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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Chaos
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Separate from the focused attention with which the entire martial world had been watching with bated breath, the end of the Yunmeng Showdown was surprisingly anticlimactic.
The Righteous Path martial artists, who had ended the battle at Xia Honghu with a great victory and entered Hunan Province like a raging fire, pressing close to Mount Tianzi.
With the hope of finally uprooting the Banun Clan, even the Wudang Sect, which had been busy closing the Ghost Gate in Hubei Province, gathered all available and unavailable forces and committed them.
However, the main players who ended the war were neither the Banun Clan nor the Zhuge Family, the parties involved, nor the Wudang Sect, which was seriously considering whether its Sect Leader should descend the mountain to drive the final nail.
The one who put an end to the war was none other than the Surveillance Commissioner of Hunan Province.
The Surveillance Commissioner, the head of the Provincial Surveillance Office that oversaw the inspection and judiciary of an entire province, invoked the Great Ming Law and forcibly ended the Murim war.
However, not a single person believed that decision was the Surveillance Commissioner’s alone.
Martial artists were not ignorant of the ways of the secular world.
It was a very famous story that Emperor Chenghua was wise, but even his favor paled before the words of Imperial Consort Wan.
It was clear to anyone that Imperial Consort Wan was moving the Imperial Family from behind the scenes to protect the Banun Clan.
Unable to ultimately uproot the Banun Clan, the Righteous Path Murim thus disbanded.
However, the harvest was great.
With this, the Banun Clan’s prestige in the Murim completely fell to the ground, and the Unorthodox Path Murim that had gathered to help them disintegrated.
Not only collaborators recruited from outside, like the Black Sword Demon or Myeolseomma, but even those who could be considered its core, left the Banun Clan.
No longer was there a colossal sect comparable to the Nine Great Sects, one of the Seven Great Clans of the Black Path.
With this, the Righteous Path Murim succeeded in bringing the entire vast Huguang region under their sphere of influence.
The fame of the Zhuge Family, who achieved such a feat, and their primary collaborators, the Wudang Sect and Mount Hengshan Sect, soared to the heavens.
Those who participated in the Yunmeng Showdown also reaped rewards such as wealth and honor, their titles changing or their realms rising.
Although there was some lingering dissatisfaction, considering that the Banun Clan had effectively been weakened to the level of a mid-sized sect, the Righteous Path Murim had met the minimum requirements to withdraw with satisfaction.
The atmosphere in the Zhuge Family was truly festive.
Wasn’t it natural?
Objectively, the Banun Clan was an adversary superior to the Zhuge Family, comparable to the Wudang Sect.
They had defeated such a Banun Clan.
Without much damage.
Even though the Banun Clan had pulled out a shocking move like reviving a former super expert called the Five Yin Demonic Emperor.
The Zhuge Family threw open the doors of its warehouses and held a grand festival.
The benefits of the grand festival, which included not only Righteous Path martial artists but also neutral martial artists and wanderers who had joined their side, extended even to the common people of Wuhan and Hubei Province.
Everyone laughed, talked, and sang of joy.
The joy of victory, the joy of survival, the joy of growth… Wuhan transformed into a city that never sleeps, and laughter-filled voices were heard incessantly.
However, even in this situation, there was one member of the Zhuge Family household who couldn’t laugh, talk, and enjoy freely with the others.
It was Zhuge Seon-ah.
In her room in the Zhuge Family main house in Wuhan, Zhuge Seon-ah stared blankly out the window.
The blurred lights.
The various sounds mixed with the bright light.
If she left her room and walked a little, she could claim a seat at the banquet they were enjoying.
But she didn’t want to.
She didn’t particularly feel the joy of the war ending either.
She thought it was a relief that her family members no longer had to get hurt, but it was difficult to empathize with the elation of victory.
Zhuge Seon-ah knew it was a wicked thought, but the idea of wishing the war had continued longer inadvertently came to mind.
The battles in Hubei Province that had lasted for nearly a month.
During that time, Zhuge Seon-ah had spent a lot of time with the Azure Sky Group.
Looking back now, those were truly nostalgic days.
There were many difficult and painful moments, but still… it was good.
Just looking at Namgung-Woo’s back as he protected her filled her with an indescribable sense of fulfillment.
If the war had continued, if it had, wouldn’t that person have stayed?
“Ughh…! What are you thinking, Zhuge Seon-ah! Get a grip. That person is Ha-ryeong’s…”
Zhuge Seon-ah muttered to herself and hugged her pillow tightly.
Befitting the daughter of a noble house, her pillow was made of silk, very soft and fluffy.
After subjecting the innocent pillow to suffocation torture several times, Zhuge Seon-ah, who was lying sprawled on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, shot up at the voice she heard from outside the door.
“Seon-ah, it’s your father. May I come in?”
“Yes, ye-yes! Please come in!”
Zhuge Seon-ah quickly threw off the blanket and got off the bed.
In the few steps it took to go to the door to greet him, Zhuge Seon-ah quickly neatened her clothes and hair.
Zhuge Jong, who opened the paper sliding door himself and entered, made a bitter expression upon seeing Zhuge Seon-ah, who clearly showed signs of having moved hastily.
It was clear to Zhuge Jong what his daughter, who had refused to attend the banquet and cooped herself up in her room alone, had been thinking.
“Let’s sit for a bit.”
“Yes. This way…”
Although it wasn’t a distance that particularly needed guiding, Zhuge Seon-ah personally pulled out a chair due to the somewhat awkward atmosphere.
The father and daughter sat facing each other.
Following the teachings of respecting elders, it was Zhuge Jong’s turn to speak first.
“He went to Luoyang, didn’t he?”
Although the subject was omitted, there was no need to ask again.
There was only one person whom both of them knew well and who fit the common denominator of having gone to Luoyang.
“Yes…”
“Why didn’t you follow?”
“…Yes?”
“You’re struggling because of that, aren’t you?”
At her father Zhuge Jong’s words, Zhuge Seon-ah merely moved her lips as if she were mute, unable to speak.
Zhuge Jong waited silently.
Until his daughter could organize her thoughts and speak.
“I… don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“Just, my heart. Whether this feeling is really right, and if it is, whether it’s okay to follow like this…”
A feeling she was experiencing for the first time.
She didn’t even know if this unfamiliar thing was truly what people called love.
Perhaps it was because her empathic ability had been too deeply influenced by Namgung-Woo’s powerful upper dantian mental strength?
If so, wasn’t that not a pure heart but merely a result of being swayed by power?
It was truly a dilemma befitting the Zhuge Family.
She avoided acting rashly because she didn’t know.
The characteristic of the Zhuge Family, who thoroughly determined their actions based on understanding and analysis, was clearly evident.
If people from the Hebei Peng Family or the Hwangbo Family had felt what Zhuge Seon-ah was feeling, they would have rushed forward without looking back.
The real-life version of that assumption was Peng Ha-ryeong.
Peng Ha-ryeong, who had never left her family home before, had gone all the way to Jiangnan following Namgung-Woo.
Peng Ha-ryeong’s way of boldly calling him “Oppa” was too unconventional for Zhuge Seon-ah to follow.
And it was a problem even if that feeling wasn’t a side effect of her empathic ability but truly a pure emotion.
The aforementioned Peng Ha-ryeong was sincere.
But a moral sense of guilt, wondering if it was okay to consider Peng Ha-ryeong, a close friend and now a precious benefactor who had helped her family, as a rival, made Zhuge Seon-ah shrink.
After Zhuge Seon-ah poured out her worries over a long time, Zhuge Jong asked.
“Is there a law in the Great Ming Code that prohibits polygamy?”
“Eh? Po-polygamy? Th-there’s no such law, but……”
“Then, is Ha-ryeong so narrow-minded as to exclude you?”
“……Towards Great Hero Nam, there’s a slight tendency…”
Zhuge Seon-ah replied, recalling Peng Ha-ryeong, who usually showed no stinginess in bestowing broad magnanimity but reacted very sensitively particularly in matters related to Namgung-Woo.
Zhuge Jong skillfully hid his flustered expression and quickly changed the subject.
“If you tell her your true feelings, Ha-ryeong isn’t a child who would just deny it, is she?”
“That’s true, I suppose…”
“If you’re not sure, you can just watch from the side a little longer. After that, if it really was because of your empathic ability, you can just continue the connection you’ve made so far, and if your heart was true, it’s not too late to let Ha-ryeong know your feelings and hear Ha-ryeong’s true feelings.”
“Is that… okay?”
How could Zhuge Jong’s heart be entirely at ease?
Sending his beloved only daughter to another man would be a difficult decision for any father.
Moreover, if it was a polygamous relationship, not even monogamous, it would be an even more difficult and arduous decision.
The fact that his beloved daughter couldn’t monopolize one person’s heart was something that even made a father feel resentful.
However, more than that, Zhuge Jong found it harder to bear Zhuge Seon-ah fretting all by herself in her room.
And he also had a slight thought that it might be alright if it was Peng Ha-ryeong.
They were once almost family to the Zhuge Family, and in this war too, Peng Ha-ryeong had fought her best for the Zhuge Family.
Since Peng Ha-ryeong and Zhuge Seon-ah were also close friends, if they acknowledged each other, it might be better than being alone.
Of course, if Zhuge Jong had known Namgung-Woo’s real name, he would have gone through another stage of deliberation here, but since Zhuge Chong hadn’t revealed Namgung-Woo’s matter even to his own younger brother, it could be said that ignorance was bliss.
“Soon, a league meeting will be held at the Murim Alliance. Our Zhuge Family has also decided to send people, of course.”
A world that was rapidly changing day by day.
The Murim Alliance could no longer remain idle.
“Seon-ah, how about you go along too?”
“M-me too?”
“Yes. The Family Head hasn’t fully recovered from his internal injuries, and Leader Lingyun was also greatly injured in this war, but we’ve secured reliable escorts, so there won’t be problems like last time.”
Although the two Transcendent Realm experts owned by the Zhuge Family were both incapacitated, Zhuge Jong had minimized the power vacuum by taking in martial artists who had fought alongside them in this war as retainers and hiring wanderers.
The best card among them was waiting to escort those participating in this league meeting.
“It’s been a while, but you’ve lost a lot of weight, haven’t you?”
One of the Three Great Wanderers.
Yi Ho-yeong, the Yellow Dragon spoke to Zhuge Seon-ah, who was approaching the carriage.
It was a long journey to Luoyang.
Zhuge Seon-ah, well-dressed for the journey, bowed to him before boarding the carriage and said.
“To Luoyang, I’ll be in your care.”
“Don’t you worry.”
Thus, a procession of several carriages departed from the Zhuge Family in Wuhan.
And such scenes were unfolding not only at the Zhuge Family in Wuhan but also in various places across the Nine Provinces.
To Luoyang.
To Luoyang.
For the Murim Alliance’s league meeting, the Righteous Path Murim began to move.
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