Dragon-Phoenix Contest (Rigged)
And so, while Baekhwa and I were still busy cooing and snapping at each other like the lovesick pair we were...
"How about you two wrap up the lovers' quarrel and just head on inside?"
When I looked over to find Dang Giyeong — one hand propped on his hip, a single corner of his slit mouth curled upward — I answered in a voice thick with irritation.
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting this time....."
"I know full well what you're thinking, Young Master, but Lady Baekhwa is a martial artist herself. It only seemed to me that you were worrying over nothing."
That was the concern he'd actually come out with. Beside him, Namgung Han kept nodding along in vigorous agreement, and before long I relented, wearing a thoroughly sour expression.
"Haa... Fine. Let's all go up together."
And so the entire crowd of them came swarming in after me, and I lamented my fate in silence. Baekhwa had clasped both hands around one of my arms, holding on tight, and as I set off I couldn't shake the feeling that I could already see exactly how the rest of this outing would unfold.
The moment we stepped into the pleasure house, a heavy wave of perfume rolled over us, threaded with rippling laughter... and through it all, I caught sight of someone making her way toward us.
A slit-eyed gisaeng came gliding between the guests, smooth as water, and stopped before us.
"Whoa... Du-shik, you had a sister?"
"So it would seem. Apparently I have a sister even I never knew about?"
Save for the long hair, she was the spitting image of Dang Giyeong, as if stamped from the very same mold — and I was still reeling from the uncanny resemblance when she spoke.
"She is expecting you above. Please follow me."
She led the way with the unshakable composure of someone who knew exactly why we had come, and we naturally fell in behind her and climbed.
"She is waiting inside."
At the very top floor, she bowed before a room that was expensive in the most shamelessly ostentatious way, then took her leave — and I was still busy comparing her face to Dang Giyeong's when the door seemed to speak.
"Please, come in."
The voice was honeyed at best and outright bewitching at worst. Clearing my throat for no particular reason, I pushed the door open...
"Hoooh......"
Magnificent......
One look, and no other word would come. I stood there with my mouth hanging open —
"My lord!"
Slap— Baekhwa's palms clamped over my eyes.
"Truly... magnificent."
"Ahem... quite so."
With Namgung Han and Dang Giyeong chiming in beside me, I quietly pried Baekhwa's hands away and spoke.
"Baekhwa, don't worry. There's no one for me but you."
That was what I said, anyway. My honest eyes, however, went straight back to the woman in front of me...
"Hnggg....."
My fiancée's face crumpled on the spot.
There was a brief commotion, but once the atmosphere had more or less settled, the magnificent lady opened her mouth.
"Might I ask what brings such promising young stars of the Orthodox faction to a pleasure house like this one?"
When she smiled, the corners of her eyes curved like a crescent moon, and that voice sent a tickle straight down the spine — Dang Giyeong, for his part, had already lost his mind entirely, standing there with a slack, foolish grin.
Thwack— I drove a fist into his side, then finally spoke.
"I hear a strange epithet of mine has been making the rounds in Hebei. The one circulating in Hubei was put out by your Haomun branch there, so I wondered whether this place might be more of the same....."
Truthfully, the mere thought of the word Serpent-Scorpion had my blood simmering, so I smiled — thinly, coldly.
"Hoo....."
With a long bamboo pipe clamped between her teeth, she puffed it alight with a series of little pops and began.
"I heard of the Hubei affair as well. That the young lady of the Jegal Clan beside you stirred up quite the storm... Were you perhaps thinking that if anyone here happened to bear you a grudge, you might come to a place like this and do something about it?"
..........
At those words, I let my killing intent unspool, slow and deliberate — and she merely laughed.
"Huhu... a jest, only a jest. By the way, you must be terribly dear to your betrothed?"
"...I don't see why I'd need to confirm that for you?"
Her knack for needling a man in exactly the wrong place had my displeasure showing plainly on my face, and she took another long, pop-popping draw on her pipe before continuing.
"In any case, as for the answer to what you're so curious about..."
She let the sentence die right there and simply smiled. I was mid-scowl when—
Clink—
"Will this cover it?"
Namgung Han, of all people, had flung a pouch of coin down in front of her.
"Sis?"
"Whatever this doesn't settle, we'll pay in steel."
"Hmmm... The rumors in Hebei did not come from us. A few tongues may have carried the tale onward, mind you, but we did not spread them the way we did in Hubei — nothing so proactive."
She answered Namgung Han with a smile whose meaning I couldn't begin to parse.
"Then who started the rumor in the first place?"
"Hmmm....."
Clink— A second pouch dropped at her feet.
"That, we cannot say with certainty either... though wouldn't it have been one of the Paeng Clan warriors who returned from the assembly a while back?"
To pocket that much money and still keep doling out these slippery half-answers — just as I was about to lose my temper—
"Aww, I think we've heard just about enough by now, don't you? Shall we head back?"
"We haven't heard a single thing — what do you mean, 'enough'?"
"There's nothing more to be gained by staying here, is there? Then home we go."
Baekhwa was angling for the exit with a look I could only call uneasy, and I must have worn my bewilderment openly, because—
"Aigoo, just let it go, will you? Can't you see the look on your betrothed's face?"
She wasn't wrong; Baekhwa looked thoroughly out of sorts. I was nodding and rising from my seat when—
"Oh, right..."
"What is it?"
"That thing..."
My finger was aimed dead at the chest of the woman who was almost certainly the branch chief — and Jegal Baekhwa pinched my arm as she asked, "My lord, where exactly are you pointing?"
"No — not that. Where did you buy that pipe?"
"Hm? Who knows? If you honor us with your patronage again, I may just tell you then..."
She ran her tongue slowly across her lips as she spoke. I clicked mine right back, and we quit the pleasure house shortly after.
And so it was, on the road back to the Paeng estate—
"'Serpent-Scorpion'? What even is 'Serpent-Scorpion'!"
I was still erupting over the epithet I'd supposedly picked up in Hebei...
"Aw, come on, A-woo, what's so terrible about it? Mine's 'Mad Sword', after all..."
"Yours is a badge of honor next to mine! Is 'Serpent-Scorpion' any kind of epithet for a warrior of the Orthodox faction?!"
"Ahem... Some joker must have pinned it on you. Laugh it off, I say. It will be replaced soon enough anyway — a tiresome little prank, nothing more..."
"At this rate I'll wake up 'Poison Ghost' next... or 'Poison Demon'? Whoever's responsible — they'd best pray I never catch them....."
"Ahem....."
Namgung Han kept clearing her throat, as though something about that didn't sit quite right with her.
"Well, I thought it was rather fun, for once. Didn't you?"
Skrrrk—
The slit-eyed gisaeng who had guided Dang Muyeong's party earlier tore her own face away as she complained.
"Isn't this prank of yours a little too cruel? Assigning me of all people to play guide... You know perfectly well what would have become of me had I been found out."
"You hid a man whose wanted posters are circulating clear across Hubei. Surely you can put up with this much and call it even. Hoho....."
"Seolyu — your perverse tastes are as unchanging as ever, I see."
"Still, the Namgung Clan's Young Clan Head gave most generously, didn't she?"
"Scattering coin like that to seal our lips, no doubt."
"She'd already sent word by voice-transmission that she would kill us the moment we opened our mouths. But it was entertaining, so all is well."
"You... keep living the way you do, and I doubt you'll be granted a natural death."
"It is simply my nature — what would you have me do? Speaking of which, that Young Clan Head of the Dang Clan..."
Licking her lips, smacking them with undisguised appetite — at the sight of Seolyu, the man shook his head slowly from side to side.
"There she goes again... I'll be smelling funeral incense any day now....."
And thus Haomun knew peace again today.
A few days later...
"WAAAAAAH!!!!!"
A grand banquet convened to celebrate the Blade King's ninetieth birthday.
It was, after all, a celebration for the most venerable elder of the Orthodox murim, and a sea of guests flooded the grounds. Far off at the head of it all, the Blade King chuckled his hearty hoh-hoh beneath wave after wave of congratulations.
And in that hall drowning in festival cheer, I alone stood with my jaw hanging slack...
"This fucking..."
"Young Master, keep that up and you'll only invite another bout of ugly gossip. Do try to smile."
"Du-shik, could you find anything to smile about?"
"You must regardless, Young Master — unless you're eager to add yet another bizarre epithet to your name..."
"Kee-hee-hee... hah... Heh-heh-heh-heh."
I hauled the corners of my mouth all the way to my ears and forced the laugh out...
At that grotesque display, Dang Giyeong's complexion turned an interesting shade of green.
The truth is, the reason I was in such a foul mood was a certain conversation with Namgung Han the day before...
"Come to think of it, you won't be entering this Dragon-Phoenix Contest, will you."
"What kind of dogshit talk is that?"
"You truly didn't know?"
What came out of her mouth next took the giddy, footloose mood I'd been floating on for days and crushed it flat in a single stroke.
"Those who reach the Transcendent Realm are barred from competing. A tournament held to measure the achievements of rising stars — does it make sense for someone no longer counted among them to set foot on the stage?"
"Seriously... what kind of bullshit rule is that....."
"The last time around, I hadn't even fully shattered the wall yet. But because I could draw sword qi by borrowing a sliver of my middle dantian, they barred me from the roster."
"What kind of stretch is that?! Wait — so you're telling me I can't compete because I'm not even twenty?"
"I'd wager that's precisely how it will go. The Murim Alliance will dispatch someone to tell you to withdraw. Of course, they'll insist it be framed delicately — that you've lost interest, or some such nonsense."
"Then what happens to my epithet? To 'Poison Dragon'?"
"Did you truly believe they hung 'Mad Sword' on me because I am, in fact, a raving madwoman? My 'Sword Dragon' — or 'Sword Phoenix' — title was half-wrested from my grip."
"Ha....."
"What could anyone do? The Nine Sects crowd are incorrigibly greedy for glory. Even Murin had her Phoenix epithet half-taken from her, when it comes to that."
"And you simply let that slide, sis?"
"In exchange, they lined my pockets most handsomely behind the curtain, so I let the matter pass amiably enough. Besides — five of the eight Dragons and Phoenixes belong to the Nine Sects and One Clan. Surely that struck you as odd from the very beginning?"
"Ha....."
"Naturally, this is all sealed confidential... but you would have learned it soon enough regardless, so consider this a courtesy."
With the single greatest reason I had come to Hebei dissolving like foam on water, I drifted for a moment before collecting myself and asking,
"Then why not just plant my feet and compete anyway? You said it's all confidential."
But Namgung Han pulverized that hope.
"I once tried exactly that... but when the Alliance Leader summons you and spends a full four hours 'persuading' you, what can one do....."
And with her final verdict — that renewing my epithet was a hopeless cause — my last tether of reason finally snapped.....
Which is why, at the Blade King's birthday banquet the next day, I could do nothing but wear the face of a man hauled out of a cesspit.
"Young Master... you would be better off simply scowling. That face right now could bring a passing child to tears."
"...Then that is exactly what I shall do, won't I?"
"Pardon? What did you say?"
"They're all faking it anyway, so I may as well do the same....."
"Pardon? Explain that in words I can actually understand."
"Heh heh heh heh..... They brought it on themselves."
Watching his own Young Clan Head snicker viciously beside him, Dang Giyeong began, at long last, to feel afraid.