longer any point in hiding the truth from her.
“…They have all been cut off from us—by the Eldest Young Master. Every last one.”
“All of them…?”
Elder Son nodded.
“…Yes. All of them. Without a single exception.”
Over the past several weeks, he and the fellow elders who had escaped imprisonment had done everything humanly possible. Truly everything within their power. They had made extensive contact with every party inside and outside the Luoyang Sword House—even beyond Luoyang itself.
Yet there had been no tangible results.
“What are you saying? Our business networks are still operating without the slightest problem, are they not?”
“…Yes, that is true.”
Across the entire sphere linking Luoyang to Sa-pae-cheon’s Jiangnan, the Second Young Master’s faction still wielded the greatest influence. To purge them would mean losing every scrap of that profit. Even the Luoyang Sword House possessed no ready alternative to replace them.
“So every one of those networks still functions—yet contact that could actually mobilize influence for this matter is impossible?”
Elder Son sighed inwardly at her words thick with disbelief.
“…Yes. That is the case.”
“How is that even possible?”
There was no need to speak words that would only bring loss. Elder Son kept his mouth firmly shut.
Had he answered without regard for Lady Guyang’s temper, he would have said:
…Because that is the Swordless One—Yeon So-hyeon—who achieves whatever he desires without ever drawing a blade.
Over the past weeks the Eldest Young Master’s influence inside and outside the Luoyang Sword House had been growing at a terrifying pace.
“…I shall visit again when I have further news. Please take care of yourself.”
Leaving the dazed Lady Guyang slumped in the garden, Elder Son turned and walked away.
“Farewell, Elder.”
He accepted the cursory salute of the guards, then suddenly turned his head to look back at Lady Guyang’s mansion.
The elegant garden.
The splendid residence.
It was a vast breeding pen.
A pen that maintained the Second Young Master’s faction’s businesses and preserved just enough of their influence so that Sa-pae-cheon could not abandon Yeon Ja-cheong and Lady Guyang—so that Sa-pae-cheon would have no choice but to cooperate with the Emperor’s project to expand and reorganize the Yangtze waterways.
The breeding pen Yeon So-hyeon had created.
And that place was Lady Guyang’s hell.