It's Probably Not My Fault
Once the Medicine Hall Master, who had come to help tidy up the aftermath of the earlier uproar, and its chief culprit, Dang Giyeong, had finished their business and the rest of the party headed back to the Dang Clan compound, Giyeong found himself alone in the emptied guesthouse. He slouched down at whatever table was nearest and brooded.
'No matter how I turn it over in my head, this doesn't add up...'
The sight of Dang Muyeong trading blows with that Qingcheng Sect madman just moments ago had well and truly exceeded the bounds of common sense, and his mind was crammed full of questions.
'His handling of his body was embarrassing to even call Third-Rate, yet his movement itself was nearly beyond First-Rate. And his control of internal qi was roughly just short of First-Rate as well...'
Giyeong dredged the image of Muyeong from earlier back up out of his memory.
'Killing a man that easily with nothing but poison alone... that should only be possible for clan leaders who have reached the Transcendent Realm...'
Recalling that gruesome scene of slaughter once more—the one that had even made him flinch for an instant—Giyeong ran a hand down his goosefleshed arm and thought.
'Is it even possible for a person's mind, technique, and body to be that wildly out of sync?'
"Tsk..."
He was still pointlessly clacking his tongue over Dang Muyeong, whose display of madness his common sense simply could not digest, when—
"...So that's why I got so worked up and just charged right in."
Inside the carriage rolling back toward the Dang Clan compound, Dang Muyeong was delivering the excuses of a lifetime to the Medicine Hall Master.
"I might've swallowed insults about me, but honestly, how am I supposed to swallow insults about my family?!"
Subjected to that veins-bulging bellow, the Medicine Hall Master wiped his face—which had been left drenched in Muyeong's spit—and replied.
"Yeah... that much you can't let slide..."
"You think so too, don't you, sir?"
The Medicine Hall Master was already kicking himself for ever having said something along the lines of, 'Go on then, explain it to me in your own words.'
"I let everything else go, but the things he said about my mother—I just couldn't take those, so I really had no choice."
"And so you just killed him on the spot?"
"Wasn't that the right call?"
"Tsk tsk... why is it that every last one of the clan head's children has a temper like wildfire? Anyone watching would think the Dang Clan was some illustrious house of the unorthodox sects."
The Medicine Hall Master, who had been listening to Muyeong's torrent of rhetoric as though he wouldn't be at peace until every last drop of his grievance had been wrung out, sighed in exasperation—then, a moment later, put on a puzzled look and asked Muyeong:
"By the way—you, a fellow who supposedly lost all his memories, somehow managed to fly into a rage over insults about your mother, did you?"
The words struck dead center, and Dang Muyeong mumbled out a vague excuse.
"Well, it's... even without my memories, the moment someone badmouthed my mother, this rage just surged up like my whole insides were overturning..."
At that, the Medicine Hall Master nodded along.
"You've always been that way. A child who never even got to see his mother's face properly would lose his mind and lunge the instant anyone spoke ill of her. When that fragile little thing lost his memory and his entire personality flipped, I did wonder for a moment whether he was someone else entirely... but judging by this tantrum, memories or no memories, it's our Muyeong beyond a doubt."
My heart hammered wildly at the Medicine Hall Master's dagger of a remark, which had struck straight and true; as he went on, I did my best to soothe the startled organ and steer the conversation elsewhere.
"Anyway, today's mess will get wrapped up cleanly, won't it?"
Stroking his goatee, the Medicine Hall Master answered my subject-change gambit.
"Hard to say... the way I see it, it may not end so neatly."
At those words, I put on a slightly cowed, pitiful expression and said:
"Then... am I going to be in a lot of trouble?"
Watching me play the fragile victim, the Medicine Hall Master replied with an expression that read, what on earth is this child talking about?
"In trouble? Why in the world would you be in trouble?"
"Pardon?"
When I answered with a blank face, the Medicine Hall Master promptly began to bark:
"That mad Qingcheng brat spewed his filthy nonsense right up to his dying breath and even put a hole through the clan head's son's shoulder—and someone would scold you for killing that damned bastard? If any such lunatic exists in the Dang Clan, you point him out to me. I'll personally send him to the afterlife."
Where had his earlier words gone? The Medicine Hall Master, now even more fired up than I was, was spraying spit with his face flushed as red as a ripe persimmon, and I found myself at a loss for words.
"Uh..."
"Of course, except for the clan head!"
At that pointless addendum, I shot him a sour, withering look, and the Medicine Hall Master—apparently a little sheepish himself—coughed drily before turning around and yelling at me instead:
"Ahem... ahem."
"Why are you looking at me like that?!"
"And what way would I be looking at you, might I ask?!"
"Oh, get off it! You've been making the exact face of a drunkard staring at some poor sod sprawled by the roadside—and now you're playing innocent with me?!"
While the Medicine Hall Master and I went back and forth like this, the carriage arrived at the Dang Clan compound before we knew it.
"We've arrived!"
When the announcement came after the carriage rolled to a stop, the Medicine Hall Master stepped down and said:
"Well... whatever else happens, mind your words when you explain things to the clan head. If the clan head blows his top, from that point on this whole affair really could snowball out of hand."
Watching the Medicine Hall Master climb down first, leaving me with those words tinged with an old man's worry, I thought to myself:
'Is this really something that serious? Eh, whatever—as long as I don't get chewed out, who cares...'
I stepped off the carriage, brushing the matter aside as nothing, and there standing before me was a man built like a bear.
Thanks to his truly enormous height, the Red Heaven Squad Leader had been graciously gifting me a patch of shade; he bowed his head deep toward me and said:
"Forgive me, Young Master... I sincerely apologize that my man failed to properly escort you and caused this incident."
Looking up at Dang Yun as he bowed his head in apology, I answered with a dazed expression:
"Ah... it's fine. It's not like I got hurt that badly..."
"You were injured?"
Dang Yun lifted his head and looked right at me, and I gave an awkward smile and said:
"My shoulder did get a little punctured by a sword, but..."
The moment he heard I'd taken a blade, Dang Yun's pot-lid-sized fists clenched tight and trembled, and the face of the man standing about five paces behind him drained white.
That man, who had been my escort that morning, already bore the marks of a beating or several—lips split and swollen, a bruise staining violet around his eyes—and wore the expression of a man watching his world collapse. I ignored him as thoroughly as I could manage.
"It appears this happened because I failed to properly manage my subordinates. I'll have to retrain them, it seems..."
Dang Yun rumbled like a growling tiger, and even the other Red Heaven Squad members standing beside that now corpse-faced man began to rot with expressions of their own.
Seeing that, I felt a twinge of guilt and said:
"I told you, it's fine. The problem in the first place was me—"
The instant the words 'because I ditched my escort and ran off' were about to leave my mouth, I caught sight of Dang Yun's face contorting red and blue, remembered Dang Giyeong happily munching his popcorn earlier, and hastily swapped horses midstream.
"The problem was all thanks to that Dang Giyeong guy."
At that, Dang Yun ground his teeth audibly and asked me:
"Do you mean the grandson of the Elder Council Head?"
Unshaken by that look, I continued on with perfect calm:
"Yes... he was the one who suggested we go paint the town, he was the one who insisted he'd stand guard himself and sent my actual escort away, and he was also the one who just stood there spectating while I fought for my life the moment trouble broke out."
Having absorbed my whole spirited airing of grievances, Dang Yun went quiet for a moment, then soon let out a sigh and dragged both hands down his face.
"Ha... I have a rough picture of the situation now."
Looking at him, somewhat settled now, I said:
"So it's not as if the Red Heaven Squad escorts actually did anything wrong, so..."
Whether he'd caught the true drift of my trailing words, Dang Yun nodded and answered:
"I understand exactly what you mean, Young Master. I will see to the boys' education. In moderation."
"Good... moderation is the key to everything..."
I exchanged a knowing glance with the Red Heaven Squad member who was shooting me a look of profound gratitude, then sauntered off toward my quarters.
Back in my quarters, I flopped down onto the bed without even bothering to change.
Sprawled out like a starfish, I replayed the day's events once more in my head.
"Tsk... I can't even remember how long it's been since I last threw this body into an honest exchange of blows..."
The alarm in my head hadn't sounded like that in ages, and it had pumped me full of adrenaline besides—now that the rush had worn off, the fatigue hit, and I muttered:
"This damned body of mine just can't keep up..."
All I could do was lament a body laid low by a fight that had lasted all of a few breaths.
"At this rate, no matter how much strength I draw on, the moment I push past twenty percent this body will break down before anything else does. Tsk... it was fun, though."
I clicked my tongue as I muttered, but before long I was snickering to myself.
"Heh heh heh..."
Still chuckling, I prodded at the shoulder that had been pierced earlier.
Thankfully the blade had slipped past the bone, and the shoulder that had been sporting a nice clean hole had somehow filled itself back in already.
I kneaded the nearly healed shoulder for a while, and before long I drifted softly off to sleep.
How long did I sleep?
"...Young Master!"
"Whuh...?"
At the sound of someone calling me, I woke from sleep in a half-dreaming daze, making a noise that wasn't quite a word.
Barely hoisting my eyelids, heavy as the world itself, I found a servant shaking me awake.
My pleasant sleep rudely interrupted, I spoke with a trace of irritation in my voice:
"What is it..."
"The Clan Head summons you."
Unbothered by my irritable tone, the servant simply relayed that the head of the Dang Clan was looking for me, and I answered:
"Father? Why?"
Miraculously deciphering my slurred, half-asleep mumbling, the servant told me:
"You have been commanded to come to the Clan Leader's Hall and explain the events of this afternoon."
At that, I rubbed my eyes and scrubbed the sleep away.
"Mmm... haaaah....."
Emitting strange groaning sounds, I stretched long, then promptly pulled myself up.
Feeling reasonably awake, I told the servant standing before me in a sleep-husked voice:
"Right... let's head to the Clan Leader's Hall, then."
"What was it you just said?"
I had still been carrying a fair share of drowsiness, but the moment Dang Jihwan—normally the picture of a genial face—asked me that with his features warped like some vengeful demon's, I felt every last shred of sleep scatter to the winds.