Chapter 390: Chapter 390
I glanced sideways and saw Dang Seo-hui’s right hand already tucked inside her changshan.
It wasn’t visible from the outside, but within that sleeve she was undoubtedly assembling a combination of poisons and hidden weapons capable of killing everyone here in a single stroke.
Jegal Cheon-gi had already drawn his sword.
Seeing them like this, they’re pretty reassuring. Glad I brought them along.
‘Good kids.’
I suppressed the urge to pat Dang Seo-hui and Jegal Cheon-gi on the head, and instead shook my head calmly.
“Easy, Senior Dang. Easy, Cheon-gi.”
I hadn’t come here to fight.
I’d come to resolve the problem.
Even if Dam Ak held a grudge against the Murim Alliance, that was something he should take up with those bastards, not me—why should I be the whipping boy?
“Take your grievances up with them directly. I’m hardly in a position to represent the Murim Alliance.”
I tried to soothe Dam Ak, but the blades showed no sign of lowering.
“……”
What, are they seriously looking for a fight?
That won’t do.
“I understand the strategist holds ill will toward the Murim Alliance, but resorting to this won’t solve……”
My mind churned furiously, and then Dam Ak cracked a thin smile.
“How dull. Why take everything so seriously?”
When Dam Ak lowered his hand, the Black Thought Alliance warriors sheathed their weapons in unison.
I stood there blinking in utter bewilderment, and he continued.
“It was a joke. A joke.”
“A joke?”
Fuck, you’re cracking jokes in this dead-serious atmosphere during a crisis of this magnitude?
My jaw refused to close at his absurd words.
Yet Dam Ak had a faint smile playing at the corner of his lips.
“Orthodox path warriors are no fun at all. At times like these, a joke like that is all the more amusing.”
Since when has he been a Black Path man?
In his previous life, around this time, he’d been holding a government post in the imperial court!
“Still, you were later than I expected. I thought you’d come the instant you received the letter……”
“How am I supposed to get in here with nothing but numbers scrawled on a piece of leather?”
“Hmm…… Didn’t you say you could freely navigate the Boundless Indestructible Soul-Destroying Formation? I assumed someone like that would pass through a Black Fog Solitary Soul Formation with ease.”
That was only because I’d brute-forced the route into my head with sheer memory……
“It seems your mind isn’t quite as impressive as I’d imagined.”
“……”
Why does this man keep needling me?
Saying things he doesn’t have to say.
“Hmm, it doesn’t look like you had White-Hand Divine Maiden’s help…… Was it that friend behind you?”
Dam Ak’s gaze shifted to Jegal Cheon-gi.
Since he was looking at me for guidance, I gave him a nod.
“Jegal Cheon-gi of the ‘Taeul Sect.'”
A perfectly measured display of courtesy—neither too much nor too little.
Dam Ak tilted his head.
“Is Jegal merely your surname?”
“I am indeed from the Jegal Clan.”
At Cheon-gi’s answer, Dam Ak nodded several times.
“How interesting. A member of the Jegal Clan introducing himself as a man of the Taeul Sect……”
Then he fixed me with a peculiar look.
“You truly have the strangest array of talents, Young Master Jin.”
I offered no response.
What mattered right now wasn’t that.
I walked past the still-wary guards and looked around.
“What happened here? Could you not dissolve the formation?”
“Why would I deploy a formation I couldn’t dissolve?”
“Then why haven’t you come out?”
Dam Ak took a measured breath before slowly parting his lips.
“Because the danger has not yet passed.”
Just as I’d thought—Dam Ak still hadn’t lowered his guard since the night of the attack.
He couldn’t possibly know the full context.
“The Murim Alliance’s Grand Strategist was also attacked. The assailants have not yet been identified.”
“Hmm…… So the commotion that night was because of the Grand Strategist?”
“The Alliance has tentatively designated ‘them’ as the suspects.”
‘Them’—the same ones who had appeared before Dam Ak under the guise of ‘Gun Yu-hyeon.’
“Truly lamentable.”
Dam Ak let out a quiet sigh.
“Then wouldn’t you consider coming out now? Your holing up like this has the entire murim in an uproar.”
“I cannot come out.”
An immediate, resolute answer.
My head began to throb.
“Why not?”
“Because the danger has not yet passed.”
What is he talking about?
Surely the hunger and deprivation hadn’t driven him mad, and given that he’d just been pulling pranks, he must have understood what I’d said……
“Are you…… still joking?”
Unable to think of any other explanation, I stared at him searchingly, but Dam Ak—now devoid of any trace of humor—answered flatly.
“We aren’t on those kinds of terms, are we?”
Why the sudden distance? That stings.
“Then what do you mean when you say the danger hasn’t passed?”
“Exactly what I said. The arrow aimed at me is still nocked on the bowstring.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you. The ones who attacked us were……”
STEP—
Dam Ak abruptly took one stride forward.
“The ones who attacked the Murim Alliance were ‘them.’ But the ones who attacked us—”
He fixed me with a piercing stare and added.
“—were the ‘Murim Alliance.'”
His tone was that of a man stating the immutable truth of the universe.
Even so, our side isn’t that far gone……
Right?
“……”
I turned my head and noticed that Dang Seo-hui’s face had gone rigid.
***
Dam Ak, accompanied by his envoy delegation and warriors, led us to the rear of the side building.
“I don’t see that person from before.”
“Whom do you mean?”
You know—the one from the graduation ceremony who kept sending sound transmissions like, ‘Our strategist says……’
Dam Ak seemed to understand who I meant and nodded.
“If you mean him, he is in the back.”
That man was Dam Ak’s personal guard, wasn’t he?
If the personal guard didn’t need to remain at his side, perhaps it spoke to the immense reliability and security of the Black Fog Solitary Soul Formation?
By the time that thought crossed my mind, we had arrived at the rear courtyard.
But the personal guard was still nowhere to be seen.
“Is he the shy type? I’d like to say hello. We do have a connection of sorts, after all.”
Even if he’d only relayed messages, we’d exchanged words—and that counted for something.
The memory brought a smile to my lips, but then—
“He’s right there, isn’t he?”
Dam Ak pointed to one side with a composed gesture.
On the small marble-paved yard designed for guests to limber up—
There lay a single corpse, covered with straw.
“This is him.”
“……”
So this was why the personal guard—someone who should never leave his charge’s side for even an instant—had been absent.
“He was a valuable person. Perhaps even more useful to the Black Thought Alliance than I am.”
Dam Ak spoke matter-of-factly, but beneath the surface there burned a cold, searing fury.
And the way he expressed none of it on the outside made it all the more chilling.
‘This is dangerous.’
The rage Dam Ak harbored was no ordinary thing.
The reason I’d felt relieved even when he became the Black Thought Alliance’s strategist instead of the Murim Alliance’s—
—was because I believed such a brilliant mind could fight alongside us against the Demonic Cult.
In my previous life, the Murim Alliance had stood against the Demonic Cult alone, and the result had been annihilation. In this life, I’d hoped that with a friend like the Black Thought Alliance fighting beside us, the outcome would be different.
Yet now that brilliant friend was directing hostile emotions at us.
The misunderstanding had to be cleared up immediately.
“The Murim Alliance is equally bewildered by this incident. In fact, three of Jegal So-myeong’s personal guards also lost their lives.”
Dam Ak, who had been gazing down at the body, looked up at me.
“……So your argument is that because the Murim Alliance was also attacked, the Murim Alliance is not the enemy?”
“I’m not making some strained case here……”
“Shall we step over here?”
Without waiting for a reply, Dam Ak walked to the side of the building.
There, just like his personal guard, three more corpses lay covered in straw.
“……”
“These are the ones who attacked us.”
At the same time, Dang Seo-hui tugged at my sleeve and looked up.
It seemed she wanted to examine the bodies, so I nodded, and she went straight over to pull back the straw.
A thick stench of decay washed over us.
Long dead, the bloodless corpses had turned a pallid gray-white, yet remained intact.
“The Demonic Cult is almost obsessively thorough about leaving no corpses behind. Didn’t that give you pause?”
“……”
Even without that, Dam Ak had already fought Je Geum-hak. Barring exceptional circumstances, he would be able to tell whether an opponent was a demonic practitioner or an orthodox martial artist.
No—even setting these corpses aside, I had nothing to say.
‘Fuck.’
I knew their faces.
I had never met them in this life, but in my previous life I had crossed paths with them on the battlefield.
Curses I couldn’t contain boiled up from my gut.
I tried to hide my trembling fists, but it wasn’t easy.
‘The Righteous Path Association……!’
Each of them had been affiliated with lay martial sects under the Nine Sects and One Gang.
They were Special Operations members, separately drafted to carry out missions for the Righteous Path Association.
What reason was there for men who would only formally become Alliance members after Jegal So-myeong’s death to already be turning up as corpses inside the Murim Alliance?
Dam Ak’s leaden voice scored a crack through the silence.
“Even seeing this, you still won’t acknowledge that the Murim Alliance did this?”
“……”
I could not answer him.
The Murim Alliance was not the Righteous Path Association, true—but I couldn’t claim the Righteous Path Association was not the Murim Alliance.
Moreover, the Righteous Path Association was the most powerful faction influencing the Murim Alliance.
To call them separate from the Murim Alliance would be nothing short of mocking Dam Ak.
And then Dang Seo-hui delivered the final verdict.
“There are no traces of wicked qi on these men. They are indeed orthodox martial artists.”
***
I separated from Dam Ak’s party to sort through my thoughts on this godforsaken, idiotic situation.
The Righteous Path Association’s intent was clear.
A conflict between the Black Thought Alliance and the Murim Alliance was inevitable.
Just as Jegal So-myeong was critical to the Murim Alliance, Dam Ak was the extraordinary figure who held the Black Thought Alliance together.
Just as the loss of Jegal So-myeong would be catastrophic for the Alliance, the loss of Dam Ak would be catastrophic for the Black Thought Alliance.
So kill him while he’s come to the Murim Alliance!
‘Idiots……’
Simple and transparent to the point of absurdity—their intentions were laid bare for all to see.
The problem was that the Righteous Path Association had taken the shit, but I was the one who had to clean it up.
How to resolve this was beyond me, and my mind had gone numb—
When Dang Seo-hui spoke.
“Something was strange.”
“What was?”
“The warriors who were guarding the Hall of Repose. There were far too many of them for a normal watch.”
“……”
“And they arrived far too quickly for people who’d supposedly rushed over after hearing the explosion.”
Digging through my memory, most of the people stationed there had been directly or indirectly connected to the Righteous Path Association.
Why hadn’t I realized this sooner?
The timing, too, was suspiciously perfect.
They had actually gone through with it while that chaos was erupting in the inner compound.
Had they considered the situation a godsend?
At this point, I almost had to acknowledge their stubbornness as tenacity and their stupidity as personality.
I turned to Cheon-gi, who had been sitting quietly beside me.
“Cheon-gi.”
“Yes.”
“What do you think we should do?”
I haven’t the faintest idea, so you—the Grand Strategist’s grandson—think of something.
And Jegal Cheon-gi had an answer ready almost immediately.
“I believe the best course would be to inform the Grand Strategist of what happened here and have the culprits identified.”
A textbook answer, just like him.
It was probably the closest to the right answer—or rather, the most orthodox approach.
But it wouldn’t be a solution.
Grasping at straws, I shifted my gaze to Dang Seo-hui.
“What about you, Senior Dang?”
“We need to hear what that man wants first.”
“Hm?”
I’d expected something along the lines of, ‘Give him candied fruit.’ The unexpected answer caught me off guard.
“If I were invited as a guest to some household, and that household tried to have me killed…… I would exterminate their entire clan on the spot.”
“……”
Surprising—or perhaps instinctive and obvious.
That such an answer had come from Dang Seo-hui’s mouth was the surprising part.
Left speechless in my bewilderment, Dang Seo-hui continued.
“Now isn’t the time to brood alone. Asking him directly is the best option.”
Asking directly is the best option……
Feeding candied fruit to a straw paid off after all.
After some deliberation, I went to Dam Ak.
As Dang Seo-hui said, sitting alone with my thoughts wasn’t going to produce an answer.
“First, I’ll convey the situation here to the Grand Strategist and the Alliance Leader. Then I’ll track down the culprits and……”
“I refuse.”
“What?”
Dam Ak sat with his back perfectly straight, his expression calm and his eyes level.
“If the culprits could have been caught, they would have been caught long ago. And instead of food, they would have sent me the culprits’ severed heads through the formation.”
“……”
“I am also opposed to reporting the situation here. The moment the assailants learn I am alive, they will realize their mistake and try to eliminate me again.”
Dam Ak continued with unwavering conviction.
“I have no intention of dancing to their shallow schemes.”
“……If I were to catch the culprits and bring them to you.”
“That would be no different. You tearing through the Alliance to find the culprits would be tantamount to announcing that I am alive.”
There was no answer in sight.
Then Dang Seo-hui, who had been quietly observing our exchange, tugged at my sleeve.
“……”
I looked down at her blank expression for a moment, then turned back to Dam Ak and blurted out.
“What is it you want?”
Dam Ak slowly closed his eyes.
“I had thought I was prepared to die here.”
“What do you……”
“My coming here in person was an act of extending my hand first, accepting the risk. I thought that if things went wrong and my head was taken, that would simply be the way of it.”
The alliance between the Black Thought Alliance and the Murim Alliance.
For the sake of that dangerous gamble, Dam Ak had staked his own life as collateral.
“If my single life could unify the Black Thought Alliance, I considered it a worthy trade.”
He opened his eyes, and his gaze drifted to the body of his personal guard.
“But I have changed my mind.”
That same composed gaze then settled on me.
A stare so calm it didn’t even allow a flinch.
“I want revenge.”
“……”
“Against those who think nothing of human lives when it serves their interests.”
Within that gaze burned a fierce blaze—one I had never seen in a man who had always maintained perfect composure.
“Get me out of here. Out of the Murim Alliance’s grasp.”
It was the eyes of a man resolved to burn everything down.