“I said stop.”
Peng Jin-ak's voice was weak.
But its resonance was heavy enough to shake the enormous pillars of the Main Hall.
Peng Mu-gwang's great blade, frozen in midair, quivered.
“F-Father......?”
Peng Mu-gwang's bloodshot red eyes turned toward the dais.
The old man who had been vomiting black blood and dying just moments ago.
Peng Jin-ak, Clan Head of the Hebei Peng Clan, was forcing his staggering body upright.
His complexion was still as dark and bluish as a dead man's, but his eyes alone were alive.
Piercing.
And fierce.
“Do you...... not hear me?”
Peng Jin-ak moved his black-stained lips.
“I said sheathe your blade.”
“B-but, Father!”
Peng Mu-gwang cried out as if spewing his grievance.
“That wench used poison! The evidence is clear, so how can you tell me to let her live?!”
He looked ready to cut off Namgung Seol's head at any moment.
The killing intent pouring from his bear-like frame filled the Main Hall.
But Peng Jin-ak snorted.
“Idiot.”
He roughly wiped the black blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Is there nothing but tofu dregs in that head of yours?”
“Pardon?”
“Read the board in front of you, instead of just cutting things down.”
Peng Mu-gwang's face stiffened.
Peng Jin-ak drew a labored breath.
At the tail of his breathing was a metallic rasp, as if poison qi were boiling.
“What kind of place is the Namgung Clan?”
Peng Jin-ak's gaze turned to Namgung Seol.
“The Boundless Azure Sky. A prestigious house of the sword that fears nothing under heaven. If those people had set out to kill me, would they have used such a clumsy poison and then walked in on their own two feet to be caught?”
Kneeling forcibly on the floor, Namgung Seol raised her pale face.
The lofty bearing of the woman called a beauty unrivaled under heaven was nowhere to be found.
She was staring at the box she had brought as if she resented it.
Her face said she still couldn't believe it.
Peng Jin-ak spoke in a low voice.
“If you cut that child down right now, what do you think will happen?”
“......”
“The Namgung Clan will rage that they lost their daughter unjustly, and from tomorrow, the Hebei Peng Clan and the Namgung Clan will enter a bloody war.”
Peng Jin-ak's eyes pierced his son.
“Do you want to watch the martial world turn into a sea of blood because of your foolish decision?”
“Th-that is......”
Peng Mu-gwang closed his mouth as if at a loss for words.
The reason that had been clouded over by agitation began to return, very little by little.
Only then did Peng Mu-gwang understand his father's words.
It was certainly strange.
It was far too sloppy to be an assassination.
It was far too reckless to be a provocation.
“Besides...... cough!”
Peng Jin-ak vomited blood again.
When the drops of black blood fell to the floor, the ebony sizzled and scorched.
The poison qi was still gnawing away at his heart meridian.
But Peng Jin-ak did not waver.
Even as he was dying, his eyes were cold.
“The suicidal act of walking into a tiger's den on one's own two feet and handing over poison.”
He caught his breath.
“A letter that goes out of its way to insult my son's looks and make him lose his reason.”
Then he looked straight at me.
“Not one thing that guy said is wrong.”
“......!”
Every gaze stabbed into me.
I hurriedly pressed my head even deeper into the floor.
Oh, Clan Head.
Please stop mentioning me.
That big lug of a bear is glaring at me again like he wants to tear me apart, isn't he?
Peng Jin-ak spoke in a low voice.
“Someone set up this board.”
The Main Hall went quiet.
“Someone who wants our Peng Clan and the Namgung Clan to destroy each other.”
“Wh-who would dare do such a thing?”
Peng Mu-gwang ground his teeth.
“Finding that out is our job.”
Peng Jin-ak said coldly.
“Not cutting off that child's head right now.”
“......”
“And.”
Peng Jin-ak's gaze turned to the thick bundle of bank notes in my hand.
“Those bank notes. Bring them here.”
I hesitantly went up to the dais and held out the bank notes.
Peng Jin-ak's trembling hand ran over the back of the bank notes.
A roughly scrawled signature.
It was Peng Hwi's handwriting.
The rims of Peng Jin-ak's bluish-black eyes reddened ever so faintly.
“This is unmistakably Hwi's handwriting.”
His voice dropped a little.
“That boy...... he was alive.”
Peng Jin-ak looked down at me.
“You said you helped Hwi?”
“Y-yes! Clan Head. On the mountain behind the Heavenly Fragrance Pavilion, I only helped just a teeeeny bit while the Master slew Thousand Faces Dokgo Yeong and achieved his revenge, sir.”
“Thousand Faces Dokgo Yeong......!”
Peng Jin-ak's eyes wavered.
“So the boy finally avenged his wife.”
Peng Jin-ak let out a low laugh, sounding hollow and yet as though a deep blockage had finally been cleared.
At that laughter, even the Elders and martial artists of the Peng Clan filling the Main Hall solemnly bowed their heads.
“That stubborn Hwi, who never trusted anyone.”
Peng Jin-ak muttered as he looked down at the bank notes.
“Someone he acknowledged by handing over his bank notes wholesale.”
Then he raised his head again and looked at me.
The corners of his blood-blackened mouth rose strangely.
“And on top of that, the guts and wits to read the board even with a blade at your throat.”
“......”
It was clearly praise, so why did it feel so ominous?
“You there.”
“Y-yes! Clan Head.”
“Raise your head.”
I hesitantly raised my head.
My eyes met head-on with those of the old man called the Hegemon King.
The pressure took my breath away.
“What did you say your name was?”
“M-my name is Lee Gap-saeng.”
“Gap-saeng, is it.”
Peng Jin-ak laughed shortly.
“The name is rustic, but your eye is certainly useful. I see why Hwi chose you.”
Was that praise?
Or an insult?
I awkwardly raised the corners of my mouth.
“You flatter me. I'm just...... a guy who lives by his wits. I only ran my mouth because I wanted to live.”
“Wits, is it.”
Peng Jin-ak stroked his chin.
“Yes, the martial art most needed in the martial world is exactly those wits.”
He looked at me as if he could see right through me.
Like a seasoned merchant weighing the value of goods.
After a moment, he spoke heavily.
“Lee Gap-saeng. Lend me that extraordinary head of yours.”
“Pardon?”
“This incident.”
Peng Jin-ak said firmly.
“You will take charge of the investigation.”
“......Pardon?”
I wondered if I'd heard wrong.
An investigation?
Me?
A waiter who'd only ever rolled noodles?
An attempted poisoning at the mighty Hebei Peng Clan?
“C-Clan Head.”
I hurriedly waved my hands.
“You're joking too much. How could a guy like me handle such a grave matter......”
“You are the right man for it.”
Peng Jin-ak was firm.
Wiping his dark-red-stained lips, he swept his eyes over the Peng Clan martial artists lined up around him with a look of disgust.
“The Peng Clan lot, my son included, have only built up their muscles, and their heads are lumps of stone, so they will not do.”
“Father......!”
Peng Mu-gwang's face flushed red and purple.
Peng Jin-ak paid no attention.
“All they know is swinging their blades like brutes. They have no talent for digging into a conspiracy like this.”
Since he was in front of his father, Peng Mu-gwang couldn't openly show his anger, and could only huff and blow air through his nose.
He looked just like an angry brown bear.
“But, Father!”
In the end, Peng Mu-gwang exploded.
“This is a matter on which the Peng Clan's prestige depends! How can you entrust such a grave matter to an outsider of unknown origins?!”
His words did have a point.
Please, use that point to let me go.
I prayed desperately inside.
“We have the ‘Punishment Hall’ too!”
Peng Mu-gwang raised his voice.
“Interrogating criminals and uncovering the truth is their job!”
The Punishment Hall.
Just the name was bloodcurdling.
According to the rumors in Hebei, no one who went in there ever walked out on their own two feet.
“That's right, sir!”
I nodded right away.
“The Peng Clan has a fine investigative body, so why would I need to......”
“The Punishment Hall?”
Peng Jin-ak snorted.
“Those people are torturers, not investigators.”
“......”
“Leave it to them, and they will just force out a confession. Then the real culprit will cut off his own tail and run.”
I shut my mouth.
Peng Jin-ak's judgment was chillingly clear-headed.
He had a precise grasp of this incident right now.
It wasn't the kind of matter that ended with simply catching the culprit and beating him.
Someone from outside had set up the board, and that board couldn't be read with the Peng Clan's eyes alone.
“That eye of yours.”
Peng Jin-ak looked at me.
“The calm to read the board even when poison has gone off. That is what we need.”
“But it's impossible alone.”
I searched for one last hole to slip out of.
“I don't know the lay of the land here, and I have no authority. Who's going to listen to me?”
Peng Jin-ak turned his head as if he had been waiting for that.
And he called toward the darkness behind a pillar.
“Sa-ryang. Are you there?”
At his call, a man slipped silently out of the shadows behind the pillar.
His presence was faint.
Unlike the giants of the Peng Clan, he had a slender build and pale skin.
He was a man dressed as a scholar, holding a fan in his hand.
In a Peng Clan swarming with muscular monsters, he was an odd existence, the only one giving off the smell of ink.
“You called, Clan Head?”
His voice was dry.
“Peng Sa-ryang.”
Peng Jin-ak introduced him.
“Our clan's strategist. His head, at least, is extraordinary.”
Peng Sa-ryang.
Did the name itself mean to think and to weigh?
He glanced at me, then narrowed his eyes as if interested.
His gaze was sharp.
“Move together with this guy.”
“I shall obey.”
Peng Sa-ryang snapped his fan shut and bowed his head.
It was a motion without any wasted movement.
Peng Mu-gwang bit his lip in frustration, but now that the Clan Head's order had been given, he couldn't defy it.
Peng Sa-ryang seemed to be someone who answered directly to the Clan Head and held an independent position within the Peng Clan.
Peng Mu-gwang glared at me and growled.
“Lee Gap-saeng.”
“Y-yes.”
“Listen well.”
He pointed an enormous finger right at the tip of my nose.
“I am letting you live because of Father's order, but in my eyes, you are a suspect too.”
“......”
“Try any tricks, and you die by my hand. Run away during the investigation, and you die. Fail to catch the culprit, and you die. Understood?”
“I-I'll keep that in mind.”
I squeezed out an answer.
My escape route had been completely blocked.
Namgung Seol looked at me with worried eyes.
Her eyes were saying she was sorry.
‘If you're sorry, at least buy me a meal.’
As I grumbled inwardly, Peng Sa-ryang came up beside me.
A cool scent of ink wafted from him.
“I look forward to working with you. Lee Gap-saeng.”
“......I look forward to working with you too, sir.”
“If you want to catch the culprit, you had better hurry.”
Peng Sa-ryang's eyes narrowed.
“Because time is not on our side.”
That was when it happened.
Hurried footsteps came from outside the Main Hall.
“The physician! The physician is here!”
An old man with sparse white hair came rushing in, flustered, carrying a medicine chest.
The Peng Clan's personal physician.
It was old Jang Gwang, the Healing Hand.
He had spent his whole life merely stitching up the bruises and cuts of Peng Clan martial artists, and the moment he came in and saw Peng Jin-ak's condition, his complexion turned the color of dirt.
“C-Clan Head!”
Old Jang Gwang screamed.
“Why does your complexion look like this?!”
“Do not make a fuss.”
Peng Jin-ak said indifferently.
“I only drank a little poison.”
“Poison?!”
Old Jang Gwang grabbed Peng Jin-ak's wrist and felt his pulse.
The wrinkles around his shriveled eyes grew deep.
Bewilderment.
Astonishment.
And fear.
With trembling hands, he took silver needles from his robes and stuck them into Peng Jin-ak's philtrum and solar plexus.
“Keuk!”
Peng Jin-ak let out a groan and spat up black blood once more.
The blood that fell on the floor sizzled and melted the wooden floor.
Pungent smoke rose up.
Seeing that, Jang Gwang's face went white.
“Th-this is...... Seven-Step Soul-Chasing Sand!”
“Seven-Step Soul-Chasing Sand?”
Peng Mu-gwang asked back.
It was a name I'd never heard before, but just the sound of it felt ominous.
“It is an extreme poison made by mixing the Purple Mist Orchid, a poisonous herb that grows wild only on the cliffs of the Western Regions, with the extract of a highly venomous toad.”
Old Jang Gwang said grievously.
“I have only ever seen it in ancient medical texts; this is my first time seeing it in reality. The moment you inhale it, your five organs and six viscera melt away, and it is named so because the soul scatters within seven steps.”
The Main Hall stirred.
“An ordinary person would have died on the spot. Because the Clan Head's inner arts are so profound, he is suppressing the poison with his qi, but......”
Old Jang Gwang hung his head.
“There is a limit to that as well.”
“Can it be cured?”
Peng Sa-ryang asked calmly.
Strength went into the hand holding his folding fan.
Old Jang Gwang shook his head with a look of despair.
“With my humble skill, the most I can do is delay the poison qi from entering the heart for a while.”
“......”
“To wash out the poison completely, we need the antidote.”
He swallowed dryly.
“The one and only antidote, whose mixing proportions only the one who made the poison would know.”
“How long can he hold out?”
Peng Sa-ryang asked.
Old Jang Gwang's lips trembled.
Everyone in the Main Hall held their breath.
After a moment.
A short, cruel answer fell from his mouth.
“A month...... at most.”
A heavy silence descended over the Main Hall.
A month.
If they didn't catch the culprit and find the antidote within a month, Hegemon King Peng Jin-ak would die.
“Damn it!”
Peng Mu-gwang slammed the floor with a bang.
“A month?! We have to find the medicine right now, even if I have to cut open that bitch's belly!”
He tried to grab his blade again.
His eyes had lost all reason.
“Please calm down.”
Peng Sa-ryang stepped in front of Peng Mu-gwang.
“Move! My father is dying, and you tell me to calm down?!”
“If you kill the Miss, the way to finding the medicine will be lost forever. That is exactly what the culprit is aiming for. For us to lose our reason and rampage. And so destroy ourselves together with the Namgung Clan.”
Peng Sa-ryang's voice was cold, but persuasive.
What if Namgung Seol wasn't the culprit?
The moment they killed her, the real culprit would laugh and dispose of the antidote.
Then Peng Jin-ak would die without any way out.
“Then what am I supposed to do?! My father is dying! Am I supposed to just sit here sucking my fingers?!”
“We have to find the culprit.”
Peng Sa-ryang said.
“The real culprit.”
His gaze turned to me and Namgung Seol.
I hunched my shoulders without realizing it.
“Do not lock these two in the prison.”
Peng Sa-ryang said.
“Instead, I shall escort them to the ‘Honored Guest Pavilion.’”
“The Honored Guest Pavilion?”
Peng Mu-gwang's eyes bulged.
“Treat the bitch who brought poison as an honored guest? When treating her as a criminal is not even enough?!”
“If we lock them up, the true culprits will feel at ease. We have to let them loose so those people get nervous and move.”
Peng Sa-ryang covered his mouth with his folding fan, his eyes gleaming.
“Bait has to sway in the water for the fish to bite. Let us use them as bait.”
Peng Mu-gwang fumed, but since his father's life was at stake, he couldn't force his way.
Peng Jin-ak also nodded with difficulty.
“What Sa-ryang says...... is right. Treat them as guests. Watch them, but give them freedom. Let those people move.”
The Clan Head's order had been given.
Unable to quell his anger, Peng Mu-gwang came toward us, dragging his great blade along the floor.
“Consider yourselves lucky.”
He growled right in front of my nose.
“If you do not find the antidote within a month, or if something happens to Father...... I will chew you up alive, starting with you two. Without leaving a single scrap of bone.”
The killing intent pricked my skin.
They weren't empty words.
This was a death sentence with a deadline.
A month.
If we didn't find the hidden culprit within that time, we were all as good as dead.
“Sa-ryang.”
“Yes, Clan Head.”
“......I trust you. Catch them without fail.”
“I shall obey.”
Peng Sa-ryang beckoned to us.
“Let us go. Our honored guests. I shall show you to your lodgings.”
His words were kind, but his eyes weren't kind at all.
The eyes of a butcher watching a cow being dragged to the slaughterhouse.
Under the strict watch of the Peng Clan martial artists, we left the Main Hall.
Namgung Seol didn't say a word.
Her white clothes were stained with dust and blood.
Even so, her steps didn't falter.
Only her fingertips were trembling, just a little.
Creeeak.
Behind us, the door of the Main Hall closed.
BOOM!
That sound was just like a prison door slamming shut.