Volume 6 Chapter 22 – Sixteen Imperial Capital Families (2)

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Translated by Rain

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Mount Beimang, near the Gongsun family’s main gate.

While surrounded by the Second Guards Brigade, the self-defense teacher of the Emei Sect was looking around.

“…What are you looking around so much for in this situation?”

“W-Well…”

As the proctor nun who was riding in the carriage together rebuked in a low voice, the self-defense teacher shrank his neck and replied.

“It seems the carriage carrying the Tea Fan Maidens is not visible…”

“What?”

* * *

Mount Beimang Gongsun family mansion, the garden.

“Now, what is the answer? Eldest Young Master! Hurry! Hurry and answer! Please, do answer!”

Yeon So-hyeon sighed at the overbearing momentum of Gongsun Na-gang, who was pressing him with a face glistening with madness.

“Sigh…”

At that long sigh, Gongsun Na-gang’s eyebrows twitched.

It was because that sigh, unlike his stiff expression until just now, looked light, without feeling even a shred of burden.

‘Is this not burden, but rather…?’

Just as Gongsun Na-gang was trying to infer something from the expression of the Eldest Young Master sitting before him, Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth opened again.

“Lord Gongsun. How have you shriveled up so much?”

Yeon So-hyeon looked at Gongsun Na-gang with eyes looking at something ‘pitiful and pathetic.’

“W-What?!”

Gongsun Na-gang jumped up, but Yeon So-hyeon’s words were even faster than that.

“To think you would try to strip away what I have as soon as you meet me, who has only just emerged from confinement…”

Yeon So-hyeon’s tone was leisurely and calm.

His posture was without a single disarray, and upright.

“Is that not an action no different from a highway robber?”

“A-A highway robber?!”

Yeon So-hyeon waved his hand as if it were troublesome.

“Yes. It is just like a highway robber.”

“Grr, grr…!”

At those words, Gongsun Na-gang’s face turned red-hot as if it would explode at any moment, transforming into the appearance of a ghost.

But.

“…Oh?”

As if by magic, a small sneer appeared on his face.

That appearance was just like a face-changing magician changing masks.

“Aha…! It won’t work. It won’t work. To try to escape this situation by making this Gongsun Na-gang conscious of my position and pride through provocation.”

He wagged his finger.

“It is an incredibly shallow psychological warfare that I would never expect from the Eldest Young Master I know.”

At those words, Yeon So-hyeon raised his eyes to look at Gongsun Na-gang.

“Psychological warfare? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Um…?”

Yeon So-hyeon was still looking at him with eyes looking at something pitiful and pathetic.

“Have you still not understood my words?”

Yeon So-hyeon’s mouth parted, revealing white and neat rows of teeth.

He laid out syllable by syllable clearly in a resonant voice.

As if for an old man who had begun to go deaf with age.

“I mean that the ‘Gongsun Na-gang of the past’ whom I know would not have behaved merely like a highway robber at this point.”

Yeon So-hyeon clicked his tongue.

“Since when did you shrivel up so unsightly? Where has the boldness and guts that casually committed deeds ordinary people could not even imagine gone? Where has that flashing wit and seemingly endless wisdom gone?”

Yeon So-hyeon sighed.

“…The Lord Gongsun of the past whom I remember can no longer be found.”

“……?!”

Gongsun Na-gang froze in the very posture he had raised his body in.

“W-What on earth…!”

In his body with skeletal ribs revealed through loose silk clothes, and his back starting to bend.

And the face of the old man, who possessed a merely testy impression, warped.

“What on earth…”

The old man tried to refute Yeon So-hyeon’s words several times.

However, Yeon So-hyeon did not even give him the leisure to refute.

“The person Gongsun Na-gang whom I know, you see…”

Yeon So-hyeon looked up at the sky with eyes looking at something distant.

“Even before I was born. The grand eunuch named Gongsun Na-gang was an existence that did deeds other powerholders could not dare even imagine.”

Gesticulating here and there in the air, Yeon So-hyeon became engrossed in his own story.

“In order to revive the Gongsun family, which was losing its prestige, and to position himself at His Majesty’s closest side, he came up with an idea that no one else had achieved.”

Yeon So-hyeon showed a clenched fist.

“He first claimed that ‘affinity,’ which was mentioned in the unofficial histories left from the previous dynasty, was sufficiently gathered in the palace due to the construction of the artificial lake.”

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice grew louder.

“That palace which remained as a ruin in Luoyang, the capital of the previous dynasty!”

The story continued without hesitation.

“And once the rumor sufficiently reached the Imperial Capital, he ‘dismantled’ the ruin entirely and moved all of it to the current capital, the Imperial Capital!”

Dismantling and moving a palace?

It was an idea a normal person could never come up with.

Yeon So-hyeon shouted.

“Down to the last foundation stone!”

With a hand gesture in the air, Yeon So-hyeon drew the shape of oxen, horses, and people stretching long toward the Imperial Capital.

“The horses and oxen mobilized at the time numbered a whopping five thousand heads. Scribes and laborers numbered over twenty thousand! Indeed, the procession was to the point of extending from Luoyang to the Imperial Capital, and I heard that such song lyrics still remain even now.”

At Yeon So-hyeon’s voice talking about his past as if singing, Gongsun Na-gang’s eyes grew slightly distant without him realizing it.

And at the same time, pain entered.

‘How have you shriveled up so much?’

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice lingered in his ears.

“To promote that plan, not only did you spend all of the family’s assets, but I heard you even mortgaged this residence on Mount Beimang, which enshrines your ancestors!”

Yeon So-hyeon pointed at the massive mansion.

“Everyone opposed it! Every member of the family desperately blocked it, but I heard that as the young patriarch back then, he pushed the plan to the end. And he succeeded eventually!”

A smile appeared on Yeon So-hyeon’s lips.

“Because he had that loyalty recognized by the late Emperor, rising to a position that could never be obtained with mere assets!”

When Yeon So-hyeon’s story ended, only silence lingered long in the garden.

“….”

The one present there was no longer Gongsun Na-gang, who emitted a ghost-like spirit.

Only an old man fitting his age remained.

Looking at the ground for a moment, Gongsun Na-gang shook his head.

“…That was quite a fine storytelling skill, Eldest Young Master. But…”

Yeon So-hyeon’s voice reached the ears of Gongsun Na-gang, who was about to say that it would not work either.

“Even if it was a threat intended to ‘test’ me, to think that even that threat has shrunk in scale…”

At the word test, Gongsun Na-gang’s mouth twisted.

“A test…?”

Yeon So-hyeon looked at Gongsun Na-gang with an expression asking what he was talking about.

“Are you still acting? I knew it from the start.”

Yeon So-hyeon continued calmly.

“Were you not trying to judge the authenticity of the person beyond the letters, whom you had not faced even ‘once’?”

Gongsun Na-gang’s face stiffened.

“Certainly. Considering the age when we exchanged letters, it must have been hard to believe that the person named Yeon So-hyeon was the party who wrote all those letters.”

A fictional figure strategically created by the Luoyang Sword Family using collective intelligence for some reason.

For it was a matter that could be doubted like that sufficiently.

And after a moment, his mouth opened.

“…How did you know?”

Yeon So-hyeon smiled.

“It was not very difficult.”

* * *

Mount Beimang, near the Gongsun family’s main gate.

‘Maid Captain. Something is strange.’

At the Guard General’s sound transmission, Maid Captain Hyang nodded.

‘Not a shred of killing intent or battle intent is felt from them.’

* * *

Yeon So-hyeon raised one finger.

“First. Lord Gongsun, you dragged me around your personal gallery, constantly throwing questions about art at me.”

The questions thrown while constantly changing fields, familiarly calling me young mentor, just like when we exchanged art via letters.

The questions asked as if it were natural to ask the teacher since you were the disciple.

Yeon So-hyeon’s second finger unfolded.

“And once the verification of the art field was finished, you tried to see how I would cope under pressure, disguising yourself as a ‘highway robber.'”

Yeon So-hyeon smiled faintly.

“Surely that highway robber disguise was not a real disguise?”

“….”

Gongsun Na-gang, forcing down a groan, opened his mouth.

“You are correct about the test, Eldest Young Master. But you have only laid out old stories, and yet…”

Yeon So-hyeon snicker.

“The only one who knows that the person who spread the rumor of the affinity-filled palace was Lord Gongsun himself would be this Yeon So-hyeon, would it not?”

“Could you not have heard that from someone? So from now on, I, Gongsun Na-gang, will throw a difficult problem…”

Yeon So-hyeon burst into laughter and waved his hand.

“Surely, you will not ask to solve a political problem for ‘free’ between us? And using a test as an excuse, at that?”

Gongsun Na-gang, whose sore spot was pierced yet again, waved his hand.

“I, Gongsun Na-gang, am not that shameless either. Just one small issue…”

Yeon So-hyeon cut off his words.

“If we have exchanged this much, the test was sufficient, and are you trying to drag time now?”

Gongsun Na-gang’s complexion changed.

“Dragging time…?!”

Yeon So-hyeon looking toward the other side of the garden, Yeon So-hyeon spoke.

“If that is the case, you may stop. If you were waiting for someone, it seems they have all arrived.”

Gongsun Na-gang, who turned back following Yeon So-hyeon’s gaze, nodded.

“Have they arrived now?”

What revealed themselves were six figures.

“Apologies, Eldest Young Master.”

“….”

Gongsun Na-gang turned his head again to look at Yeon So-hyeon.

On that face, a sly and bizarre expression had returned once more.

“Just as you said, this old man’s boldness and guts have shriveled up quite a bit.”

He giggled and laughed.

“So I called for some reinforcements.”

As the distance gradually closed, the faces of old men, each draped in clothing and accessories whose value was hard to estimate, were revealed.

The Situ family, the Lu family, the Yuan family, the Chunyu family, the Puyang family, and the Mou family.

They were the former patriarchs of the six families that Yeon So-hyeon had not met yet.

“Eldest Young Master. Put aside any great worries. It is merely that everyone wanted to see the Eldest Young Master’s face a little sooner.”

He was an old devil who, despite having called them ‘reinforcements’ with his own mouth just a moment ago, threw subtle mockery to pressure Yeon So-hyeon.

“Since everyone has friendship from all this time, anyway, we will turn a blind eye to the rudeness of being placed late in order…”

Ignoring Gongsun Na-gang, who was about to burst into giggles, Yeon So-hyeon stood up from his chair.

“This is my first time meeting you in person. I am Yeon So-hyeon, the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword Family.”

At Yeon So-hyeon’s disregard, Gongsun Na-gang’s wrinkles momentarily trembled, but he saved his words.

It was because there were now six more figures of the same class as him.

“Nice to meet you, Eldest Young Master.”

The former patriarchs lined up on the opposite side clasped their hands and greeted Yeon So-hyeon all at once.

For them, who were the former patriarchs of the Sixteen Families, there was no such thing as someone greeting as a representative.

Without even considering Yeon So-hyeon, everyone merely offered greetings in voices mixed together, introducing themselves individually.

Although it was a situation where one could not tell who was who, Yeon So-hyeon did not seem flustered either.

“Now, do not just stand there, everyone come this way.”

Yeon So-hyeon guided them to a place where a wider table and more chairs were laid out.

It was a dignified and even shameless attitude, as if he were the master of this mansion.

“….”

Sparks flew from the eyes of Gongsun Na-gang, who stared at that sight from behind.

‘Setting other things aside, that shamelessness is even more than what I felt in the letters!’