Chapter 18

The atmosphere grew worse by the second.

“The important thing is that the duel was fair!”

“Fair? Since when is using poison considered fair? What is this, the Sichuan Tang Clan?”

“The man himself said he didn’t do it! And as the Medicine King Hall Master said earlier, Lee Seogeun was perfectly fine—”

“Of course the Third Young Master would deny it. And how can you trust that quack?”

“A quack? You bastard!”

Then one particularly agitated voice pierced my ears.

“If necessary, we should prevent the war even if it means offering up the Third Young Master’s head!”

…What?

“What outrageous nonsense!”

“Am I wrong? Let’s admit it already. The Mount Heng Sword Sect is stronger than our family. If war breaks out, hundreds will be killed or injured, and in the worst case, our family will be wiped out. If we hand over the Third Young Master, who caused all this, won’t that settle everything?”

Was that supposed to be speech or a fart? It had been a while since I’d heard bullshit that impressive. The back of my neck tightened, and my chest began to ache.

But someone else stepped forward before I could.

“What did you just say?”

His voice was quiet, but it carried power. Its very quietness made it all the clearer.

It was Jin Wikyung. He looked around the room, his face expressionless.

“Whose. Head. Did you say we should offer?”

Frost coated every clipped syllable. The atmosphere was so chilling that even I shivered, but the White Tiger Hall Master immediately spoke up.

“Why, obviously the Third Young Master, the chief culprit behind this—ah.”

That bastard was bald, and he couldn’t read the room either. The White Tiger Hall Master let his words trail off, but it was already too late.

“So you intend to offer the Third Young Master’s head to the Mount Heng Sword Sect over something that hasn’t even been confirmed? Is that something a hall master of this family should say?”

“No, that isn’t what I meant…”

Overwhelmed by Jin Wikyung’s aura, the White Tiger Hall Master avoided his gaze. Jin Wikyung stared silently at him.

He wasn’t normally like this, which made him even scarier now that he was angry.

The White Tiger Hall Master’s deathly pale face made me feel as though ten years of indigestion had finally cleared. Jin Wikyung rose from his seat and looked coldly over the gathering.

“You all know the truth already.”

He swept his gaze across the room and spoke with conviction.

“The duel was fair, and Lee Seogeun’s poisoning was a conspiracy. Knowing that, are you suggesting we surrender to them out of fear?”

The members of the Council of Elders faction avoided his gaze. Jin Wikyung’s sneer deepened.

“I don’t know who placed it in their hands, but the Mount Heng Sword Sect now holds the hilt of a sword called justification. Whether they strike today or tomorrow—or whether the sword has already been drawn—it’s too late for us to turn this around. There is only one thing we can do. Fight back.”

“…”

“Do you want to live? Do you want to protect the family? If you truly do, ready the martial artists and prepare for war. Otherwise, cut off my head and my younger brother’s and offer them up. If wealth and glory are all you desire, I suppose that isn’t a bad option.”

A suffocating silence seized the main assembly hall.

If one person hadn’t spoken the next moment, we might have remained crushed beneath that silence for hours.

“Excellent.”

It was the man who had silently watched everything unfold until now.

The Head Elder.

The Head Elder.

Someone I needed to watch. The family’s highest-ranking elder and the head of the Council of Elders.

I recalled Jin Wikyung’s earlier Sound Transmission.

He told me to be careful.

Among all the NPCs, Jin Wikyung was my greatest ally and adviser.

I hadn’t taken his warning lightly. Whenever I had the chance, I kept an eye on the Head Elder.

And I reached one conclusion.

Fuck, I can’t figure him out at all.

If someone asked me to count every NPC I’d encountered since starting this godforsaken game, the number would easily exceed a hundred.

They each had their own expressions and personalities. The servant I met at the pleasure house wore the weary professional smile of someone ground down by life. The coachman who brought me here had a bumbling side, while the senior members of the family were surprisingly simple and hot-tempered.

But the Head Elder…

I can’t read his expression.

He merely watched everything with that strange smile of his.

When the interrogation began. When the senior members of the different factions shouted at one another. Even now.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

The Head Elder’s vigorous applause rang through the hall.

“I had always thought of you as a mere youngster, but before I knew it, the Lesser Family Head had grown into such a commanding martial artist. Excellent. That is how the Lesser Family Head of our family should conduct himself.”

“I can only apologize for showing you such an unseemly side.”

“Excessive humility can be mistaken for arrogance. You have nothing to apologize for.”

Despite the Head Elder’s praise, Jin Wikyung’s expression remained stiff.

“May this old man add a word? What do you think, Lesser Family Head?”

“I will take it to heart.”

As the Head Elder slowly rose, dozens of pairs of eyes fixed on him.

He was the family’s most senior elder. In authority and standing within the family, he might even surpass Jin Wikyung.

The biggest problem was that he led the opposing faction, the Council of Elders.

Fuck. I’m screwed.

I began turning toward the door in preparation for the worst when the Head Elder’s first words reached my ears.

“You’re rotten to the core.”

Huh?

I whipped my head around. The Head Elder still wore his usual strange smile.

Did I hear him wrong?

But I hadn’t.

“Even beasts join forces and fight when an enemy enters their den. And yet men who are supposedly senior members of this family offer up the head of a direct-line member as a solution to stop a war. Heh. So men like this sit in our family council.”

“N-no, Old Master. You misunderstand. It was merely…”

“White Tiger Hall Master.”

At the Head Elder’s icy call, the White Tiger Hall Master stiffened.

“Was I away for too long? Or is this what happened because the Family Head was absent?”

“N-no, Old Master.”

Judging by his expression alone, he looked like some ripped old man at the gym asking if you’d eaten. But his words were downright vicious.

What the hell is this?

What was going on? Why was he taking our side?

I darted my eyes around, but everyone else looked just as confused as I was. Both factions were visibly flustered.

“What do you think, Lesser Family Head?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“If war is now inevitable, our first priority should be putting our own house in order. Shouldn’t we begin by cutting off the heads of those men who are little better than traitors?”

In the frozen silence, Jin Wikyung stared at the Head Elder for a long moment before letting out his answer like a sigh.

“That cannot be done.”

Whew. The White Tiger Hall Master breathed a sigh of relief.

Considering that he’d just suggested offering up my head, I was a little disappointed.

Should I suggest killing just him?

“Those men not only framed a direct-line member of the family, but even argued we should hand him over to the enemy. Don’t you think that is too lenient a response?”

“They have served our family faithfully for many years. I will consider their words a thoughtless remark made in the heat of the moment.”

The Head Elder laughed heartily.

“A thoughtless remark. A thoughtless remark, indeed. Yes, the Lesser Family Head’s capacity is greater than I imagined. You are truly worthy of your position. In that case, I will not hold them accountable. I offer my thanks to the Lesser Family Head for magnanimously forgiving the thoughtless words of these old men.”

When the Head Elder bowed, the others frantically waved their hands and bent at the waist in return.

“Oh, Old Master, please. We were the ones who failed to think matters through.”

“Please don’t do this.”

“You’re only making us more ashamed. Please…”

“Old Master…!”

Jin Wikyung was the one who had spared them, yet they were making a huge fuss over the Head Elder.

Go on. Put on a show. What a performance.

I clicked my tongue inwardly as I watched the spectacle.

Wait. A show?

An indescribable sense of wrongness swept over me. I hurriedly examined the people gathered around the Head Elder.

And then I saw it.

The faint smiles flickering across the lips of the Council of Elders members who had hounded me earlier.

No way…

Was this planned? All of it?

What were they trying to accomplish? Why? Countless questions rose and vanished. My thoughts were a complete mess.

Does Jin Wikyung know something?

I didn’t even need to turn and look for him. The Head Elder was already raising Jin Wikyung’s hand high in the air and shouting.

“With the Family Head absent, the Lesser Family Head is effectively our Family Head. I support him in this matter. If we unite behind him, then no matter how formidable our enemies may be, they will never dare challenge the Jin Family!”

The heated atmosphere. The chanting and cheers.

Where had I seen this before?

It all felt strangely familiar.

And then—

“Thank you.”

The moment I saw the corners of Jin Wikyung’s mouth tremble and the Head Elder’s strange smile, I realized what it reminded me of.

An election campaign.

The Head Elder’s figure overlapped with the politicians I’d seen on television.

The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, but once the Head Elder raised Jin Wikyung’s hand, the meeting proceeded at a rapid pace.

All discussion of the duel, which the Council of Elders faction had so stubbornly dragged out, vanished. Instead, the meeting focused on the assumption that war was coming.

“How many men are currently available?”

“If we recall the martial artists stationed outside… roughly two hundred.”

Two hundred?

I was impressed by the unexpectedly large number, but the next question shut me up.

“And if we select only elites of First Rate or higher?”

“Fewer than twenty. Of course, the number would be different if we included everyone present.”

Including the senior members, there were around thirty or forty First Rate masters.

I didn’t know much about how things worked here, but that seemed like a respectable number.

Just what I’d expect from an old, prestigious great family. Two hundred years of accumulated strength didn’t simply vanish.

“What about the Mount Heng Sword Sect?”

“At least three hundred martial artists have been confirmed so far.”

Three hundred. And that was the minimum, which put them more than a hundred men ahead.

But it was fine. Fights came down to numbers anyway—

“And they have more than fifty First Rate martial artists.”

This war was going to be tough.

Still, with masters like Jin Wikyung and Wipeng, we had a chance. They were high-level NPCs beyond the reach of my Qi Sense. The Head Elder probably belonged in the same category.

“Our family has three Peak masters in total: the Lesser Family Head, the Head Elder, and Sir Wipeng. The Mount Heng Sword Sect has five.”

…Fuck this. I couldn’t do it.

What? An old, prestigious great family? Two hundred years of history?

What the hell had these bastards been doing for two hundred years? From what I’d heard, the Mount Heng Sword Sect hadn’t even existed for thirty, yet their forces didn’t merely outmatch ours.

We were being steamrolled. Steamrolled.

Did the Black Death sweep through here last year or something?

Plague or no plague, I felt like I was about to lose my mind. As I stared at the yellowed ceiling of the meeting hall, I made a sudden decision.

I need to run.

Around four in the morning should do. Once everyone was asleep, I’d sneak over the wall and run as far away as possible.

At my current level, I could easily deal with five or six martial artists around the Heavenly Axe’s level.

I could scour every mountain I came across and rack up EXP and Fame—

“M-Mount Heng! A messenger pigeon has arrived from the Mount Heng Sword Sect!”

A martial artist had rushed into the hall and shouted.

Someone took the rolled sheet of paper and unfurled it. Red characters, as though written in blood, came into view.

Even without the System translating them, I could read them.

Enemies Who Cannot Live Beneath the Same Sky

Irreconcilable enemies beneath heaven.

Jin Wikyung spoke with a grim expression.

“From this moment onward, our family enters a state of war. Without my seal, no one may enter or leave the family grounds, regardless of rank or position. Maintain the strictest vigilance. Do not let so much as a single ant through. Understood?”

“Yes!”

“…”

With my mind half gone, I heard a System notification ring in my ears.

Ding.

System

• The Mount Heng Sword Sect has declared war on the Jin Family of Taiyuan.

• A War relationship has been established between the two factions.

• The Mount Heng Sword Sect has designated you as a public enemy of the sect.

• You will incur severe penalties if you flee.

• The Main Quest — War has been created.

…Heh. Heh heh heh.