Treasure Hunting-5
'It wasn't formed naturally?'
The cave in Ugok 5-ri that the Village Head had described was not a natural limestone cavern carved out by groundwater.
It was a man-made tunnel, dug by human hands with tools.
Legend had it that people fleeing taxes during the Joseon era had hidden themselves deep in the mountains and hollowed out this place to live in. There were also stories of bandits minting counterfeit coins here and ambushing passing merchants or tribute ships. An article from December 1988 reported that actual Joseon-era coins had been discovered on the cave floor.
"Six months before the villagers were massacred."
The cave had been sealed behind piles of rock and earth—so perhaps it was the blasting for the nearby highway that shook the ground loose and brought it to light. And once the cave was found and the counterfeit coins came pouring out of its floor, the villagers would surely have reported it to the Cultural Heritage Administration. A few reporters would have come and gone, the story would have made the news.
And maybe that was exactly what had made Joo Chang-nam and Jeong Hyeon-taek of Mirae Civil Engineering all the more anxious. If word got out that the villagers opposed the highway construction, the project might hit a snag.
"Abe, try to remember what happened back then."
I asked as I walked out of the cave. "Once the cave was discovered and the whole area grew noisy—was it your master's decision that the villagers had to be killed?"
Having been flayed of his flesh and driven to the very brink of dissolution, Abe had lost a great deal of his memory. That was why I'd brought him along—there was a chance that standing in this place might shake something loose.
[Until I came here to set up the barrier, I did not know what my master was doing. No—I doubt I ever knew.]
"So you can't even tell me whether it was Joo Chang-nam or Jeong Hyeon-taek who pushed hardest for killing the villagers?"
[No, my lord. My master never kindly explained such things to me. I simply stayed in his seal and did as I was commanded.]
Abe had been used like a tool.
'He doesn't seem to be lying.'
Watching how Joo Chang-nam had treated Abe at the Yeongcheon theme park construction site, it was clear this was no relationship between human beings. It was the way a man treats his dog.
"Understood. You take your revenge on Cho Eun-sun and return to Japan. I'll handle the investigation into Jeong Hyeon-taek myself."
Jeong Hyeon-taek—struck from behind by Joo Chang-nam, dead on the spot of a heart attack.
'I hope his ghost never made it to the afterlife. I hope he's still wandering the nine heavens, unable to rest.'
Only then could I grind his spirit into oblivion the way I had Joo Chang-nam's—slowly, in agony.
I walked back down into the village and gathered the alcohol and food I'd loaded into the car, then headed down into the basement of the old Chinese restaurant. The police line tape was still up, and since I couldn't cross it, I poured out the liquor on the steps outside and left the food there. Yongsoo's spirit had already gone on to the afterlife, but this was where he had lingered for so long—it felt right to pay him a simple rite.
'When the resentment of the dead grows deep enough, it seeps into everything—the land, the buildings, the trees, even the air.'
Trees grew into grotesque shapes where many people had died. Buildings razed and rebuilt after fires that claimed dozens of lives never lost their chill, lingering gloom, and this was exactly why.
Ziiiing—ziiiing.
I had just finished the simple offering and was walking out of the building when Moon Sung-il's call came through.
"Teacher Kim, is this a good time to talk?"
"Of course. I was just wondering how the investigation was coming along."
There would be plenty that never reached the press. Moon Sung-il spoke in his measured, unhurried way.
"Joo Man-deok, Joo Chang-nam's son, testified that it was Jeong Hyeon-taek who killed the villagers. Jeong Hyeon-taek was the owner of Mirae Civil Engineering—the company behind the Yeongcheon theme park."
"Jeong Hyeon-taek's already dead, so he's trying to shift the blame onto a corpse."
"That was surely the intent. Unfortunately, he poked a hornet's nest he never should have touched."
Moon Sung-il clicked his tongue softly and went on. "After Jeong Hyeon-taek's death, his son founded a general construction company called Seongdo Construction & Development. You've heard of it, I imagine."
"Seongdo Construction!"
Good heavens. I'd heard that a Seongdo Construction apartment complex was about to go up right across from the neighborhood where my parents lived. An area crowded with aging apartments and old villa blocks—and now the whole thing was being scraped clean and rebuilt.
'So that's why Mother was so pleased, going on about property values rising.'
When a new complex goes up, surrounding prices dip at first, but over time the gap narrows. That effect is why everyone cheers when new construction arrives nearby.
"I had no idea Seongdo Construction was connected to Jeong Hyeon-taek. And growing into a mid-tier builder in just twenty years—that's no small feat either."
Jeong Hyeon-taek had orchestrated an investment fraud worth hundreds of billions of won. Could his son really build a construction company afterward without a single sanction falling on him?
"It means someone is shielding them from behind. There's someone powerful in politics standing with them, it seems."
"A boy who grew up fat and comfortable on a fortune built by slaughtering villagers is now untouchable. What an unjust world."
While the wicked ate well and lived well, the villagers had been trapped here even in death, bound as earthbound spirits. Thinking of them, my mouth filled with bitterness.
Moon Sung-il's voice had sunk low as well, as if the thought weighed on him too. "At least from this case alone, they won't lose so much as a single hair."
"At least from this case?"
Catching the hidden meaning in his words, I smiled. "So there's plenty else we can bring them down with?"
"Exactly."
As expected of Moon Sung-il. All I had asked was that the villagers' wrongful deaths be publicized as widely as possible—and he had dug and dug into Joo Chang-nam and Jeong Hyeon-taek, the men behind the massacre, until he'd pried loose their weaknesses. He knew, of course, that what I really wanted was retribution.
"Let's discuss the details in person. When you go to Hwacheon, I'll come along."
Originally, Lee Ho-young and I had planned to go ahead alone and scout out where the treasure lay.
"Yes, let's do that."
I set a date with Moon Sung-il for the Hwacheon trip and hung up.
'Seongdo Construction, huh.'
A mid-sized firm that had grown fast on generous privileges, backed by powerful friends in the political world. I could guess exactly how it had cultivated such protection.
'The shaman Cho Eun-sun must have played a major role.'
A woman who thought nothing of commanding ghosts, weaving curses, and flaying flesh. No doubt she'd had the heir to Seongdo Construction wrapped around her finger, both of them drunk on the sweetness of wealth and power.
Then, suddenly, I felt it—a certainty that someday, inevitably, I would cross paths with Cho Eun-sun. And a premonition that when we did, we might settle once and for all which of us was stronger.
'Ha. Now that's something to look forward to.'
I'd have to take stock beforehand of what my power could actually do.
I was turning the car around to head home from Ugok 5-ri when two luxury sedans came rolling up one after the other and stopped in front of the old Chinese restaurant.
"Well, hello there, Mr. PR Ambassador!"
A man rolled down his window toward my car and called out loudly, playing the familiar stranger. It wasn't as if only one or two people in Pyeongcheong County knew my face—but no one had ever greeted me so brazenly, so provocatively, as this.
I lowered my window and gave a slight nod. "Hello. Though I'm afraid I don't quite—"
"Ah, you don't know me yet!"
The tone was pure incredulity—how could anyone fail to recognize so famous a man? Some kind of rural bigwig, maybe? He certainly didn't look poor, so I answered with a smile.
"I really only travel between home and the county office."
"Is that so."
As the man moved to get out of his car, two other men leapt from the sedan that had arrived first and hurried to open his doors for him. The whole performance looked like something out of a gangster film—the country-road variety.
The man climbed out and walked toward me, and when his two companions fell in behind him at precise, practiced angles, I had no choice but to step out of my car as well.
"I'm Son Gu-chul, CEO of Ugok Marsh Snail Hangover Soup."
The man extended a hand bearing a gold watch. "Ah, yes. Kim Yunho."
I shook it, at least. But then the man childishly clamped down on my hand and started showing off his grip strength, squeezing for all he was worth.
'What is with this guy?'
He'd pretended to be friendly out of nowhere, and now he was trying to dominate me with force. Fine. I applied a measure of my own unnatural strength and crushed down on Son Gu-chul's hand.
"Uuugh!"
Son Gu-chul, who had clearly taken me for an easy mark, made a face like his eyeballs were about to pop out. The bones in his fingers looked ready to crack.
"Ha, haha. Hahaha."
Sweating cold, Son Gu-chul tried to pull his hand free. When I still didn't let go, his face crumpled as if he might cry from the pain. "Y-you must work out, Mr. PR Ambassador. I had no idea."
Only then did I release his hand and smile. "And now you do know, apparently."
"Th-that's right. I'd heard our Mr. Kim Yunho was making a name for himself as a—a public figure, and I've been dying to meet you. And here we are."
"You've been wanting to meet me?"
"Not that I hold anything against you, personally. Haha. It's just that you snatched up the land I'd had my eye on—no, that you purchased it before I could."
Ah. Now I remembered. This was the CEO of the Ugok 2-ri marsh snail hangover soup place who had tried to buy Grandpa Hosik's land.
'So it was you.'
The man who had egged on Ma Chang-guk, the Ugok 2-ri village chief, in an attempt to build an ingredient warehouse on Grandpa Hosik's hillside. And when I'd bought the land out from under him, he'd supposedly ground his teeth and vowed to make me pay.
But why was he here? I looked back and forth between the two sedans and Son Gu-chul and frowned.
"Don't tell me you're here to look over this land coming up for auction because you want to buy it?"
"That's right?"
Son Gu-chul lifted his chin and said, "I couldn't build my ingredient warehouse because of you. Haha. But now a famous franchise company out of Seoul wants to distribute Ugok marsh snails, so I'm planning to build a whole processing factory."
"Oh, is that so?"
Well, wasn't that actually a good thing? Nobody could build a warehouse on Grandpa Hosik's land and a factory on top of it. The village would have fought it to the death.
'They'd only just barely gotten the village water line connected last spring. If a factory started drawing from it, the residents might have run short on drinking water.'
The paving of the village road had only happened last winter because I'd asked the county governor and he'd agreed. Did he really want trucks barreling down a freshly paved village road belching exhaust everywhere?
'To pull something like that, you'd at least need the residents' consent. This guy doesn't seem to have an ounce of that kind of common sense.'
But Son Gu-chul glared at me as if he had a long list of grievances. "If I'd bought that land back then, I'd have built the factory right next to my warehouse and been shipping product already. And I really hate that. A lot, you understand?"
"Do you, now? Well, you're free to think whatever you like."
Thinking was free, after all. I turned to leave, and Son Gu-chul called out at my back.
"And what brings you here? Don't tell me you're planning to steal my land this time too?"
I turned around slowly. "I have never once stolen land from you, Son Gu-chul. Choose your words carefully."
"Ah, no, what I meant was—don't bid on this land. I'm going to win it."
"That's for me to decide."
After all, there were ways to make him bid himself into the ground and buy the whole thing at a punishing price. Know your limits, pal.
Just as I swung around, shaking off the unpleasantness, and moved to get into my car—
Thud!
A bird flew headlong into Son Gu-chul's perfectly unblemished sedan. Blood sprayed in every direction, staining the windshield red.
I whipped my head around and looked at Abe. 'Abe—was that you?'
[I remembered the things Jeong Hyeon-taek used to do. He pressed his authority on people exactly like that man, and tormented them.]
'Still, that's going too far. What did the bird ever do?'
Son Gu-chul was stamping his feet in a cold sweat of dread.
"Hey, what the hell is going on here?"
"Maybe there's an earthquake coming? In the movie Haeundae, birds kept smashing into car windshields right before the quake hit."
"Boss, I think it's true what they say—there's a ghost in this village."
Smack. Son Gu-chul smacked the back of the head of the man—underling or employee, who knew.
"Ghosts? What is this, the twentieth century?"
"Well, technically it's the twenty-first—"
"You little punk, just clean up the damn bird."
Son Gu-chul hopped around in a full-blown panic.
'If people like that build a factory here and start making hangover soup, that can't possibly end well.'
I swallowed down my uneasiness and got out of there.
And a few days later, the day finally came—the day we set out for Hwacheon to find the treasure.