Chapter 48 - The Whole Thing

For a while, even Dong Bongsu would have no choice but to respond to each situation as it arose. As cautiously as possible, retracing every detail, just as he had when evading Do Heo-ok’s Thunder Saber a short while ago.

Several traditional hours later, in the King’s Hall.

WHOOO.

Namgung Byeok simply sat there. The wind brushing his ears felt unfamiliar. Of course it did. When had he ever felt the cold outdoor wind while seated in the chair of the King’s Hall?

The roof was gone. Wind swept unhindered through the gaping space above the hall, swirling wildly through its interior.

“Patriarch...”

Namgung Bang, leader of the Imperial Sword Unit, had been standing quietly beside the dais. At his soft call, Namgung Byeok spoke, his gaze still resting on the place where the ceiling had been.

“Have all the swords been recovered?”

He meant the swords of the clan’s past patriarchs, which should have been embedded up there.

“Yes, Patriarch. Fortunately, we found every last one, and none were damaged.”

Namgung Byeok could not suppress a derisive laugh. Should those swords not have remained safely embedded in the ceiling in the first place? Yet Namgung Bang was calling it fortunate merely because they had been recovered intact. Or perhaps he was pleased that none had been damaged.

That word, “fortunately,” grated terribly on Namgung Byeok. He found himself wondering whether Namgung Bang had even looked around at the state of the King’s Hall before saying it.

The loss of the King’s Hall’s ceiling meant more than damage to a building. With the ceiling gone, the roof was gone as well, and the patriarchs’ swords could no longer be returned to their original positions.

In other words, the Three Emperors Nine Kings Formation had lost its core, rendering the subsidiary cores installed throughout the estate useless. The formation’s core had been the swords of the former patriarchs, embedded in the roof of the King’s Hall according to its formation pattern.

Still gazing up at the empty opening overhead, Namgung Byeok asked Namgung Bang,

“How long will it take to restore the Three Emperors Nine Kings Formation?”

He believed restoring the defensive formation had to take precedence over everything else. But both he and Namgung Bang knew full well how extraordinarily difficult that would be under the circumstances.

“... At least a month, Patriarch...”

“Ha...”

All he could manage was a hollow laugh. Surrounded by a powerful enemy, they would have to endure an entire month without their defensive formation.

That morning, immediately after the roof of the King’s Hall collapsed, Namgung Byeok had released the messenger pigeons that regularly traveled between the estate and the Murim Alliance headquarters. It had been useless. Anticipating this, the enemy surrounding them had already released dozens of gyrfalcons around the estate. No sooner had the pigeons taken flight than sharp talons and beaks tore them into barely recognizable shreds. Every pigeon was dead in less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea.

Unless someone went to Zhengzhou in person and delivered the news to the Murim Alliance Leader, the Namgung Clan would have to overcome this crisis through its own strength alone.

But if that were easy, Namgung Byeok would not have looked so troubled.

According to the reports, although Do Heo-ok had fled, his skill was no less than Tang Wu’s. That was tantamount to saying no one in the Namgung Clan could face him one-on-one.

And on top of that...

“There were only four of them...”

As his self-mocking murmur suggested, the people who had reduced the King’s Hall to this state—the ones hiding in Do Heo-ok’s room—had numbered only four.

The moment the Imperial Sword Unit warriors entered Do Heo-ok’s room to search it, they had burst out of hiding and attacked the clan’s warriors.

What they had feared had come to pass, but the attackers’ strength had far exceeded their expectations. Yet that was not the only thing that shocked Namgung Byeok and the clan’s experts.

The identities they discovered after subduing the four were more shocking still.

Ok Napaeng, the Vermilion Iron Demon Whip; Pa Cheonsu, Seven Kills with One Saber; and the Yin-Yang Twin Demons.

Those were the four who had been hiding in Do Heo-ok’s room. All were demonic-path masters of the previous generation, renowned throughout the land. But what shocked Namgung Byeok most was not their fame. It was that two of them were the Yin-Yang Twin Demons.

Do Heo-ok had earned most of his reputation by defeating those very demons, yet they had been hiding in his room. Namgung Byeok and the clan’s experts were utterly dumbfounded.

“It was all planned from the beginning...”

Every step Do Heo-ok had taken, from his first appearance to entering the Namgung Clan and arranging his marriage to Namgung Hye, had been part of a single, flawlessly crafted performance.

That morning’s events were stark evidence of how thoroughly Do Heo-ok had made fools of Namgung Byeok and the Namgung Clan—no, of all Murim.

Had it not been for the “ill-omened aid” left by the unidentified intruder the previous night, they would have proceeded with the wedding, and the clan might have fallen helplessly into Do Heo-ok’s trap.

Yet the situation remained grim.

Even driving the chief culprit, Do Heo-ok, out of the estate and killing all four villains he had brought inside did not put Namgung Byeok at ease.

Do Heo-ok was still alive, and the clan was still surrounded. Moreover, the “guest who was no guest” remained hidden somewhere within the estate. He might have provided information beneficial to the clan, but his true intentions remained shrouded in doubt.

Trouble within and calamity without.

How else could one describe the Namgung Clan’s situation?

Namgung Byeok believed this was the greatest crisis of his tenure—no, the greatest since the clan had first hung its House of Kings plaque beside Soho Lake.

Watching the slowly setting sun, he pondered that morning’s events and Do Heo-ok. Then he lowered his head and looked at Namgung Bang.

“How large did you say the enemy force was?”

He had already received the report, but he was asking again in the hope that perhaps he had misheard. The answer was just as bleak as before.

“The Cheonroe Unit and the Heavenly Vault Sword Unit have confirmed a full thousand already.”

At least a thousand. It was by no means a small force. Even that number alone roughly equaled the clan’s entire complement of warriors, excluding the wedding guests. Reports so far indicated that the enemy’s rank-and-file warriors were certainly no less skilled than the Namgung Clan’s.

Little difference in quality, and similar numbers.

No, a full thousand was only the minimum estimate. There could be more. And what if further reinforcements were to join them?

He did not want to imagine it, but the possibility was very real.

“At least a thousand...”

Namgung Byeok felt the words “at least” weigh heavily on his shoulders as he murmured them. Quietly closing his eyes, he questioned Namgung Bang once more.

“Have we still not determined how many Peak Realm experts they have?”

In a war between Murim sects, the number of experts mattered far more to the outcome than sheer numbers. If the Namgung Clan had more Peak Realm experts, they could still turn the battle considerably in their favor. That was what Namgung Byeok wanted to ascertain.

But once again, Namgung Bang’s answer was discouraging.

“... Forgive me, Patriarch. The clan’s ordinary warriors simply could not discover that much. I felt we could not risk sending the unit commanders out again, so for now we are conducting only routine reconnaissance.”

Victory would have been uncertain even if they knew everything about their opponents, yet what they did not know far outweighed what they did. The enemy, by contrast, had plainly come with an intimate knowledge of the Namgung Clan. It went without saying that their preparations were equally thorough.

At this rate, the clan could only be dragged along wherever the enemy led. Unable either to march out and fight or to sit still and take the blows, they were trapped with no way forward or back.

“Whew... It is all right. What have you to apologize for? It would make no difference whether we investigated or not. Their number of Peak Realm experts will certainly be no less than ours. With them as our opponents, we need not see it with our own eyes to know. Do not trouble yourself over it.”

Their opponent was the Heavenly Demon Castle. Had it not attacked, things might have been different, but once it began its assault, it was obvious that it had brought a force at least equal to theirs.

Why on earth had the Heavenly Demon Castle suddenly appeared in Anhui Province to attack the Namgung Clan?

Namgung Byeok desperately wanted to know, but he had no way to find out.

The situation he and his clan faced was rather like being beaten with their hands and feet bound and a blindfold over their eyes.

They knew nothing about the enemy, yet their losses were mounting rapidly.

The clan had already suffered a heavy blow in that morning’s first clash. Do Heo-ok and the enemies hiding in his room had put one unit leader and nearly a dozen elders out of action. More than twenty percent of the Imperial Sword Unit, the clan’s most elite fighting force, had been killed or seriously wounded. On top of that, countless clan warriors had died on reconnaissance missions that yielded little of value, and more were dying even now.

Their losses could not yet be called fatal, but if things continued this way, they would eventually be unable to hold out and would collapse.

And beyond the clan’s own losses, an even greater problem was that many of the guests who had come to celebrate Do Heo-ok and Namgung Hye’s wedding had died. All the guests were now trembling with fear.

“The wedding guests... Whew... What are they doing now?”

“They are clamoring to be allowed out of the guest halls.”