Choe Manor
Several carriages came to a stop at the front gate of Choe Manor.
Dozens of Haomu Sect members spilled out, drew their blades, and fanned out in a rush.
The gate guards, who had only been standing watch because they thought the matriarch and her entourage had simply gone to Seochon, turned white with shock and ran for the hills.
A Haomu Sect member who had already gone over the wall opened the main gate from inside.
The manor was empty except for the servants who handled the household work.
After terrifying them into shaking fits and begging for their lives as though bandits had burst in, we confirmed through their mouths that there were no guards left behind at all.
Choe Sa-deuk’s wife and children were gone too. They had reportedly been sent to her family’s home several days earlier for safekeeping.
“Search every corner. Bring it all out.”
“Yes!”
At the order, the Haomu Sect members split into groups and scattered across the manor’s many buildings.
“You’re looking for proof of salt smuggling and human trafficking?”
“We already have enough proof. It was our sect that told the Black Night Gang lord who Choe Sa-deuk really was.”
I was left speechless by the answer.
“So Haomu Sect has joined hands with the Black Night Gang?”
“We’re only using each other for the moment.”
It was exactly the sort of world the martial world had become, where schemes and collusion ruled everything.
This wasn’t just a simple burglary of an empty house.
If they had set this up with the Haomu Sect, then by now the Black Night Gang must already know that the Bloodshed Gang and Pacheon Gate were on their way.
The end of the fight was already plain to see.
The Bloodshed Gang and Pacheon Gate would suffer a crushing defeat, and Choe Sa-deuk would lose everything.
“If you had evidence, wouldn’t it have been much easier to just hand Choe Sa-deuk over to the magistrate?”
There would be no need to seek help from the prefect or the county magistrate. No official would refuse the merit of arresting a salt smuggler and human trafficker.
Ye-hyang shook her head with a resolute expression.
“I can’t leave revenge to someone else’s hands. This matter will be handled by our sect. The martial way. We should go in too.”
There were too many buildings to search if we wanted to find out just how much money they had made.
We stepped up the stone steps onto the veranda and pushed open the door to the family hall before the Haomu Sect members had gone in.
Ye-hyang headed down the corridor to the office that served as the inner hall’s workroom.
The entrance door, covered with fine paper, stood wide open on both sides. It made sense if they had left in a hurry.
I stopped as soon as I stepped inside.
It was a mess.
Books from the shelves were strewn across the floor, and every drawer had been yanked all the way out.
The secret vault built into the wall behind a toppled folding screen had been half-torn loose and dangled there in tatters. I looked inside on a hunch, but the vault was empty.
Had one of the servants gotten greedy and run off with the valuables?
It was a plausible guess, but another face came to mind in the back of my head.
Ho Yeongeom.
He had been robbed and never received payment for it, and yet he had withdrawn without a single protest.
I had thought he was up to something, and it seemed he had waited for the moment when Choe Manor was at its most vulnerable and then climbed over the wall.
No, he probably hadn’t even gone outside the manor. He must have hidden somewhere in a storehouse or building, then crept out in secret after everyone else was gone.
With the Black Night Gang crisis going on, it wouldn’t have been that difficult.
So the bastard was a righteous orthodox martial artist in name only, and he had really sunk to the bottom.
A murderer and robber by day, a thief by night.
How had a criminal more suited to the black path ended up with the absurd epithet of “the sword full of noble righteousness”?
I wasn’t in any position to criticize, but at least no such hypocritical nickname had ever been attached to my name.
Ye-hyang came into the office.
“Did you find anything?”
“I didn’t search it. Someone else got here first.”
“Eh? Who...”
“Do you remember that middle-aged martial artist I saw in the inner quarters earlier?”
“You mean Daehae, Ho Yeongeom?”
“You know him?”
“He’s come to Simhyangru a few times to commission Haomu Sect work. I only saw his face briefly then.”
“Looks like it was Ho Yeongeom’s doing. He was quiet earlier, and it seems he used the chance to rob the place while it was empty.”
“If it was Ho Yeongeom...
“...then that sounds exactly like something he’d do.”
Ye-hyang accepted it with such an ease that it was almost startling.
“What sort of man is Ho Yeongeom?”
“He was once one of the more brilliant younger talents, but after his sect collapsed, I heard he wandered Jianghu making his living as a wandering hero.”
A wandering hero, my foot. A wandering killer and robber, more like.
I almost said that it was Ho Yeongeom who had ambushed the carriages in broad daylight, slaughtered everyone, and stolen whatever martial manual or inner art he had wanted, but I stopped myself.
There was no solid evidence. I only had instinct, based on the smell of fresh blood, his build, and the circumstances.
If I spoke too lightly now, it might just create trouble when I ran into Ho Yeongeom later.
“There were some young ladies traveling with him.”
“They were probably his junior sisters.”
Should I call that good senior-junior fellowship, or should I call it a rotten sect foundation?
After checking the rest of the rooms, we went outside. A young Haomu Sect member came running from behind the annex.
“Found it! It’s in the annex!”
*
The stairs leading underground opened into a broad chamber about the size of three rooms.
A foul stench hung thick in the dark.
When a torch was thrust forward, several large chests stacked to one side came into view.
When the light shifted to the other side, something twitched inside the prison with its iron bars.
Before anyone could stop her, Ye-hyang strode right up to it.
Her breathing turned rough as she stood before the bars. I moved beside her and held the torch up.
In the filth, gaunt little girls looked up at the adults with vacant eyes, as if they had been burned to ash.
Even after rebuilding his clan and laundering his business, Choe Sa-deuk apparently had never washed his hands clean completely.
Or maybe he had kidnapped the children for his own private use.
Ye-hyang yanked hard on the door. It didn’t budge. After checking the chains and lock wrapped tightly around it, she drew her sword.
“Wait. A sword won’t help here. You’ll only damage the blade.”
I looked around and found something suitable.
Among the wall-mounted weapons I had no desire to imagine the use of, I found a hammer and took it in hand.
I smashed the lock in one blow and opened the door.
The children shrank back and curled into the corner. Anyone dragged out of here was probably never brought back, so they had every reason to be afraid.
Ye-hyang could not easily step into that prison, thick with despair. It didn’t seem to be the stench alone, sharp enough to make my head ache, that kept her back.
“...Please give me the water bucket. Tell the kitchen to make some porridge.”
Since there were Haomu Sect members here too, it seemed she was asking me to step away.
I obediently handed over the bucket and turned away. The Haomu Sect members opened the chests and checked the contents. Silver ingots, each about the size of a palm, gleamed blood-red in the torchlight.
I went back up to the surface. The night air drove away the stink, but the cloud hanging over my heart only grew heavier and duller.
I took the eldest maid with me to the kitchen and had her make porridge.
“There were children locked in the underground prison. Do you know anything about that?”
With her head still bowed, the maid shook as she stirred the porridge.
“...We don’t know what the mistress does.”
Even if she had known, what could she have done? Questioning her further was pointless.
Before the porridge was even done, Ye-hyang came out with the children.
They were as thin as burnt wood, in a state so wretched it was hard to imagine branches ever sprouting fresh buds, blooming flowers, or bearing fruit of their own again.
However she had comforted them, the children clung to the hem of Ye-hyang’s clothes and walked close to her. The littlest child, too weak to move properly, had been carried in Ye-hyang’s arms and hung there limply.
They had only just met today, and yet there was something eerily similar in their eyes and their air.
As though Ye-hyang herself had been trapped in that prison with them for a very long time.
The senior Haomu Sect members took the servants belowground, carried out the chests filled with silver ingots, and loaded them onto the carriages.
Even with three men straining together, they were heavy enough to make them grunt.
Everything in Choe Manor that could be turned into money, apart from rice and other grains, went into the carriage beds. Silver, hanging scrolls, porcelain, and even swords.
After they finished, all the servants and maids were locked in the storehouse.
I thought that was the end of it, but Ye-hyang sat down on a chair in front of the main house and perched there.
“There’s still one thing left to take.”
It wasn’t hard to guess what she meant.
“Choe Sa-deuk’s head?”
Ye-hyang nodded and spooned porridge into the arms of the child she was holding.
It was midsummer, but with no sun and a night breeze from the mountains, the air was rather cold.
Not knowing when Choe Sa-deuk and the surviving Bloodshed Gang men might return, everyone lit braziers here and there in the yard and kept watch while they rested.
The rescued children did not want to go into the rooms either. They threw fits and stayed close to the Haomu Sect members instead.
They seemed to know instinctively that they were safer while staying with the people here.
With troubled expressions, the Haomu Sect members ladled porridge into bowls and fed the children.
No one asked how these children, who should have been at home being spoiled and adored, had been kidnapped and brought here.
The situation still wasn’t over. It was too early to relax and sink into sentiment.
After taking care of the children’s meal, the adults also filled their stomachs with food brought from the kitchen.
Hee-eeehh... huff...
Apparently the smell of food had reached them, because the horses tied to the carriages whinnied and snorted.
The Haomu Sect members who were doubling as drivers ran over, led the horses and carriages into the manor, then unhitched the horses and gave them water and hay.
The full children began dozing off one by one as they warmed themselves by the fire. We carried them into rooms and covered them with blankets.
People and horses alike spent the night in a manor with no owner, eating and resting quite comfortably.
The owner of the house, meanwhile, was probably flailing in an inferno of chaos after stepping into a trap the Black Night Gang had set for him.
Maybe he had already become a companion on the road to the underworld, together with the Bloodshed Gang and Pacheon Gate.
Swords and blades had no eyes, and in a night this dark, it was hard to tell friend from foe.
When screams rang out and blood began to spray in a dim scene where nothing could be seen clearly, human instinct was simply to start swinging a blade.
And if you were too worked up and hacked at anything in front of you, you often ended up cutting your own side by mistake.
I had nearly died in brawls like that more than once. It was the kind of ridiculous all-out mess where you didn’t even know who you had stabbed or where.
Summer nights were short, but the night we spent at Choe Manor felt longer than the dead of winter.
By the time the embers in the braziers had lost their last warmth, the sky had begun to pale. The mountain birds greeted morning noisily.
“They’re coming.”
A Haomu Sect member on watch looked out beyond the gate, then came back to wake the others. Everyone rose quietly and loosened up their bodies.
The clatter of carriages grew louder and louder, then stopped in front of the main gate.
A heavy thud rolled to the ground. A groan escaped from somewhere deep in the chest.
Someone came pushing open the gate while coughing hard and struggling for breath.
It was Choe Sa-deuk.
Had he escaped because he had kept a little distance behind the Bloodshed Gang?
Or perhaps the Haomu Sect had already agreed with the Black Night Gang not to kill Choe Sa-deuk, only to let him go.
Even if he had survived by the skin of his teeth, there was nowhere Choe Sa-deuk could go but back to Choe Manor.
He had become a beggar overnight. His expensive silk robes were torn in several places, and blood stained his face.
There was no trace left of the local magnate, the hero of the Choe family who had raised the fallen clan back from ruin.
His grand ambition and confidence, the swagger he had shown when he boasted he would cut off Jeok Chu-yeong’s head, had collapsed into nothing like drunken bragging.
What remained was only a pitiful figure and a helpless sense of defeat.
Maybe he was too exhausted, or maybe coming home had made him relax his guard. Choe Sa-deuk didn’t even realize that dozens of martial artists stood before him with blades in hand.
He took a few steps before absently lifting his head, and only then did he jerk in shock, eyes flying wide.
The escort who had followed him in glanced around nervously, then backed away and ran.
Five Haomu Sect members pursued him over the wall by climbing the ladder they had propped at an angle.
I heard the clash of weapons, then a final scream, and the escort’s life was cut short.
Choe Sa-deuk swallowed dryly and slowly retreated. Then he saw me and Ye-hyang and blinked at us with a dazed expression.
There was more bewilderment than fear in his eyes.
He seemed to understand that the unknown martial artists were Haomu Sect members, but he couldn’t make sense of why they were here.
As his frozen mind slowly began to turn, Choe Sa-deuk’s face twisted hideously. Murderous intent surged in his bloodshot eyes.
He gripped his blade-less Pafeng Blade and ground his teeth.
“You damned bastards... how dare you drug me?”