At my words, the Palace Lord of Zhurong Palace nodded.
“You’re right. Hyeon’s removal from the position of Young Palace Lord has yet to be officially announced. And even if that fool approached the Unorthodox Sect in a fit of rage, would they really have launched an attack this quickly?”
The Palace Lord was right.
That meant they had already been prepared to attack Zhurong Palace at any moment.
Then, after hearing that Young Palace Lord Maeng Hyeon had been stripped of his position, they had swiftly approached him.
In other words, someone had leaked the information to them.
“Who do you think it was?”
I had a place in mind.
However, the Palace Lord undoubtedly understood Zhurong Palace’s internal affairs better than I did.
“Why are you asking me? Wouldn’t you know better than I do, Palace Lord?”
“…You’re right. It is rather absurd to ask an outsider about the affairs of my own palace.”
After thinking for a moment, the Palace Lord raised his head and looked at Outer Chief Administrator Hae Dal-man.
“Immediately arrest everyone who works at Hyeon’s residence.”
“I obey.”
I then asked him,
“Do you believe there’s a rat among the servants at Young Lord Maeng Hyeon’s residence?”
“None of my children have personal guards. Whenever they wish to leave the palace, they must formally request an escort. Naturally, that request is reported to me. Yet I received no such report.”
“Which means he slipped out without an escort.”
“Exactly. That would only have been possible if there were a rat among those working at Hyeon’s residence.”
“What about that man named Hae Hong?”
“Ah, I briefly considered him as well, but I doubt it. If it had been him, there’s no way Chief Administrator Hae wouldn’t have noticed. He may appear indifferent, but he’s much stricter with his son than most people realize.”
“I see.”
“More importantly, that boy is currently undergoing forced closed-door cultivation as punishment for his recent crimes.”
Ah… Then it probably wasn’t him.
But something still felt strange.
When I had looked around last time, I hadn’t sensed Unorthodox Qi from anyone.
“…!”
A sudden thought flashed through my mind.
“Has anyone from Young Lord Maeng Hyeon’s residence been away for several days and returned yesterday?”
The Palace Lord turned around.
The man who appeared to be the Inner Chief Administrator immediately answered.
“There is a man named Ok-gun. He left briefly to deal with a family matter and returned yesterday evening.”
At that answer, the Palace Lord nodded.
Everything moved swiftly after that.
We immediately rounded up everyone from Young Lord Maeng Hyeon’s residence and began interrogating them.
The most important suspect among them was the man named Ok-gun.
“Once the First Young Lord wakes, he’ll tell us everything. So if you confess your crimes before then, we’ll show you a measure of leniency.”
“…”
“But if you keep your mouth shut until that happens, you’ll be subjected to an exceptionally brutal punishment.”
Zhurong Palace’s punishments were certainly cruel.
Ok-gun seemed well aware of that fact, because he eventually confessed.
“The truth is… I was the one who tempted the Young Lord. My father owed an enormous debt to a place called the Black Lotus Gang, so…”
The name I had expected emerged from his mouth.
The Black Lotus Gang.
They ran rampant throughout Yunnan and were infamous for their cruelty.
They earned money through all manner of underhanded schemes, then used those profits to create the Extreme Martial Awakening Pill.
Their goal was the Black Lotus Dominion.
They called themselves the descendants of the Black Lotus, and their organization had something of a religious bent to it.
They referred to the Extreme Martial Awakening Pill as the Black Lotus’s mercy.
Mercy, my ass.
In any case, things hadn’t ended well for them.
Their mistake in this life was laying their hands on Young Lord Maeng Hyeon and Zhurong Palace.
For Zhurong Palace’s future, the Palace Lord had removed his son from the position of Young Palace Lord.
But that didn’t mean he no longer loved his son.
Maeng Hyeon had certainly made trouble for me and brought shame upon Zhurong Palace, but none of that was worthy of death.
Tricking his son into taking the Extreme Martial Awakening Pill and reducing him to a cripple, however, was another matter entirely.
And Zhurong Palace took vengeance more seriously than almost anyone else. The Palace Lord would make certain they paid the price.
.
.
.
The next day,
the Palace Lord immediately summoned every senior figure in Zhurong Palace.
There, before all of them, he declared war on the Black Lotus Gang.
He called it a war, but in truth, it would be an extermination.
The conference was postponed as a result, leaving me to remain at Zhurong Palace a little longer.
After seeing off the Palace Lord and his disciples as they departed to attack the Black Lotus Gang, I returned to my quarters in the Guest Hall.
Then I wrote a letter to my master.
Events had unfolded so chaotically that I hadn’t yet found the chance to report everything I had discovered.
An ordinary person wouldn’t have been able to send a letter from here, but I had Geumryeong.
“Geumryeong.”
“Kui!”
“Take this to Master.”
“Kui!”
Geumryeong immediately extended its tail. As expected, nothing inspired such enthusiasm like the chance to make money.
Geumryeong swiftly tied the letter to its tail and shot away like an arrow.
As I watched Geumryeong become a tiny speck in the distance before vanishing in the blink of an eye, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
Could Master actually keep up with Geumryeong at that speed?
I certainly couldn’t.
Just then, Palgap entered and spoke.
“Young Master, um…”
Palgap seemed slightly hesitant. What was this about?
“What is it?”
“Someone came from Young Lord Maeng Hyeon’s residence. He says the Young Lord wishes to see you.”
Palgap clearly wasn’t pleased by the idea of me meeting him.
“You don’t want me to see Young Lord Maeng Hyeon?”
“He tried to make a fool of you before, and this time he tried to kill you. You were even injured fighting him, Young Master…”
“You know, I’m the pettiest man in the entire world.”
Palgap snorted with laughter at my words.
“Do you honestly mean that? I’ve never met a truly petty man who willingly admitted he was petty.”
“It’s just an expression.”
I continued,
“But a merchant must be capable of smiling at yesterday’s enemy today. Besides, it’s not as though he’s my mortal enemy.”
“Well, that’s true.”
A mortal enemy.
The phrase referred to an enemy one could not bear to live beneath the same sky with, and it originated from the Summary of the Rules of Propriety in the Book of Rites.
For me, the Baekcheon Merchant Group and the Murim Alliance were enemies of that sort.
Come to think of it, the Baekcheon Merchant Group had been strangely quiet lately.
I told Palgap,
“So there’s no need to worry.”
I rose from my seat and went outside. The man waiting in front of the building quickly bowed his head.
“I heard you were looking for me. Lead the way.”
“Yes. Thank you for accepting the Young Lord’s request.”
A short while later,
I arrived at Young Lord Maeng Hyeon’s residence.
He sat in a spot with a beautiful view, quietly drinking tea.
As the one responsible for bringing the Unorthodox Sect into Zhurong Palace, he could easily have been sentenced to death. However, he had been allowed to keep his life.
That was because the man named Ok-gun had manipulated him.
He was also the Palace Lord’s son. Was this what people meant when they said it mattered what family you were born into?
Even so, the Extreme Martial Awakening Pill’s side effects had severed the meridians throughout his body, twisted the flow of his Qi and blood, and even shattered his dantian.
Fortunately, he could still walk and wash himself without assistance, but…
Many of his teeth had come loose, leaving him unable to eat anything except soft food or porridge.
Given the ruinous condition of his body, he probably didn’t have long to live.
His gaunt complexion and the dark circles surrounding his eyes were proof enough of that.
“I heard you asked to see me.”
“Ah! Please, come in.”
He welcomed me.
“I should rise to greet you properly, but as you can see, I’m unable to do so. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to.”
With that, I sat across from him.
“So, what did you want to tell me?”
At my question, he bit his lip. After a moment, he finally spoke.
“How did everything end up like this?”
That was what I wanted to ask.
In my previous life, he had become the Palace Lord of Zhurong Palace. He had ultimately run the entire place into the ground, but for a time, he had still lived as a powerful figure who commanded respect throughout Yunnan.
Now, however, he had been stripped of his position as Young Palace Lord and reduced to a cripple, making a mockery of all the praise he had once received as a promising genius.
“Now that my body has ended up like this, I find myself with far too much time to think.”
“…”
“And when I looked back on everything I’d done, I realized that all of this began with me. I pursued the Young Palace Lord of the North Sea Ice Palace even though she wasn’t free to disregard her palace’s laws, and I ignored those laws entirely…”
“Do you not remember insulting the North Sea Ice Palace’s disciples?”
“I did? I never did anything like that.”
“You very clearly said, ‘They may not marry officially, but did you think I didn’t know they sleep with any man who caught their fancy?’”
“Ghk!”
Judging by his reaction, he finally remembered.
I told you.
My memory was exceptionally good. I was also petty and held grudges.
How dare he play dumb with me?
“Th-that… I truly apologize for saying such a thing.”
He apologized in embarrassment.
“You were fortunate that I was the only one who heard you. If Young Palace Lord Bing Hae-rin had heard that, all hell would’ve broken loose.”
“…I am truly sorry.”
Well, that was enough of an apology on the North Sea Ice Palace’s behalf. There was something else I needed to hear.
“You’ve wronged me plenty of times as well, haven’t you?”
“I apologize for that too.”
“But there are people you should be far more apologetic toward than either me or the North Sea Ice Palace.”
At my words, he sighed and nodded.
“I know. I have committed an unforgivable act of unfilial conduct against both my father and mother.”
“You may not know this, but the Palace Lord is currently leading his disciples against the Black Lotus Gang that used you.”
“…”
“You don’t truly believe he’s doing that solely to avenge the humiliation Zhurong Palace suffered, do you?”
“Is he doing it for me?”
“What other reason could there be?”
“I was a truly pathetic son.”
“You’re only realizing that now?”
I made no effort to comfort him. Comfort was something only those who deserved it had the right to receive.
As far as I was concerned, he didn’t deserve any.
He needed to regret what he had done and reflect on it properly.
I wasn’t about to ease his guilt with some halfhearted consolation.
“All it takes for a person to stray down the wrong path is one careless moment. They fail to control a passing emotion or restrain their hot blood, and they do something they can never take back.”
I continued,
“I don’t know what conclusion you’ve reached, but from what I saw, you allowed your temper to rule you far too often. That was both the cause and the reason behind everything that happened.”
“…”
At my words, he could only let out one heavy sigh after another.
“You certainly know how to strike where it hurts.”
“That happens to be my specialty.”
“And yet, somehow, hearing it from you puts my mind at ease. What a strange contradiction.”
He gave a bitter smile.
I could no longer find any trace of the stubbornness or hot-blooded arrogance he had displayed before.
Had he realized that throwing a tantrum would no longer accomplish anything?
Or perhaps he had stopped because indulging that stubbornness and anger only made his body hurt.
Whenever his temper flared, the resulting fiery Qi would aggravate his acupoints and cause him excruciating pain.
He should have controlled that temper from the beginning.
Now he had been forcibly rendered incapable of losing it.
“The reason I asked to see you, Young Palace Lord, was partly to apologize. But I also have a request.”
“What sort of request?”
“My younger brother, Cheon… Please persuade him.”
“Persuade him to do what?”
“Father intends to make Cheon the next Young Palace Lord. Even I can see that he’ll do an excellent job once he becomes Palace Lord. Of that, I’m certain.”
He continued,
“I saw in him the qualities needed to become Palace Lord, which was why I secretly tormented him whenever I had the opportunity. Yet he never once ran to Father and tattled on me.”
“…”
“He simply avoided me and buried himself in the library.”
So that was why Young Lord Maeng Cheon had been in the library.
“Looking back, I was unbelievably petty. I never should’ve acted that way… I suppose I sensed that he was a threat without even realizing it.”
“…”
“But Cheon came to visit me earlier, and he said he had no intention of becoming the Young Palace Lord.”
He continued,
“Please persuade him to accept the position. This is the only way I can atone for what I’ve done.”
.
.
.
After returning to the Guest Hall, I paced around the courtyard and grumbled.
How could he ask something like that of me? It was completely unfair.
I would’ve felt far less uncomfortable if he had acted hotheaded again or looked down on me like before.
Instead, he had asked me politely and sincerely.
Besides, it was also true that the Eunhae Merchant Group had been able to grow in my previous life thanks to Young Lord Maeng Cheon.
Just as I never forgot a grudge, I never forgot a debt of gratitude.
And the Maeng Cheon I remembered was a broad-minded man. In other words, he possessed the qualities of a leader.
He could also be extraordinarily decisive when the situation demanded it.
If a man like Young Lord Maeng Cheon became the Palace Lord of Zhurong Palace, it would be no different from planting an ally here.
The Murim Alliance would no longer be able to run rampant throughout Yunnan.
And when times grew difficult, I would have someone here I could turn to for help.
Yunnan might be a remote border region, but as a major source of copper, it was still an important place.
In my previous life, when the Black Lotus Gang caused trouble here, the copper supply had been disrupted for quite some time, creating all sorts of problems.
The Eunhae Merchant Group also manufactured various products using copper, so Yunnan needed to remain peaceful.
In the end, there was only one possible conclusion.
I had to persuade Young Lord Maeng Cheon.
I immediately headed for the library.
I had yet to return my library entry pass, so I entered without anyone trying to stop me.
Before long, I found Young Lord Maeng Cheon reading a book.
“So this is where you were.”
“Ah! Young Palace Lord Eun.”
“Could we speak for a moment?”
At my words, he stared at me quietly before speaking.
“It seems my brother asked you to come and persuade me.”
“You’re remarkably perceptive.”
“I’ve always been good at reading the situation, even as a child. But I have no intention of becoming the Young Palace Lord simply because my eldest brother asked me to.”
He gave a faint, crooked smile.
Huh? Had he always been capable of smiling like that?
But that thought vanished completely when I heard his next words.
“Why should I grant a request from the man who doomed my brother to die?”
–TL Notes–
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