I was in my room.
The room was dark because I hadn’t lit the lamp, and officially, I wasn’t supposed to be here right now.
“Fire! Fire!”
“There’s a fire!”
Using those shouts as my cue, I started counting in my head.
One, two, three…
Right when I reached fifty, the door opened and Palgap slipped inside.
But I hadn’t sensed a thing.
If I’d been looking somewhere else, I probably wouldn’t have even realized he’d come in.
That was why I’d asked Palgap to handle this.
He had the talent of a King of Assassins.
“Young Master, I brought what you asked for.”
“Thanks.”
Palgap handed me a pair of shoes. They were the Artifact Gong Ho had been wearing.
I quickly stashed them inside my storage.
“Then do it just like we discussed.”
“Yes, sir. Understood. Please be careful out there.”
“Yeah. You too.”
I headed for the dungeon we’d visited yesterday with Escort Guard Seo Wu.
Because the fire had grown pretty large, everyone was too busy putting it out to pay attention to anything else.
Everything was going according to plan.
Only the traitors and the warriors Gong Ho had brought were staying in the inner compound, so I hadn’t hesitated to set it ablaze.
Yeon Yu-mun had been staying there too, but thanks to the warning I gave him, he was outside.
Taking advantage of the chaos, we safely reached the dungeon.
Then we entered through the secret passage Yeon Yu-mun had told us about earlier.
Before long, we arrived where the Imperial Prince was being held.
I immediately drew my sword and cut through the chains binding him.
Thud.
And before his body could hit the ground, Escort Guard Seo Wu caught him.
The shock made the Imperial Prince open his eyes, but they still weren’t focused.
He parted his lips, trying to say something, but I quickly covered his mouth and whispered,
“Whatever you want to say, I’ll hear it later, so please stay quiet for now.”
After taking off his clothes, I applied Geumryeong’s saliva to the wounds I’d prepared for in advance.
His injuries started healing almost immediately.
Like I said, Geumryeong’s saliva was the best.
Then I changed him into the clothes I’d brought.
We were sneaking out, sure, but I couldn’t exactly carry him out covered in blood.
I hoisted Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon onto my back.
– Let’s go.
– Yes.
Originally, Escort Guard Seo Wu had offered to carry him, but there was no way he could keep up with my speed while carrying the Imperial Prince, so I took him instead.
We left the dungeon and quietly made our way toward Springview Fortress’s gate.
Han Seok was waiting for us there, having already knocked out all the gate guards.
“Did you rescue His Highness?”
“Yes. As long as we can get him to Beijing, that’s enough, but with things the way they are, we’ll have to run without stopping. Are you prepared for that?”
“Of course. I’ll give it everything I have.”
I nodded, then kicked off the ground.
A few hours later, the fire at Springview Fortress Lord’s estate was finally extinguished.
Only then were people able to breathe again.
“My shoes! My shoes!”
No one had wanted the fire put out more desperately than Gong Ho. The moment it was over, he rushed into the room he’d been using.
Then he started searching for his shoes.
But no matter how many times he looked, they were nowhere to be found.
“W, where did they go? My shoes…”
He couldn’t hide his panic. One of the envoys looked at him and asked,
“What’s wrong?”
“My shoes are gone!”
“It’s just a pair of shoes. Why are you making such a fuss?”
At that scolding, Gong Ho shouted in frustration,
“Damn it! They’re not just shoes! They’re an Artifact! An Artifact called the One-Step Thousand-League Shoes!”
“A, an Artifact?”
Just then, someone pointed to a corner of the room.
“There’s something over here that looks like it might’ve been a pair of shoes…”
At those words, Gong Ho rushed over at once. But what he found was a pair of shoes that had nearly burned to ashes.
In reality, acting on Eun Seo-ho’s orders, Palgap had left a different pair of shoes there.
But Gong Ho had no way of knowing that, so he had no choice but to believe they were his Artifact shoes.
Thud.
He collapsed to the floor.
A treasure as precious as his own life had burned up.
His vision went white, grief crashing over him. Too stunned to do anything, he just stared blankly into space.
Then one of the dungeon guards came running over and shouted,
“T, this is bad! The Imperial Prince who was locked in the dungeon is gone!”
“What?”
“The chains were cut. It looks like someone broke in.”
At that, everyone forgot about the Artifact and the fire and rushed to the dungeon in a panic.
Just as the guard said, the chains had been severed, and where the Imperial Prince should have been, only a blood-soaked set of underclothes remained.
Then someone else came running up with another report.
“They say the gate guards were found unconscious! Someone definitely broke in.”
“Then who the hell was it?”
“Let’s think about this calmly. If they knocked out the gate guards and escaped, then that means they would’ve had to take down the guards to get in too, doesn’t it?”
“But we confirmed the gate guards were perfectly fine right before the fire broke out.”
“Then that means someone on the inside betrayed us?”
“Who was it? Who the hell did this?!”
The first people suspected were Eun Seo-ho’s group, the outsiders who had only recently arrived.
But.
“Our Deputy Merchant Lord left right after meeting with the Strategist earlier.”
“Is that true?”
“The gate guards saw it too… and weren’t you the one who personally saw him off earlier? So why are you asking?”
“Ahem, r, right.”
“Then who could it be…”
At that moment, Escort Guard Yeo Eung-am spoke up.
“Uh, there was one person acting a little strange earlier. The one with the wound on his cheek.”
“Dae-cheol?”
“Yes. I don’t know his name, but anyway, he was carrying some kind of bundle and kept glancing around while hurrying off somewhere. That seemed suspicious.”
“Find him.”
At Gong Ho’s order, everyone scattered to search for the man, but no matter how hard they looked, they couldn’t find him.
Gong Ho exploded in rage and said,
“That settles it. Jin Dae-cheol, that Embroidered Guard, is the traitor!”
.
.
.
An hour or two after it became all but certain that Embroidered Guard Jin Dae-cheol was the traitor.
A secluded part of the Fortress Lord’s estate.
Jin Dae-cheol was tied to a pillar in the place Eun Seo-ho had borrowed, a place only the Fortress Lord and Yeon Yu-mun knew about.
‘Where is this? Where am I?’
He remembered losing consciousness. Then he came to, and found himself here.
His throat acupoint had been sealed, and his eyes had been covered, so he had no idea where he was or what was happening.
And while he waited in fear for the acupoint to be released.
The door opened, and a familiar voice reached his ears.
“Seeing you like this… it’s almost nice.”
“…!”
A moment later, light returned to his vision, and he saw the owner of the voice.
It was Gwon Jik, a fellow Embroidered Guard, glaring at him with an icy expression.
“Well then, did you enjoy your happy little dream?”
“…”
“It’s about time you woke up from it. Come to think of it, I heard you tortured His Highness.”
He was the one who had personally tortured Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon.
Gwon Jik and the others had learned that through today’s chaos, and they were furious.
But they were soon able to calm themselves.
Because they realized why Eun Seo-ho hadn’t told them sooner.
‘He didn’t want us doing anything reckless.’
They’d worried So Un might lose control, but maybe Eun Seo-ho’s mental training had left more of an effect than expected, because all So Un did was bite his lip.
‘If anything, he’s probably even angrier than we are…’
Gwon Jik looked at Jin Dae-cheol and said,
“To wake you from that dream of yours, I think I’ll have to lend a hand.”
He picked up a dagger, and Jin Dae-cheol shuddered.
Because he knew all too well that Gwon Jik was even better at torture than he was.
“And I’ve got a feeling this kind of help is the only thing that’ll get you to give us the answers we want.”
Then came the overwhelming pain.
His throat acupoint was sealed, so he couldn’t even scream.
But not a single person there pitied him.
Gwon Jik’s voice drifted into his ear.
“Don’t worry. I won’t go so far that you die. His Majesty will be the one to judge your crimes.”
Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon’s hazy consciousness slowly began to clear.
He clenched his teeth.
Because now the threats and coercion, backed by torture, would start all over again.
The envoys who had been with him from the beginning hadn’t acted like that at first.
They had tried to win him over with riches and glory far beyond anything they had offered before.
They told him to found a nation in Springview Fortress and become its Lord.
But he couldn’t do that.
Partly because he believed the exploitation of Springview Fortress had to end, and partly because he knew just how terrifying his father, the Emperor, truly was.
When he refused to be swayed, they chose a more extreme method.
They subdued him by force and threw him into the dungeon.
In the process, the eunuchs and warriors who had tried to protect him and get him out were killed.
And before he could even mourn their deaths, his days in hell began.
Tortures so cruel he would never have believed a human being could inflict that much pain on another.
He endured every one of them with his own body, but he still couldn’t give the answer they wanted.
Because the torture he was suffering was still less frightening than his father, the Emperor.
As a father, he had been warm and kind.
But as a ruler, he was terrifying.
Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon knew that better than anyone because he had seen it firsthand.
And he believed in his father.
He believed the Emperor would come for him.
But the torture only grew harsher, and his body finally reached its limit.
Even so, he never opened his mouth.
He endured on sheer will alone.
His mind gradually blurred, and just when he thought this was how he would die.
Someone fed him something. It was unbelievably sweet.
It tasted so heavenly, it felt like the legendary nectar from the heavens themselves.
He could feel his raw, aching insides recovering.
And at the same time, a voice whispered in his ear.
“You absolutely cannot die. You have to hold on to the very end. You’ll be able to repay all of this suffering soon enough.”
At that voice, he held on stubbornly through the next day as well, but in the end, he lost consciousness.
Then, sensing that something was strange, he opened his eyes.
The face swimming before his blurred vision was stunningly beautiful.
So beautiful that he mistook it for a fairy.
He tried to ask for help, but a hand covered his mouth.
Then the voice came again.
“Whatever you want to say, I’ll hear it later, so please stay quiet for now.”
It was the same voice he had heard before, the one telling him to hold on to the end.
A strange sense of relief washed over him, and he lost consciousness again. And now, he had awakened.
‘Huh?’
But then he realized something was off.
Instead of the usual smell of dirt and blood, he smelled medicine.
And the pain was gone.
‘Did I… die?’
That was how unreal it felt.
As his mind gradually cleared, he felt something like needles stuck in his body, and he heard people talking nearby.
“Why hasn’t His Highness regained consciousness yet?”
It was a familiar voice.
The voice of one of the eunuchs who had stayed behind in the Imperial Palace while serving him.
“His vitality was severely depleted. Even so, he’s still alive because we got an Elixir into him beforehand.”
At that, he forced out a weak sound filled with hope.
“Ugh…”
“Your Highness!”
“Your Highness! Have you awakened? Your Highness!”
“M, Man Ung?”
“Yes! Your Highness! It’s me, Man Ung! Do you recognize my voice?”
“W, where… am I right now?”
“This is the Imperial Palace, Your Highness. Your residence.”
“W, what happened? How am I in my residence?”
The place where he had been held was Yunnan.
It was so far from the Imperial Palace in Beijing that it might as well have been the exact opposite end of the world.
“The Embroidered Guards, acting under His Majesty’s command, rescued you, Your Highness.”
“Then who was the one carrying me on his back?”
He remembered briefly regaining consciousness midway and feeling someone running with him on their back.
Someone straining so hard that his back had been drenched in sweat.
And he also remembered hearing someone say, “Deputy Merchant Lord, let me carry him.”
At that question, the eunuch Man Ung answered.
“It was Deputy Merchant Lord Eun Seo-ho.”
Eun Seo-ho was someone he knew as well. After all, he was a man greatly favored by his father, the Emperor.
“According to Han Seok of the Embroidered Guard, he played a decisive role in rescuing Your Highness.”
“Where is he now?”
He needed to thank the man who had saved him, and he needed to say that Springview Fortress was innocent, that they had been wronged, and that someone had to help them.
“Well… he’s not here right now.”
“Not here?”
“He led the Imperial Guard and headed back to Yunnan Province.”
At those words, Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon jolted upright and shouted,
“N, no! The Lord of Springview Fortress is innocent!”
“Yes. We know.”
“What? Y, you know?”
“Yes, Your Highness. The reason they returned to Yunnan Province was to capture and punish the shameless traitors responsible for this, and for the sake of the Lord of Springview Fortress and the people of the city who were sacrificed.”
“Ah… I see.”
The moment he heard that, all the tension drained from Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon’s body, and he collapsed back onto the bed, unconscious once more.
I was on my way to Yunnan Province again.
Seriously, what kind of cursed fate is this?
How many times am I supposed to go back and forth between Beijing and Yunnan…
Still, at least we managed to save Imperial Prince Ju Hyeon before he died.
If it weren’t for Young Lady Seohyang’s advice, things really could’ve gone horribly wrong.
But this still wasn’t over.
Palgap and the escort guards were still in Springview Fortress, and the traitors still had to be dealt with.
That said, the Emperor told me to name the reward I wanted, and I told him I’d give him my answer later.
Truth be told, there was already something I had in mind.
I wanted him to leave me alone.
I’m a merchant, not an Embroidered Guard.
–TL Notes–
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