Seven Kowtows
—Crack.
The jaw muscle of Hwangbo Cheonseong, head of the Hwangbo Clan, stood out stark against his cheek.
No one understood better than he did — as the clan’s own patriarch — that every word Jegal Sea had spoken was true, and the knowledge cut him to the bone.
For all that he led the Hwangbo Clan, his roots were those of a martial artist, steeped to the marrow in the laws of the murim. He had watched the entire affair with his own eyes from start to finish, and the exchanges had taken place before a throng of witnesses. No matter how tightly he tried to seal lips here and now, binding the mouths of the countless people who had seen it — and of Shaanxi’s high officials besides — was all but impossible. The Jegal Clan, needless to say, would offer no help in silencing anyone.
Handle this poorly, and the Hwangbo name would go down in the histories of the jianghu as a house that had answered a martial challenge with petty, small-minded spite.
“In my view,” Jegal Sea said, “further argument between the Clan Head and myself seems unnecessary.”
“….”
She did not bother spelling any of this out. Even the headman of some backwater village, if he stood for a body of people, had reasons that could not simply be brushed aside — and the man before her was no village headman. Hwangbo Cheonseong, soft-bellied patriarch of the Hwangbo Clan, might be infamous throughout the jianghu for his dullness, but he still sat at the head of one of the Five Great Families. However sluggish and complacent his handling of affairs looked beside the other clan heads, his mind still turned within the bounds of a normal man’s.
He did not need the humiliation of hearing it from Jegal Sea’s lips. By cold calculation, there was only one way to close the present crisis at the least possible cost.
Of course, that cost was more than enough to shatter a clan head’s pride.
—Grit.
Hwangbo Cheonseong raised a hand. He gestured behind him and muttered in a voice thick with bitterness.
“…Bring So Cheonpa.”
“…?!”
So Cheonpa’s eyes nearly started from his head.
“As you command!”
The clan head’s personal guard seized So Cheonpa by both arms and locked his pressure points.
“W-wait…!”
So Cheonpa thrashed, but four more men piled on, and there was nothing he could do.
“Y-you can’t—!”
A boot drove into the backs of his knees.
—BOOM!
With a crash that shook the stone, the struggling So Cheonpa was forced to his knees on the arena floor.
“L-let go! You bastards! How dare I—how dare I bow my head to vermin like—!”
Hwangbo martial artists clamped onto each of his thrashing arms. So Cheonpa writhed like a man fighting for his life.
“I won’t! I can’t! I, So Cheonpa—!”
The clan head looked down at him with eyes so cold they seemed to freeze the air. Hwangbo Cheonseong bit his lower lip and spoke.
“Very well. A martial man’s word must be kept. So Cheonpa, representative of Unwol Jiju — regardless of cause or circumstance — will, here and now, drive his head into the earth and beg the pardon of the people of Shaanxi assembled in this place.”
“N-no!”
For a martial artist, to kneel was an act reserved for parents and one’s lord. To press one’s brow to the ground was a shame beyond even that — a humiliation so vast that some would rather die. So Cheonpa might be a man of the black path, head of Unwol Jiju, but he was still a man who had made his life in the murim, and his pride ran just as deep. To kneel and knock his forehead on the dirt before common folk he had always treated as less than insects was enough to unmake everything he was.
“This can’t be happening! Something’s gone wrong! C-Clan Head! Please — just a moment! Wait!”
“What are you standing around for? You’re trying my patience. Finish it.”
Sick of the entire spectacle, Hwangbo Cheonseong flicked his hand. To him, So Cheonpa was no longer anything but filth he could not bear to look at.
—Murmur, murmur…
The crowd that had scattered in the earlier uproar drew back toward the arena. Every eye turned to the stage. Among them were people who had been beaten half to death by Lee Eultak, who had collapsed unconscious and were only now staggering upright. There were old, worn fathers who had stood trembling, waiting their turn. And there was Gang Ilbi, wiping blood from his mouth as he barely kept his feet.
“Ah…”
Before them all, So Cheonpa knelt with a gag forced between his teeth.
“Judging by the state of him, I don’t expect we’ll get a spoken apology out of his mouth even at the end,” Jegal Sea said, arms folded. “But we consider that part of the compensation, so we will have it. Seven times. Knocking his forehead to the ground seven times ought to serve as sufficient courtesy.”
A cold smile touched her lips.
“For the sake of a martial man’s honor, I trust you will oblige us, Clan Head.”
Hwangbo Cheonseong’s face twisted. He gestured at the men watching him. The martial artists pinning So Cheonpa’s arms nodded.
—CRACK!
So Cheonpa’s thrashing forehead smashed into the stone of the arena floor.
“Nngh! Nngh—!! Me…! Me, bowing to those worm-spawn—!”
He flailed like a madman. Veins stood out in his eyes. He fought with everything he had to keep from offering that bow to the people before him.
—CRACK!
Two men drove him down. With the full weight of their strength, his brow struck the stone a second time. His forehead split open.
—CRACK!
Blood ran. So Cheonpa’s eyes swelled with humiliation until tears stood in them. Blood tracked sideways along the line of his jaw.
—CRACK!
The shocks piled one upon another, and slowly his eyes began to roll.
—Hissss…
Urine ran down his legs.
Everyone held their breath and watched.
“The head of Unwol Jiju…”
“To us.”
Not some common thug, but a representative of the black path, was on his knees before gaunt, rib-thin commoners, driving his brow into the earth in penance. The people of Shaanxi stood dazed before a sight they could scarcely believe.
Only after So Cheonpa’s forehead had struck the stone a full seven times was he released. He had thrashed to the last, and in the end he fainted where he lay, his trousers yellowed with urine.
Hwangbo Cheonseong looked down at him and muttered as if he meant to chew the words to pieces.
“Satisfied now? I have no wish to remain one breath longer in this damned place. As for the agreement and related talks, I will send a dispatch rider in due course. We will set a date later.”
The eyes he fixed on the fallen So Cheonpa burned with the promise that, once everything was settled and quiet, he would exact a vicious reckoning for today’s failure.
“This is why one should never keep time with base trash. Hwangbo forces — sheath your weapons.”
Grinding his teeth, Hwangbo Cheonseong turned on his heel with brutal force.
“A moment.”
It was Jegal Sea who stopped him. Hwangbo Cheonseong clenched his jaw and glared at her.
“As you yourself pointed out, I have paid the price of the duel’s outcome according to the codes of the jianghu. I warn you, eldest daughter of the Jegal Clan. My temper is foul enough as it stands. What I have done thus far, I did because I acknowledge the laws of the jianghu — not because I lack pride. It would be wise not to provoke me further today without need.”
“Ah — I have no intention of provoking you without need,” Jegal Sea said, digging at her ear with a little finger. “We simply require that the full price of the duel’s outcome be paid before we let anyone go. Shaanxi is our front yard. We’ve looked the other way while you ran wild this far — that ought to be enough. You didn’t think we’d overlook the rest as well, did you?”
“…What did you say?”
Jegal Sea lifted her crane-feather fan and slowly waved it toward her own face.
“Aaah. Looking at your face, I see you don’t remember. I’ll go through it point by point for you. There’s rather a lot, so listen carefully.”
She held up three fingers.
“First: when Gang Ilbi of Shaanxi held out for more than one gak in the duel, Unwol Jiju was to reduce by three-tenths the tenant rents owed by the sharecroppers bound to its fields. If I recall correctly, Gang Ilbi most certainly lasted more than one gak.”
Hwangbo Cheonseong’s face went rigid.
“Ah.”
Eun Seollyeong let out a soft breath of realization. Members of the Jegal Clan lifted their heads with brightening faces, catching her meaning at once.
Jegal Sea went on, each word crisp and deliberate.
“And that is not the end of it. There were also the terms put forward by Bilyu — the Blood Death Sect assassin our Jegal Clan engaged, a son of Shaanxi, and Gang Ilbi’s direct disciple.”
Hwangbo Cheonseong’s brow knotted. He barked in pure outrage.
“That was settled with the forehead to the ground and the apology!”
“That was the condition for one against two hundred thousand,” she shot back, her voice turning lethal. “The earlier terms have not yet been collected.”
“…What?”
Hwangbo Cheonseong’s breath stopped.
Jegal Sea folded her fingers down one by one as she spoke.
“The principal of the match — Bilyu of the Blood Death Sect — said this, and clearly: if he defeated five men, he wanted more than half the tenant rents remitted. If he defeated ten more, he asked for three full years of rent forgiven. If he then defeated fifteen, he demanded So Jeongmun’s apology. And lastly, if he defeated twenty, he was to receive the apology of Unwol Jiju’s representative, So Cheonpa. And in the end, your side accepted a match against the full complement — twenty men. As for the third condition alone, well — the man in question is dead, so out of our expansive generosity we will set that one aside. Now then. Let’s see.”
She clicked her tongue, studying her folded fingers.
“To fulfill every condition, one would simply make the rents free for three years, then remit more than half for the year after that, and then reduce by three-tenths for one year more — is that about right?”
“W-wait just a—!”
“Which means that for something approaching five years at minimum, you would be unable to draw proper income from those fields. The registered sharecroppers remain on the rolls, of course, so the relief grain a landlord is obligated to supply from spring through early summer would still have to go out every month. No income at all, and the outlay unchanged — quite a handsome loss, wouldn’t you say?”
The clan head’s face turned the color of dirt. Jegal Sea kept her fan moving and her words rolling without pause.
“As I understand it, the greatest public justification for the usurious rents applied until now has been that relief-grain eligibility is calculated not by the number of sharecroppers, but by the number of family members attached to each — so just how many people is that? One, two, a hundred, two hundred… Wow. Now that is true chivalry. Tell me — are the Hwangbo granaries well stocked?”
Hwangbo Cheonseong’s face went ashen.
“Y-you—! This is pure sophistry—!”
“Sophistry?”
Jegal Sea snapped her crane-feather fan open.
“The sophistry was accepting a match of one against twenty in the first place — an absurd request you snapped up without blinking. If you find it so unjust, then don’t honor it. Turn around and walk the road you were already on. And we will watch how the rumors spread. Those who witnessed this entire process under the codes of the jianghu will kindly carry the tale for us.”
Orthodox or demonic, righteous or blood-soaked — the outcome of a fair duel was sacred so long as one belonged to the murim. No one could touch it. Jegal Sea’s words left no room even to debate the result.
The clan head’s face flushed as if it would burst, but his inability to find anything further to say already decided the match.
Toward the trembling Hwangbo Cheonseong, Jegal Sea smiled, her fan half-hiding her mouth.
“Still — I’ll grant you this much. Applied as stated, the losses would be monstrous, and I can understand how awkward a position that puts you in. The Hwangbo Clan didn’t do this directly. In a sense it was the freelancing of some black-path underling, and yet as the masters you have to clean up the whole mess. How unfair that must feel.”
“…Don’t tell me you mean to call it off, then.”
Hope flared in the clan head’s face as he looked at her.
Jegal Sea smiled and nodded.
“Half.”
“What?”
Hwangbo Cheonseong echoed her like a dullard. She answered him evenly.
“You know the fields Unwol Jiju stripped from the people of Shaanxi during last year’s famine — unilaterally. Money like that doesn’t fall out of the sky. Those are the fields bought with funds you people supplied.”
“Th-that—!”
“The Jegal Clan will purchase those fields here and now — at half price.”
“What kind of dogshit—!”
Jegal Sea’s voice turned blade-sharp.
“If you don’t like it, try lasting five years feeding every last Shaanxi commoner attached to those fields for free.”