Clothes
When I finished my morning training, the sour stink of sweat was practically rising off my clothes.
I opened the wardrobe to find something clean to change into. It was empty.
In the heat, I used to wash my training clothes in the well every two or three days.
Now the well water was as cold as ice, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to reach for it.
Since I kept changing clothes without washing the training set, both of the remaining two had piled up as dirty laundry, giving off that stale, musty reek.
Most wanderers lived like wild animals. They rarely washed, and they rarely took off their clothes, as if the cloth and their bodies had become one.
I had been the same. I’d been a rootless life drifting like duckweed, and I hadn’t cared about a little smell.
But now that I’d settled down and was living fairly comfortably, the foul odor had started to bother me.
Even if I washed them now, it would take several days before they dried. I’d probably have to buy a few more training outfits.
And since I had no idea how cold this winter would get, it might be wise to pick up a padded winter coat while I was at it.
The small fabric shops only sold cloth; they didn’t have ready-made clothes. If I wanted proper garments, whether training clothes or a long robe, I’d need to find a shop with some real size to it.
Fortunately, there was a decent fabric shop in Seochon.
“My, my, long time no see, Great Hero.”
Bang Yong-seong, the owner of Bang Family Fabric Shop, greeted me with easy familiarity and a flood of chatter.
My first meeting with Bang Yong-seong had been rather nasty. If the misunderstanding hadn’t been cleared up in time, I might have cut him down right there.
Luckily, nothing like that had happened. After his eldest son, Bang Ho-jin, became close with Gu-sam, I could come and go here without any fuss.
“I’m here to buy clothes.”
“Please, come in and have a look. Our shop may not be the biggest in Seochon, but we carry more garments than anyone else. I’m sure there’s something that will suit your eye, Great Hero.”
Bang Yong-seong’s boast wasn’t empty. The inside walls and ceiling of the rather spacious fabric shop were packed tight with all sorts of clothing, hanging from every available space.
There were the most ordinary clothes, the kind most people wore. The martial world’s garments were set apart to one side.
Drab long robes. Bright, elegant short outfits for women.
Even training clothes came in all sorts of styles. Sleeves long or short, wide or narrow. Collars high enough to cover the entire neck, or cut lower and looser.
I preferred sleeves that were moderately narrow and short. Since I might wear an inner vest underneath, I chose something with a roomy fit.
I picked out two sets of training clothes and a single winter coat thickly padded with cotton. Black, so dirt wouldn’t show easily.
As I reached for my money pouch, I noticed a pile of training clothes stacked carelessly off to one side.
“Are those for sale too?”
“Of course.”
“They don’t look new.”
“They were worn by someone else, yes, but they’ve been washed clean and are in good condition. Would you like to take a look?”
I picked up the black training clothes sitting on top and unfolded them.
They were worn, and the color had faded a little, but compared to the clothes I was wearing now, they weren’t in bad shape. There were no tears or holes either.
It looked like something I could wear comfortably while training my sword forms.
“How much for this?”
Bang Yong-seong named the price. It was one-third the cost of the new training clothes I’d just bought.
That was far too cheap for the condition. There was always a reason something was that cheap.
The clothes were all black, so it was hard to notice at a glance, but if I looked closely, I could see long stitches where they had been mended.
The spot was around the lower abdomen when worn. The left side of the waist had been stitched as well.
It wasn’t the kind of tear that came from natural wear. It was a wound from a blade.
I held the training clothes to my nose and sniffed.
Maybe they’d been soaked in lye for a long time to drive out the smell of blood, because a sharp, acrid odor still lingered.
The other training clothes were the same. Chest, back, arms, waist. Only the places that had been stitched differed.
A large navy-blue outfit that had clearly belonged to a broad-shouldered brute was in terrible shape.
The chest, abdomen, back, and waist were all covered with ugly stitching, like centipedes plastered across the cloth.
I didn’t know who it had belonged to, but it looked as though he’d been surrounded and hacked apart in a frenzy by several people.
“Where did all these come from?”
After glancing once toward the door, Bang Yong-seong lowered his voice.
“You heard about the big fight between the black-clad factions in the mountains outside Seochon a while back, right?”
The night the Haomu Sect moved against Choe Manor. Blood Snake Gang and Paechon Sect, in league with Choe Sa-deuk, had gone to strike the Black Night Gang, only to be ambushed in the mountains and nearly wiped out.
“These came from there.”
So these were the clothes worn by the martial artists of Blood Snake Gang and Paechon Sect.
“And those are here because...?”
“The government men stripped them off.”
“Not personally, of course. They dragged in contractors and had them collect the lot. I hear blades and other weapons fetch the best price, but training clothes apparently bring in a nice bit of profit too.”
“And they don’t worry about trouble after the fact?”
“They’re government men. Why would they? I don’t know whether the clothes had the faction’s name on them or not, but even if they did, they would have removed all of it. As you can see, they’re clean. Just like any other training clothes.”
“You handled the washing and repairs yourself?”
Bang Yong-seong let out a snort of laughter and waved the question away.
“Heavens, do I look like I know how to do that? A leather merchant handled it. I just receive the goods, add a reasonable margin, and sell them off. I don’t know the details.”
I had lived as a wanderer for quite a long time, but this was a first for me too.
In the martial world, taking things from the dead was common enough. Stripping off their clothes wasn’t unheard of either.
I didn’t know where all those clothes went. I’d assumed they were simply washed and worn again, but I hadn’t expected this.
The piled-up training clothes from the dead felt bleak, like a graveyard. It was strangely chilling, as if someone had skinned the beasts known as martial artists and tanned their hides.
If I got cut down somewhere and died, the clothes I was wearing now would be stripped off and stacked here too.
That stray thought left my mind unsettled.
“...Do people really buy these?”
“Of course. They’re so cheap I can barely keep them in stock. Half of what came in is already gone.”
Clothes weren’t as cheap as weapons, but they weren’t exactly cheap either. Poor people living hand to mouth had to endure midsummer heat and the bitterest winter cold with a single set of clothing.
Even the wanderers who hated touching the bloodstained clothes of the dead would probably grit their teeth and buy these if they had been cleaned and mended this well.
Once those men died, their clothes would be stripped off and brought here again. It would go on like an inheritance, over and over, until the cloth became rags too ruined to wear anymore.
*
Seven days later, the woodcutter brought more firewood as promised. Seeing the storage shed packed full of fuel finally put my mind at ease.
The smell of opium on the woodcutter’s body was still there.
I paid for the firewood without a word. We didn’t bring up what had happened at the wandering inn.
There was nothing good to be gained from knowing, and it wasn’t my business to interfere.
“If you need more firewood, come to the place you were before.”
“You’re out there every day?”
“During the day, yes.”
“Understood.”
I answered him, but I didn’t think we’d meet again. There was enough firewood now, and by the time the shed ran empty, I doubted the woodcutter would still be there.
After training, I stopped by Poongcheon Inn in the late afternoon as usual.
Pung Chil had gone out a few days earlier to look for day labor, so no one was at the inn.
With business like this, I wondered whether the place could even stay open, but the inn had plenty of guests, and it did fairly well in the evenings. In the morning too, nearby merchants came by for a quick bowl of rice porridge, so they were busy then as well, I’d heard.
Gu-sam’s eyes sparkled as he poured tea into a cup.
“Great Hero, did you hear?”
“Hear what now?”
Seochon was fairly large, and there were plenty of martial artists there, so there was never a quiet day.
A corpse or two turning up in the back alleys wasn’t even worth talking about anymore.
Getting cut down by the sword usually happened to martial artists who were good for nothing anyway. And when they died, the only ones who took interest were the hungry beasts in the mountain valleys.
“They say there’s a man selling opium in Seochon. The Black Night Gang is dead set on catching him, and apparently if they do, they’ll rip his guts out while he’s still alive.”
I thought of the middle-aged martial artist who had sold opium to the woodcutter at the wandering inn.
I had no idea where he’d gotten it or what kind of nerve he had to go around selling it, but he would probably meet an ugly end before long.
Even the savage blade men who boasted that they couldn’t sleep unless they bathed in human blood every day knew how to control their temper in front of a local faction or sect that ruled the area.
No matter how fierce or skilled you were, if you were surrounded by dozens of people stabbing at you, you’d end up as butchered meat all the same.
If it were a master who had reached a higher realm, they might make a legendary name for themselves like a wolf thrown among sheep, but the wanderers’ skills were all more or less the same.
He had sold opium in another man’s territory, so if they caught him, he wouldn’t die cleanly.
Beheading and hacking him apart would be only the beginning. They’d probably skewer him on a pole and hang him in the street as a warning, with his own entrails or severed arm clenched in his teeth.
Warnings had to be as gruesome and brutal as possible to be effective. If someone crossed into your territory and you only handled it softly, the others would come sniffing around with their teeth bared.
“Food’s ready!”
At the cook’s call, Gu-sam hurried over and brought the dishes back.
White rice, stir-fried vegetables, and a clear soup with chicken in it.
After training all day, the plain rice tasted sweet after just a few chews. With the weather turning cooler, I kept reaching for the warm broth with my spoon.
I was enjoying the meal well enough when someone came looking for me. It was one of Geuk-hwan’s servants.
“I said I wasn’t taking any work for the time being.”
“Someone who knows something about Jeok Chu-yeong has appeared. He was told to ask whether you might be interested.”
“Who?”
The servant stepped close and whispered, “A guest has come from the Martial Alliance.”
“The Martial Alliance?”
At the sudden news, I set down my chopsticks and asked him more closely about it.
The Martial Alliance was the largest organization in the martial world, built around the Nine Great Sects and joined by the Five Great Clans along with smaller sects from across the central plains that called themselves orthodox.
The Haomu Sect might have the edge when it came to information, but in force and organization, the Martial Alliance was overwhelming.
It was said that even a couple of the Alliance’s strike teams, each staffed by the younger elites of the orthodox schools, could wipe out a small local faction in a single night.
I’d heard they couldn’t do much north of the Yellow River or south of the Yangtze, where the unorthodox factions held sway, but even so, there were surely plenty of people there who had crossed blades with Jeok Chu-yeong.
I quickly finished what was left of my food and went to Simhyangru with the servant.
Geuk-hwan was waiting for me in a side building.
“Who’s here?”
“An inspector.”
“Don’t tell me he came to inspect the Haomu Sect?”
Geuk-hwan shook his head with a cool expression.
“Of course not. Our branch is not part of the Martial Alliance.”
What difference did that make? In the martial world, if you had power, you enforced your own will.
I had heard that because the Martial Alliance was so large, even its inspectors numbered more than ten. I didn’t know exactly what standing they held within the Alliance, but even the Haomu Sect couldn’t treat them lightly.
“We requested their cooperation. There are no sects in Seochon that belong to the Martial Alliance, so they came to us instead.”
“And why did you call me?”
“They would like to meet the guests of this branch. Lord Won and the others were unavailable because of other matters, so we sent word to Master Jeong.”
“Can they tell me anything about Jeok Chu-yeong?”
“You should ask them yourself.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
Two guards in Martial Alliance uniforms were stationed at the entrance to the inner chamber where the inspector was staying.
“Sir, someone from the Haomu Sect has arrived.”
“Show him in.”
When I entered the inner chamber, a tall middle-aged man was standing by the window with his hands behind his back, gazing up at the sky.
Just from the back of him, he looked every bit the real inspector.
I had once seen a few mid-ranking Martial Alliance officials in Henan. They all wore the Alliance’s formal uniform, dark blue silk embroidered with fine gold thread.
The inspector’s clothing was the same.
He wore an yingxiongguan with jade ornamentation on his head, and the sword at his waist was just as ornate.
He was some ambiguous middle rank, but he’d clearly splashed money from head to toe in an effort to radiate the authority of a high official.
Even after Geuk-hwan and I came in, the inspector didn’t take his eyes off the sky.
He didn’t seem to be hard of hearing, so it looked more like he simply enjoyed making people wait for no good reason. A thoroughly unpleasant habit.
In situations like that, speaking first would only make things worse.
Geuk-hwan and I stood there in silence for a moment, and then an odd sense of wrongness drew my eye.
About a span below the back of the inspector’s head, right in the center of his uniform, there was a vertical line where it had been stitched together.
Wondering whether I’d seen wrong, I narrowed my eyes and stared hard. No mistake. It was definitely a seam made with needle and thread.
About the length of three finger joints. If a blade had gone in and come out, it would have split exactly like that.
The thread at the cut edge was slightly frayed. It looked as if it had been torn and sewn up not long ago.
So he’d fought recently...
The inspector was a martial artist too, so his clothes might have been torn by a blade, or he might have been injured.
The problem was that spot was a vital point. If you were stabbed there, no matter how shallow the wound, your spine would be severed. There was no way you’d survive.
Was I seeing this wrong?
Maybe the sword had merely brushed him. Or perhaps he had dropped a dagger onto the clothes he’d taken off...
Trying to shake off the suspicion, I was just about to turn my head when I suddenly remembered the training clothes of the dead martial artists I had seen at the fabric shop not long ago.
“Ahem.”
The middle-aged man cleared his throat, dropped his hands from behind his back, and turned to face us. He had a stern, seasoned face, with a fine beard that made him look all the more impressive.
The unknown man wearing the clothes of a Martial Alliance inspector stared at me and asked, “Is there an opium dealer in Seochon too?”