Sohwa supported Tang Hae-han and stood up.
As she dragged Tang Hae-han, who was a head taller than she was, toward the building, Heukcheon Amgui muttered:
“There’s an assassin hiding behind the door.”
The voice was fairly loud, but it seemed to be swallowed by the sheer noise around them.
Sohwa, as if she had not heard a word, grabbed the pavilion door.
Creak.
The moment the door opened, a concealed weapon flew over her head. A throwing dagger lodged into the forehead of the spy who had thrust a shuriken at Sohwa.
Thud.
As the spy fell backward, Sohwa stepped past him and went inside.
Even as a person died right before her eyes, and fierce flames roared beside her, there was nothing that could be called an expression on Tang Sohwa’s face.
When Heukcheon Amgui tried to come closer, Sohwa finally spoke.
“I did the poison-dosing for all of the Eight Ultimate Poisons into the pond. If you touch that smoke, it will affect you too, Grand Elder, so please don’t come near.”
“Ah, so that’s why breathing has been so bothersome.”
The sound of Heukcheon Amgui clicking the tongue could be heard.
Sohwa ignored this and shifted her hold on Tang Hae-han.
Then, suddenly, a fierce wind blew.
Heat hotter than the fire itself rushed over the back of her neck.
Intending to blow the pond away, Tang Min poured all his strength into a palm wind.
Whoosh.
The flames flared up larger in the wind, then split into several streams. As the pond water was driven out into the open ground, the embers scattered along with it.
The smoke mixed with poison also began to lose its strength.
Step.
When Sohwa started up the stairs, Heukcheon Amgui, who had approached before she knew it, slung Tang Hae-han onto the back in her stead.
“What are you doing?”
Tang Min always told himself not to say anything unless truly necessary, but this child, whose insides were as unknowable as a snake’s, always forced him to ask for a reason.
“We store medicinal ingredients in the second-floor preparation room. I’m going to take him there and detoxify him.”
“No, even I know you’re trying to feed this half-wit an antidote. I’m not so dense that I can’t see that.”
What Tang Min was curious about was why Sohwa’s expression looked so out of her mind.
When they had first arrived at the Tang manor, the martial artists, him included, had no time to be shocked by the Blood Cult’s sorcery.
It was because they were confronted by a burning forest. Beyond it came screams and the sounds of battle.
As soon as they spilled out of the buildings, they split and scattered to their assigned sectors. The Namgung Clan blocked the main gate, Mount Hua guarded the east gate, Wudang held the rear gate, and the Tang Clan went to handle the west gate, which was on fire, and the central area where the inner compound was.
The Clan Head and Heukcheon Amgui each led the White Tiger Unit and the Blue Tiger Unit, splitting their forces in half, and Tang Sohwa had raced after the Blue Tiger Unit to the inner compound.
Left behind in the building, Sohwa had seen the Oral Transmission Pavilion burning and, heedless of her place, had rushed out.
Tang Min had left the Little Clan Head in charge of the central area and gone after Tang Sohwa.
Only after seeing Tang Hae-han spewing blood did he understand why Tang Sohwa had charged in so recklessly.
'...How did she even know this half-wit was dying?'
Normally, you would assume someone would run away if there was a fire; you would not expect them to dig in and stake their life.
And that was not a worry you would have when it came to Tang Hae-han, who was famous for having a quick mind.
However, Tang Min could not ask Sohwa any more questions.
It was not because he was reading her mood.
Step.
It was because he was at a loss for words at the shocking sight in front of him.
When Tang Min reached the second floor, he was met with a preparation room turned into utter chaos.
The medicine drawers had been pulled out and were lying everywhere, and dirty cloths and bowls, their stains impossible to identify, covered the preparation tables.
“Ugh, what is this smell?”
On top of that, it seemed they had not even had time to go outside, for there were easily more than a dozen chamber pots scattered across the floor at a glance.
Heukcheon Amgui let out a shrill yell of horror.
“Has the Oral Transmission Pavilion always been this filthy? Ack, I’m never eating the antidote you lot make again!”
Ignoring Tang Min, Sohwa pushed the things off the table and cleared the preparation surface.
“Put him down here.”
Originally, the Oral Transmission Pavilion had been a clean place.
If even one wrong ingredient went in, an antidote could become poison, so it had to be maintained scrupulously.
Seeing the filthy preparation room, Sohwa could guess what the Oral Transmission Pavilion people had gone through in the past two days.
“Ugh, this smell really...”
As soon as Heukcheon Amgui put Tang Hae-han down, they hurriedly pinched the nose.
Meanwhile, Sohwa was choosing medicinal ingredients. She took down one of the herb pouches hanging from the ceiling, scraped the remaining powder from a drawer, and grabbed a few medicine bottles from a shelf.
Since it was impossible to find a clean bowl right now, she began putting a little of each ingredient into a medicine bottle instead.
Tang Min stared at Sohwa with eyes full of betrayal.
“...So you’ve been making antidotes that roughly all this time?”
Sohwa did not respond.
She licked Tang Hae-han’s blood from her hand, then tilted the bottle and dropped one drop of the antidote onto the back of her hand.
Tasting the antidote, Sohwa opened the herb pouch again as if something was lacking and added one more piece of dried fruit.
Tang Min spoke in a complicated tone.
“This is more like a cook tasting food, isn’t it? Is it really okay to just roughly throw together the proportions like that?”
Tang Min had cherished a grand image of the Oral Transmission Pavilion, so his feelings were complicated.
Tang Sohwa still gave no answer, and Tang Min no longer expected any explanation.
When Sohwa finished the preparation and approached Tang Hae-han, Tang Min quietly stepped back.
Sohwa raised Tang Hae-han’s upper body, pressed his acupoints, and forced his mouth open. Then she dripped the medicine in little by little.
“Will he be all right after he drinks that?”
“He will not die.”
“Well, then that means he’ll be all right.”
Relieved, Tang Min tried to sit down on a chair, but when he saw the stains on it, he straightened up again with a troubled expression.
“But what in the world did this brat take to end up in this state? Why is someone from the Oral Transmission Pavilion getting poisoned himself?”
Heukcheon Amgui looked down at Tang Hae-han as if seeing the greatest fool the world would ever know.
Having poured all of the medicine into Tang Hae-han’s mouth, Sohwa answered.
“Because he took a completely different antidote all at once, his organs are reacting excessively. On top of that, he was exposed to the Eight Ultimate Poisons in this condition, so a defense mechanism that has gone past its limits is wringing out all the energy in his body.”
Tang Min narrowed his eyes.
“...Don’t people die when they run out of energy?”
“Yes.”
“So, someone who works at the Oral Transmission Pavilion touched the Eight Ultimate Poisons without even knowing that?”
“He would have known.”
After a brief silence, Tang Min asked:
“He knew his body would not be able to endure the antidote and still touched the Eight Ultimate Poisons?”
Sohwa nodded.
“Yes.”
“Was this brat always short in the head?”
At Tang Min’s sarcasm, Sohwa almost nodded before she could stop herself.
“Then what’s the point of him taking the antidote? If he dies from being poisoned or dies from not being able to endure the antidote’s energy, it’s the same, so why bother?”
“There is a difference.”
Sohwa’s voice was icy.
“For a brief time, his body can hold back the Eight Ultimate Poisons, so he must have thought he could use that time to destroy the Oral Transmission Pavilion poisons.”
“......”
Tang Min said nothing more. Sohwa also quietly took Tang Hae-han’s pulse.
The pulse that had been rampaging wildly gradually found its rhythm.
Right now, Tang Hae-han was still immature. In twenty years or so, he would likely be able to predict his body’s reactions precisely, but that time had not yet come.
With the current skill of the Oral Transmission Pavilion, they could not achieve the detoxification effect Tang Hae-han had imagined.
Sohwa swallowed a heavy breath.
'If I had been even a little later...'
She ignored the thought that followed.
He was alive, and that was enough.
The time that had not yet been able to flow still existed in her head, so she could correct Tang Hae-han’s mistake.
Gradually, the noise outside subsided.
It seemed as if the Tang manor was regaining peace, but the moment they resolved one memory of the past and felt relieved, another tragedy was lifting its head.
***
Slaaash.
The Sword Sovereign’s blade was stained with demonic warriors’ blood.
He was at the front, but he moved while giving the young martial artists of Wudang a chance.
It was a leisure he could afford because, strangely enough, there were few demonic warriors.
The path leading to the rear gate was deathly quiet, and most of the enemies they saw had their backs turned, trying to flee, so there was little need for major fighting.
However, it seemed the Sword Sovereign was not the only one thinking this way.
When the Sect Leader reached the open space at the rear gate, he lowered his sword.
“Something is strange.”
Staring at the open rear gate, he spoke to the Sword Sovereign.
“If the rear gate had fallen and demonic warriors had come in through it, shouldn’t there be more of them the closer we get to the rear gate?”
The Sword Sovereign also came to a halt.
He looked back and forth between the rear gate and the central gate.
Something was off.
This was not the shape of a gate that had been taken.
Nowhere was there any trace of battle.
The gate was undamaged, and the entrance, where the most corpses should have been, was so clean it was peaceful.
At this point, it was more accurate to say there had been no one guarding the rear gate.
Just then, Yeon-a sprang forward.
Having picked something up off the ground, Yeon-a rummaged through her chest.
“Uh, uh!”
Startled, Yeon-a could barely form words as she looked between the white objects in her hands.
“What’s that?”
“A cloth for wiping tears. No—this is a cloth Young Lady Tang keeps on her person, and it looks exactly the same.”
Yeon-a shook her head hard, as if to clear her mind.
“Young Lady Tang kept it on her person and then gave it to me, and the quality is excessively good, with even gold thread embroidery at the edge. Normally, you wouldn’t be able to give away such an expensive cloth lightly. I suppose it’s something Young Lady Tang can obtain easily.”
Looking back and forth between the cloths, Yeon-a spoke softly.
“Did this person also receive a cloth from Young Lady Tang? Were they sobbing at the front?”
A Wudang disciple standing beside her examined the cloth in Yeon-a’s hand.
“Aren’t those letters?”
“Hmm? Letters?”
Something strange was attached to the cloth she had picked up. Next to the butterfly embroidery, several pink worms were drawn. It was embroidery that could hardly be considered writing, but Wudang’s first disciple read it calmly.
“It seems to say Yehwa.”
When the first disciple reported this to the Sect Leader, Yeon-a’s eyes widened.
“Yehwa? Yehwa is Young Lady Tang Sohwa’s younger sister.”
At that moment, the clouds covering the sky parted.
In the soft morning light that settled down, the shadows carved into the open space were revealed.
Silence flowed among the Wudang martial artists.
The dirt ground was filled with hoofprints.
On top of them, human footprints had been pressed in long, thin lines.
The footprints had drawn a clear path, like a thread connecting the rear gate and the central gate.
When the Sword Sovereign, who was standing in front of the rear gate, sprang out beyond it, everyone followed him as if on cue.
In front of the rear gate, there were only footprints leading out, and none leading in.
