NOVEL NEXT chapter 54 - The East Wing’s Secret
The hot air ceaselessly scorched her lungs. The charred membranes healed only to burn again.
The pain dragged on, and even the iron-willed Sohwa found it hard to endure.
She quickened her pace, forcing herself to breathe as little as possible.
Kwa-gwa-gwang.
The moment she reached the second floor, the wooden staircase collapsed.
Sohwa paid it no mind and entered the room from which the smoke was billowing.
It seemed to be a place where medicinal ingredients were processed; tanks of water stood everywhere, and instead of wood the floor had been laid thinly with stone resistant to moisture.
The fire from the adjoining room had spread, burning away the wall, but the thin stone had blocked it so only half the floor had burned.
Poisonous smoke rose from the charred floor.
When she pushed her hand into a blackened hole and stirred the burning ash, choking smoke surged up.
"Ugh."
For a moment Sohwa nearly lost consciousness.
She shook off the drowsy haze and ran to the tank.
Tearing her hem, she soaked the cloth in water and bound it over her nose and mouth. Then she returned to the floor and carefully sifted through the debris.
It was no strange thing to hide something in a medicinal storehouse. Even the Tang Clan’s Medical Division kept certain medicines or poisons too dangerous to disclose, omitting them from records and storing them separately.
The Tang had even hidden away an entire secret building, the Gujeonggak.
Sohwa clenched and opened her palm burned raw by the fire, then searched again through the wreckage.
Tuk.
Her fingertips struck a box. She carefully lifted it.
Holding her breath, she opened the box.
Inside was a red mineral.
‘…Isn’t this Red Stone Earth?’
Red Stone Earth was a material used in combination with other medicines for patients with abdominal pain.
Beside it was another mineral of a different color.
Five kinds of minerals neatly divided.
Red Stone Earth, White Stone Crystal, Purple Stone Crystal, Stone Bell Oil, Stone Sulfur.
Sohwa’s face darkened as she confirmed them. Unwittingly, she muttered.
"Five Stones…"
These were the ingredients for Oseoksan.
Once regarded as medicine, but no longer used— a mixture of minerals with potential for abuse, clouding the mind for ill ends. Any physician of sound mind shunned it, and the formula had long been lost.
Even the Tang’s medical texts listed only the ingredients, never the recipe.
Sohwa tore off a strip of her skirt. She wrapped the stones from the box in the ratio they had been stored. Likely this ratio was the formula for Oseoksan.
‘But why hide Oseoksan here in the Hubei branch?’
Hesitating, Sohwa ripped off an even larger piece of her skirt and wrapped another bundle of stones. She would take them back to the Tang estate to study Oseoksan’s reaction more closely.
Gathering the stones, Sohwa sought an exit. The stairway she had entered by was already collapsed and impassable.
She ran toward the opposite section, intending to leap out the window—when something caught her eye.
A maidservant lay collapsed before the window frame, as if fainted while opening it.
Without a second thought, Sohwa seized the servant by the side and leapt from the second floor.
Landing, she immediately turned her head toward the entrance. She worried the Black Tiger Unit might have rushed in after one quarter of an hour.
Ominously, people were crowded at the entrance. Holding the servant close, Sohwa dashed straight there.
Just then, someone spotted her and shouted.
"Oh! There!"
Countless gazes turned toward her. Among them were the Wudang warriors she had exchanged looks with, and the Taeguk Sword Sovereign, his face dark with anger. The West Wing’s reinforcements seemed to have arrived.
Yet the expressions of those who looked from her to the maidservant in her arms were strange.
‘…What is this?’
She could not fathom the mood, but she set the servant down. No sooner had she done so than another maidservant screamed and ran up.
"Juhyung!"
Close to him, she clutched the unconscious servant and wept.
Sohwa spoke without thinking.
"There’s no need for such worry. He fainted from the smoke; with treatment he will recover."
The problem was not burns, but Oseoksan poisoning.
A minor problem remained: Sohwa did not know the antidote.
Had she known, she would have come with Jin-cheol. The Yeonjuda might know well about Oseoksan.
For now she strode toward the East Wing Medical Division Head.
Since he had stored the stones, surely he also knew the antidote.
Yet even with the crisis so urgent, the Division Head only stood frozen, mouth agape. The physicians packed around him fell back, making way for Sohwa.
She still did not understand the problem, so she alone spoke hastily.
"Division Head, the maidservants did not collapse from smoke inhalation."
At last the Division Head came to himself and asked,
"If not asphyxiation, then what?"
Sohwa drew out the bundle from her sash. Unwrapping the layers of cloth revealed five colored stones. The Division Head’s eyes widened in recognition.
"Wh-what is this! Why is Oseoksan here in the Medical Division?"
"There was strange smoke on the second floor. When I went to look, there was a hidden store beneath the floor. When the fire caught there, the Oseoksan must have vaporized."
"A storehouse? A storehouse, you say? The second floor itself is for storing medicine—what hidden store could there be beneath the floor?"
Annoyed by his response, Sohwa retorted coldly.
"How should I know that?"
In such urgency, cutting her words short and dodging blame was absurd—and if he truly didn’t know, that was even worse.
How could the Division Head not know what medicines entered his own Medical Division?
If Tang Hae-han had been here, such a mistake would have been unthinkable.
Sohwa despised incompetence. More than that, she despised those who, rather than correcting mistakes, shifted blame, eyes darting everywhere.
So no kind word could come as she looked at the Division Head’s eyes glittering with panic.
Pulling off the cloth covering her face, she spoke coldly.
"Now is not the time to argue the source of Oseoksan."
She held up each stone from the cloth.
"It seems they combined in the fire. I brought them in the same ratio they were stored; make a neutralizing agent against this mixture."
The Division Head frantically waved his hands.
"I have never even seen Oseoksan, nor do I know how to neutralize it. What good is knowing the ratio?"
"Then you mean to do nothing?"
Though she asked only briefly, Sohwa’s expressionless face made it sound like censure.
The Division Head scowled and raised his voice.
"Lady Tang, I tried to think well of you from what I’d heard, but how can you be so arrogant! You would treat victims of smoke with antidotes for poisoning? If, as you say, we treat for poisoning but it turns out to be simple asphyxiation, who will bear the blame? And if someone dies—"
"Enough!"
As the quarrel overheated, the Taeguk Sword Sovereign’s thunderous voice rang out. He swiftly denounced the Division Head.
"Division Head, what disgrace is this! I kept silent as it was East Wing’s affair, but I can listen no longer. Only a moment ago you yourself said it was strange that people collapsed at such distance from the smoke. And now, fearing exposure of Oseoksan in your storehouse, you press down upon our guest who came to aid Hubei? And you, a physician, dare speak of lives so lightly?"
Unable to contain his anger, the Sword Sovereign poured out another volley.
"A junior far younger than you risked her life, leaping into the flames to save people. Even then she came out with a way to treat the rest! And you…! Know your shame!"
At those words, Sohwa flinched.
Who risked her life to save people? Her?
Startled, she looked at him, but he did not catch her gaze.
Breathing heavily, he tried to calm himself. With only a few deep breaths, befitting a Wudang Daoist, he soon regained serenity.
With far warmer eyes than he had shown the Division Head, he looked at Sohwa.
"I apologize in his stead. Truly, I am ashamed. A guest risked her life to save the branch’s people, yet we only showed concern for responsibility."
"…"
She had never risked her life for maidservants.
Sohwa’s eyes grew clouded, but no one noticed. Black smudges on her white cheek and the ragged, burned hem of her skirt drew all attention.
The Sword Sovereign swallowed his bitterness.
‘Tsk, tsk. How urgent must it have been…’
Half the day he had watched the Tang direct line at her side, calm to the point of stillness, like a placid pond. With so little reaction, he had thought her wood or stone. Yet seeing her scorched and disheveled, he knew his judgment had been wrong.
When she deemed something necessary, she paid no heed to dignity or reputation.
Even the way she had rushed at the Division Head, rebuking him, was like a mad dog in green robes.
‘This one too, truly cannot escape the blood of the Heukcheon Amgui.’
Had Sohwa heard, she would have had convulsions of rage; thinking so, the Sword Sovereign smiled inwardly.
Sohwa felt ill at ease under their strange gazes.
Though the fire had mostly died down, was this not still a dire situation?
Seeing Daoists and aristocratic warriors calmly observing, even contemplative, her irritation surged.
In the Tang Clan, such handling would be unimaginable. Who had leisure for sentiment, or room in the mind to ponder an escape route?
That blockhead Tang Hae-han was someone to miss.
It seemed these people would waste tomorrow again in meetings, and not begin to set things in order until evening.
‘With the Medical Division in ruins and so many patients, at this rate… they’ll come begging my help.’
She could not wait on them.
She had to depart before noon if she were to reach the Sects’ Alliance meeting in time.
Yet she could not allow witnesses of the Oseoksan poisoning to die. That was precisely what those who smuggled it in wanted.
Looking at the collapsed maidservants, Sohwa closed her eyes tight.
She thought of the Oseoksan left in her pouch and spoke.
"…In an old record, I once saw a method of treating the side effects of Oseoksan."
The truth was, there had been a solution from the start.
‘If I am poisoned, I can discover the cure.’
The smoke her body had quickly expelled, but if she ingested the stones directly, the reaction would last longer.
She had always loathed things that clouded the mind—whether aphrodisiacs or sleeping draughts. She disliked using them, despised even more to consume them.
But now, it seemed this was the only way.
Sohwa forced open her unwilling lips.