One Month Before the Namgung Clan Head's Blood Pressure Exploded
It was around the time when, somewhere across the vast Central Plains, ugly rumors about Dang Muyeong were ballooning like a snowball rolling downhill.
He was just stepping out of the Clan Leader's Hall, having finished a report alongside the two squad leaders.
"What about it?! Today, you and me are settling this once and for all — a duel to the death!"
KA-BOOM—
Dang Muyeong did his level best to ignore the perfectly ordinary sounds of a Dang Clan meeting drifting out from behind him as he turned to Dang Giyeong.
"Dushik, you've got nothing else scheduled today, right?"
"No... that's correct, isn't it? Nothing on the books except checking up on how hard the Green Heaven Squad kids have been training, and then lazing about for a bit afterward."
"Then you're coming somewhere with me later, so just remember that much. I'll come find you at the training grounds the Green Heaven Squad uses."
"Well... then I shall see you there, sir."
Seeing him answer with a face that radiated pure reluctance, I briefly considered decking him one good time...
Haah... but the kid is my one and only thrall here. About time I started cherishing him a little.
But watching Dang Giyeong, who seemed to be growing dimmer by the day thanks to all the beatings I'd doled out lately, I loosened my fist and let him go on his way...
"Then I shall take my leave as well."
"Yeah. Let's have a drink with the Green Heaven Squad Leader sometime."
"I'm told that a wise approach to life is never letting a promise pass your lips if you have no intention of keeping it."
"What? Hey! Where do you think you're going!!!"
Soon the White Heaven Squad Leader gave me a small nod of her own and departed as well. I hollered after her too, but Dang Jihyeon didn't so much as turn her head, and shaking mine in defeat, I made for my quarters.
"Hm-hm... hm-hm-hm-hm..."
Things had been so deafeningly noisy around me lately that, savoring the first real peace in ages, I hummed through my nose and bounced along on my heels as I swung open the door to my quarters —
"You're finally back...?"
"GYAAAAH... damn it!"
Perched right against the door, spine bent into an arch and face hanging fully upside down, Dang Mulin greeted me — and I screamed and toppled over backward.
"Uuuurgh....."
She let out a strange groaning sound as she straightened her folded-back spine.
Whether that was because a curse had nearly burst from my mouth... or because my heart had nearly burst from my chest...
Grappling with my half-departed wits, I shouted at Dang Mulin, who was still twisting her waist this way and that, in a voice that shook.
"N... no, what are you doing here of all places, big sis?!!!"
Completely indifferent to me jabbing a finger at her and shrieking from where I'd collapsed, she didn't spare me so much as a glance as she stretched her legs back out and answered.
"Me? My work at the Murim Alliance is all wrapped up, so I came home. Why?"
"Then why were you doing that in front of my quarters..."
"I came by a little while ago, but they told me you'd headed for the Clan Leader's Hall, so I was just doing my flexibility stretches while I waited, that's all."
"Haaa....."
Once my heart, which had lurched clean out of my chest at the sight of Dang Mulin welcoming me in a pose straight out of an old-school horror classic, finally settled back down...
"Big sis, stop doing that in front of my quarters. Let's go talk in the back garden."
"Fine. That's a better spot than this for all sorts of chatting anyway."
And with that, I led her out to the back garden.
"It really has been an awfully long time since I've been here."
"It has... When I heard the news that you'd collapsed here, I..."
The moment Dang Mulin abruptly dragged the mood down into a fog of gloom while we looked around the pavilion, I waved the words away.
"That's all ancient history, and it ended well. Why dig it up now?"
"Fair enough. After something so merciless, I'm just glad you crawled back to the land of the living in one piece."
Glug-glug-glug—
With the atmosphere restored to normal, I poured tea into the cups and spoke to Dang Mulin.
"By the way — you said your Murim Alliance work is completely finished? What on earth was it that took this long to wrap up?"
"Ah... it truly wasn't much of anything. I went to look into the truth behind the previous Murim Alliance Leader's death, and apparently it's all concluded now."
"Wasn't that the affair the Demonic Cult had its fingers in?"
"Huh? How did you know that?"
"Well, you see, here's how it happened..."
And with that, I launched into everything that had happened while Dang Mulin was away from the clan — the recent assembly, and then the whole affair inside the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang.
Naturally, I left out every last thing she was better off not knowing.
But at some point, Dang Mulin had gone strangely quiet, her mouth clamped shut without a single word of response. Puzzled, I asked...
"Sis, are you feeling unwell? Or is something bothering you?"
"No... keep going."
With her lower lip jutting out and her foul mood on full display for anyone with eyes, I tilted my head once, then carried on with the story.
And so, once I'd told her everything, all the way down to the jiangshi pandemonium in Sichuan...
".........."
Watching my sister sit there in a towering sulk, I asked as delicately as a younger brother could, sneaking sidelong glances at her face.
"What's wrong... you're not angry because I got ambushed at the hermitage, are you?"
"I'd heard about that ages ago. Would I be getting angry over it just this minute?"
"Then... oh! Right, you wouldn't have known. Th... they say the ones behind what happened to our eldest brother were the Demonic Cult."
"I knew that already too."
"Th... then... the Demonic Cult strutting around Sichuan's soil so openly..."
"Since when did that Namgung Han wench become your 'big sis'?"
"What?"
The truth of the matter was that Dang Mulin's foul mood stemmed from the word big sis that kept popping out of her little brother's mouth.
To be fair, hearing it all retold — her eldest brother's fate, the Demonic Cult's filthy hands reaching for her little brother — made her blood boil all over again, but still...
"So anyway, me and big sis Han..."
'Big sis?'
"And against the terracotta warriors that revived without end, big sis Han..."
'Bii-i-ig sis...?'
"And after everything wrapped up, when we were splitting the loot back at the inn, big sis..."
'HA! Since when was that wench a big sis?!'
Dang Mulin fumed in silence. This was the boy who, the first time he laid eyes on her after losing his memory, had asked who are you? — and now he was calling that blockhead Namgung Han 'big sis' every chance he got...
"Since when did that Namgung Han wench become your 'big sis'?"
'Ah... I said it out loud.'
But once the words she'd been stubbornly swallowing back — for fear that voicing them would make her look hopelessly petty — finally slipped past her lips, there was no stopping the derailment.
"To me, it was 'Who are you?' and 'What's wrong with you?' last time — but for that Namgung Han thing, it's 'big sis' every single time without fail, is it?"
"No, sis, that's..."
"While a certain someone was setting out bowls of water and praying through sleepless nights, sick with worry in a foreign land, begging the heavens to please keep her little brother safe as he tumbled deeper and deeper into Demonic Cult business... that same little brother calls the woman who once screamed her head off at him 'big sis'? 'Big sis'...?"
"Th..."
"Before long 'big sis' turns into plain 'sis', 'sis' turns into 'lass', and 'lass' turns into 'darling', hmm? Aigoo... did I carry this boy on my back and raise him only to see the day? I'm starting to have serious doubts."
"But big sis, what exactly did you do with the letters Baekhwa sent—"
"Shut it!"
Watching her huff and puff after neatly snipping off every line of talk that didn't favor her, I felt the hard-won peace I'd only just recovered dissolving into foam, and thought to myself:
Ah... when I first met her, she had this cutting, cynical air — a total yandere, or so I thought. Why is it that every single person around me keeps getting their carefully maintained persona shattered to pieces?
And as Dang Muyeong himself sat there spacing out, utterly unaware that he was the one who had changed beyond all recognition...
"Are you not listening to a word I'm saying? We were just about to head out, weren't we?"
"No... it's just, Han is my big sis..."
"Big sis again? Even after everything I've said, it's still 'big sis'?"
"Th... that Namgung Han woman said she was your friend, big sis, so I just went along with it."
"Haah... friends? How lovely, 'friends.' Do you have any idea how many times that Namgung Han wench and I have gone at each other hammer and tongs?"
"Fight someone that many times and you grow fond of them, don't you...? But the Namgung Clan's Young Clan Head is in the Transcendent Realm, isn't she? Wouldn't that make you the one losing, big sis?"
"'Impervious to ten thousand poisons,' my foot. Dust someone with lethal poison in secret beforehand, and even a grandpa of the Transcendent Realm can't do a thing."
"............"
When I stared at her with distinctly dubious eyes, only then did Dang Mulin clear her throat.
"Ahem... regardless, I've won more of our bouts than I've lost. And besides, I've all but crossed the wall myself."
"Oh? Really? Congratulations, sis."
"You'll reach the Transcendent Realm soon enough yourself. It's simpler than you'd think."
Somewhere along the way, her earlier fury had vanished without a trace, and there she was, preening and openly performing her signature smug pose. Watching her...
"It is, actually. I picked up a rough clue myself, so I figure I'll be crossing that wall before long too."
"I'm sorry — what did you just say.....?"
"Just like you said, sis — easier than I thought? I'm already circulating through my middle dantian anyway, so all I'd need is to nail that mind-qi-body unity thing or whatever, right?"
At that, Dang Mulin stared at me for a long moment with a hollow look on her face before hastily pulling her expression back under control and draining her teacup in one go.
"Anyway, sis, you just gave me an idea — how would you like to present the Namgung Clan's Young Clan Head with a lovely gift of taffy?"
Clack—
At those words, she set her teacup down and stared at me, long and hard, before speaking.
"Feed her taffy? And how, exactly, would you manage that?"
"Th... all we have to do is fire off a single letter to the Sword King over at the Namgung Clan, that's all?"
Remembering how I had, in the end, coughed up my precious whip to talk Namgung Han down from the tantrum she threw when it was time to leave the inn, I pressed on with my explanation.
"In the letter, we write that the reason the Namgung Clan's Young Clan Head took only the whip and a few elixirs is that she herself insisted she simply had to have that whip, even at the cost of turning down ten treasured swords — so please, absolutely do not misunderstand."
When I laid out the revenge scheme I'd racked my brain to devise — all in the name of avenging my whip — she...
"Oh... that's a good idea. But sending it to the Namgung Clan Head would work even better than sending it to the Sword King."
"Really? Then, big sis, would you send this to the Namgung Clan for me?"
When I fished a letter out of the front of my robe and handed it over, Dang Mulin took it and said,
"Let's tweak the contents a little before we send it. At the very end, we'll write: 'Nevertheless, believing it unthinkable that the Sword Clan should return without a single proper sword to its name, I am sending one blade along with this letter' — and send the thing off together with an actual sword. That'll do beautifully."
"But the Finance Hall Master carted every last one of those off..."
"Leave the Hall Master to me — I'll talk him around somehow. Besides, wouldn't this be far more effective at sending the Namgung Clan Head's blood pressure through the roof?"
"Well... that's true...?"
"Then it's settled. We do it this way."
And so, chattering away with Dang Mulin, gleefully reworking the plan over and over, I never noticed the sun had already begun to sink...
Meanwhile, in one of the Dang Clan's training grounds, someone was sniffling quietly to herself, waiting all alone for a certain someone who simply never, ever came.
"Sniff... I wonder when the Young Master will come..."