Let's Catch the Rat
Let's catch the rat, let's catch the rat—
squeak, squeak, squeak.
"BWAAAAAAH! My one regret... my one regret!!!"
"Ugh... fine, just take it, Sis."
"Truly, you would part with it? Then, shameless though I be, I shall receive it with a grateful heart."
"Thank the heavens we rented out the entire inn—otherwise the whole world would soon be hearing how the Young Clan Head of the Namgung Clan was possessed by a ghost..."
Only after a full night of Namgung Han raving and carrying on like a woman possessed did I finally, at long last, surrender the whip—and only then did she settle back into the dignified image of a great house's Young Clan Head and address me.
"A-woo, you are still young, so perhaps this escapes you—but one's face, you see, is now and then among the most cost-effective commodities in all the world. When surrendering a little of it wins you the thing you truly crave, why, that is a steal of a bargain, is it not?"
"So... what I'm hearing is that you traded your dignity for that whip."
"From where I stand, a very profitable trade."
"You gave up several treasured swords for it and it's still profitable? The Young Clan Head of one of the finest sword clans under heaven really chose a whip over swords? Truly?"
"Ahem... it is all done out of necessity, so you may spare me your worrying."
"And what exactly is this 'necessary business' that requires a whip?"
"Ho there! That is a matter of secrecy—pry no further, if you would."
Snapped at the instant I asked about its use, I studied her with eyes gone flat and sour before speaking.
"If Sis had been born into the evil sects, you'd have made a first-rate pimp—"
Thwip—
"Hurk..."
It is a small matter, truly—that, having vented every unfiltered thought in my head straight out of my mouth, I caught a single lash of the whip across it for my troubles...
"In any case, should your affairs bring you to Anhui again, do come by the Namgung estate. I shall see to it that you are lavishly entertained."
At first light, Namgung Han departed the inn bearing the sort of ceremonial promise nobody ever actually keeps.
"Young Master, I think it is time we set out as well."
"Yes. It's barely a month since we left the Tang Clan, and already homesickness is creeping up on me. Let's hurry home."
With that, our party too left the inn and set out for the Tang Clan. About two weeks passed in this fashion... and just as we crossed into Sichuan—
"Well now, my lords... you'll be needing to pay a toll if you mean to cross this mountain."
A pack of beggarly wretches had planted themselves across the road in front of the carriage, baring yellow teeth in grins and demanding money out of nowhere.
Never mind that the character for 'Tang' was bolted across the carriage in letters the size of a front door—there they stood, demanding a toll with perfect confidence. I climbed down, cackling despite myself, and said to Dang Jihyeon:
"Pfft... hah... hahaha... actual bandits, out here. Does that make you 'Paeng Jihyeon' now, White Heaven Squad Leader?"
"What have you misheard this time? What nonsense is this, all of a sudden?"
"What, you said if bandits showed up you'd go change your surname. Hence—Paeng Jihyeon."
"When did I ever say that?"
"On the road to Hubei—bandits appear, you rechristen yourself Paeng Jihyeon. Ringing any bells?"
"I said I would change my name if the Green Forest Bandit King himself came charging out. When did I ever say I'd do it over running into trash like these?"
"What's the difference?!"
Whether her words were what lit the fuse, the ruffians drew their blades in a ringing scrape of steel, and the one who appeared to be their leader stepped forward.
"Last chance. Hand over everything you're carrying now—or die here, every last one of you... Choose!"
"Hey... Fuzzy."
"My name is not Fuzzy, it's—"
"Don't tell me you can't read?"
"That's right! But a man can live his whole life in this world without it being any problem at all!"
"You don't seem to realize that not knowing your letters can, in fact, become quite a problem for living in this world. Here... let me teach you."
This was a land where illiteracy ran past half the population anyway, so I put on the spirit of a devoted educator and began to walk him through it, one character at a time.
"Look here... this is the character 'Tang.'"
"Whether that reads Tang or Shang or Chang, what business is it of mi—"
"If you don't know, you learn. Anyway—Fuzzy. Think carefully: in the land of Sichuan, who do you suppose is allowed to drive a carriage with 'Tang' written across it?"
"The... the Tang Clan of Sichuan..."
"That's right! Oh good, you do know the Tang Clan of Sichuan. I'd have been terribly sad if you hadn't."
The moment I finished, smile bright and pleasant, Fuzzy twisted around to look behind him with a face gone bone-white—and there his men already stood, weapons abandoned in the dirt, both hands raised to the sky.
Only then, it seemed, did the situation dawn on him. He dropped to his knees and groveled:
"Ohhh... please, spare my life. My wife and children wait for me at home, heartsick with worry. Please, just this once, forgive me."
He pleaded thus—but I only snickered and asked:
"White Heaven Squad Leader—lie, or truth?"
"With a face like that, do you truly believe he has a wife and children? And if he did, it would have been an abduction marriage."
"Then his crimes are even uglier, hm? Tsk... well. Then there's nothing to be done."
"Ohhh! Venerable elder! Please, just once, bestow upon us your vast and boundless mercy....."
"El...der? I suppose the head of this expedition has let his face ripen with age, hm. Now I'm even being called 'elder.'"
"Enough nonsense—decide quickly, if you please. The sun will go down on us at this rate."
"Well, a bandit's likely cut down his share of travelers in his time... So. Shall I? Or would the Squad Leader care to?"
At that moment, Dang Giyeong came crawling out of the carriage, wiping the drool from his mouth, and said:
"Mmmnh... allow me."
Still only half awake, he staggered like something risen from a grave, drew a pair of daggers, and came creaking toward the bandit pack—and at the sight of it, Fuzzy shrieked in terror-stricken urgency:
"W-we swear, this is our first raid! We have never once hurt a soul, so please, just this once, spare us....."
"Now that's a story that doesn't hold together."
"It's true! The thing is, we're slash-and-burn farmers—one day every child in the village simply vanished, so we dropped the fields to search for them, but there wasn't so much as a trace to be found... Then, as luck would have it, we stumbled upon an abandoned bandit stronghold, and to buy ourselves at least some rice we took up the weapons that had been left behind, and today was our first....."
"What? Say that again."
When I asked again, irritation sharpening my voice, he stammered with a dim-witted look on his face.
"I—I really do have a wife. We were childhood friends, we grew up together, and..."
"Not that. The part before."
"Huh? What do you mean...?"
"You said every child suddenly disappeared. What exactly happened?"
Only then did he wear the look of a man groping for how to explain—before he opened his mouth at last.
"W-well... the truth is, our village had about twenty children, none of them yet ten years old..."
The account that poured out of him was strange to the point of being grotesque.
Children not yet ten, all vanished in the space of a single night. Whether they had wandered out of the village on their own... or someone had slipped in under cover of darkness and carried them off... not the slightest trace of either could be found. And the part that made the least sense of all: if some vicious beast capable of such a feat had taken the children, why on earth would it leave the farmers alive?
I chewed on it for a while, then turned a long, level stare on the bandits.
"Ha..... you've got to be kidding me."
"What is it? Is something wrong?"
When the White Heaven Squad Leader asked with a puzzled face at my sudden hollow laugh, I beckoned her close and whispered into her ear:
"Those things aren't living people."
At that, Dang Jihyeon went rigid as a pikestaff, and I thumped my forehead, muttering:
"Ah... my mistake. She'd have been chattering her teeth over a ghost."
"Wh...who's chattering their teeth!"
I beckoned Dang Giyeong over as well, then told the two squad leaders:
"They move, sure—but they aren't living people. Go take a pulse."
Dang Jihyeon went green at the words, while the Green Heaven Squad Leader—true to form—sauntered toward the bandit pack behind his ever-slitted eyes, running his mouth the whole way:
"Uh... what are you doing? We truly haven't killed anyone... please, just once, spare us."
Fuzzy begged, but heedless of it, Giyeong snatched up his wrist and pressed two fingers to the pulse—
"Gkeeeeeeehek—!"
In that instant the man seized up into convulsions and lunged to sink his teeth into the Green Heaven Squad Leader's throat.
"Du-sik!"
Shff—
My worried cry proved needless—Dang Giyeong snapped the creature's neck without so much as a change of expression. But—
"Gkieeek—hek—hek—hek!"
Bandits who, only moments before, had been wearing pitiful looks and signaling their surrender now came charging at us with the whites of their eyes rolled up.
How long it went on, I couldn't say... There was a brief clash, but things wearing farmers' bodies and playing at banditry were only ever going to be a farce, so everything was cleaned up with ease—there was no need for me to step in at all.
"Young Master, the sort of people who would do something like this..."
"No one comes to mind but the Demonic Cult."
"We should return to the estate at once."
With faces carved from stone, we made haste for the Tang Clan. Inside the carriage, a brief council was held between me and the two squad leaders.
"Spiriting away the children and turning every last adult into jiangshi by sorcery... utterly vile."
"Ha... and who else goes this far off the rails but the Demonic Cult?"
"The Demonic Cult is certainly the leading suspect... but might it not be the Blood Cult, or some other outfit altogether?"
"And you—are you alright? That thing nearly took a bite out of you."
"Oh? Concerned for me, are we? Then this big brother of yours could die with no regrets at—"
"Then just die."
At Dang Jihyeon's frost-glazed reply, Dang Giyeong pulled a wounded face—
"Spare me the useless theatrics and put that head of yours to work."
—was all she said, cool and unmoved.
Weariness written across my face, I dug my fingers into my temples and murmured:
"How long ago did Fuzzy say all this happened?"
"A little over a fortnight, he said."
"And that's what's been nagging at me. If we had finished the conference and ridden straight back to Sichuan, it would line up with that timing almost perfectly—down to the very stretch of road we'd have crossed. Doesn't that strike you as a little too neat?"
"Coincidence, surely? How would the Demonic Cult possibly know our itinerary, let alone time their little production to match it?"
"On that point I largely agree with Jihyeon. Our schedule was unknowable to begin with—and had they truly been after us, they'd have sent at least a Transcendent Realm master in person, as they did last time."
"I suppose... it is true that coming after us with such shabby jiangshi-like things makes no sense..."
A silence settled over the carriage...
I let out a long, slow breath and said quietly to the squad leaders:
"Hoo..... there is still a Demonic Cult plant inside the Tang Clan."
"Didn't the Clan Head personally pull it all up by the roots, root and branch, last time?"
"We did strip the clan bare—even the An Family next door got turned inside out... but I'm telling you, past the small fry, there are still a few roots sunk deep in the core."
"Which would mean..."
"That among those holding the rank of squad leader or higher, there is a rat."
"That's impossible!"
The White Heaven Squad Leader's voice cracked upward—but I only gave her a long, cold look and spoke.
"And what makes you so certain?"
"Everyone at squad-leader rank and above is blood kin except for one—and frankly, pinning it on that one makes even less sense than anything, doesn't it?"
"Then answer me one thing. The day I set out for that hermitage—how did the Demonic Cult know to come ambush me?"
"Couldn't someone... have been keeping watch around the estate from outside?"
"Then explain how a Transcendent Realm master came to be deployed."
".........."
"The rumor that I had reached the Peak Realm after my bout with Dang Yun had been in circulation barely three days when the attack came. And for the Demonic Cult, squatting in the deepest reaches of Xinjiang, a courier pigeon alone would take the better part of three days just to reach Sichuan."
"Just so. As you say, Young Master—had the intelligence been gathered outside the estate, a Transcendent Realm master could never have arrived on schedule."
To Du-sik, chiming in with his impeccable sense of timing, I flashed a little gesture meaning zip it for a moment, and pressed on:
"The news that I had reached such an attainment at that time had been relayed to those of squad-leader rank and above—or to Sis. And the old man's plan to take me somewhere had been announced at the squad-leader council, too.."
"I, ah, happened to be called away by the Poison Hall Master at the time, though..."
"And of course, the White Heaven Squad Leader wasn't present at that meeting either—which is precisely why I can speak of all this in front of you now."
I took a sip of water to wet my mouth, then went on:
"So tell me: if this affair, too, is not mere misfortune but bears the shape of yet another scheme—am I simply being oversensitive?"
"It doesn't necessarily follow that there's a plant in the clan's core, does—"
"Then suppose every part of this was planned. And if, as the White Heaven Squad Leader suggests, it was merely the work of clan servants or demonic agents lurking near the estate—it makes even less sense."
"........."
"Some nameless squad member or servant who just happened to learn of my attainment, just happened to know I would be going to that hermitage, just happened to escape the purge when Father turned the family inside out—and just happened to know the precise route we would take to Hubei and back?"
Both squad leaders had sunk into silence before a chain of coincidence that ached merely to hear.
"Rather than that parade of absurdities, a plant in the heart of the Tang Clan is by far the more realistic possibility—isn't it?"
"Then the prime suspect would be..."
The White Heaven Squad Leader let the words trail off, her gaze sliding toward Dang Giyeong.
"Huh? Not me! Young Master, you know full well it isn't me!"
"It's not him. I've confirmed it beyond any doubt."
"How can you be so very certain? Truthfully, if one were to judge coldly, the most likely candidate would be..."
"Because I am certain enough to stake my own neck on the Green Heaven Squad Leader not being it. So we can strike him from the list."
I swept the hair back from my face once, then looked at the two of them.
"In any case....."