Chapter 77
Chapter 77
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 77
Chapter Title: Line and Boundary
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### Part 2: Line and Boundary
Elder Yeom asked the martial chief, whose exhaustion was plain to see.
“So, how was it?”
The martial chief slumped into a chair and stuck out his tongue.
“Ugh, I can’t even put it into words. Punishments we hadn’t seen in public at headquarters for ages came pouring out like crazy…”
Elder Yeom shook with laughter, his massive frame heaving.
“Looks like Elder Huangfu, who oversaw the trials, was having the time of his life for once.”
“If he gets that excited twice more, even our headquarters warriors won’t be able to keep their sanity with what unfolds.”
The martial chief shook his head.
“Exactly. That’s the level needed for the ‘punish one, warn a hundred’ effect. How did the ones you brought back react?”
The martial chief held up both hands.
“Can’t you tell from how wiped out I am? The trainee warriors managed to walk back on their own two feet somehow, but those scholar types…”
Elder Yeom burst into loud guffaws.
“Now those fools won’t dare underestimate the Eldest Young Master again.”
“That’s for sure.”
The martial chief nodded.
“On the way back, I even heard rumors that ‘the Eldest Young Master killed all the inner pavilion housekeepers because they wouldn’t pay for the books.’”
He shrugged.
“At the very least, no one under us will ever utter the name ‘Swordless One’ again.”
Elder Yeom’s eyebrows twitched.
“…Rumors again?”
The martial chief looked up at him with a puzzled expression, as if he didn’t understand the question.
“With something this big happening, isn’t it natural for all sorts of rumors to spread?”
Elder Yeom leaned back.
“…This feels off. It seems the Eldest Young Master’s scheme isn’t over yet.”
“Scheme?”
“Gather all the advisors.”
* * *
Luoyang Sword Clan, Second Young Master’s faction.
Grand conference hall.
The young scholars, waiting for the regular meeting, clustered in small groups, chatting idly.
Their topic of conversation was, predictably, the Eldest Young Master.
A scholar whose face was pockmarked with acne spoke up.
“Hey, you hear about the book payment rumor?”
“Of course. They say the Swordless One lost it and mobilized the Inspection Department to ransack the inner pavilion.”
“Heard the Disciplinary Hall sent out two divisions too. They wrecked the place in just one night.”
“A bloodbath blew through the central plaza from morning on.”
“Look at that guy over there. He passed near the central plaza earlier, and his face is still pale as a ghost.”
“Ah, damn… What do we even call this? The Book Payment Fury Incident? Book Payment Massacre?”
A bit older-looking young scholars conversed off to one side.
“In the end, the Swordless One is still a legitimate direct descendant of headquarters. It was a predictable outcome.”
“Everything happened so fast, our side couldn’t do much about it.”
“I hear only the intelligence personnel are dropping like flies. They can’t even go home these days.”
On the other side, scholars nearing middle age were talking.
“But isn’t the Eldest Young Master currently in seclusion on orders from the Supreme Patriarch? Is it really okay for him to pull something like this?”
“If it’s an issue like that, the higher-ups will handle it themselves.”
“…And strictly speaking, it doesn’t even seem like the Eldest Young Master violated his seclusion.”
“True. This whole Sword Clan is his house—what’s the problem?”
“…So the logic is, he was just handling a problem that arose in his own house.”
At that moment, the front door of the conference hall burst open, and the room fell silent.
A long-bearded strategist hurried in through the open door.
“Everyone! Clear out of this conference hall! Now!”
At his words, they grumbled softly while packing up their things.
“Strategist, sir.”
“What?”
A middle-aged scholar at the front bowed and spoke.
“We have a regular meeting scheduled here soon. Is there some urgent matter?”
“Right now…”
As the long-bearded strategist opened his mouth to reply,
strategists began flooding in through the front door.
“What are these kids doing?! Haven’t you cleared the hall yet?!”
At one strategist’s shrill voice, the scholars snatched up their belongings in panic and bolted for the back door.
“Eek, it’s Chief Strategist Choi…!”
“Chief Strategist Han’s here too!”
“Run! Run!”
In an instant, the conference hall emptied like the tide going out.
“Seal off both front and back doors! Control the entire hall—no, the whole building!”
As warriors rushed in to tighten security, the lower-ranking strategists hurriedly tidied the conference hall and distributed confidential documents and reports to those seated.
“Um, what about preparing the tea…?”
At the question from the hall’s housekeeper, Chief Strategist Choi bellowed like thunder.
“Didn’t you hear me say the whole building’s under lockdown?! You lot get out of this building right now!”
Chief Strategist Choi slammed the front door shut right in the housekeeper’s face.
A strategist sitting in the back whispered with a smirk to the one beside him.
“That guy got stripped bare over the Fourth Young Master business, and now he’s taking it out on the whole neighborhood.”
“He was always a nasty piece of work, but now no one can rein him in. I hear all the kids under him want to head back to Jiangnan these days.”
Chief Strategist Choi spat fire from his mouth.
“Can’t you all stay quiet?!”
With his shout, the emergency meeting began.
A short-statured strategist took the podium to start proceedings.
“No one here could have failed to sense a problem with the Eldest Young Master’s actions.”
He held up a document.
“Those who haven’t read Chief Strategist Han Myeong-hwi’s emergency report yet—check it now.”
Even the strategists who had seemed relaxed up to that point grew serious.
* * *
“What’s the Third Young Master’s side reaction?”
One of the strategists handling the Third Young Master answered from his seat.
“They started an emergency meeting around the same time as us. It’s not just us taking this seriously.”
Another strategist spoke up.
“Then shouldn’t we verify that rumor from before, about the Eldest Young Master partnering with the Fourth Young Master on some business?”
“But all our ears on the Fourth Young Master’s side got ripped off…”
“We couldn’t get inside intel, but we still have people outside the Sword Clan monitoring the Fourth Young Master’s business activities, right?”
The strategists’ eyes flicked toward Chief Strategist Choi.
Chief Strategist Choi trembled as he spoke.
“Don’t look at me like that! They’re all tied up chasing Eldest Young Master rumors or the inner pavilion incident.”
The short-statured strategist nodded.
“That was decided in a previous meeting, so let’s move past it.”
“The intent matters first. We need to consider why the Eldest Young Master is making moves at this particular time.”
“We also need to analyze from multiple angles why he stayed silent until now.”
“Honestly, what does the Eldest Young Master gain by jumping into the successor race at this point?”
“Does he even have a chance to win?”
“By our calculations, the Eldest Young Master’s odds of victory are practically zero.”
“Then…”
“From now on, we need to ramp up the rumor campaign against the Eldest Young Master. Spread the infamy of the ‘Swordless One’ more aggressively…”
“Stuff like that stopped working the moment the parade of extreme punishments started in the central plaza today.”
“I know recent new maids joined Yuan Court Pavilion. Inner pavilion intel suggests we should consider they might be behind it…”
“Maid skirts fluttering? Did you leave your brains in Hangzhou after your vacation there?”
“What?!”
The debate raged fiercely for a while.
Lower-ranking strategists, eager to prove their worth, raised their voices without exception.
Higher-ranking strategists referenced the debate, occasionally steering it, while organizing their own thoughts.
“Let this strategist say a word.”
As Han Myeong-hwi stood, all eyes focused on him.
“All this stems from the Supreme Patriarch’s order to the Eldest Young Master being in that ambiguous form called ‘seclusion.’”
Chief Strategist Choi eyed Han Myeong-hwi resentfully but nodded.
“I agree. Seclusion isn’t a legally recognized punishment under the Sword Clan Codex.”
Another high-ranking strategist spoke.
“The interpretation as ‘discipline’ is arbitrary to begin with. It’s just inferred from the circumstances as an ‘order’ for seclusion.”
Han Myeong-hwi continued.
“That’s why, in my judgment, the Eldest Young Master is currently ‘testing the line.’”
“The line…”
A high-ranking strategist stroked his beard.
“Since seclusion imposes no legal restrictions, he’s trying moves…?”
“More precisely, he’s interpreting it as stepping along the line while expanding the scope of his activities.”
The conference hall fell silent for a moment.
The short-statured strategist rapped the podium.
“…If that interpretation holds, then the inner pavilion incident is just the beginning. But we should approach it from more perspectives for now.”
Han Myeong-hwi shook his head.
“The longer we wait, the more we lose any pretext to control his actions.”
Another high-ranking strategist nodded.
“If we respond now, we might still block him within the Sword Clan. But once he steps into Luoyang? Once he expands to the entire Henan Province?”
“What pretext do we have to stop him when he crosses the Yangtze?”
“Then shouldn’t we force him to halt activities from the start?”
“Strip him of successor eligibility altogether?”
The conference hall grew noisy.
At that point, a lower-ranking strategist cautiously spoke up.
“…If the Eldest Young Master goes that far, won’t the Supreme Patriarch who ordered the seclusion step in personally?”
The high-ranking strategists all shut their mouths at once.
They seemed to know something but said nothing about it.
All the strategists here were cleared for Second Young Master faction secrets, but Sword Clan headquarters secrets were another matter.
Wondering if he had offended them, the low-ranking strategist panicked.
“S-sorry…”
At that moment, the front door opened, and a sturdy old man appeared.
All the strategists rose and bowed to him.
The short-statured strategist stepped down from the podium to greet him on their behalf.
“We pay respects to the elder from headquarters.”
The old man raised a hand to accept their bows and scanned the room.
“Sorry about this. Can the non-chief strategists clear out?”
The real meeting was about to begin.