The Genius Young Master of the Sichuan Dang Clan
After the sparring match between Dang Muyeong and the Red Heaven Squad Leader, the Dang Clan spent days abuzz with talk of the duel.
"Aish... how does that even make sense? You're telling me the Young Master nearly matched the Squad Leader?"
"That's what I'm saying! Honestly... with all the people who saw it with their own eyes, how have you still not managed to believe it?"
"I could have sworn I heard years ago that the Squad Leader had reached the fully matured Peak Realm. So that would make the Young Master at the very least Peak Realm as well?"
"Aigoo! Then don't believe it, if you don't want to!"
Rumors whose source no one could trace swept through the clan, and even those still sitting on the fence began to cave, one by one.
"Wow... so the Young Master really is at least a match for the clan's deputy squad leaders?"
"That's what they say... Dang Yun runs his mouth, sure, but he's not the type to spout pure nonsense, so it's probably true."
"Climbing from Third-Rate all the way to Peak Realm in a matter of months—does that even make sense? Wow... my twenty years. Twenty whole years of my life, thrown away..."
"I've lived a full lifetime without ever hearing or seeing anything like it. At this point, it's probably kinder to your heart to just stop trying to understand."
"The world truly is an unjust place... I think I'm already a lost cause, Squad Leader..."
"If you're that bitter about it, why don't you go knock back a nice cold bowl of Poison Wine yourself? If it were me, I'd spend less time whining with that 'the world is so unfair' face and run one more cycle of my cultivation technique instead."
"Squad Leader!"
"And that is exactly why you're still stuck in First-Rate. Haaah... and to think a guy like that counts as one of my men."
So it was that somewhere in the clan, one man whined and moaned over the crushing envy that Dang Muyeong's absurd achievement had stirred in him—right up until he caught an earful from his own superior.
Whatever anyone thought of it, the feat was flatly beyond anything a martial artist's common sense could digest, yet for the Dang Clan it was an enormous blessing—and so the Clan Leader's Hall rang with laughter from a good number of throats.
"Heh heh heh... my congratulations, Clan Leader."
The Enforcement Hall Master, who on ordinary days hardly ever showed a smiling face, offered his congratulations wearing one now, and Dang Jihwan laughed and returned the greeting.
"It's all Muyeong's hard work, so frankly I'm embarrassed to be the one collecting congratulations."
"Well, they do say fortune and calamity trade places when you least expect it. A good thing is a good thing, no?"
With the meeting flowing along pleasantly for the first time in an age, the Medicine Hall Master decided there was no time like the present and weighed in.
"That saying fits the boy perfectly—that whole affair turned into one tremendous stroke of fortune for him. In any case, my congratulations, Clan Leader."
"Heh... I don't know whether you're all determined to make my face burn off with all this congratulating."
"From the looks of things, it won't be long before Muyeong surpasses even you. Best keep yourself sharp, I'd say."
"Heh... if that day comes, I'll welcome it with open arms."
"Clan Leader, since things have come this far, why not simply grant Muyeong the seat of Young Clan Head?"
"As it happens, I have already been thinking favorably on that very matter."
Amid the warm, genial banter, the talk had turned to the Young Clan Head seat—when someone drove a spike straight through the mood.
"Bestowing the seat of Young Clan Head on a boy of a mere sixteen—a child who will barely be seventeen soon—is that not premature?"
The Elder Council Head, lounging crooked in his chair, spoke with a smile that sat badly on his face, and the atmosphere in the hall cooled by several degrees.
"Ahem... ahem."
Someone's dry cough broke the silence that had settled over the room, and the Clan Leader looked the Elder Council Head in the eye with a languid expression.
"Had it been the Muyeong of this time last year, I might have agreed with you, Elder Council Head. But as of now, does he not fill the qualifications to overflowing?"
Contrary to the softness of Dang Jihwan's voice, the air in the hall grew all the thicker with discomfort.
Utterly indifferent to that atmosphere, the Elder Council Head pressed on.
"Well now, whether the qualifications are sufficient rather depends on how one chooses to look at it... And besides, as for that fiend behind the incident some months ago—we haven't so much as picked up his trail, let alone caught him..."
He let the words trail off, skewered the Clan Leader with one long look, and then continued.
"If we were to hand over the Young Clan Head seat and something untoward came of it, it would make things tiresome for everyone..."
"Elder Council Head."
Dang Jihwan's growl cut off the Elder Council Head's words the moment he tried to step over the line.
"You will say no more about the Young Clan Head seat. Anything further is overstepping."
The Clan Leader's expression hardly seemed to change, yet fury rolled off him in waves. The Elder Council Head answered with a shrug.
"I merely spoke of a hypothetical. There is no need for such a prickly reaction."
Even after that reply, the air in the hall passed beyond discomfort into something heavy enough to feel on the skin, and the Elder Council Head drew a long, deep breath.
"Whew... you are all far too hard on an old man... In any case, if the Clan Leader's resolve is that firmly set, there is little to be done."
Murmuring something—it was hard to say whether he meant it for himself or for the room—he promptly rose and made his exit.
"Tsk."
With Dang Jihwan's click of the tongue, the meeting resumed—only to wind down and die with nothing settled at all.
At that moment, while the meeting raged on in the Clan Leader's Hall...
I was sitting in a pavilion in the rear garden, tucking into a bowl of rice that—cooked, for once, from normal ingredients—actually tasted like rice.
"Man... it's bland."
My tongue had, after all, been pickled in everything from snake venoms to strange mushrooms to an acid said to melt through iron swords, and thanks to that, here I was, unable to find satisfaction in even a Sichuan table—held by all to be the most stimulating cuisine in the Central Plains. Watching myself complain about it, I felt a full-blown existential crisis slam into me.
Somehow I managed to finish the meal, and then, as a palate cleanser, I sipped scorpion tea while admiring the scenery.
I zoned out watching the pristine white snow pile up in soft drifts, felt my own heart grow quiet at the peaceful sight, and murmured to myself,
"Big Sis left for Hubei yesterday, so things should stay quiet for a while..."
Dang Mulin had put off her duties at the Murim Alliance again and again and again while running me ragged, and the moment I reached the Peak Realm—
"Satisfied?"
—with that single line as her parting shot, she promptly whisked herself off to Hubei.
In truth, ever since the duel with the Red Heaven Squad Leader, I had kept to morning-only training. But today Dang Mulin was gone, so for the first time in a long while I was goofing off for the entire day, resting without a shred of guilt.
"Tsk."
I was leaning against the pavilion pillar, spacing out over the lake, when a thought slid into my head, and I clicked my tongue.
Come to think of it, the Demonic Cult Vice-Cult Master's campaign to crush the Orthodox Sects was right around this time, wasn't it...
I tapped my knee with my index finger—tap, tap—rummaging through the game's memories, which had grown truly threadbare by now.
The Vice-Cult Master's downfall definitely began when he lost a good chunk of his own subordinates scheming against the Five Great Clans—but for the life of me, I can't remember what exactly he did...
Before long, the hand that had been tapping my knee migrated up to my skull and started knocking away, thunk, thunk, as if the memory might shake loose—but just as its stubborn refusal to surface was starting to get on my nerves—
"Young Master! It's been far too long."
Dang Giyeong—owner of a face that looked shifty no matter when you caught it—was calling out to me as he strolled closer.
Grinning from ear to ear, he sauntered up to me—me, with my expression of supreme annoyance and half-hearted little wave—and then plopped himself down right in front of me.
"Your face has been awfully hard to come by lately."
He settled in beside me as though it were the most natural thing in the world and struck up conversation; I gave him a perfunctory, lukewarm reply.
"Ah... well... I've been busy training, so that figures."
Blithely ignoring the displeasure I was broadcasting, Dang Giyeong kept right on chatting.
"Oh! Dropping honorifics with me now, are you?"
"Why? Don't like it?"
Even as my manners slid steadily toward outright rudeness, he waved a breezy hand.
"Not at all. I hear you're to become the Young Clan Head soon enough—hardly fitting for a mere squad leader like me to keep receiving formal speech from you anyway."
"Young Clan Head?"
When I echoed the words back in sheer bewilderment at this bolt-from-the-blue claim, Dang Giyeong treated me to an exaggerated look of astonishment so theatrical it had to be an act.
"You hadn't heard? From what I'm told, the Clan Leader announced it at the meeting just now, before all the clan's senior executives—I naturally took it for granted that you'd been told as well..."
"What the hell is—"
As I floundered there, tangled up in news about my own life that everyone but me had apparently heard, Dang Giyeong's eyes curved into a pair of crescent moons as he smiled and spoke.
"In any case, it seems I'll soon have to start calling you 'Young Clan Head' instead of 'Young Master.' So, since fate has been kind enough to bring us together like this—how about a farewell party for the Young Master?"
"What kind of deranged talk is a 'farewell party for the Young Master'? Anyone who overhears that will think you're packing me off to the next world."
"Oh, come off it. Anyway, I've had my eye on a wonderful place—why don't we go together today and enjoy ourselves a little?"
The whole situation prickled with a strange sense of déjà vu, and I was pulling a sour face, preparing to turn him down—but the words that came next got their hooks into me.
"Once you receive the Young Clan Head seat, you'll have to study for it and slave away over all the duties that come with it. You have to play while you still can."
At those words, the image of the Clan Leader locked in daily mortal combat with mountains of paperwork flashed before my eyes. Goosebumps crawled up my arms unbidden as I muttered:
"He's right... if I really do end up with the Young Clan Head seat, I might not even have time to sit around daydreaming like this anymore..."
"That's exactly what I've been saying! By the time you look back and think, 'I really should have rested back then,' it will already be too late."
Like the serpent of old who sweet-talked a lovely woman into plucking the forbidden fruit with her own two hands, Dang Giyeong wound his honeyed words and sugar-coated flattery around me—and in the end, I swallowed the bait whole.
Look, I'm more than strong enough now to walk into any hall in the Central Plains and declare myself Peak Realm to their faces. Surely nothing like last time can happen again...
That was what I failed to understand, back then.
Just how much more the world was willing to screw me over...