"Besides… Crown Ribbon really seems to hate us… for some reason," another murmured, voice low under the shifting lantern light.
Kirihito tilted his head slightly where he crouched above them, listening... expression unreadable, the faintest flicker of amusement dancing behind those covered eyes ,
Lan Kansai's voice, rough with pain, joined in:
"I didn't get to say it earlier… but I think Ribbon Prince is hiding something.
He looked… suspicious… but maybe it's our misunderstanding too. How could Kyoren-sama be smarter than his own father who's lived double his years?
But the way he glared at me… it felt like… if I dared speak, he'd devour me alive."
A silence pooled between them, broken only by the hiss of night insects.
"… what if it's because we doubted him with something so heavy… that he didn't quite like it?" Kansai added, voice softer, haunted by guilt.
"Besides… Kuradome-sama never liked cultivation politics... even after wounding me, his eyes showed guilt.
He always believed in cold mercy... but Kyoren-sama… feels different.
Like something darker moves under the surface."
Lan Suji spoke next, words heavy:
"You're right… and it isn't recent.
It feels like Kuradome-sama has been fighting something for centuries… something that's been eating him alive from inside."
"How would you know that? We humans don't live that long…" another Lan asked, puzzled.
"Master Suiren kept records from formal grand masters going back at least three hundred years," Suji explained quietly.
"And there might be another hundred… or two hundred years even before that."
They walked on, shadows bending around them.
"We must keep a closer watch on Kyoren-sama," Suji advised.
"Lord Kuradome trusts him completely… and if Kyoren-sama is hiding something, we can't expect Kuradome to believe us.
We'll have to act ourselves."
"… is Kyoren-sama really fooling his own father?
It's hard to believe… they seem distant, yet they're like two sides of the same coin… and we already saw proof earlier, remember?" another whispered.
"Maybe... maybe Ribbon Prince is using Kuradome's trust... or maybe not.
One suspicious gaze can't prove everything.
And both father and son have blade tongues… we can't fight them with words, only with truth.
Until then… we must not act foolishly," Suji finished, voice sinking lower.
"Kazomaki is a royal family of yokais... both are two of the seven main core pillars of that line..."
Lan Kansai swallowed, asking under breath:
"... where might the other five be?"
"Dead... probably… or hiding... their stories buried under untold centuries.
We should quietly dig into family history too... who knows what we might find..." Suji said, then added, "Next time… be prepared. Kyoren-sama gave a dead glare… there's no guarantee the next won't be a stab."
One by one, they nodded... the weight of those words sinking into silence.
High above, balanced on a branch wrapped in darkness, Kirihito's smirk sharpened.
The moonlight caught the curve of his lips, painting them silver.
"So… that double-old fox's boy is playing games…?then he really might be cruler then me..
Interesting… I wonder what it is…" he murmured, voice low and velvety, like something thinking of both blood and secrets.
Far beyond Baiyun domain's broken doors, hidden in torn shadows, the black-cloaked figure listened from behind an old tree.
His wound still bled quietly into the ground. Hes silently worried about something . He also noticed kitihito on the branch of tree , watched him doing nothing but hearing them and smirking sleepily
And in that bleeding silence, he thought:
"…is that..him ?,"
[ End of Chapter 26 ]