Chapter 18

The atmosphere went from bad to worse.

“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 Leader 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 just admit it. The Mount Heng Sword Sect is stronger than our family. If war begins, hundreds will die or be injured, and in the worst case, our family could be destroyed. If we hand over the Third Young Master, who caused all this, won’t everything be over?”

Was that supposed to be an argument, or a fart? It had been a while since I’d heard such spectacular bullshit. The back of my neck tightened, and my chest grew tight.

But someone else stepped forward before I could.

“What did you just say?”

The voice was quiet, but it carried power. If anything, its quietness made every word clearer.

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

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

Each syllable fell separately, frost coating his voice. The atmosphere was so chilling that even I shivered.

The White Tiger Hall Leader immediately opened his mouth.

“Obviously, the Third Young Master, the main culprit behind this—ah.”

The bastard had no hair and no tact. The White Tiger Hall Leader trailed off, but it was already too late.

“So you intend to hand the Third Young Master’s head over to the Mount Heng Sword Sect over something that has not even been confirmed? Is that something a hall leader of this family should be saying?”

“No, that’s not what I meant…”

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

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

The sight of the White Tiger Hall Leader’s pale face felt like ten years of indigestion finally clearing up. Jin Wikyung rose from his seat and looked down at everyone with a cold expression.

“You all already know.”

He swept his gaze across the room and spoke firmly.

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

The members of the Elder Council faction avoided his gaze. Jin Wikyung’s sneer grew deeper.

“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 draw it today or tomorrow—or whether it has already been drawn—it is too late for us to turn things back. Only one path remains. We fight.”

“…”

“Do you want to live? Do you want to protect the family? If you truly do, prepare the martial artists and prepare for war. Or cut off my head and my younger brother’s, then offer them to the Mount Heng Sword Sect. If all you want is wealth and glory, I suppose that isn’t a bad option, either.”

A suffocating silence seized the main assembly hall.

If one man had not spoken the next moment, that silence might have crushed us for hours.

“Excellent.”

It was the man who had watched the situation without saying a word until now.

The Head Elder.

The Head Elder.

Someone to watch. The family’s most senior elder and the head of the Elder Council.

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. I’d watched the Head Elder whenever I had the chance.

And I’d reached one conclusion.

Fuck, I can’t figure him out at all.

If someone asked me to count the number of NPCs I had encountered even once since starting this godforsaken game, the number would easily be over a hundred.

Each of them had their own expressions and personalities. The servant I’d met at the pleasure house wore a world-weary customer-service smile. The coachman who brought me here had a goofy streak. The family’s senior members were surprisingly simple-minded and aggressive.

But the Head Elder…

I can’t read his expression.

He simply watched everything with that strange smile.

When the interrogation began. When the senior members of each faction shouted at one another. And even now.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

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

“I thought of you as nothing more than a youngster, but before I knew it, the Lesser Family Head had become such a dignified martial artist. Excellent. That is how the Lesser Family Head of our family should be.”

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

“Excessive humility can appear arrogant. You have nothing to apologize for.”

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

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

“I will take it to heart.”

The Head Elder slowly rose from his seat, and dozens of pairs of eyes locked onto him.

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

The biggest problem was that he was the head of the opposing faction—the Elder Council.

Fuck, I’m screwed.

Preparing for the worst, I started edging toward the door 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 that same 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, Head Elder. You’ve misunderstood. It was merely…”

“White Tiger Hall Leader.”

At the Head Elder’s chilly call, the White Tiger Hall Leader stiffened.

“Have I been away for too long? Or is it because the Family Head is absent?”

“N-no, Head Elder.”

Judging by his expression alone, he looked like a muscular old man at the gym asking whether you’d eaten. The words coming out of his mouth, however, were vicious beyond belief.

What is this?

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

I looked around frantically, but everyone else was 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 has become inevitable, then our first priority should be to discipline those within our ranks. Wouldn’t it be best to cut off the heads of those men who are little different from rebels?”

In the frozen air, Jin Wikyung stared at the Head Elder for a long moment before forcing out an answer like a sigh.

“That cannot be done.”

Whew.

The White Tiger Hall Leader sighed in relief.

Considering how he had just been talking about offering up my head, I was a little disappointed.

Should I suggest killing just him?

“Those men were not content merely to frame a direct-line member of the family. They even argued that we should hand him over to the enemy. Do you not think your response is too lenient?”

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

The Head Elder laughed heartily.

“An ill-considered remark. An ill-considered remark, indeed. Yes. The Lesser Family Head’s capacity is greater than I expected. Truly worthy of being the Lesser Family Head. In that case, I will not hold them responsible. I offer my thanks to the Lesser Family Head for magnanimously forgiving the thoughtless words of old men.”

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

“Oh, Head Elder, no. Our thoughts were shallow.”

“Please, don’t do this.”

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

“Head Elder!”

Jin Wikyung was the one who had spared them, yet they were making a huge scene.

Go on, put on a show. A real show.

I watched the spectacle, clicking my tongue inwardly, when—

Wait. A show?

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

And then I noticed it.

The smiles flickering around the lips of the Elder Council members who had cornered me earlier.

No way…

Had all of this been planned? Every last bit of it?

Why? For what purpose? Countless questions rose and vanished. My thoughts were a complete mess.

Does Jin Wikyung know something?

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

“With the Family Head absent, the Lesser Family Head is effectively the Family Head. I support the Lesser Family Head in this matter. If we unite around him, then no matter how formidable they are, they will not dare challenge the Jin Family!”

The heated atmosphere. The people’s cheers and shouts.

Where had I seen this before?

It felt strangely familiar.

And then—

“Thank you.”

The moment I saw the corners of Jin Wikyung’s mouth quiver and the Head Elder’s strange smile, I realized where that familiar feeling came from.

A campaign rally.

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

It left a bad taste in my mouth, but once the Head Elder raised Jin Wikyung’s hand, the meeting proceeded swiftly.

The discussion about the duel, which the Elder Council faction had stubbornly kept dragging out, disappeared entirely. Instead, the meeting focused on preparing for war.

“How many men are currently available?”

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

As many as two hundred?

I was astonished by the unexpectedly large number, but the next question made me shut my mouth.

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

“Fewer than twenty. Of course, that 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 decent number.

As expected of a prestigious family with deep roots. 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 only the minimum, putting the difference at more than a hundred men.

But that was fine. It wasn’t as if fights were decided by numbers—

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

This war was going to be difficult.

Still, with masters like Jin Wikyung and Wipeng, it was a fight worth attempting. They were high-level NPCs beyond what my Qi Sense could read. The Head Elder probably belonged to that category, too.

“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. Seriously.

What? A prestigious family with deep roots? Two hundred years of history?

What the hell had these bastards been doing for two hundred years? I’d heard the Mount Heng Sword Sect was less than thirty years old, yet we weren’t merely outmatched in military strength.

We were being steamrolled. Steamrolled.

Did the Black Death sweep through last year or something?

Whether there had been a plague or not, I felt like I was going insane. I was staring at the meeting-hall ceiling, which had yellowed before I knew it, when I suddenly made a 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 take down 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—

“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 tightly rolled sheet of paper and unrolled it. Red characters, as if written in blood, appeared before my eyes.

Even without the System translating them, I could understand what they said.

Enemies Who Cannot Live Beneath the Same Sky

Enemies who cannot coexist beneath heaven.

Jin Wikyung spoke, his expression grim.

“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. Maintain a strict state of 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.