Chapter 103: The Snipe-and-Clam Stratagem (1)

Inside the office of the Second Young Master of the Zhuge Household.

Zhuge Sakhyeon was biting at the tips of his nails in spasms.

Anxiety kept crashing over him.

“...My brother’s retainer is dead? And Gu Jang-il, of all people?”

This was exactly the kind of thing that invited suspicion.

He and his older brother had only just been locked in a fierce argument over the future direction of the household.

Martial arts, or the arts of calculation.

The Zhuge Household was recognized for the latter, but looked down on for the former.

And the current martial world regarded anyone weak in martial arts as lowly.

Should they move with the changing times?

Or should they preserve their own identity?

People said the waves behind drove out the waves ahead.

But the teachings of the Sage and Mencius still shone even after a thousand years.

No one could swear with certainty which of the two was right.

Just then, someone knocked on the door by tapping the handle.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

“Second Young Master. It is this girl, Hyeyeon.”

“...Come in.”

Nan Hyeyeon.

If the First Young Master had Gu Jang-il, then the Second Young Master had Nan Hyeyeon.

She was twenty-six now, and from childhood onward had studied the arts of calculation alongside Zhuge Sakhyeon.

Just as Gu Jang-il had studied swordsmanship alongside the First Young Master, Zhuge Cheokwol.

“...Second Young Master. Are you all right?”

“I am not.”

The Second Young Master had no talent for the sword.

Even at the age of thirty, he had failed to cross the threshold of Apex.

At best, he had only reached the completion of First-Rate.

But what of his older brother, the First Young Master?

His talent for calculation was lacking, but his swordsmanship was peerless.

At thirty-two, he had already passed beyond the opening stage of Transcendent Apex.

That was enough for him to stand shoulder to shoulder with the most outstanding second-generation disciples of the Nine Great Sects.

One might wonder how merely catching up to them could justify calling his swordsmanship peerless.

But this was the Zhuge Household.

A place that, by tradition, had always possessed martial skill even worse than that.

And his brother, Zhuge Cheokwol...

was a man who had inherited intact the blood of their father, the one called the Zhuge Household’s greatest martial talent.

That talent for martial arts had not passed on to him.

“Why would you not be all right? It was not something you did, Second Young Master.”

“That is not how it works. Sometimes, in this world, the facts are not what matter most.”

“...Is that so.”

Zhuge Sakhyeon quietly looked at Nan Hyeyeon.

There was no need to dress it up.

She was the reason he had refused every marriage proposal brought to him so far.

Even though Nan Hyeyeon herself turned her face away from his heart.

“I am afraid I will lose you.”

“A man cannot become great if he fears losing someone like me.”

“Even if I became a great man without you, I would be nothing but an empty husk.”

“...There will never be a marriage pact between us.”

The reason was the same reason Nan Hyeyeon hid the left side of her face and eye beneath her hair.

There was an ugly burn scar there, covering half her face.

The same scar had taken the sight from her left eye.

“I... am not someone suited to you, Young Master.”

*****

Soyak, Eunsong, Zhuge Yeon, and Zhuge Won all reached the same conclusion.

They had to stop the struggle over the heir position in the Zhuge Household at once.

Ordinarily, both the First Young Master and the Second Young Master were cool-headed enough to cooperate when it benefited the household...

But the problem was that someone had died.

And not just anyone.

Someone’s dearest and closest friend.

“...I don’t even know how I’m supposed to say this to Brother Cheokwol.”

“Yeon, if you try to say it, it will only look like a younger sister trying to lecture her older brother.”

“Then what should we...”

“I’ll do it.”

Zhuge Won rose from his seat.

Eunsong nodded.

“Please do, Father. I’ll go see Brother Sakhyeon.”

“Take those two Daoists with you.”

Zhuge Won assigned Eunsong and Soyak to go with Zhuge Yeon.

Zhuge Yeon tilted her head.

“The two of them...?”

“Isn’t Sakhyeon quick-witted, but soft at the core? He’ll likely want to test whatever course he means to take against the impartial eyes of outsiders.”

“...That does sound like him.”

By contrast, Zhuge Cheokwol had inherited a thick share of Zhuge Won’s blood, the blood of the Zhuge line’s greatest martial ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) talent.

Including all that boiling hot blood.

“And go see your mother too. She’ll be worried.”

“I will, Father.”

With those words, Zhuge Won truly left the Family Head’s chambers.

Then he headed for the office of the First Young Master.

Only Soyak, Eunsong, and Zhuge Yeon remained.

“So then, where do you plan to go first?”

“My mother. Brother Sakhyeon may be soft-hearted, but he’s brilliant. He won’t move rashly.”

“We’ll follow.”

Eunsong slowly rose from his seat.

But Zhuge Yeon stopped him with a single sentence.

“Before that—didn’t you say you did not want to see me, Young Hero Eunsong?”

Eunsong turned to look at Zhuge Yeon.

He was smiling instead.

As though he found the whole situation amusing.

“You already know the answer too, Miss Yeon.”

“...That’s true.”

He had not come because he wanted to see her.

He had come because he needed to.

There was no need for private feelings in carrying out the great work of toppling heaven.

All feelings...

had been left behind in front of the gravestone of the one most precious to her, on the day that person died.

Zhuge Yeon stood as well.

Then she looked down at Soyak.

A girl who followed Eunsong in silence.

She did not know what had happened between the two of them.

She did not even know what sort of past Soyak had lived through.

“I have one question, Young Hero Eunsong.”

“Ask it.”

“Not to you. To your disciple.”

Soyak looked up at Zhuge Yeon.

Their gazes tangled together.

What Zhuge Yeon felt was no different from what others had felt before.

Those eyes were a vast darkness.

The unobstructed void between stars in the night sky.

Cold and empty...

“You are Miss Soyak, yes?”

“...Yes.”

“Are you holding that sword by your own will?”

Soyak’s eyes narrowed.

She lowered her gaze for a moment, then turned her head away from Zhuge Yeon.

It was a clear sign of displeasure.

“Internal Affairs Pavilion Lord.”

“...Go on.”

“I watched my parents burn alive right in front of me.”

Soyak placed her small, delicate left hand on the hilt of her sword.

Then she looked back at Zhuge Yeon.

Her eyes were no longer empty.

They were filled with a cold yearning for revenge.

And with the resolve to bring forth a Blood Calamity.

“With his blood, and with theirs, I will bring forth a Blood Calamity. Without fail.”

Zhuge Yeon swallowed dryly.

The dissonance—

the dissonance between that small, young girl before her and the murderous words spilling from her lips—

filled her with a tension she could not name.

“...All right. With resolve like that.”

“Have you made up your mind, ‘Society Head’?”

“Yes. The Reverse Heaven Society will accept this child as one of us.”

“Good.”

Soyak rose from her seat alongside Eunsong and Zhuge Yeon.

But just then—

someone shoved open the doors of the Family Head’s chambers and burst inside.

A man in a pale martial uniform with blue sleeves.

One of the strategist corps.

“I-Internal Affairs Pavilion Lord! So you were here!”

“...What is it?”

“It’s bad.”

“Then tell me how bad.”

“We thought Gu Jang-il’s sword had gone missing, but...”

The older strategist was panting for breath.

Zhuge Yeon handed him a cup of water first.

Only after gulping down the lukewarm water and catching his breath did he speak again.

“It’s been found at Wudang Mountain!”

“At Wudang Mountain?”

Zhuge Yeon frowned.

Why would it be all the way at Wudang Mountain?

“And not only that... it was found lodged through the neck of a young Wudang master!”

The snipe-and-clam struggle.

The bird seizes the clam’s flesh in its beak, and the clam clamps the bird’s beak in its shell.

And the one who profits is the fisherman.

*****

“Well now, it seems someone thinks very little of us.”

“So it does. Looks that way to me too.”

Hair ties embroidered with the taiji symbol.

Martial robes made only of black and white cloth.

The two men were of the Wudang Sect—that Wudang spoken of alongside Shaolin in the old saying, “Shaolin honored in the north, Wudang revered in the south.”

Before them, a dead martial artist hung from a tree.

A sword had pierced through his neck and pinned him there.

And that sword...

was one issued by the Zhuge Household.

How could anyone fail to know it when the butt of the hilt itself was stamped with “Zhuge”?

Other Wudang martial artists stood in ranks all around them.

Naturally so.

One of the two speaking was Elder Cheongpyeong of Wudang himself.

The younger of the two was his disciple, the first-generation disciple Jonggwon.

A master in the middle stage of Transcendent Apex, known throughout the martial world by the title Wudang Fist Adept.

Using Cloud-Treading Ascent, Wudang’s exalted movement art, he approached the corpse pinned to the old tree.

Then he pulled the Zhuge Household sword free from the neck of his young disciple.

“This murderous intent is not the Zhuge Household’s.”

He came lightly back down to the ground, cradling his pitiful disciple’s corpse in his arms.

Then he handed the sword to Elder Cheongpyeong.

The elder too ran one dry hand slowly along the blade.

“Thick and cold murderous intent...”

“You know it?”

“It is the murderous intent of the Kill Veil.”

At the words “Kill Veil,” the Wudang martial artists standing in formation all stiffened.

Tension spread through them at once.

“And not from any ordinary hand, either.”

“Then...”

Elder Cheongpyeong looked at the old tree, slick with blood.

A clean sword mark, carved into the grain without leaving even a single crack in the wood.

“We must go to the Zhuge Household at once.”

“Did you not just say this was not the Zhuge Household’s doing?”

“It seems someone is trying to set us and the Zhuge Household against each other.”

Elder Cheongpyeong grinned.