The Joke Was On Me
Why don't we just call it even...
Dusk had settled in, the sky darkening by degrees, and I trudged along sighing hard enough to bring the ground down around me.
"Haah... I'm wiped out..."
Dragging my worn-out body toward my quarters, I found myself replaying my audience with the Clan Leader. In the wake of Dang Jihwan's rage — the smashed furniture, the teeth-grinding menace of a man who looked ready to storm the Qingcheng Sect that very moment — I'd had zero confidence in my ability to talk him down, and so had simply stood there sucking my thumb like a scolded child.
"Whew... It's gotten rather late. Return to your quarters for now."
Faced with the Clan Leader's none-too-subtle order to show myself out, I could do nothing but leave the Clan Leader's Hall without another word.
Thankfully, a handful of people had been drawn to the epicenter of that earth-shaking racket, and they somehow managed to talk Dang Jihwan around. The world, it seemed, would be spared a farcical headline like Poison King Storms Qingcheng Sect Single-Handed.
"Whether that was actually smoothed over... or merely postponed... I honestly couldn't tell you..."
Feeling for all the world like I'd failed the earnest warnings the Medicine Hall Master had drilled into me, I offered a silent apology and returned to my quarters. The instant I arrived, drowsiness crashed down on me, and I skipped dinner entirely and sank straight into the clutches of the sleep demon.
A few days after the Clan Leader's epic meltdown.
The Sichuan Dang Clan was thick with a heavy, suffocating air, as though the storm clouds of war itself had gathered overhead. Ever since the incident everyone had taken to calling the Downfall of Qingcheng, all who heard the full story had come to regard the sect with hostility — ranging from poisonous glares all the way to outright warmongers demanding war, consequences be damned.
Granted, there were exceptions — like the Financial Hall Master, who was too busy weeping over the wrecked furniture — but the overwhelming majority burned with hatred for Qingcheng.
And Dang Mulin was one of the loudest of those warmongers.
"FATHER!!!!"
Dang Mulin's bellow reverberated through the half-ruined office of the Clan Leader, and Dang Jihwan replied with a furrowed brow.
"My ears haven't given out yet..."
Whether she heard him or not, she kept right on shouting at a volume that posed a genuine threat to the Clan Leader's eardrums.
"We need to march to Qingcheng RIGHT NOW and kill every last one of those mangy dogs!!!"
"Haah..."
Watching his daughter rant with the veins standing out on her neck, Dang Jihwan pressed hard against his throbbing temples as he answered.
"Let us simply wait and see, for now. I am still weighing the matter myself..."
At her own father's call for patience, Dang Mulin spat out her indignation with the face of a woman betrayed by the very axe she'd trusted — which had just come down squarely on her foot.
"Muyeong... and Mother... they were subjected to that insult... and he came back to this family with his shoulder pierced clean through — how can you bear to just sit here?!!!"
Her shrieking was louder than a swarm of midsummer cicadas, and just as the Clan Leader's ears were going numb—
"If that's how you feel, Father..."
Dang Mulin whipped her head around and made for the door.
"Then I'll go by myself."
Watching his daughter charge ahead with all the restraint of a runaway cart, Dang Jihwan felt his headache sharpen — and tossed a letter her way.
The letter drifted down onto the crown of her head as softly as a falling leaf. Dang Mulin caught it and asked the Clan Leader,
"What's this?"
"Unfold it and read."
At that, she opened the letter her father had thrown her and began to read.
"Regarding the incident that took place..."
Two days after that incident.
The two third-generation disciples of the Qingcheng Sect sprinted back through their sect's gates, hearts in pieces.
"Oh, you've returned... Wait — children, what in the world happened to you?"
A second-generation disciple sweeping the courtyard had moved to greet them warmly as they came running in — then stopped short. Their eyes were swollen puffy from what looked like a full day of crying, and their robes were torn to shreds, snagged on every thorn between there and home, by the look of them.
Besides, he distinctly remembered three of them leaving. Only two had come back. Puzzled, he pressed them:
"What on earth happened out there?!"
In answer, the female disciple broke down in heaving sobs.
"Senior Brother... Senior Brother is dead."
"What?"
"Senior Brother Ji Taek... was killed... by someone from the Dang Clan."
Stunned beyond words, the second-generation disciple led the two of them straight to the Sect Leader.
"Heh heh... The tea tastes especially fine today."
"It certainly does."
Yoo Joyang, Sect Leader of the Qingcheng Sect, had been passing yet another tedious day sipping tea with his fellow disciples.
Then — BANG— one of the second-generation disciples flung the door open hard enough to tear it from its hinges and burst inside. Confronted with a side of the man he had never once seen, the Sect Leader asked, flustered,
"What is the meaning of this?"
Gulping for breath, the disciple ushered the two third-generation disciples standing behind him forward.
"You need to hear what these two have to say."
The pair dragged out before him were a sorry sight — their appearance said it all. One of them was openly wailing, and the Sect Leader and the assembled elders coaxed and soothed them until, at last, the story spilled out.
"...and so, in the end, they left Senior Brother behind at that inn..."
As one shocking revelation after another tumbled from her lips, Yoo Joyang barely managed to wrestle his drifting wits back under control, letting out a long, troubled groan.
"Mmm... I understand. Go back and rest for now..."
A short while later.
In the room now holding only the Sect Leader and his elders, a dreadful silence settled — so absolute you could hear every swallow. Then someone shattered it with a roar:
"Sect Leader! Say something! My own martial grandson was brutally murdered in the Dang Clan's front courtyard — how can you sit there in silence?!!!"
Only when that elder — whose direct line of transmission lived on in the slain third-generation disciple — had worked himself into a fury did the others finally begin to speak.
"Compose yourself first. This is hardly a matter to be settled on impulse."
"Compose myself? Does this look like a thing I can compose myself about?"
When another elder tried to rein him in, his fury only climbed higher.
"My boy misspoke a few words, and now he's a lonely ghost wandering the Nine Springs — and you tell me to compose myself?!"
Watching him rage, flushed with heat, another elder ventured carefully,
"In fairness... those few words of his were rather grave, were they not?"
The raging elder's face went scarlet as he glared at the man — who nonetheless continued, his own expression grim.
"Do not mistake me. I understand your fury as well as any man alive. But speaking coldly and rationally... tell me — what then? Would you go seize that man?"
"Obviously! We drag him back here and kill him, or at the very least cripple him!"
The elder who had first ventured a word curled his lip into a sneer.
"And if we do, the Poison King wipes Qingcheng off the map, does he not? No... more to the point — do we even possess a way of prying that man out of the Dang Clan in the first place?"
The words cut like a dagger between the ribs. The elder who'd been roaring a moment before stood rooted to the spot, struck dumb.
Watching him, the sneering elder pressed on.
"I grieve as well. Ji Taek met a horrific end — how could my blood not boil? But grief aside... what power do we actually hold here?"
His words left the room heavy and airless once more, suffused with helplessness.
Only then did the Sect Leader speak, slowly.
"...Ji Taek was a boy of overflowing talent and unshakable loyalty..."
His voice cracked and caught in his throat, and there was nothing for the rest of them to do but listen in silence.
"Though... I will confess I worried at times that his hatred for the Dang Clan ran too deep... Not that any of us need reminding why his heart turned out that way..."
A brief silence followed before one of the elders murmured through a sigh,
"He was caught up in the wind of blood that swept through the Dang Clan through no fault of his own... The boy lost his entire family that day..."
Just as the room brimmed over with anguished grief, someone let out a long, slow sigh.
"Haah..."
Yoo Joyang exhaled, closed his eyes, and seemed to weigh something for a long moment. Then he spoke, low and quiet.
"We must not clash with the Dang Clan. As was said — should the Poison King move, too many of our young disciples will be hurt."
A memory of what Dang Jihwan had done a dozen years ago — all while wearing that same lazy, half-lidded expression — crept unbidden into his mind, and he felt the hair rise along his scalp as he continued.
"First, I will draft a letter to the Dang Clan requesting the return of Ji Taek's body. And if the Poison King insists on blood regardless, I will do everything within my power to end it with my own neck — but should matters turn truly sour, appeal to the Murim Alliance."
"Sect Leader!"
"What else would you have me do? The justice of this matter lies with the Dang Clan, and to press one's will upon the Central Plains one must have force... We possess neither."
"Even so—"
"I will hear no objections."
The Sect Leader's face was resolute, closing the door on any further argument, and every man in the room could only wear his tangled feelings openly.
The elders filed out one by one, and Yoo Joyang, left alone, raised his brush beneath the guttering candle and set down the letter to the Dang Clan. To hide the tremor in his hand he bore down hard, writing each character with care; when it was finished he read it over once, then sent it on its way.
...and so, I beg of you: show us your mercy.
Respectfully offered, Yoo Joyang, Sect Leader of the Qingcheng Sect
"Ha..."
Having read the letter from the Qingcheng Sect through to the end, Dang Mulin stared at Dang Jihwan, utterly deflated.
"So what you're telling me is — I'll hand over my own neck, so please, just return the body. That's the message?"
"That is what it says..."
If Qingcheng had come charging in howling for a fight, the clan could simply have met them head-on. But with the sect groveling this low, for the Dang Clan to push for blood anyway would only make them look ridiculous — and only then did she truly understand why her father had been banging his head against the wall.
"Can't we just ignore it and bulldoze straight through?"
Looking at the irritation written plainly across his daughter's face, he shook his head from side to side.
"Do that in this climate, and I can see it plain as day — the Murim Alliance shrieking about martial merit and murim justice and what have you. Which leaves even accepting the Sect Leader's neck an awkward proposition..."
"What if we just shut our eyes and take the Sect Leader's head anyway?"
Coming from the most bloodthirsty soul in the Dang Clan, the proposal gave Dang Jihwan a moment's pause — for a heartbeat, he was genuinely tempted — but he soon shook his head and answered.
"We will... let this matter conclude as it stands. But send word that the boy's corpse is to be dumped in the wild hills. Let it at least feed the feral dogs."
"Yes... understood."
Dang Mulin answered with a look of pure dissatisfaction and promptly swept out of the room.
"I wonder who she takes after, being that violent..."
Musing that his daughter's temper might well be second to none even in the notoriously venomous Dang Clan, Dang Jihwan closed his eyes and tried to steal a brief rest.
Meanwhile, I was in the pavilion in the rear garden, sipping the poison tea the Medicine Hall Master had pressed on me, letting the breeze wash over me as I mentally replayed the events of a few days past.
'I got lucky this time. If that bastard had swung his saber at my throat from the opening move, things could have gotten rather... strange. But the man had spent his whole life in nothing but sparring matches — never once fought with his actual life on the line — and it showed. Soft as overcooked tofu. That's the only reason I managed to kill him. Thank goodness for small mercies.'
That day I'd come away with a clear impression: in pure technique, I was leagues behind him.
The only reason I'd managed to claw out a result at all was that the idiot kept aiming for my shoulder, time after time. With that thought, I sank back into deep contemplation.
'My raw output is definitely strong... but the whole thing is awfully half-baked. If no one were ever watching, that would be one thing — but if a situation like this crops up again, it's bound to be a headache...'
To be honest, being pushed back so helplessly that day had left me with a gnawing sense of powerlessness, and that feeling made one thing painfully clear: I needed to fill in what I was lacking.
"Aah, forget it. I'll just go back to the very beginning and learn it all properly — footwork, claw techniques, the whole catalog, one piece at a time."
My martial arts lessons with Dang Mulin had, I'd noticed, been quietly fizzling out of late, so I steeled my resolve to finally take my training seriously.
"Well, I do have plenty of experience under my belt — I'll pick it up in no time, surely..."
I didn't know it then.
That I'd been treating the martial arts like a goddamn joke.