Wi Saheon marked down on the blank sheet, one by one, the locations from the report where nothing had happened.
Rather than tracing the flow of events, it was a process of working backward from the points where that flow had broken off.
Sections where explosives had been placed but not detonated. Locations where guards had been eliminated but no further infiltration followed. Time periods where a signal had been given but no subsequent action taken.
Rather than examining these individually, he chose to layer them on top of one another as a single stratum.
What was revealed as a result was a pattern of repeated disconnection at specific points.
“It’s an incomplete structure.”
The design of the operation itself had been meticulous — yet at the execution stage, it had been severed in the same way every time.
This did not mean the unit members had acted on independent judgment.
It meant the central command itself had been fragmented from the start.
Therefore, it was highly probable that the unit members did not know the full structure.
“Are you saying the operation failed, sir?”
The Gold Guard Commander flinched as his own voice struck the high ceiling and fell back down on him.
Wi Saheon answered without looking up.
“Not failed. Stopped.”
His fingertip tapped against a specific point on the map.
“Without identifying the upper echelon, the full picture will not come to light.”
If the system was one in which orders were delivered in fragments, only a very small number at the top would know the whole.
Or perhaps only one person.
“There would be one of two reasons it stopped. Either the orders were cut off — or the orders that had been given could no longer be maintained.”
The moment he mentioned the second possibility, Wi Saheon’s voice dropped lower.
His thinking naturally converged on one person.
The gaze he had met for the first time in that interrogation room. Eyes that were lucid yet severed from their connections. An attitude that did not recognize him and yet grasped the situation itself with precision.
The intensity of the torture needed to be calibrated not randomly but with precision — so as not to exceed a certain threshold. Not enough to kill, yet enough that the torture would not stop. Until Shin Yigyeom could maintain consciousness long enough to piece together his severed memory.
“Understood, sir. I will submit the report.”
The Gold Guard Commander exited the administrative office, reported the current status of the wall’s defenses to the Ministry of War officials gathered at the Outer Administration Hall, and then handed the draft official report over to the lieutenant commander.
The initial conclusion — that the Mumyeongdan’s surprise assault on the imperial palace had failed, but the threat had not been eliminated — was relayed to the imperial court.
Because the emperor was required to hear the classified matter directly, the meeting was convened in the Secret Document Chamber.
Attendance was also restricted.
The report that had come over from the Dark Bureau was in the form of an alloy foil — it would not burn or be damaged by water.
It was fixed atop a lacquered black writing board.
The imperial recorder read through the report without particular emphasis on any point.
“Accordingly, the Mumyeongdan who launched the surprise assault on the imperial palace is composed of the Baekah people—”
The ministers turned to one another in surprise.
“Did you just say the Baekah people?”
“They are from Baekah Nation… No, but why on earth would they—?”
Baekah Nation, in which the Baekah people comprised more than half the population, occupied a special position among the vassal states of the Daeryun Federal Empire.
The first reason was archery.
The archery of the Baekah people, who were specialized in the bow, was not merely a combat technique — it was the sum total of survival skills accumulated across mountain and forested terrain, something the empire’s military doctrine had never been able to fully absorb.
In mountain warfare in particular, there was no force that could replace the Baekah.
It had become an imperial tradition for the empire’s princes, who had trained with the longsword across generations, to learn archery from Baekah-born officers.
“The Daeryun Federal Empire has long extended preferential treatment to Baekah Nation.”
First Imperial Prince Wi Sagyun looked around at the ministers with a grave expression.
“The empire recognized Baekah Nation as an autonomous state, reduced its taxes, and granted it exemptions from military mobilization. And that was not all. Freedom of movement for diplomatic envoys was also guaranteed. It was treatment so extraordinary that allied nations voiced grievances over it.”
The second reason was a medicinal ingredient.
A specific medicinal plant that grew within Baekah Nation’s territory — Seollakcho.
Seollakcho was a rare medicinal herb that grew only in extreme cold climates, and its superior effects in stanching bleeding, reducing fever, and stabilizing the nervous system meant it was treated practically as a strategic material in an empire where warfare was frequent.
Above all, when Seollakcho was compounded with other medicinal ingredients, its potency amplification rate was exceptionally high.
When purified after removing its toxicity and combined in specific ratios, the effects on physical recovery and blood flow stabilization rose dramatically — a technique deeply rooted in Baekah cultural life over many generations, transmitted only among their own people.
The imperial medical institute had attempted to reproduce the formula on multiple occasions, but had never succeeded in replicating the same efficacy.
That was the reason the Daeryun Federal Empire had extended preferential treatment to Baekah Nation.
“Continue.”
The emperor pressed the recorder to go on.
“Yes. Furthermore, among the senior cadres currently detained, one has been identified as Second Palace Guard Yunbaek Shin Yigyeom of the Imperial Palace Guard—”
At the mention of Shin Yigyeom’s name, several ministers looked up in shock.
The Palace Guard Commander let out a sigh; the emperor kept a silence heavier than lead.
The most stunned was the Senior Inspector from the Internal Oversight Bureau who had been present at the interrogation.
He had seen the man’s face up close, and yet it had never once occurred to him that this was Yunbaek.
He had occasionally thought that the pupils, which sometimes held a faint blue tint, resembled Yunbaek’s — but the reason he had failed to make the direct connection was the ferocious, murderous bearing of someone who had turned the empire into his foremost enemy.
There was not a single aspect of that man that called Yunbaek to mind.
Only now, at last, did the names whose meaning had been unclear — Baekah people, Mumyeongdan, imperial palace guard — finally converge within a single person.
“How did this come to pass?”
Wi Sagyun looked sharply at Wi Saheon.
The whites of his eyes were bloodshot to an almost alarming degree.
Everyone present recalled the same face.
Yunbaek Shin Yigyeom — the Second Palace Guard of the imperial palace guard, the man who had been responsible for the safety of the imperial household and the princes.
His motive for disappearing five years ago and his whereabouts had never been found.
As a result, he had remained an ambiguous gap in the records all this time — neither killed in action nor transferred.
He existed in the records but was absent from the present.
The imperial palace had not had the leisure to remember and mourn Yunbaek.
His vacant place had been quickly filled by another, and the imperial palace itself had weathered a storm of turbulent upheaval and anguish over the past five years to arrive at today.
“Is there… no possibility of it being someone with the same name?”
The voice of the Palace Guard Commander, who had been close to Shin Yigyeom, trembled slightly.
Shortly after, the recorder presented additional documents.
The identity information submitted by the Dark Bureau included the internal recognition code of the palace guard and an operational call sign that had been deactivated five years prior.
It was made unmistakably clear that Shin Yigyeom was both the central figure in the inexplicable surprise assault on the imperial palace and a member of the organization known as the Mumyeongdan, which bore hostility toward the empire.
“What does Shin Hyeonmuk have to say about this? Could it be that he is also involved?”
“What kind of outrageous suggestion is that? He doesn’t even know about this yet.”
“So the palace guard was alive after all. Madness, but alive…”
The Palace Guard Commander muttered with a bitter smile.
“Your Majesty, what will you do with Yunbaek? If left as is, it will cause tremendous damage to the dignity of the imperial household.”
“He must be executed as an example. He is someone who tried to drive a blade into the heart of the empire.”
“As has always been done, it seems right to leave his disposal to the Dark Bureau this time as well.”
“Out of the question. The moment someone is confirmed as a traitor affiliated with the imperial palace, death by dismemberment is immediate. There has never been a precedent broken in this regard.”
