The Righteous Are All the Same
Wherever people lived, the story was always the same.
Even across this vast Central Plains, the largest power acknowledged by all was the Orthodox Faction. As the name implied, they walked the upright path, and so they had taken the character for "righteous" into their very title. Unlike the Unorthodox Faction, who would stomach any shortcut so long as it served the goal, they always chose the correct road, setting an example worthy of emulation. And held up against the Demon Cult, which spared no means or method in pursuit of its ends, their nobility shone all the brighter.
But the Orthodox Faction, and every group that made it up, was in the end assembled from people...
"Sect Leader, is this truly acceptable?"
"What is there to worry about? What happened here will never leave this room."
"Mmph!!! Mmmph!!!!"
"Shh... this is karma of your own making, so do go gently now."
Burying people in secret every now and then was, evidently, not beyond them.
"Uncle! I respected you my whole life—how could you do such a thing?!"
"Haah... Yongtaek, how many times did I tell you? Never trust people too easily. Now go, and rejoin your father."
"Kehk....."
And cutting down one's own kin in service of one's desires was, it turned out, more routine than anyone would care to admit.
"Then I shall report to the Alliance Leader that the two of you are in agreement."
"Ahem... see that you do."
"Then I will take my leave....."
Even the venerable luminaries of murim would collude behind closed doors the moment their own interests were at stake.
Of course, unlike the Unorthodox or the Demon Cult, they buried every trace of what they'd done—so to the watching world they appeared nothing more than paragons of martial virtue...
"Honestly, being on the receiving end of this dogshit myself, it feels absolutely filthy."
"Young Master, what sort of strange scheme are you cooking up this time?"
"Not yet, I'll tell you later. Far too many ears around here."
For whoever was being screwed over, the righteous were more infuriating by far than the Demon Cult, which at least had the courtesy to come at you while openly declaring, 'I am a son of a bitch.'
Truthfully, I couldn't entirely blame the Nine Sects and One Gang for clinging to honor so desperately. Unlike the great clans, which were effectively businesses run by bloodline, sects like theirs lived and died by their reputation, so their conduct made a certain grim sense.
"So then, Young Master—it's just the two of us now, so out with it, nice and clean."
"Nothing much... I'm planning to raise hell on a grand scale at the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament."
But that was their problem, not mine—none of my business, no? Besides, I was in a position where I needed some name value of my own to achieve my goals. Of course, there was also the trivial matter of refreshing my epithets...
So once I'd returned to my quarters, I quietly began laying out my plan for Dang Giyeong.
"Du-sik, you know why I came all this way, don't you?"
"Well... didn't you come to enter the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament?"
"I did. Except it seems I won't be allowed to compete."
"Pardon? What on earth do you mean?"
"Martial artists of the Transcendent Realm are being summoned separately by the Alliance Leader and told to stay out of it. They're even planning to dress it up as though we're abstaining of our own free will?"
"What kind of bullshit is—"
"Right? Total bullshit. And apparently the very pillars propping up the Orthodox Faction are the ones spouting it."
Whatever had come out of my mouth must have struck Dang Giyeong rather hard...
"Ha!"
It was the loudest gasp—delivered with the widest eyes—I had seen from him in the near-year I'd known him.
After a short silence, he spoke again...
"Then the Alliance Leader himself is leading the Nine Sects and One Gang in such a contemptible trick?"
"I'd wager so."
"Then what if one of their own later-generation disciples breaks through the wall of the Transcendent Realm at your age, Young Master?"
"Then they'll rewrite the rules again. Honestly... it's uncanny how faithfully they keep the realism settings in exactly these places..."
I reminded myself, once more, that this place was, in fact, the Central Plains...
Dang Giyeong mulled something over for a moment, then asked, brow furrowed:
"But Young Clan Head Namgung was decidedly not Transcendent Realm at the last tournament, was she?"
"From what I hear, they barred her from competing on the grounds that she could wield incomplete sword ganggi."
"And the Namgung Clan simply let that slide?"
"They let it slide in exchange for a rather generous payout under the table. She more or less conceded the point herself, so it was all quietly swept under the rug..."
"That is completely fucked, isn't it?"
"Hehe. Fucked is right."
Watching him put the swearing lessons to such fine use, I was giving a hollow laugh and nodding along when...
"Young Master, why don't we simply forgo any compensation and charge straight in?"
Dang Giyeong had dropped his voice low, and I kept right on nodding as I answered.
"That was the plan anyway. Honestly, no matter how much compensation the Murim Alliance throws at us, what we hauled out of Qin Shi Huang's Mausoleum was worth more—call it even, and the clan shouldn't have much to say."
"Fair enough. The Financial Hall Master said it was worth nearly a full year of the clan's budget... I believe that was the figure."
The truth was that the fruits of our industrious grave-robbing had proven so valuable that, crudely put, every last member of the Dang Clan could have spent an entire year lounging about doing nothing.
"Well... anyway, that's why I've been working out the most painful way possible to make those doomed old bastards swallow the biggest loss of their lives..."
And so the presentation of my grand design did not conclude until it was nearly midnight.
"Oh my—what business brings you to our humble branch so early in the morning, my lord?"
"I have a commission for you."
"And might I ask what information you desire, to bring you here at such an hour?"
"Haomen releases information as well as gathers it, no?"
"That we do, but....."
"Then spread this rumor as far and wide as you can. Will this much money cover it?"
"Our most treasured customer—what sort of rumor shall we spread for you today?"
"Just something like this......."
From the black hours of pre-dawn, when the sun had only just begun to show its face, I had gone to the Haomen branch chief of Hebei and commissioned a single rumor to be spread...
"Fellow Daoist Muyeong, then we shall meet again in Henan."
"Yes, off you go. You'll be late at this rate."
One after another, we were seeing off the people of the various sects and clans as they departed the Paeng estate. That we lingered there a while longer was, admittedly, not part of the plan.....
"You whelp! You turn another family's precious grandson into a half-broken husk, and now you're slinking off?!"
"I'm... sorry? What do you mean?"
"Where do you get off playing innocent! In any case—you, Muyeong, will take responsibility for that boy Jun and set him back to rights before you leave!"
"Ah....."
And so, thanks to the Blade King seizing me by the collar and shaking me like a dusty rug while he raged, I found myself abruptly conscripted as psychotherapist to Paeng Jun.
"I am trash... I ought to just die....."
"Haah... this is worse than I expected. How is your mental game this frail....."
The Paeng Jun I was reacquainted with after only a few days wore a scraggly dark beard, reeked to high heaven of however much liquor he'd been drowning in, and lay sprawled across his quarters with his hair hanging loose and wild. I shook my head at the sight, then promptly hauled him bodily out to the training grounds.
Namgung Han, who had only ever meant to spectate the tournament anyway, had sent the rest of her party on ahead to Anhui and stayed behind at the Paeng estate alone...
"Hmm... I can simply hitch a ride in the Dang Clan carriage again this time, can I not."
And since I—Dang Muyeong—had announced I was bound for Henan despite being quite plainly barred from competing, she had come looking for me with that carriage very much in mind.
Jegal Baekhwa, meanwhile, who had been searching for her betrothed besides, caught wind of it and went hunting for me through the Paeng estate—and when the two of them reached the training grounds.....
"Nnnnnnngh!!!!!"
"Quit hamming it up. Even your little brother endured this, yet here you are—a man his senior, raising hell over it."
"A-woo... what exactly are you doing right now?"
"Oh! Big Sis... and Baekhwa's here too? Nothing much. The Blade King ordered me to return this fellow to his former self, so here I am."
The scene that met the two women's eyes as they stepped into the training grounds was one that drew an involuntary 'ah... this is a bit much' out of anyone watching. Paeng Jun stood rigidly upright as though paralyzed, burst capillaries webbing red across both eyes as he groaned and moaned...
"Hmm... shall we raise the intensity of the pain this time, then? Come on, now... open wide. Say 'aah' for me?"
"Mmph!!!"
...and me, prying his jaw open and dripping something inside.
Namgung Han rounded on me, face aghast.
"What exactly are you feeding him right now—"
"This? Now what was it called again..... ah! The blood of the Two-Headed Venom-Horn Serpent, that's it."
"Uuurghhk!!!"
"You mean the blood of that serpent with the two heads?"
"Yep!"
At the sight of me force-feeding lethal poison to another clan's Young Clan Head, they hurried to intervene—and...
"Tch... fine, I'll stop for now and simply ask again."
I fed the utterly immobilized Paeng Jun something else, then asked him:
"So... what would you like to do now?"
"Save me! No... spare me, I beg of you!!!"
"Oh....."
"PLEASE, save me!!!"
"Then you're coming with us to Henan?"
"Yep!"
Watching a man who in his entire life had never once bowed that stiff neck answer so meekly, Namgung Han could only say, bewildered:
"A-woo, what on earth did you do to reduce Paeng Jun to this?"
To that question I flashed a grin and answered...
"Nothing much—just repeated the poisoning and the detoxing until a man ready to die started begging to live instead. That's all?"
"Haah..... no wonder they pinned 'Serpent-Scorpion' on you."
"What was that?"
"Nothing at all. So—when do we depart for Henan?"
Asked about our departure time, I scratched my head for a moment before answering.
"Hmm... he's more or less back among the living, so shall we leave after lunch?"
"Very well. I shall ready myself to match that, then."
"Got it. Baekhwa, what about you?"
Something about the exchange left me feeling I'd glossed over some detail, but I brushed it aside and turned to Jegal Baekhwa for her thoughts.
"I shall follow you to Henan as well, my lord!"
She wanted to come along, so I nodded and said,
"Then inform the Jegal Clan folk. We'll make for Henan and pass through Hubei while we're at it—two birds, one stone."
"Of course!"
With that settled, we set out for Henan a little past noon.
Unfortunately, through some absurd twist of fate, three Young Clan Heads of the Five Great Clans—the Hwangbo Clan excepted—along with Jegal Baekhwa, had all crammed themselves into the Dang Clan carriage, which meant...
"Young Master! You're honestly telling me to ride a horse? Someone of my rank....."
"Then who takes the seat instead? Big Sis? Or Paeng Jun?"
"Haah... never mind. A mere squad leader rides horses, after all..."
"If you hate riding that much, you're welcome to run along behind, you know..."
"Ah-ha! Of course—this humble servant shall ride a horse!"
Minor grievances aside, the horses galloped on with great diligence...
"Big Sis! We're here—up you get!"
"Mmmwah... Huh...? Wha...huh....."
We had arrived at Mount Song, home of the Shaolin Temple. Whether on account of the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament or not, the village at the mountain's foot was packed to bursting with countless people, and through that crush the Dang Clan carriage led the way, the Jegal and Paeng Clan carriages trailing in its wake. Strangely enough, though, the crowds began to murmur the moment they caught sight of the Dang Clan banner.....
"That's truly the Dang Clan's Young Clan Head riding in there, yes?"
"Ah... you mean the one all the rumors are about? An absolute madman....."
"Shh! Mind your tongue, old man. What will you do if he hears you flapping your lips for nothing!"
Listening to every word of it, I wore a warm, contented smile.