A rich scent of wood diffused gently as only the faint scratch of brush on paper threaded through the vast Emperor’s palace.

Within a room appointed in gold and precious timber, a sober gravity prevailed. The lofty forms of dragons filled the ceiling and the wall behind the Emperor, laying his majesty bare.

“You are not, I trust, thinking to spare that criminal and send her back.”

In front of a steaming cup of tea, the woman who spoke with a soft, cultivated voice was the Emperor’s fourth consort, the lady of the Cheol clan, known in the palace as Consort Suk. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

She had entered the harem originally to consolidate the Emperor’s power, but by now the Cheol clan’s influence had swelled until it was the most powerful among the affinal families.

“She murdered my only child and fled. I have held it in my heart ever since you spared her twenty years ago.”

“Consort.”

A low, gentle voice resonated through the chamber.

Thick brows, eyes neither large nor small, a prominent nose, and lips of measured fullness.

The Emperor’s features were plain enough that, for an emperor, he might seem almost ordinary—yet he was a man with an air one could not gainsay.

At first, the grandees who underestimated him for that plainness either found themselves standing at his side before long—or vanished without a trace.

So the emperor who first seemed easy to read had come to be called the iron-blooded emperor whose depths no one could plumb.

“The child who died twenty years ago was my son as well. What father could lightly pass over a child’s death?”

Consort Suk pressed her lips together.

A quiet sorrow hung in the Emperor’s gaze, yet she did not believe in his sincerity.

“Then why did you let her go twenty years ago?”

He had ordered the Brocade Guard to seize the Blood-King Poison, yet he did not send their elite.

When the men he sent returned wounded, he gave no order to pursue; and though he knew the Blood-King Poison had long been sheltered by the Namgoong Clan, he looked the other way.

“It is because Your Majesty did so that I am anxious. If Your Majesty spares that criminal again this time...”

“Enough. If Consort Suk cannot trust me, how could I discuss great affairs with you?”

“...!”

Her expression hardened.

Once again the Emperor’s unreadable words threw her into confusion.

“You may go. I wish to rest.”

Consort Suk’s lips parted as if she had much to say, but she rose instead.

Once the Emperor had bid someone withdraw, not even the most powerful consort could refuse.

“Rest well. I shall await the glad news Your Majesty will send.”

After saluting, she left the chamber.

The subtle smile that had hung at her lips vanished the moment she stepped out of the Emperor’s rooms.

‘Serpentine wretch.’

Did he think she did not know the Blood-King Poison had been brought into the palace and was being kept in ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) comfort?

The woman who killed his son and fled—sleeping in a soft bed instead of a dungeon...!

‘His son? If he had truly held the boy as his own, he would have had that woman’s limbs hewn apart twenty years ago!’

To stir up what he ignored for two decades, and now to bring the word “son” to his lips—

Consort Suk found such an emperor loathsome.

“...”

Her steps through the palace halted.

She turned her gaze toward a group to one side of the corridor, standing aside and bowing their heads to her.

On their way to an audience, perhaps; they were a party of Eastern Depot eunuchs met midway down the hall.

One of them, though, held his head stiffly high and looked straight at her.

When Consort Suk speared him with a cutting look, he blinked, then bowed with a displeased face.

“Tch...!”

Filthy eunuchs.

Because they basked in the Emperor’s favor, they had grown so arrogant that now—now they dared slight the Emperor’s woman?

“Consort Suk is as radiant as ever today.”

Consort Suk fixed her hard gaze on the man standing at the fore of the eunuchs.

“...Chief Eunuch Joo.”

“Is the corridor not this bright because of your beauty, my lady? You are the light of this imperial house.”

Her brows twitched.

Yet who could take offense at being called beautiful?

She disliked the eunuchs’ bearing, but seeing such men bow and flatter before her was not unwelcome.

“I’ll be watching.”

“How could I do otherwise.”

She passed the eunuchs and left the Emperor’s palace.

Only after she disappeared did Chief Eunuch Joo lift his head and slide a glance at Seop Mugwang standing beside him.

Seop Mugwang averted his eyes and sent a Voice Transmission.

— My apologies. Once I knew she meant to kill Chor Yeon, I just couldn’t bring myself to bow.

He had learned that the consort was the mother of the imperial prince who had massacred and burned Chor Yeon’s people in her hometown, and rage had surged up.

— I told you: in the imperial palace, doing as you wish is a good way to lose your head.

— ...Understood. I’m sorry.

Because Chief Eunuch Joo was covering for Seop Mugwang and Chor Yeon within the palace, Seop Mugwang had to heed him.

For his part, Chief Eunuch Joo had taken the measure of Seop Mugwang’s temperament during the journey to the palace and over the few days they had stayed there.

Seeing the rough fellow apologize so readily to his warning, Chief Eunuch Joo smiled and let the matter pass.

****

Not a full week had passed since the Namgoong Clan Lord requested an audience with the Emperor when permission to enter the palace came down.

It had been nearly twenty years since a great clan of the martial world had visited the imperial palace—since the incident involving the Black Path power that upended the southern Central Plains.

“You’ve come a long way.”

“I greet Your Majesty the Emperor.”

Standing before the Emperor, Cheongun offered a formal salute.

By the Emperor’s arrangement, they had come to the imperial palace without meeting any imperial officials; and even now, at the audience, only the Emperor and a few eunuchs were present.

“So. I have heard you wished to see me.”

“If Your Majesty permits, may I set a Qi Screen.”

“You may.”

As soon as the Emperor finished, Cheongun cast a Qi Screen around the room.

Since the palace’s eyes and ears were everywhere, he drew it small to reduce the space.

“Sit.”

As if he had been waiting, the Emperor offered seats; Cheongun, Chief Eunuch Joo, and Seop Mugwang—concealing his identity as a eunuch—sat in a circle.

Cheongun reversed the question the Emperor had just asked.

“I have heard Your Majesty wished to see us. May I ask whether it is our clan Your Majesty would see—or the martial world?”

“Both. I hear the Martial Alliance Lord is the former Namgoong Clan Lord. Namgoong Mucheon—is that the man?”

“It is.”

“I met him once.”

The Emperor cast his mind back to twenty years ago.

The Namgoong Clan Lord who had toppled the Black Path force that plagued the martial world—and drew the eye of the imperial palace.

“When I said I would grant what he wished, as he had rendered service, do you know what he asked?”

“I beg pardon—I hear that story today for the first time.”

“The pardon of the Blood-King Poison.”

“!”

Cheongun and Seop Mugwang turned wide eyes on the Emperor.

Seop Mugwang, who had already found the Emperor’s favor odd throughout their stay, felt it keener still.

Whatever else, she was the criminal who had killed his son.

Yet the rooms given were comfortable, and they were tended without the slightest inconvenience.

Did the Emperor truly bear no resentment for the killing of his son?

Part of him also feared the Emperor’s attitude might turn overnight.

And then—

“When I told him to name what he wished, he immediately brought up the Blood-King Poison. He said the Namgoong Clan had long suffered for lack of a great physician—and that they needed her.”

Even if invited to name any boon, how could a man easily beg, before a father, pardon for the criminal who killed his child?

In a sense, it had been a condition on which Namgoong Mucheon staked his own life.

The Emperor remembered even now the unwavering gaze with which Namgoong Mucheon had spoken those words.

“You have your father’s eyes.”

“...You honor me.”

From the Emperor’s gaze, Namgoong Cheongun felt a formidable presence in turn.

He masked it with plainness, but a sharpness like a look that pierced through lay hidden in his eyes.

“I have no intention of laying charges on the Blood-King Poison. I wish to keep a promise made twenty years ago.”

“...!”

“I must apologize, however, for using her circumstances to draw you here.”

A clear pledge from the Emperor.

Yet to lay out what the other side desired first meant the Emperor also wished for something.

Cheongun and Seop Mugwang listened, tense, as the Emperor continued.

“I summoned you because of a rebel faction called the Blood Cult.”

At that name, Cheongun and Seop Mugwang’s faces hardened.

Seeing their reaction, the Emperor nodded.

“So you know of the Blood Cult as well.”

“In the present martial world, we have declared war on them as a public enemy.”

“Then the tale will be swift.”

The Emperor nodded.

In truth, he already knew of the enmity between the Martial Alliance and the Cult from his reports.

It was also why he had risked conflict with Consort Suk to summon the Martial Alliance to the palace.

“It seems an agent of the Cult has infiltrated the imperial palace.”