Fate and Fortune -1
Yesterday had been an exhausting day for Hwanggeum-seon as well.
Out of nowhere the Fighting Dog Tang Do-gyeong had shown up, and right in the middle of that mess Yeo Il-ye herself had come storming in. With two people who were like bombs about to explode already inside the estate, some strange nangin had started raising hell outside for good measure.
Tang Do-gyeong’s sudden appearance could simply be chalked up to rotten luck. That notorious battle maniac charging in to demand a spar with Yeo Il-ye was nothing out of the ordinary. The only real misfortune was that he had used a letter of introduction from the Hwanggeumga as his excuse to enter Sichuan Province.
Yeo Il-ye arriving at the exact same moment Tang Do-gyeong did could also be called bad luck, yet Hwanggeum-seon had long expected she would visit the Hwanggeumga someday and had steeled himself for it. Her recent movements had been anything but ordinary.
Still, both Tang Do-gyeong and Yeo Il-ye fell within the range of things Hwanggeum-seon could understand and accept.
But what in the world was that sudden sorcery performance by a Sichuan nangin supposed to mean?
Why had a Sichuan nangin suddenly started causing a scene right in front of the Hwanggeumga? To make sense of this incomprehensible situation, Hwanggeum-seon summoned Hwanggeum Goburin.
The man who appeared before him was trembling from head to toe.
Among the nangins a middleman was someone you did not treat lightly, and outside the family the mere title of “Goburin of the Hwanggeumga” made people bow under the weight of the clan’s prestige.
Out in the world Goburin was a man of some standing—a scion of a famous house who earned no small amount of money himself, someone who could throw his weight around.
Inside the Hwanggeumga, however, he was a weakling with nothing to his name.
A worthless branch of the Hwanggeum bloodline. A failure who sold the family’s honor because he lacked any real ability. That was how the Hwanggeumga judged Goburin.
Before Hwanggeum-seon he had no choice but to spill every scrap of information he possessed. Who the nangin named Ho Cheon-an was and what he had been up to. The incident where Yeo Il-ye stormed into the Wanderer Inn and gave Ho Cheon-an a favor token. His clash with Yu Sa-yeon. Even the recent affair with the newcomer Black Cat and the commission fee he had pocketed from the Gyeongsu Market job.
Goburin simply shook and poured it all out.
“Ho Cheon-an, is it…”
Hwanggeum-seon stroked his beard and murmured.
Yeo Il-ye’s movements have been strange lately. Did she gain some enlightenment and undergo a change of heart?
After receiving enlightenment from Ho Cheon-an and settling her inner self, Yeo Il-ye had stopped simply grabbing any random nangin and beating them for answers. She had begun digging into the true heart of the matter.
Who was the black hand that had wiped out the Yeo Family Mountain Villa?
She had started searching for the real enemy of the villa.
It was a story more than fifteen years old, yet every time Hwanggeum-seon thought of the Yeo Family Mountain Villa a queasy feeling rose in his chest. Back then he had been nothing more than the insignificant third son of the Hwanggeumga. The family and its merchant caravan had not yet possessed the status they enjoyed now; how much power could a mere third son of a wealthy merchant house have wielded?
In the midst of the scramble to seize control of the Hwanggeumga, cleaning up after the Yeo Family Mountain Villa had inevitably been pushed to the bottom of the list.
Those idiots left behind karma that’s finally coming back around.
When news reached him that Yeo Il-ye had entered the Jeomchang Sect, Hwanggeum-seon’s heart had dropped. But his old partners no longer wanted to touch a girl who had stepped into Diancang’s shadow. They believed a young Yeo Il-ye would never be able to dig up the truth of the villa.
They had merely exerted themselves from time to time to erase any remaining traces of what had happened at the Yeo Family Mountain Villa.
After fifteen years of steady work, there shouldn’t be a single trace left of the villa…
Hwanggeum-seon was certain no evidence existed that could prove he had lent a hand in the destruction of the Yeo Family Mountain Villa—yet there was always that one-in-a-million chance.
Fortunately, whether thanks to those fifteen years of work or not, Yeo Il-ye had arrived without any proof. Her reaction the day before had given Hwanggeum-seon the conviction that she held nothing. The look of someone who had come simply to poke around at random had been unmistakable.
“People are all the same.”
Goburin flinched, but Hwanggeum-seon did not spare him so much as a glance as he sank into thought.
How foolish human nature was; people deceived themselves more often than not. It was not only Yeo Il-ye. To accomplish a great undertaking one needed every possible preparation and still it might not be enough.
Yet even when the situation demanded such thorough readiness, there were always those who told themselves, “If I prepare that carefully the other side will be ready too,” and then charged in empty-handed, hoping to snatch victory for free. How many such fools had there been?
Just as it was impossible to raise a mountain in a single day, it was equally impossible to topple one overnight—yet these arrogant strongmen deluded themselves into believing they alone could make the impossible possible.
The Yeo Il-ye Hwanggeum-seon had seen was merely one more of those arrogant strongmen.
What one truly needed to bring down a mountain overnight was not a strongman.
It was a crowd.
Even a strongman who could casually lift a hundred catties of earth was no match for hundreds of people each carrying a single catty.
No matter how lofty the masters who had once defeated them, the Zhongnan Sect had chosen voluntary seclusion before the fury of the people of Sichuan.
If word spread in this province that someone had committed evil deeds while wearing the mask of a nangin, not even the Hwanggeumga—no, not even the Hwangbo Clan—would escape annihilation.
“Ho Cheon-an… Ho Cheon-an…”
He had already heard the details of that bizarre performance from his warriors. A sorcerer who commanded the power of the Ghost of the Great Sea Hell? As a mere setting it was far too meaningful. Goburin claimed Ho Cheon-an had staged the whole thing simply to force the return of a commission fee, but Hwanggeum-seon did not believe it.
He took it as a direct condemnation of the Hwanggeumga’s dark underbelly itself.
“Goburin, how much did you take as your cut?”
“Th-thirty taels of silver, my lord. It’s customary for a middleman to quietly take two or three tenths of the commission! The amount I kept was a perfectly ordinary ratio!”
Afraid he might be caught in some ledger, Goburin spilled information no one had even asked for. Hwanggeum-seon silenced him with a look.
Thirty taels of silver…
It was not a trivial sum.
But to raise a ruckus in front of the Hwanggeumga just to recover that much money? And while trampling on a middleman’s taboo at that?
This was as good as deliberately picking a fight.
If money had truly been the only goal, a proper Sichuan nangin would simply have kidnapped Goburin, hung him up, and given him a taste of real pain. That alone would have been enough.
A merchant’s weapons were his face.
A thick skin and a flapping mouth—those were a merchant’s true arms.
A martial artist’s weapons were pain and fear.
Quietly roughing Goburin up without leaving a shred of evidence would have been far easier for collecting the money than making a scene in front of the Hwanggeumga, and it was the method a martial artist would naturally choose.
Sorcery, is it…
A dry laugh escaped Hwanggeum-seon. To think mere street tricks could make even him feel threatened.
Today the crowd numbered only a few hundred.
But if the performance continued tomorrow and the day after, how many would gather before the Hwanggeumga?
Strange handbills. Snacks. Sleight of hand. The methods of drawing people were laughable, yet the results they would produce were no laughing matter.
He gave her enlightenment, they say.
To a martial artist that would have been information worth salivating over, but Hwanggeum-seon was a merchant. What he focused on was not some floating rumor of enlightenment, but the fact that Ho Cheon-an and Yeo Il-ye were bound by a favor token.
In the end, did that not mean this Ho Cheon-an could command Yeo Il-ye?
A man who held both the crowd and the strongman in his hands.
If Ho Cheon-an truly intended hostility toward the Hwanggeumga, he was more than enough of a threat.
Yet… I cannot see the grudge.
Causing a disturbance right in front of the Hwanggeumga was itself an aggressive act, so the man likely harbored some resentment. But Hwanggeum-seon could not place Ho Cheon-an at all.
He let out a long sigh. How many dirty corners did the Hwanggeumga have? Even if none matched the scale of the Yeo Family Mountain Villa fifteen years ago, the sins piled up since then were hardly few.
He had steadily destroyed the evidence of those affairs, manipulated public opinion, and scattered gold among the martial artists to keep friendly relations.
Yet how the grudges remaining in the victims’ hearts had blossomed into flowers was something even Hwanggeum-seon had no way of knowing.
Should I meet him face to face…?
Hwanggeum-seon considered meeting Ho Cheon-an himself, then shook his head. He was the head of the Hwanggeumga. Even a nangin coming and going from the estate was something to be avoided; rumors that the family head had personally met a nangin were something he must prevent at all costs.
“Goburin, keep your relationship with this Ho Cheon-an clean and tidy. And report every single move he makes.”
“Y-yes, my lord!”
Hwanggeum-seon looked down at Goburin with doubtful eyes. He expected little, yet since the man was stuck so close he might at least bring back some scrap of information.
One had to know the opponent before one could decide how to deal with him.
Hwanggeum-seon resolved first to investigate Ho Cheon-an thoroughly.
And with that resolution of Hwanggeum-seon,
in the darkness of Sichuan the three characters of Ho Cheon-an’s name began to flow.
What is fate?
It is something formed from the mixture of chance that brushes past, the inevitability that must be met, and the karma one has piled up over time.
The chance of Yeo Il-ye meeting Ho Cheon-an, the inevitability of Tang Do-gyeong coming to Sichuan Province for a spar with Yeo Il-ye, the karma the Hwanggeumga and Hwanggeum-seon had accumulated.
All of it had come together and become fate.
And Ho Cheon-an, who happened to stand at every single point of contact, could not help but be swept up in that fate as well. Whether the fate that had entangled him was fortune or not—
where the result of luck that could quietly twist even the scales of heaven would lead—
was something that could only be known at the end of Ho Cheon-an’s path.