Treasure Hunt — 6
The weather's been so nice lately.
Dark clouds had gathered since the early hours of the morning, and now the rain was coming down in sheets. According to the forecast, it would pour all day long. Farming was on hold. The abandoned house renovation was on hold. Everything had ground to a halt.
"Umm... th-then what am I supposed to do today?"
Bang Jeongsoo stood in front of my front door in his rain gear, wearing a hopelessly lost expression. Back when he worked at Ju Mandeok's farm, he'd shown up rain or shine, but my fields were open-air plots, and he clearly had no idea what one was supposed to do with them in a downpour.
Chai stepped out beside him, also suited up in his raincoat.
"Dig the furrows so water drains away. If you laze around just because it rains, you ruin the crops."
"There you have it."
When I said it with a smile, Bang Jeongsoo nodded vigorously.
"Understood. I'll get started on the furrows right away."
"The soil drains pretty well, so it shouldn't take long. Finish up as fast as you can and head home."
"Go... go home?"
"Yes. I think the soybean flowers will bloom once this rain passes. We'll need to prune them one more time, so save your strength."
Only when I explained that I'd need him to put in some real effort later did it finally click, and he managed an understanding smile.
"Got it. Then I'll get to work."
"Good."
I called out loudly to Chai as he headed for the fields.
"Chai, don't overdo it either. Go home early."
"Chai will do a good job. Don't worry, and have a safe trip!"
Chai waved a hand at me.
Leaving the village at the height of farming season made my feet feel heavy. The Village Head and Grandpa Hosik had promised to keep an eye on things in my absence, but handing the farm work off to others while I went off to play left me with an uncomfortable twinge of guilt.
Of course, that twinge vanished the instant I spotted Moon Sung-il's luxury sedan making its way up the village road.
Time to go treasure hunting.
I picked up my lightly packed bag and scooped up No. 1.
"Abe, let's go."
[Yes, my lord.]
Abe glided silently along behind me. Meanwhile the sedan had come to a stop, and Driver Yoon stepped out and unfolded an umbrella over my head.
"Good to see you again."
"Ah, yes. Thank you."
"You're... taking the cat with you?"
"I am."
Anyone watching would think I was some man who couldn't travel anywhere without his cat.
It's not like I want to be this way either.
[When ancient onmyoji laid their barriers, they rarely simply hid a treasure and left it at that.]
Abe had warned me that sorcerers of the old days were far crueler. They turned living men into ghosts. They transformed beasts into monsters.
[They may have sealed a yokai or an evil spirit inside the barrier alongside the treasure, to guard it.]
Grave robbers who looted ancient relics and archaeologists who unearthed ruins often died in inexplicable accidents or of sudden, unexplainable illness. Abe insisted such deaths were the work of ancient sorcery, and that we needed to prepare thoroughly.
Which is exactly why I have no choice but to bring along my evil-spirit-eating cat.
Driver Yoon opened the rear door for me. When Moon Sung-il saw me cradling the cat, he blinked in bewildered surprise.
"You're bringing the cat?"
"Yes. This fellow eats evil spirits."
"Gah!"
It seemed better to tell him the truth than to invent excuses. Moon Sung-il recoiled as if jolted by electricity and pressed himself against the far side of the seat. In the passenger seat, Lee Ho-young turned his head, got one look at No. 1, and shuddered from head to toe.
"S-so that's what it was? No wonder I felt like I was going to die every time our eyes met."
No. 1 had probably stared so intently at Lee Ho-young because he'd wanted to climb onto his head and torment him. Back at Miho Gallery, clinging to Lee Ho-young like that, he must have had himself a grand old time.
I climbed into the car and settled in comfortably.
"Shall we be off, then?"
The road to Hwacheon. The luxury sedan sliced through the torrential rain, gliding across the flooded asphalt as if skimming over water.
"Let's plan on arriving in Hwacheon today, securing our lodging, and simply confirming the location of the Chilseongnu pavilion," Moon Sung-il said, gazing out at the rain-streaked window. "Oh, and one thing I've been curious about. If we do find the gold, how do you intend to sell it?"
"If it's a cultural artifact like a golden Buddha statue, I intend to negotiate with the Cultural Heritage Administration first. I'd rather not, as a rule, commit anything as unpatriotic as damaging our cultural heritage or smuggling it out of the country."
Moon Sung-il seemed to have principles of his own that he'd quietly settled on. Lee Ho-young, however, looked less than satisfied.
"They might lowball you or refuse to pay at all. Cultural property law is a rope around the neck one day and a necklace the next, depending on how they feel."
Under the Lost Property Act and the Act on the Protection of Buried Cultural Heritage, you could report a find to the state and receive compensation. The problem was that, in practice, hardly anyone ever received fair value through those official channels. Worse, if an artifact was discovered in a designated Buried Cultural Heritage Preservation Zone, you didn't get a single won. The law was written precisely so that once something was found, there was no room for negotiation.
It's no exaggeration to say Gangwon Province, Gyeongsang Province, and Gyeongju are almost entirely preservation zones.
Gangwon turned up Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery; Gyeongsang and Gyeongju kept producing Silla-era artifacts.
Either way, I couldn't bring myself to trust the Cultural Heritage Administration either.
"Last time, they offered a measly twenty million won for Shoichi's letter, and you'd still deal with them?"
"Shoichi was a defector to Joseon, so I suspect he was undervalued."
Moon Sung-il's voice carried a faint sourness, as if the memory of that episode still rankled. "I believe it happened because the researchers who set artifact valuations think far too narrowly. That said, I do trust a golden Buddha would be appraised differently."
"Because a golden Buddha is so rare?"
"Exactly. Joseon enforced a policy of suppressing Buddhism, so gilding statues or pouring money into ritual implements was viewed with extreme suspicion."
Moon Sung-il stroked his chin. "If a golden Buddha does emerge from inside the barrier, I'd say the odds are strong it's a Goryeo-era artifact. In the Goryeo period, when Buddhism was revered, the gold-rich northern regions of our peninsula must have produced countless golden Buddhas."
He paused for a moment, then let out a soft sigh. "The only reason we can do nothing but speculate like this is that the division of the country leaves us with no way of knowing what remains in the North."
"I always regretted that exact thing back when I studied history in university."
Ever since the Korean War ended and the DMZ was drawn across the peninsula, Korean archaeology and historiography had become a field with half its body missing. Goguryeo and Goryeo artifacts and cultural treasures remaining in North Korea were simply beyond our reach.
Unless, like the sword of Yeon Chumo that No. 1 had lived inside, something was carried off to China, circulated for centuries, and happened to find its way back to us, it was gone. Far, far too much had vanished forever.
Just as the Japanese raiders plundered Korea's cultural treasures during the Imjin War, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army swept up everything during the Korean War, too.
Hwacheon, our destination, was dotted with temples and temple sites believed to date back to the Goryeo period. There was the seven-story stone pagoda at Wiralli, which had even survived the war, and the stone standing Buddhas of the Seongbulsa temple site. As for the thirteen-story pagoda of Yongbongsa, only records remained — nothing but the foundation stones where the tower had once stood. Historians' prevailing theory held that it hadn't been lost to bombing during the war, but deliberately dismantled and carted off by the Chinese forces.
They left the Wiralli pagoda standing — why take the Yongbongsa one?
Which was to say, it must have been sculpturally beautiful enough to make someone decide it was worth dismantling and hauling away. The Buddhist scriptures and statues believed to have been enshrined inside vanished as well.
If those things had been spirited off to China and carefully preserved, they might one day be recovered through repatriation. But judging by how completely they had vanished without a trace, they seemed to be receiving the same treatment as landscaping rocks in some Communist Party official's private garden.
Was even that much a mercy? They might well have been smashed and burned during the Cultural Revolution. Goguryeo and Goryeo treasures whose value could never even be assessed now — the cultural heritage presumed scattered across the temples of Hamgyong Province — might never be studied at all.
"Kato may have melted the gold down into ingots precisely so it would be easier to carry back to Japan," Lee Ho-young said, his voice subdued.
At his words, I recalled the vision I'd seen when I touched Shoichi's letter.
When the gold showed through the cracked seam of that wooden box being lifted off the cart, it did seem to have some kind of shape.
Square ingots mingled with other golden forms — whether one of them was a Buddha statue, I couldn't tell for certain. But it seemed it hadn't all been melted down.
I shook off the thought and looked at Moon Sung-il. "Say you deal with the Cultural Heritage Administration and the talks collapse. What then? You must have a fallback in mind."
"In that case, I intend to sell it to someone of deep Buddhist faith."
"Ah! The Big Madam of the chaebol family?"
"That's right."
Mrs. Song — the museum director once called the deepest pocket in the Korean art world, and the matriarch of a chaebol dynasty. She was the woman who had bought the secret record compiled by the royal secret inspector for five billion won, on the condition that it stay out of public view for two years.
Moon Sung-il went on. "A woman like her would spare no expense if a Goryeo-era golden Buddha were authenticated."
"And if it's just gold ingots, no statue?"
"Even then, the value would be far different from the current market price of gold."
Gold was gold no matter where it was mined, of course — but this was gold Kato had looted and hidden away, which gave it historical worth.
"Then I suppose we don't need to worry about finding a buyer."
"We don't. Transport and secure storage have already been arranged."
"Excellent. All that's left is to actually find it."
I had photographed the drawing from Shoichi's letter. Now I studied the photos on my phone, cross-checking the area around Chilseongnu on a map app.
Once the barrier is down, finding the treasure won't be hard at all.
Transporting it, selling it — every step was already prepared. Just one problem remained.
Who knows what evil spirit or yokai they sealed inside that barrier — all that's left is to destroy it.
The ancient onmyoji's sorcery Abe had spoken of. No. 1, Abe, and I would have to combine our strength and break it.
Whoa. So this is Lake Paroho.
Paroho was an artificial reservoir created by the Hwacheon Dam. Since I was bringing No. 1, I'd searched for pet-friendly accommodations, and that was how we ended up at a resort on the lake's shore. Moon Sung-il had booked the entire resort. We'd be holding meetings for the duration of the treasure hunt, and our conversations could not be allowed to reach other guests' ears. Even the resort staff were instructed to finish the cleaning and bed-making, then keep their distance from us for the rest of the day.
I stepped into a room overlooking the lake and set down my bags. No. 1 leapt from my arms, scampered to the window, and flicked his red tongue in and out.
[Master, why is this place just crawling with things to eat?]
The rain alone would have made the day gloomy and eerie enough — and that was likely why, at the sight of the spirits milling in swarms around Paroho, goosebumps crawled up my arms.
"They say the Chinese army died here in absolutely staggering numbers during the war."
The reservoir formed by the Hwacheon Dam, built during the Japanese colonial era, had originally been named simply the Hwacheon Reservoir. Then the Korean War broke out. The South Korean army, driven all the way back to the Nakdong River line, recaptured Seoul thanks to American intervention and the Incheon landing. Riding that momentum, the UN forces pushed north — only to be driven back to this very spot by China's entry into the war, and here at Hwacheon the two armies clashed head-on. The Chinese forces moved to seize the Hwacheon Dam and cut the allies' power, but the allies fought to the last, and here at this reservoir they crushed them.
Afterward, the Hwacheon Reservoir was renamed Paroho — the Lake of Broken Savages — for the barbarian horde it had shattered.
No. 1, Abe might need you fighting Japanese yokai or evil spirits once the barrier is down, so go out there and stuff yourself full of Chinese war ghosts.
[C-can I really?]
Since devouring Joo Chang-nam's soul, No. 1 had grown even stronger. Even if he grew stronger still, I could keep him under control.
Probably because No. 1 and I are bound together — I've been growing stronger right along with him.
Considerately, I opened the window for him.
"Go fill that belly of yours. Focus especially on the ones trying to become vengeful spirits or evil ghosts. Now go — shoo!"