Chapter 579:
Waking up from sleep is never a pleasant thing. Especially for Wei Yan-ho. Wei Yan-ho had never once enjoyed the moment of waking up from sleep.
He always forced his eyes open with the feeling of wanting to sleep just a little more, just a bit more if he could.
But today’s awakening was a little different from before.
Wei Yan-ho pushed off the blanket with a dazed expression. Then he sat up on the bed.
“……”
Wei Yan-ho, who had been silently staring into the distance, quietly opened his mouth.
“……It’s over.”
Empty and hollow.
It was like watching sand that had been held in his palm slip through his fingers completely. No matter how tightly he grasped it, the sand would eventually flow away.
The Dream Practice was like that sand.
No matter how much he tried to make it last, an end would eventually come. One cannot dream forever. People must eventually wake up from their dreams. Even if that dream is incomparably sweet and peaceful, one they don’t want to wake from.
There is no eternal night. Morning inevitably comes.
“The end……”
The melancholy that the word ‘end’ brought was sorrowful.
If the first farewell he faced without understanding gave Wei Yan-ho intense sadness, then this farewell he now faced was pressing down on him with a dull weight.
It was a farewell he would have to face someday.
It was sorrow he would have to experience someday.
He had thought this day would come. But knowing it was coming didn’t make Wei Yan-ho’s sadness any duller.
Wei Yan-ho quietly turned his head to look out the window.
The sunlight streaming down remained the same.
The wind blowing remained the same.
Even though Baek Mu-han’s existence had completely disappeared from the world, the world showed no change at all. It was hard to accept that fact.
He would have to pull himself together.
If Baek Mu-han saw him looking so pathetic like this, he would immediately kick Wei Yan-ho’s backside.
But now that was no longer possible.
You can only act spoiled when there’s a master to scold and get angry with you. But without a master, that’s no longer possible.
Because the teacher watching from heaven would feel frustrated.
Wei Yan-ho bid his final farewell to Baek Mu-han with two sighs.
“Hey!”
Bang!
At that moment, the door opened and Jang-il came running in.
“Hey, Wei Yan-ho! The strategist wants to see… are you crying?”
Jang-il stepped back two paces with an expression like he had seen a ghost.
‘What the hell is happening?’
It would have been easier to accept if the young master had been wailing loudly. That’s how shocking the sight of tears hanging in Wei Yan-ho’s eyes was.
‘Did he yawn?’
That didn’t seem to be the case either.
Sadness was evident in his expression. Jang-il, who had lived by reading the mood, couldn’t fail to grasp such things. Instinctively realizing that something tremendous had happened, Jang-il slowly backed away.
“The strategist wants what?”
Looking at Wei Yan-ho asking back in a low voice, Jang-il’s face also became serious.
‘This isn’t the usual Wei Yan-ho.’
If it were the usual Wei Yan-ho, he would have thrown a pillow infused with internal energy or said something ridiculous like telling him to come when he’s not busy, for waking him up over something trivial.
But the current Wei Yan-ho was responding sensibly.
Sensibly.
Realizing how ill-fitting the words ‘Wei Yan-ho’ and ‘sensible’ were together, goosebumps rose all over Jang-il’s body.
Wasn’t this like having a normal conversation with a normal person? Since the person isn’t normal, normalcy becomes abnormal.
“The, the strategist wants you to come?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly, but it seems like something urgent has happened.”
“Mm.”
Wei Yan-ho nodded.
Then he got up and began gathering his clothes.
“……You’re going?”
“Didn’t you say he told me to come?”
“That, that’s right.”
“Then I should go.”
Good heavens.
Jang-il covered his mouth with both fists. How long had it been since they’d had such a normal conversation?
If told to come, he goes.
Hadn’t he gone through all that trouble trying to make Wei Yan-ho understand this simple logic? The results were finally showing now, but Jang-il couldn’t be entirely happy about it.
‘What really happened?’
Wei Yan-ho’s face had already become expressionless, but he couldn’t hide the dejected air about him.
“Hey, Wei Yan-ho.”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing happened to you, did it?”
“What do you mean nothing?”
Wei Yan-ho smiled slightly.
“I just experienced what I had to experience.”
Jang-il looked at Wei Yan-ho with a puzzled gaze.
People can mature. But they don’t mature overnight. Someone who was an ordinary Wei Yan-ho until yesterday couldn’t change into an ordinary person in one night.
“Let’s go.”
Wei Yan-ho, having roughly put on his clothes and tied his waist sash, urged Jang-il.
“Uh-huh.”
Jang-il nodded and took the lead.
‘Something’s really strange……’
Jang-il kept glancing back at Wei Yan-ho with questioning eyes.
“You’re here?”
“Yes.”
“Sit down.”
“Yes.”
As Wei Yan-ho went to an empty seat, Shin Gi-sua looked at him with slightly questioning eyes.
‘Why is he acting like that?’
Strange.
Why is he sitting down obediently as told?
He had already prepared himself mentally. If it were the Wei Yan-ho he knew, he would have been complaining about everything from the moment he entered. He had steeled himself for it, but seeing him sit down without a word left Shin Gi-sua feeling flustered instead.
And why did he come so early?
Wasn’t it common sense that waking Wei Yan-ho and bringing him here would take at least half an hour?
That common sense had just been shattered.
The situation was urgent, so he had even thought about going to Wei Yan-ho’s room as a group to hold the meeting, but with things proceeding so naturally, Shin Gi-sua felt nothing but unease.
‘Why is he acting like that?’
He gave Jang-il a subtle look, but Jang-il just shrugged as if he didn’t know either.
“Ahem.”
Shin Gi-sua cleared his throat to dispel the strange atmosphere. He didn’t understand the situation, but now wasn’t the time to figure it out.
“Since everyone is gathered, let’s begin.”
Cho Hyeon looked around the room.
The temporary meeting room was packed with many people. They could be roughly divided into two groups. The key figures responsible for the core of the Righteous Alliance and Wei Jeong-han’s group.
These were the most important people currently staying at the Righteous Alliance. Due to the Righteous Alliance’s characteristic of leaving elder positions to each sect, there wasn’t really anyone else to worry about besides the Alliance Leader. Important matters were decided by these people.
“To get straight to the point, an urgent message has arrived.”
Shin Gi-sua raised the red letter in his hand. Seeing the urgent message, everyone’s faces became tense with worry.
Recently, Wei Jeong-han had been sending urgent messages frequently, somewhat diminishing their importance compared to before, but in fact, urgent messages were only used for matters related to the survival of the Righteous Alliance.
An urgent message arriving meant something very important had happened, and in the current situation, there was only one place such a message could come from.
“Anhui?”
“That’s right.”
Wei Jeong-han nodded with a grim expression.
If it was news from Anhui, it was news of war. The situation at White Sword Castle that they had been anxiously waiting for had finally reached the Righteous Alliance.
“What’s the result?”
“……”
Shin Gi-sua said nothing.
But there was no one here who couldn’t guess the meaning of that behavior.
“How, how badly……”
The words asking how badly they had lost couldn’t come out to the end.
Shin Gi-sua glanced around the room briefly, then opened his mouth in a heavy voice.
“The situation…… is very unfavorable.”
Yeong Jon, who had been quietly listening to Shin Gi-sua’s words, raised his hand.
“Speak.”
“I understand that it’s difficult to speak due to the severity of the situation. But since every moment counts, please just briefly convey the situation.”
“……I shall.”
Shin Gi-sua briefly closed his eyes.
Then he opened his mouth as if suppressing something.
“Not everything is written in the urgent message. It appears to have been written very hastily. There are only two things written in the urgent message.”
“Two things?”
“One is crushing defeat.”
The heavy feeling that the words ‘crushing defeat’ carried settled down on them. If the word crushing defeat was used in war, it meant they had inflicted almost no damage while suffering near-annihilation losses themselves.
But…….
“Is, is that possible?”
Wei Jeong-han jumped up from his seat.
His face was flushed red. Everyone here knew that White Sword Castle was no easy opponent. But those led personally by Gwon Geuk weren’t at the level to suffer a crushing defeat.
Even if they lost, it should have been a close battle. But a crushing defeat?
“The Alliance Leader is! The Alliance Leader is there……”
“I’ll tell you the second piece of news.”
As Shin Gi-sua interrupted Wei Jeong-han’s words and mentioned the second news, everyone’s faces went pale.
What the second piece of news would be was all too obvious.
But they absolutely did not want to hear those obvious words with their own ears. If Gwon Geuk was there, they couldn’t have suffered a crushing defeat. But they did suffer a crushing defeat. Then?
‘No.’
Wei Jeong-han’s eyes wavered.
But Shin Gi-sua delivered the words he absolutely didn’t want to hear in an utterly cold voice.
“The Alliance Leader… has fallen.”
“……”
A chilling atmosphere swept through everyone.
“You’re not joking, are you?”
At Yeong Jon’s question, Shin Gi-sua shook his head.
“I don’t want to accept it, but it’s true. Unless the person who sent the urgent message was playing a prank.”
Anyone who knew what urgent messages meant in the Righteous Alliance, anyone who possessed such an urgent message, wouldn’t write something in it that they hadn’t confirmed with their own eyes.
If it was marked as ‘deceased’ rather than ‘fate unknown’ or ‘missing’, there was no room for doubt.
“What on earth……”
Wei Jeong-han collapsed into his seat.
He wanted to deny it but couldn’t. And now wasn’t the time to be in denial. It wasn’t time to deny reality but to come up with countermeasures.
The fact that he couldn’t even show grief over the death of the Alliance Leader he respected was tormenting Wei Jeong-han.
“Is that all that was conveyed?”
Yeong Jon was maintaining his composure as much as possible.
“That’s right.”
“That means the intelligence agents dispatched to Anhui haven’t sent word yet.”
“That’s also correct.”
“Then…… something massive that even the intelligence agents couldn’t avoid has struck Anhui…… I can’t fathom what it could be. We need more information to discuss countermeasures.”
“That may be so, but……”
Shin Gi-sua let out a frustrated sigh.
He had tried every method to obtain information. But neither those who had gone to Anhui nor those who had been in Anhui were sending information. He had no idea what had happened in Anhui.
“Since that’s not working, isn’t that why I gathered all of you? Please share your insights.”
The fact that Shin Gi-sua, the giant who moved the Righteous Alliance, was asking for others’ opinions meant the situation had become that difficult. Realizing this fact, everyone’s faces grew heavy.
He had asked for opinions, but no one could open their mouth. When even Shin Gi-sua couldn’t come up with countermeasures, what methods could they have?
Strengthen vigilance since they don’t know what might happen and send people to Anhui.
That was the only obvious thing they could say. But Shin Gi-sua wouldn’t have gathered them just to hear that.
So they had no choice but to keep their mouths shut.
“Perhaps……”
Zhuge Moon-in, who had been quietly observing the situation, opened his mouth.
“Could there have been intervention from the Demonic Cult?”
Everyone’s attention focused on Zhuge Moon-in.
