Fates Parallel Chapter 406 - Pillar (Patreon)

Hyeong Daesung walked with trepidation towards the command center. He’d been dreading this moment since their arrival at Geumji. Actually, he’d been dreading it since long before. From the moment Hayakawa Kaede had recruited him into her plan to turn Geumji into its own independent state, he’d known that this time would come.

It had come in much stranger and more difficult circumstances than even his worst fears.

Yan Yue and her strange menagerie of ghosts followed invisibly behind him.

“Where are you going? We don’t have time to waste on detours.”

Dae sighed at Yue’s complaints.

“I can’t do this alone, Miss Yan. I’ll need support from this side. Even if I wanted to go alone, Sun Quan would smite me the second he saw me attempting to bypass the shield. We need coalition approval.”

“It’s a waste of time.”

“So is dying. We only get one chance at this, please let me handle it.”

Miss Yan didn’t object any further, and Dae entered the command tent to find Guan Yi, Xin Wei, Seong Eunae, and Yuan Xing waiting for him. The Silver Orchard commander crossed his arms and scowled.

“You’d better have a good reason for calling this meeting, Magus. I shouldn’t have to remind you that your role here is purely advisory. You don’t have the authority to pull us away from our work.”

Dae shook his head, and straightened his back, suppressing the urge to chuckle nervously.

“Not this time, Sir Yuan. I’m acting in my capacity as Lady Hayakawa’s proxy. Something urgent has come up, and we need to accelerate the plan to infiltrate the academy grounds.”

Yuan Xing narrowed his eyes.

“The demonic forces are routed, but this battle is far from over. What’s the emergency?”

“I can’t say in specific, but we have a window of opportunity to fully subvert the shield formation well ahead of schedule. However, if we don’t move quickly, then it will close forever.”

“That’s not my concern. We’ll do things as planned unless you can give me a compelling reason not to. I’m also highly suspicious of a sudden change of plan brought to me by a proxy. Why can’t your leader explain it herself?”

Princess Seong gave Dae a knowing look. She knew that Hayakawa was currently stuck with Yoshika, and that if she was unable to speak for herself, then it meant that something was wrong.

“Commander, perhaps we can come to a compromise.”

As they began to negotiate, Zheng Long stepped up next to Dae and leaned down to whisper.

“That’s not going to work. Yuan Xing is a staunch traditionalist. He goes by the book, or not at all. A decent leader, but far too rigid. You won’t be able to move him without leverage.”

Yan Yue frowned.

“You know him?”

“Of course. Your father spent a lot of time growing ties with the Silver Orchard, and provided them with the resources and preparation necessary for...a certain operation.”

“The assassination attempt, you mean.”

Dae’s eyes widened for a moment, before he quickly schooled his expression. The what?!

“Yes, that. Does it surprise you that your father had a hand in it?”

“Not at all. So how can we use it, then?”

“Tell him that this involves the Jade Pillar. He’ll know what it means.”

Dae would rather know what it means himself, but he couldn’t very well argue with Zheng Long in front of everyone. He was the only person that could see them at the moment.

“Sir Yuan, we don’t have time to waste on debate. It involves the Jade Pillar.”

Everyone at the table gave him a strange look, except Yuan Xing himself who pursed his lips, his expression hardening.

“I don’t know where you heard that name, but you’d better explain yourself quickly, Magus.”

Dae hesitated, but Zheng Long fed him a response immediately.

“The pillar is toppling, and its shadow is longer than we thought. We need to support it a while longer yet, until we’re ready.”

He had no idea what any of it meant, but he’d already waded into unknown water, so he relied on Zheng Long’s navigation and repeated the words. Dae knew how suspicious it made him look, talking in obvious code to a Qin official, but what other choice did he have?

Yuan Xing drew his sword.

“On whose authority? I’ll ask again, who told you those words?”

Zheng Long clicked his tongue.

“Tsk, he’s more cautious than I thought. He must think you pried the information from an informant with Seong’s powers.”

Yan Yue glared at him.

“What information? I’ve never heard of a code like this!”

“I can explain later. For now, try telling him—”

Zheng Long was cut off by the sudden appearance of a powerful aura, the domain pressing down on Dae from all sides.

“Stand down, Commander.”

Sun Quan stepped into the tent, pointedly walking around the ghosts following Dae. He knew.

“Seong Misun is an ally, and it was most likely her who brought the young magus into the fold. The plan has my approval. Magus Hyeong, gather the people you need and depart at once. Yuan Xing, you are to join the infiltration group personally.”

The commander bowed deeply.

“Yes, Honored Grandmaster.”

Without another word, Sun Quan turned to leave, but Zheng Long called after him.

“Wait! I know you can hear me...what’s going on? Why did you help us?”

He didn’t break stride, but Dae could hear Sun Quan’s voice through his soul sense spell.

“Consider it a gift and a warning in congratulation for your ascension, Zheng Long. You should take care when meddling in things you do not understand, especially now that you have enough power to draw the attention of those who do. The pillar is toppling, and you should think very carefully about which side of it you wish to stand on. We’ll speak again.”

Yuan Xing gave Dae a cursory bow.

“I will transfer command of my forces and meet you at the edge of the formation.”

With that, he left Dae alone with the others. Xin Wei raised an eyebrow at him.

“Magus Hyeong, I think I speak for everyone here when I ask—what in the emperor’s name was all that about?”

—-

Dae filled them in as quickly as possible while arranging for the right people to join the expedition. There were only so many he could bring along. The exploit that High Magus Hwang had developed had a lot of constraints, and the number of people it could let through was foremost among them.

Technically, it should only have been able to allow one person through. It took advantage of the fact that Hwang Sung had been one of the people in charge of creating the tokens of admission in the first place, and that even from within the formation there was a limit to how much the demons could alter it.

His spell essentially derived a formula from the shield’s current status and used it to create a single false token. According to Hwang Sung, that had been the easy part. The greater challenge was extending it to allow a small group through on the same token, provided they were quick enough about it.

Eunae frowned when she heard about it.

“That seems like a rather glaring flaw for Do Hye’s magnum opus, don’t you think?”

Dae shrugged.

“Magus Hwang thinks it was intentional. A contingency plan in case my master was ever locked out of his own formation. The spell won’t work a second time. In fact, using it at all destroys the entire system for verifying entry. Nobody will be able to get in or out until it’s fixed, at which point the exploit would no longer exist unless it was intentionally recreated.”

Xin Wei grimaced.

“What are the chances that the demons discovered your master’s little back door and repaired it from within?”

“Non-zero, I’m afraid. They obviously know enough spellcraft to use it for themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to modify it without the risk of destroying the formation in the process.”

“Lovely.”

Dae ignored Xin’s sarcasm and went over his team again, to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything. Harada Jun and Ishihara Nao were a given—they were his most trusted subordinates, and the friends that had been with him the longest. There was nobody he trusted with the task more than them.

However, they lacked power. To that end, while he’d have liked to bring Hayakawa or Yoshika, he’d settled for Seong Eunae and Xin Wei. Guan Yi had declined to join, citing his responsibilities as the main commander of the coalition forces—which was perfectly fair. Finally, waiting for him at the edge of the shield, was Yuan Xing.

Truthfully, Dae would have liked to not bring him at all, but he hadn’t exactly been given much of a choice.

That made the chain of command in their little group rather muddy, however. Technically, Dae was the head of the mission itself, but Seong Eunae was his direct superior as the founder and overseer of his clandestine unit. Complicating things even further was the fact that Dae was also acting as Hayakawa’s proxy, which made him the acting vice commander of the entire coalition and equal to Yuan Xing.

All of that without even considering the ghosts. Yan Yue and the others would be able to pass the formation freely on their side, but their cooperation would be integral to actually completing their mission.

Dae shared his soul sight spell with his allies, aside from Yuan Xing, in order to better coordinate. Naturally, the first thing anyone did was to question Zheng Long about this ‘Jade Pillar.’

Zheng Long sighed as he was bombarded with questions from every direction.

“One at a time, please. We haven’t got long before we meet Yuan Xing, so I’ll have to be brief.”

Yan Yue was quickest.

“What is it? What did all of that code you fed to Hyeong mean?”

“I don’t actually know.”

He held his hands up defensively before she could interject.

“I know how that sounds! Let me explain. As far as I can tell, the Jade Pillar is...well, not an organization, per se, but a set of beliefs loosely agreed upon by certain associates. I don’t think they have a structured hierarchy, but I know that Yan De is among them, as is Sun Quan.”

“And what was all that about the pillar toppling?”

“They don’t actually call themselves the Jade Pillar, I don’t think they call themselves anything at all. When they speak of the Jade Pillar, they are referring to...I think it’s an enemy of some kind? A powerful structure that can’t be dismantled carelessly, because there is too much which relies on its support.”

Dae frowned.

“The emperor?”

“No, I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, most of the members are loyalists, but the thing is I don’t actually know because I’m not a member myself. Or I wasn’t. I suspect I’ve been drafted.”

Xin Wei stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“Do you think it has something to do with The Snake, or perhaps the Sovereign’s Tear?”

“I really don’t know. I was just able to derive bits of the code from various exchanges between Elder Yan Ren and Ancestral Grandmaster Yan De, as well as some of the discussions that happened during visits to the Silver Orchard.”

“And you staked this entire mission on something you spun out of that?”

He shrugged helplessly.

“Yuan Xing was more stubborn than I thought.”

Eunae pursed her lips.

“What did he mean when he said that my sister is an ally? Is she a member of this group as well?”

“You’ll have to take that up with her. My guess is that he was forced to include her after she blackmailed him over the attempt on your life, but I don’t know enough to give you better answers.”

Dae shook his head.

“It will have to wait until another time. We’ve arrived.”

Yuan Xing was already surrounded by several dead demons as he greeted them.

“Took you all long enough. Stay alert, there are still demons around, and there will be even more inside the barrier.”

Dae nodded and steadied himself. It was time at last to take back his master’s legacy.