The Ruler of Darkness

North Mang Mountain, near the Gongsun Clan’s main gate.

While surrounded by the Second Imperial Guards Brigade, the self-defense instructor from the Emei Sect was looking around.

“…What are you looking around for in this situation?”

“Th-that’s…”

When a preceptor nun riding in the same carriage scolded him in a low voice, the self-defense instructor shrank his neck and answered.

“It seems I can’t see the carriage carrying the Daseollang kids…”

“What?”

***

North Mang Mountain, Gongsun Clan’s mansion, garden.

Faced with Gongsun Nakang’s overwhelming momentum, pressing him with a face flickering with madness, Yeon So-hyeon sighed.

“Haah…”

At that long sigh, Gongsun Nakang’s eyebrows twitched.

Because unlike his stiffened expression from earlier, that sigh seemed light and carefree, without a hint of burden.

‘This isn’t a burden, but rather…?’

As Gongsun Nakang tried to deduce something from the Eldest Young Master’s expression in front of him, Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth opened again.

“Senior Gongsun. How have you shriveled up so much?”

Yeon So-hyeon looked at Gongsun Nakang with eyes that saw something ‘pitiful and pathetic.’

“Wh-what?!”

Gongsun Nakang leaped up, but Yeon So-hyeon’s words were even faster.

“Meeting me, who had just emerged from seclusion, and immediately trying to strip me bare…”

Yeon So-hyeon’s tone was leisurely and calm.

His posture had not a single hint of disarray and was upright.

“Isn’t that behavior no different from a highway robber?”

“Hi-highway robber?!”

Yeon So-hyeon waved his hand as if it were a bother.

“That’s right. Just like a highway robber.”

“Yo-you, you…!”

At those words, Gongsun Nakang’s face turned bright red as if it would explode at any moment, transforming into a ghostly appearance.

However.

“…Oh-ho?”

A small sneer appeared on his face as if by magic.

It was as if a magician changing masks.

“Aha…! It won’t work. It won’t work. Trying to escape this situation by making me realize my position and self-esteem through provocation.”

He wagged his finger.

“A psychological warfare so shallow that I couldn’t even imagine coming from the Eldest Young Master I know.”

At those words, Yeon So-hyeon raised his eyes to look at Gongsun Nakang.

“Psychological warfare? What are you talking about?”

“Hmm…?”

Yeon So-hyeon was still looking at him with eyes that saw something pitiful and pathetic.

“You still haven’t understood what I said?”

Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth opened, revealing white and neat teeth.

He enunciated each syllable in a melodious voice, as if speaking to an old man whose hearing had begun to decline with age.

“What I’m saying is that ‘the Gongsun Nakang of the past’ I know wouldn’t have stooped to acting like a mere highway robber at this point.”

Yeon So-hyeon clicked his tongue.

“Since when have you shriveled up so unsightly? Where has the magnanimity and guts that nonchalantly performed deeds unimaginable to ordinary people gone? Where has that sparkling wit and seemingly endless wisdom gone?”

Yeon So-hyeon sighed.

“…I can no longer find that ‘Senior Gongsun’ of the past that I remember.”

“…?!”

Gongsun Nakang froze in the posture he had risen to.

“Wh-what the…!”

A body with protruding, scrawny ribs visible through the loose silk clothes, a back that had begun to hunch.

And the wrinkled face of an old man who was merely irritable.

“What the…”

The old man tried to refute Yeon So-hyeon’s words several times.

But Yeon So-hyeon didn’t even give him the luxury to do so.

“The Gongsun Nakang I know was…”

Yeon So-hyeon gazed into the void with eyes that saw something distant.

“Before I was even born. The immense eunuch named Gongsun Nakang was a being who did things other powerholders couldn’t even imagine.”

Yeon So-hyeon gestured here and there in the air, immersing himself in his own story.

“To revive the declining Gongsun Clan and position himself closest to the Emperor, he came up with an idea no one else could.”

Yeon So-hyeon clenched his fist.

“He first claimed that the ‘fortune’ had sufficiently settled in the palace due to the construction of an artificial lake, as mentioned in the unofficial histories from the previous dynasty.”

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice grew louder.

“The palace that remained as a relic in Luoyang, the capital of the previous dynasty!”

The story continued unimpeded.

“And once the rumor had sufficiently reached the Capital, he ‘dismantled’ the entire relic and moved it all to the current capital, the Capital!”

Dismantling and moving the palace?

It was an idea that a normal person could never conceive.

Yeon So-hyeon shouted.

“Down to the last foundation stone!”

Yeon So-hyeon gestured in the air, creating the shape of horses and people stretching long to the Capital.

“The horses and cattle mobilized at the time numbered over five thousand. The laborers were over twenty thousand! Indeed, there was even a song lyric saying that the procession stretched from Luoyang to the Capital.”

At Yeon So-hyeon’s voice, singing his own past as if it were a song, Gongsun Nakang’s eyes unwittingly grew a little distant.

And at the same time, pain settled in.

‘How have you shriveled up so much?’

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice echoed in his ears.

“To push through with that plan, he exhausted all the clan’s wealth, and even this mansion in North Mang Mountain where the ancestors are enshrined was mortgaged, I heard!”

Yeon So-hyeon pointed at the massive mansion.

“Everyone opposed it! The entire clan desperately tried to stop him, but I heard he, the young clan head at the time, pushed through with the plan to the end. And he finally succeeded!”

A smile appeared on Yeon So-hyeon’s lips.

“Because he earned recognition from the previous Emperor for that loyalty and reached a position that could never be obtained with mere wealth!”

As Yeon So-hyeon’s story ended, only silence lingered long in the garden.

“…”

The one remaining there was no longer Gongsun Nakang, exuding a ghostly spirit.

Only an ordinary old man befitting that age remained.

After gazing at the ground for a moment, Gongsun Nakang shook his head.

“…That was quite a splendid storytelling, Eldest Young Master. But…”

Gongsun Nakang, who was about to say it wouldn’t work either, heard Yeon So-hyeon’s voice by his ear.

“Even if it was a threat intended to ‘test’ me, to think that even that threat has lost its magnanimity…”

At the word ‘test,’ Gongsun Nakang’s mouth twisted.

“A test…?”

Yeon So-hyeon looked at Gongsun Nakang with an expression asking what he was talking about.

“Are you still acting? I knew from the beginning.”

Yeon So-hyeon spoke calmly.

“Wasn’t it to judge the authenticity of the person beyond the letters, whom you had never met ‘once’ face to face?”

Gongsun Nakang’s face stiffened.

“Indeed. Considering the age when we exchanged letters, it would have been hard to believe that Yeon So-hyeon was the one who wrote all those letters himself.”

A fictitious person strategically created by the Luoyang Sword House utilizing collective intelligence for some reason.

It was a matter that could be sufficiently doubted.

And shortly after, his mouth opened.

“…How did you know?”

Yeon So-hyeon smiled.

“It wasn’t all that difficult.”

***

North Mang Mountain, near the Gongsun Clan’s main gate.

‘Head Maid. Something’s off.’

At the Guard Captain’s voice transmission, the Head Maid, Hyang, nodded.

‘I don’t sense any killing intent or fighting spirit from them at all.’

***

Yeon So-hyeon raised a finger.

“First. Senior Gongsun, you dragged me to your private gallery and incessantly threw questions about art at me.”

Questions thrown while changing subjects, calling him ‘young master’ affectionately like during their artistic exchanges through letters.

Questions asked as if it were natural for a disciple to ask a master.

Yeon So-hyeon’s second finger unfolded.

“And once the verification of the artistic field was over, you now tried to see how I would handle a pressure situation by disguising yourself as a ‘highway robber.'”

Yeon So-hyeon grinned.

“Surely that highway robber disguise wasn’t actually a disguise, was it?”

“…”

Forcibly swallowing a gulp, Gongsun Nakang spoke.

“You’re right about the test, Eldest Young Master. But you’ve only recounted old stories, and you still haven’t…”

Yeon So-hyeon chuckled.

“I’m probably the only one who knows that it was Senior Gongsun himself who spread the rumor about the fortune-filled palace, right?”

“You could have heard that from someone. So now, I, Gongsun Nakang, will present you with a challenge…”

Yeon So-hyeon burst into laughter and waved his hand.

“Surely you’re not asking me to solve a political challenge ‘for free’ between us? And using a test as an excuse at that?”

Gongsun Nakang, hit in a vital spot once again, shook his head.

“I, Gongsun Nakang, am not that shameless either. Just a small problem…”

Yeon So-hyeon cut him off.

“If we’ve exchanged this much, the test should be sufficient. Are you now trying to buy time?”

Gongsun Nakang’s complexion changed.

“Buying time…?!”

Yeon So-hyeon looked across the garden and spoke.

“If that’s the case, you can stop now. If you were waiting for someone, it seems they have all arrived.”

Following Yeon So-hyeon’s gaze, Gongsun Nakang turned around and nodded.

“They’ve arrived now.”

What appeared were six figures.

“Apologies, Eldest Young Master.”

“…”

Gongsun Nakang turned his head again to look at Yeon So-hyeon.

That face had once again taken on a sinister and bizarre expression.

“As you said, this old man’s magnanimity and guts have greatly shriveled up.”

He cackled.

“So I called in some reinforcements.”

As the distance gradually closed, the faces of the old men, each dressed in clothes and accessories of immeasurable value, were revealed.

Situ Clan, Lu Clan, Yuan Clan, Chunyu Clan, Puyang Clan, Mou Clan.

They were the former clan heads of six clans Yeon So-hyeon had yet to meet.

“Eldest Young Master. Don’t you worry too much. They all simply wanted to see the Eldest Young Master’s face a little sooner.”

The old monster, who had just blabbered about ‘reinforcements’ with his own mouth, threw subtle mockery at Yeon So-hyeon to pressure him.

“They all have ties from the past, so they’ll probably overlook the discourtesy of being visited later…”

Ignoring Gongsun Nakang, who was about to burst into cackling laughter, Yeon So-hyeon rose from his chair.

“This is our first time meeting in person. I am Yeon So-hyeon, the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House.”

At Yeon So-hyeon’s disregard, Gongsun Nakang’s wrinkles quivered and trembled for a moment, but he held his tongue.

Because now, six more people of the same rank as him had joined.

“Greetings, Eldest Young Master.”

The former clan heads lined up on the opposite side clasped their hands in unison to greet Yeon So-hyeon.

As former clan heads of the Sixteen Clans, none of them had someone deliver greetings as a representative.

They all disregarded Yeon So-hyeon’s consideration and greeted him with a jumble of voices, each introducing themselves.

It was a situation where one couldn’t even tell who was who, but Yeon So-hyeon showed no sign of being flustered.

“Now, don’t keep standing. Come over here.”

Yeon So-hyeon guided them to a place with a larger table and more chairs.

It was a confident and even brazen attitude as if he were the master of this mansion.

“…”

Gongsun Nakang, glaring at that sight from behind, had sparks flying from his eyes.

‘Putting aside everything else, that brazenness is beyond what I felt in the letters!’

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