Same Bed, Different Dreams
Four shichen from the Moyong Family’s main estate.
Beneath a sky without a single cloud, the horizon itself seemed to dance, shimmering and warping in the heat haze. Along the highway, where even a scrap of shade was nowhere to be found, the wind that raced unobstructed down the dirt road was nowhere near enough to blunt the heat.
“Hah… hah…”
A long column of martial artists in white combat robes rode in formation, enduring the full cruelty of the sun.
“What did you say…?”
A middle-aged man who appeared to be the column’s commander bared his teeth and asked in a low voice.
“Say that again.”
An uncommon presence. Qi rolling behind furrowed eyes. And on his combat robes, plum blossom motifs embroidered in fine gold thread. Anyone living in the Central Plains would have known at a glance who these people were.
The Huashan Sect.
They were the vanguard of Huashan—the force that had joined hands with Yeon Jeok-gwang, Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House.
Gam Woo-hyeon, commander of the vanguard and Head Disciple of Huashan, spoke with a snarl.
“Do you have any idea how much time we wasted detouring around Shenyang just to avoid the Moyong Family’s seat?”
His temper was that foul.
“And now—suddenly—we are to march on the Moyong Family itself…?”
Even with the wind momentarily still, his robes trembled under the force of his aura alone.
“Th-that is…”
The disciple who had received the message by messenger hawk shook from head to toe under that pressure.
“I-I am only… delivering…”
He could barely get the words out. There was no way an ordinary disciple could withstand the aura of a man who had broken through the wall long ago.
“Senior Brother.”
A middle-aged woman spurred her horse between them.
“No matter how much you lose your temper and browbeat the boy, what is he supposed to know?”
Even past her prime, she was a beauty as brilliant as a plum blossom in full bloom.
“Deputy Leader Mae Ok.”
Gam Woo-hyeon’s brow knotted still tighter at the sound of her name.
“Did I not tell you that here you are to address me not as Senior Brother, but as Captain of the Vanguard?”
“Yes, yes. As you say.”
The woman called Mae Ok answered halfheartedly and took the ciphered dispatch from the disciple.
“Deputy Lea—!”
“My, my.”
As if plugging his mouth before he could raise his voice, Mae Ok clicked her tongue and spoke first.
“It is not just anyone. This is a request from Sama Dae-gunsa himself.”
She frowned slightly at the Grand Military Advisor’s seal stamped clearly on the cipher.
“He is too great a figure to simply ignore.”
She flicked her fingers lightly.
With a whoosh, the cipher burst into flame.
Samadhi True Fire
“A great figure?”
Gam Woo-hyeon snorted.
“Is he not the old man who could not even stop the Wulin Alliance from being smashed to pieces and dissolved?”
“No. On the contrary—it is precisely because Sama Dae-gunsa was there that the Wulin Alliance held out as long as it did.”
Mae Ok answered him point for point, yielding not a single word.
Are those two at it again?
They never seem to tire of it…
The disciples of Huashan, wary of sparks flying their way, quietly urged their exhausted mounts farther off.
“If our vanguard continues its present march,” Gam Woo-hyeon said, raising a hand toward the north, “we will reach the Gong King’s domain ahead of the Wudang Sect, Deputy Leader Mae Ok.”
Huashan and Wudang. Who arrived first to join the Gong King was no mere matter of sequence. It was a question of pride between two great sects—and if they reached him before Wudang, Gam Woo-hyeon would have earned merit before the real fighting even began.
“That much is true.”
She creased the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and offered a captivating, smiling glance.
“The decision rests with Captain Gam Woo-hyeon. Decide as you please. I have merely offered the counsel a deputy leader ought to give.”
For all their earlier clash, she was the first to lower her head and step back.
“Nonsense.”
Others might have been taken in—but Gam Woo-hyeon was not fooled by that dry, emotionless smile of hers.
“If I order it, the disciples of the vanguard will swear they never saw Sama Dae-gunsa’s cipher. But not you, Mae Ok.”
The Mae Ok he knew was nothing like her brilliant exterior. Beneath that skin lived a starved wolf, drooling for the kill.
“You will keep your mouth shut—until something goes wrong at the Moyong Family. Then you will go scurrying to Master. Am I wrong?”
“My word…!”
Deputy Leader Mae Ok made a show of covering her lips with her collar, feigning shock.
“If Senior Brother kicks away the seat of the next Sect Leader, someone has to take it in his place. Why not me?”
She shrugged with brazen calm. Gam Woo-hyeon ground his teeth.
“…You jackal.”
“Such harsh words for a flower of a junior sister.”
Even as she spoke so lightly, Mae Ok clicked her tongue inwardly in irritation.
Sharp-eyed serpent of a man.
The place of Head Disciple was not something just anyone could claim. For all that Gam Woo-hyeon looked every inch a born martial artist, his political instincts were formidable.
“What of the ranging?!”
The disciple on scout duty reported at once.
“Four shichen to the Moyong Family!”
Gam Woo-hyeon tapped his scabbard, sorting his thoughts.
“…I hear the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House is at the Moyong Family.”
“The Eldest Young Master, you mean?”
He licked his lips as if a feast had been set before him. Mae Ok cut in.
“They say his stratagems reach the heavens—and that his martial skill is no less monstrous. They also say he is an extraordinary beauty. Will you not suffer by comparison when you meet him, Captain?”
An obvious provocation. This time, Gam Woo-hyeon took the bait.
“Even so, he is still a green boy who has not yet reached twenty.”
Overwhelming real combat experience. Countless life-and-death struggles. The seat of Huashan’s Head Disciple was not handed out for free. His confidence was absolute.
“Just because a man is born with a little talent and breaks through the wall earlier than others—does that make him a true master?”
“True enough.”
Rarely, Mae Ok agreed with him.
“I hear the Sword House’s Third Young Master has also broken through the wall this time. Perhaps…”
Under the blazing sun her skin still looked glass-clear and translucent for her age—but beneath the light cosmetics, her flesh was a lattice of old scars.
“…what the Sword House calls a master may fall somewhat short of Huashan’s standard.”
At that, Gam Woo-hyeon grinned and let a thick killing intent rise.
“Then the Eldest Young Master’s head will be more than enough. The hour has come to avenge Elder Geomgun’s humiliation.”
No one in Huashan had forgotten the day their Geomgun fell to the Luoyang Sword House’s Geomakpasan.
“Proud disciples of Huashan!”
Gam Woo-hyeon drew his sword and raised it high.
“This war will begin at the Moyong Family—and the first merit will belong to our vanguard! Our target is the Eldest Young Master of the Sword House!”
He knew exactly how to fire Huashan’s disciples.
“Avenge the humiliation!”
With a roar of voices, the column wheeled and broke into a gallop.
Waaaaaaaaah!
“…….”
Deputy Leader Mae Ok rode with them—but her mind was elsewhere.
There is no way the Moyong Family will be cleaned up that quickly.
Other thoughts filled her head.
Sama Dae-gunsa’s request was thick with urgency and warning.
She could not erase the single thread of doubt still lodged in her mind.
‘Hold until I arrive’—what on earth did that mean?
Her gaze turned beyond the horizon.
Is that Eldest Young Master truly so formidable…?
The Neutral Tribe Alliance.
“So.”
A belly like a mountain rolled with every movement, though his vast frame made it look almost modest.
“The Moyong Family has gone straight into civil war?”
He had not the slightest interest in the subordinates who had died at the Moyong Family’s main gate. Tearing a great mutton haunch free with one hand, he sucked the grease from his fingers with loud, wet relish.
“That is so, Alliance Leader.”
Neither the Gong King’s man nor the Northern Great General’s—Mal-daljae, Alliance Leader of the Neutral Tribe Alliance, known as Red Eyeball, regarded the reporting general with a look of pure incredulity.
“…In this situation. Instead of absorbing power as fast as possible and minimizing the damage—they are continuing the civil war?”
“That is so.”
He scratched his head, smearing the meat grease still on his thick fingers straight into his hair.
“And you say Moyong Un-jeong is the one who made that decision?”
“That is so.”
Alliance Leader Mal-daljae asked, doubtful.
“Did the Northern Great General’s command and the Gong King sign a peace treaty while I was not looking?”
“They did not.”
“And yet they keep the civil war going in this situation?”
His expression grew still more baffled.
“…Has Moyong Un-jeong finally cracked under the pressure?”
His general answered with the same blank face as always.
“I do not know.”
“Haaa…”
With a sigh, Alliance Leader Mal-daljae sank into thought for a moment—then, as usual, began stuffing meat into his mouth again.
Watching him, the general asked,
“The Gong King’s side is requesting our intervention, offering enormous compensation. Will you accept?”
He swallowed the half-chewed mutton, let out a burp thick with the reek of fermented mare’s milk, and shook his head.
“No.”
“Then will you demand payment from the Acting Great General in exchange for aiding her?”
“No, no. Your arithmetic is far too simple, my friend.”
Alliance Leader Mal-daljae waggled thick fingers heavy with rings.
“The Gong King is blocked by the Northern Great General’s forces and cannot intervene directly. Moyong Un-jeong will end up coming to us for help first.”
“The Acting Great General… first?”
Alliance Leader Mal-daljae chuckled, heh heh.
“The Moyong Family’s main estate is a fortress built for war. Even when they fight inside it, the interior of a fortress is still a fortress.”
He shifted his finger to the wall, where a plan of the Moyong Family’s inner layout hung.
“In that situation, what does she need if she wants to crush the rebels quickly?”
The general nodded in understanding.
“…Numbers, and siege engines.”
“And those numbers and siege engines?”
“Cannot be pulled from the front lines—not with the Gong King there.”
“Exactly…!”
Mal-daljae laughed, his jowls shaking.
“Huashan and Wudang, having joined hands with the Sword House’s Third Young Master, will already be racing this way the moment they hear the news. So…”
He let out a magnificent, cheerful fart and continued.
“In the end, Moyong Un-jeong will have no choice but to ask us for help. She is running out of time.”
Then he went right back to chewing, chomp chomp.
“In that case,” the general said without the faintest change of expression, “the Gong King’s side, which fundamentally does not trust people of the Central Plains, will also have no choice but to hire us at an even higher price than now.”
“That is precisely it!”
Mal-daljae slapped his own belly.
“Moyong Un-jeong or the Gong King—whichever it is, we send the mercenary corps to whoever pays more!”
The Moyong Family.
“Troops and siege engines, you say?”
Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon asked.
“Yes, Eldest Young Master.”
With no other eyes or ears present, Moyong Un-jeong could speak a little more honestly of her weakness.
“And not merely elite infantry—true martial artists. That is what the situation demands.”
Even now, her drastic course of action was drawing many within the Moyong Family to her side. Even so, the numbers were short.
“Without siege engines, time will not be our ally either.”
She frowned as she spoke.
“Defenses that solid… I have already killed their ringleaders, but it seems they prepared far more thoroughly than I expected.”
Watching her sit beside him and let out a small, almost petulant sigh, Yeon So-hyeon thought of the woman she had been.
“All of it will be all right.”
Moyong Un-jeong knew the circumstances bound up with Yeon So-hyeon’s Cheonsal-seong. Because of that, she had always borne everything alone.
But…
It is different now.
Yeon So-hyeon smiled.
Things have changed.
“Eldest Young Master…?”
When Yeon So-hyeon rose from his seat with that smile still on his face, Moyong Un-jeong rose after him by pure reflex.
“Proper martial artists and siege engines.”
He opened the window. In the distance, the wreckage of the Moyong Family’s main gate—still a shambles—came into view.
“How convenient.”
“…Pardon?”
His answer came in another form.
“--------!”
“--------!”
With thunderous bellows, two spirit beasts smashed through the debris of the gate that had yet to be cleared, charging in.
Kakakakang!
A colossal wagon of solid black ironwood, its steel wheels throwing sparks.
“That is…?!”
Moyong Un-jeong’s eyes went wide as she recognized it.
“Lady Medicine Fairy’s Ironclad Fortress…!”
And on the driver’s bench of that wagon—
“Slow down, you damned mad oxen…!”
—Tal-myeong-gwi-geom hauled on the reins, desperately shouting as he tried to impose some measure of control on spirit beasts that refused to be controlled.