Two days later.“Oh, you came?”“So we meet again.”“Haha, indeed.”Mo Yonggun was the same as ever.Though it was a hot summer, he wore a luxurious outfit that covered sleeves and legs entirely. With the realm he’d attained, he likely felt no sway from heat or cold.Yeon Hojeong looked at the table.Half a dozen dishes, just out of the kitchen, sat upon it. Every one was a costly, ornate plate.Mo Yonggun indicated a chair.“Sit there.”“Very well.”Seated, Yeon Hojeong glanced around.“By the way, did you not bring your daughter today?”“Yeonhwa? She’s at the main house. Unlike you, she still has much to learn.”Yeon Hojeong smiled.“I can’t speak to martial arts, but her stratagem looked outstanding.”“Heh, that’s how she appeared to your eye as well?”Of course.In the Dark Emperor days, Mo Yong Yeonhwa displayed a level of strategy not one whit beneath the present Mo Yonggun—a heroine whose plans inflicted heavy losses on the Cult of Perversity’s forces.Of course, the Black Emperor’s Citadel took losses in the shadows as well.“If she’s polished well, she’ll make a famed treasure-sword of the realm.”“If it came to that, what more could I want. Truth be told, had she been a boy, I might have made her young clan lord within short order.”“That’s unexpected.”“Mm? What is?”“I know how you came to that seat. Precisely because of that, I’d thought you would draw no lines over blood or gender.”Mo Yonggun smiled.He says he knows how I became Clan Lord. Though the meaning embedded in those words was weighty, he didn’t so much as flicker.“I don’t mind. It’s the world that does. If a girl becomes clan lord, many would point fingers at the main house.”“Is that so.”“Clan Lord is not a seat one reaches by ability alone. Martial skill, strategy, and character all matter. Provided it’s a man.”“…”“Talent that fits the age is also demanded. I count gender as part of talent. The most regrettable talent Yeonhwa was not born with.”A lie.After he became Alliance Lord, Mo Yonggun bequeathed the clan to Mo Yong Yeonhwa.Strictly speaking, he did not yet let go of the clan headship at that time. He merely put Mo Yong Yeonhwa at the fore as acting Clan Lord.And before the Battle of Mount Heng unfolded, he placed the Clan Lord’s seat in her hands and went to his last battle.Did his heart soften because it was a fight with no promise of tomorrow? Not at all.It had been a fight with high odds of victory. He likely didn’t think he would die.You’re hedging me.Yes.Perhaps now he had no plan to pass the seat to Mo Yong Yeonhwa. But Mo Yonggun was not a man who thought gender was “talent.”He was soothing the other party. She’s brilliant, but regrettably unfit to be Clan Lord. Once married out, no need to mind her greatly.This is different from before. He’s paying more attention.After the sequence of events that buried the Ming Clan, his wariness toward Yeon had risen.Thus he concealed—down to matters one might call trivial.I’ll need to focus in this talk.Mo Yonggun lifted a wine bottle.“Has your body fully healed?”“Cleanly.”“Heh, youth is a fine thing. With a wound that large, and you’ve already recovered? You keep astonishing me, in various ways.”This was sincere. Mo Yonggun was purely surprised by Yeon Hojeong’s recuperation.Yeon Hojeong raised his cup with a bitter smile.“I’m still far, far off.”“Don’t say that anywhere outside. You’ll be cursed. No—perhaps they can’t easily curse you. Are you not the hot-blooded youth who scraped the rot from the white-path martial world?”Yeon Hojeong’s face creased.“You don’t know how tiresome that makes life.”People look at results, not process. If the one crushed had been Yeon Hojeong, not the Ming Clan, his name would have been carved in history as a villain of the realm.But the Ming fell, and Yeon survived.Only then did people begin to look at process—why he alone waged war against the Ming, and how he faced them.In that way, the three characters of “Yeon Hojeong” lodged hard in the heads of the martial world’s contemporaries.“Tiresome, perhaps. But accept it. If you mind every gaze one by one, you’ll end up unable to do what must be done.”A chill drifted through Yeon Hojeong’s smile.“I feel that—viscerally.”And thanks to you, I’ll feel it once more.“Drink.”The two drained their cups coolly.“Now then, why did you call me?”“This from you? Heh, we together took down the Ming Clan. You ought to know what sentence the Ming will receive.”“I don’t care to fret over cleanup.”“Are you the sort who leaves meat on a picked-clean chicken bone and doesn’t care?”“I don’t leave meat to begin with.”Mo Yonggun shook his head.“You’re misthinking this. The Ming bore the four characters ‘first under heaven’ for a long time. Branded enemy of the martial world, the ones who fled can’t go around boasting, but we ought to watch them for at least a few years.”He couldn’t know why Yeon spoke thus.Even if their elixir fields were crippled, the fake Four Spirit energies they’d learned remained in the body. And depending on the nature of true energy, that energy would lodge in heart, liver, lungs, or kidneys and ceaselessly damage the body.Branded enemy of the martial world, the minimum is ten years in the dungeon. Among them, no one would be able to endure the full term.“The lofty ones of the martial world will handle that on their own.”Mo Yonggun smiled.He knew Yeon truly had no interest in that part—and that he was now urging him to speak the real reason for the summons.A sharp one.The more he saw him, the more desirable he seemed.And the more wary he felt. The more he spoke, the more he sensed this was not a man to be subordinated.“You are a remarkable man.”“You flatter me.”“Good. With those eyes of yours glinting at me like that, I’ll get to the point out of sheer fear.”Refilling the cups, Mo Yonggun continued,“Tell me, do you know the Huainan Demon Head?”“I do not.”“Mm, I forgot. He’s known by a more famous epithet.”“…?”“The Anhui Blood Bow?”In that instant, Yeon Hojeong’s eyes flashed.Mo Yonggun smiled.“So you know.”Know? Of course.To hear that name here…Anhui Blood Bow.He first heard it when he was sweeping the black-path martial world.He had not heard it before the annihilation of his clan. Then, he had had no interest in the world. He hadn’t even known the Je Gal Clan’s Lesser Celestial Mechanism Pill.But after the annihilation, when he learned martial arts from his master and swept the black-path martial world, he heard the Anhui Blood Bow’s infamy.Not only that—he had met the Anhui Blood Bow, and even traded hands.And later, when he raised the Black Emperor’s Citadel—Yeon Hojeong installed him as the commander of the Five Divine Generals—the Citadel’s strongest vanguard.Muk Bi!The Anhui Blood Bow—no, the Divine Archer, Muk Bi.Bow arts are a path few take and fewer still make great in—but he refined them to the extreme, the Realm’s First Bow.A sniper whose arrows never missed, and a death god whose monster strength matched the other Divine Generals even barehanded.Why, now, was his name—his epithet—leaping from Mo Yonggun’s lips?“The Anhui Blood Bow—call him simply ‘Blood Bow.’ Blood Bow’s infamy began to shake the world because of the blood-case he stirred up five years ago in Huainan, Anhui.”“…”“He single-handedly exterminated a sect settled in Huainan called the Golden Sword Gate. Do you know it?”“…I do not.”“Mm. Golden Sword Gate made quite a name in northern Anhui. Considerable armed power—and per the name, golden sword, their financial power was immense.”“…”“They were a sect that knew the chivalric way. With their wealth, they opened their granaries in times of famine to fill the bellies of commoners. When they were wiped out, they say the people across Anhui’s northern reaches beat the ground and wailed.”“…”“Naturally, Anhui’s martial world boiled. They raged to seize and kill Blood Bow on the spot.”“So they did.”“But he vanished without a mouse or a sparrow knowing. Professional trackers and investigators were sent, yet they could not find so much as one footprint.”Naturally.An archer must have superb body movement to bring full skill to bear. He is one who, keeping distance, drives the enemy with constant pressure and fire.That man—his movement alone could lay claim to ‘first under heaven.’Beyond Divine Archer, Muk Bi bore the infamy Ghost Fiend. Once he started to move, you could neither see him nor catch him.“Such a man has shown himself, of late, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} on Eight Dukes Mountain in Anhui.”Eight Dukes Mountain lay in Huainan, south of the Huai River.Mo Yonggun knit his brow.“The reason is unknown. Is it some so-called perverse taste—wanting to look again on the grounds of the sect he exterminated—or something else? What matters is that he’s set up there for quite some time.”“Not many can know.”“A keen read. If the rumor spreads, might Blood Bow not run? The information is under tight control.”Yeon Hojeong drank, forcing himself calm.“Then why bring up the Anhui Blood Bow?”“Ming Heorim.”“…?”“The runaway First Young Master of the Ming Clan has headed to Anhui. And the place he’s run to—by chance, they say it’s Eight Dukes Mountain.”A frown creased Yeon Hojeong’s brow.“A coincidence?”“One can only call it that. I heard it from none other than Ming Usan, once the Ming’s chief executor.”A coincidence… Was it truly?“They say the Ming set up secret boltholes across the Central Plains. You can think of them as assassins’ safehouses.”“Isn’t that the same for the other Seven Great Clans?”Mo Yonggun scratched his cheek.“Well, yes. Though not to the Ming’s degree.”“Then there’s a Ming safehouse on Eight Dukes Mountain?”“There is. They say there was one in Henan as well, but at present Henan is filled with uncountable martial men arresting the Ming warriors who fled. Excluding Henan, the nearest is Eight Dukes Mountain.”A chill slid into Yeon Hojeong’s eyes.Mo Yonggun’s smile deepened.“Why look at me like that?”“Be frank. Are you pushing to found an Alliance of the Martial World?”Before admiration, Mo Yonggun felt a chill.Is there a ghost like this?He leapt several steps of conversation and raised a point he hadn’t even intended to mention.And the problem was—he was right. It would be known soon enough, but for now only the leaders who’d attended the Grand Assembly knew.“…Yes.”“You’re not thinking to toast the founding of a new Alliance by drinking to the First Young Master, Ming Heorim’s head, are you?”Mo Yonggun burst out laughing.“Do you take us for black-path riffraff? What a ghastly thing to say.”“…”“Fine, as you say, the Alliance will soon be established. You know my dream is Alliance Lord.”“You mean to drive it in earnest on the pretext of the Ming affair.”“Heh heh heh.”Yeon Hojeong nodded.“So it is.”Outwardly he showed nothing; inwardly, he cheered.Good.You cannot seat a man where there is no body and no post.He thought of Mo Yongwu.A chivalrous man more fitting than any for the title Alliance Lord.If the Alliance is born in this stroke, all the better for me. Fine.Unlike Yeon, who silently cheered, Mo Yonggun’s heart was cold as ice.No. When this is over, I must do something. This one is too dangerous.Yeon Hojeong asked,“By telling me something this critical—do you mean to join hands with me once more?”Mo Yonggun smiled faintly.His eyes did not.“Yes.”“I’ll be blunt. What do I gain?”As expected—he’s my kind.Masking his inner mind, Mo Yonggun drew out a document.“What is that?”“A permit.”“A permit?”“All that belongs to a house proclaimed enemy of the martial world accrues to the Alliance. Wealth, martial manuals, even the elixirs in stock.”“…?”“Bring me Ming Heorim, and I’ll grant you access to the Ming Clan’s martial manuals. This is the permit that makes that possible.”Yeon Hojeong’s eyes gleamed.“Of course, it can be replaced with something else. At that time, we can swap for what you need.”“…”“What will it be? Will you catch Ming Heorim?”“Before that—one question.”“Ask.”“Why me?”Mo Yonggun smiled again.“The Young Tiger of Jiangdong. The man of tempestuous fortune who fought the world’s first house alone for his clan. The Little Overlord; or, Lu Xun reborn.”“…”“All epithets for you. You’ve proved your ability on the white path amply. To me, needless to say.”“…”“You must have ambition as well. Let’s sweep away the remnants of the past and grow—helping each other where we can.”Looking at Mo Yonggun with clear eyes, Yeon Hojeong smiled a beat later.“Will you take a cup?”Acceptance.Mo Yonggun laughed broadly.“Bold as ever. I knew you’d accept. Here—take a cup yourself.”The two shared a laugh as they traded cups. In the looks they cast each other, one could almost glimpse thick kinship and goodwill.But both knew. That what each showed the other was thorough acting and a lie.And so, another event—streaked through with ties and enmity alike—came seeking Yeon Hojeong.

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