The Ruler of Darkness

Somewhere in the Luoyang Sword House.

The Grand Preceptor of Emei Sect, having finished the meeting, boarded the carriage.

“Was the meeting satisfactory?”

The Deputy Chief Nun asked again, even though satisfaction was clearly evident in her expression.

“Yes, it was satisfactory.”

The Deputy Chief Nun always checked the temperament that could explode at any moment, like testing a stone bridge, before bringing up the main topic.

“…What if Daseollang makes a childish choice at the cost of their families’ sacrifice?”

She had spoken loudly to the other nuns, but inwardly, a sense of unease remained.

“You think those girls will do something so foolish?”

“…I hope it’s just my foolishness leading to needless worry. But we have no way of knowing what conversation is taking place in the Eldest Young Master’s residence right now.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The Grand Preceptor smiled, wrinkling her face.

“In the end, if we shatter the Eldest Young Master and 4th Young Master’s joint venture, Daseollang becomes a dispensable horse to them.”

“Then?!”

The Grand Preceptor chuckled.

“In that case, Daseollang will have no choice but to return to the bosom of our Emei Sect.”

And she would teach Daseollang an unforgettable lesson.

***

Inner Courtyard of the Luoyang Sword House.

All butlers of the Inner Courtyard live their entire lives there.

That was the reason for the large-scale existence of pavilions for lodging in the Inner Courtyard.

Deep night.

Even the radiantly shining moon had hidden its face behind thick clouds.

A fourth-grade butler was walking a long corridor, holding a lantern.

It was an exceptionally late-ending work day.

A cold wind blew through the corridor of the lodging, engulfed in darkness, and the lantern light flickered unsteadily.

The creaking noise of the wooden corridor with each step on the floor was particularly grating.

It was a space he had lived in for a long time, but today, everything seemed strangely irritating.

The end of the abruptly bent corridor.

The shadow of tree branches wavering uneasily beyond the door screen.

The deep darkness visible through the carelessly opened crack of a lodging door.

Feeling as if something was just staring at him, he hastened his steps.

It must be due to the fatigue from several days of continuous heavy work and the resulting frayed nerves.

Even while repeating that to himself, his hand grabbing the lock of his lodging was damp with cold sweat.

“…”

While turning the key, he looked around, but there was no one in the late-night corridor.

He carefully opened the door, first inserting the lantern to scan the interior.

Relieved by the familiar sight of the room, he quickly entered and locked the door with a small latch.

After briefly catching his breath, he felt the drowsiness he had been unaware of due to the tension suddenly overwhelming him.

Without even organizing his clothes, he lay down on the bed and fell into a deep sleep, almost fainting, before he could blink a few times.

How long had he been asleep?

“…?”

For an unknown reason, he swallowed and opened his eyes wide.

His eyeballs darted back and forth.

The lantern he had brought was already extinguished, and the room was dark.

The faint moonlight from outside illuminated the interior of the room.

The sound of his roughly beating heart was too clearly audible, piercing through the creaking noise peculiar to the wooden pavilion in the wind.

‘…Is it nothing?’

His heavy eyelids began to close again.

‘I thought I heard something falling.’

With that memory resurfacing, he opened his eyes again.

His gaze fell upon the door of his lodging.

The small latch he had set to lock the door had fallen to the floor.

“…?”

He blinked a few times.

He was sure he had locked the door.

No. Perhaps he had been too tired to even properly lock the door before falling asleep.

He forcibly raised his heavy body to lock the door and felt a tightness in his throat.

“…Huh?”

There was a noose around his neck.

“Wh-what?”

At that moment, the rope tightened and mercilessly threw him to the floor.

He screamed something and shoved his hand into the gap of the tightening noose.

He prevented his neck from being constricted at once, but he couldn’t stop the rope from dragging his body into the corridor with terrifying force.

The door, hit by his body that almost bounced, was roughly flung open outward.

He was dragged without mercy, rubbing and hitting his back and face against the corridor floor.

At the bent corridor, he collided with the opposite wall due to inertia, and when dragged down the stairs, it felt like his whole body was shattering.

Even though he wanted to scream, the noose relentlessly strangling his neck only allowed gagging sounds to escape his mouth.

After being dragged for a while.

His body was forcibly seated on a chair fixed to the floor.

His two eyes, hurriedly looking around, widened as if they would tear.

With a burning torch behind them, people wearing white hoods surrounded him.

“Y-you…?!”

He tried to shout something, but a gag was stuffed into his mouth, and when he tried to struggle, his body was already tightly bound with ropes.

They didn’t ask anything, nor did they urge anything.

The one who stepped forward simply gouged out his left eye with a red-hot awl.

“Ugh, uggghhh!”

Convulsions ran through his entire body, and blue veins bulged on his neck.

The smell of searing flesh rose along with acrid smoke.

A white-hooded figure approached and removed his gag.

He wanted to say something.

But the searing pain rushing from his burnt and burst eyeball only allowed him to drool saliva mixed with bloody foam while groaning.

One of the white-hooded figures in the center stepped forward.

“Now you’re ready for a conversation.”

Through the eye holes of the white hood, too-cold pupils were looking down at him.

“Tell me about the private organization that exists within the Inner Courtyard.”

“…!”

The fourth-grade butler’s one remaining eye turned to the waist of the white-hooded figure.

There, six gold rings were hanging, reflecting the red light of the torch.

***

The Chief Secretary reported.

“The Security Secretary’s search operation is proceeding smoothly.”

The interior of the pavilion was too dark to be illuminated by a single lamp.

“Hurry. The given time is finite.”

In that darkness, the half-open eyes of the Chief Elder of the Inner Courtyard, sitting in a cross-legged position, were emitting a faint light.

“Yes, of course.”

Normally, the Chief Secretary would have to withdraw after reporting, but today, he seemed to have something left to say.

“However…”

The Chief Elder’s half-open eyes turned to the Chief Secretary.

“You look unusually troubled today.”

The Chief Secretary bowed his head.

“Should we just watch the Eldest Young Master’s first move like this?”

“If we don’t watch?”

The Chief Secretary, prostrated on the floor, lowered his head even deeper.

“The movement of the Second Young Master’s faction is unprecedentedly active. The Third Young Master’s faction must also be aiming for something. There’s information that the Grand Preceptor of Emei Sect met with a former sect leader.”

“And?”

The Chief Secretary sought guidance from the Chief Elder, who kept asking questions.

“We need guidelines for a response.”

The Chief Elder, who had been silently looking down at the back of the head of the Chief Secretary prostrating and bowing, opened his mouth.

“The position of Chief Secretary is like the Chief Elder of the Inner Courtyard’s chief disciple. If something happens to the Chief Elder, it’s a position that exists to fill that role at any time.”

“…I keep that in mind.”

The Chief Elder clicked his tongue.

“But looking at your behavior, it seems I should pray that the day I meet with misfortune never comes.”

It was a harsh evaluation.

But the Chief Secretary merely bowed his head without a hint of resentment.

“Please instruct this incompetent one…”

The Chief Elder unfolded his cross-legged position and laboriously rose from his seat.

His aged muscles had atrophied, and his joints had long been rusted.

Nevertheless, if there was something sustaining that skeleton, it wasn’t thanks to a handful of inner energy.

It was probably the almost mad loyalty he had devoted to the Luoyang Sword House for over a hundred years.

“A thief who dares to consider the main family’s Armory Director’s money as his own is carelessly leaking the main family’s legitimate son’s loan information…”

Even though he spent more than half a day in seclusion, how much information in the family would he not know?

“The entire family is in an uproar over the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to completely push the Eldest Young Master out of the succession struggle if his first move fails.”

A blatant sneer rose on the Chief Elder’s face, full of wrinkles.

“Even so, are you saying you can’t see the end of this matter?”

The Chief Elder’s implication was clear.

“…Are you saying things will eventually unfold as the Eldest Young Master wants?”

At the Chief Secretary’s unconvinced tone, the Chief Elder erased the mirth from his face.

“Foolish bastard.”

The Chief Elder spoke decisively.

“No one in the main family can win against the Eldest Young Master in a direct battle of wits.”

“…!”

“No. Not just the main family, but in the entire Central Plains, there’s no one who can dare to win against that Eldest Young Master in a battle of minds. That was true ten years ago, and it’s still true now.”

“Those words…”

Don’t they sound like the Eldest Young Master will ultimately be victorious?

The Chief Elder snorted at the sight of the Chief Secretary swallowing his words while breaking out in cold sweat.

“What is it that we’re doing right now?”

“We’re removing the ‘rotten shells’ remaining deep within the Inner Courtyard.”

“Indeed.”

The Chief Elder grinned.

That smile, faintly visible in the darkness, felt eerie.

“All of that was possible to begin thanks to the Eldest Young Master.”

Punishing those who arbitrarily served the successors was extraordinarily difficult.

Because in the end, one of those successors would become the Lesser Family Head of the Luoyang Sword House.

However, after the Eldest Young Master turned the Inner Courtyard upside down, the Chief Elder, who had been reprimanded by the Elder Council, gained justification.

“Thanks to that, we’ve now reached the stage of removing that final shell.”

The Chief Elder raised his bony hand and tapped his own temple.

“If you get caught up in the Eldest Young Master’s battle of wits and try to directly respond, all that awaits is an endless scheme.”

Didn’t Yeon So-hyeon evaluate the Chief Elder as someone who must be mentioned when discussing the power behind the scenes in the Luoyang Sword House?

“What the Eldest Young Master throws, you don’t hit back, but receive and utilize.”

The old monster’s eyeballs glimmered in the lamplight.

“If you want to target the Eldest Young Master who has already set the stage, you must stab and enter from outside the stage, at the very, very end, in a way he couldn’t even anticipate.”

It was hard to believe the imposing air emanating from the stooped, gaunt old man.

“…”

What could he possibly say?

The Chief Secretary received the instruction, forgetting to even swallow his dry saliva.

“Until then, you must remove all the rotten shells of the Inner Courtyard.”

The old monster sat back down in a cross-legged position.

“That is the guideline I give to the Inner Courtyard.”

***

The night deepens further, and calculations intersect in the darkness.

The arrangement of the pieces is complete.

All that remains is for another great game to unfold.

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