The Challenger
As dusk settled long and deep over the evening hour, the man lingering near Wongak-jeong was none other than Elder Paeng—leader of the Hebei Faction, and a man of the Hebei Paeng Clan.
In the end, I came after all…
He had stripped off every ornament, thrown on a borrowed set of plain martial robes, rubbed a handful of dirt across his face, and brushed it off in a rough swipe. The result was unmistakable: he looked for all the world like an aging martial artist who had never climbed anywhere near success.
Yet the brief satisfaction of a near-perfect disguise did not last.
"Haa…"
The moment he fully realized what he was doing, a sigh escaped him on its own.
Still. I could hardly refuse to attend entirely, could I…?
It was not a gathering to swear loyalty. It was merely a celebration for the founding of a new faction. Nothing of great consequence—and yet failing even to show his face at such a place could invite dangerous misunderstandings.
…If I do not appear at all, it could be taken as if I were siding with the Third Young Master.
And that applied not only to Elder Paeng himself, but to every neutral elder who made up the majority of the Elder Council.
Still—
"Surely the head of a faction whose junior elder was stolen away like that would not attend the celebration, would he?"
Like Elder Paeng himself, the greater part of the neutral elders had, that very day, watched their own people be torn away from them without a night's rest.
And yet…
He had to attend. There was no choice but to attend.
In all the years since I rose to the rank of elder in the great Luoyang Sword House, I have never been driven into a corner this wretched…!
Caught between awkwardness and genuine difficulty, Elder Paeng had resorted, as a compromise, to disguising himself as an ordinary martial artist.
He fretted at the well-worn sword that was his beloved weapon.
I will somehow slip in among the crowd, somehow offer the Eldest Young Master my congratulations, and somehow get out again as quickly as I can…
A three-beat of "somehow." Even if he could not make his attendance known to everyone, he at least had to make it unmistakably clear to the Eldest Young Master that he and the Hebei Faction were not the enemy.
It was a plan that could only be called slapdash, and yet—
The one mercy is that I need not worry about standing out…
Elder Paeng surveyed his surroundings with a bitter smile.
"Have you heard of the Eldest Young Master's single sword stroke?"
"Heard of it? I saw the scar it left carved into the heavens with my own eyes."
"Exactly. If not for that, this many people would never have gathered."
Just as the martial artists murmuring near Elder Paeng were saying, the great road before Wongak-jeong was thronged with Luoyang Sword House warriors who wore their swords and loitered without real purpose—
"Might I be granted an audience with the Eldest Young Master? I have brought a most important investment proposal—"
"Hah. A merchant of your standing would have to stand in line here for a full month before seeing him."
—and with silk-clad merchants who had flocked there in the hope of even a chance meeting with the Eldest Young Master.
"…Why does this process take so long? Is my name not enough?!"
"My word, honored master, the entry procedures are already finished. It is only that the carriages of the most illustrious houses are lined up waiting their turn."
"Tch, tch."
The line of carriages stretched to the far end of the road, and not one of them belonged to a house whose name was wanting or whose standing fell short.
"How about celebrating the birth of the Eldest Young Master's faction with these firecrackers?!"
"It's delicious! Delicious! So good you wouldn't notice if one of you died while the two of you were eating!"
"Those who failed to prepare a congratulatory wreath in time, look here!"
Every sort of peddler drawn by the scent of a killing, those who had come to pray for the Eldest Young Master's success even from a distance—
"We give thanks for the Medicine Fairy's grace…"
"May the Medicine Fairy's blessing walk with the Eldest Young Master on the road ahead…"
—and even the mere gawkers who had come to hang about a famous feast. Taken all together, one could feel with raw clarity just how vast a single stroke the Eldest Young Master's sword had been, and how great the reverberations it had set loose.
"A true throng at the gates, is it not?"
Suddenly—
At the words tossed so casually his way, Elder Paeng's body locked stiff.
It was not because someone had simply spoken to him while he was in disguise.
"Only a few months ago, this stretch before Wongak-jeong was nothing but ramshackle storehouses and servants wandering about. And now it has become this."
It was because of who had spoken.
"Looking on a scene like this, one truly feels boundless emotion."
Haha—he laughed with a clear, bright sound. A boy in the plain dress of a common scholar, wearing a white mask of the sort one saw everywhere in the marketplace.
This voice…!
No one around them had noticed. But Elder Paeng, who that very day had had that face and that voice branded into the deepest place in his mind, could not have failed to know him even if he had tried.
The Eldest Young Master…!
Merely recognizing Yeon So-hyeon's presence was enough to make every hair on his body stand on end.
"…Is that so."
Feeling his lips go dry, Elder Paeng forced his voice—tight with tension—into something that sounded measured and calm.
"This old martial artist has come for no more than to pray that the Eldest Young Master's road ahead be filled with fortune."
Quick-witted as ever, he did not raise his voice in greeting and draw every eye upon them. He simply stated his business.
"With you offering such prayers, the Eldest Young Master will no doubt be deeply grateful."
"…I see."
With that, the most important purpose of his visit was finished. Ordinarily, this would have been the moment to withdraw.
"But…"
Before he knew it, Elder Paeng was continuing the conversation.
"What business brings the busiest man of the entire occasion all the way out here?"
At that, the Eldest Young Master answered with a light laugh.
"There are a great many in as awkward a position as you, you see."
He lifted a hand and pointed toward the entrance of Wongak-jeong.
"None of them can get past the gate."
However open Wongak-jeong might be for the duration of the event, it was not a place just anyone could enter as they pleased. At the main gate, meticulous entry checks were underway.
"Next, please."
"Next! Step forward!"
When two girls in dazzling, eye-catching palace attire clapped their hands, the next guest in line approached them.
"My word, if it is not the Third and Fourth Young Ladies of the Sword House!"
Indeed. They were none other than Yeon So-hyeon's younger sisters—the Third Young Lady Yeon Da-eun and the Fourth Young Lady Yeon Da-hye. They had taken the post themselves, cutting off any disturbance that might have erupted at the crowded main gate.
"Congratulations on the official founding of the Eldest Young Master's faction!"
As the guest wrote his name in the visitors' book and offered his congratulations—
"Ohohoho! Thank you!"
—the Third Young Lady Yeon Da-eun burst into an exaggerated, coquettish laugh with a thoroughly haughty expression, while—
"It would be best if that sentiment of yours does not change in the days to come."
—the Fourth Young Lady Yeon Da-hye cast him one of her characteristically sharp glances.
"O-of course, of course."
The guest hurried inside in flustered haste.
"Next, please."
"Next! Step forward!"
It was a celebration announcing the founding of the Eldest Young Master's faction—and yet somehow the two of them looked even more triumphant than anyone else.
"…At any rate."
Smiling beneath his mask as he watched them, the Eldest Young Master shrugged and turned back to Elder Paeng.
"So I have no choice but to go around like this and meet people in secret myself."
Elder Paeng gave a wry smile.
"I see…"
As expected—elders in the same predicament as himself had also been prowling the area around Wongak-jeong in disguise.
"And yet, hearing the very man who created this situation say such a thing still feels a little…"
Even as the words left his mouth, Elder Paeng was startled by how much they sounded like a sulk.
"Is that so?"
The Eldest Young Master only laughed, easy and unburdened. Haha.
Strange, how little it felt strange. By age they might as well have been grandfather and grandson, and yet their attitudes seemed reversed—and somehow that did not strike him as odd at all.
…Is this the difference in the vessel of a man?
As the old saying went, a hundred hearings were not worth a single look. The hegemonic presence Elder Paeng had felt in the Elder Council that day, and the vastness of the Eldest Young Master's vessel he felt here with his own senses—this was a man of a different grain from anyone he had ever met.
And so Elder Paeng found himself, without meaning to, in admiration of the boy who had once been scorned as the Swordless One.
"…Our Hebei Faction," he said.
Perhaps that was why the words came more easily now, rising from somewhere deep.
"Given our various positions, we cannot openly support the Eldest Young Master. But we deeply hope to continue maintaining good relations with him going forward. And…"
"And?"
Elder Paeng hesitated a moment, then decided to finish what he had begun.
"…Personally as well, I should very much like, someday, to see the Eldest Young Master become Young Clan Head."
It was an expression of pure goodwill, free of political calculation—words that even he himself felt were unlike a crafty old politician.
"Is that so…"
But pure goodwill answered pure goodwill. As if he could look straight into the man's heart, Yeon So-hyeon nodded without the slightest hesitation.
"I look forward to working with you."
"…Thank you."
He did not even know, precisely, what the thanks were for. All the same, Elder Paeng expressed his gratitude and began to step back.
"Then I shall take my leave—"
As if catching him by the scruff of the neck—
"Is that all you came for?"
—Yeon So-hyeon's words stopped him in his tracks.
"…What do you mean?"
Turning back, Elder Paeng asked, and Yeon So-hyeon asked again.
"I asked whether the only reason you came this far was that."
"…What else would there be?"
At that answer, the eyes visible through the holes of the mask narrowed into a faint curve.
"Your birth house, the Hebei Paeng Clan, has from ages past been a renowned family without peer when it comes to the saber."
"That is so, but…"
Yeon So-hyeon lifted a hand and pointed to the sword bound at Elder Paeng's waist—the well-worn blade that was his beloved weapon.
"And yet you, a man of the Paeng Clan's direct line, have entered this Sword House and walk about wearing a sword."
At those words, Elder Paeng fretted at his beloved weapon out of long habit. Into that silence, Yeon So-hyeon continued.
"Many elders who hesitated to come in person chose instead to send a proxy."
That was the ordinary choice. There was effectively no way to slip over Wongak-jeong's walls in secret, and bribing someone inside for a clandestine visit was likewise impossible.
"But you came to me yourself."
"If you turn back now, you may never have another chance like this."
At last the silent Elder Paeng opened his mouth, together with a long sigh.
"…I had heard a rumor that the Eldest Young Master could read the hearts of men."
He spoke with an awkward air.
"I am beginning to wonder whether it is true."
As if he had reached some resolve, he unbound the sword from his waist, took it in both hands, and offered Yeon So-hyeon a formal martial salute. The posture was more respectful than that of any warrior.
"This nameless martial artist, one Paeng, dares to request a single lesson from the Eldest Young Master of this house."
Before he was a politician of the Hebei Paeng Clan, before he was the head of a faction—he was a young man who bore the surname Paeng and yet had been captivated by the sword instead of his clan's saber, and had thrown himself into the Sword House.
In the rough waves of the world and the swamp of politics, the heart of a martial man that had grown old and rusted was beginning to beat again.
"Good…!"
Laughing in open satisfaction, Yeon So-hyeon tore off his mask and flung it into the sky.
"That is how a warrior of the Sword House ought to be."
Around them, those who recognized him cried out.
"That is—!"
"It is the Eldest Young Master…!"
Hands clasped behind his back, one hand extended forward, an arrogant smile settled across the face of the Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.
"I, the Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon, will accept your challenge."