Chapter 29: Poison Smoke

“Why are you plotting a rebellion?”

“Are kings, nobles, generals, and ministers born with special blood?”

The intruders did not deny the rebellion.

They spoke the old phrase that rejected the idea that high status belonged only to those born into it.

Instead, they stood tall, almost proud.

Perhaps my inability to understand showed on my face.

They sneered at me.

“What would someone born with more bloodline than they deserve know?”

“Privilege of birth does not mean freedom from responsibility.”

Those at the top did not merely live in comfort.

They carried the weight of major decisions and bore responsibility.

Sometimes, they even had to risk their lives.

“Shut up. What right does someone who has lived comfortably all their life have to speak?”

The fact that I opened my mouth to argue seemed to offend them.

Another intruder pushed through his companions and stepped forward.

He pointed at me as I knelt on the ground.

He looked nearly six feet tall, and I had to tilt my head back until my neck stiffened to see his face.

“…!”

My bound body jerked in shock.

I knew him.

Though he wore a mask covering everything but his eyes, I recognized him.

There could not be two people with such a vicious scar across the left eye.

He was one of the guards who had come to watch me in the underground prison.

Several guards had taken turns, and he had been one of them.

The scar over his left eye was so grotesque that it was impossible to forget.

The healthy right eye that had mocked me when I collapsed from exhaustion in the underground prison was now burning with rage.

I stared at him blankly, stunned to encounter someone I had seen in the dream outside of it.

Then I noticed something strange.

Through the narrow slit in the black mask, his left eye socket was sunken.

The closed eyelid had been horribly cut.

It was not the kind of scar one received in ordinary life.

It could only happen in a place where tearing and mutilating human limbs was permitted.

There was only one such place.

A battlefield.

I slowly examined the intruders.

They were strong adult men.

The highest priority for conscription.

“Was your eye injured in war?”

“…”

“You met each other on the battlefield?”

The black-clad intruders, all different heights beneath the moonlight, turned their faces in different directions to avoid my gaze.

Yet as though they had agreed beforehand, they all remained silent.

“…Fine. You are right. Then does the person supporting you share the same beliefs? Are they opposed to the class system as well?”

“That person—!”

“Hey. Stop.”

The one-eyed intruder, apparently full of resentment, nearly shouted in anger.

His companions stopped him.

So there truly was someone behind them.

Who was it?

In the omen, the rebel army had been enormous.

There had been the Red Demon’s forces, and so many soldiers attacking the imperial palace that the ceiling of the underground prison had shaken.

If the purpose was opposition to the class system, the rebellion’s leader was likely from the lower classes.

But someone from the lower classes could never gather an army of that size.

The leader of the rebellion was a high-ranking official.

They needed immense power and wealth to plan a rebellion on such a scale.

But a high-ranking official rejecting the class system?

It made no sense.

I could not understand it at all.

But the intruders, who had gathered with their backs turned to me, showed no intention of resolving my questions.

They whispered among themselves, but I could not hear.

“Why were you trying to smuggle Hyeopbyeol out of the palace?”

“…”

I tried to draw their attention, but they did not even listen.

Only after their discussion ended did the man who had captured me approach.

The blade he drew halfway from the scabbard at his waist gave off a faint glow.

Bound hand and foot, the fear carved into me by sharpened steel was twice as strong as usual.

The intruder saw me stiffen in an instant and smiled with his eyes.

“The emperor’s treasured strategist has been captured. He will surely come.”

He would come.

Even if circumstances made it impossible, he was the kind of person who would come himself.

Knowing that made my heart ache even more.

The intruder moved behind me, apparently intending to strike my neck.

The fear worsened because I could not see him.

Cold sweat soaked the back of my neck.

My hands and feet, damp with sweat, wanted to break free from their restraints.

But because the intruder stood behind me, I did not dare attempt it.

“They say your loyalty is deep. Let us test it.”

Before I could ask what he meant by that, the sword came down.

“…!”

The arms bound behind my back came free.

Blood tingled painfully through my wrists where the rope had pressed down.

There was no time to think.

Without waiting for the numbness in my hands to fade, I reached toward the broken bow.

It had been snapped in half, but it could still strike a vital point like a club.

But no matter how urgent my desperation was, it meant nothing against an opponent holding a sword.

“Ghk…”

The broken bow lay just ahead of me, but my hand could no longer reach it.

Had my solar plexus been pierced?

Had the blade passed all the way through?

I could not understand why it burned so fiercely.

Then I realized that the sensation of being pierced through was not an illusion.

It was real.

The broken bow lay abandoned in the grass.

Above it, a sword blade protruded sharply.

Blood clung to the pale silver blade like foam on the sea.

The blade protruding from my torso blurred my view of the bow.

I had to remove it.

I reached for the blade with trembling hands.

But the sword that had pierced through my back and out my solar plexus was pulled out without warning.

I pressed down on the wound where blood surged hotly.

Blood poured thickly through the gaps between my fingers.

“Cough…”

“If I were to give you advice, do not breathe. That is your only chance of surviving a little longer.”

Do not breathe?

Why?

But blood flowing from my mouth made it impossible to speak.

I covered my mouth with a hand shaking from pain.

Blood rose from my damaged organs.

Unable to stop it, it spilled from my mouth.

The liquid running down could not be swallowed.

It surged upward like vomit and poured out regardless of my will.

I had to press my palm tightly over my mouth.

“S-save me…”

Unable to remove the hand covering my mouth, I called out to the intruder.

I had to live.

I could not die here, so meaninglessly.

But they did not even glance at me as they left.

At me—the one born into a high-ranking official’s family, the one who had preserved my life comfortably behind the front lines during war.

In my blurred vision, the intruders walking away suddenly stopped.

I did not know why they had stopped, but I felt hope.

I opened my mouth to cry out for help.

Blood burst from it again like a fountain.

The intruders turned toward me with mocking smiles.

What they threw at me was a small flask.

They tossed it carelessly.

It drew an arc through the air and shattered the moment it struck the ground.

Then the intruders ran without hesitation, leaping over the wall surrounding the garden and disappearing.

“Cough… cough…”

I did not know what was happening to my body as it raced toward death.

A rattling sound rose from my throat.

The animal-like cries I had never made in my life came from the bloody foam bubbling in my throat.

I could not breathe.

Blood filled my nasal passages and airway, leaving no space for anything else to pass through.

I was dizzy and suffocating.

My mind felt distant, as though it might snap apart.

My upper body slowly collapsed, and I braced myself against the ground.

The hand that had covered my mouth pressed into the dirt.

Blood I vomited surged out and soaked the ground.

The agony of suffocation made me claw at the earth.

Thud.

Thump.

Thud.

At the sound of something falling, I moved only my eyes to the side.

Birds that had been resting on branches and in nests were falling helplessly to the ground.

Like cloth dolls slipping from a clothesline and landing in the dirt, the fallen birds became heavy lumps and did not move.

They showed none of the reactions a living creature should show.

There was only one reason they could suddenly die without any visible cause.

Poison.

The poison stolen from the Sichuan Tang Clan.

The poison Hwangbo Min had been searching for under imperial orders.

I looked for the flask the intruders had thrown before leaving.

Nothing remained inside the shattered vessel, but it had clearly contained something deadly.

I did not need to think long to know the answer.

What poison was colorless, odorless, without form or trace, and capable of killing living beings?

Poisonous smoke.

Now I understood the intruder’s cold laughter when he told me not to breathe.

And I understood why they had not killed me with a single strike.

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