Being summoned to Sagye Hall was not a good thing, so any Alliance member would naturally tense up at a call from the Hall Administrator.
Even so, Zhuge Jihwi knew that he himself was a little more tense than others.
The Sagye Hall Daoist standing at the entrance recognized Zhuge Jihwi and guided him.
“We have prepared a seat for you in the hall. This way, please.”
The Daoist led him to a building standing off to one side.
The closer he drew to the hall, the more tightly Zhuge Jihwi’s face hardened.
He wanted to ask why he was being led to Donghyeon Pavilion, where they interrogated criminals, but he could not reveal that he knew the layout of Sagye Hall, so he kept his mouth shut.
Creak.
The taciturn Daoist only opened the door and showed it to him; he did not look as if he had any intention of going inside. When Zhuge Jihwi reluctantly stepped forward, the door shut at once behind him, as expected.
Turning his head forward, Zhuge Jihwi let his gaze move and took in Donghyeon Pavilion.
The atmosphere of Donghyeon Pavilion was as bleak as he had heard.
Crunch.
Reaching the center, he spotted a familiar face. A young woman was seated at a table with a single box upon it.
“...Young Lady Tang Sohwa?”
The eldest daughter of the Tang manor lifted her head and met his gaze with eyes like graphite. There was something strange in that look. Some unspoken meaning reached him, one he could not tell was an invitation or a command to sit.
Feigning composure, Zhuge Jihwi sat down across from her, but he could not hide his uneasiness.
“I heard all those who had been at headquarters have left. Did Young Lady Tang remain here?”
“So the news has already reached the Zhuge family?”
“Well, we are close to headquarters.”
Tang Sohwa’s lips curved.
“We have not yet informed the outside, but the Zhuge family seems remarkably quick with headquarters news.”
Zhuge [N O V E L I G H T] Jihwi could not answer.
Since the Zhuge family was in Hubei, he could have glossed it over by saying they had seen them passing through, but he could not say that. Zhuge Jihwi knew they had opened a Passage and moved to Sichuan.
He was about to change the subject when Tang Sohwa spoke first.
“I did not come here to put the Young Clan Head in a bind, so there is no need to be nervous.”
As if time was too precious to waste, she went straight to the point.
“I do not know how the Zhuge family came to be bound to the Blood Cult. I do not have the leisure right now to dig into that story either. I merely came to ask how much the Young Clan Head knows about the Blood Demon.”
With every word Tang Sohwa spoke, Zhuge Jihwi felt his heart pounding, but he turned his head to hide his expression.
Then, as if he had only just thought of it, he asked with feigned nonchalance,
“By the way, where is the Hall Administrator? He personally sent the letter, but he doesn’t seem to be here.”
“The Hall Administrator is in audience with the Alliance Leader.”
Sohwa answered his question, then steered the conversation back.
“I understand the desire to change the subject. If I were the Young Clan Head, I would also find it difficult to have such a conversation with an outsider. However, this is no time we can afford to waste. The Blood Demon may soon come to the Central Plains, so we have to hurry.”
Zhuge Jihwi tried not to show it, but his cheek twitched. Taking that as her answer, Sohwa explained the reason.
“If he does not mind flaunting his power in the Central Plains, he may personally move to face the sects. That is why we must know in advance how he might move, so that when that day comes, we are not caught defenseless.”
Zhuge Jihwi smiled at her words.
“That is a rather strange thing to say.”
When Zhuge Jihwi cut in, Sohwa closed her mouth and yielded the floor to him.
“While assuming I am one of the Blood Cult’s people, you press me, saying the Central Plains will be in danger and we must hurry to stop the Blood Demon... Isn’t it odd, as if you were treating me not as a Blood Cult agent but as a martial artist of the Central Plains?”
“Even if the Zhuge family has become the Blood Cult’s dog, I do not think of the Young Clan Head as a Blood Cult agent.”
“Mm... Do you happen to know what my family name is?”
Zhuge Jihwi scratched his chin and spoke with a touch of sarcasm, but Sohwa lowered her gaze instead of answering.
She opened the box on the table. A jar filled with a black liquid medicine and a clean needle came into view.
Her calm voice bored into Zhuge Jihwi’s eardrums.
“If my guess is not wrong, unlike the Family Head, the Young Clan Head should wish to be rid of the Dokgo, so I prepared this.”
Tang Sohwa picked up the needle and dipped it into the jar.
Zhuge Jihwi’s Adam’s apple bobbed hard.
Holding the needle, Tang Sohwa stared straight at him. Her look seemed to say that if he wished, he should hold out his hand.
Zhuge Jihwi did not hesitate for long. Like a man afraid this chance would vanish, he immediately rolled up his sleeve and laid his arm on the table.
Sohwa placed the needle into his hand. The black antidote went straight into his body.
“Urgh.”
The veins stood out on Zhuge Jihwi’s forearm.
He struggled to endure the pain. Since he had seen in the training yard how the antidote worked, he seemed to have been expecting the pain.
When Sohwa pulled out the needle, black liquid poured out in a steady stream from the hole.
For a time, Donghyeon Pavilion was wrapped in silence.
Only after a long while, when red blood began to drip, did Zhuge Jihwi let out a breath.
Sohwa offered advice, as if saying it was not yet a time to relax.
“Try violating the restriction once.”
At that, Zhuge Jihwi did something she could not read. He looked to be still, yet warm qi spread out around him.
Before long, like fog lifting, the warmth in the air faded away.
Zhuge Jihwi’s face was strange. The smooth, sociable expression that had made him look so good-natured now felt chilly. There was a faintly eerie air about him, as if a baleful energy had seeped in.
“Why me? While suspecting the Zhuge family, I don’t understand why you would call me, the Young Clan Head of Zhuge, here.”
“Young Clan Head, you seem to be similar to the Hall Administrator.”
Zhuge Jihwi, who had been trying in some way to catch her out, fell silent.
“Though he does not say so, the Hall Administrator also seemed not to have known about the Zhuge family’s ties to the Blood Cult. It looks like he has only just realized it. Even so, the Hall Administrator has not taken the Zhuge family’s side; instead, he is striving to block the Blood Cult that has burrowed into the Central Plains.”
Watching the Zhuge Young Clan Head who was keeping his eyes fixed on her, Sohwa spoke again.
“I think that when the Young Clan Head learned the truth, you must have felt the same way as the Hall Administrator. It is just that, unlike the Hall Administrator, the Young Clan Head had neither a chance to leave the Zhuge family, nor anyone to guard his back.”
Zhuge Jihwi let out a hollow laugh.
“I don’t know why you are suddenly trying to prod my conscience. If you’re trying to plant guilt in me over the Blood Cult’s attack on the Tang manor, I didn’t know about it, and the others probably didn’t either.”
“No. I am not here to argue about the past.”
By now, asking about that would have been useless information. Sohwa went straight to what she needed to find out.
“If the Blood Demon crosses into the Central Plains, do you know where he might choose as his base of operations?”
Zhuge Jihwi’s eyes narrowed. Whether he did not understand or simply did not wish to answer, he kept silent.
Sohwa made her question a bit more concrete.
“I am wondering whether, if the Blood Demon comes into the Central Plains, he will stay at the Zhuge family.”
Zhuge Jihwi let out a small laugh.
“Considering even the Family Head was carrying Dokgo, it’s no wonder Young Lady Tang would misunderstand like that.”
Zhuge Jihwi did not look offended. He simply seemed to find it absurd.
Sohwa explained why she had suspected that way.
“When I was dragged to Geumeunsan before, I once entered the Blood Demon’s treasure vault. They said the things inside were precious items he had collected over the course of a life close to immortality. The Blood Demon showed me records as he told me that the items and records inside that vault could not be taken outside Geumeunsan.”
Sohwa continued in an even tone.
“Also, the Blood Demon was translating Outland records into the language of the Central Plains. But there is a rumor that the Zhuge family owns records from Outland, is there not? So I wondered if the Outland records said to be at the Zhuge family might be the Blood Demon’s secret books. If the Blood Demon had moved the treasured secret books he valued to the Zhuge family, would it not be reasonable to suspect he intended to use that place as his residence?”
Zhuge Jihwi’s face turned cold.
“From whom did you hear such things?”
“In Hubei, it is a famous rumor. I heard that the Young Clan Head and the Hall Administrator fell into qi deviation while training in Outland martial arts in the treasure vault, and that the Hall Administrator lost his sight.”
Once she had brought up the rumor, Sohwa added, perhaps feeling sorry.
“It’s not that I believe the gossip about the two of you. I simply couldn’t ignore the talk that the Zhuge family possessed Outland records.”
In truth, Sohwa already knew that the records the Zhuge family held were the Blood Demon’s secret books.
When the Alliance Leader had sought out the Zhuge family in his first life, Zhuge Jihwi had shown him the family’s treasure vault, and through those records, the Alliance Leader had been able to reach Geumeunsan.
However, she could not say the Alliance Leader had told her so.
Since it had been the Alliance Leader, who had lived many lives, meeting Zhuge Jihwi of his previous life, it would have been something the present Zhuge Jihwi would find hard to accept.
Zhuge Jihwi let out a low groan.
“I never took Young Lady Tang for someone who lends an ear to rumors. But if you are someone who pays heed to rumors, I cannot understand why you would ask me such a question. Have you not heard the rumors about the Blood Demon? They say he was the strongest man under heaven, with followers as numerous as a mountain. For such a man, does it matter where he chooses to reside? Wherever he stays, it makes no difference. Wherever he takes as his seat becomes his stronghold and can become a battlefield. Each time he feels like it, won’t he swallow and spit out, turning the whole Central Plains into his own land?”
Clicking his tongue, Zhuge Jihwi went on.
“If everywhere his feet tread is his land, why would he sit in one corner of enemy territory and endure the risk of becoming a target?”
Sohwa realized that the worst-case assumption was the truth.
It seemed that places like the Zhuge family, which served the Blood Demon, were not just one or two.
Wherever he went in a region, the Blood Demon appeared able to receive help.
Come to think of it, that was how it had been.
Even now, it was so, but as time passed, the Zhuge family’s status at the Martial Alliance headquarters had changed in overwhelming fashion.
The Zhuge family, the Martial Alliance headquarters, and the Anguk Trading Company. Through the martial family clans that had become the Blood Demon’s hands and feet, the funds of the largest trading company in the Central Plains flowed.
Since Hubei was called the Nine-Province Thoroughfare, it was a place well suited for the Blood Demon to use as a hub. In that case, power should have been concentrated there, yet outside Hubei as well, there were many relationships where established sects and money were bound together.
There were even such places in Sichuan. Anhui was the same.
The influence that could have ended with Hubei alone was something the Blood Demon had spread across the entire Central Plains.
Sohwa felt her heart grow heavy, but she tried thinking of that point in reverse.
'If the Blood Demon can stay anywhere...'
Then perhaps the way was to lure him instead to a place that suited her.
