Omens of Ruin and Defeat
“In a single day, the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House, Yeon So-hyeon, solved the grain crisis of the Northern Grand General’s Office.”
That rumor had already spread as far as the market floors of Shenyang, the city where the Moyong Family held its seat.
“Have you heard?”
“Heard it? Of course I’ve heard it. They say the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House opened the Northern Grand General’s Office’s throat with one stroke!”
“Astounding. Truly astounding.”
“What with the talk of the Terror King becoming the new Grand General, I’d even started learning that useless northern tongue. Lucky break, that.”
As the merchants fretted and gushed, another, still packing away his stall, slipped into the conversation with a sly look.
“…But hold on. Does any of that actually make sense to you?”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“It was only a single day.”
The man who had cut in wore an expression of open suspicion as he went on.
“A grain problem that could be fixed in a day—and the Northern Grand General’s Office couldn’t solve it all this time? That doesn’t strike you as strange?”
“Well…”
“Hmm…”
One of the excited merchants twitched his brows and scratched at his beard.
“…There’s something we don’t know, surely.”
“So what are you trying to say?”
The merchant who had raised the doubt only shrugged.
“Rumors are always the same. Either it’s pure nonsense, or it’s been blown all out of proportion.”
“No—what I heard was—”
The man who had first spoken tilted his head.
“My nephew came through the Northern Grand General’s Office on a trading run at dawn. He said he saw carts loaded with grain rolling in one after another…”
“Then it wasn’t a complete lie. Just exaggeration, then?”
At that moment—
“Clear the road!”
“Out of the way!”
Warning shouts rang out. From behind them, warhorses in uncommon heavy armor thundered past in a tight column, and the carriage they seemed to be escorting tore straight down the avenue after them.
“Oof!”
“…That direction’s toward the Moyong Family. Something big happening, you think?”
“Big, my foot…”
The merchant who had been doubting the Eldest Young Master’s rumor—and who had overturned his own stall and landed on his backside in the process—got up grumbling.
“Day in and day out they get pushed around by the Terror King without a peep, but with us they’re the lords of the earth…”
Leaving the eternal pessimist behind them, the other two merchants lifted their eyes and followed the end of the procession with their gazes.
“…Even if the rumor was padded a little, I hope it holds.”
“…One way or another, I just hope that Eldest Young Master fellow does right by us.”
Neither of those merchants could have imagined it.
That the very procession they were watching belonged to the Eldest Young Master whose name they had just been bandying about.
And of course they couldn’t. Who would ever think that the man who had arrived only yesterday and solved the Northern Grand General’s Office’s greatest crisis would already be rolling into Shenyang by morning?
The Moyong Family.
The Grand Assembly Hall.
Unlike those out on the streets arguing over half-heard rumors—
“…Is the information solid?”
“It has been cross-checked, yes.”
Certainly the central figures of the Moyong Family possessed far more reliable intelligence.
And yet—
“Grain secured or not! The Terror King’s victory is already certain!”
“Don’t talk rubbish!”
—the way they conducted themselves was worse than the stall merchants of the marketplace.
Elder Moyong Wan, widely known as one of the Moyong Family’s leading pro–Terror King figures, raised his voice.
“You all know this already, do you not?!”
He surged to his feet and clenched a fist.
“Through the Great Co-Prosperity strategy, the Terror King has promised us more than mere survival for our house!”
His face was flushed scarlet; spit flew as he shouted.
“He has promised to restore the brilliant glory of the Moyong Family’s past!”
He looked ready to climb onto the conference table itself.
“Zhongyuan treated us like criminals after the northern war, even though we earned shining merit there—Zhongyuan is the one we must cast aside now!”
Behind him his fervent supporters within the clan clapped and roared approval at every line.
“Hear, hear!”
“We should abandon Zhongyuan first!”
“The union of the Great Yelü Clan and our Moyong Family! Under the banner of Great Co-Prosperity, a new history beginning in the north!”
Caught up in his own rhetoric, Elder Moyong Wan’s chest swelled; the finger he thrust toward the ceiling gathered force.
“That is the great milestone our Moyong Family must advance toward!”
The Grand Assembly Hall, built on a scale that mirrored the family’s history itself, rang with the ecstatic cheers of the supporters packed behind him.
“A new history!”
“A great milestone!”
“Great Co-Prosperity! Great Co-Prosperity!”
“Moyong Wan! Moyong Wan!”
Toward those who were roaring as if they meant to bring the roof down, the Grand Speaker—dressed in the formal robes of the days when the Moyong had been a royal house—bellowed for order.
“Silence! Silence!”
“Elder Moyong Wan! Quiet them at once, or the lot of you will be expelled from this hall!”
“Ha-ha-ha.”
Elder Moyong Wan shrugged and waved a helpless hand toward his people; they answered with a long, mocking chorus of boos aimed at the Speaker before finally taking their seats.
“Next! Next! Elder Moyong Chusan—proceed!”
The Grand Speaker brought the gavel down hard enough to risk breaking it. Elder Moyong Chusan began at once.
“Joining hands with the Terror King is folly!”
When cries of “Hear, hear!” rose around him, he sprang to his feet and shouted.
“And that so-called Great Co-Prosperity strategy is pure fantasy from start to finish!”
“Boooo—!”
“Come to your senses, Elder Moyong Chusan!”
Jeers erupted from Moyong Wan’s side.
“You are the ones who need to come to your senses!”
Furious, he raised his voice still higher.
“We surrender the Grand General’s seat! We surrender the northern army! And once we are nothing but an empty shell—why in the world would the Terror King continue to treat the Moyong Family with any respect?!”
His own supporters applauded with zeal.
“That’s right!”
“Exactly so!”
Moyong Wan’s faction answered with even louder mockery.
“Nonsense!”
“Is Elder Moyong Chusan insulting our Moyong Family?!”
“Great Co-Prosperity is our future!”
The protests from Moyong Wan’s side made further progress impossible. The Grand Speaker’s gavel crashed again and again.
“Elder Moyong Wan!”
At that roar, Moyong Wan made a placating gesture toward his people, then turned with a dry laugh. “Heh. Well now.”
“Then tell us,” he said to Moyong Chusan. “What brilliant alternative does Elder Moyong Chusan propose?”
“Of course.”
Moyong Chusan answered without a second’s hesitation.
“Our Moyong Family must not kneel to the Terror King. We must join the New Martial Alliance of the Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House!”
He was of the pro–New Martial Alliance faction.
“That’s right!”
“Exactly!”
The elders who backed him supplied the chorus, and Moyong Chusan launched into a vigorous oration.
“If we join hands with the Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House, we can effectively check the Terror King—who is set to become an absolute ruler over this northern land—and at the same time!”
He drew a breath and pressed on.
“The path to the prosperous south, rather than this barren north, will open wide before us!”
He thrust a clenched fist high.
“This is the chance for the Moyong Family to become a great house not merely of the north, but of all Zhongyuan!”
His supporters answered with thunderous applause.
“A great house!”
“Not of the north—of Zhongyuan! The great Moyong Family!”
As if determined to crush that momentum, Moyong Wan of the pro–Terror King camp stepped forward.
“That is the real nonsense!”
“If we take the hand of the Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House, we will no longer deal with the Terror King as equals. We will be jerked about by the Terror King’s ally—the Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House!”
“You’re the one who should stop spouting rubbish!”
Moyong Chusan of the pro–New Martial Alliance jabbed a finger at him.
“Order! Order! Maintain order!”
The Grand Assembly Hall slid into uncontrollable chaos—exactly as it always did.
“How dare an old man point fingers?!”
“Old man?! Did you just speak down to me?! In this sacred assembly chamber?!”
The pro–Terror King elders and the pro–New Martial Alliance elders, who together made up nearly half the hall, tangled in the middle of the floor in an ugly brawl.
“This bastard’s grabbing my collar?!”
“What?! Who are you calling bastard?!”
“Guards! Guards!”
And watching it all as if it were a fire on the far bank of the river, a few elders of the minority factions clicked their tongues in open contempt.
“Fine work. Tsk, tsk.”
“They’ve all lost their minds. Completely unhinged.”
They muttered among themselves.
“Whether it’s the Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House or the Terror King, the future looks equally unstable, doesn’t it?”
“…Then what if we, among ourselves at least, chose Haedong instead?”
“Certainly…”
They, too, were thinking of nothing more than selling the family for continued wealth and glory.
“If we can persuade the tribes that were once our allies and bring them with us, Haedong will surely welcome us.”
“Their borders have grown just as unsettled with the Terror King’s sudden rise…”
Once the great ship that was the Moyong Family began to sink, every last scrap of reason vanished. The crew not only prepared to abandon ship—they were already calculating how to strip the costly ornaments from the cabins and sell them on the way out.
“ENOUGH!”
But of course, men of that stamp were not the only ones in the Grand Assembly Hall.
CRASH!
“Come to your senses, all of you!”
An elderly elder smashed his desk to pieces as he rose from his seat. Elder Eulji-hwang roared with the force of a man coughing up blood.
“Have none of you heard the news that the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House solved the Northern Grand General’s Office’s grain shortage in a single day?!”
Eulji-hwang was a former general of the Grand General’s Office who had laid down his command baton and risen to the rank of elder of the Moyong Family.
“This is not the moment to decide whom we should bow to and how! That grain crisis is something our Moyong Family could have solved from the beginning if we had only chosen to help!”
At his appeal, a few elders nodded faintly.
“Therefore we should first decide how we will aid the Grand General’s Office, even now—!”
The retired old general never finished the sentence.
“You are not even of Moyong blood—know your place and do not interfere!”
“A military man without proper learning, kicking up a fuss!”
The very elders of the pro–Terror King and pro–New Martial Alliance camps who had been at each other’s throats a moment earlier now raised their voices as one.
“Grand Speaker!”
“Will you simply watch while he destroys the furnishings of the Grand Assembly Hall and creates a disturbance?!”
The Grand Speaker, a direct-blood member of the Moyong line, slammed the gavel in a towering rage.
“What are the guards doing?! Drag Elder Eulji-hwang out at once!”
Until that moment the guards had only stood gaping at the chaos raised by the Moyong bloodkin. Now they swarmed Elder Eulji-hwang and subdued him in an instant.
“Come to your senses! I beg you!”
Elder Eulji-hwang shouted as he was hauled away.
“Now that the urgent grain crisis is resolved, the Acting Family Head will soon descend upon the main house!”
His voice grew fainter as the distance from the Grand Assembly Hall increased.
“When that person returns, do you truly believe you will be forgiven?!”
Listening to that voice, the elders only sneered at him.
“Idiot.”
“Acting Family Head, indeed…”
“That one who knows nothing but the command tents—do you really think they would abandon the front lines?”
“With the grain problem solved, they’re probably holding a festival and handing out the stores even as we speak.”
Blunt, contemptuous words. Open laughter.
“Even if they did return, how many voices in this house would still listen?”
So this is how a thousand years of Moyong history ends.
“…How bitter.”
Just as Elder Eulji-hwang, being dragged out, was about to hang his head—
“Urgent report!”
A messenger brushed past him and burst into the Grand Assembly Hall.
“What is it?!”
At the Grand Speaker’s demand the messenger gasped out his report between ragged breaths.
“T-the Acting Family Head and the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House have just arrived at the main estate!”