Baekgeumgak was the place in Wuhan least affected by the recession. Unlike the common folk whose insides were burning as their customers dwindled, Baekgeumgak even chased out guests who came holding entry tokens.
“As you know yourself, Pavilion Lord, ever since our warehouse was stolen wholesale by those Blood Cult bastards, we’ve been under the Martial Alliance’s supervision. On top of that, not long ago dozens of corpses were found near the Yangtze River and everything blew up into an uproar, didn’t it? Headquarters is on edge, so there’s nothing good to be gained from drawing attention during this period. People like us can only hold our breath and watch the mood. °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° So we absolutely did not close the pavilion doors to insult you, Pavilion Lord.”
The Baekgeumgak attendant groaned as he tried to soothe the guest’s temper.
Sound originally rose upward, so even the office on the second floor could hear that dispute. Sitting in front of his desk, Min Doyu moved his brush while listening to the commotion outside.
The Vice Unit Leader of Crimson Blood Hall, who had not wavered even at the noisy back-and-forth, suddenly lifted his head.
Flap.
A hawk flew in through the office window.
The messenger hawk, its yellow eyes gleaming, tore off the bamboo tube tied to its leg with its beak and tossed it at him.
Tap.
The petty creature’s behavior was absurd, but the Vice Unit Leader quietly picked up the bamboo tube that had fallen onto the desk.
He took out the note and read it, then sprang up from his seat.
Tat-tat-tat-tat.
The Vice Unit Leader hurriedly ran up the stairs.
He ran as if nothing were visible to his eyes, and in an instant reached the very top floor.
A faint light was flickering beyond the closed door.
It seemed a single candle had been lit.
‘Damn it, how did they get in without a sound.......’
Just as Min Doyu was catching his breath, unable to quite bring himself to open the door first, the wooden paper door ripped open.
Boom.
In his widened field of vision he could see the Heukcheon Amgui sitting on the window frame and Tang Sohwa walking toward the left.
“What are you doing here? No, how in the world did you get in here?”
When Min Doyu barked, the Heukcheon Amgui’s gaze moved to the woman. Before the Heukcheon Amgui could open their mouth, Tang Sohwa answered.
“You don’t need to worry about the Supreme Elder. He already knows Baekgeumgak’s true nature, but he will keep the secret.”
She had a knack for talking about something enormous as if it were nothing.
“How does that make any sense?”
“Why wouldn’t it make sense? If he weren’t going to keep the secret, do you think he would have come in quietly? Walk just a little and you’ll reach the Hubei Branch, and there are dozens of Tang Clan martial artists staying inside it. There’d be no need to leave Baekgeumgak’s doors intact.”
Without even giving Min Doyu a glance, Tang Sohwa spoke in a calm tone. She was holding a large basket in her hand, and she was focused on taking candles out of it and lining them up by the window.
It was the brazen behavior of someone strolling through the master bedroom of their own house.
So Min Doyu briefly lost anything to say.
While he kept silent, Tang Sohwa asked,
“Have you heard about what happened in headquarters today?”
“What are you talking about?”
Tang Sohwa’s lips curved.
Perhaps she had finished setting out all the candles, for Tang Sohwa turned her body while still holding the basket.
“I’m asking if you know that an antidote to Dokgo has appeared.”
Min Doyu could not answer.
He had heard the story that Blood Demon’s Dokgo had been removed in headquarters. So as soon as he heard the news, he had been in his office writing a letter to verify the truth.
Step.
Stopping in the middle of the room, Tang Sohwa took a jar out of the basket.
“This is that antidote.”
Min Doyu’s gaze fixed on the jar.
“I promised the Crimson Blood Hall Lord that I would liberate Crimson Blood Hall, so I will remove the Dokgo right now.”
Min Doyu could not readily move.
But he could not take his eyes off it either.
Staring at the doubtful eyes full of suspicion, Tang Sohwa spoke.
“The Zhuge family already knows that I made an alliance with the Crimson Blood Hall Lord. So they’re threatening that if I expose the relationship between the Zhuge family and the Blood Cult, they’ll drag Crimson Blood Hall in as well.”
She opened the jar and showed him. Inside, black liquid was filled to the brim.
“If you know what happened in headquarters, then you know that this antidote has now become the standard for identifying Blood Cult people. If you don’t get rid of the Dokgo as soon as possible, you could be accused of being the core of the Blood Cult and be annihilated by the Martial Alliance.”
Min Doyu, who had been silent, took a step inside. It was true that her words made him uneasy, but more than that, his surrender to desire was greater.
With every step he took, that desire grew larger.
Even before he met Tang Sohwa, at the news that an antidote had appeared that could erase the Blood Demon’s blood, half his reason had already been blown away.
When he heard the rumor that the Hall Lord had suddenly gone to the Great Desert and captured the Sun Palace, Min Doyu had vaguely suspected that this woman might have been the one to remove the Hall Lord’s Dokgo.
Now she had appeared right before him, proposing detoxification while bringing up a plausible reason, and in the end his reason snapped.
Because it was something he had wanted so desperately.
The black water that filled the white jar felt sacred. As the small ripples swayed in the breeze, it was as if they were sketching out freedom.
Trying to hold on to his reason, Min Doyu threw out a meaningless question.
“Can I really trust you?”
Tang Sohwa let out a dry laugh.
“If you don’t, do you have any other options? Even if you assume the worst, this is still a better choice than having your tail cut off by the Zhuge family and being wiped out by the Martial Alliance. Being poisoned to death by me is better than being tortured by the Martial Alliance.”
“......”
“Anyway, you already know I’m not doing this because I’m some great immortal who wants to save Crimson Blood Hall, don’t you? If you doubt me, just picture the outcome of my actions.”
Her cold voice spoke as if mocking him.
“I created the antidote to weaken the Blood Cult’s strength, so why would I poison a traitor to the Blood Cult and do that old man a favor?”
Min Doyu’s eyes narrowed.
It was because he was facing another mad person who called Blood Demon “that old man.”
That there could be two such unmatched monsters in all the world of the Central Plains—he could not help but inwardly lament the misfortune of the Central Plains. Just then, a displeased voice came from the window.
“......Old man? Are you talking about me?”
“No. Someone else.”
She half-heartedly soothed the Heukcheon Amgui, who was feeling put out, and took out some needles.
“I understand why you’re suspicious, but we don’t have much time, so choose quickly.”
Instead of answering, Min Doyu held out his arm. In truth, he did not want to drag things out any longer either. No fear could be greater than this fear of missing his chance.
Sohwa stuck a needle soaked in the antidote into the back of the Vice Unit Leader’s hand.
Soon Min Doyu felt an intense pain in his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as he endured the pain.
If it meant he could get rid of the insect that had ruled him for decades, he could bear this much pain as much as needed.
Fortunately, the pain did not last long.
As he felt his chest grow calm, Min Doyu slowly opened his eyes.
“You’re not in the Vice Unit Leader’s seat for nothing.”
In a voice empty of emotion, Tang Sohwa praised him, then pulled the needle out.
“......Is that all?”
Looking at the black trickle and drops of blood wetting the back of his own hand, Min Doyu asked.
A brusque answer came back at once.
“You know the answer to that better than I do, don’t you?”
Min Doyu hesitated, then broke the injunction that had been placed upon him. It was the peculiar injunction imposed only on the framework of the Great Desert. Not much time passed before Min Doyu’s eyes flew wide open.
“Wh-what in the world is this!”
Startled, Min Doyu snatched Sohwa’s jar away.
“Is it really possible to erase Dokgo this easily? How can this be possible? W-what in the world is the principle behind.......”
As Min Doyu fussed, Tang Sohwa cut him off.
“Bring the other Crimson Blood Hall members. We need to detoxify all of them before today is over.”
Who knew where he had thrown his suspicion, but Min Doyu cried out in a voice full of trust.
“Yes! All of us Crimson Blood Hall bastards are in the pavilion right now, so I can bring them right away.”
When Min Doyu handed the jar back, Sohwa received it and asked,
“You said the cultists who stay outside the pavilion belong to the Void Pavilion, right?”
“Yes. Well, truth be told, the Void Pavilion did come under Crimson Blood Hall’s command a few years ago, but since the Void Pavilion has always lived on its own without any sense of belonging, they don’t think of themselves as Crimson Blood Hall members, and we don’t think of those punks as Crimson Blood Hall members either.”
“Not long ago, in a guesthouse in Wuhan, I met a Blue Blood Hall cultist.”
At those words, Min Doyu let out a dry laugh.
“Yes, I know. You fought so loudly there that there was no way not to know.”
“I heard they gathered all the cultists nearby into the guesthouse. Were all of those also Blue Blood Hall?”
“Probably not. Since the Blue Blood Hall headquarters is still in the Outland, if they gathered cultists in the Central Plains, most of them were probably Void Pavilion punks.”
That point was what Sohwa was curious about.
The reason the Void Pavilion, which had established its base in the Central Plains, followed Blue Blood Hall rather than Crimson Blood Hall.
She wondered if maybe Crimson Blood Hall had lost its power to dominate.
It was fully possible, since the Crimson Blood Hall Lord, Min Hae-rak, had betrayed Blood Demon and taken the Great Desert Sun Palace.
As expected, Min Doyu said something similar to what she had guessed.
“You’ve heard the story that our Hall Lord went to the Great Desert, right?”
Sohwa gave a small nod.
“The Void Pavilion has a lot of punks whose sense of reading the mood is stronger than their sense of loyalty. Given the way things are, you can think of it as them keeping their distance from Crimson Blood Hall.”
“Then is it fair to assume that the Void Pavilion cultists who still follow Crimson Blood Hall have low loyalty to the Cult Master?”
“That’s right. A fist that’s close at hand is scarier than a fist far away, so ultimately it means Crimson Blood Hall is scarier to them than Blood Demon.”
Apparently satisfied with Min Doyu’s words, Sohwa asked in a voice whose barbs had been pulled.
“If you gather the cultists in Hubei, how long will it take them to arrive?”
“Well. If we gather all of them, it’ll take a full day. We’d have to send a messenger hawk or a person, but as you know, the atmosphere has been grim lately, so it’s risky to send people out.”
When Min Doyu answered conservatively, Tang Sohwa asked,
“I heard that lighting a fire on the very top floor of Baekgeumgak is your signal for a summons.”
Min Doyu’s gaze grew dim.
‘......He told her even that.’
It was the moment he felt a sense of mortification at his superior’s careless words.
Suddenly, the Heukcheon Amgui flipped over the flower vase that had been sitting on the window frame.
Since there had been nothing inside, only dust fell from the large vase.
Tang Min, who lightly shook the vase in midair, held it out to Sohwa.
“Put it in here.”
Quietly, Sohwa walked up to Tang Min.
Shrrk.
She poured the black liquid from the jar into the vase.
There were several jars in the basket. Sohwa took out all the antidote and poured it into the vase, then also put dozens of large needles into it.
Sensing danger on instinct, Min Doyu approached them.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Anyone who comes to Baekgeumgak under Crimson Blood Hall’s orders is someone who values Crimson Blood Hall, and ultimately their own safety, more than the Blood Cult.”
“......”
“So if we set them free from the Blood Cult, won’t the odds be high that they’ll run away and live their own lives?”
A shade of laughter colored Tang Sohwa’s voice.
“When they leave Hubei and spread across the whole of the Central Plains, the rumor about the antidote will spread quickly too.”
Tang Sohwa looked over at the Heukcheon Amgui. At that, as if it were some sort of signal, Tang Min unleashed Sammae True Flame.
Whoosh.
The surroundings flared bright. All the candles packed densely along the window frame had caught fire.
Flustered, Min Doyu’s mouth opened and closed.
“W-wait, I haven’t even answered yet and you’re just lighting it as you please!”
“If Crimson Blood Hall is being rejected by the Blood Cult, then a reduction in the Blood Cult’s strength will be good for you too.”
“......”
“If the Cult Master changes his mind and orders Crimson Blood Hall’s extermination, then even the ones carrying Dokgo will have no choice but to kill you.”
A cold voice added on,
“And when they see someone else become free, even the ones who were proud of their own high loyalty will start to waver.”
Just then, the vase on the floor vibrated.
Fwash.
One of the large needles soaked in the antidote flew out the window.
Thud.
A cultist stuck to a pillar toppled inward. A needle was lodged in the back of his neck. The cultist clutched his chest and curled up.
“It’s not a poisoned needle. It’s medicine that will free you from the Dokgo that binds you, so just wait a bit.”
After explaining to the cultist in a matter-of-fact voice, Sohwa turned her body toward Min Doyu.
“There’ll be some bastards who respond to the summons and come in through the first floor, so go down and bring them up.”
She frowned, then added in a voice that sounded uneasy,
“I don’t know how many cultists there are, and that’s all the antidote I brought. It might not be enough, so before we run out, bring the Crimson Blood Hall bastards up first.”
Min Doyu flinched and hurriedly turned his body.
“P-please wait for me! I’ll be right back.”
He seemed uneasy at the thought that his own subordinates might not become free.
“And there’s one more thing I have to say.”
“What is it?”
With a tense face, Min Doyu asked back.
“Once you break away from the Cult Master’s will, select a few of Crimson Blood Hall’s elites and send them to the Great Desert.”
“......”
“I can’t be sure how the Cult Master will react, but he seems to know that your Hall Lord helped me, so he might vent his anger over there.”
With a stiff face, Min Doyu nodded and quickly disappeared.
In the meantime, the Heukcheon Amgui, using the principle of manipulating objects in midair, moved the needles and injected the antidote into the bodies of the cultists who came in anew.
The Heukcheon Amgui stayed quiet, just as promised.
Considering that one’s nature, it was tremendous patience. There must have been many things they wanted to ask, but they didn’t ask, and even after learning Baekgeumgak’s true nature, they did not let killing intent leak out.
That alone was more than satisfactory.
Sohwa looked down at the distant streets of Wuhan visible beyond the brightly lit interior.
Perhaps it was just her imagination, but she felt as if a chilly force drawing near the pavilion could be sensed.
She steeled her heart to resolve this chaos as quickly as possible.
