172. Friend (3)
Friend (3)
172. Friend (3)
As we moved from the reception room to the bedroom, Gyeong Su-yeon and Murong Rin walked glued to either side of me. I'd thought it would feel like being a harem master with beautiful childhood friends flanking me, but it actually felt like being a prisoner under escort. On the way, I caught Lee Eun-ha's eye. That face that already knew everything. Since she knew about my relationships with these two, she must have been bothered by them from the start and eavesdropped from the next room. Leaving behind Lee Eun-ha's happy smile, I headed with them to the prepared bedroom.
The wine and dishes Jeong-hyang had brought earlier were laid out in the bedroom, and we unhurriedly sat down at the table first.
"This is genuinely good. It's not the least bit inferior to the cooks at the main house."
Murong Rin nodded as she tasted Lee Eun-ha's cooking. Gyeong Su-yeon also took a bite of the food and looked quite astonished.
"A martial artist made this?"
"Yeongsan Sect's third disciple. Lee Eun-ha. She's a master not only of profound internal energy but of all kinds of cooking and pharmacology. Grandfather said she's a talent from Yeongsan Sect he absolutely wants to recruit away."
"Lee Eun-ha? That's an unusual name."
"They say she's from Joseon."
"Ah... Now that you mention it, Young Master Baek, you enjoyed that spicy, peculiar Joseon food at the Baek Clan Estate too, didn't you?"
Peculiar, my ass. Joseon kimchi was treated as some bizarre food at the time, but give them a few hundred years and they'd insist kimchi was Chinese.
"But you're something else, aren't you? A virgin, and here you are sharing a bed with another woman and a man?"
Murong Rin spoke cheerfully, downing a cup of wine.
"Honestly, I'm nervous. Young Master Baek has a lot of experience with women, but I don't know anything. You're the surprising one, actually. I never imagined someone as prideful as you would get into bed with another woman."
Gyeong Su-yeon also drank a cup of wine and spoke candidly.
"To be honest, I'm surprised too. I've enjoyed myself with plenty of men, but I'm no courtesan or prostitute. The thought of coupling with a man alongside another woman—I couldn't have even imagined it before. But Young Master Baek is worth it."
I was the most surprised of all. By now I'd grown more accustomed to orgies than one-on-one sex, but I never expected Murong Rin, of all people, to do a threesome with Gyeong Su-yeon. The two women downed their wine with hearty gusto, a far cry from the murderous atmosphere earlier. I suddenly remembered Gyeong Su-yeon back at the Baek Clan Estate, collapsing into a giggling mess after a single cup.
"Hold on. You're terrible with alcohol, remember? Aren't you going to pass out after drinking that?"
"I built up my tolerance while I was in the Central Plains. I drank with the Mount Tai Sect's servants every day and learned. I always wanted to share a cup with you someday, Young Master Baek, since you love wine so much, but it would all be for nothing if I couldn't hold my liquor."
Come to think of it, the way she drank looked very practiced. Servant's work in a martial sect was brutally hard. Maybe she'd been getting through the pain of that labor with alcohol all this time.
"Speaking of which, that guy Dan-yeong. He turned down a daughter of the Jinju Eon Clan and has been pining for Lady Yeon-hwa instead."
"The Junior Manor Head is interested in Yeon-hwa? She'll be thrilled."
"But it's a bit complicated. Since you've joined Mount Tai Sect, Lady Yeon-hwa has to become the successor to Gyeongse Sect, right? If she marries into our family, Gyeongse Sect loses its successor."
"Gyeongse Sect... Does it really need to exist? Clinging so desperately to its survival. Will Yeon-hwa's daughter someday have to give her body to the Junior Manor Head's son too? Our Gyeongse Sect. We call ourselves a martial sect, but the martial arts we learned from the Baek Clan Estate haven't advanced at all. We can't grow any further, stuck in a corner of Jilin. Does a Gyeongse Sect like that really need to keep on existing?"
She spoke my own thoughts aloud, wearing a bitter smile. She and I were both precious children of Jilin once, but now, having come to know the Central Plains' martial world, our eyes saw the world differently. I supposed that was why people said you had to play in the big waters.
"I think the same. That's why I told Dan-yeong to take Lady Yeon-hwa as his wife and swallow up Gyeongse Sect."
"That's a good idea."
Into the amiable atmosphere, Murong Rin slammed her wine cup hard onto the table with an irritated edge and glared at us.
"If the Baek Clan Estate, after swallowing Gyeongse Sect, ends up sticking close to the Tang Clan going forward, the loss will be incalculable. So both Young Master Baek and Gyeong Su-yeon have to absolutely cooperate with me in becoming the Young Clan Head."
"Me? With what ability?"
Murong Rin always tried to use anyone. At the mention of her own name, Gyeong Su-yeon looked dumbfounded.
"Aren't you the Head Disciple of Mount Tai? Seize control of Mount Tai and build up your strength. I'll help if needed. It's a sect with sufficient foundation, and you've recovered the lost ultimate arts, so Mount Tai will revive quickly. So Mount Tai has to put pressure on the neighboring Huangfu Clan."
"The Huangfu Clan?"
"My second older brother secretly made a pact with Huangfu Jong. Huangfu will actively support my brother from now on. My brother will likewise support the Huangfu Clan in Shandong. Shandong borders Liaoning just like Hebei, doesn't it? If Huangfu's influence grows stronger, it'll become a headache later, so the Mount Tai Sect needs to become the overlord of Shandong like it used to be."
How long had this woman even known Gyeong Su-yeon, and she was already drawing up schemes like this?
"You said he made a pact in secret, so how do you know about it?"
"I seduced a branch-line descendant of Huangfu."
Ah... Huangfu Gun. That brother of mine, who looked a little dim but seemed pure-hearted, had just become even more pitiful. Murong Rin hadn't been drawn to his masculine charm from the start; she'd just needed information and turned him into a living dildo.
"I'm someone who only barely got permission to join the sect yesterday. My martial arts are paltry, and until just before, I was barely even a servant. How can someone like me step into such a major undertaking?"
"I told you my dream was to become Young Clan Head, did I not? A sect's Head Disciple holds the same position as a Young Clan Head. You don't understand that power. In practice, it isn't the Sect Leader who runs a sect—it's the Head Disciple. Ugh. Seriously. One person is scheming tooth and nail to become Young Clan Head, another abandoned the successor's seat and ran away from home only to become Head Disciple, and yet another handed the position to his little brother and now roams around as the greatest master under heaven, fooling around with beauties. This is truly unfair."
Murong Rin vented all her irritation and poured wine down her throat in heavy gulps.
"You're the last person who should be talking about unfairness."
"Shut up. Just take off your clothes already."
Murong Rin had been drinking leisurely but now snapped out her full irritation and roughly stripped my clothes off. While I was briefly flustered, Gyeong Su-yeon pulled off my pants as naturally as she had back at the Baek Clan Estate. At the hands of these two women, who seemed utterly mismatched, I was stark naked in an instant.
"Isn't it really strange? Honestly, his face isn't much, is it? So why does he keep looking more and more like a handsome man?"
"I know. Young Master Baek is certainly a good person, but his one flaw was his face. Ever since he left the Baek Clan Estate, though, my heart pounds every time I see him."
That... was a compliment, right? I'd assumed Murong Rin meant it that way, but Gyeong Su-yeon. You thought I was ugly all this time too. That stung a little. For a moment, irritation surged through me, and I wanted to tell them my face looked decent only because they both had so much sexual experience. But the Yin-Yang Art was a secret of Yeongsan Sect, so I held my tongue and raised my wine cup. After stripping me naked, Murong Rin briskly shed her own clothes. Those springy breasts of Murong Rin's—it had truly been a long while.
"I used to think Young Master Baek was a little pathetic for falling head over heels for such a vicious woman as Murong Rin just because she was pretty, but now that I've seen her naked, even I, a woman, feel as though I could fall for her. How can a woman with such a rotten heart have a body like this?"
Gyeong Su-yeon was slightly flustered by Murong Rin's naked body. Seeing her slyly slip in a dig at me, this one had a bit of a temper too, didn't she?
"What are you doing? Not getting undressed? Are you planning to just watch again today and take your precious virginity back to the Mount Tai Sect?"
Murong Rin spoke as she sat back down, still naked. At her words, Gyeong Su-yeon also began carefully removing her clothes, her face lightly flushed. With Murong Rin—a woman utterly impervious to shame in this setting—beside her, Gyeong Su-yeon's blush didn't seem to come from embarrassment. It looked like the particular sexual arousal of a healthy young adult with ample quasi-sexual experience. Sex with Murong Rin didn't begin with abrupt penetration. It was sex between friends: enjoying wine, enjoying conversation, and enjoying one another's bodies. Once everyone was naked, she poured wine generously into large bowls instead of cups and handed them around.
"Isn't this Geumcheon Wine?"
Geumcheon Wine. The name did not literally mean wine worth a thousand taels of gold, but it was such a renowned and precious liquor that even a silver-spoon kid like me rarely had the chance to taste it properly. Gyeong Su-yeon looked aghast as Murong Rin poured the famous wine into bowls like a bandit.
"Is it too much for a country girl from Jilin? Want me to swap it for Bamboo Leaf Green?"
"I'm not rude enough to refuse wine offered by the host."
Watching Gyeong Su-yeon raise her bowl while masking her dismay, Murong Rin laughed softly.
There was a term called ambivalence. The contradictory feeling of liking and disliking at the same time. Right now, that was exactly the feeling I got from them. Well, that wasn't the important part. There were pretty women on either side of me with their breasts bared. I reached behind their backs, cupping and fondling their chests as if pulling them close, and Gyeong Su-yeon smiled gently and brought my wine bowl to my lips.
This was good. It was on a completely different level from a pleasure house. Even a little different from the wives. To be able to play with the breasts of women who weren't even my women, friends, and enjoy wine like this. The springy fullness of Murong Rin's breasts. Gyeong Su-yeon's breasts, the ones most familiar to me from having touched them the longest. Even the virgin Gyeong Su-yeon had received breast caresses to the point of exhaustion, so the moment my touch brushed her, she responded immediately.
"Deciding not to become a nun was a good call. When you go back to Mount Tai, dress as flamboyantly as you possibly can."
Murong Rin abruptly turned the conversation toward advising Gyeong Su-yeon.
"Until the day before yesterday, I was just a servant girl, remember? If I change the way I dress overnight just because I became Head Disciple, how am I supposed to face the senior brothers and martial uncles who already can't stand me?"
In ordinary sects, the eldest disciple became Head Disciple, as in Yeongsan Sect. But even that wasn't absolute. Just as the eldest son of a clan didn't necessarily become Young Clan Head, some sects distinguished the eldest disciple from the Head Disciple. Mount Tai seemed to have kept the position vacant for Geo Am's successor, who would one day appear, but no one could have guessed that the despised servant girl would become Head Disciple. Although she'd secured the absolute support of the Sect Leader and elders, her position going forward would be extremely precarious.
"Your house has servants too, does it not? Could you serve one of those servants as your master? No matter that she recovered the ultimate arts, could you accept a servant you'd treated however you pleased as your Head Disciple? Your current situation feels like a miracle, and you're incredibly grateful, are you not? But if you settle for that, you'll become a figurehead Head Disciple and then a figurehead Sect Leader. Young Master Baek worked so hard to make you Head Disciple—you don't want to become a figurehead, do you? Someday, you want to repay Yeongsan Sect's kindness as the strong Sect Leader of Mount Tai, do you not?
"First came money. Mount Tai's coffers were gradually emptying too, were they not? Murong Rin would provide some gold for Gyeong Su-yeon to spread through the sect. To control people, she first had to show them sweet fruit. And since Gyeong Su-yeon couldn't become a master overnight, she should at least dress splendidly so that no one could even recall her past as a servant. Murong Rin had business in Shandong as well, so she would accompany her on the return journey. If Murong Rin attended her investiture ceremony, the others wouldn't be able to dismiss her so easily."
This genuine madwoman Murong Rin, delivering needlessly serious talk with her nipples standing erect. What the hell was she doing after stripping people naked?
"Becoming Sect Leader is still a distant prospect for me. In the long term, my taking control of Mount Tai would help the Murong Clan, yes, but does it actually help you become Young Clan Head?"
Gyeong Su-yeon asked just as seriously, even while letting out soft moans herself.
"Of course. My second older brother invested in Huangfu, and I decided to invest in Mount Tai. Once Mount Tai produces results, the clan's opinion will swing to my side in an instant. I, for my part, have never once had an investment fail. I hope you don't become the first."
Murong Rin, who just moments ago had been murderously hostile toward Gyeong Su-yeon. At what stage had she thought up this scheme? If she'd gathered intelligence on Mount Tai in advance and provoked Gyeong Su-yeon with this in mind, she was genuinely terrifying. But if this wasn't a prearranged plan, if she'd improvised it on the spot, then she was a far more frightening person.
As expected. Strength wasn't everything in this world.