Hui spoke in a tone utterly devoid of surprise.

“Ah, oh my. You were so lovely, Young Lady, that my hand went out without realizing it. I apologize. Of course, I accept your proposal.”

“P-Pardon?”

“Even if just for the sake of bringing you here, I suppose I really must poke through every nook and cranny of the Zhuge Clan. Leave it to me, and go catch up on your lacking sleep now.”

“Then…”

“Since we don’t know what happened right now, I won’t make a fuss prematurely. Just know that I tend to work capable people to the bone.”

“Ah…”

Only after everything she had planned proceeded with lightning speed did the strength drain from her hands. Seol-rin, belatedly flushing at the nape of her neck, answered in a crawling voice that she understood, then rose obediently from her seat. Even as she exited the luxurious sliding doors, Hui’s voice followed behind her back.

If you need to see me, come here anytime; even if it’s night, just grab anyone and tell them; if there’s food you can’t eat, make sure to tell the manager; feel free to use everything in the Guest House comfortably; if you need anything, don’t hesitate to say so! They were mostly trivial words dripping with consideration, worry, and meddling.

Some time after Seol-rin’s footsteps faded away, all traces of the outsider remaining on the upper floor vanished.

Only then did Hui slowly close his mouth and lower the hand he had been waving affectionately. The face that had been smiling with warmth and cheer was now devoid of expression.

The clear sound of the wind chime and the sunlight settling on his shoulders could not break the ice-cold silence.

Hui, glaring wordlessly at someone not present before him with a silent face, dug his fingertips into the desk with a kkadeudeuk sound.

Veins stood out on the back of his hand from unvomited emotion, and fierce nail marks were engraved on the surface of the writing desk carved from rosewood.

Hui, who had been breathing heavily huff, huff for a while, spoke in a low voice. The cheerful tone had long since frozen cold.

“…What do you think?”

“…Master usually writes with a lamb-hair brush, and due to the characteristic of lamb hair gaining elasticity with long use, his writing is characterized by elegant stroke momentum. However, seeing that the strokes in the letter that arrived during the Three Treasures Tournament were sharp in execution and intense in conclusion… it seems he used a weasel-hair brush.”

The answer to the question thrown abruptly into the void came from the side.

It was Sa-yeong, walking out after opening a door cleverly hidden by a folding screen.

Sa-yeong held up her master’s letter in her hand and continued, “Although it is high-quality paper, there is no hidden pattern. Didn’t he put a peony pattern in the paper kept at the private villa, similar to what is used here?”

“That’s right. That person knows the pattern too, so he must have switched the paper before giving it to him. He needed to hide the fact that the Immortal Healer Great Hero was staying in Shaanxi Province, so there’s no way he would have stupidly used my paper.”

“But since he couldn’t take out an old brush from that private villa, it must have ended up like this.”

How good would it have been if I knew earlier? If I had learned how to analyze handwriting sooner, I could have noticed as soon as I received this.

Sa-yeong’s expression as she looked into the letter again was merely complicated. She had no self-awareness that living with suspicion toward everything would make her an unsociable human being.

The beginning of the incident was the night before last.

Sa-yeong, returning with her brother after a series of shocking conversations with Cho Yoon, witnessed a strange scene. Moving luggage in the middle of the night before dawn was frequent enough, but the problem was the accessory wrapped around the wrist of one of the sect members unloading the cargo.

Apple blossoms in Guangdong Province, where the sunlight steams people to death?

And three apple blossoms at that—isn’t that the crest of the Shaanxi Zhuge Clan?

Sa-yeong, who had just been seriously contemplating whether to silence Zhuge Seol-rin, caught the sect member with sharp intuition, and it wasn’t difficult to hear his identity. The martial artist who had infiltrated the Hao Sect disguised as a member was none other than Zhuge Seol-rin’s escort warrior.

By what grace of heaven, Zhuge Seol-rin was coming here herself.

Furthermore, it seemed something grave enough to make her rush urgently yet unable to even show impatience had occurred. Cheon-oh definitely said he met her in Zhejiang Province, but did she follow all the way here in the end?

Sa-yeong, tracing her master’s tracks, suddenly felt a sense of incongruity.

—Master mentioned there was someone he had to meet after resolving the poison issue in Shaanxi Province four years ago, and it seems he established a connection with Zhuge Seol-rin then. At the time, I… stayed at the inn, so I didn’t know.

—It makes no sense that the Hao Sect didn’t know this.

—There is only one force that wants to harm the Central Plains on such a large scale, right?

—Young Master Seo said something to Young Lady Seol-rin, and Young Lady Seol-rin fell for it and secretly monitored Shaanxi Province. Then what on earth is this ‘something’…? It seemed she obtained information that was definitely large-scale and dangerous yet hard to believe easily, so I watched throughout the Three Treasures Tournament, but in the end, nothing came up.

Sa-yeong had learned the fact that ‘the Immortal Healer was in Shaanxi Province’ through the letter her master sent to Hui after the Three Treasures Tournament ended. However, at that time, the Hao Sect’s Shaanxi branch was monitoring the entire Shaanxi Province upon Zhuge Seol-rin’s request, and even if not for the request, the grand event called the Three Treasures Tournament concentrated more manpower in Shaanxi than usual.

The Hao Sect, the gathering place of all information in the Central Plains, was flocked in Shaanxi Province… Could really nothing have come up?

If he were alone, maybe, but could a pharmacist accompanied by a fifteen-year-old Seomun Cheon-oh really have gone unnoticed by anyone’s eyes?

Even considering the martial arts characteristics of her master and junior brother, it was entirely suspicious.

The Formless Void Eclipse Art was a mental cultivation method that assimilated one’s energy with nature to make one’s presence faint, not a technique that made people forget you. If they stayed at an inn, they surely would have encountered clerks, yet no one in Shaanxi Province, teeming with Hao Sect members, had doubts?

Thinking this far, Sa-yeong began to scour all the records from that time to build a hypothesis.

Visiting the archives at a late hour, she took out the letters sent from Shaanxi Province and also gathered her master’s letters she had stored neatly. By the time all preparations were complete, the sun was already high in the sky. Sa-yeong ran to her second teacher and boss with sharp eyes, hugging all sorts of papers.

And while she was in the middle of analyzing with Hui, Zhuge Seol-rin arrived and showed decisive information.

“The Hao Sect carries news all over the neighborhood just by reclusive eccentrics breathing the city air, but ha! There should be a limit to deception. I took in a dying human, taught him, clothed him, and sat him in that seat, and he cuts off my hands and feet?”

“Is Branch Manager Wang an ordinary human? If he borrowed the power of the Demonic Cult, there would be nothing he couldn’t mobilize, from martial power to restrictions, so it is understandable he could hide it until now.”

“Trusting him and not even visiting for several years was a mistake. He must have moved very slowly so I wouldn’t notice. In that case, the scale won’t be that large, so weeding them out isn’t difficult. The problem is the aftermath.”

Hui, letting out a hollow laugh as if dumbfounded, continued.

“Shaanxi Province is exactly where the Zhuge Clan, Mount Hua, and Zhongnan are all gathered. Wang Jeong has managed the Hao Sect and Peony Escort Agency branches there for a whopping ten years. Just how many things must have been edited and corrupted passing through his hands during that time? And what about the items embezzled and spied on from the escort agency? I have to re-examine not just Shaanxi Province, but the businesses of all regions, and every executive-level member of every business. It’s like I’ve been painting with sewage instead of ink!”

“…Please calm yourself, Sect Leader. In the end, wasn’t it discovered? If it were that serious, there is no way you wouldn’t have known, Sect Leader.”

“‘No way I wouldn’t know,’ ‘no way I wouldn’t notice.’ I shouldn’t have been so arrogant. It was like handing too much power to a human too far away. If I had at least entrusted the escort agency or the private villa to someone else…”

Hui frowned and lifted a hand to press his temples firmly.

Sa-yeong, who had been standing silently for a moment fingering the letter, spoke, “…By the way, what do you think was the reason he had to hide the fact that Master was in Shaanxi Province?”

“…Wang Jeong didn’t show prominence in martial arts, and since he was in a position with much contact with the outside, his status in the Demonic Cult is likely neither very high nor low. No mastermind tells such a person everything about the plan. If he only knew the poisoning plan for Shaanxi Province without knowing where the Zhenniao would be released… it’s plausible he was wary of the Immortal Healer Great Hero.”

“Wary of Master?”

“The Immortal Healer Great Hero already has a record of sealing the Brilliance Heavenly Demonic Emperor against the Demonic Cult, and he has the ability to detoxify the Zhenniao’s poison. Even if he didn’t know he had the ability, it was reason enough to keep an eye on him. Because a massive conspiracy to poison the entire Shaanxi Province shouldn’t be ruined by a poison arts master who appeared by chance.”

“What does Master being able to resolve a large-scale poisoning incident at once have to do with concealing the fact that he stayed at the Hao Sect’s private villa?”

“If worst came to worst, he would have mobilized his forces to try and stop the Great Hero, and the best direction would have been to go further and harm the Great Hero. He must have thought that if this scheme succeeded, it would be troublesome if I discovered the Great Hero’s tracks. That is the only reason to hide his destination.”

Sa-yeong’s face, having her sanctuary provoked, distorted in an instant. It was a hypothesis of the past that hadn’t happened and couldn’t happen, but just hearing it offended her.

“It was probably better if the timing was slightly off… and since the probability of subduing the Great Hero was low anyway, he likely sent the letter intact. The Great Hero didn’t mention separately that he was staying at the private villa either.”

“…Yes, there was no such sentence.”

“I knew it. Because the Immortal Healer Great Hero always speaks concisely only of important business.”

“…Just how did he think he could harm Master?”

“Either he received support of equivalent martial power… or if it were me, I would have tried to use the Zhenniao’s poison that was scheduled to be released soon. Since great chaos would follow once the poison turmoil began, he probably planned to tail the Great Hero and try something in that confusion.”

Although the exact circumstances could only be known by dragging that human here and tearing him apart piece by piece, it didn’t seem likely to deviate much from the most persuasive current hypothesis.

Sa-yeong, letting out a frustrated sigh at the sheer absurdity, spoke.