A Play: What He Wanted to Say
The black silk outer coat draped over Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon’s shoulders fluttered.
“What he wishes to say is this.”
“That, for the sake of offering even the slightest aid to our clan’s future—having uncovered the treason at the time—I took the opportunity to deal with every last one of your fellow disciples.”
Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon raised his hand and drew a slow line through the empty air.
“With my own hands, no less.”
Those gathered in the grand banquet hall, trapped in a silence so thick it threatened to choke them, suddenly caught the thick, metallic reek of blood.
“...By that, you mean...” The Grandmaster of the Gongdong Sect forced the words out with difficulty. “That the rumors of the Eldest Young Master personally causing that bloodbath more than ten years ago are true?”
Every gaze in the hall fixed upon Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.
Until this moment—officially or unofficially—Yeon So-hyeon had never once stated his position on the bloodshed.
Today was different.
“Indeed.”
The dam of held breath broke. A wave of murmurs surged through the assembly.
“So it really was the Eldest Young Master...?!”
“But at the time he was nothing more than a child not yet ten years old...!”
The whispering rolled like a tide across the broad banquet hall before the Eldest Young Master spoke again.
“To be a little more precise...”
For reasons unknown, today’s Eldest Young Master was recounting those events in his own calm, deliberate voice—something he never did.
“To be precise, the bloodshed did not come first. The traitors’ conspiracy came first.”
Yeon So-hyeon gave a light shrug, as though it were nothing.
“What I did then was simply fulfill the duty that fell to me as Eldest Young Master of this house. Whether so grand a name as ‘bloodbath’ is truly necessary for it... I cannot say.”
The faces of those present went pale.
The Eldest Young Master spoke as if it were trivial. Yet every one of them knew he understood better than anyone that the affair—when countless formidable power-holders had been swept away in a matter of days—could never be dismissed as nothing.
“...Those who vanished or suddenly retired to the countryside at the time...”
“There were rumors that most of them were in fact executed or imprisoned for treason. Was that true?”
“And that some of them still live, locked away even now in the clan’s underground dungeons whose location remains unknown?”
For more than a decade, ever since the Supreme Patriarch collapsed, the bloodbath had been the most whispered secret history of the Luoyang Sword House. Now they were hearing it from the very man who had written it.
“Is it true that the Sword Demon Elder did not ascend to immortality, but was in fact executed for his part in the conspiracy...?”
“Is the rumor true that the rebels who escaped purge at the time ultimately brought harm upon the Supreme Patriarch?!”
People shoved one another in their frenzy to press forward.
“Then... the story that the Supreme Patriarch had secretly left the main house at the time...?!”
Their mad rush was only natural.
“Because far too many of the clan’s power-holders were involved in the conspiracy, we had no choice but to conceal their fates in order to keep the house from convulsing.”
Today Yeon So-hyeon answered every question, one by one, in that same quiet, measured tone.
“Certainly some were imprisoned in the underground dungeons. Whether any of them still live to this day, I cannot say.”
“The Sword Demon Elder did not join the conspiracy. By chance he simply succumbed to illness around the same time.”
These were stories no one else could have told.
“The rebel faction was completely uprooted. The Supreme Patriarch—my father—falling ill had nothing to do with them.”
Yeon So-hyeon answered the final question.
“It is true that Father was away at the time.”
Still more questions poured forth, but most were either excessively sensitive or born of baseless rumor.
When the storm of inquiry finally passed, every eye settled on the one man who had remained rooted in place without a word: the Sect Master of Zhongnan.
“...Eldest Young Master.”
When he opened his mouth, his voice cracked under the weight of emotion.
“You... eliminated every one of my fellow disciples?”
At that heavy question even those who had been shoved to the rear ranks—still wearing expressions that said they had more to ask—chose, at least for this moment, to seal their lips tightly.
All eyes turned naturally to the Eldest Young Master.
How would he answer?
Yet the reply that left his lips was unexpectedly swift and light.
“Yes.”
“I myself ordered that your fellow disciples be seized, and I myself ordered their execution.”
The face of the Zhongnan Sect Master, already frozen beyond any further hardening, grew colder still.
A sudden chill ran through the assembly; bodies shivered of their own accord.
Wongak-jeong had already been cool enough to make one doubt it was summer. Now it felt as though a midwinter cold wave had crashed over them without warning.
Slowly a bitter smile formed on the Zhongnan Sect Master’s lips.
“They... my fellow disciples... were, as the Eldest Young Master says, inadequate in every respect.”
His voice was calm, yet his presence remained undiminished; no one present could relax.
“They called themselves Taoists, yet day after day they gave themselves over to wine and women. They called themselves martial artists, yet their training was forever secondary...”
A hollow laugh escaped him.
“That such men would even join a conspiracy...”
He looked up at the night sky over Wongak-jeong. It was heartlessly high and infinitely distant.
In that sky’s uncaring gaze, the truth was clear.
...I myself am no different from my fellow disciples.
In today’s Central Plains no banner could be raised without capital and power. Led by the Luoyang Sword House, the great clans that had accumulated both over long years now reigned. The efforts of previous generations of sect masters to preserve the values of the Taoist schools had, in the end, been swallowed by the very magic of capital and power they had sought to resist.
...I am no different at all.
The old Taoist remembered the previous spring—the voices he had heard during the unrest at the Yongbong-jihoe stadium construction site.
“Distribute the grain you promised us!”
“Please! Pay our wages!”
“Our families are starving!”
“Please...!”
He remembered turning his back on those desperate pleas.
I was not different in the slightest... not even a little...
His lips moved of their own accord.
“...Primordial Heavenly Lord...”
How long had it been since he last recited that Taoist true word? Even the name of the Primordial Heavenly Lord felt unfamiliar.
Then, as though coming to a sudden resolve, he spoke with a face that had aged in an instant.
“I am sorry.”
Thud.
He dropped to his knees.
“I am sorry, Eldest Young Master.”
He cast his entire body to the floor in full five-body prostration.
“Even at this late hour, I offer apology on behalf of Zhongnan.”
The fury he had displayed had been fury at himself—and shame at his own utterly disgraceful sect.
“And... thank you.”
His voice trembled.
“Thank you for doing in our place the work that Zhongnan should have done.”
“Thank you... thank you...”
The Eldest Young Master approached him slowly and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“It is all right.”
A smile touched his lips.
“It seems I chose well when I selected Zhongnan’s new Sect Master back then.”
A cool breeze swept through, carrying a rich fragrance of flowers among the gathered guests.
Some simply nodded. Others turned their gaze to the petals drifting through Wongak-jeong so no one would see their reddened eyes. Still others looked calmly up at the bright moon overhead.
Yet not everyone was convinced.
“...In the end it’s nothing more than the Eldest Young Master’s one-sided claim, isn’t it...?”
Among the Third Young Master’s faction—certain leaders belonging to the New Murim Alliance—whispers passed in the distant rear ranks.
“...Seems so.”
“Seizing the moment to use an old rumor and deify himself...?”
One man was watching their faces with careful attention: the former Sect Master of Diancang, who had escaped the Yongbong-jihoe site the previous spring by virtue of his peculiar survival instinct and keen senses, and who had already taken the Eldest Young Master’s hand.
Those who openly distrust him are few.
The bloodbath of more than a decade past. Finding anyone now who could corroborate it was no easy matter. Put a witness forward and the attack would simply shift onto that witness’s credibility; the witness himself would come under suspicion.
“Pure fabrication.”
“Agitation. One of the Eldest Young Master’s schemes.”
Yet almost no one in the grand banquet hall was listening to such talk.
The great majority were busy murmuring in admiration.
“...So the rumors that he was of a different caliber even as a child were true.”
“...Then is the rumor also true that he assisted the Patriarch in governing the clan from childhood?”
“...With that Eldest Young Master, it would hardly be surprising.”
The former Diancang Sect Master turned his gaze upon Yeon So-hyeon and let out a dry laugh.
The Eldest Young Master offered not a single proof today.
Ever since ending his seclusion he has done nothing but pile shock upon shock. Every step he has taken today—beginning with Jangro-won—has simply made it so that the majority cannot help but believe and trust whatever he says and does.
Did he deliberately leave only the useful talent alive to become Zhongnan’s Sect Master? Or did the present Sect Master simply prove useful enough that he never joined the conspiracy and therefore survived?
At this point no one can know.
“The floor is cold. Rise now, Sect Master.”
“No, Eldest Young Master...! I...!”
Looking at the benevolent expression on the Eldest Young Master’s face, another dry laugh escaped him unbidden.
...I cannot even begin to distinguish where the falsehood ends and the truth begins.
Instinctively he knew: beneath that kindly face that so resembled a celestial maiden lay an unprecedented monster wearing human skin.
Yet could one truly call that face false?
...It no longer matters.
The stone had already been cast.
Just as he had alerted the leaders of the Third Young Master’s New Murim Alliance organizations to the present situation and stirred them deeply with talk of the bloodbath—
I will simply perform the role assigned to me in this one-act play.
He stepped forward.
“Though late...!”
In a deliberately impassioned voice he cried out so all could hear.
“This Sect Master of Diancang has at last understood!”
Every gaze snapped to him at once. He unfastened the sword at his waist and raised it high.
“That the only one to whom this Diancang sword may be offered is none other than the rightful heir of this house—the Eldest Young Master...!”