Out of Stock (1)
Click—
Baek Wontae’s hand threw open the chest.
“Hoo....”
A sigh slipped out before he even realized it.
At the bottom of the chest, lumps of Hyeonrihwa latex were piled here and there, scattered rather than stacked. The gaps were wide enough to drive a cart through, and the amount wasn’t even enough to fill half the chest. Just looking at the barren interior made his chest feel hollow too.
Baek Wontae turned and looked at Dang Ihyeon.
“Ihyeon. The last time you and Ihwa went out to shop was... two weeks ago, right?”
Ihyeon gave a bitter nod.
“Yes. We kept looking after that, but... there’s nowhere left with any stock.”
Baek Wontae pressed at the bridge of his nose.
A headache was starting to creep in.
“We’d been rationing it as much as possible, cutting it into the smallest pieces....”
He unfolded his fan and snapped it open and shut for no reason at all.
“So this is the limit, huh.”
Flap, flap—
The breeze was warm, and all it did was make him more irritated.
The lab’s all about environmental control....
Even with every window in the refining room thrown open, the heat didn’t seem willing to budge. Sichuan summers were vicious, no less merciless than the ones back on modern Earth. The heat and the dead-end situation only made his temper worse.
“Tch....”
Brooding inwardly wasn’t going to change anything.
Swish—
Baek Wontae got to his feet and headed for the door.
“I’m going out for a bit to get some air.”
He stepped outside the main gate, where the forest breeze was drifting in.
The wind threading between the trees cooled his body little by little.
Mm. Phytoncides.
As expected, the scent of nature did wonders for the nerves.
For a brief moment, it felt as if he’d escaped from his worries.
Baek Wontae caught his breath and looked around.
A flower garden in full bloom, bursting with color. Petals soaked in sunlight displayed their hues with unabashed pride.
Among them, one color stood out sharply: black.
Hyeonrihwa.
Rustle—
He brushed a finger lightly over the petals.
The thin, broad petals overlapped in layers, lush and dense, carrying that refined beauty unique to a deep black bloom.
There was no denying it had a kind of appeal.
But for Baek Wontae, it was nothing but bad news.
Hyeonrihwa latex could only be harvested after the petals had all fallen and only the pod remained.
And this was the season when Hyeonrihwa was at its fullest bloom.
Trying to harvest latex at this point was a pipe dream.
Which left only one answer.
Buying the latex cakes they’d already refined and stored in advance.
But the regions listed by the clan head had already been combed through from top to bottom. Every place worth stripping had been stripped, and there was nothing left.
In truth, the warning signs had been there for a while now.
- Hyeonrihwa? It’s all gone. Didn’t you people clean it out yourselves? Hahaha!
- There’s only a little left, so we have to keep some in reserve for emergencies, don’t we?
Every dealer they usually worked with had said the same thing.
Which meant they had to pay extra just to get their hands on any.
Of course, even then there was still profit.
But they couldn’t keep this up forever.
Up until now, there hadn’t been any real restrictions on trading Hyeonrihwa, which was why money had come in so quickly.
Even though he’d already gathered more than half of the twenty gold taels, a gold tael was still a gold tael. It was a massive unit of money.
And if distribution got choked off?
That was no different from having the cash flow cut at the throat.
That didn’t mean there was no other way to raise money.
If he put a bar of soap in front of the people of this world, they’d turn upside down with shock. And beyond that, Baek Wontae had more than enough knowledge to recreate the products of modern civilization.
But he didn’t want to.
The reason was simple.
He just didn’t want to.
If he sold soap, he’d have to explain how to use it, persuade people to accept it, and shoulder every bit of the work needed to spread it through society.
And even setting that aside—
The benefit they’d get from it would be far greater than the money he’d make.
He could sell drugs, but that line he wasn’t willing to cross.
Absolutely not.
Baek Wontae stared out at the dense green undergrowth and sank into thought.
The reason he was this pissed off wasn’t just the heat, either.
It was that damned list.
The clan head’s half-threat, half-warning that they must only use this region, and no other, was something he’d obediently followed all this time.
He’d known this would happen.
So there was no helping it.
The outcome was obvious enough to see from space, but....
Still, I should ask.
Baek Wontae waited until evening, when the clan head returned.
And that night, the clan head, Baek Wontae, and the two siblings gathered around the table in the main hall.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“No.”
Dang Hogyeom’s heavy answer cut Baek Wontae off mid-sentence.
Yeah. Figures.
There was no way words were getting through to this iron-brained clan head.
But wasn’t cutting him off before he’d even finished a little too much?
Baek Wontae moistened his lips with his tongue and continued as calmly as he could.
“So what you’re worried about, Clan Head, is that the Dang Clan people might notice the kids, right?”
“You know the answer well enough already, yet you still ask.”
“Of course, I haven’t lived in this world as long as you have, but I’ve gotten around a bit. People covering their faces isn’t exactly rare.”
Baek Wontae held out an open palm in front of his face.
“You don’t need to hide the whole face. Covering just the eyes is enough. There are plenty of excuses, too. A scar, a sickness, a personal preference. There’s no shortage of reasons.”
It had worked back during the Dang Rim incident, too.
...The other guy had been a bit dim, though.
He absolutely could not mention that to the clan head.
If he did, the man would probably kill him.
Dang Hogyeom listened, then let out a faint sigh.
It was almost contemptuous.
“In the martial world,” he said in a low voice, “there are experts whose keen senses allow them to detect internal energy from a distance. Naturally, the Dang Clan has such men as well.”
His gaze shifted to Ihyeon and Ihwa.
“The children and I possess the same internal energy as the Dang Clan. And within that energy lies the clan’s distinctive venomous nature. If someone with a keen sense among the Dang Clan were to notice the children’s internal energy, what then?”
His eyes sharpened.
“A person hiding their appearance while carrying the internal energy of the Dang Clan—would that not be suspicious in itself?”
For a moment, silence settled in.
“In the martial world, things that happen by a one-in-a-million chance happen often enough to become a certainty. This place is not as simple as you think.”
At those words, Baek Wontae suddenly remembered the day he’d first fallen here.
That day, Ihwa touched my middle dantian and confirmed I had no internal energy.
And then, when he’d been dragged to the main hall—
Dang Hogyeom had realized he had no internal energy without even laying a hand on him.
Baek Wontae nodded and took the point.
“Fair enough. You did, after all.”
Then he lifted his head and looked at Dang Hogyeom from the side.
“In that case, how many people in the Dang Clan are on your level?”
Dang Hogyeom thought for a moment, then answered.
“Main House 1st Class Disciples, elders, and....”
His sentence trailed off abruptly.
His eyes froze.
It was the look of a man reaching back into an old memory.
Baek Wontae watched him closely.
What the hell is wrong with this guy?
This was a man so meticulous that he could probably organize a funeral by category, and now he was spacing out in the middle of a meeting.
He glanced sideways at the children.
Ihyeon and Ihwa both wore expressions that suggested they already knew something.
A moment later, Dang Hogyeom seemed to come back to himself and continued.
“...And perhaps the sect master. It has been twenty years, so I cannot say for certain. Around ten, perhaps.”
Baek Wontae’s eyes flashed.
“Ten.”
He asked at once, “Then roughly how many people are in the Dang Clan altogether?”
“If one counts only those who train martial arts, then around three hundred.”
“Three hundred... ten....”
He did the math in his head and gave the answer.
“About 3.3 percent. Not even one in ten. What are the odds that people like that would patrol the most outer edge of their own territory?”
He said it with absolute confidence.
“Seriously. They’d have to beat me to death and I still wouldn’t believe they’d come.”
But his certainty was ruthlessly sliced apart by a single sentence from Dang Hogyeom.
“One in ten is still larger than one in a million.”
The air went dead.
Baek Wontae lost his words for a moment, then let out a dry laugh.
“Wow.”
He clicked his tongue and muttered, “You’re really good at math.”
He held up both hands and took a step back.
“Fine. I get it. I understand.”
He took a breath and went on.
“I do have a backup plan, though.”
His gaze skimmed over the children, then returned to the clan head.
“I’ll go alone. As long as the only risky part is me, there’s no problem at all, right?”
“No.”
Baek Wontae’s brow furrowed.
“Why not?”
“If a stranger like you suddenly spends a large sum of money in Dang Clan territory, you become a person of interest. And the Dang Clan is sensitive when it comes to medicinal trade. The disciples they send out patrol and inspect all the transaction records and unusual matters at the Dang Clan’s medicine shops. A guest no one has seen before suddenly appears and starts spending a fortune, focusing only on Hyeonrihwa?”
Dang Hogyeom shook his head.
“That would be no different from shouting for suspicion.”
Baek Wontae asked bitterly, “...Is that one of those one-in-a-million things too?”
“Larger than that. This is the Dang Clan’s thorough business structure.”
He continued without giving him room to breathe.
“If you drew the clan’s attention and ended up with someone tailing you, then our existence would be exposed in no time.”
Grit.
Baek Wontae ground his teeth.
Not this, not that.
Then what the hell was he supposed to do?
He pulled out his last resort.
“Then what about leaving Sichuan?”
Baek Wontae looked Dang Hogyeom straight in the eye.
“The Dang Clan can’t possibly reach beyond Sichuan, can they?”
“No.”
Baek Wontae smiled and nodded.
“At this point, I’m honestly curious why not.”
“At the passes, you must present your Sinpae. That leaves a record. And the Dang Clan periodically bribes the officials. They’ll be handed those records.”
Baek Wontae shot back at once, “That’s not a problem. We have real fake Sinpae.”
“That is not the only issue.”
He went on.
“The Dang Clan holds considerable authority over medicinal materials flowing into Sichuan. It is a right recognized by the magistrate’s office. All information on medicinal goods passing through the gates is forwarded to the Dang Clan. And then suddenly a large quantity of Hyeonrihwa is brought in?”
Dang Hogyeom’s gaze turned sharp.
“There would be no reason for the Dang Clan not to suspect and investigate.”
Baek Wontae threw down his final card.
“...Then smuggling?”
Dang Hogyeom answered calmly.
“If you can bring in large quantities of Hyeonrihwa while evading the dense ranks of government troops stationed around the edges of Sichuan Province...”
He paused, then looked Baek Wontae dead in the eye.
“...go ahead and try it.”