Free Web NovelMorning in the Northern Sea was different from the Central Plains. Sunlight trapped in the clouds trickled down in a hazy blur.
A gentle light fell and shadows lay on the ground, but to Namgung Jin, it still felt dim.
Having bound the last servant of the Han family, Namgung Jin lifted his head.
Hundreds of martial artists of the Han family, the Dong family, and the Eom family who had been on the island were stripped to the waist and tied up.
Four-Directions Hall officers walked among them, checking whether the prisoners’ vital acupoints were properly pressed and if their hands were tied correctly.
Barely thirty-odd Four-Directions Hall martial artists had subdued hundreds of martial artists without taking any damage.
Perhaps they had gone through this kind of situation often; the Four-Directions Hall was adept at dealing with a large number of losers. Even though they had no binding rope, they did not panic and simply stripped off the prisoners’ upper garments to use them as ropes.
Rip.
A Four-Directions Hall officer tore another remaining garment. They went so far as to make proper bindings, determined to handle the job thoroughly.
“This one’s from the Eom family. It only looks purple because of the blood, so tie him over there.”
“Oh, you’re right. I got confused because it’s dark.”
In the midst of it all, they even sorted them by family.
With an expression thick with boredom, the Four-Directions Hall officers continued tidying things up with meticulous care.
Namgung Jin watched the Four-Directions Hall’s work with his own eyes, having only heard of it by rumor.
He had long heard that the Four-Directions Hall Administrator could clean up a small to mid-sized sect on their own, and it was true. Seeing how leisurely the officers moved, this scale of aftermath seemed to be something they handled fairly often.
Namgung Jin lifted his reluctant gaze higher.
The Four-Directions Hall Administrator was on the causeway above, speaking with an Ice Palace warrior.
Perhaps because a qi barrier had been spread, he could not hear the conversation even though it was not that far away.
The tall martial artist standing in front of Pang Shihyeon lowered his gaze to her. Namgung Jin did not avoid it.
Still, keeping their eyes locked for so long was unsettling. Because the Ice Palace warrior was white from head to toe, he hardly looked human.
The gaze of the martial artist, whose sex was impossible to tell, turned back to Pang Shihyeon.
He did not know what they were saying, but the mood seemed amicable.
Three or four more Ice Palace warriors appeared; they said something to Pang Shihyeon, and without questioning them, she nodded.
When the conversation seemed to end, she jumped down from the causeway. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
The Black Tortoise Pavilion Lord, who had been watching the prisoners, immediately turned his body.
“How did it go?”
He had thought the man was not paying attention, but it seemed all his senses had been pricked in that direction.
“They say they’re taking all the prisoners to the Ice Palace. They asked if they should bring carriages to load them into, so I said we left their legs untouched and they can still walk.”
“We’ve done this more than once or twice—of course we left all the legs in perfect condition. We should make them walk on their own. Why would we pamper them by breaking their legs?”
“I told them the same.”
The Four-Directions Hall Administrator cast a brief glance up at the causeway, then lowered her eyes again.
“They say Young Lady Tang has already arrived at the palace. Someone called the Fourth Seat took her inside, and it seems he asked them to give him a few prisoners because he has a use for them. You should hurry and go into the palace yourself. I have no sense at all of what he’s planning to do.”
The Four-Directions Hall Administrator let out a sigh. She now knew Tang Sohwa was not the benevolent physician of rumor.
“The Ice Palace warriors on the causeway say they’ll guide the way, so follow them right now. If anything happens at the palace, come back here.”
“Are you not going with me, Administrator?”
Pang Shihyeon cleared her throat and flicked her eyes toward the water below. Understanding, the Black Tortoise Pavilion Lord swallowed an “ah” and nodded.
Han Cheol was under that water.
It seemed Pang Shihyeon had bought herself some time, trying to find a place to hide Han Cheol.
'For a martial artist, wanting Han Cheol is only natural, but...'
The Black Tortoise Pavilion Lord wanted to add a word, but he too felt uneasy about what kind of trouble Young Lady Tang might cause, so he hurriedly took his subordinates and the prisoners and went up.
The prisoners and Four-Directions Hall officers who had been cleaned up disappeared quickly.
After about a quarter of an hour, their sounds could no longer be heard.
Watching the situation atop the causeway for a moment longer, Pang Shihyeon turned her body.
Namgung Jin furrowed his brow. It was because Pang Shihyeon did not go into the cave where Han Cheol was but instead walked toward him.
“If we move to another place, it’ll draw attention, so let’s just talk here. Is that all right?”
Only then did Namgung Jin understand Pang Shihyeon’s actions.
She had shaken everyone off in order to tell him what had happened to Namgung Cheonghae.
Namgung Jin had also misunderstood that she had stayed behind out of greed for Han Cheol, so he quickly bowed his head in apology.
“Yes, I don’t mind where we talk.”
“Good.”
For a moment, the world grew quiet.
Even the trickling sound of water disappeared.
Without hesitation, Pang Shihyeon spoke.
“About four years ago, the Gansu Branch asked Sagye Hall for help. A report came in that a chest had been found on Gongdong Mountain, and there were children inside.”
Gansu Branch was where the Gongdong Sect was located. He quietly lent his ear to Pang Shihyeon’s words. There had been no need for the Gongdong Sect, so far away, to ask Sagye Hall for help just because children had been found in a chest.
“Most of them were children around the age to learn basic studies, but there were patients with severed-meridian syndrome among them, and none of them were in good condition. So the Gongdong Sect moved the children into their main compound to treat them, but in the middle of the night, someone appeared and took them all away.”
The Four-Directions Hall Administrator’s voice dropped.
“The Gongdong Sect elder crossed hands with the intruder and said the man used ice arts. It wasn’t even a cold time of year, but frost formed on the wall where his sword passed, and it didn’t melt even after several days.”
“So Sagye Hall sent people to the Gansu Branch?”
Pang Shihyeon nodded.
“Two pavilion members from Chuhyeon Pavilion went down. As they investigated, they sent a carrier pigeon to Sagye Hall, and its contents were strange. The people of the Gongdong Sect said the children had not been hiding in the chest but packed into it. Four children were stacked inside a small chest, so narrow they could not possibly move. And when the Sagye Hall officers arrived, the chill clinging to the outer walls of the building still hadn’t faded. They said the yin energy that had soaked into the wood didn’t just make their hands cold—it felt like their energy was being sucked out.”
In a grave voice, she continued.
“We’d never heard of anyone in the Central Plains who could use ice arts to that extent. The Sagye Hall Administrator also found it strange and said he pored over the archives for quite a while. To look into yin qi and ice arts.”
“And did he find out who the intruder was?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“On top of that, the two Sagye Hall officers who were investigating disappeared. At that point, the Sagye Hall Administrator came to me personally and said he wanted to investigate this himself, and asked me to dispatch officers from the Four-Directions Hall who were tight-lipped and good at their work. So we picked two officers from the Black Tortoise Pavilion.”
In a heavy voice, Pang Shihyeon added,
“One of them was Cheonghae.”
Namgung Jin’s eyes sank darkly.
“At first, we couldn’t find anything either. Our report was the same as Sagye Hall’s. The chest the children had been packed into was so small it felt less like they had tried to hide people and more like they had stacked objects neatly. The yin qi soaked into the wood wasn’t quite on the level Sagye Hall described, but the fact that it remained even by the time we arrived meant the caster’s yin qi could not be ordinary. If his body could circulate that yin qi and still endure it, then from the beginning he might not have a normal body. We were saying such things and added a personal note that he might be someone from across the Northern Sea.”
Pang Shihyeon closed her mouth for a moment, then opened it again.
“And that same evening, another message came.”
A sharp edge entered her voice.
“It was a death notice Cheonghae sent privately. He wrote that he had found the body of one of the missing Sagye Hall officers.”
As if speaking of something difficult, Pang Shihyeon hesitated, then went on.
“There was more. He wrote that the Four-Directions Hall officer who had gone with him had betrayed him and tried to kill him, and that he was now being pursued by an unidentified group. He said he would contact me again once he figured out who they were, and that I should be careful.”
Namgung Jin realized why Pang Shihyeon had tried to keep this matter hidden. It was because an incident had occurred inside their own ranks. The Four-Directions Hall already had a spy planted within.
“Seeing the situation looked serious, I went to Gansu myself. I tracked Cheonghae’s traces from Gongdong Mountain, but Cheonghae had already left Gansu. Instead, I found the intruder the Gongdong Sect had spoken of.”
Even as she said she had met the intruder, Pang Shihyeon did not flare up in anger.
If anything, the strength had left her voice.
“At first, it seemed he intended to kill me. But when I asked him about Cheonghae, he pulled back his killing intent. It seemed Cheonghae had found the intruder first and made a deal with him. The man said Cheonghae had gone to ask the Family Head for help so he could send the children back to their homeland.”
Namgung Jin’s face hardened.
When he did the calculation, the time period she mentioned lined up with when he had received a message from his older brother.
Namgung Cheonghae had sent him a secret letter, asking him to arrange a private audience with the Family Head so that no one else would know.
“The intruder seemed younger than me, but his level of martial attainment was no less than the Alliance Leader’s. It’s shameful, but I lost to him, and in truth I wasn’t even a match. But he spared me because I was connected to Cheonghae. And then he warned me. He said there were spies in the main house as well, and that from now on I should trust no one. I went straight to Anhui after that. I meant to go meet Cheonghae.”
“And... did you meet my brother?”
In a low voice, she answered,
“No. Cheonghae had cut off his tracks so completely that even I couldn’t find any trace of him. And your father insisted Cheonghae had never come to Anhui, and told me to go back to the main house. Only later, when news of the Blood Cult’s rampage broke and I heard the report you submitted, did I learn of Cheonghae’s death. And that you had hidden Cheonghae’s death from the outside world.”
The corners of Namgung Jin’s eyes drooped.
Namgung Cheonghae had been poisoned by an unknown assailant while crossing Daebyeol Mountain.
Namgung Jin ran a hand down his own face, trying to steady himself.
Namgung Cheonghae had trusted him. That was why he had sent him a secret letter, asking him to arrange a meeting with the Family Head.
With an unreasonable request that, because the situation was urgent and it was hard to go somewhere crowded, he hoped Jin would come in person.
At the time, Namgung Jin had informed the Family Head.
But the Family Head had not gone to Daebyeol Mountain. Instead, he had given Namgung Jin, who was then pavilion master of the Anhui Branch, an order to go meet Cheonghae and bring him back.
He had said that if Cheonghae was in a difficult situation, he would need an escort all the more. And he told Jin to take his younger brother along to help Cheonghae.
At his father’s words, he had not been able to refuse, and had gone to Daebyeol Mountain with Namgung Hyun, exercising the Family Head’s authority in his stead.
Namgung Jin’s chest grew tight.
It had been because of him that Namgung Cheonghae’s location was exposed.
