[And the second.]

Watching the uproar in front of her, Woon Seorin thought back to her conversation with Seo Woojin.

[I’m going to move the Black Dragon Guard.]

[You’re going to what?]

[I’ll put the Four Black Dragons at their head. And I’ll send them to annihilate the places the Military Advisor finds for me.]

Whatever pressure she felt from him, she could not simply let him do as he pleased.

[You can’t! If you touch them without justification, it will blow back on you! However much you have the Jang Clan’s ledger, that does not mean you may annihilate four clans and sects!!]

Seo Woojin let out a small laugh.

[Then was there justification for what was done to the Baek Clan?]

[Th-that’s…]

[Was there justification, that they had to flee Ningbo like fugitives? Was there some magnificent justification, that a sword had to be put into that child’s hand? What in the world—!!]

For the first time, a crack ran through a voice that had been steady from beginning to end. Beneath the wavering anger she could feel a deep revulsion, and self-reproach with it.

[What magnificent justification did they have. Those people.]

The words did not come easily. But she had to say them — that was her role.

[That is the fate of the weak. The Baek Clan became weak for no reason but that a daughter was ill. It is bitter and it is unjust, but that is the dark path.]

[Yes. I know.]

[No. You don’t. You’re about to act out of anger. What you need now is patience. Once you’re Alliance Lord first, then—]

She had truly believed that was all it was. That anger had swallowed him, that the clear-thinking man had lost his judgment — that he was putting the feeling of the moment first and making a bad move.

[Who says I’m acting out of anger.]

He wasn’t. He was still—

[I am angry at them, and I feel self-reproach at my own ignorance. I feel helpless that I cannot punish them directly right now. Even so, what I am doing is an entirely political act.]

—entirely rational.

[Whatever the process, I lost the second trial. The shock of the first will fade and my failure will be thrown into relief. They won’t let a chance like that pass.]

[Ah. Then—?]

[Yes. My apologies to the winner of the second trial, but every eye is going to be on me. I’m going to do something drastic. Right and wrong don’t matter. Only this: that my defeat was not powerless, and that my ruthlessness is a threat to them too. That is what I intend to show.]

Woon Seorin found herself rubbing at her forearm. Even now the thought raised gooseflesh — that in a situation like that, he had seen this far ahead.

And perhaps because of the uneasy suspicion it left her with: that he might not be unfit to play the fake after all.

Woon Seorin looked once around the great hall.

Just as he had intended, the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped sharply. Some of the quicker sort had caught his purpose, and she could see admiration on their faces.

BANG!

Some, of course, were not quick at all.

“Nonsense!!”

Gok Taejun slammed the table, spat a curse, and came striding toward Seo Woojin.

“Insolence, in front of us! I’ll tear your mouth open and teach you manners!!”

There was killing intent in it. And as if to prove the intent genuine, his hand shot out.

But he could not carry it through.

Clang!

A sword had come to rest at his throat before he knew it.

“Hey there, Young Clan Head. Still stupid, I see. Thinking of laying hands on the man who drove out the Crazed Fiend.”

The White Dragon of the Four Black Dragons — Yoo Geonwoo.

He had finished his own task first and had been standing at Seo Woojin’s back as his guard. He had started later than Gok Taejun and still blocked him with room to spare.

“You—!! You again—!”

Gok Taejun ground his teeth in fury, but there was nothing to be done. His killing intent had been genuine — and so was Yoo Geonwoo’s.

Seo Woojin gestured for Yoo Geonwoo to take the sword away, and when he did, stepped forward.

“Including the Jang Clan, there are three houses under the Gok Clan. Unavoidably, the Gok Clan will also fall within the scope of the investigation.”

“Don’t talk rubbish!! What right do you have!!”

Gok Taejun raged on, and Seo Woojin paid him no mind.

“Nor only the Gok Clan. Everywhere connected to the places punished today will be investigated. If there is even the slightest link to the smuggling, they will all be punished.”

Cho Igyeom, who had been watching in silence, finally stepped in.

“Y-Young Master Seo. However strong the suspicion against them, if you handle matters this high-handedly…”

Seo Woojin gave a thin smile.

“I don’t follow. Is what the dark path pursues above all else not the dark path’s own profit? With this many men eating away at it, you’re telling me to observe procedure? Are we the Murim Alliance now? Where there is evidence of a crime, investigate and punish. Is that not the dark path’s law?”

“Ngh. No — that’s true enough, but… there will be resistance.”

Seo Woojin nodded, slow and deep.

“Let them resist. As I said, they too will have to receive the Four Black Dragons and the Black Dragon Guard.”

“Is that a threat?”

Cheon Doyun’s cold voice came from one side. Seo Woojin turned to look and found him recovered from his alarm.

“Did it sound like a threat?”

“Do you understand how dangerous and how stupid what you’re saying is? In the worst case it could bring about civil war.”

“Do you think that would frighten me?”

“You—!”

As Cheon Doyun flared up, Seo Woojin’s lips moved, slightly. He was turned toward the man as he did it, so the others could not see it well — and Cheon Doyun, the only one to read the shape of the words, was struck dumb.

‘The Murim Alliance… So he means to be blatant about it after all.’

He was invoking the Murim Alliance — making a display of who stood behind him.

Seo Woojin swept the assembly with a satisfied smile. Men in alarm. Men with gleaming eyes, watching for an opening. Men letting their hostility show openly. Every kind of man.

They had exactly one thing in common: every one of them was looking only at Seo Woojin. Just as he had first intended, he had drawn every eye in the room.

Enjoying their attention, Seo Woojin spoke again.

“Setting aside whether it is even possible. The dark path’s clans and sects are in for a hard season. They will receive unwelcome visits, and they will be uneasy even where they have committed no crime.”

Every man there was fixed on his words.

“Or perhaps some are trembling because they have truly committed crimes. I am aware, too, that what I have just described is outrageous and unreasonable. But I will do it. I may of course be stopped partway — in exchange, a great many clans and sects will vanish before then.”

A rich smile hung at Seo Woojin’s mouth. Having laid out the unreasonable proposition, it was time to lay out the reasonable condition.

“So let me make an offer.”

At the word offer, the mood in the room stirred. Seo Woojin waited for them to settle before going on.

“I request amnesty for the Baek Clan. Grant that, and everything outrageous I have said here today never happened.”

Cheon Doyun ground his teeth.

“You raised all this uproar for nothing more than—”

“Let us grant the amnesty.”

Cheon Doyun’s words were cut off again. Among the Seven Families, the head of the Falling Sword Yeon Clan had spoken first.

“I think that would be better as well. Frankly, the Baek Clan’s crime wasn’t so great a crime. And in any case, the Baek Clan all died when their ship blew up as they fled, did they not?”

“Let’s do that. Better to grant the Baek Clan amnesty than to blow this up needlessly.”

“I’m in favor as well. The Jang Clan matter is better investigated separately by the Military Advisor’s Hall.”

Once one man agreed, the voices in favor multiplied fast. Cheon Doyun and Gok Taejun had no standing to speak; the tide had already turned.

Watching it all, Woon Seorin let out a faint sigh.

‘A frightening man.’

What Seo Woojin had done today was, quite literally, strong-arming.

The force of his assertion and his momentum. The magnitude of the Jang Clan’s crimes. The news of clan after clan and sect after sect annihilated, arriving one on the heels of the last.

Because of all that, their thinking had briefly stopped — and that was what mattered most. Bluntly, the Seven Families acting in concert could have dismissed the whole demand; the Dark Alliance moved on their axis. But once the momentum had been taken from them, there was no room in the moment to think that far.

It had been drastic in the truest sense.

A drastic situation, and an impossible demand. Had he kept pressing it, they would soon have recovered their composure and prepared a counterattack — which was exactly why the offer he made immediately afterward was amnesty for the Baek Clan.

Was it not far too easy? To grant amnesty to a Baek Clan already ruined, rather than live through the alternative.

Seo Woojin must have known. That they would certainly take the offer.

So Seo Woojin had punished at least some of them and won the Baek Clan’s amnesty besides. They had granted it now, so even if the Baek Clan came back alive, no one could say otherwise.

‘That man… can I handle him?’

It was the strongest wariness she had felt yet.

She had thought he might be a double-edged sword. She had taken it up because she needed it.

But someday, it felt, that sword would go through her heart.

“The will of the Seven Families is decided. The Baek Clan’s amnesty is acknowledged.”

At Cho Igyeom’s declaration, Seo Woojin took a respectful cupped-fist salute.

“A junior has been insolent before his elders. Thank you for overlooking this junior’s insolence with such generosity, and for your understanding.”

Throats were cleared here and there, discomfort plain on more than one face, but no real complaint came.

Seo Woojin turned a satisfied smile on Cheon Doyun.

“The crime of running the smuggling market ends with the places punished today. From here on it will be investigated by procedure. By the Military Advisor’s Hall, of course.”

“…”

The bitterness showed plainly on Cheon Doyun’s face.

Strictly speaking, he had lost nothing. The Cheon Clan’s candidate had won the second trial, and the Baek Clan had been dealt with. He had failed to bury Seo Woojin with the chance, but that was hardly a loss in itself.

And yet. And yet he had to sit there steeped in defeat.

In the end, something small-minded slipped out of him.

“Do you think you’ve won?”

The courteous manner was gone. There was nothing left but thick venom and killing intent.

As Cheon Doyun showed his true colors, Seo Woojin’s smile only deepened.

“No. It’s only starting. Prepare whatever you like for the third trial. In the end, the one who becomes Alliance Lord will be me.”

“And even if you do become Alliance Lord, do you imagine that’s the end of it? Your own father could not throw his weight around like this in front of our Cheon Clan.”

Seo Woojin clicked his tongue.

“Looking at you, the Cheon Clan’s future doesn’t amount to much either.”

“What?”

“You put your clan’s name out in front of you, just like that idiot there.”

Seo Woojin pointed at Gok Taejun, and sparks leapt in the other man’s eyes.

“I promise you this. I will make you kneel before me without fail. I’ll have you barking like a dog, begging me for your life.”

At a declaration close to a curse, Seo Woojin gave a deep, scornful smile.

“And I’ll give you a warning.”

Seo Woojin leaned in again and brought his mouth to Cheon Doyun’s ear.

“Don’t think my anger is finished. Until the Cheon Clan submits, I won’t be stopping.”

Swish.

Straightening again, Seo Woojin gave a brilliant smile, savoring the fury on Cheon Doyun’s face.

But it did not take long for that smile to be wiped away.

“The Clan Head of the Black Sword Cheon Clan enters—!!”

Every eye turned toward the entrance of the great hall.

Creeeeeak!

The doors opened, and a man in a black robe stepped inside.

Neatly ordered hair. A trimmed beard. Sharp eyes. He was not a large man, and yet he looked larger than anyone else in that room. The ash of his hair made the air about him colder still.

His eyes, cold as ice, moved slowly.

“F-Father…”

Cheon Doyun stammered, badly shaken. But the Cheon Clan’s head — Cheon Baekhyeon — did not spare his son a glance.

That slow gaze came to rest on Seo Woojin, and stayed there a long while without a word.

Meeting that gaze, Seo Woojin had to fight with everything he had — to hold down the urge to draw his sword on the spot.

‘What… what is that look…’

He could not find words for it. And it was surely not only Seo Woojin who felt it.

The man’s presence had taken command of the room.

“Igyeom.”

A voice as cold as the eyes called for Cho Igyeom, and Cho Igyeom’s manner, too, was not what it usually was.

“Yes.”

“Explain.”

Cho Igyeom briefly laid out everything that had happened. Having heard it all, Cheon Baekhyeon delivered his assessment coldly.

“Untidy.”

He glanced at his son.

“Still hoping to get lucky with cheap cleverness.”

“Kh.”

Cheon Doyun made a low sound, but had no rebuttal in him at all.

Cheon Baekhyeon let out a faint sigh and looked at Seo Woojin again.

“Let us keep the third simple.”

“Have you a proposal?”

To Cho Igyeom’s question, Cheon Baekhyeon answered shortly.

“A death match.”

“…!!”

The whole room started. A death match meant, quite literally, a duel with lives on the line.

Cho Igyeom spoke through his alarm.

“B-but a death match would mean Clan Head Cheon’s own daughter as well—”

“Is that a problem?”

Put like that, there was nothing to be said. Adopted or not, if the man meant to enter his own daughter into a death match, who was going to object?

Cheon Baekhyeon looked him over once. The splint on the left hand caught the eye, and so did the bloodstain just showing past his robes at the abdomen.

Meeting Seo Woojin’s eyes again, he spoke.

“You don’t resemble your father.”

Something lurched in Seo Woojin’s chest, but he made himself keep his composure.

“I must take after my mother’s side. Unfortunately, my parents’ faces are a blur to me.”

“That ease and that insolence seem to be inherited, though.”

“Are those not the virtues of an Alliance Lord?”

Cheon Baekhyeon nodded slightly.

“I’ll take that as agreement.”

The corner of Seo Woojin’s mouth drew slowly upward.

“It will be the last time.”

“…?”

“Being played with in the palm of the Cheon Clan’s hand.”

Cheon Baekhyeon tilted his head slightly, and then a faint smile crossed it.

“I’ll look forward to it.”

Seo Woojin felt it — that every eye he had dragged to himself, at such cost, had been taken from him by this man’s entrance alone.

And he understood.

That this man was the dark path as it now stood. That he was the dark path itself.

(End of Chapter 35)