Late at night, when headquarters should have been quiet, the sound of birds chirping could be heard now and then.
Though it was chaos she herself had caused, Sohwa could not draw the scattered Blood Cult forces together into a single direction.
Normally, she would have waited until she understood the situation, but now she ran until her breath caught in her throat. She was so pressed in her heart that she resented having a body that could not learn lightness skill.
A dark building came into view.
The smell of pine resin tickling the tip of her nose made her stomach churn.
Her insufficient breaths and racing heart reacted to the smell.
Swallowing back nausea, Sohwa made a request to the warrior standing at the door.
“I am Sohwa of the Tang Clan. I have come to see Young Master Namgung Hyun.”
The warrior lifted the torch and lit Sohwa’s face, then hurried to open the door.
“He told us before that if Young Lady Tang came, we were to guide you straight to his room.”
The speaker’s lips were twisted in a strangely crooked way. It felt like he was teasing her, but Sohwa did not react and simply followed as he guided her.
Because it was not an early hour, the Namgung building was quiet. It seemed everyone was asleep.
However, the man guarding the door did not think to go ahead and wake Namgung Hyun, and instead went straight up to his room. It was as if he knew Namgung Hyun did not sleep at this hour.
Among the many rooms lining the corridor, there was one where the light was not out.
'What is he doing again that...'
Unease and doubt already settled in her heart.
Sohwa barely managed to smooth out the wrinkle carved between her brows. Fortunately, just as she had finished arranging her expression, the door opened.
Creak.
Perhaps sensing their presence, Namgung Hyun stepped out first and looked at them with surprised eyes.
“You told us before that if a guest came, we were to guide them straight to your room, so...”
“You did well.”
Namgung Hyun hastily cut off the warrior’s words. He seemed afraid of the sound reaching outside.
Perhaps noticing that, the gatekeeper closed his mouth, brought his hands together, and immediately withdrew. As he left, he gave Sohwa a sidelong, lewd glance. From the look of things, he seemed to think she had come because springtime desires had stirred.
However, Namgung Hyun himself knew that Sohwa had not come because her heart was in the mood for romance.
Silently, he opened the door a bit wider.
Sohwa understood that he meant for them to speak inside and walked toward him.
The moment the door closed, the peacefully ringing bird calls cut off.
“What brings you here?”
“Your words were correct, Young Hero. They say the Blood Demon has sent the framework of the Demonic Sect to the Tang Clan.”
“The Demonic Sect?”
Namgung Hyun repeated, as if he could not believe it. His fine brows drew closer together, then spread apart again.
“...That cannot be. As far as I know, it is not yet time for the Demonic Sect to cross over.”
Namgung Hyun retraced his memories.
“The Demonic Sect’s framework is an armed force the Blood Demon created to display as an enemy. The cultists who have crossed over into the Central Plains have not yet properly settled into place, so there is no reason to cull unnecessary people and reorganize the forces.”
He noticed that Sohwa’s expression was strange. So, as if to prove his point, he added,
“The Crimson Blood Hall Lord has not yet taken the position of owner of Anguk Trading Company, and there are few cultists of Muhyeon Hall who have taken seats as leaders within the Martial Alliance. If he sends the Demonic Sect in the middle of all this, it will become difficult for the cultists to consolidate their power.”
Sohwa wanted to believe that too.
Inwardly, she had assumed that Namgung Hyun’s conjecture would be correct.
As he had said, the Demonic Sect’s rampage was an incident well-suited for culling the forces that should be discarded and letting the cultist newly elevated to leader draw out internal cohesion.
In her past life, the Demonic Sect had not shown itself until roughly twenty years from now.
However, Sohwa denied Namgung Hyun’s words.
“A cultist just came to the building. She said the Blood Demon sent the Demonic Sect to the Tang Clan to punish me.”
Sohwa spoke of the reason she could not trust his words.
“It seems the Blood Demon changed his plans because I created the antidote to the poison.”
“That is certainly something the Blood Demon would respond to. However, even so, it will not be the Demonic Sect. The Blood Demon is not someone who would abandon his final plan so easily. If Young Lady Tang also knows how obsessed that man is with the Central Plains, you will understand what I am saying.”
Namgung Hyun’s words did not feel unfamiliar to Sohwa.
Everyone who knew anything about the Blood Demon said the same: that his obsession with the Central Plains was tremendous. Therefore, he would not easily abandon his plans and would not come to the Central Plains.
However, just as she had overreached and cut off the Blood Demon’s limbs, the Blood Demon could also show excessive behavior.
“They say the Blood Demon’s direct armed forces are the Red Blood Hall and the Blue Blood Hall. The Red Blood Hall and the Blue Blood Hall have been half-destroyed, and as for the framework of the Northern Sea and the Great Desert, I do not know if you have heard, but they have slipped out of the Blood Cult’s hands.”
Sohwa put into words the variables she had created.
“He may have felt driven into a corner.”
Unlike the confusion in her head, the voice that came from her mouth was calm.
Instead of confiding her anxiety to Namgung Hyun, she tried to find a way to resolve it.
“The cultist said it took her a little less than two days to cross from Sichuan to Hubei. Could you perhaps tell me where the Passage leading to Sichuan is?”
Namgung Hyun shook his head with a regretful expression.
“I do not know the location of the Passage leading to Sichuan either. I used a Passage when returning from Geumeunsan, so I know the location of the Passage going between Geumeunsan and Hubei or the Passage going from Hubei to Anhui, but I have never gone to the Passage leading to Sichuan.”
“Then can you create a Passage leading to Sichuan like before?”
“To do that, I would need a mold, and it takes some time to make that mold.”
“How much time do you need?”
“Last time, it took about three days to make one. I also need time to obtain the materials, so we have to factor that in as well.”
At least three days.
Seeing that Namgung Hyun could not speak optimistically, it seemed the time required to obtain the materials would not be short either.
Sohwa let out a small breath and asked again,
“You said you could directly draw a formation on the ground to send me to the Northern Sea.”
“Ah, if it is that, I can still do it now.”
Namgung Hyun’s expression brightened.
“Can I bring someone else? If possible, what is the maximum number of people I can take?”
The face that had brightened darkened in an instant.
“...Whom are you planning to go with?”
“I would like at least a hundred Tang Clan warriors to accompany me.”
“That is difficult.”
Namgung Hyun spoke in a troubled voice.
“Is a hundred too many? Then what is the maximum number you can send?”
Biting his lip, Namgung Hyun let out a pained sound and answered,
“The method I mentioned is a little different from opening a Passage. You could call it a sorcery that swaps the space where you and I are standing with the space of another region.”
He moved his hand as if tracing the outline of his room.
“It is a ritual in which I clarify the position of the four cardinal directions and ask heaven’s permission to move that domain. Since it is something dependent on heaven’s will, everyone has to be within that space at the moment the formation is drawn. It is not something where I can obtain permission in advance.”
In truth, Sohwa did not fully understand his explanation at once. Perhaps noticing that, Namgung Hyun spoke again.
“If I draw the formation in front of that many people, everyone will know that I am a cultist, will they not?”
Only then did Sohwa understand why Namgung Hyun was troubled.
Namgung Hyun was a cautious person. He could not openly reveal that he was a cultist of the Blood Cult.
No, it was not a matter of temperament.
No one, whoever they were, could easily reveal that they were a Blood Cultist in the very middle of the Martial Alliance headquarters.
Though she was disheartened, Sohwa did not press him further.
“I understand.”
She gave a brief answer and turned her body toward the door.
If she could not obtain a path to Sichuan, there was no longer any need for her to remain here.
Namgung Hyun let out a sigh and said,
“I am sorry.”
That brushed against a subtle place in Tang Sohwa.
She knew that the present Namgung Hyun was helping her.
However, overlaid on that face she saw the appearance of the man she knew.
Long ago, when he had refused the Tang Clan Head’s request, Namgung Clan Head Namgung Hyun’s voice and expression had been much like they were now.
Of course they were.
It was the same person.
That day, Namgung Hyun had worn a concerned expression and, with a regretful voice, had said to the Tang Clan Head:
That he could not help immediately, but that he would receive support from headquarters and go to the Tang Clan together.
It had been a roundabout refusal.
He had not stopped the Tang Clan Head from returning to a dead end, and on the way out he had not given a single one of the Namgung Clan’s forces.
Only then did Sohwa realize it.
She had thought the Namgung Hyun of the past and the Namgung Hyun of the present were different, but whether then or now, she still could not trust him.
She did not know whether Namgung Hyun truly could not help and so refused, or whether he meant to stand by and watch the Tang Clan’s annihilation once more.
The only certain thing was that she could not get the answer she wanted from him now.
Just like the day, in the past, when the Demonic Sect annihilated the Tang Clan.
Wanting to hide such thoughts, Sohwa immediately turned her body and opened the door.
“I have been very discourteous at this late hour.”
The moment the door opened, the cold night air brushed her cheek.
Sohwa intended to return to the building and send a messenger letter to Baekgeumgak. The Vice Hall Lord of the Crimson Blood Hall would likely know where the Passage leading to Sichuan was. The Crimson Blood Hall Lord had once come to the inner compound of Tang manor.
Crunch.
Walking down the dark corridor, Sohwa halted. Someone had covered her mouth and pulled her body behind a pillar.
Pressed back-to-back, a fast heartbeat transmitted into her.
He rested his hand lightly over her mouth so as not to press it.
His hand smelled faintly of ink.
His breath brushed her ear, but there was no sound.
Namgung Hyun seemed to want silence.
She did not know what the situation was, but since he was not someone who would act so rashly without cause, Sohwa stayed quietly still.
As she complied with his intent, before long the heartbeat she felt through her back slowed.
Slowly, Sohwa turned her head. Namgung Hyun was staring outside the building.
Sohwa followed his gaze, but saw nothing. Only the darkness that had settled in front of the empty building filled her sight.
Click.
Then she heard the sound of a door opening, and light spilled out from the floor below. Someone seemed to have come out of a room.
Soon, a familiar figure appeared outside the building. It was Namgung Clan Head Namgung An.
He stood quietly in front of the building.
“Clan Head!”
The gatekeeper running toward the building flinched. He looked surprised, as if he had not expected the Clan Head to be outside.
“Someone has come from Sagye Hall.”
“At this hour?”
“Yes, the Sagye Hall Administrator has asked that you come to Sagye Hall.”
He did not look like someone who had just risen from sleep. His eyes were full of sharpness, and suspicion flickered there.
However, he did not refuse Sagye Hall’s request.
“I understand.”
Namgung An took a step. Then the man guarding the door spoke in a flustered voice.
“A-are you going alone?”
“If they are calling me at such a late hour, it is not likely something they mean for others to hear. Do not wake anyone else, and you go about your own duties.”
“Yes, I will do so.”
Though the Namgung warrior answered in a displeased voice, he faithfully carried out the Clan Head’s order.
As if to guide the Clan Head, he stepped out through the door.
At that moment, the Clan Head’s eyes briefly brushed the building.
Sohwa knew Namgung An had noticed her presence.
However, Namgung An dismissed her as nothing of consequence and left.
Watching the torch beyond the wall disappear, Tang Sohwa took hold of Namgung Hyun’s hand and pulled it down from her mouth.
Then Namgung Hyun spoke to her in a small voice.
“Please come inside and talk. There may be some other way I can help.”
“It’s fine. The help you have given so far is enough.”
Namgung Hyun was quick on the uptake.
He knew it was something Tang Sohwa had said offhand to push him away.
However, he could not stop her from leaving. He felt the presences of the Namgung elders and warriors above and below as they woke.
If he made another sound here, they would realize that Sohwa had come to this place.
While he hesitated, unable to answer, Tang Sohwa went down the building and vanished entirely beyond the wall.
