The Black Market
“The black market? Hm, all right.”
When I asked Do Goeng-il to come with me and take a look at some spiritual herbs, he thought it over for a moment and agreed.
I didn’t feel like walking the distance of a full day by carriage in weather like this. I disliked riding horses just as much, so I hired a carriage instead.
Early the next morning, I took the carriage and left Seochon.
“A letter of introduction from the Haomu Sect...”
Do Goeng-il gave the letter only a cursory glance before handing it back.
“Did you read this?”
“I read it.”
Do Goeng-il tilted his head.
“You can read?”
“I can manage the Thousand Character Classic.”
When your martial skill was lacking, life had a way of humiliating you. And if you couldn’t read, people treated you like a gullible idiot. That was the world’s idea of fairness.
I’d been burned more than once already.
I’d done hard labor for a receipt, only to find out later it was a bill issued by an escort agency that had gone bankrupt ten years earlier.
Whenever I was hired by a gang, I signed contracts without bothering to read the fine print, because I didn’t even know what the hell was written on them.
Most of the time it was nothing serious, but once I worked for three months and somehow ended up not only without wages, but actually in debt by one tael of silver.
The bastards had charged me for food and lodging they were obviously supposed to provide for free. They’d even padded it out to the rate of a first-class inn and fleeced me blind.
I was furious, but they stood there shamelessly and said it was written in the contract.
When I was once assigned to deliver a letter, I was honestly chilled to the bone.
The travel expense and gratuity they gave me felt way too generous, so I asked a scholar I met at an inn to take a look, because something about it just felt off.
After he’d eaten and drunk at my expense, the scholar read the letter aloud. It said that the man who brought the letter should not be paid a gratuity, but simply killed to silence him.
After that, I got hold of the Thousand Character Classic and spent every spare moment paying different scholars to teach me how to read.
I must not have been hopeless, because after about a year of studying, my eyes opened. The scholars urged me to move on to the Elementary Learning and The Analects, but I had no intention of taking the civil service exams, so I closed the books there.
“How much money did you bring?”
“I emptied my pockets. I don’t know how much the herbs will cost.”
“Good. Expensive doesn’t mean best, but among the cheap stuff, there’s nothing good.”
This was about gaining internal energy. If I tried to save money and swallowed something strange, only to end up suffering cultivation backlash, then my life was over right there.
The carriage, rattling down the official road hard enough to ache in my backside, suddenly slowed.
The coachman soothed the horses and looked back at us.
“The sun’s too hot and the horses are worn out. There’s an inn up ahead. Why don’t we stop there for a bit?”
“All right.”
The carriage left the road and headed toward a shabby roadside inn fluttering with a banner at the foot of the mountain.
I rubbed my backside as I climbed down, then stretched.
The coachman parked the carriage in the shade and took out a barrel from the cargo bed to give the horses water.
When he opened the bamboo tube, it was already empty. The horses had drunk it all.
“Let’s have a cup of tea at the inn.”
The inn was old, but inside it was broad and clean. There wasn’t a single customer. I couldn’t see even a servant.
“Hello?”
When I stepped over the threshold and went in, the old floorboards gave a creaking groan.
I’d barely walked inside when the hair on my neck stood on end, as if I’d stepped on a dead rat. Instinctively, I stopped.
There was nothing under my feet. Only the echo of the floorboards had changed in a strange way.
Beside me, Do Goeng-il clicked his tongue low.
“Why is it so hot inside this inn? It would be cooler outside.”
He turned on his heel and sat down at the open-air table in the shade of the eaves. I quietly withdrew and took the seat opposite him.
Only then did a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties come out of the inn. He definitely wasn’t a servant, and he didn’t seem to be the owner either.
“What would you like?”
“Tea.”
I paid with coins, and a steaming teapot was set down at the center of the table.
I poured the tea into the cups, but didn’t touch it. Not just because the weather was hot.
“Did you notice?”
“Notice what?”
Do Goeng-il asked back with complete calm. He hadn’t touched his cup either, and was quietly watching the area around the inn.
So my instincts had been right.
I took a careful look inside and outside the inn.
It was a shabby single-story place that looked like a converted storage shed. There were no guest rooms and no stable in sight.
If it hadn’t had the banner hanging out front, I would have passed right by without even realizing it was an inn.
We hadn’t seen a single soul on the road since arriving here.
Could an inn in a place this remote really make a living? If it wasn’t from business, then how were they making money?
The man who’d taken our order and brought out the tea didn’t look like he belonged in an inn, either. He seemed simple enough, but his eyes were sharp and his steps had a loose, lazy swagger. He carried the stink of the black way about him.
The inn’s floorboards I’d just stepped on.
From the fourth step after crossing the threshold, the echo of the creak had suddenly grown open and light.
As if everything beneath that point was hollow under the floorboards. Deep and wide, too.
“Looks like a black den to me...”
“And? Do you plan to play the wandering hero?”
I glanced through the open doorway into the empty inn.
Dust shimmered and trembled under the slanting sunlight, useless and drifting.
What was under that floor...
As I’d rolled through Jianghu until now, all the ugly scenes I’d run into flashed through my mind.
Things cut into pieces, or tied up tight.
If this place was indeed a black den, there would definitely be a crew here.
Even if I slaughtered them all, the higher-ups who took their cut would come after me. If I wiped them out, someone even higher would come down. They’d cling to me doggedly, like some endless relay match. They could even hire assassins with money.
That was what made organizations frightening.
Unless you cut off the head all at once, they moved in an orderly way and took a strip of flesh here, a handful of blood there.
One sliver of flesh for killing one bastard sounded like a fair trade, but if you repeated that dozens of times, even the strongest expert would end up a corpse with nothing but bones left.
That was why even martial artists who built their fame by wiping out bandits never touched mountain strongholds tied to the forest brigands.
The world wasn’t going to change with one or two heroic acts.
“Forget it. Let’s get going.”
I stayed tense, ready for an ambush, but the man from earlier never showed himself again.
The coachman, resting in the shade beside the horses, waved us over.
I spilled the tea from the cups into the grass and climbed back onto the carriage.
As the carriage jolted away, I kept a steady glare on the inn receding behind us.
I didn’t know whether it was a real black den or not, but the fact that such suspicious bastards were less than half a day from my hometown of Seochon left a foul taste in my mouth.
Come to think of it, it was almost funny.
Wasn’t the Black Night Gang already settled right in the middle of Seochon, as rotten as they came?
The things those bastards did in the back alleys probably weren’t any less filthy than a black den’s.
*
We didn’t arrive at our destination until dusk.
It was too late to head back today, so we took a room at an inn and went to the place Geuk-hwan had told me about.
The black market meant a dark market where trades were conducted in secret, out of sight.
The stalls of the black market were scattered all over the place, each operating under a different signboard. If you didn’t already know where to go and what was sold there, you couldn’t find anything.
The place I’d been introduced to was an herbal shop. When I handed over the letter of introduction, I was immediately shown to a back room.
“You’re looking for spiritual herbs?”
“Let me see medium to high grade.”
“Understood. Please wait a moment.”
The herbal dealer came back carrying several wooden boxes and set them down in front of us.
“Now then, take a look at this one. It’s the finest thing in our shop.”
With a self-satisfied grin, the dealer opened the box and showed us a light-brown herb about the size of a fist.
“Twenty-year-old fleeceflower root.”
Unlike me, who had no idea what that even was and was only listening to the explanation, Do Goeng-il dismissed it at once.
“Twenty years, my ass. It’s barely been aged five.”
“P-pardon? What are you talking about? Do you have any idea how much this—”
“Enough. A twenty-year fleeceflower root should be at least twice that size.”
Do Goeng-il shook his head firmly. The herbal dealer, catching on at last, cleared his throat and quietly shut the box.
Next came a tiger-eye herb, named because the front of it supposedly looked like a tiger’s eye. Once again, after a few words from Do Goeng-il, the box was slid aside. One by one, the boxes were opened and then closed again, like some absurd quiz.
Do Goeng-il fixed the herbal dealer with a severe stare.
“Listen. If you keep dirtying this old man’s eyes with low-grade trash, the price you pay for it won’t be light. There’s fake stock mixed in among these as well, I think... Do you take the Haomu Sect for fools?”
“N-no, fake stock? Absolutely not. I’ve lived on my reputation in this line of work—how could you say such a thing?”
Apparently he hadn’t expected to be put through the wringer like this, because the dealer was breaking into a cold sweat as he protested.
He must have been used to dealing with ignorant martial artists like me, who knew nothing about medicinal ingredients.
The black market didn’t guarantee quality or authenticity to begin with. If you got cheated, that was your own stupidity, and whether you blew up or turned into a robber was your own problem to solve.
Even so, to bring out counterfeit goods after being introduced by the Haomu Sect...
If I’d come here alone, I might have been tricked into leaving with a couple of shabby roots and lost my whole fortune.
“This isn’t all you have, is it?”
“Hoo... Most people would be satisfied with this much, but you masters have very high standards indeed. I do have some premium-grade spiritual herbs for people with discerning eyes, though... they’re so expensive I can’t recommend them lightly.”
The dealer’s tone was mild, but he was clearly trying to stir our curiosity.
The bastard had been dragging this out on purpose because he wanted to sell it.
Of course. There was no way someone making a living in the black market was this clumsy.
Even if I didn’t know better, it was obvious he thought Do Goeng-il had an eye for quality, so he’d deliberately laid out only the trash herbs first to build the stage.
Unable to hold back any longer, I asked first.
“What is it?”
“Snow ginseng.”
Do Goeng-il’s eyes narrowed.
“Ginseng from where?”
“Don’t be surprised. Tianshan.”
Tianshan was where the demon cultists swarmed.
A foreign region far north beyond Qinghai.
It was a place where the state’s power didn’t truly reach, so if something came from Tianshan, nine times out of ten it was smuggled.
“If you’re trying to fool us with some wild ginseng or yellow root, this shop will be engulfed in flames before night is over.”
“Of course not. But the price won’t be small.”
“Show me the goods first.”
“They’re not here.”
Both Do Goeng-il and I glared at him at once. The herbal dealer flinched, but didn’t lose his merchant’s smile.
“It isn’t our shop’s item. To be honest, we were asked to broker the deal a little while ago. You’ll have to meet the seller directly for the transaction. We’re only middlemen taking a fee. Conveniently, the seller is already in the black market. Would you like to meet him? If we send word now, the deal can be made in about an hour.”
“Let’s do that.”
We set a meeting and went back outside.
“I have a small matter to attend to, so let’s meet here in an hour.”
Do Goeng-il walked off alone into the crowd. I’d wondered why he had come so willingly; apparently he had some other purpose.
The night streets were alive with entertainment and crowds. Since this was a city built outside the walls, there was no curfew here either, just like in Seochon.
There were even pleasure houses larger than Simhyangru, and the alleys were packed with taverns and gambling dens.
After circling around once, I returned to the herbal shop. I passed the time with a light drink at the tavern across the street.
I didn’t know what he’d been doing, but Do Goeng-il appeared right on time. We went back into the herbal shop together.
“The seller of the snow ginseng arrived first and is waiting for you.”
When we entered the back room, a middle-aged man in a deep bamboo hat rose from his seat. He was a martial artist with a crescent moon saber at his waist.
“You said you’re interested in snow ginseng?”
It was a voice I’d never heard before. That was only natural, since this was the first time we’d met.
But the moment the middle-aged man slightly lifted the brim of his bamboo hat and looked at Do Goeng-il and me, something unnatural happened.
He looked familiar.
Drooping eyes, plump cheeks.
About fifty years old... no, maybe forty-five.
A long, thin woman’s hand drawn on the neck. If he took off his martial clothing, there would probably be an Medicine Master Buddha tattoo running all the way to his chest.
Maybe because he’d been drinking too much, or maybe because he hadn’t slept well, the skin beneath his eyes was dark and both eyes were bloodshot.
Still, his face matched almost perfectly the portrait Won Seo-gang had shown me. I was reminded all over again of the skill of whichever painter had drawn it.
Pan Ho-yang.
The man who was supposed to be holed up in the Black Night Gang, avoiding Won Seo-gang’s sword, was here of all places...
Pan Ho-yang took a small wooden box from inside his robes. He carefully lifted out the snow ginseng wrapped in silk and held it up proudly.
A pungent chill lightly pricked the tip of my nose.
“This is the treasure of Tianshan. Tianshan Snow Ginseng.”