"Cho, stay here with Seol for a bit. Dad and Mom have somewhere to go for a moment. Someone is sick, so we're going to check on them, alright?"

"Yeah, Cho can stay with Auntie. We had fun together for the past few days, right? Dad, have a safe trip."

— Tsrut!

After telling Cho to wait for a bit, I followed Military Strategist Zhuge Hu as we rushed to the guest quarters where regular visitors of the Martial Alliance stayed.

Since I was staying in a secluded annex behind the Lord's Hall—being one of the Five Venoms, with Seol and Gong as guests—we had been assigned a more private residence. However, Zhuge Hu’s nephew, Ji-ryong, must have been given lodging in the general guest quarters where most visitors to the Martial Alliance stayed.

"The Five Dragons and Three Peaks… Nothing special about them, huh?"

The area around the guest quarters was already surrounded by warriors of the Martial Alliance, sealing off the entire vicinity. Judging by the commotion near the entrance and surrounding area, it seemed like they had placed the whole place on lockdown.

A poisoning incident involving the nephew of a Martial Alliance strategist was bound to trigger an emergency response.

Passing through the heavily guarded warriors, we reached a long corridor lined with rooms resembling small one-room lodgings. We stopped in front of one.

Standing outside were three familiar faces—Kwon-ryong, Geom-ryong, and Gungbong—each looking deeply concerned.

"Strategist!"

"Yes. Did anything happen while I was away?"

"No, sir. Ji-ryong is inside, being looked after by Eunbong, the physicians, and the people from the Zhuge family."

When we entered the room, it was already crowded with over a dozen people. Ji-ryong lay on the bed, his pale face tilted toward the ceiling.

Beside him, a woman named Eunbong clung to his collar, her eyes swollen from crying. She stared blankly at the ceiling, her grief evident.

As soon as we stepped inside, the crowd parted like the Red Sea.

Eunbong, seeing us, leaped to her feet and cried out.

"D-Dokhwa! Please, I beg you! Tianlang—please, save him…!"@@novelbin@@

Tianlang—a term used affectionately between lovers.

So, Eunbong and Ji-ryong were in a relationship.

She looked utterly devastated, but from what Hwa-eun had told me earlier, this woman was an expert in Sound Arts—a terrifying ability where she could kill someone by screaming or plucking an instrument to rupture their eardrums or blood vessels.

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