Instead of bowing his head low as convention demanded, Tang Yu-hyeon lifted it slightly.
Catching the light, his eyes glittered as though holding a keen intelligence.
"Please believe me. I did not go to the pleasure house without a reason."
"Hmm."
As he stated clearly, word by word, exactly what he meant to convey, Tang Gang-heon's gaze wavered.
That opening was precisely what Tang Yu-hyeon had aimed for.
'He never gave up on Tang Yu-hyeon all this time, so he won't turn away the prodigal who's come back.'
All the more so if that prodigal has a story behind him.
"Rise."
Just as expected. Tang Yu-hyeon did not change his expression at so obvious a result.
"Very well. I am curious what valid reason you will produce."
A valid reason?
There is none.
What reason is there for a wastrel doing wastrel things?
But something like that only needed to be manufactured from here on.
"I heard recently that a poison of unknown make is being distributed through the pleasure houses."
At the words about poison being distributed, Tang Gang-heon tilted a brow.
It meant he was interested.
'He's hooked.'
Tang Yu-hyeon pressed down the corner of his mouth and continued.
"They say that even in Sichuan it is sold at only a few pleasure houses, and only to special customers, so all this while I deceived them by playing the prodigal."
A martial artist of the Tang Clan, a direct-line son no less, brought down not by a lethal poison but by a mere soul-befuddling drug?
It was more than enough to send his standing straight through the floor.
And that would place limits on the Tang Clan's growth and on his own activities to come.
He meant to protect his descendants and his clan himself, and being caught by the ankle over past deeds was out of the question.
Tang Gang-heon chewed over Tang Yu-hyeon's conduct and tapped the desk with his fingers.
There must have been much that snagged at him, for his brows slanted.
Understandable.
All he could recall was the boy guzzling liquor or coming home trailing that cloying stench peculiar to pleasure houses, so of course belief would not come easily.
'Frankly, any bastard who believed it would be a fool.'
But making him believe it was his job.
Tang Gang-heon's fingers slowed.
Tap...... Tap...... Tap.
CRACK—!
The bamboo scroll grazed past Tang Yu-hyeon's side and struck the door.
"You bastard!"
Even at Tang Gang-heon's thunderous rebuke, Tang Yu-hyeon's expression did not shift in the slightest.
'Dammit. I shouldn't have kept my mouth shut. Now my ears are the ones paying for it.'
"Why did you not speak up! Had you done so, you could have lived at least a little more easily!"
Huh? He believes this?
There's no proof and the logic is thin, and he believes this?
At that unexpected show of concern, Tang Yu-hyeon's eyes went round.
When he first brought the story out, he had trusted himself.
He was confident in his calculations, at what angle to catch the light so his face would read as he intended, and what tone and combination of words would produce the result he wanted.
He had also trusted the Tang Gang-heon that the 'memories' described.
A man who loved even a child gone astray would not be able to look away from eyes shining straight and true.
But he had never dreamed that such love would permit an unreason that outran reason.
Feeling a warmth spread through his chest for the first time in a long while, Tang Yu-hyeon answered calmly.
"With no way of knowing where the rat bastards were hiding or how far their moves had reached, I judged that identifying which poison had been spread came first. I am sorry to have caused you worry."
The first thing anyone thinks of at the word 'poison' is the Sichuan Tang Clan.
It was also the place that handled more poisons than anywhere in the Central Plains, so caution was only natural.
Tang Gang-heon knew this as well, so he asked nothing further and let out a low sigh.
"......Very well. In the end you came through unharmed, and that is a relief."
He pressed at the space between his brows and asked.
"Are you hurt anywhere? Any lingering effects?"
"I am fine."
"What did the physician say?"
"I came without seeing one."
"This child. I wonder whom he takes after, being so hasty."
He had expected to be asked which poison he had identified, but once again concern came first.
However true it may be that people came into the world before poison, and not poison before people, he had never seen a man who actually lived by it.
'It's been a long while since I saw such a decent bastard.'
Tang Yu-hyeon lowered his head to hide the corners of his mouth turning up.
Good descendant of mine. I will pass the secret arts down to you myself.
'Why do you think people say ancestors are worth something! This is exactly when you reap an ancestor's blessing!'
According to Tang Yu-hyeon's memories, what Tang Gang-heon wanted was to restore the lost secret arts and make the Tang Clan the world's greatest clan.
A Tang Yu-hyeon who held memories from a hundred years ago could grant that wish with room to spare.
"There was a commotion, but no great harm came of it, and that is fortunate. Now then. Did you find out what poison it was?"
"Yes."
"Your evidence?"
"There is no physical proof."
"Then your claim will be difficult to have accepted......."
"Knowing which poison it is will be enough."
Tang Gang-heon twitched a brow to say go on.
"Because it is Midnight-Noon Heart Burning."
"......!"
Midnight-Noon Heart Burning, one of the Tang Clan's Eight Great Lethal Poisons, long since lost.
When that name came out of Tang Yu-hyeon's mouth, Tang Gang-heon was visibly shaken.
By common sense it made no sense at all.
How could a boy of barely fifteen know a lethal poison whose original form had been lost, one that survived only as a mention in other secret manuals, and how was he alive after swallowing it!
But if one is going to lie, lying grandly draws less suspicion.
Because at times an unrealistic falsehood lands more persuasively than an ambiguous truth.
"How did you come to know that?"
"Do you remember, Father, showing your children the martial arts manuals when we were small?"
"Of course."
"Among what I read then, there was one that introduced the Tang Clan's Eight Great Lethal Poisons."
The body's original owner had surely forgotten it entirely, but to the Tang Yu-hyeon who had received that whole life along with the memories, it was vivid.
"It was written that among them, Midnight-Noon Heart Burning brings on seizures only at the two hours of midnight and noon, and that bodily activity slows in step with them."
The voice reciting a secret manual he had opened in the past was as plain and level as could be.
As is usual for anyone drawing knowledge out of his own head.
"I merely remembered it."
At those unshaken eyes, Tang Gang-heon put a hand to his head and let out a sigh.
He was confused because this differed from the Tang Yu-hyeon he knew.
Naturally, it could not be otherwise.
Because Tang Yu-hyeon is not that clever.
There is no chance he remembers his early childhood, and no chance he would recall, even by accident, what he had seen while playing with his brothers back then.
But what stood before Tang Gang-heon now was not Tang Yu-hyeon.
Only one person knew that fact, so everyone else was left confused by the gap.
"......This is difficult."
The words came out like a sigh.
"You remember being around five years old? Fine. Let us grant that. Then why have you behaved as you did all this time?"
His real derailment had begun five years ago, but skipping lessons and refusing to listen went back further still.
His earlier conduct was just as hopeless, but it could at least be smoothed over as the folly of a young age.
Tang Yu-hyeon, however, did not do that.
Instead of a pleasant excuse, he brought out a truth he had once held.
"To my shame, at that time I had no ambition."
"You had no ambition?"
"Yes. Having known more tenderness than I deserved, I feared a merciless world. I did not want to fight my brothers under the banner of 'the strong are revered,' and I did not want to kill those who might one day become my strength."
Setting aside the lie in the first line, it was something Tang Yu-hyeon had also agonized over until his hair fell out.
The fear of kin killing kin.
The revulsion at a world that did not see people as people.
That was why, once, he too had run away.
"But now I know that was wrong. That the tenderness I received carries responsibility with it, and that I cannot be free of it."
That was what had turned back the feet of a certain coward of the Tang Clan a hundred years ago, the bedrock of who he was, and the strength that had earned him the name Poison Lord.
"It is tenderness built upon someone's spilled blood, so I must live in a way that does not let that blood go to waste. I realized it late, but now that I have, I mean to act on it."
Tang Yu-hyeon finished speaking and lowered his head slightly.
The words he had wanted to give to a descendant already dead, and the words he had to say to the descendant who would lead the Tang Clan.
The two mixed together and settled quietly.
"......You truly have changed."
Instead of answering, Tang Yu-hyeon smiled brightly.
The person inside had been swapped out, so of course there would be changes and then some.
Tang Gang-heon could not take the astonishment from his eyes.
That was how shocking Tang Yu-hyeon's change must have been.
"If that is how you thought, I will ask no more. Do not forget that resolve."
"Yes."
"Haa. Still, it is a relief that you had a purpose of your own."
A flicker of self-reproach passed through Tang Gang-heon's eyes.
Before long it turned to relief.
Seeing it, relief spread across Tang Yu-hyeon's mouth as well.
'See? Things like secret arts change hands easily enough.'
Because sometimes sincerity overwhelms everything.
A little unreality is nothing at all before it.
"In that case, those who frequented the pleasure houses with you......."
"They are the ones who guided me to the pleasure houses without knowing a thing."
Tang Yu-hyeon said with a smile.
They were the ones who had helped bring about Tang Yu-hyeon's fall.
Had it not been for the Elder Council, they would never have been attached to Tang Yu-hyeon, nor coaxed him at all.
Had that been so, Tang Yu-hyeon might have grown into a diligent child, showered in his parents' affection.
"How dare they. And to me, your own son, no less."
One could not say he was without fault, but those who had done the deed with the Elder Council at their back ought to pay the price of that trust, ought they not?
"Understood. I will handle it as the rules dictate."
"That is a wise measure."
"Once the matter is settled, I will send men to the pleasure house you frequented."
"Is something still left?"
"The Elder Council sent word that they intend to take issue with your conduct and call you to account. You collapsed after taking a soul-befuddling drug, so it seems they do not mean to let it pass easily."
In a word, they had found their opening.
"Still, hearing your account, it seems it will be settled quickly."
Merely settled quickly?
A spectacle is about to unfold in which every move they aimed for comes to nothing.
"It is to be three days from now, so prepare yourself."
"Yes."
"Is there anything you need?"
He caught on instinctively.
This was not a 'the business is done, so get lost'; it was a reward given to a child who had done well and been through hardship.
There's no way he'd let a chance like this slip by!
"Then, in that case......."
Tang Yu-hyeon smiled shamelessly and spread both hands.
"Could I have some spirit elixirs?"
***
"Heh heh heh."
Tang Yu-hyeon tossed the pouch up and caught it, grinning to himself.
Filled without so much as a word of protest with a fitting mix of poisons and spirit elixirs, the pouch was so large and heavy that he had to spread his hand wide to hold it.
On top of that, tucked in his robes were promissory notes handed over separately for his trouble.
'Goodwill has always come out of a well-stuffed pouch.'
Affection has to travel both ways for helping to have any flavor to it.
"Hahaha!"
Tang Yu-hyeon burst into a satisfied laugh.