Conspiracies Always Bloom in the Dead of Night
It was the deep of night, when darkness had settled over the world in full. The streets that had throbbed with life all day long had slipped into silence before anyone noticed, and the lamps that had lit the evening went out one by one.
But in one inn, a faint glow was still seeping out through closed windows...
"Whew... Sis, I'm finished over here too. That makes it airtight, right?"
"Yeah. The qi barrier is up three layers thick, so unless Bulseong comes snooping, not a word of this leaves the room."
Three of us in all—myself, and Dang Mulin, who had broken through her bottleneck while I was away in Hebei—had raised the barrier so that not a single sound could slip out. I gave it one last check, wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, and spoke from where I had flopped bonelessly into my chair.
"Well then... shall we get to it?"
With that, I looked around the room. Starting with the Paeng brothers, each family head had brought a pair of direct descendants—fourteen people in all, a sizable crowd seated in a ring around a great table made by pushing several smaller ones together.
Once the young scions of all seven families had taken their seats, I flashed a smile and spoke.
"My, with everyone gathered in one place, we really are a crowd... In any case, you all know what business brought us here."
"Uh... I don't actually know why we've gathered, though....."
Just as I was trying to set the mood, someone had to go and puncture it. And of course it was that Moyong Sahyeok—the very man who had once vanished and left me holding the bag.
Frowning at the thoroughly unlikable fellow, I heaved a long sigh and asked him,
"Did... did your Clan Head not say anything to you?"
At my question, the girl beside him—Moyong Sahye—shook her head vigorously.
"No? Father told me everything."
At his sister's words, Sahyeok's head snapped up and he rounded on her.
"What? I'm the Young Clan Head, and Father told only you? Wow... he really does play favorites with his daughter. How's the actual son supposed to live with that?"
"You were the one dozing off back then! He told the whole family meeting the day before we left for Henan, and you slept straight through it..."
"Th-that may be, but you still could have told me!"
"Did you ever ask me? Did you ask me even once!"
I was the one who had raised the question in the first place, but the two of them were going at it hammer and tongs as if I didn't exist. Just watching, my head had already begun to ache.
"Ugh... you two."
Pressing my throbbing temples with my fingers, I glanced to the side and found Dang Mulin smiling away, serene as you please.
"Sis, is that what it feels like when people look at our family?"
"Uh... hmm... Well, we do look a little better than that....."
She sounded utterly unconvinced. I let out a sigh and tried again.
"Both of you, quiet down. I'll simply explain from the beginning... Actually, the Young Lord of the Zhuge Clan will do the explaining."
At my none-too-subtle deflection, Zhuge Baek-jun shot me a glare sharp enough to sting, cleared his throat, and began.
"Ahem... I don't know how much of this each of you has heard, so I'll explain everything from the top. The reason we have gathered here is, in short, to form what we are calling the Seven Clan Alliance....."
The Seven Clan Alliance was a plan to pool the strength of the great clans around seven great families: the Five Great Clans of Dang, Namgung, Zhuge, Paeng, and Hwangbo, joined by the Divine Spear Yang Family and the Moyong Clan.
It was a plan that, handled carelessly, could split the Orthodox murim—built as it was on sects and clans—clean down the middle. The reason they were forcing it through anyway was this:
"The biggest reason is that we can no longer trust the Murim Alliance."
The words out of Zhuge Baek-jun's mouth carried far more weight than I had expected, and a brief silence settled over the room...
Before long, the Yang Family's young head raised a hand and put a question to him.
"Young Lord, would you explain in a little more detail what exactly you mean by that?"
"Hmm... then choose. Shall you hear the most serious matter first? Or would you rather save it for last?"
"Well, as they say, even a flogging is best taken early....."
At that, Baek-jun closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and spoke.
"The Murim Alliance deliberately concealed information concerning the Demon Cult."
"To be precise, it was the Nine Sects and One Union that hid it from the clans. Among themselves, they already knew everything."
At Dang Mulin's addition, he nodded and carried on.
"You will all have heard of the calamities that befell the Five Great Clans these past few years. We only recently learned that the Demon Cult stood behind them, but..."
"The Alliance already knew?"
"They did."
Right in the middle of it all, Moyong Sahyeok raised his hand and cut in yet again...
"What happened to the Five Great Clans?"
"Hey, you blockhead! Read the room!!!"
Sahye, whose own flesh and blood seemed to have left his situational awareness back in Liaoning, scolded him and physically clapped a hand over his mouth.
"Hmm....."
The Yang Family's young head, Yang Do-wi, was sunk in a low, thoughtful hum.
Seeing him like that, Namgung Han snorted a laugh and spoke up.
"I'd wager the Alliance decided hiding it suited them just fine. The Five Great Clans, locked in a tug-of-war with them, would grow suspicious of one another—and their strength would never properly unite, don't you know."
"You're right. Though it seems they genuinely didn't know the previous Alliance Leader had been poisoned by the Demon Cult..."
"Either way, what matters is that those bastards buried the information out of sheer malice. And have we not a few more grievances against the Murim Alliance besides?"
At her wide, beaming grin, Baek-jun rubbed at the corner of his mouth and continued.
"And the fact that the Alliance has been steadily shutting clan-born men out of its key posts. That in the dozen-odd years since the last Alliance Leader was poisoned, they never once came to the Dang Clan asking for aid..."
"You mean the Alliance has been trying to reduce how much it depends on the clans?"
When the Moyong Clan's daughter—who had been smacking her own flesh and blood across the back not a moment before—asked this, he nodded.
"Whatever the reason, none of it bodes well for us. And truthfully, there is plenty more besides. Look no further than the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament—has it not kept tilting in the Nine Sects' favor to a frankly suspicious degree?"
Sahye went quiet at that, turned it over in her head, then opened her mouth again.
"So you're saying we should withdraw from the Murim Alliance?"
"Oh, nothing of the sort. What we are doing is, at most, a little friendly socializing."
"Officially, anyway."
Pipe between my teeth—the one I had sent Dang Giyeong out to buy—I turned to Namgung Han.
"Sis, a little Samadhi True Fire, if you would..."
"Does this little brother of mine take me for his tinderbox..."
"Aw, come on....."
"Tsk... I shall grant it just this once."
Fwoosh—
The tobacco caught. I pulled in a long, deep draw of smoke, exhaled it slow, and picked up where we had left off.
"On the surface, our reason is friendship between the clans—but even that alone will keep the Nine Sects and One Union from running wild the way they have been... And if it comes to it, well, we ought to be ready to tear ourselves free."
"But that would split the Orthodox faction right down the middle..."
"You can't stay aboard a holed ship... When you saw those Taoist bastards today, didn't something strike you as off?"
"I didn't really find anything strange about them, though...."
Tap— tap—
Sahye was looking at me with genuine puzzlement, so I rapped the tabletop lightly with my pipe and said,
"One look at what those men were wearing and you could tell no Taoist would ever dress like that going about his business. Why else do you think I took one of them for a Moyong man?"
"Now that you mention it... it wasn't the sort of garb Taoists are supposed to wear, given how they shun the worldly life."
"That's exactly my point... If the men claiming to cultivate the Dao look like that, can we really trust them? The Unorthodox factions are already gathering in one place, and the Demon Cult is stirring—of all times."
Silence settled over the inn once more, and I found myself groping after memories that had long since gone hazy.
The Demon Cult sweeping down on us was all but a settled future by now... But why on earth did I leave the Unorthodox out of it entirely back then.....
Everyone had gone quiet, sunk deep in thought—or, in the case of one pair of siblings, were murmuring cautiously between themselves.
"In any case, it is for those reasons that we have all gathered here today."
Baekhwa, who had been sitting beside me nibbling away at something, set down a plate scraped perfectly clean—I hadn't even noticed her finish—and began to speak.
"With every Clan Head's consent, the formation of the alliance is settled... Now it is time to work out the details."
The timid girl I knew was nowhere in sight. Watching her speak with such poise, I couldn't help the fond smile spreading across my face.
The meeting that began that way did not end until the sun had risen.
"Uuuuugh..... Sahye, carry me too."
"Drop dead....."
The Moyong siblings, who until yesterday had been bickering at the top of their lungs, now wobbled up the stairs on a sleepless night's worth of exhaustion.
"Honestly... what a pair of clowns. All the hard work fell to me and Sis here."
Watching them go, I muttered to myself as I gathered in the qi barrier I had held up all night.
Though unlike Dang Mulin's, what I had spread was, in a sense, closer to a Blood Barrier.
Her ears were sharp as ever, though. Having caught my muttering, Namgung Han immediately started whining at me.
"Little Brother, I toiled through the night as well... How can you speak so, with no care for my tender heart..."
"The bet was about who had strength to spare in the first place, Sis. I doubt it wore you out much."
I brushed off her grumbling without a second thought. Yesterday, while I was out strolling with Baekhwa, she had somehow managed to settle her contest with Dang Mulin and claim the title of Big Sis for herself.
"Hoo... hoo..."
The all-night meeting had clearly taken its toll; Baekhwa lay slumped over the table, fast asleep. When I reached out for her...
Smack— smack—
Two hands clamped down on my wrists.
"I'll be looking after my own sister, so you go look after yours."
"Muyeong, you heard the man. How about looking after your sister for once?"
Zhuge Baek-jun and Dang Mulin had spoken in unison, each with a grip on one of my arms. I was just opening my mouth to protest, face falling...
"Um....."
"Muyeong? Is there a problem?"
But then I met Dang Mulin's eyes, fixed on me with slow, pointed patience...
"Nothing... Sis, why don't we get some breakfast first and rest after? I'm starting to get hungry, actually."
I swallowed the words I had been about to say back down my throat and suggested we eat instead.
Of course, a "Tch..." still slipped out of Baekhwa as she rode off on her older brother's back.
Meanwhile, on a certain road leading toward Mount Song, a white-haired old man and a young woman walked side by side...
"Master, I'm so excited!"
"Heheh..... Do you remember everything I told you?"
"Yes! That I mustn't kill people... and that I mustn't lose my head!"
"Good. As long as you hold to those two, I doubt there will be any great trouble."
The old man smiled as he stroked the woman's hair, and she simply beamed back at him, happy as could be.
But the pupils visible between those crescent-curving eyes were unmistakably not a human's... They resembled, if anything, a mountain goat's.