Chapter 365: Chapter 365
Namgung Seon-hwa couldn’t find her words for a long while.
No—she didn’t know what to say.
“……”
Granted, Jin So-un had been attracting a great deal of attention lately.
Being an Academy student already gave one above-average appeal to the opposite sex, and on top of that, he had the skill to back up his rank as top student.
With the recent rumors spreading about how he’d taken charge during the Black Forest crisis and led the students to safety, interest in Jin So-un—particularly marriage-minded interest—had quite literally exploded.
Families of fallen noble houses and wealthy merchant clans were regularly sending envoys to the representative delegation.
Even among the Academy’s female students, who had previously shown no interest in Jin So-un because of his meager background, a fervent wave of attention was now pouring his way.
Yes, that was all true, but…… she’d never imagined Dang Seo-hui would join the competition.
And she’d come to ask whether he’d be willing to marry in as a matrilocal son-in-law, no less.
“Wh……why do you want to know that?”
The question might have been rude, but it tumbled out before she could stop it.
By the time she realized, it was already too late.
Fortunately, Dang Seo-hui didn’t seem to mind and went on munching her candied fruit.
“I’m not the curious one.”
“Oh! Really?”
Namgung Seon-hwa’s relief was short-lived.
GULP—
Dang Seo-hui swallowed the candied fruit in one go and added.
“It’s Grandfather who’s curious.”
Namgung Seon-hwa’s heart plummeted again.
“G-Grandfather…… you mean the Poison King?”
“Mm, that’s right.”
Namgung Seon-hwa kept her voice as level as she could.
“Wh-why would your grandfather be curious about that?”
Dang Seo-hui picked up another candied fruit and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Then she tilted her head.
“That…… I don’t know.”
“……”
The person in question had no idea, but Namgung Seon-hwa had a sneaking suspicion she knew the answer.
The only person in the Tang Clan currently of marriageable age was Dang Seo-hui.
Surely he wasn’t asking with her ten-years-younger cousin in mind.
A creeping anxiety took hold.
Poison King Dang Hyeok-je was renowned for his staggering stubbornness, and especially for the iron certainty with which he followed through once he’d set his mind to something.
Once he locked onto a target, escape from his grasp was nearly impossible.
In that case……
‘Hah……’
The only option was to change the mind of the person at the center of it all.
“Um, Senior Dang…… have you been thinking about marriage?”
“Marriage?”
Dang Seo-hui wore the expression of someone who’d just been read a passage from the Four Books and Three Classics, but then nodded.
“Ahhh, marriage! Hmm…… I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Right?! It’s still too early to be thinking about marriage.”
Namgung Seon-hwa clapped her fist against her palm.
“Senior, you must still have so much you want to do…… and even if your family tells you to marry, you certainly wouldn’t want to wed someone you have no feelings for, right?”
Dang Seo-hui’s stubbornness was every bit a match for Dang Hyeok-je’s.
The very reason she’d been chosen to inherit the Tang Clan’s true transmission wasn’t just her dazzling talent—it was also the sheer obstinacy that had once driven her to refuse a single morsel of food for an entire month, pushing herself to the brink of starvation.
Moreover, she was now a prominent figure in the martial world, having earned the epithet White-Hand Divine Maiden through the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly.
A marriage that disregarded her wishes couldn’t possibly go through.
As Namgung Seon-hwa let herself breathe—
“If it’s a marriage the elders have decided on, I’d consider it.”
“What???”
A thunderbolt from a clear sky.
“Marriage is important. As long as the person isn’t particularly objectionable, I could do it.”
Could do it? She could…… do it?
Until the very last moment, Namgung Seon-hwa agonized.
She knew that not asking was the wiser choice, but without asking, she wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight.
“Um…… Senior Dang, if I may ask…… what do you think of Young Lord Jin?”
“Jin So-un? I think he’s an outstanding Academy student.”
“Hmm…… if you had to say like or dislike……?”
“Hmm? Why do you keep asking strange questions?”
Namgung Seon-hwa pushed a candied fruit toward Dang Seo-hui’s puffed-up cheeks, and Dang Seo-hui continued.
“……If I had to pick, I’d say I like him. Munch munch…… we do chivalrous hero activities together and he always buys me candied fruit.”
“……”
Dang Seo-hui, who had been reaching for another piece, paused and glanced at Namgung Seon-hwa before tilting her head.
“Why does your face look like that? Did you think of an enemy or something? Just say the word. I’ll beat them up for you.”
“No. I just think I was mistaken about something. I thought he was someone with a clean record when it came to women…… but I guess that wasn’t the case? Ho ho……”
Inside Namgung Seon-hwa’s chest, a flame that had been dying reignited and blazed to life.
***
‘Hm?’
A chill ran down my spine and I glanced behind me, but there was nothing except an empty wall.
Still, something felt off.
‘What is it?’
Don’t we all have moments like that?
Despite living a life of impeccable conduct and upright character, that nagging feeling that you’ve somehow made a terrible blunder in front of someone—that dread of future consequences, the chill creeping up the back of your neck.
“Student Jin So-un, is something the matter?”
A deep voice snapped me back to attention.
Then again, given the circumstances, it’d be stranger not to feel uneasy.
“It’s nothing.”
“Let’s continue.”
I’d come because they said they needed advisory assistance, but no matter how I looked at it, this didn’t seem like a simple investigation into the Black Forest.
“So, this big bear appeared, and then what?”
“It wasn’t a bear, it was a divine spirit. The Ten-Thousand-Year……”
“Right, so that’s a bear.”
If it were just a Heavenly Eye Pavilion investigation, why would Jang Bo-geuk, Great Hall Master of the Red Dragon Pavilion, be sitting in?
“It has the form of a bear, but…… hah, never mind.”
“Huh? Did you just sigh at me?!”
“Jang, would you stop interrupting? And get your feet off the table. This is supposed to be a debriefing.”
The one chiding Great Hall Master Jang Bo-geuk was Hwang Seo-ryul, Great Hall Master of the Azure Dragon Pavilion.
And it wasn’t just the two of them.
Representatives from the White Tiger Pavilion, the Black Martial Pavilion, the Yellow Phoenix Pavilion, and the Red Phoenix Pavilion were all present.
They might not hold the title of each unit’s commander just yet, but these were the people who would lead the Martial Pavilions in the future and become heroes—every single one of them was here.
‘Getting all of them together in one place couldn’t have been easy, either……’
For the record, no one from the White Wolf Pavilion—the unit I was preparing to apply to—had shown up.
A stark display of the White Wolf Pavilion’s current status as little more than a foreign legion.
I felt nothing but regret.
After all, I’d essentially missed the chance to make a good impression on my future superiors.
On top of that, the attitude of those listening to my briefing was thoroughly unprofessional.
“My apologies, Student Jin So-un. Everyone just returned from Sichuan not long ago and they’ve let their guard down. Please be understanding.”
At least Hwang Seo-ryul, the only one with a decent attitude, offered some consolation.
Jang Bo-geuk, his feet still on the table, propped his head on a thick hand and spoke.
“Why’d you enter the Demonic Reaches in the first place? You only ran into those divine spirits because you went in there for no good reason.”
These people have nothing to do with me.
Whatever attitude they take while listening, whatever they think—it’s utterly irrelevant to me.
“You should’ve just bolted straight for the entrance. Why’d you have to go and overthink things?”
Yeah, it’s definitely none of my business, but……
Shit, listening to this is unbearably grating.
“Why aren’t you answering? Got something to hide?”
“If the Red Dragon Pavilion had been in the same situation…… every last one of you would’ve been wiped out.”
“……!?”
“……??”
Damn, that slipped out.
Hwang Seo-ryul, who’d been trying to restrain Jang Bo-geuk, also seemed displeased.
The people from the other pavilions, too.
Well, there’s no walking this back now.
I went all in with a what-the-hell attitude.
They weren’t going to be my superiors anyway.
“Did you not hear me properly earlier? They deployed a Heavenly Net and Earthly Snare. On top of that, beyond the killing intent, another sinister energy was severely disrupting the students’ mental composure. Charging straight into a fortified position where the enemy knew exactly which way you’d exit……”
I looked at Jang Bo-geuk and twisted the corner of my mouth into a smirk.
“You might as well order your soldiers to strap rocks to their backs and jump off a cliff.”
“……”
Jang Bo-geuk’s face began to flush red.
His jaw clenched tight, he lowered his feet and slammed a fist into the table.
CRASH!
Teacups toppled and shattered as the long table cracked with a sharp report, then splintered apart.
Definitely a cut above the average Hall Master.
He wasn’t even projecting killing intent, yet the sheer pressure radiating from his entire body was enough to make my lungs seize up.
“What…… did you just say?”
But I knew all too well—back down here, and there’d be no recovering.
Jang Bo-geuk despised people who made excuses to save face.
“Let me be precise. If Great Hall Master Jang Bo-geuk and the Red Dragon Pavilion had been in that situation……”
But the kind of person who crashed headfirst into you rather than breaking—that was someone he respected.
I looked him dead in the eyes and answered.
“Not a single one of you would have come back alive.”
WHOOSH—
The air froze instantly.
“You…… know who I am and you still dare say that?”
But it didn’t bother me much.
“Well, it’s not like I said anything wrong.”
I only ever say what’s right. The problem is that “right” sometimes gets taken as “asking to get hit.”
CRACK.
Jang Bo-geuk crushed the chair’s armrest to powder, then fixed me with his imposing glare.
“You think the Red Dragon Pavilion is that much of a joke?!”
“Then let me ask you one thing. What countermeasures does the Red Dragon Pavilion have against unorthodox arts, demonic arts, and sorcery?”
“……Against that kind of wicked nonsense……”
I cut him off.
“Deep mind-image training to power through it…… surely that’s not your answer? The Red Dragon Pavilion couldn’t possibly be relying on something that naive.”
Jang Bo-geuk’s mouth gaped like a fish.
“Hmm…… so it is.”
“……”
“I hear the Red Dragon Pavilion’s people sold off all their Spirit-Suppression Beads, and that’s why things went so badly in Sichuan. Was the mind-image training insufficient back then, too?”
His body began to tremble.
The fury he was barely containing threatened to erupt at any moment.
“If they couldn’t even stop those enemies, how would they have handled the creatures in the Black For……”
“YOU LITTLE SHIT!!!”
He finally exploded.
He hurled a Fist Projection with everything he had.
THWACK!
The Fist Projection grazed just beneath my ear, leaving a small cut on my neck as it buried a deep fist mark into the wall behind me.
“Whoa…… he didn’t dodge that?”
“That takes some guts.”
“More nerve than most Black Path fighters, they said……”
Murmurs of admiration erupted from all sides.
……Though it seemed like not a single one of them had read the situation correctly.
‘Sh-shit…… I didn’t think he’d actually throw one.’
I’d assumed he’d just make a threatening gesture, but Jang Bo-geuk turned out to be even more unhinged than I’d thought.
In any case, not flinching looked more impressive, so I stood there as if nothing had happened.
Which only made Jang Bo-geuk, who’d actually thrown the Fist Projection, look somewhat foolish.
“Y-you goddamn……”
While Jang Bo-geuk stood frozen, unsure what to do, Hwang Seo-ryul spoke in a measured tone.
“That’s enough, Jang Bo-geuk.”
The voice was perfectly ordinary, yet Jang Bo-geuk flinched and trembled.
Having settled the situation, Hwang Seo-ryul gave me a slight bow of the head.
“Student Jin So-un. On behalf of everyone here, I apologize. If you were startled, we can reschedule.”
“I’m fine.”
“Thank you. Then please continue.”
Perhaps because I hadn’t reacted to the Fist Projection—the audience’s attitude shifted dramatically afterward.
Throughout the rest of the briefing, they cycled through fury, awe, and wide-eyed shock.
Once the story was finished, another peculiar silence settled in.
Hwang Seo-ryul, who had been lost in thought, gave a faint nod.
“Remarkable.”
That’s it? That’s the whole reaction?
I wasn’t expecting applause, but it had been a demonstrably successful operation. A bit of acknowledgment would’ve been nice……
The response was distinctly lukewarm.
“Can a mere Academy student truly have devised and executed an operation of this caliber? What do the rest of you think?”
At Hwang Seo-ryul’s question, the others began weighing in one by one.
“Absurd. That kind of improvisation doesn’t come easily even at the Hall Master level……”
“I hate to say it about myself, but…… our people would’ve all died.”
“Even taking only half of it as truth, it’s hard to believe. This operation from a student?”
“When the Grand Strategist told us, I took it with a grain of salt…… but now I see why he said what he said.”
Finally, Hwang Seo-ryul looked at Jang Bo-geuk.
Jang Bo-geuk sat with his lips firmly sealed, but under Hwang Seo-ryul’s gaze, he finally shook his head and spoke.
“He’s…… he’s passably useful, I’ll give him that.”
Then a question occurred to me.
Hadn’t the whole point of being summoned to the Heavenly Eye Pavilion been to share intelligence on the enemies we’d encountered in the Black Forest?
Why were the Martial Pavilions’ power players sitting in the Heavenly Eye Pavilion’s seats?
“Are there any further questions?”
Thinking they might be deployed to the Black Forest soon, I tried to be as thorough as possible and opened the floor for questions……
“So then, what’s your first choice for assignment?”
“Pardon?”
Where did career planning suddenly come from……?
Well, they asked, so I should answer.
“I’m considering the White Wolf Pavi……”
“Hm? The White Wolf Pavilion? Not the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly?”
“Given how turbulent the martial world is, I thought it’d be better to adapt to the front lines quickly and prepare countermeasures rather than spend time on Dragon and Phoenix Assembly activities.”
“Hmm…… even so, why the White Wolf Pavilion specifically?”
After that, questions entirely unrelated to the Black Forest came pouring in.
“Are you interested in special operations forces, by any chance?”
“I hear your martial skill is exceptional—do you have any other specialties?”
“Hearing you out, it doesn’t sound like the White Wolf Pavilion is your dream posting…… is there somewhere else you’d prefer? Say, the Red Phoenix Pavilion, perhaps? Ahem.”
“Do you like to drink?”
“……”
It finally reached the absurd point of being asked whether I liked to drink, and I looked at the person who’d asked.
Jang Bo-geuk hastily averted his gaze.
“Th-this is a very important question, you know!”
“……”
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what this gathering was supposed to accomplish.
Were these people seriously not busy……
“So…… what’s your alcohol tolerance?”
A throbbing headache set in.