Every Natural Disaster Has Its Omens
It was one of those placid days when a cool breeze drifted in through the open window.
Swish... swish.....
Dang Jihwan worked his way through a stack of documents, the wind sweeping past his face as if to tickle it.
Tap.
Having more or less dispatched the towering pile of paperwork, he laid his brush down on the desk, leaned back, let every muscle go slack, and heaved a long sigh.
"Ahhh..... so peaceful."
In truth, Dang Jihwan was having himself a wonderful day.
Muyeong, who had sent his father's heart into freefall mere days ago, was not merely up and out of his sickbed but practically flying about in the picture of health, having even chanced into some fortuitous encounter along the way—and Murin, too, who had once made onlookers anxious just watching, had returned to the old familiar self.
"If we could just get our hands on that one bastard, there'd be nothing left in this world to want..."
He brooded for a moment over the savage creature that had twice tried to take his son's life, then brushed the thought away and murmured,
"If only every day could be just like today..."
A day not yet sweltering, the cool breeze tempering even what warmth remained. At the peaceful face of the Dang Clan estate—arrived, it seemed, after far too long an absence—Dang Jihwan closed his eyes and let a contented smile settle across his lips.
How much time had passed?
A sound intruded on the rest of Dang Jihwan, who had been idling with his eyes closed, wrapped in hard-won inner peace.
Knock, knock.
"Clan Head, may I come in?"
He sighed deep at the sound ruining this very moment, then spoke.
"Enter."
At his word, someone stepped into the office, bowed low, and spoke.
"Clan Head..."
Something uncomfortable flickered across the man's face, his words trailing off, and Dang Jihwan eyed him with puzzlement.
"What is it? Stop watching my mood and just say your piece."
Head still bowed, the man hesitated a moment longer, hummed low in his throat, and finally forced the words out.
"Hnnm... it's the Young Master, my lord. He went out into town today, you see..."
The instant Muyeong's name left the man's mouth, a cold current of dread swept over Dang Jihwan.
His son had barely weathered the ordeals of recent days; terrified that some fresh calamity might have found him again, worry got the better of the Clan Head, and he snapped at the man, who was still dithering, his voice laced with irritation.
"Enough dithering. Out with it, now."
"Ah... forgive me."
Only then seeming to collect himself, the man hurried on.
"The Young Master went to a tavern in the marketplace with the Green Heaven Squad Leader, and there was... something of a problem with a few third-generation disciples of the Qingcheng Sect."
"With that brat—the Elder Council Head's grandson?"
"Yes..."
The man delivering his report on Dang Muyeong's mishaps marked how the Clan Head's mood was souring by the moment, gulped once, and pressed on regardless.
"By all appearances, one of those Qingcheng disciples heaped a rather vicious insult upon the Young Master while he was dining with the Green Heaven Squad Leader."
Krrrk-krrrk-crrrack—
Listening to the report, Dang Jihwan had begun—quite literally—to crush the inkstone held in his bare hand.
When the inkstone in the Clan Head's grip began making a sound the likes of which he had never heard in all his born days, the man delivered the rest of the report in a voice trembling at every seam.
"S-so the Young Master struck the first blow, and the fight broke out from there... and the Young Master's shoulder was run through by that man's sword..."
CRACK—!
At last the inkstone, unable to withstand the Clan Head's crushing grip, burst apart and rained onto the floor.
...
The man said nothing, staring at the shattered inkstone, quietly trembling where he stood—until the Clan Head's low voice reached his ears.
"Drag that bastard before me."
"Th-that is, Clan Head... that may prove... somewhat difficult..."
"Are my words not reaching you? I said drag that insolent Qingcheng whelp before me—this instant!"
Caught beneath the Clan Head's gaze—killing intent gone so dense it had all but curdled into a ghostly aura—the man quivered from head to toe like a sapling in a storm as he spoke.
"B-because the Young Master killed him, my lord. There is no one left to drag here..."
"What?"
At the wholly unexpected news, the Clan Head's face went blank for an instant.
All of Jihwan's earlier ferocity had vanished without a trace; at the news rattled out through the man's chattering teeth, he could only look dumbstruck.
"Was that Qingcheng whelp even younger than Muyeong?"
"Ah... no, my lord. He was past his twentieth year at the very least..."
...
"Then what—was he nothing more than a Third-Rate fighter?"
"N-no, not that either. Unsteady, by all accounts, but he could send his qi outward—so he must have been First-Rate..."
Jihwan nodded at last, his face settling into an expression of understanding.
"So that's it. Giyeong must have stepped in."
At that, the man waved both hands in frantic denial.
"I-I heard the Young Master cut him down alone..."
Jihwan's face knotted into sheer incomprehension as he pressed.
"Muyeong? Alone?"
"Yes..."
"He killed a First-Rate swordsman, and all it cost him was one shoulder?"
"Yes..."
"How, in the world?"
"I-I'm afraid I don't know the particulars myself..."
Confronted with a Clan Head whose questions had plainly abandoned all dignity, faced with something far beyond the borders of common sense, the man could do nothing but bow his head over and over between answers.
Before long, Jihwan gave up trying to understand altogether and muttered through a hollow laugh.
"I always thought that grotesque mental cultivation technique of his was something out of the ordinary whenever I saw him run it—but setting the technique aside, the boy was Third-Rate through and through. And now you're telling me a boy like that took down a First-Rate warrior? Perhaps I ought to empty my own head of everything I know and go learn that technique myself..."
Just as the Clan Head's bewildered grumbling was winding down, the man warily read Jihwan's mood and gingerly broached his final item.
"A-anyway, seeing as things turned out as they did, the Green Heaven Squad Leader has already sent word that the Qingcheng warrior's body is drenched head to toe in poison qi, so it seems the Dang Clan ought to handle the aftermath."
The man had stuttered his way through the entire day, but with the report at last concluded, Jihwan answered quietly—wearing the face of a man who had aged years in a single afternoon.
"Understood. For now, send the Medicine Hall Master to that tavern."
"At once, my lord."
At the order, the man bowed his head, answered crisply—his stutter finally gone—and was turning to leave the office when the Clan Head's weary voice drifted after him.
"When Muyeong returns to the estate, bring him to me."
"Yes, my lord."
Turning back to bow once more in answer, the man scurried out of the Clan Head's office at a half-run.
"Haaa....."
Feeling the long-awaited peace of mind evaporate like smoke, Dang Jihwan pressed the heels of both hands against his eyes and murmured.
"Aigoo... Muyeong, my boy... Muyeong... am I to rejoice over this... or worry myself sick...?"
Torn between pride in his child's achievement and fear for his wounded son, he could do nothing but wait for Dang Muyeong to hurry home.
How much time slipped by after that? By the time the sun was slouching toward the western hills, Dang Muyeong shuffled into the office, exhaustion draped over him like a wet cloak.
One look at his son—left shoulder wound round and round with bandages—and Dang Jihwan heaved a deep sigh.
"Sit, first of all."
At those words, Muyeong flopped down in front of his father, eyes at half-mast.
Watching him, Jihwan asked in his softest voice,
"Care for some tea to chase the sleep away?"
In answer, Muyeong managed only a drowsy nod, his eyes by now barely a third of the way open.
A short while later...
Once his son had drained the tea the Clan Head had handed over with his own two hands and was gazing back with somewhat clearer eyes, Jihwan asked,
"Now then. I would like to hear, from your own mouth, just what happened today."
Asked about the day's incident, Muyeong scratched his head and answered.
"Well... you see, it went like this..."
The Poison King, Dang Jihwan.
Clan Head of the Dang Clan that reigned over Sichuan, and a master whose name stood among the ten finest of the Orthodox Faction.
With his good-natured face and signature languid expression, he was held to have the most easygoing bearing of the Ten Strongest of the Orthodox Faction—and, in perfect contradiction, the most explosive temper of them all.
Indeed, the trail he left whenever he truly detonated was so ruthless that people said had he been a nameless wandering ronin rather than the head of one of the Five Great Clans, he would have been branded a Public Enemy of the Murim long, long ago.
And before such a man, a handful of subjects were absolutely taboo...
"That whole report claiming I was some jiangshi revived through sorcery..."
Insulting his children.
"...saying I was born only after devouring my own mother..."
Insulting the one woman he had ever loved.
"...that time someone went and flung poison darts at me, reckless as you please..."
The loss of his children.
"...so of course I had no choice but to fling a few right back..."
By the time I had delivered the full account of the incident to him, start to finish, his face had set into the coldest blankness imaginable.
The longer I spoke, the more the Clan Head's face changed color, and I watched it with genuine admiration.
First it had flushed crimson with fury, then darkened an ugly shade of blue, then drained to a bloodless white—and at some point it returned to its ordinary color, settling into an expressionlessness that was frightening to behold.
Wow... his face cycles through more colors than a traffic light... ran the idle thought through my head—even as I witnessed, with my own two eyes, the truth of an old saying I'd once heard: when a person truly rages, they don't explode. They sink, still and silent.
"Haaaaaah....."
Expressionless as his face was, the fury itself he could not quite hide: the Clan Head, who had kept his silence through my entire account, let out a long, trembling sigh and screwed both eyes shut.
I was watching him, teapot raised to fill his cup—
BOOM!!!!!!
With a sound like a hand grenade detonating square in front of my nose, I was bowled over by some blast—wind-shock or air pressure, I couldn't begin to say—and went tumbling end over end backward across the floor.
The tea soaking into my clothes was forgotten on the spot, because something so terrifying was billowing out from the man before me that I lifted my head to look—
Creeeeeeak.....
The Clan Head's fist had obliterated the desk outright; the force had been so tremendous that the floor was spiderwebbed with cracks, and every window and door in the office had been ripped from its moorings and sent flying.
Khoff...
As the dust of the pulverized desk thinned and my vision cleared, what greeted my eyes was the Clan Head—face twisted beyond all describing, a murderous light blazing from beneath his brows.
It was a question with no real interest in an answer. I kept my mouth firmly shut and thought:
So when fury crosses the line, what follows isn't calm at all—it's the prelude to a catastrophic eruption... My apologies, Lord Clan Head... I'm afraid we're already well past it.....