The instant the drinking party that had made his heart pound with excitement nearly to the point of splitting came to an end, Cho Myeong hurried back to the guest quarters in the Reception Hall.
Wi So-baek also left his dispersing subordinates behind and set off.
Unlike most leaders of groups, who situated themselves deep within their bases and paid great attention to their safety under heavy guard, Wi So-baek valued his own tastes above all else.
Thus, the residence he soon reached was an absolutely conspicuous and lavish hall towering at the heart of the Demon Alliance.
At its entrance hung a signboard bearing the words ‘Demon Venerable Pavilion’ in soaring brushwork that resembled the beat of a bird's wings in flight. A garden planted with all manner of rare flowers and wondrous herbs surrounded it, adding an air of mystery to its overflowing grandeur.
The subtle fragrance that brushed his nose as he drew closer to the pavilion was another feature Wi So-baek rather liked.
At least, that had been true until a mere two months ago by the time of this world... when he left the Demon Alliance's headquarters for the battle against the Martial Alliance on the Chang'an Plains.
“Is it because I was trapped on a mountain for several hundred years? It is terribly irritating.”
Thinking he would order every weed and tree root around the Demon Venerable Pavilion ripped out the next morning, Wi So-baek entered the building.
“You are back?”
Though she could not have known when he would return, Yeo-hwa, the Demon Alliance's Chief Administrator who had taken it upon herself to serve as his personal maid, stood inside to greet him as she always did.
“Yes.”
Wi So-baek answered simply and headed straight for his room instead of climbing to the third and highest floor of the pavilion. Yeo-hwa followed behind and asked.
“Shall I have the grounds around the pavilion redone?”
Her lord enjoyed looking down upon the outside world from a high window, but lately he had stopped visiting the top floor entirely. She had therefore guessed that he might have tired of the familiar view.
As it was something he had already been considering, Wi So-baek nodded with pleasure, and a faint blush colored Yeo-hwa's face.
She lowered her head to hide it, and Wi So-baek's voice reached her.
“Tell the Wood Banner Captain to come see me tomorrow morning.”
Does he mean the Wood Banner Captain, Oh Chi-yeong?
Yeo-hwa stopped walking as if slightly surprised. Wi So-baek slowed his own pace and explained.
“The Martial Alliance sent an envoy, so it would look better for us to send one in return rather than merely a written reply. Moreover, now that the Demon Alliance has agreed, we must discuss where and how the conference will be held. We cannot waste time sending another round of people and letters back and forth, can we?”
“Are you... planning to give the Wood Banner Captain the authority to negotiate with the Martial Alliance?”
For some reason, Yeo-hwa's voice seemed to tremble, and Wi So-baek stopped and turned.
“Yes. I intend to grant him considerable power so that the Wood Banner Captain can negotiate with the Martial Alliance independently.”
“Ah......”
Yeo-hwa sighed softly, then realized her mistake and promptly composed her expression.
“I will tell the Wood Banner Captain to visit tomorrow.”
“Tell him what you just heard as well. I intend to send him back with Hall Master Cho of the Martial Alliance when he returns, so he would be better served knowing early enough to prepare.”
“......”
“What? Is there something you wish to say?”
Yeo-hwa quickly shook her head.
“No. If that is the Alliance Leader's will, then of course it must be done.”
She looked almost resolute.
Wi So-baek found it strange, but felt no desire to ask a question he had already posed.
Had it been something she could discuss, she would have told him already. Even if it was not, pressing further could only look like an interrogation.
Praising himself for how much gentler and more considerate he had become, Wi So-baek turned and entered his room.
After bathing and changing into comfortable clothes, Wi So-baek drank a cup of tea Yeo-hwa brought before he went to sleep.
“Green tea.”
“You have not been asking for White Hair Silver Needle as much lately, so I tried something a little different.”
It was just like her to try matching his tastes while remaining within the bounds of Tieguanyin tea.
Wi So-baek took a sip of the green tea, set it down, and asked.
“Yeo-hwa, do you also think I have changed greatly?”
“...I thought so, but looking again... I do not believe that is true. You are the same as ever, my lord.”
Wi So-baek's eyebrow twitched.
“Truly? Think again. Do you really believe that?”
“Yes. I know there has been a great deal of talk around you lately. But there is no need for you to be displeased or concerned. You are the same as ever, my lord. You have not... You have not changed in the slightest.”
“Understood.”
Knowing he had nothing more to say, Yeo-hwa gathered the things she had used to serve him and left the room.
When the door silently closed and he was left alone, Wi So-baek stroked his chin.
“That sounded almost like an insult. Was it my imagination?”
Surely.
Being told he was the same as before could hardly be an insult, and surely Yeo-hwa would never harbor disloyal thoughts toward him?
Concluding that the banquet after such a long interval must have left him unusually tired, Wi So-baek clicked his tongue, went to the bed, and lay down.
***
The next morning.
“I must see him!”
The entrance to the Demon Venerable Pavilion was in an uproar.
Wi So-baek had opened his eyes some time ago but remained lying down. Now he threw off the silk bedding and climbed out of bed.
He muttered in puzzlement.
“Would you look at that. I have tolerated him this long without going straight outside and cutting off his head, so why does Yeo-hwa say that I am the same as before?”
There was no other reason for his concern.
Wi So-baek was simply worried that Yeo-hwa had failed to recognize the plainly visible truth.
It meant that something might have gone wrong with the judgment of the bold, clever woman who had been capable of bargaining over her own price before the heartless father trying to sell her.
Wi So-baek decided that Yeo-hwa, who had evidently been too occupied with managing the household as Chief Administrator to properly witness how he had changed, needed to see it clearly. Then he left his room.
But.......
“Alliance Leader, please spare me!”
Wi So-baek looked down at the man who dropped to his knees the instant he saw him and slammed his forehead against the floor with a thud.
The man abruptly snapped his head up and looked at Wi So-baek.
“Alliance Leader!”
SPLATTER!
Blood pouring from his split forehead did more than soak the man's face. It sprayed in every direction with the motion of his head.
The trajectory of the blood might have carried some onto Wi So-baek had he not immediately taken a step back. His eyes rose sharply, but he endured it once.
“Yes, you are Cheol Myeong-hwan, Deputy Captain of the Wood Banner Unit, are you not?”
The man looked slightly surprised that Wi So-baek recognized him, then his expression abruptly hardened.
“So you were planning it after all?”
“Have you grown so bold? I ask you a question, and you answer with one of your own.”
As a glacial air rose from Wi So-baek, the back of Cheol Myeong-hwan's neck tingled.
“An... uneducated brute like me lost his senses because a life was at stake and... acted impertinently. I-I apologize!”
Cheol Myeong-hwan looked ready to smash his forehead against the floor again, so Wi So-baek waved a hand.
CRASH—!
Cheol Myeong-hwan's body, which had been pitching forward, flew backward with the motion of Wi So-baek's hand and landed hard on its rear.
He looked wretched, but Wi So-baek did not care.
“Am I not asking what you mean? When did I ever say I intended to kill a Deputy Captain?”
“N-not me, but are you not trying to kill our Captain?!”
“The Wood Banner Captain?”
Wi So-baek asked again as if dumbfounded.
“When did I say that? I was preparing to put the Wood Banner Captain to important use. What nonsense have you heard that brought you here?”
“I heard you planned to give him the authority to negotiate independently with the Martial Alliance. Our Captain could never handle such a thing properly with his personality, so would that not mean burdening him with all the responsibility under the pretext of granting him authority? Then our Captain's head will go flying clean off!”
So that was how he had interpreted it.
No wonder.
Wi So-baek felt he now understood why Yeo-hwa had told him the previous night that he had not changed at all.
“That is not so. I chose the Wood Banner Captain because I deemed him the most suitable for this mission. There was no other reason.”
“Did you not become angry and say he was far too upright for a martial artist of the demonic path and so pointlessly kind that he was useless?! You even confined our Captain to his quarters, saying the Alliance Leader would not tolerate that stifling face before him again, which kept him from participating in the battle on the Chang'an Plains... and now you truly thought him suitable?”
“Hmm. Did I say that?”
“You did! Only three months ago! You broke a wine bottle at a banquet and threw the wine in your cup into his face!”
Cheol Myeong-hwan sent him a profoundly resentful look, as though asking how he could possibly forget, and Wi So-baek answered with an expression that plainly said, What of it?
“Ugh, th-that is too cruel. Just as I thought, the Alliance Leader truly has neither blood nor tears... Sob......”
The tears of a fully grown, hairy brute were exceedingly ugly, but they did not anger him.
It was true that Wi So-baek had not particularly liked the Wood Banner Captain, Oh Chi-yeong, before.
Yet during the first hundred years he was trapped in the formation, he had refused even to converse with his sworn younger brother, Se-jin, and had suffered through a great many hardships.
He had even occasionally thought of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult he had abandoned and his grandfather, the Cult Leader. That alone said everything.
So as the Wi So-baek of that time endlessly revisited his old memories, what had he thought of Oh Chi-yeong?
At least the man was not someone who would stab Wi So-baek in the back.
Wi So-baek thought seeing him again might be pleasant.
He had wanted to see him once more.
He had thought that when he did, he should ask why Oh Chi-yeong had acted that way back then.
And... if they met again, he would refrain from openly cursing the man for pretending to be good despite having committed murder and become a martial artist of the demonic path.
And now that he had spent time with his sworn younger brother, torn apart the formation, and returned to the outside world?
For his cherished sworn younger brother, Wi So-baek thought not of the Law Wheel, whose thoughts were impossible to discern, or the Literary Wheel, who would scrape and scrape at his opponent with schemes until he had seen the bottom of the man's bowels.......
Instead, Wi So-baek immediately thought of the Wood Banner Captain, Oh Chi-yeong, as someone he could present as proof that even the demonic path had men like him and that he, as an elder sworn brother, also had a subordinate who still smelled human.
Given the man's personality, Wi So-baek knew he would suffer losses there, but it did not matter.
In truth, he was sending the man there to lose.
It would be enough if he returned with a moderate result that did not make the position of Wi So-baek's sworn younger brother too difficult.
“So, I.”
Just as Wi So-baek began to speak, Yeo-hwa happened to return with Oh Chi-yeong, whom she had gone to summon in order to stop Cheol Myeong-hwan's disturbance.
Yeo-hwa looked back and forth between Cheol Myeong-hwan, sprawled on the floor and wailing with his forehead split open, and Wi So-baek, standing proudly before him and looking down as though the man were beneath contempt.
In her expression, Wi So-baek read sorrowful resignation that her lord was indeed unchanged.
And in Oh Chi-yeong beside her, he read pity for his subordinate and resignation that would never reach Wi So-baek himself.
The situation had grown complicated.
It felt somewhat troublesome and irritating, and Wi So-baek looked down at his hand.
He killed whenever the impulse took him, and once he decided to do something, he was not a man who set it aside.
Unlike a passing impulse he could endure once, that meant no restraint upon himself existed in the depths of his nature.
Nevertheless.
‘Elder Brother!’
Wi So-baek's younger brother had suggested that they sell dumplings once they escaped from the formation.
If they could not make dumplings, they could sell firewood, he had said. Gathering medicinal herbs would be good as well.
No dumpling seller, woodcutter, or herb gatherer in the world... had an elder brother who tore people apart and killed them whenever the whim took him.
Wi So-baek relaxed his hand.
He tilted his head, looked around, and opened his mouth.
“Yeo-hwa, go prepare breakfast. The Wood Banner Captain and Deputy Captain will be joining me today, so make sure there is enough.”
“Pardon? Yes! Understood!”
The bloodcurdling force that had swept through the area for an instant had left Yeo-hwa frozen, but she quickly answered.
“And have that one washed.”
When Wi So-baek pointed at Cheol Myeong-hwan, Oh Chi-yeong hid the man behind himself.
“I am not going to kill him. I said I am not.”
Wi So-baek clicked his tongue and went inside.
It was a noisy morning.