The Hundred-Handed Giant God
The following day, early morning.
The Military Strategy Department of the Third Young Master's faction.
Just before dawn broke on the distant horizon.
Only the idle chirping of birds perched among the landscaping trees and rooftops of the department could be heard from time to time—the most peaceful hour of the day.
"The Great Young Master has disappeared?!"
The booming voice of a senior strategist on night duty shattered the quiet.
"...Huk?!"
"W-what's going on...?!"
Strategists who had been dozing right where they sat bolted upright in shock.
"Wasn't the festival still going strong inside and outside Wongak-jeong even at this hour?!"
They had no time even to rub the sleep from their eyes.
"Then why has the Great Young Master vanished?!"
The senior strategist's shout at the Intelligence Department courier shook the entire hall.
"The Great Young Master has disappeared...?"
Eyes flew wide. Sleep fled in an instant.
"What the hell is this nonsense?"
"Wasn't the Great Young Master's faction in the middle of a founding celebration banquet?"
"And the host just vanished without a trace? Isn't he simply still inside Wongak-jeong?"
Ignoring the rising murmur, the Intelligence courier bowed his head before the duty senior, cold sweat pouring down his face.
"W-well, the thing is..."
"It's not merely that we lost track of his movements within the main estate."
"Not merely?"
"...After compiling all available information. As of this moment, the Great Young Master appears to have left Luoyang entirely."
At that thunderbolt of news, the senior strategist's face went bone-white.
"Th-that can't be...?!"
Of all times for disaster to strike—why did it have to be on his watch?
"What in the world is this...?"
While the duty senior stood momentarily dazed, his subordinates swarmed the courier and pressed him hard.
"The Great Young Master—a surveillance target classified at the special grade—just walked out of the main estate?!"
"What the hell was the Intelligence Department doing?!"
The Intelligence Department had been hit by the same bolt from the blue.
"If he left Luoyang, there had to be some means of transport, didn't there?!"
Cornered and nearly devoured by their glares, the courier spoke in frantic haste.
"Th-the Great Young Master exited Luoyang by way of his own carriage, the Ironclad Fortress...!"
For every answer he gave, two or three more questions rained down from every side.
"The Ironclad Fortress was under watch, was it not?!"
"What exactly were the field agents watching?!"
The courier's face had gone ashen; he cried out desperately.
"The Ironclad Fortress had completed its routine maintenance as usual and was on a test run...! From field observation, not a single member of the Great Young Master's retinue was aboard!"
"...What did he just say?!"
At last the duty senior recovered enough of his wits to lunge at the man.
"So you're telling me the Great Young Master slipped out of Wongak-jeong alone somehow, somehow linked up with the carriage, and drove it out of Luoyang himself?!"
"There was no prior sign whatsoever! In the first place...!"
The courier, collar seized, choked and shouted.
"In the first place, the only reason we even realized the Great Young Master had left Luoyang is because his fully armed maid corps is right now leaving the main estate in armored carriages—we only caught on after the fact!"
"Direction?!"
The senior's grip on the courier's collar tightened.
"That direction isn't north, is it?!"
Please, he prayed, let it be nothing more than a casual outing. Into his desperate eyes came the clear sight of the courier shaking his head hard.
"Th-the Great Young Master's Ironclad Fortress is said to be heading north...!"
"Fuck...!"
The duty senior squeezed his eyes shut.
What the hell is happening...?!
By order of the two Grand Military Advisors and Namgung Hyeok-cheon, the Military Strategy Department had only begun formulating plans for intervention in the North last night.
And yet the Great Young Master has already set out northward...?！
That the Great Young Master would move had been well within the predictive range of both Grand Military Advisors; countermeasures were already being prepared. The problem was the speed—so abnormally swift it could no longer even be called a "response."
Just what...?!
That pace was not the Great Young Master's "reaction" to the Third Young Master's side. It could only be called a "preemptive strike" against them.
"Fuck..!"
The senior strategist could not help the curse that slipped out.
Does the Great Young Master truly possess eyes that see the future, just as the rumors claim...?!
Whenever they believed they had gained even a single step, the Great Young Master was already two steps ahead. Whenever they devised some sudden strategy that might overturn the board, he was already standing in the center of it, sneering down at them.
"Goddammit, Great Young Masterrr...!"
Bloodshot eyes that had stayed open all night now blazed as if ready to burst.
"That will be enough."
An elderly voice, dry and aged, reached the senior strategist's ear.
"S-Sama Dae-gunsa...!"
"Keh, kek...!"
The Intelligence courier, nearly strangled, collapsed to the floor, yet no one spared him a glance.
"When we first heard that the Imperial Court was taking an interest in the North, I thought perhaps... but..."
Like the rest of them, Sama Dae-gunsa had not slept; fatigue sat plain upon his face as he clicked his tongue.
"To think he has already secured even an imperial decree."
He brushed back his disheveled white hair and continued.
"I never imagined the Great Young Master would already be moving ahead of us on the northern problem...."
At those words—
"A-an imperial decree?"
The frozen duty senior snapped back to himself and asked Sama Dae-gunsa.
"What imperial decree, sir?"
"Intelligence that just arrived from the Imperial Capital."
The senior hastily unfolded the slip Sama Dae-gunsa handed him and read.
"...The Emperor has unilaterally granted the Great Young Master full authority over the North—we only learned of it after the fact."
Both the senior's voice and the hand holding the slip trembled.
"The ministers in the Imperial Presence protested strongly...?"
A hand suddenly shot out and snatched the note away.
"Wh-who...?!"
The senior nearly flared in temper—then saw the owner of the hand and stepped back at once.
"Jegal Dae-gunsa...!"
Looking as though he had only just woken from a light doze, Jegal Dae-gunsa read the note in silence. His face remained as composed as ever once he finished, yet the white hand that gripped the paper—tendons standing out—crumpled it beyond recognition.
"...To surpass even the worst-case assumption."
The movements the Great Young Master had shown—could they have been dual preparations for intervening in the North? His own ominous suspicion had not only proven correct; the moment it was confirmed that the Great Young Master had already moved even the Emperor himself—
"...The fact that the Great Young Master is currently"
After a long silence, Jegal Dae-gunsa spoke in a hoarse voice.
"heading north essentially alone means, in all likelihood—"
Sama Dae-gunsa finished the thought with a bitter expression.
"In all likelihood, he has already prepared every element necessary to intervene even while acting alone."
Had it been anyone else, other interpretations might have been possible.
But—
"...Nine times out of ten, no."
Jegal Dae-gunsa corrected himself.
"Ten times out of ten. It is certainly so."
When the opponent was that Great Young Master, words such as "perhaps" or "what if" were unnecessary.
"...Even so."
Watching him, Sama Dae-gunsa spoke in a soothing tone.
"We are only a day behind, yet we have succeeded in reading the Great Young Master's movements."
Until now the Great Young Master had always moved in ways no one expected—and the two Grand Military Advisors had been no exception.
"We are gradually adapting to the speed of the Great Young Master's thinking."
Since the end of his confinement, the Great Young Master had placed so many pieces upon the board that it was hard to believe they belonged to a single man. And precisely because of that, they had been able to analyze and re-analyze without end.
"Next time, we will catch up without fail."
Neither Grand Military Advisor needed to issue orders.
"We must predict which highway the Great Young Master's Ironclad Fortress will take!"
"If we analyze the volume of supplies secured by the maid corps, we can forecast where they will take on provisions!"
"...What is the pursuit report from Intelligence?!"
Awake since the earliest hours of dawn, the Military Strategy Department seethed and boiled like the interior of a blast furnace.
"Our Military Strategy Department is not the slapdash Jiangnan Private Corps of the Second Young Master's side."
They were an organization with history—one that had long maintained the order of the murim. The Military Strategy Department of the Wulin Alliance.
"By now the Third Young Master..."
Sama Dae-gunsa approached the map hanging on the wall.
"will already have received word from Elder Namgung Hyeok-cheon and set out for the North."
His hand indicated the Third Young Master's point of departure.
"He is starting from a position far farther north than the Great Young Master, so he will arrive first as well."
Sama Dae-gunsa gave a little shrug.
"We can still say our side holds the initiative."
Yet Jegal Dae-gunsa's expression remained rigid.
"Moreover."
Sama Dae-gunsa smiled at him.
"The Great Young Master's regular forces can move only after receiving permission from Jangro-won. Ours need not, yes?"
His hand traveled across the map, tapping Mount Hua, Wudang, and the Namgung Clan.
"As you know, these will reach the North ahead of the Great Young Master's forces. And..."
Next he rapped the northern region.
"the Yayul tribe, whose home ground the North already is, have been on the move for quite some time..."
Removing his hand from the map, Sama Dae-gunsa turned back to Jegal Dae-gunsa with a smile.
"All we need do is concentrate, just as we are now, on keeping pace with the Great Young Master's thinking."
He accepted a teacup, lifted the lid, and savored the fragrance before continuing.
"The larger the body grows, the slower its movements become."
He spoke with finality.
"The Great Young Master's bulk is likewise increasing. The speed of his organization can only grow more sluggish with time."
It was a truth those who had once controlled countless organizations simultaneously in the old Wulin Alliance's Military Strategy Department understood better than anyone.
"Indeed, that is so."
The strategists listening nearby nodded in agreement.
"There is no way to control hundreds of arms and hundreds of legs at the same time."
"And on top of that, each of those limbs has its own thinking head—that is what organizations are."
"The greatest reason the Great Young Master could make such agile, unpredictable moves until now is simply that his body was still light."
Then—
"...However."
Jegal Dae-gunsa broke his silence.
"What if, for instance."
His expression remained as hard as stone.
"What if the Great Young Master has not yet even begun to show the true speed of his thought..."
With the light at his back, the gloomy shadow that covered his face slowly turned toward Sama Dae-gunsa.
"What if, until now, he has simply lacked enough pieces to move. And what if, the more organizations he possesses—the larger his bulk becomes, the more limbs he gains—"
Jegal Dae-gunsa's voice cracked.
"his movements only grow faster still."
The eyes of the man once hailed as a genius, who had risen to Grand Military Advisor at so young an age, were trembling.
"What if he was born from the start a giant god capable of freely commanding a hundred arms and legs? What then?"
His question ended. Only silence answered.
It was Sama Dae-gunsa who broke it.
"You, of all people."
He gave a dry chuckle.
"Having too much imagination can be a problem at times like this. Your stomach is empty, so pessimistic thoughts are rising."
He clapped Jegal Dae-gunsa on the shoulder.
"It is still early, but let us go and take some breakfast at least."
Ordinarily Jegal Dae-gunsa would have followed the counsel of a man who had accumulated several times his own experience.
"...No."
"Hm?"
Today was different.
"I will set out for the North even now."
If he left at once, he would not arrive much later than the Great Young Master.
"Brother Jegal..."
"I know outstanding men are already attending the Third Young Master."
Jegal Dae-gunsa spoke with eyes full of resolve.
"But this time I must face the Great Young Master myself, on the ground."
He turned on his heel.
"I can no longer afford to fall behind him."