"Where do you think you're going?"
"..."
Wei Yan-ho, who had been stealthily turning around, flinched at the voice filled with killing intent from behind him.
"I asked where you think you're going."
Wei Yan-ho awkwardly turned back around, scratching the back of his head as he spoke.
"Even though you're a eunuch, sir, your voice is incredibly deep. You scared me."
"You insolent wretch!"
The eunuch shouted, his forehead and neck bulging with veins as if he might collapse backward at any moment.
"I don't know who you are, but you'd better not think about surviving. How dare you infiltrate the Imperial Palace and attempt to assassinate His Highness the Crown Prince?"
"I never infiltrated anything. I walked in, didn't I?"
"How dare you talk back!"
"Well, you seemed to be asking..."
"You damned wretch who should be torn into a thousand, ten thousand pieces. You will never die easily. Even being torn limb from limb wouldn't be enough for you! Is there no one here!"
As soon as the eunuch finished speaking, soldiers came rushing out from all directions.
"Huh?"
Wei Yan-ho opened his mouth wide as he watched the soldiers rushing toward him.
"There's a lot of them."
"Arrest this man immediately and throw him in Thunder Prison! Immediately!"
"Yes, sir!"
As the soldiers began to surround him, Wei Yan-ho shrugged his shoulders.
"Um, excuse me... may I ask one thing?"
"Shut up!"
"Well, they say even a dying person's last wish is granted, so why are you being so harsh when a living person just wants to ask one question?"
The eunuch, who had left the commotion to the physician who had rushed over desperately upon hearing the news, glared as he spoke.
"Fine! Go ahead and spout your nonsense. It's amusing to exchange words with someone who's already as good as a corpse, but I'd like to hear what kind of audacity drove you to do such a thing."
"It's not that I had any particular audacity, but anyway... so that kid is the Crown Prince?"
"That's right. This person is His Majesty's only son and the Crown Prince who will become the next emperor. Surely you're not going to say you didn't know?"
"I didn't know."
Wei Yan-ho raised his hand to stop the eunuch, who looked dumbfounded and was about to shout, and elaborated.
"No, that's why I originally asked that brat..."
"Brat?"
"No, I mean... I asked His Highness the Crown Prince, and he said he absolutely wasn't royalty."
"What kind of madman is this!"
The eunuch raised his voice.
"If there's even a little bit of thinking in your head, you should consider whether there could be any young person in the Imperial Palace. If he's not royalty, how would a child dare enter the Imperial Palace!"
"Now that you mention it, you have a point."
Wei Yan-ho smacked his lips.
"Well, it was an unfortunate accident, but it should serve as a lesson. If he had grown up like that, it would have been a disaster. I feel proud that I did something good for the country."
At Wei Yan-ho's words, the eunuch looked stunned.
'Is he insane?'
The Imperial Palace is called a den of demons.
Not only because of the many conspiracies, but there's no place with as many madmen as the Imperial Palace. It's a place crawling with villains who would abandon their own families for power. As such, he had seen countless villains and madmen until now, but he could say with certainty that he had never seen anyone as insane as this one.
"I don't know what you're relying on to act this way."
The eunuch's face became extremely hard.
"Acting recklessly without knowing reality may be a child's privilege, but correcting that is also an adult's duty. I'll make you realize just how serious what you've done is."
Wei Yan-ho sighed.
"Listen... it wasn't intentional, and that kid... no, His Highness the Prince lied saying he wasn't royalty, so can't you take that into consideration?"
"Normally you'd have your flesh cut three hundred times, but I'll specially petition His Majesty to reduce it to two hundred and ninety-nine times."
"...I'm truly grateful."
Wei Yan-ho shook his head.
"Hmm, well, it seems like the situation has gotten complicated, so I should be going now. If I stay here, I really will end up being torn limb from limb."
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Obviously I'm going to escape the Imperial Palace. I don't want to die."
The eunuch snorted.
"By what means?"
"Huh?"
"Don't forget where you are. This is the Imperial Palace. You seem confident in your abilities, but this is a place that no one, not even you, can escape from."
Wei Yan-ho scratched his head vigorously.
"Of course that should be the case, but I'm someone with exceptional abilities. You might feel upset, but there's nothing you can do about it. Well then, see you next time."
"Try leaving."
"Hmm?"
Just as Wei Yan-ho was about to respond, armed soldiers appeared on the rooftops.
"Huh?"
Generals in black armor and warriors in yellow robes began to surround Wei Yan-ho without leaving any gaps. Every visible roof and every visible alley was packed full of soldiers, resembling an anthill.
"What the hell?"
As Wei Yan-ho looked flustered, the eunuch wore a bitter smile.
"I'll show you what 'entering the dragon's den and tiger's lair' means. Even if you have the ability to fly, you can't escape from here."
Even at that moment, Wei Yan-ho rolled his eyes around, watching more warriors continuously joining.
"Um... may I ask one more thing?"
"I'm tired of playing along with your antics."
"This is really an important matter."
"...What is it?"
Wei Yan-ho asked with an unprecedentedly serious expression.
"Do they serve meals in Thunder Prison?"
"..."
***
"You had him arrested?"
"Yes."
Nok-gi's face broke into a wide smile. His face, which had never had reason to relax, became incomparably at ease.
"Damn bastard. If he was going to fall for it so easily, why did he make people suffer?"
Nok-gi reached out to grab his teacup.
It felt like the stabbing stomach pain was subsiding. Wei Yan-ho, who had been tormenting people like a thorn stuck under a fingernail, had finally fallen into the trap he had set.
"Was there no resistance?"
"He was arrested without resistance. Even while being tied up with rope and heading to Thunder Prison, he asked if meals were served on time... it must be a misunderstanding. No matter how stupid he is, he couldn't take this situation lightly."
"That's right."
Nok-gi slowly nodded.
"But to be arrested without resistance despite having such skills..."
Nok-gi's brow furrowed slightly.
No matter how skilled one is, they can't handle all the masters in the Imperial Palace, which is like a den of demons. If that were possible, it would mean that any prominent martial artist could infiltrate the Imperial Palace alone, assassinate the emperor, and escape. Such a thing is absolutely impossible.
But being arrested without any resistance bothers him. If he had resisted and been captured while trying to flee, it would have created the perfect justification, but he felt like he had missed that opportunity.
"It's unfortunate, but we can't make everything perfect. What he's done now is enough to entangle him in treason charges."
"You speak wisely."
"Hehehehe, you bastard."
Nok-gi drank his tea with an extremely refreshed expression.
"No matter how much you can fly around, the Imperial Palace is my domain. From the moment you dared to walk into the Imperial Palace with your own feet, your fate was sealed."
Nok-gi giggled with laughter.
No matter how much of a Wei Yan-ho he was, there was no way he could scheme anything while locked up in Thunder Prison.
"The Grand Eunuch's strategy reaches the heavens."
"It's not strategy. It's effort."
Nok-gi answered calmly.
Wei Yan-ho and the Prince.
It would have been stranger if nothing happened when those two met. Wei Yan-ho and the Prince were, as far as he knew, the worst humans in existence. When such creatures gathered in the same place, how could no incident occur?
It would be like bringing fire to well-dried tinder and expecting it not to ignite. It was absolutely impossible.
"The work was coaxing that annoying little brat to send him there. And the work was keeping those escort bastards occupied. It was something created through persistence, not brains."
Nok-gi licked his lips with his tongue.
"It ended up as expected after all, it did. This creates the framework to entangle even Yi Wang-ya completely. From now on is what's important."
Nok-gi slammed down his teacup so hard it could have shattered and jumped up from his seat.
"Yi Wang-ya! Yi Wang-ya! You've made a bad move. When people get impatient, they tend to make moves they wouldn't normally make. This mistake will become the misjudgment of your lifetime."
Nok-gi burst into loud laughter.
Everyone passing by the great hall shrank back at the booming laughter that shook the building.
***
"...You hit the Crown Prince?"
"Yeah."
"The Crown Prince?"
"Yeah."
The Historian quietly lowered his head to look at the book in his hands. On the book's cover, the title 'The Wei Yan-ho Chronicles' was carved in bold calligraphy.
"Then is this a work of fiction?"
"Huh?"
"...If you hit the Crown Prince, you should die. Whether you fall from the sky, you die, and if you hit the Crown Prince, you die. Isn't that like a natural law?"
"That's right. Normally... it should be."
Guwangqushen nodded his head greatly.
"Normally, well, hitting royalty would be a charge of insulting the imperial family, but once you've hit the Crown Prince, it's not insulting the imperial family but treason. You shouldn't think about surviving after committing treason. Normally, that is, normally."
Guwangqushen chuckled as he spoke.
"That's how it should be... but it's a strange thing."
"What?"
"You, while listening to my story so far, haven't you noticed one strange thing?"
"Shouldn't I be finding things that aren't strange?"
"...Something especially stranger among them."
"Well, I'm not sure what you're talking about."
Guwangqushen clicked his tongue and said,
"Do you think Wei Yan-ho is a smart person?"
"...Not particularly."
"Right."
Guwangqushen's brow narrowed slightly.
"But I still don't know even now."
"What are you talking about?"
"Whether that bastard is a lucky bastard, or a truly ghostly clever bastard."
"..."
At Guwangqushen's words, the Historian closed his mouth.
"Normally, it's difficult for the results of things to always turn out the best. Especially depending on luck. But strangely, Wei Yan-ho created the best results in everything he did, everything he touched. Even this incident is like that."
"Hmm."
"Just surviving from there could be called the best result. But Wei Yan-ho went one step further. In a way that other people couldn't even think of."
The Historian quietly nodded. He understood what Guwangqushen's words meant.
"Around this time, I started to have doubts. Was this bastard really just lucky?"
Guwangqushen scratched his nose.
"Of course, I might be overthinking it, but sometimes I still think that maybe I and other people were all played by that bastard's hands."
"...What happened that makes you say such things?"
"So at that time..."
Guwangqushen coughed loudly and picked up the liquor bottle.
"Oh no!"
"Why, what's wrong?"
"There's no alcohol."
"..."
"My throat hurts too."
"...You did drink about a mal though?"
"So?"
"...I'll go buy some now."
Jang-il had always been Wei Yan-ho's sucker, but to the Historian, he was like a leech.