Geom Mugeuk and Han Seol returned to their quarters and told the Drunken Demon and Ian what had happened when they met Seo Nak.
When Geom Mugeuk finished speaking, Han Seol said to Ian,
“It was a good judgment to suggest we leave it to the Young Cult Leader instead of handling it ourselves.”
She had thought Ian was being deceived by Geom Mugeuk, but this incident changed her mind a little. Even if he was not some transcendent being, there was certainly something extraordinary about him.
Geom Mugeuk’s mischievous gaze turned toward Ian.
“A subordinate who pushes work onto his leader?”
“At times like that, a good leader pretends not to notice and lets it pass.”
“It’s hard, living as a leader.”
“Young Cult Leader, you’re the one making it hard. Other leaders all live easily.”
Han Seol still found this kind of conversation unfamiliar. She was convinced that such an easy relationship with one’s subordinates was bound to bring serious side effects.
“Do you know who is closest to Elder Seo?”
At Geom Mugeuk’s question, Han Seol answered honestly.
“The closest person to him is the Palace Lord.”
“Would you arrange a meeting with the Palace Lord for me tomorrow?”
“I will.”
“But I’ll go alone tomorrow.”
“Why?”
Geom Mugeuk gave an unexpected reason.
“Because when one’s child is present, a palace lord becomes a parent instead.”
Han Seol thought Geom Mugeuk still did not know about her mother.
“I don’t think you need to worry about that.”
“There are parental feelings that a child can never know.”
“How would the Young Cult Leader know a parent’s heart? You aren’t even married yet.”
Geom Mugeuk was not the sort to be at a loss for an answer to such a question.
“When you have someone like my father as your parent, you end up studying parents very diligently. What is a parent!”
Geom Mugeuk saw the Drunken Demon laugh at his words. Everyone feared and worried about his father, but probably none more than the Drunken Demon. At least it was fortunate that the misunderstanding that his father disliked him had been resolved.
Geom Mugeuk approached the Drunken Demon, who was drinking tea, and sniffed at him.
“Young Cult Leader, what are you doing?”
“I’m checking because you and tea don’t suit each other at all, Drunken Demon. I wondered if there might be liquor in the pot instead of tea.”
With those words, Geom Mugeuk poured tea into an empty teacup and drank it.
“Somehow I feel like I’m getting drunk. Isn’t this liquor that tastes like tea?”
“Tea is nice too, once you start drinking it.”
“You’re holding up well, though.”
“You know, don’t you? There’s nothing as mysterious as the human body. As if it never drank so much liquor, my body is already adapting to tea.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m saying you’re holding back well when you must want to charge over there and overturn everything.”
The Drunken Demon drank his tea in one long draught and said,
“I won’t be able to endure it for long.”
Between the long strands of hair hanging down, the Drunken Demon’s eyes were colder than ever.
Ian and Han Seol could tell. The Drunken Demon was not holding back liquor; he was holding back his rage.
Geom Mugeuk looked out the window and spoke quietly. Now, he was treating him not as a Demon Venerable, but as an older brother.
“We’ll drag them out soon. This place is too beautiful for villains to hide in.”
Everyone followed Geom Mugeuk’s gaze and looked for a moment at the pure white world outside the window.
Knowing what sort of person the Blood King was, Geom Mugeuk briefly imagined that white world covered in blood.
But that was all right.
Because soon it would be covered once more by pure white snow.
* * *
The Ice Palace Lord received me with tea and refreshments.
“This is my first time sitting together with the heir of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.”
“It is an honor.”
“Now, have some.”
When I drank the tea without hesitation, the Ice Palace Lord looked at me as though surprised. The meaning was clear: as the Young Cult Leader, how could I drink without even checking for poison?
“Before coming here, I investigated and studied you, Palace Lord.”
“What sort of person was I?”
“You were an intelligent and astute person. Even if half a century passed and dementia came upon you, at the very least you would not poison a Young Cult Leader who came from the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.”
The Ice Palace Lord gave a faint smile. She understood that I was complimenting her by saying she looked to be in her twenties or thirties.
“I studied a little about you as well.”
“What sort of person am I?”
Looking straight at me, the Ice Palace Lord answered.
“A person one cannot easily define with a single answer.”
“You saw correctly. I am not an easy person.”
I said it as though joking, but the Ice Palace Lord did not smile, as if she truly thought so.
“I hear there has been progress in the investigation?”
“Yes. That is why I paid a visit to Elder Seo yesterday.”
“Do you suspect Elder Seo?”
I slowly drank my tea and let a brief silence pass.
“What do you think, Palace Lord?”
“It is absurd.”
“There are suspicious circumstances.”
“Is that so?”
“And yet you are calm.”
“Because it is impossible.”
The Ice Palace Lord did not hide that she trusted Seo Nak more than anyone.
“You still have not properly answered my question.”
It was also a direct demand that I state my thoughts.
“I suspect him.”
“Why?”
“It is simply what I feel.”
For the force behind this to threaten you, Palace Lord, it would have to be someone on Elder Seo’s level.
“So you mean you have no direct evidence.”
Geom Mugeuk admitted it with a smile.
“Why would Elder Seo have killed Wonju?”
“I don’t know either.”
“He is not that sort of person.”
She drove the point home once again, but I could feel it. Some distrust was hidden within that trust. If she truly believed Seo Nak, she would have stopped the investigation right now.
There was another reason she had allowed me to remain in the Ice Palace and investigate this case.
‘What is it that you truly want?’
I could feel that there was a secret buried deep within the snow, beyond merely finding the culprit who had killed Wonju.
This time, I probed the Ice Palace Lord’s heart with the matter of the North Blood Sect.
“I believe the North Blood Sect is also involved in this affair.”
Even when the North Blood Sect was mentioned, she did not show any particular agitation.
“Did you expect that?”
“Their second son got entangled with you.”
“You know he is dead, don’t you?”
Of course, the Ice Palace Lord knew.
“I heard he took his own life, shocked by the kidnapping this time.”
“Do you believe that?”
Instead of answering, she drank her tea.
“What do you think of those who would kill even their own children for the sake of their desires?”
“I am one of those people as well. I am someone to whom the Ice Palace matters more than my child.”
Her answer was both self-deprecating and provocative.
“It seems I studied you incorrectly, Palace Lord. The Palace Lord I studied is someone who cherishes her daughter more than anyone.”
The Ice Palace Lord stared at me. Her eyes asked how I could know that.
I may not know anything else, but I do know that one thing for certain. How much you love your daughter.
Though you have never properly expressed it, and though you even seem unaware of your own heart.
“Well, even so, it is all right.”
I brought in someone who worked well and got through in any situation.
“My father would be the same.”
As expected, the Ice Palace Lord smiled faintly. She too would know well what kind of person the Heavenly Demon of this generation was.
And what I wanted to say was this.
“My father, and you as well, Palace Lord, are all thinking wrongly.”
At the words she had not expected, the Ice Palace Lord looked slightly surprised. She likely had not imagined I would say not only she, who sat before me, but even the Heavenly Demon was thinking wrongly.
“In what way?”
I said to her first what I wanted to say to my father someday.
“I want to tell you not to live a life where you sacrifice everything for your organization, then look back and find no one there.”
“!”
“It is a life you ran for the sake of those behind you. And because of that, you ran looking only ahead. Yet then you sigh, ‘How could you do this to me?’ That sort of life. You must look back. Far more often, and far more carefully, than you think is enough. Cruelly enough, seven or eight times out of ten, they will not even know you looked back. Because they too must look back at what is behind them.”
I rose from my seat and bowed politely to her.
“I want to tell you that now is the time to look back at your daughter. Fortunately, she still seems to be standing behind you.”
* * *
The next day, I went to see the Ice Palace Lord again.
“What brings you today?”
“I wondered whether I was too rude yesterday, so I came to see you again today.”
“You told me to speak with my daughter, yet you are the one who came again.”
Fortunately, she did not seem angry over yesterday’s matter. The issue of her daughter must have been an important one to her as well.
“You still haven’t called your daughter, have you?”
The Ice Palace Lord could not answer. If she had been someone who could look back the moment she was told to, she would have lived while looking back from the start.
“I know such things do not easily change after being told only once.”
“So? Do you mean to keep coming until they do?”
“That is my intention.”
“What is the reason you are doing this?”
I did feel for the two of them, but there was another reason as well.
It was precisely because of Seo Nak. He would be watching my meetings with the Ice Palace Lord.
I met her yesterday, and I met her today. What if I met her again tomorrow?
Judging by his obsessive nature, I guessed he would seek a certain perfection or order even in human relationships.
The Young Cult Leader of the Demon Cult, who had clearly shown signs of suspecting him, was meeting the Ice Palace Lord every day? This would certainly shake his order.
I had to quickly find out what role he played in this affair. Whether he was merely a good-natured elder with obsessive tendencies, their hands and feet, or the body itself.
“What other reason could there be? I want things to go well for the Young Palace Lord. If not for her, I could not have come here this time. I would not have been able to see you so often either, Palace Lord. Since you studied me, you must know well. I truly like spending time with the rising talents of the younger generation. I am someone who even dances with them.”
No matter how hard she tried to grasp me, it would not be easy. As long as the things she was certain were false were in fact my truth.
“Have you ever felt as though you had lost your way?”
What was he going to say now, bringing this up? With that emotion plainly written on her face, the Ice Palace Lord shook her head.
“I feel it often. I felt it yesterday as I left after seeing you, Palace Lord. Who was I to say such things to you so arrogantly? In the first place, I had only followed the Drunken Demon to the North Sea because I wanted to spend time with him.”
I bowed my head politely to her.
“I apologize for my arrogance yesterday.”
After silently gazing at me for a moment, she asked,
“You said you were abstaining from alcohol?”
“Yes. Abstinence out of loyalty.”
“When does it end?”
I understood that she meant we should have a drink together.
“It will not be long.”
Of course, I added the decisive words.
“If you trust me, Palace Lord.”
* * *
Seo Nak made his move on the evening of the day Geom Mugeuk visited the Palace Lord’s Hall for the third day in a row.
“Welcome, Elder.”
“I stopped by on my way past.”
From the time the Ice Palace Lord had been the Young Palace Lord until now, Seo Nak had always treated her with courtesy.
Seo Nak immediately revealed the reason he had come.
“I heard you have been meeting often with the Young Cult Leader of the Demon Cult.”
“He has come to see me for three days straight.”
Seo Nak asked cautiously,
“Someone of the Young Cult Leader’s standing would not move without reason. What do you think his ulterior motive is?”
By using the expression ulterior motive, he revealed what his own feelings toward Geom Mugeuk were.
“He told me to try to get along well with my daughter.”
Seo Nak waited for the next words. Surely that was not all.
“For three days, that was mainly what we talked about.”
Seo Nak could not believe it.
‘Is the Palace Lord deceiving me?’
Naturally, he could not help but think that. The Geom Mugeuk who had faced him was seasoned beyond his years. Each and every one of the remarks he casually thrust at him had thorns and bones.
Yet he had come for three days just to tell her to get along with Han Seol? It was difficult to believe.
“As you know well, the demonic practitioners are people who cannot be trusted.”
“I do not trust them either.”
If you do not trust them, then why did you bring them in?
Forcing down the words that had risen to his throat, Seo Nak said,
“Whatever the Young Cult Leader’s intentions may be, I think it would be best to send him away as soon as possible.”
Then he added with emphasis,
“For the sake of the Ice Palace as well.”
At that, the Ice Palace Lord said quietly,
“You say it is for the sake of the Ice Palace again.”
Seo Nak flinched and was about to ask what she meant by that when the Ice Palace Lord spoke one step ahead.
“You are right. Nothing good can come of demonic practitioners staying in the palace for long. I will tell the Young Cult Leader to resolve this matter within a set time.”
Though she had obediently followed his will, Seo Nak noticed that the Ice Palace Lord was different from usual. Somehow, in some subtle way, she was different.
The Ice Palace Lord had always stood at the distance and position he had set for her. And in that moment, he felt it. She was standing just slightly askew from her original place.
“This is all the path for the sake of the Ice Palace.”
Seo Nak left those words behind and descended from the Palace Lord’s Hall. As he went down the steps, he recalled what the Ice Palace Lord had said earlier.
—You say it is for the sake of the Ice Palace again.
Again? When had he said it before? It was something he said as a habit, so he could not tell which time she meant.
When he came down from the Palace Lord’s Hall like that, Seo Nak met Geom Mugeuk at the entrance.
“Elder Seo?”
“Young Cult Leader.”
The two faced each other and exchanged greetings.
“Are you on your way back from seeing the Palace Lord?”
“I am. And you?”
He had shown a sight there was no particular need to show, but Seo Nak remained calm.
“I came to see the Palace Lord as well. If I had come just a little earlier, we could have seen her together. What a pity.”
“I hear you have been visiting her often these days.”
“Opportunities to learn from the Palace Lord’s lofty insight are rare.”
“Then go and speak with her.”
“After seeing the Palace Lord, I plan to go to the North Blood Sect.”
At the mention of the North Blood Sect, Seo Nak’s steps, which had been turning away, stopped.
“Why the North Blood Sect?”
“They have lost a child, so their grief must be great. I should go and offer my condolences.”
“Young Cult Leader, you are truly kind.”
Seo Nak did not believe the claim that he was going to offer condolences.
His mood soured. Geom Mugeuk was going here and there, disturbing everything around him.
“Then I will see you again next time.”
When Geom Mugeuk bent his upper body in a fist-and-palm salute, Seo Nak saw it. A single letter protruding from Geom Mugeuk’s robes.
‘No. Could it be? Is that the letter he said stated that Wonju had given me the Hyangseol Bingju?’
Geom Mugeuk saw it. The face that had always smiled benevolently in any situation stiffened for the first time.
His order had begun to collapse.