FVN Chapter 362 : Truth (2)
Chapter 362 : Truth (2)
"Bring Eunuch Cha to me."At the Supreme Eunuch's command, the Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch flinched.
"Might I ask what you need Eunuch Cha for?"
The Supreme Eunuch's expression soured at the cautious question.
"Since when did you become my superior? As far as I'm aware, the only person this old man answers to is the Son of Heaven."
In other words, he wasn't about to explain himself to a mere Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch.
The Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch swallowed dryly and slammed his forehead hard against the floor.
"I-I beg your pardon! I will bring Eunuch Cha at once, Supreme Eunuch."
Rattled by his recent string of failures, the Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch realized his anxiety had caused him to make a fatal slip of the tongue.
The Supreme Eunuch looked down at him for a moment before speaking.
"Your health has been poor, so it would be difficult for you to continue your duties as Director of the Eastern Depot. I'll be entrusting that role to Eunuch Cha for the time being. Consider yourself informed."
"I will abide by the Supreme Eunuch's wishes!"
The Brush-Holding Grand Eunuch answered with vigor before turning on his heel and leaving the room. But the loyal reply didn't match the face he wore once he was out the door, which was twisted with barely contained fury.
Historically, the Directorate of Ceremonial, which oversaw all eunuchs, consisted of one Director at the top, supported by three or four Assistant Directors.
Among those Eunuchs, the most trusted was appointed as the Director of the Eastern Depot. And what the Supreme Eunuch had just announced was that he was stripping that position and handing it to yet another Eunuch.
But defying the Supreme Eunuch, a man whose unchecked power was matched only by his martial ability, was nothing short of suicide.
So the former Director of the Eastern Depot had no choice but to trudge to Eunuch Cha's quarters and personally deliver the humiliating news.
"What a sorry sight you are, Eunuch Bang."
Eunuch Cha's eyes moved between the blood on Eunuch Bang's forehead and the blood on his thigh before he let out a blatant sneer.
Eunuch Bang bit down on his anger and replied shortly.
"The Supreme Eunuch wants to see you."
Unable to stomach another second of this humiliation, the former Eastern Depot Director spun on his heel and stormed off.
"Hmph."
Eunuch Cha gave a small scoff, then composed his expression and his robes before making his way to the Supreme Eunuch's quarters.
"I pay my respects to the Supreme Eunuch."
Eunuch Cha bowed and offered his greetings, and the Supreme Eunuch responded with a nod.
"I am officially stripping Eunuch Bang of his position and entrusting the duties of the Eastern Depot Director to you."
"I will devote my body and soul to prove worthy of the Supreme Eunuch's trust."
"How could this be merely my trust?"
"If it is for His Imperial Majesty, I am fully prepared to sacrifice my body and soul at a moment's notice! Long live the Emperor! Long may he reign!"
"Hahaha. I will convey your loyalty to the Son of Heaven."
As soon as the necessary political theater concluded, the Supreme Eunuch issued his first order to the prostrated Eunuch Cha.
"From this moment on, take a few trustworthy men from the Eastern Depot and head north."
"I will prepare and depart as quickly as possible. But what exactly am I to do once I'm there?"
"It seems Agent Number One embedded in the Martial Alliance has recently hit a roadblock in his mission."
'Agent Number One' was the Imperial Court's codename for the current Martial Alliance Leader, Cheok Pae-myeong.
The man known as Cheok Pae-myeong did not originally go by that name. He was a man who had been trained from a young age to serve as part of the Imperial Guard protecting the Emperor. Then one day, a covert order came down to that young man to assume the new identity of Cheok Pae-myeong and begin operating in the Central Plains as a member of the martial world.
And this wasn't something exclusive to Cheok Pae-myeong alone.
Every year, a select few of the children being trained as future Imperial Guards were given similar covert orders. The Eastern Depot would fabricate new identities for them and dress up the martial arts they'd learned as a kind of "lucky encounter."
Those who rose quickly and built enough influence within the Orthodox Faction's circles were even granted special elixirs, which the Eastern Depot would also pass off as another "lucky encounter."
Through this process, spies were quietly planted all across the Central Plains, and the one who grew the fastest and accumulated the most influence out of all of them was none other than Cheok Pae-myeong.
Because of his overwhelming success, he was designated 'Agent Number One.'
To support him, the Court assigned him the most brilliant mind among their young scholars, that is none other than the current Chief Strategist, Gongsun Hyeon, also known as Agen Number Two.
On top of that, a good portion of the Martial Alliance's fighters could be considered spies raised by the Eastern Depot and the Imperial Guard, just like Cheok Pae-myeong.
The Supreme Eunuch gave a rough summary of the situation Cheok Pae-myeong had found himself in.
"So go north and dig into the Maitreya Luminous Cult."
"As you command."
After Eunuch Cha bowed one last time and departed, the old man known as the Supreme Eunuch turned his cold gaze back to the map spread across the table.
Even though the Han Dynasty was technically one unified empire, the map in front of him made it look like it was fractured into dozens of independent warring states.
'If only Emperor Qianxi had moved when he should have.'
Emperor Qianxi was the Emperor who had reigned before the Supreme Eunuch was even born. It was during his reign that the Demonic Cult, having been previously banished to Xinjiang, launched its very first invasion of the Central Plains. But Emperor Qianxi dismissed the ruffians of the martial world beneath his notice. So while the court stood idle, the forces of the Orthodox Faction within the Central Plains rallied together and the Martial Alliance was born after that incident.
For better or worse, the newly formed Martial Alliance successfully lured the Blood Tears Heavenly Demon into a trap and repelled the Demonic Cult, all without a single bit of help from the government.
Although the Orthodox Factions had suffered heavy casualties during the war, the government still didn't make a move to wipe them out.
Emperor Qianxi had so little regard for the people who called themselves martial artists that he didn't even consider them worth keeping in check.
But roughly forty-odd years after Emperor Qianxi's death, the Demonic Cult's second invasion came.
Unfortunately, the Emperor sitting on the throne at that time was the complete package of a foolish ruler. He was a degenerate fool who cared about nothing but indulging in lavish debauchery with endless wine and women.
With their previous war experience as teachers, the Orthodox Faction and the Martial Alliance repelled the second invasion much more easily.
By the time he heard the news, Emperor Taiping of that era merely laughed it off with, "Hahaha. My loyal subjects took it upon themselves to defend our lands and drive out those rebels. How commendable of them."
Hearing this, the sycophants glued to Emperor Taiping's side immediately began to flatter him.
"This is all thanks to Your Imperial Majesty's boundless grace! Since Your Majesty's divine favor reaches the very heavens, what is there to worry about?"
And so, the Imperial Family casually dumped half the responsibility of maintaining law and order in the Central Plains onto the martial artists, leaving the military to just guard the borders while the Emperor spent his days drowning in lavish debauchery with his corrupt officials.
But while the Court turned a blind eye, the forces of Orthodox Faction were able to continuously stockpile massive amounts of power.
"It was we who stopped the Demonic Cult's invasions. It was we who looked after the common people and dealt with bandits and the Unorthodox Faction’s scums. We martial artists will govern ourselves, so back off and leave our affairs to us."
It reached the point where arrogant martial artists would actually march right into government offices and boldly demand independence.
This was the period when the absurd custom known as the Non-Interference Pact between government and martial world came into being.
Decades passed, and Emperor Taiping died.
The succeeding Emperor desperately tried to correct his predecessor's mistakes, but the Orthodox Faction of the Central Plains had already grown far too massive to control.
Meanwhile, rampant corruption and internal rot had severely crippled the Imperial Family's actual authority. Determined to restore the Imperial Family's absolute power, the new Emperor turned to two specific organizations.
The Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot.
To purge the treacherous officials, root out the corruption, and butcher anyone who dared challenge the Emperor's authority, he began pouring vast resources into rebuilding these two spy agencies, which had previously existed only in name.
To that end, Emperor Yuanli aggressively recruited eunuchs from across the Central Plains, and it was during this period of mass recruitment that the Supreme Eunuch entered the palace.
Over the span of decades, Emperor Yuanli succeeded in purging the corruption, and the young Supreme Eunuch was able to rack up considerable merit along the way.
But eliminating the Orthodox Faction forces and shattering the nonsense that was the Non-Interference Pact still remained a distant goal. Because while Emperor Yuanli was focused on strengthening the Imperial Family and cleaning out the rot, the Central Plains' Orthodox Faction had only grown more bloated than ever.
Of course, no single faction could hold a candle to the Imperial Family or the court on its own. But if they united, even the Imperial Family couldn't guarantee an easy victory, and the biggest problem was foreign threats. They couldn't just abandon their borders and leave the empire defenseless just to crush a bunch of arrogant martial artists on the inside.
Ruling over a land as vast as the Central Plains meant managing an equally vast border. The fierce nomads of the north, Sila beyond the Heilongjiang Province, the Demonic Cult in Xinjiang, the Southern Barbarians to the southwest, and the pirates who plundered the coastlines.
Emperor Yuanli was no fool; he knew that pulling his armies back from the borders to wage war on martial artists was an option he simply couldn't take.
After Emperor Yuanli passed away, a string of rapidly changing Emperors left the political landscape in chaos. Then one day, a horrific bloodbath struck the Central Plains.
The Blood Cult had stirred.
The newly crowned and young Emperor Tianxing came to distrust martial artists entirely because of that incident.
In his eyes, the Blood Cult cultists slaughtering innocent commoners were martial artists, and the Orthodox Factions hiding behind the Non-Interference Pact while selfishly lining their own pockets were also just martial artists.
Even after the Blood Cult was suppressed, Emperor Tianxing agonized over the problem and eventually devised a scheme. The grand plan to exterminate the martial world came into existence.
Its name is [Return to Origin]
If they couldn't afford to empty the borders to wipe out the martial world, then let the martial world tear itself apart from the inside. It was a scheme born from watching the Blood Cult and the Orthodox Faction fight each other.
And the man chosen to oversee the execution of that plan was a eunuch who already held the position of Director of the Directorate of Ceremonial at the time. The current Supreme Eunuch.
He carried out the Emperor's orders, patiently laying the groundwork over decades to slowly and quietly plant spies within both the Demonic Cult and the Martial Alliance.
And even now, long after Emperor Tianxing had gone and a new Emperor had ascended the throne, the Supreme Eunuch was still seeing the mission through.
"All the land of the Central Plains originally belonged to the Son of Heaven. I will restore this map to what it should be. By whatever means necessary."
The old monster of the Imperial Palace murmured coldly as he gazed at the map.
***
Meanwhile, in the far Gansu Province, Il-mok sat with a troubled look on his face.
"Is something troubling you, Big Brother?"
When Hyeokryeon Seon-ah stepped up to ask the question, Il-mok hesitated for a second before letting out a heavy sigh.
"Third Brother brought me the information I was hoping for, but what comes after that is the problem."
The maids exchanged startled looks.
Jin Hayeon was the only one managing to keep a straight face. She asked on their behalf.
"If it was the information you were hoping for, does that mean you anticipated the Imperial Family's scheme from the start?"
"I wish I could. I had no idea Deung Bi was the Imperial Family's dog until Third Brother told me."
"Then what did you mean when you said it was the information you were hoping for?"
Il-mok gave a light shrug and answered.
"I'm talking about the alliance we've worked so hard to build up until now. I've been trying to find a way to keep it from falling apart. I thought that even if our true identities as the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult are exposed, the alliance might actually survive if an overwhelmingly greater external threat suddenly appeared."
He had secretly been holding out a faint hope that investigating why the Imperial Court disguised itself as the Blood Cult to commit those massacres would give him the leverage he needed. And then this dropped into his lap.
"The Imperial Family is plotting a grand plan to exterminate the martial world, and they went so far as to carry out a massacre to support the Martial Alliance. If that isn't justification enough to keep an alliance together, I don't know what is."
Even Il-mok hadn't expected the Imperial Family to be cooking up such an utterly insane conspiracy with such incredibly perfect timing.