Investigation Authority
"…Why is the Central Audit Department here?"
The eyes of the Banker of the Sword House Bank sharpened the instant he asked the question.
"Come to think of it."
The old man spoke as if to show that age had not dulled his memory in the least.
"I heard that Dokgo Ya-yeon, Head of the Central Audit Department, has an exceptional confidant."
He dredged up a scrap of information he had once overheard or glimpsed in passing.
"His name was Hwa Bok, if I remember correctly."
"My, my. There are rumors like that?"
The man who had introduced himself as Hwa Bok scratched the back of his head with a smile full of easy familiarity.
"This Hwa Bok of yours is no one so impressive."
He curved his eyes into a soft, friendly smile, yet the Banker saw straight through it. Though Hwa Bok's eyes crinkled at the corners, those eyes themselves were neither smiling nor soft.
An interrogator's eyes.
A gaze that seemed ready to dissect the person before him and peer all the way into his insides.
Through long experience, the Banker knew exactly what sort of man wore eyes like that.
"Men with eyes like yours are the type who lower themselves with practiced skill while scraping a man down to the very bottom."
Even if his present circumstances had reduced him to being carried about by the Eldest Young Master—
"Why don't you set those petty tricks aside for the moment?"
The old man was, without question, the head of the Sword House Bank—the largest private bank of any single clan in all of Zhongyuan.
Just as the rumors said.
Having reached his judgment, Hwa Bok stopped testing the Banker.
"My apologies, Banker."
He wiped the false expression from his face as if peeling off a mask and continued, bowing his head with formal courtesy.
"We are bound to follow the Eldest Young Master's orders faithfully. Even so…"
He pressed on with his apology.
"We needed to judge for ourselves what sort of man we were meant to save. That is why we committed the discourtesy."
Before offering their cooperation, they had wanted to know the Banker's true worth.
"Just now, you said…"
Yet in the Banker's mind, the Central Audit Department's intent no longer remained at all.
What he had seized upon was something else entirely.
"You said you follow the Eldest Young Master's orders faithfully. That means…"
The Banker arranged the pieces and asked again.
"The Central Audit Department of the Luoyang Sword House—Dokgo Ya-yeon herself—has offered her sword to the Eldest Young Master?"
Fragments that had been spinning separately in his head clicked into place one by one.
The Eldest Young Master's easy laughter when he heard that Hobop Wonju was meeting the Gamchal Buju in secret.
And then—
The personnel of the Central Audit Department already waiting in the reception room to which the Sixth Bureau Chief had guided them, as though they had been expecting them all along.
"So the Central Audit Department has already slipped free of the Gamchal Buju's influence?"
This time Hwa Bok smiled in earnest.
"Precisely."
"Then Hobop Wonju's actions right now are…?"
Seated in the place of honor, reviewing the investigation materials the Sixth Bureau Chief had handed him, Yeon So-hyeon spoke and drove the nail home.
"A wasted trip."
Within the Luoyang Sword House—
In a certain garden.
A carefully tended grove of trees, shaped by expert hands. The beautiful woodland blocked the increasingly fierce sunlight and let a cool, refreshing breeze pass through its leaves.
But to those holding a secret meeting inside that garden, the grove was nothing more than a means of cutting off surrounding eyes.
"What do you mean by that…?"
"The Central Audit Department has slipped from our control…?"
Unable to hide his shock, Hobop Wonju repeated the words he had just heard.
"Yes."
The one who nodded calmly was the man whose face was wrapped round and round in black cloth—
Gamchal Buju, Head of the Audit Department.
"The Central Audit Department… more precisely, Dokgo Ya-yeon has left my hands completely."
His tone was even, yet Hobop Wonju could clearly feel the molten rage boiling beneath it.
"I can no longer control the Central Audit Department's investigation of the Sword House Bank."
Yet that only made Hobop Wonju angrier still.
"Why share such vital information only now?!"
His voice roughened to match the fury that filled him to the brim.
"If you had told me earlier, I could have devised some countermeasure before taking this wasted trip!"
A low rumble. The tiles of the pavilion in which they sat vibrated; dust sifted down from the eaves.
"What hidden motive made you conceal it?!"
"Hidden motive…?"
From between the black cloth that covered his face, Gamchal Buju's eyes flashed with an eerie light.
"You are too excited."
Under that materialized, murderous gaze, Hobop Wonju closed his mouth.
Their relationship—the relationship between Hobop Wonju and Gamchal Buju—was not hierarchical.
Just as the dust shaken loose by Hobop Wonju's wave of energy was simply brushed aside by Gamchal Buju's protective aura, each of them was the head of one of the Luoyang Sword House's most powerful investigative organs.
"I, too, learned of this only today, just as you did."
"You only learned of it today as well…?"
That single statement proved more effective on Hobop Wonju than even the display of martial power that matched his own.
"That means—?!"
It was a moment that showed just how thoroughly political a creature Hobop Wonju was by nature.
"Yes."
Gamchal Buju continued in the same even tone, as if he had never raised a protective aura at all.
"The moment I heard what the Eldest Young Master had done at the Hobop Court, I summoned Dokgo Ya-yeon, Head of the Central Audit Department."
Hobop Wonju kept silent and listened.
"She showed no particular hostility. She merely repeated the same principled claim—that the Central Audit Department is guaranteed independent status in its investigations. But—"
"In the end she accepted none of your orders or requests."
"Exactly."
It was frighteningly identical to the situation with the Sixth Bureau Chief.
"…Then the Head of the Central Audit Department as well?"
The words were cut short, head and tail missing, yet—
"Yes."
Gamchal Buju understood him perfectly and nodded.
"Without a doubt, she has taken the Eldest Young Master's side."
Hobop Wonju had begun this secret talk in search of a breakthrough.
Instead of finding one, he felt himself sinking deeper into the mire.
No.
He shook his head inwardly.
I am not sinking now. I was already in deep, and I am only now realizing it.
A tightness closed around his chest. Hobop Wonju pressed his forehead and spoke.
"…Was there no prior sign?"
"Prior sign?"
"An organization of the Central Audit Department's stature would have shown cracks no matter how carefully they tried to hide them."
"No."
Gamchal Buju shook his head.
"On the contrary—because it was the Central Audit Department, because it was Dokgo Ya-yeon—there was no way to know."
From the beginning, Dokgo Ya-yeon had been famous for her unyielding personal convictions.
"We had always clashed often, and this year the clashes seemed to grow sharper still…"
Hobop Wonju could not see it, but he could tell how badly the face beneath the cloth was contorted.
"That Dokgo Ya-yeon would set aside her own principles and swear loyalty to a single individual…"
His own face must have been twisted the same way.
"It was unimaginable."
Gamchal Buju's eyes turned on Hobop Wonju.
"Hobop Wonju—what of you?"
Those eyes raked over him, probing for what lay within.
"Did you notice nothing from the Sixth Bureau Chief?"
Faced with the reversed question, Hobop Wonju let out a long, low hum.
"…Mmm."
Ordinarily, the two of them would never have laid bare the contents of their hearts so candidly to each other.
But now they shared a common problem named the Eldest Young Master.
"…Come to think of it."
Hobop Wonju frowned and walked back through his memories.
"I recall the time when the matter of the Third Young Master's 'Yongbong-jihoe arena construction site' blew up."
As the head of the largest investigative organ—one of the men who stood at the very peak of the greatest clan under heaven—he could recall an incident from a specific moment with perfect clarity, without any documents or records.
"At the time, the Sixth Bureau Chief's behavior was somehow… off."
"I distinctly remember issuing him a secret order then, requesting the Eldest Young Master's cooperation."
Gamchal Buju likewise dredged up the memory and slowly nodded.
"The request for help arresting the martial artists' organization that had joined the uprising—the group called 'Luoyang's Spring,' was it…?"
At those near-muttered words, Hobop Wonju felt a brief chill at the Audit Department's information network—
They knew about that secret order…?
—but he set the thought aside for the moment and simply nodded.
"…Yes."
He continued, recalling the outcome.
"No evidence could be found, so there was never any cooperation in the arrests."
"Certainly…"
Gamchal Buju nodded as well.
"That was the result of the Sixth Bureau Chief's preliminary investigation."
"That was the first and last time the Sixth Bureau Chief ever produced an investigative result that so openly opposed my will."
As he spoke, Hobop Wonju grew more and more certain of his own conclusion.
"The moment the Eldest Young Master made contact with the Sixth Bureau Chief—"
He spoke as if sighing.
"It must have been then."
Gamchal Buju narrowed his eyes and asked,
"…You felt nothing strange at the time?"
"I did not."
Hobop Wonju immediately shook his head in denial.
"There was no evidence at all, and in truth no one was caught. Fabricating nonexistent evidence is one thing, but manufacturing nonexistent people for a case of that scale was impossible."
Finding one or two scapegoats to take the blame was feasible enough.
But conjuring an entire anti-social martial organization out of thin air was next to impossible.
"And the decisive point—"
Gamchal Buju took up the thought.
"Even if they had spirited those people away, it would have brought the Eldest Young Master no direct benefit."
Exactly so.
What possible "profit" could the Eldest Young Master gain by smuggling out a pack of anti-social martial artists?
At the time, the Eldest Young Master had not even been directly connected to the unrest.
In the structure of their thinking, the piece simply would not fit.
"So at the time we could only accept it and move on. But looking back now, an entirely different picture emerges."
From the Eldest Young Master's late birth mother, the Medicine Fairy, and the Jaewon he had never stopped operating even during his seclusion—
Through fending off pirate attacks—
All the way to the complete rebirth of the Valley of Sin, once known as the Five Fiends—
"…Everything connects in a single consistent line."
Now that they had reached this point, and considering that one of Yeon So-hyeon's greatest foundations lay in the overwhelming support of the common people—
"…Without a doubt. Ensuring that the cause of the Yongbong-jihoe arena construction site unrest was pinned not on the agitation of an anti-social martial organization, but—"
"—solely and unilaterally on the Third Young Master's side, was what mattered to the Eldest Young Master."
"Only then could he himself receive the people's support without any noise."
As the pieces locked into place, they felt a certain clarity.
At the same time—
"But for that to be true…"
The clarity chilled them to the bone.
"Just how long has the Eldest Young Master—"
"—been looking ahead, and how far?"