Chapter 105: The Snipe-and-Clam Stratagem (3)

The guest hall.

The room assigned to Soyak and Eunsong.

Soyak was sitting there alone.

Eunsong, Zhuge Won, Zhuge Cheokwol, and Zhuge Sakhyeon had all gone to meet the people from Wudang.

Soyak had quietly stepped back.

She had said she would remain in the room, and Eunsong had allowed it.

Soyak sat cross-legged on the floor.

Her mind was tangled.

The Dark Emperor, the Zhuge Household’s internal conflict, the Wudang Sect...

Someone’s death, and death, and death.

“...Haa.”

To be honest, it was overwhelming.

Of course, when she chose revenge, she had also accepted that everything ahead of her would be overwhelming.

But even if she had accepted that...

it was still hard.

You can brace yourself for red-hot iron touching your skin. That does not mean you can keep yourself from screaming when it does.

It was the same here.

She was tired. Worn down.

“I haven’t done proper circulation in a while.”

She barely managed to steady her exhausted body.

Then she emptied her mind.

She drew her internal energy up from her dantian and spread it evenly through the finer meridians of her body...

and let her consciousness sink deep inward.

*****

It was always the same.

A water surface she could touch with her hands and stand on with her feet.

The black qilin looking down at her.

Soyak glanced at the place where the great black snake had once been.

There was nothing there.

As if there had never been anything there to begin with.

“...Come here.”

She crooked a finger at the black qilin.

It shoved its head into her arms and immediately began making a fuss, spoiled and needy.

It rubbed its cheek against her again and again and prodded at her with its horns.

“All right. I’ll pet you plenty...”

Back then, she had been grateful to it, and sorry.

Its weakness was her weakness.

When she had stood against that vast, dark thing she could not even comprehend...

and when the snake had smashed the black qilin down into the ground in a single blow...

Soyak had understood just how weak she was.

“Grrr...”

It was thinking the same thing.

That was what it meant to share a heart.

Soyak wrapped her arms around the black qilin a little tighter.

Tough, durable hide.

The pulse of muscle and bone beneath it.

The warmth that traveled through her as their bodies pressed together.

And deeper than that, the kindness she could feel from the bottom of her heart.

Why had the black qilin, the manifested power of the Harmonization Scripture, been given a personality?

If it were nothing more than a tool that exerted power, it would have been closer to the essence of martial arts.

But the Heavenly Killing Star needed this.

Someone who could offer warmth at any time.

Someone who could stay beside her without limit.

Someone who would let her hold them, again and again.

People were people—imperfect, unreadable, impossible to fully know.

But a divine beast that shared her heart and thoughts was different. She could form an attachment to it without fear.

Even if she had lost her parents young and grown up full of emptiness and grief.

“...So that was why.”

Why every time she practiced circulation, she came to this deep place in her mindscape.

Why the black qilin was friendly to her, and why their hearts were connected.

Why the grand circulation happened here without her needing to think about it...

It was rest.

It meant: rest.

At the very least, while she was practicing circulation.

“...Grrr.”

The life of the Heavenly Killing Star was full of Blood Calamity, hardship, and trials.

She had to kill people.

She had to live under threat from others.

It was far removed from an ordinary, mundane life.

And because of that, it was easy to grow exhausted.

If her inner self had been full of Viciousness, perhaps it would have been easier.

Then killing people and being drenched in blood would have felt like a reward.

But Soyak was not like that.

And the great grandmaster of Mount Hua who had created the Harmonization Scripture...

must have believed that anyone who learned his martial art had, at the very least, been taught and shaped in a way that kept that Viciousness in check.

If so, then he had to provide something.

A reward like sweet rain after drought, something that would keep Viciousness at bay.

And martial artists always practiced circulation.

In that sense, the Harmonization Scripture was a heart-method designed to make the act of circulation itself function as a form of emotional reward—a kind of peace of mind.

So that a Heavenly Killing Star who denied the Viciousness within herself

would not one day break, after facing trial after trial forced upon her by fate with nothing to sustain her within,

and simply let herself go.

“...Thank you.”

Soyak reached up with her small hand and scratched under the black qilin’s chin with all the care she had.

She did not know whether it actually liked that.

It was simply what her instincts told her to do.

Fortunately, it did.

It liked it enough to start twisting its body wildly.

A little laugh slipped from her.

Somewhere in her chest, a corner of her heart turned warm for no particular reason.

The space beneath her sternum felt strangely ticklish.

“I’ll come more often. Okay?”

“Grrr.”

The sound was oddly restrained.

But Soyak already knew the truth.

It was trying, in its own way, to maintain some dignity.

Though whether that would work after it had twisted itself around from a few scratches under the chin was another matter.

*****

“I can’t accept this.”

Zhuge Yeon shot to her feet.

The chair legs scraped loudly against the floor.

“Eunsong! You’re saying you’ll use your own disciple as bait. How can you—”

“Just because I’m not raising my voice does not mean I’m not angry, Lady Yeon.”

Zhuge Yeon pressed her lips shut.

Then she looked at her father, Zhuge Won.

The two Wudang experts were watching as well.

Elder Cheongpyeong spoke first.

“Still, the Family Head’s proposal is the best one. I don’t like it either, but that doesn’t change the matter.”

“Elder!”

“Lady Yeon, think about it. To a man obsessed with revenge, what bait could possibly be sweeter than the object of that revenge?”

Put simply,

they were saying it would be better to use Cheon Soyak as bait and catch the Dark Emperor.

From a purely rational perspective, it was not entirely wrong.

How long could they protect her?

Would they keep her inside the Zhuge Household and guard her for the rest of her life?

And Zhuge Won had sworn that not even the Dark Emperor could break through the Zhuge Household’s mechanisms and formations...

but no one could truly know that.

“Eunsong. Say something.”

Zhuge Yeon bit her lip.

There had never been a moment when she resented Eunsong more than she did now.

He had originally been the Society Head of the Reverse Heaven Society.

Had he pushed that burden onto her only so she would have to make decisions like this?

“This matter...”

Eunsong opened his mouth slowly.

Elder Cheongpyeong, the Wudang Fist Adept Jonggwon, and Zhuge Won, the Heaven-Communing Enlightened One, all focused on his every word.

Even Zhuge Cheokwol and Zhuge Sakhyeon did the same.

“...is not for us to decide.”

Eunsong rose from his seat as well.

Not roughly, like Zhuge Yeon had, but with quiet deliberation.

His chair slid back slowly.

Then he gave a formal salute to everyone present.

“I know this room is filled with wise and brilliant seniors, but...”

Zhuge Yeon could not guess where he was going with this.

If they were not the ones to decide, then who was?

Even if it was the person who had not been brought here yet—

Ah.

At that moment, Zhuge Yeon reached the answer.

Eunsong glanced at her, then quietly closed his mouth.

And then he gave voice to the answer she had already realized.

“This is for Soyak to decide.”

Whether she would allow herself to be used as bait or not.

Whether she would accept a threat to her life or refuse it.

If outsiders chose that for her, then whichever option they picked, it would be nothing more than the condescension of those presuming to grant favor.

It was her life.

Her choice.

Her decision.

More than that, she too was now a martial artist of the Reverse Heaven Society, acknowledged as such by Zhuge Yeon, its Society Head.

And she was no minor figure, either, but a master who had already reached the realm of Transcendent Apex.

“I heard your disciple has already passed the opening stage of Transcendent Apex.”

The question came from Elder Cheongpyeong.

Eunsong answered respectfully.

“Yes, Elder Cheongpyeong. She has.”

“And she is fourteen?”

“That’s correct.”

“Has she killed before?”

It was not the sort of question one expected from a Daoist.

The corners of the old man’s mouth curled upward in a crooked grin.

But that too was a kind of line, drawn as one martial artist to another.

To place the option of sacrificing one’s own life before someone who had never taken another’s life—

that could be a kind of coercion.

But it was different for someone who had already killed.

One who had already taken lives could be treated fully as a swordsman bearing a blade.

“Three.”

“That’s enough. I’m in favor. Jonggwon, what say you?”

“I would say three is enough as well, Master.”

Even the massive man, the Wudang Fist Adept Jonggwon, cast his vote in favor.

Zhuge Yeon stared at them blankly.

What was the point of saying Soyak was only fourteen?

It was she herself who had made that fourteen-year-old into the Reverse Heaven Society’s blade, the blade meant to kill the Sword Sovereign.

It was Soyak herself who had already killed three people and stepped onto the path of the martial world.

Now Soyak was...

beginning to receive the responsibilities and the rights that matched the path she had chosen.

Regardless of age.

“And what does Family Head Zhuge think?”

“I share Elder Cheongpyeong’s view. She wears a sword, has severed lives before, and has reached a realm that most could never attain. Is that not enough?”

Zhuge Yeon dropped back into her seat.

Eunsong, too, slowly sat down again.

The discussion halted there.

Now it was time to bring Soyak and speak with her directly.

Zhuge Won raised a hand and called to his two sons.

“Cheokwol. Sakhyeon.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Speak, Father.”

“Go bring Young Hero Soyak.”

Zhuge Cheokwol and Zhuge Sakhyeon rose.

After giving a formal salute, they left the room and closed the door behind them.

Zhuge Yeon rested her elbows on the table and pressed at her temples with her fingers.

“...She’s going to say yes, Eunsong.”

“I know.”

“And even then, this is how it has to be?”

“There is a great difference between being told to do something and choosing to do it yourself. You know that, don’t you?”