SYM 92
by Emerlyn“What’s going on?”
Yoon Ju-myeong asked the two Amhon who had returned sooner than expected.
The village was quite large, yet the Amhon had returned faster than he thought they would.
“Well….”
The Amhon who had gone on reconnaissance trailed off. Yoon Ju-myeong’s eyebrows shot up.
“What kind of attitude is that?”
It was very rare for an Amhon, who was required to move with all human emotions excluded, to show such a reaction.
Eun-hyeon, who was inside the carriage, poked his head out.
“What did you see in the village?”
“There was nothing in the village.”
Eun-hyeon blinked at the unexpected answer.
“Nothing at all?”
“Yes. It’s a fairly large village, and when I heard the report a while ago, it seemed like there were no problems, but there was no one in the village.”
“No one?”
“If they were hiding somewhere secret, I might not have sensed them. But as far as outward appearances go, there was no one.”
Eun-hyeon got out of the carriage after hearing that.
“I need to go see it myself. I want to see it with my own eyes.”
“If something strange has happened, we should check it out first. We don’t know why the people disappeared, so approaching is dangerous.”
Eun-hyeon bit his lip tightly. His Martial Arts were too insignificant to insist he was okay.
He was afraid that approaching recklessly would only cause trouble.
“Then… what about Master’s traces? Master went ahead early this morning, didn’t he? Were there any traces of Master?”
“Unless he deliberately left traces for us, we cannot find his traces with our abilities. There weren’t any particular Amho left behind.”
The Amhon were secretly treating Eun-hyeon as the mistress or the second-in-command of the Demonic Sect.
They didn’t know why Cheonma called the young Namgung Eun-hyeon ‘Master’ and treated him with such respect. But the reason was not important to them.
Amhon were Cheonma’s hands and feet, tools, not thinking heads.
“Then let’s go together to the village entrance first, and I’ll wait outside. After you’ve looked around enough and determined it’s safe, I’ll go in.”
Yoon Ju-myeong hesitated, unable to answer easily.
Frankly, he didn’t want to let the Young master of the Namgung family inside. If something happened to him, it wouldn’t be something that could be resolved with just his life.
“Well… you should rather wait here, and I’ll go inside and report back. Bringing the Young master of the Namgung family close to the village knowing there’s something wrong….”
“There’s nothing to be particularly wary of in this area.”
A familiar voice was heard right next to them.
“Cheong-un!”
Eun-hyeon jumped up in joy and got out of the carriage.
“What’s going on?”
“When I arrived at the village this morning, I couldn’t see a single person. But the households were all intact, as if only the people had evaporated.”
As Cheong-un appeared, the Amhon all prostrated themselves. Cheong-un lightly looked around and then approached Eun-hyeon.
“So, I’m on my way back from looking around the nearby villages.”
“…So? Were there other places like this?”
“Yes. I’ve looked around about five places so far, and three of them are like this.”
Eun-hyeon opened his mouth. If three villages were all in this state, then it meant that more than just a few people had disappeared.
“What is this…? What on earth is going on?”
An entire village disappearing. Was such a thing possible?
“Don’t you have a guess?”
“…Me?”
Eun-hyeon was startled by Cheong-un’s words. Cheong-un nodded as he looked at Eun-hyeon.
“There were no traces of battle or resistance left anywhere. Considering the size of the village, at least 300 people must have disappeared. There may be more villages that haven’t been checked, but we should assume that about a thousand people have disappeared for now.”
“…A thousand people.”
Eun-hyeon’s mouth fell open at the scale that exceeded his imagination.
Goodness. A thousand people disappearing without a reason?
“…Shouldn’t we report it to the authorities?”
If one or two people went missing, it could be attributed to an accident or personal misfortune. But if the number reached a thousand, it was a national matter.
As Eun-hyeon fidgeted as if he would run out immediately, Cheong-un approached and grabbed Eun-hyeon.
“Master. Since the people have all disappeared anyway, nothing will change if we step in right away. So, let’s think about it slowly.”
“Ah……. Right. Haa. I guess I got a little excited because I was surprised. But what do you mean I know?”
“Isn’t it strange that so many people disappeared quietly without any traces of resistance? Even if they were lured with the promise of making a lot of money, not everyone would have agreed. If people were moved by carriages, that would have been a large procession, and it would have been noticeable somehow.”
“Ah…! Hongbaek Sect!”
Upon hearing this, the Hongbaek Sect naturally came to mind.
Cheong-un nodded.
“I think so too. I can’t think of anyone other than the Hongbaek Sect who could make this many people disappear as if they had evaporated. The problem is… why did they gather these people? And where did they take them?”
“Don’t tell me. Those guys…!”
Eun-hyeon’s face turned pale.
There were two possible reasons why the Hongbaek Sect kidnapped people.
One was Undead, and the other was human sacrifice.
“…Maybe, both.”
They could kill people in human sacrifices and use their bodies as Undead. Thinking that way made him feel dizzy.
“Cheong-un. It’s not just one or two people. The weight of life cannot be said to be more precious than one, but a number of over a thousand….”
His body trembled slightly as he spoke.
A thousand people. No, maybe it would be thousands.
“Master. And there’s something I found while going around the village. It was lying on the ground, but it was a familiar object, so I brought it.”
What Cheong-un held out was a trinket. It was made by carving a small jade into a bead shape, and it was the kind of trinket that men would attach to the end of their swords or to their waists.
“Wait, this is….”
What he had thought was jade at first glance was jadeite with a clear green color.
Jade and jadeite were worlds apart, and the price of jadeite was more than ten times that of jade. To just throw away a trinket made of such jadeite.
Besides, now that he looked at it, it was strangely familiar.
“The Third Prince was wearing it.”
“Ah!”
Only then did he remember. The jade-colored beads that were draped over the blue Outer Robe.
“But this was in the village?”
Was it a coincidence that the prince’s belongings were in the village?
There was no way that an item the prince was wearing would have fallen in such a place by chance. Besides, if it was such a valuable item, someone would have picked it up as soon as they saw it on the ground.
The fact that the item remained on the street meant that the person who had this jadeite was there when people were hypnotized.
“Does this really mean that the imperial palace is behind the Hongbaek Sect?”
“We can’t say the entire imperial palace. This could be the Third Prince’s sole action, or the result of colluding with someone else. Perhaps it was done with the emperor’s tacit approval.”
“It’s horrifying just to think about it. It’s clear they don’t think of people as people. Are they just seeing them as good materials to make Undead?”
Were they just seeing people as good Undead materials even in the imperial palace? These were stories that were difficult to accept with the morals and concepts of modern people.
“What about the eyes we planted here? What happened to the eyes we planted to monitor Seo Eun-hyeon?”
“They appear to be dead. Reports were made every three days, and since there were no problems until the last report, it seems they were killed in the last two days.”
“It’s been a long time since I felt like ‘shit’.”
“Huh?”
As Eun-hyeon looked at Cheong-un at the word ‘shit,’ Cheong-un smiled gently.
Seeing that, the tension he had been feeling until now gradually eased.
“This is a report that just came in.”
An Amhon handed Cheong-un a small note. Cheong-un unfolded the tightly rolled note and scanned it, his eyebrows rising.
“It seems the missing people have headed to Beijing.”
“…Beijing?”
“It seems this Rite will be held near Beijing.”
Eun-hyeon wore an astonished expression at those words.