After meeting with Woo Aseok, I stepped back outside and ran into Yu Yul.
“All done?”
“Yes. More or less.”
I had gotten something out of it.
The conversation might not have looked like much, but there had been plenty of ore buried inside it.
Ore?
No, not really.
It was closer to being spoon-fed.
I knew Woo Aseok had openly tried to place something in my hands.
He had made a point of showing it while he did it. There was no way I wouldn’t notice that.
Why?
I didn’t need long to think about why he had chosen to do that.
He thinks well of me.
That was all there was to see in it.
He thought that highly of me.
Given my current position, it was easy enough to tell that Woo Aseok wanted to create a point of contact with me.
Not bad.
I was happy with that.
He was not just anyone—he was the Beggars’ Union Leader.
Having a connection to him could only help me.
That part really is good, but...
There was still one question.
What the hell is my family?
The Bang Family was still completely opaque.
Not just Father—the whole family was wrong somehow.
That was the real problem.
It was giving me a headache.
Of all places to be reborn, why did it have to be into a house like this...?
I had thought it was just a wreck of a family.
Wasn’t that enough?
Did there really have to be a secret buried in it too?
Couldn’t it have just stopped at a good-for-nothing older brother and a father obsessed with women?
Why the hell did a household like that need a secret?
Wasn’t that insane?
And not just any secret, either.
A secret the Beggars’ Union had effectively sealed behind the Ink rank.
Just in case—do you know anything about it?
I asked the sword.
[Who knows.]
There was nothing in the Heavenly Demon’s response.
No interest, if anything.
...Tch.
I clicked my tongue inwardly and turned to Yu Yul.
“Thank you for waiting. Let’s go.”
“Right.”
Fine.
If I couldn’t learn anything about the Bang Family right now, then I just had to get what I had already set in motion.
The Dark Sovereign.
The information Woo Aseok had said he would give me in three days.
For now, I decided that was enough.
*****
The rain was still coming down in sheets when I returned to the Murim Alliance and went to find Thousand-Mile Divine Eye.
Yu Yul split off midway because the Lesser Moon Unit leader had called for him.
“You’re back.”
He looked the same as ever.
Buried in letters, he did not even lift his eyes toward me.
He always told me to sit, but there was never anywhere to sit.
I shoved a few letters aside and made a space for myself.
“So. You saw the Union Leader?”
“Yes.”
“...You saw him?”
What was with that reaction?
Why did he look surprised?
I had done exactly what he told me to do, and now he was staring at me like I was the strange one.
“Yes. I saw him.”
“It really was the Union Leader?”
“Yes. It was really him. He put on a strange little performance at first... but it wasn’t especially hard to see through.”
“...Hm. So you saw through it.”
It seemed Thousand-Mile Divine Eye had known beforehand that the Beggars’ Union Leader was going to put on an act for me.
Was that why he found it so odd that I had recognized him?
“I lost that one, then.”
“What?”
“I said I lost the bet.”
A bet?
What kind of bet was he even talking about?
I was frowning at the sudden nonsense when—
“I made a wager with the Union Leader.”
Thousand-Mile Divine Eye said it like a confession.
“On whether you would see through his little game or not.”
“...Then did you bet that I wouldn’t?”
“I did.”
“And the Union Leader bet that I would?”
“He did. In the first place, the Union Leader had no choice. There was nothing for him to lose.”
“...Hm.”
I scratched my cheek.
A bet, huh.
“What did you stake on it?”
“The reward you received. That was what was wagered.”
“...You bet a Gold rank?”
At that, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye smiled faintly.
“I wagered too much.”
“You really are something.”
Who in their right mind put something like that on a bet like this?
I almost laughed.
If it were me, I would never have staked something like that.
“I truly didn’t think you would see through it. Even the current Zhuge young patriarch failed to notice that little trick.”
“Maybe the young patriarch was just tired that day.”
He was practically my uncle.
A man with a real name in the Zhuge Family couldn’t see through that?
Honestly, even if he hadn’t, I didn’t see why that mattered all that much.
“So. Having won the bet, what did you ask him?”
“Oh, that?”
I answered plainly.
“I asked about the Bang Family and about Father. He said I couldn’t hear that with Gold.”
“...”
The expression vanished from Thousand-Mile Divine Eye’s face.
“...Why would you ask about something like that?”
Had I been too blunt?
It didn’t matter.
Judging by his reaction, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye clearly knew something too.
“My house looks like such a complete disaster that I figured I should look into it. Turns out it’s even more of a disaster than I expected. It seems you know something too, Strategist.”
“It is not something you need to know. All the more so if you are not going to become the young patriarch.”
“I’m not. Why would I inherit a family like that?”
I would be grateful if my older brother inherited it instead.
“Then stop looking at it.”
Thousand-Mile Divine Eye spoke seriously.
“You only need to do what you are meant to do. That sort of thing...”
That sort of thing.
“You need not concern yourself with it.”
He was more grave and more firm than ever.
Which only made me more curious about the Bang Family.
“Yes. I’ll do that.”
For now, I decided to let it go.
For now.
“Then what else did you ask?”
“Oh, that part is a secret. He said I could keep that to myself.”
“...But the thing he refused to answer, you can tell me?”
“Yes. I couldn’t hear it anyway, so what does it matter?”
“Hah.”
Thousand-Mile Divine Eye looked at me like I was unbelievable.
Fortunately, he did not seem inclined to press further.
“Anyway... I delivered the letter you asked me to.”
“Good.”
“And if possible, I’d like to make a trip to Liaoning.”
“Liaoning?”
The moment I said it, his brow furrowed deeply.
“What would you go there for?”
“What do you mean what for? That’s my home.”
My hometown.
A hometown I had not been back to in years.
“You intend to go there in the current situation?”
“Ah, to be exact, I’d leave in three days. There isn’t really anything else for me to do right now anyway, and what the Alliance is preparing is still a couple of months away, so I thought I’d go and come back quickly.”
“What are you planning to do there? Don’t tell me you mean to dig into your family’s secrets.”
“No. Not really... I just actually have something to take care of.”
I was curious about the family’s secrets.
But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
The ring over my heart.
More precisely, the ring on my soul.
The thing I had fastened there was reaching its limit.
Lately I had been using more power than I had expected, and the thing I had set in place years ago had gone loose.
If it snapped soon while I kept going like this, then I would be truly fucked.
...I might end up like I did in my previous life.
Back then, buried in evil ghosts, going through every kind of hell while trying to cut them away.
Just thinking about it made my skin crawl.
“It’s important. I have to go.”
“The schedule is tight. You would go anyway?”
“Yes. I’ll be back without delay. I’m going because I’ve already done everything I was supposed to.”
What had been called a conference, though it really was not one, had already been dealt with.
I had pushed things so the Tyrant would rise as the Alliance Leader candidate.
After that, whatever younger-generation matter was being pushed ahead because of the Demonic Cult was—
That’s not something I should be stepping into.
That was a matter for the people above me to sort out themselves.
“...”
Thousand-Mile Divine Eye stared at me like he disliked the idea immensely.
“Fine.”
Even so, he gave permission.
I was just about to nod in satisfaction when—
“However.”
Ah.
There it was.
The ominous part.
“You’ll be helping me with my work first.”
“...Work?”
His work?
Before I could even wonder what that meant, he pointed at the pile of letters stacked beside him.
“The schedule you mentioned. If you finish these within those three days, I will allow it.”
“...All of these?”
There was a ridiculous amount.
I looked at him in disgust, but Thousand-Mile Divine Eye shook his head as if to tell me not to worry.
“Surely you didn’t think I meant only that pile.”
“Ahaha. Right?”
Of course not. No matter how shameless he was, even that would be a bit mu—
“All of those as well.”
“...?”
Those as well?
I shifted my gaze to the left.
There were two more piles there, each about the same size.
“...”
I stared at them blankly for a moment, then said—
“...Strategist.”
“Yes?”
“Do you happen to have a conscience?”
I asked in complete sincerity.
“As if.”
And Thousand-Mile Divine Eye turned out to be even more shameless than I had expected.
*****
The downpour only grew heavier.
Inside a room that was silent in contrast to the storm outside, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye swallowed a sip of tea.
Gulp.
The sound of it going down his throat rang out with strange clarity.
There was emptiness in his eyes.
“...Absurd.”
He looked at the letters neatly arranged on the desk before him.
The very same letters he had ordered Bang Seongyeon to deal with earlier.
The amount he had told him to finish in three days.
“...He finished it in less than half a day?”
Bang Seongyeon had sat down and handled the entire thing in less than half a day.
—Don’t regret this.
That look in his eyes, like he was asking who would break first.
That insolent stare had made it seem as though Thousand-Mile Divine Eye ought to have snapped something back at him.
And yet Bang Seongyeon had simply buried himself in the letters and begun working.
With how fast he was moving, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye had half wanted to scold him for merely skimming them and calling it done.
But—
“...Ha.”
He had not been able to.
The way Bang Seongyeon had processed them had been too clean.
There were clumsy parts here and there, certainly. A few rough and inexperienced places.
But those were small enough to let pass.
Because—
With speed like this.
Three days had been impossible to begin with.
If he had told one of his own subordinates in the Alliance to handle it alone, it would have taken over half a month.
Even if he had dragged in the Zhuge Family’s young patriarch, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye was certain it would still have taken another seven days and nights.
Half a day?
The speed was absurd.
...That monstrous brat.
Where in the world had a thing like that fallen from?
He had known it from the first time he saw him, but the gap was too great.
The first instant he laid eyes on Bang Seongyeon, he had thought of his daughter.
Then he had seen those eyes and thought of himself.
It’s certain.
There was no mistaking it.
He should be the one to inherit the Zhuge Family.
The talent was overwhelming.
Martial talent?
Yoo Cheongil had wanted him, so that much was obvious.
But this was different from that.
He was the one who should carry on after him.
And the curse of it was that the boy was a Bang.
That fucking house, of all places.
“Whew...”
He let out a long breath.
His irritation rose with it.
Dammit.
The boy had finished the work in half a day, then walked out without even asking for it to be checked.
Did that mean he had been certain it would be perfect anyway?
Part of Thousand-Mile Divine Eye wanted to tell him to do it again.
But his pride would not °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° allow it.
Ordering him to redo something like this would be the same as admitting defeat.
“Ha ha.”
Thinking of it, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye finally laughed in genuine delight.
“That insolent brat.”
So in the end, he had made this old man bow his head.
It felt bad.
And yet it felt good.
At the same time, Thousand-Mile Divine Eye checked the letter tucked into his robes.
The one he had exchanged with Woo Aseok.
He had told one lie.
I said I had bet against him, didn’t I?
That was the lie.
Thousand-Mile Divine Eye had wagered that Bang Seongyeon would see through it.
Woo Aseok had taken the opposite side.
And during that exchange, certain of his own victory, Woo Aseok had said:
—If that brat really recognizes me, I’ll give him something a little richer than Gold.
What Thousand-Mile Divine Eye had put up was this:
If he won, he would hand his Gold token over to Bang Seongyeon.
Something that ordinarily could never be passed on in that way.
Which meant—
“...What pointless nonsense to be doing at my age.”
It meant that Thousand-Mile Divine Eye had never once doubted Bang Seongyeon.
Of course, a prideful old man like him would never say that to Bang Seongyeon’s face.
