The Eldest Daughter of the Sichuan Tang Clan Protects Her Family

Seeing no sign the passage would open, Wu So asked cautiously.
“Hall Administrator, could you try opening it once?”
“I do not know this formation.”
“Let’s try something. Try at least a method for opening another formation.”
Perhaps from frustration, Wu So insisted, but the Administrator shook his head.
“If we force-break the formation, the art may be damaged. If [N O V E L I G H T] the passage closes, the Alliance Leader will not be able to return.”
At that, Wu So could only close his mouth.
In truth, the one here who should worry most about the Alliance Leader was the Sagye Hall Administrator.
Accepting that he had no method, the Administrator waited for the Alliance Leader. If so, waiting would be best.
He trusted the Alliance Leader and waited, but there was one point that caught.
‘There’s no way dealing with Blood fiends would take this long. What in the world is he doing?’
Feeling suspicion spreading in his heart, Zhuge Inhwi took his attention off the gate. He turned at once and asked Namgung Jin,
“Young Clan Head, how did you people come here?”
Namgung Jin shifted the gaze he had kept on Tang Sohwa.
Adjusting his stance, he spoke in a calm voice.
“I do not know if you are aware, but the Blood Cult attacked Baekgeumgak.”
“What? They even touched a building outside headquarters?”
The Sword Sovereign broke in, enraged.
The Administrator, by contrast, kept his mouth shut as if waiting for an explanation.
“Yes. We followed, being guided to the place where the goods looted by the Blood Cult from Baekgeumgak had been moved, and discovered this place.”
Namgung Jin’s voice was dark.
“But we did not know there was a gate here that led to the Blood Cult’s stronghold.”
“Who would have guessed? That a Blood Cult formation lay this close to Wuhan.”
The Sword Sovereign clicked his tongue.
The grave discussion continued, but Tang Sohwa had no interest in the voices behind her.
Her attention was fixed on the one lying on the rock.
Tang Hak’s body was a wreck.
As if torn by a raptor’s claws, his clothes were rags, and on his face and all over his body, chunks of flesh had been ripped away.
Han-won crouched beside Sohwa and offered comfort.
“All I had were the disinfectant and salve the Divine Physician gave me, so I treated him as best I could for now. Still, his fingers aren’t severed and no bones are broken, so he should have no trouble taking up hidden weapons again.”
Sohwa’s gaze dropped to her brother’s hands. Fingers cut to the point bone showed through entered her eyes. But unlike the other wounds, there were no bloodstains on the hands.
Tang Hak’s hands had been washed with disinfectant and covered in a salve that promotes healing. For fear he would lose the use of his hands, Han-won had poured out all the medicine he had.
For a martial man, it was an immense relief.
“…You must have been rattled yourself, yet you treated him properly.”
“Of course. I’ve had the Divine Physician’s nagging for over three years—what kind of person would I be if I couldn’t even do this?”
Serving as Tang Sohwa’s escort, Han-won went in and out of the Medical Division like his own house.

While waiting for Sohwa when she went to Gujeong Pavilion, he would receive this and that from the Divine Physician and the physicians.
Especially on days when he went out and returned with injuries, he would be nagged to the point of brainwashing by the Divine Physician about disinfection and quick treatment, so out of habit he carried the disinfectant and salve the Divine Physician made.
Tang Sohwa felt genuine gratitude to Han-won.
Tang Hak had been injured inside the Blood Demon’s formation. That meant Han-won could have been endangered as well.
Even so, without hesitation he had exhausted all his medicine on the Young Clan Head.
Han-won did not notice, but Tang Sohwa resolved to repay this favor one day.
For Tang Sohwa to decide on repayment was something so rare it might happen once in a lifetime.
Thus, at this moment, there was no way the talk of gravely worrying over the Alliance Leader would be heard. The Alliance Leader’s safety lay outside her concern.
She was all the more unaware of Namgung Hyun, standing behind her in silence, watching her.
So when Namgung Hyun approached to lift Tang Hak, she, without knowing it herself, showed a sharp attitude.
“What are you doing?”
A cold voice she had never once shown Namgung Hyun.
At a tone that should have flustered him, Namgung Hyun answered in an even voice.
“The Young Clan Head’s condition is serious, so I will escort him to the physicians first. The others must be exhausted after days of running, but I am fine.”
Then someone behind cut off Sohwa’s reply.
“That will not do.”
It was Zhuge Inhwi.
He, whom she thought too worried over the Alliance Leader to think of anything else, had his ears open this way as well.
Approaching them, Zhuge Inhwi said,
“The Young Clan Head must return and undergo screening first.”
Ordinarily, Tang Sohwa would not have quibbled with the Sagye Hall Administrator’s words, but not now.
Shielding Tang Hak, Sohwa sneered.
“How do you intend to screen an unconscious man? Are you going to read his mind?”
“Consciousness is not an issue. The screening is a procedure for show, anyway.”
“A procedure?”
“The Tang Clan promised that, as the condition for leaving headquarters, they would undergo screening first upon return. If, in this situation, we do not return together and spirit the Young Clan Head off elsewhere, it will arouse suspicion. Then even I won’t be able to help.”
The Administrator’s body faced Tang Sohwa, but his words were to the Clan Head.
“Since you personally declared it, Clan Head, it will be less tiresome to keep to it. The Zhuge Clan Head will not miss the chance.”
“I am aware.”
The Clan Head answered coldly.
There seemed to be some backstory, but Sohwa could not tell what.
Yet she could broadly infer the situation.
Alliance members were suspicious of the Tang Clan, and the Tang Clan had ignored that suspicion and come to rescue her.
Come to think of it, the rescue party was small.
The Alliance Leader had moved, and they had even entered the Blood Cult’s base.
Since, the moment they left the Blood Demon’s quarters, the Alliance Leader had, by luck, brought everyone back alive and they had taken relief in that, those accompanying them were only these.
‘…Father forced himself to come.’
Knowing other Alliance members were not favorable to the Tang Clan, Sohwa’s eyes darkened.
In a voice somewhat subdued, she replied,
“I understand the Administrator’s intent. But the Young Clan Head must be treated as soon as we return.”
The Administrator seemed to agree on that point; he gave a small nod.
“I will summon the Divine Physician and the physicians to Sagye Hall.”
“Then may I at least move now? I will return first, undergo screening at Sagye Hall, and be treating the Young Clan Head.”
At her words, a crease formed between the brows of the usually smooth Sagye Hall Administrator.
Even though the Alliance Leader who had rescued her was stranded at the passage, she said she would return first.
This person had no interest in the Alliance Leader’s situation now.
‘Who do you think the Alliance Leader went through all this for?’
Zhuge Inhwi was not one to show emotion readily, but at Tang Sohwa’s brazen stance he spoke words he need not have said.
“The Alliance Leader accompanied us to rescue Young Lady Tang. And it seems he remained alone at the passage to hold back the Blood Demon.”
Silence fell, as if all were thinking the same.
After giving her time to reflect, Zhuge Inhwi spoke again.
“And yet, Young Lady Tang, you think this is what you ought to say now?”
“He remained at the passage to hold back the Blood Demon?”
Her voice sounded as if she had only now realized the Alliance Leader’s danger, but Zhuge Inhwi felt something else.
The tightly drawn aura loosened.
As if laughing at him.
Though he could not see her face, the Tang Clan’s eldest daughter certainly held him in contempt.
Unable to understand the feeling he sensed, Zhuge Inhwi wanted to ask, but with many eyes watching, he swallowed the question.
Instead, he raised another matter, that this selfish woman might retract her own words.
“Are you not curious why only the Young Clan Head was injured so?”
As if the Young Clan Head were her reverse scale, the slackened aura drew taut again.
“While we drew the Blood Cultists’ eyes, we left the young Zhuge martial artists and the Young Clan Head in another formation. It was to spare them from harm.”
Gauging the unknown current with care, Zhuge Inhwi cast his words.
“But the Blood Cultists, rather, are said to have swarmed toward the formation where they were.”
“……”
“The Young Clan Head asked the others not to retreat and to hold for just a quarter of an hour. He worried that, if we drove the Blood Cultists earlier than the time the Alliance Leader specified, it would be dangerous when Young Lady Tang reached the entrance.”
Through the silence, the flowing aura heaved violently.
“So he begged those with him to hold for just a quarter of an hour. To wait so he could buy time.”
The Sagye Hall Administrator’s hand moved slowly.
That hand pointed to Zhuge Cheonyu of the Zhuge clan.
“Those children held out for a quarter of an hour, isolated by Blood fiends, just as the Young Clan Head asked. They said they could not stop him—who entered the jaws of death himself for his sister’s retreat.”
Tang Sohwa kept her silence, but the atmosphere clearly changed.
Her aura, sharp and cold as a blade, dripped to the ground like metal melting in fire.
‘A strange emotion…’
Too heavy, as if pressed down, to call it defiance; too mixed with anger and heat to call it sorrow.
A feeling deep and complex beyond her years.
There were any number of things about Tang Sohwa that he found strange.
The Blood Demon had personally brought her to his stronghold, and, from the beginning, the one who told of the Blood Cult’s rampage had been this very person.
‘What on earth are you, truly?’