“Do you have any idea why I did that?”
“No. I do not.”
“I see. So without knowing, you decided I was doing something wrong.”
“I did not doubt Alliance Leader’s intentions. I believed they were surely good. That belief was not based on my personal feelings. Alliance Leader personally went to Geumeunsan to find Young Lady Tang, and there tried to save everyone. If your purpose had been to conceal the Blood Cult’s true nature, you could simply have refused to go along from the beginning.”
His voice, colder than the night air, continued on at length.
“When you remained alone in the Passage, something went wrong, and I know you overreached yourself trying to resolve it.”
“So you thought something had gone wrong with me, and meant to resolve it in my place?”
“No. How could I possibly resolve Alliance Leader’s problem in your stead?”
The Sagye Hall Administrator added,
“I merely did not wish Alliance Leader to make a mistake.”
The man who had confined the master of the Martial Alliance met his eyes. His gaze, without a shred of guilt, was as light as his voice.
“There are paths that are right and also easy, and yet must not be taken.”
“......”
“The one who taught me that was Alliance Leader yourself. If you placed something on the scales of value, then you must indeed have been promised something greater than the life of Young Lady Tang alone. I believe it would have been a peace worth sacrificing for. However, you cannot save the entire Central Plains with a single life. I am not speaking of a numbers game or weighing the value of lives.”
In a dry tone, he spoke his thoughts.
“Someone who covets the Central Plains will not be satisfied with a single life. As time passes, he will demand someone else’s life, demand wealth, and continue trying to use Alliance Leader. In the end, the Blood Demon would gather what he wants through you without ever staining his own hands.”
A heavy air flowed from Zhuge Inhwi.
He could not bring himself to look directly at the Alliance Leader, but his warmth circled nearby.
The qi that could not reach the Alliance Leader soon withdrew of its own accord.
Zhuge Inhwi did not try to judge alone, but asked him directly.
“What did you see that day?”
“......”
“What frightened you so much that you made such a decision?”
“Do you imagine you will never regret your decision?”
Zhuge Inhwi gave a small nod.
The Alliance Leader burst into laughter, as if he found it absurd.
In a tone close to defiance, Zhuge Inhwi put his reason into words.
“They say the Outland Five Palaces were also in the Blood Demon’s hands. While Alliance Leader was under the influence of Oseoksan, one of them, the Northern Sea Ice Palace, was rebuilt.”
The Alliance Leader seemed already to know. He looked at Zhuge Inhwi without the slightest disturbance.
Perhaps feeling that his words were being listened to, Zhuge Inhwi asked in a calm voice,
“I heard from the Four-Directions Hall Administrator that the situation in the Northern Sea has been very dire all this time. Were you aware of that as well?”
At the sharp question, the Alliance Leader fell silent.
“The Northern Sea Ice Palace is the reason I do not regret it.”
Cutting through the sound of insects, Zhuge Inhwi added evenly,
“Because we trusted Young Lady Tang and sent her, the Ice Palace bloodline was separated from the Blood Cult. Once they took the Northern Sea, the Blood Cult’s power there was greatly weakened, and in the midst of that, we even learned how to remove the Blood Cult’s Dokgo.”
For the first time, the Alliance Leader’s face twitched.
“You’re saying you found a way to erase the Blood Demon’s blood?”
“Yes.”
Watching the Alliance Leader’s agitation, Zhuge Inhwi slowly continued.
“It is an antidote we would not have obtained had you handed Young Lady Tang over to the Blood Demon.”
“So you’re saying you don’t regret binding me here and spiriting Young Lady Tang away.”
The Alliance Leader let out a bitter laugh.
When Zhuge Inhwi did not answer, the Alliance Leader spoke.
“I have lived longer than you, Inhwi.”
It was something anyone would know.
Yet the Alliance Leader continued speaking more seriously than ever.
“There is such a thing in this world as fate. Humans live only along the path Heaven has set; they cannot change the outcome.”
“Do you know the fixed outcome, Alliance Leader?”
Though it sounded like a question, there was no curiosity in his face.
Zhuge Inhwi did not agree with the Alliance Leader’s words.
“Even if the Blood Demon is high and strong, how can you assert that losing to him is fate? An outcome is something that can only be spoken of once the end has been seen. But no one in this world has yet seen the end.”
Instead of answering, the Alliance Leader gave him a smile that was hard to read. Perhaps because he could not see that expression, the Sagye Hall Administrator calmly went on.
“Living in a station above my station, I have realized something. Humans cannot control themselves, nor can they control others.”
“......”
“Yesterday’s heart is different from today’s. A decision made half an hour ago is overturned. A foolish person suddenly makes a wise choice. If fate is Heaven forcing humans to walk a preordained path, then I dare say there are not even a handful in all the world who follow that path without straying.”
In the Sagye Hall Administrator, the emotion thickening in his eyes could be read as faith in humans or distrust of them.
“If Heaven is truly omniscient and omnipotent, then it will not have made a path for humanity. It would know that controlling humans is impossible. The path is created as we walk it in the first place, and humans, walking the path they themselves made, simply delude themselves that they are obediently following Heaven’s will.”
“So you’re denying Heaven, saying there is no fate?”
Zhuge Inhwi shook his head.
“To be precise, I am saying that humans cannot know Heaven’s will.”
His voice was earnest. He did not regard the Alliance Leader’s words as mere nonsense.
“Even a waterway that has existed for hundreds of years disappears the next year if there is a drought. Even if Heaven decided to erase that waterway next month, so long as clear water is rippling and fish teem within it now, those living in the present cannot know that will.”
The Alliance Leader did not refute Zhuge Inhwi’s words.
“Even if, as Alliance Leader says, Heaven has indeed fixed a path for humans, since humans do not know that fixed path, they cannot know how that path will change either. If you regard Heaven as an absolute power, then Heaven’s whims as well are something humans cannot interfere with, are they not?”
“......”
“If humans’ fate is merely to flow on as Heaven has ordained, then interfering with that flow by presumptuously guessing Heaven’s will is also an act against Heaven, and a contradiction.”
After quite some time, the Alliance Leader let out a hearty laugh and asked,
“Are you saying I don’t know anything?”
“Yes. Because Alliance Leader is human as well.”
It was a fair statement.
Gazing at the Sagye Hall Administrator before him, he spoke.
“...Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve seen you turn me into an enemy.”
At that, Zhuge Inhwi’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“I have never turned Alliance Leader into an enemy.”
At his firm words, the Alliance Leader gave a short laugh.
Swallowing a light breath, he murmured as if to himself,
“I am curious about this ending as well. Since no one can know how the world will turn out when your will and Young Lady Tang’s will coincide.”
Zhuge Inhwi’s eyebrows returned to place—or perhaps sank even lower. His slightly narrowed eyes betrayed his feelings.
“...It is not that Young Lady Tang’s will and mine coincide.”
It was hard to explain, but he did not look pleased.
The Alliance Leader did not trouble himself to gauge Zhuge Inhwi’s mood. Instead, he recalled the day he had been freed from a long punishment.
The name of the sorcerer who had returned Yeonju to his proper place faintly brushed his mind.
“Inhwi.”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that the people of the Outland also put meaning into their names?”
It was an abrupt question, but Zhuge Inhwi nodded.
“I do not know every clan of the Outland, but every Outlander I know carries meaning in their name.”
With a bitter smile, the Alliance Leader said,
“Indeed. Perhaps your words are not wrong.”
Much had been left unsaid. Not even Zhuge Inhwi could grasp the meaning of the Alliance Leader’s words all at once.
He could only guess that the Alliance Leader had accepted that something had changed.
***
When they reached the Blood Demon’s pavilion, several Ice Palace martial artists flinched. It was because they had discovered a flamboyant hall where a dragon coiled up a crimson pillar.
However, the Ice Palace martial artists could not keep their eyes on the Red Pavilion for long.
The Fourth Seat quickened his pace and struck the Black Pavilion, and their attention was soon stolen that way.
Boom.
With a fierce shockwave, one wall of the Black Pavilion blew out.
The Fourth Seat slipped into the Black Pavilion in an instant, like someone who knew exactly where he was going.
Running after him, the Crimson Blood Hall’s Vice Unit Leader spoke urgently.
“P-please wait just a moment!”
The Fourth Seat halted and lifted his head.
Swallowing a curse, Min Doyu spoke in a voice full of dissatisfaction.
“In the first place, we need to let the Blood Demon know that we attacked the Black Pavilion, but there’s no one here. We didn’t come here to truly loot the Black Pavilion, so we have to find a witness and send them to the Great Desert.”
The Ice Palace martial artists who had accompanied them stared straight at the Vice Unit Leader.
Reading their expressions, the Vice Unit Leader’s face twisted into a fierce scowl.
It was because the faces of the Ice Palace men clearly said that his real goal was to rob the Black Pavilion.
They had not the slightest interest in the circumstances of the Great Desert.
Fortunately, the heated air quickly cooled.
“Fifth Seat, go out as if taking the marriage trial and brush the formation.”
At the Fourth Seat’s order, the one beside him immediately left the pavilion.
The sight of him going out with a face as meek as a lamb was almost funny. His attitude was as if he had never once shown any sign of giving external forces the side-eye.
The speed of that shift in stance was absurd, but at least it meant there was no need for a war of words.
'Damn it, we don’t have time...!'
For the Vice Unit Leader, the Black Pavilion and everything else were drowned out by his worry for the Great Desert.
Looking at him, the Fourth Seat spoke in a low voice.
“Once the marriage trial formation is disturbed from outside, an alarm will sound, and whether it’s the Blue Blood Hall or the Crimson Blood Hall, someone will come across. Let us go in now.”
“Please, go ahead. I will stay here in the garden, as there is something I must find there.”
The Fourth Seat’s gaze slid briefly toward the garden.
Without asking why, he nodded. The vegetation in the garden was as precious as the secret manual.
“And hurry. I hear that so long as you bring out the manager inside, there’s no need to steal the secret manual. So you must not drag this out too long.”
It seemed that in the Northern Sea, anyone who made noise died of some plague, since they answered so little.
Watching the Ice Palace martial artist vanish without a sound, the Vice Unit Leader felt a tightness growing in his solar plexus, but he swallowed his anger and took a slip of paper from his breast.
On it were written the ingredients Tang Sohwa had told him to gather.
