The Money Downpour Begins in Earnest-6
The moment Moon Sung-il arrived at his Itaewon mansion, he guided me straight to the annex.
"Do wait just a moment. I'll have some tea brought in."
"Thank you."
In the VIP parlor, the White Porcelain Grandmother was seated on the sofa, gazing out the window. Still as graceful as ever, she caught my eye, smiled warmly, and greeted me first.
"You've received a great many gifts in the meantime, I see. And you've fully learned how to handle the ones I gave you as well."
'Yes. It almost feels like I've gained foresight.'
"That may be so, and it may not. The future has a way of changing on you."
The White Porcelain Grandmother chuckled softly, saying that the moment you believe you know the future is precisely when it smacks you on the back of the head.
I always thought so, but she really did have a prickly personality.
'Um, Grandmother. You said you came to Ugok 1-ri forty years ago, didn't you?'
When I'd first met her, she told me she'd lived in a grand ninety-nine-room house in Gyeongseong before being sold off to Busan. From there she'd been sold again and again, passed from hand to hand until she drifted all the way to Ugok 1-ri.
"That's right, child."
'I was wondering whether you'd ever heard of someone living in the village with abilities like mine. Someone who could open the gates of the underworld.'
A hundred and ninety thousand nyang of treasure lay scattered throughout Ugok 1-ri. And within the graveyard that had sunken into a low, grassy mound, there was an unidentified restless spirit, trapped and bound.
Part of me suspected that spirit might be a transcendental medium, like me.
'When I pressed my hand to that earth, the power it carried jolted all the way up to the crown of my head. It was tremendous.'
Abe had said the thing was sealed away by divine power, so I'd left it alone for the time being, thinking it best not to touch anything until I knew for certain. But I couldn't pretend not to know forever.
'Please tell me. Whatever you saw and heard when you came to our village — please, tell me everything.'
At my blunt demand to just spit out whatever she knew, the White Porcelain Grandmother let out a faint sigh.
"Village Head Jeonjeon was a man with a touch of spiritual gift. He knew what a golden seal was, mind you. But he was not one who could open the gates of the underworld."
The White Porcelain Grandmother gathered the hem of her skirt in her hands and rose to her feet. Her gaze settled on the roses blooming in the courtyard, where moonlight had settled in serene silence. Then she spoke, as if tossing the words carelessly over her shoulder.
"My master was one who could open the very gates of the underworld you speak of."
Thud. My heart lurched violently.
'The Grandmother's master was a transcendental medium with the same gift as me?'
Come to think of it, I'd never once asked. Who it was that had built a ninety-nine-room house in Gyeongseong and treasured her so dearly.
'Who was that person?'
"What good would telling you do? They became a living evil spirit, mad with power and greed. Every night I visited my master's dreams and begged them to repent. And what did they do? They sold me off."
A living evil spirit of the Korean Empire era, consumed by power and greed.
Could it be—
'Grandmother, was your master Jinryeonggun? The shaman who held Empress Myeongseong's favor?'
The Grandmother only turned away, her face gone grim and shadowed.
"The moon is rather bright tonight, isn't it. On nights like this I ought to be taking the streetcar for a turn about Gyeongseong."
She brushed right past me and slipped straight through the glass doors into the courtyard.
'So it was Jinryeonggun.'
The only people who could have built a ninety-nine-room estate in Gyeongseong were the powerful aristocracy — someone like Min Young-hwi, Empress Myeongseong's cousin, or the rest of the imperial in-law faction.
'No wonder! Even older porcelain usually doesn't harbor a spirit.'
Just as the killing karma soaked into Yeon Chumo's longsword had given birth to Number 1, the White Porcelain Grandmother too had been born from the sinister energies of a shaman like Jinryeonggun.
Only then did I understand why she'd always sneered at shamans as mere handlers of petty ghosts and riffraff spirits. She had watched Jinryeonggun commit every manner of wickedness — meddling in state affairs, gutting the national treasury.
That was where her stubborn conviction came from that all shamans were wicked creatures.
"Why are you sitting there in a daze?"
Moon Sung-il came walking in, carrying a tray of green tea he had brewed himself.
"The moonlight on the porcelain was so beautiful I lost track of time just watching it."
"I do that sometimes too. I get completely absorbed and forget the hours passing."
Moon Sung-il took his seat, and I settled into the chair across from him. I savored the delicate fragrance of the tea, and with one sip, my muddled mind sharpened into clarity.
'Could I find the treasures and cultural artifacts Jinryeonggun hid away — through the White Porcelain Grandmother?'
I swallowed dryly.
To explain who Jinryeonggun was, one had no choice but to start with Empress Myeongseong.
After Heungseon Daewongun had been ousted by the Empress, he was scheming for a return to power. The government of the day had created a new elite unit, the Byeolgi-gun, and dismissed soldiers en masse from the old Training Command and the Five Army Camps.
The discrimination was brutal, and resentment among the old armies festered and mounted. Not only were their wages withheld — even the rice they were issued was mixed with sand and chaff.
The man managing those military provisions was Min Gyeong-ho, a relative of the Empress's powerful Min clan.
And so the old armies rose up alongside Heungseon Daewongun, seeking to set the nation right.
That was the Imo Military Rebellion.
Empress Myeongseong fled all the way to Janghowon — where she met a low-born shaman woman of the lowest caste.
'That was the beginning of the curse.'
The shaman, a widow living in wretched poverty, prophesied that the Empress would return to the palace within fifty days. And when her prophecy came true exactly as foretold, the Empress brought the woman back with her into the royal palace.
Having won the Empress's trust, the shaman caught King Gojong's eye as well, and received the court title Jinryeonggun — meaning "one of truly wondrous spiritual power."
That was a title reserved for royalty and imperial clansmen. That's how deeply they trusted a shaman of common birth.
'Once she became Jinryeonggun, the shaman meddled in every corner of state affairs and piled up an enormous fortune.'
Jinryeonggun prophesied that Qing China would win the Sino-Japanese War. Trusting her words with unwavering faith, Empress Myeongseong sided with Qing — and was assassinated by Japanese samurai for it.
When the Empress died, the story goes that Jinryeonggun surrendered everything she owned to buy back her life.
'But could a woman drowning in greed, with it rising to her very throat, really have given up all of it?'
Doubt it. She'd have handed over a portion and hidden away the rest.
In fact, there was no record anywhere of Jinryeonggun being beheaded, or of her dying a beggar after being stripped of her entire fortune.
And what did that mean? Only that she'd found someone to look after her with her hidden wealth, and lived out her days in comfort and luxury.
'The White Porcelain Grandmother would know where Jinryeonggun hid her treasure, and who she conspired with.'
At the thought that came to me unbidden, I set down my teacup and looked at Moon Sung-il.
"Shall we discuss how to handle the treasure and gold we found in Hwacheon?"
"Yes."
Moon Sung-il's expression darkened.
"After weighing every option, I've reached the conclusion that selling the whole lot to Big Madam at once is our best course."
"So there's really no other way?"
"The Hwacheon Chilseongru area is not a designated cultural heritage excavation zone, it's true. Artifacts don't automatically become state property the moment they're unearthed."
Of course, that didn't mean I could claim anything found on my land as my own.
There were only two circumstances under which private ownership of cultural artifacts was permitted: either my ancestors had left them to me as an inheritance, or I had purchased them with money. Those two, and nothing else.
My ancestor passed down a Goryeo-era Buddha statue to his descendants? Then whether it was worth tens of billions of won or whatever else, it was legally mine.
Our ancestor bought a golden Buddha statue from Moritake Shoichi, paying money for it? Just the same — recognized as my property.
'In our case, it's neither.'
That was why even though Goryeo-era golden relics had poured out of land Moon Sung-il had purchased in Hwacheon, the official assessed value of the buried artifacts capped out at a hundred million won.
The only reason we weren't simply robbed outright was that Moon Sung-il was a man rich in connections, someone who could sit down and negotiate with the highest ranks of government.
In any case, Moon Sung-il had negotiated off the record, hoping the government would offer a realistic price — and in the end, no compromise could be reached.
"They're still offering the exact same terms. They'll buy the golden treasures by weight, at raw gold value. As for the gold bullion, they'll look the other way entirely — we're to dispose of it ourselves, by whatever means keeps us clear of the law."
"They mean for us to sell it off to an electronics company as industrial gold, don't they?"
"Yes."
Moon Sung-il added bitterly,
"I passed along your words as well, CEO Kim. That this is only the beginning. That we'll be reclaiming countless more cultural artifacts in the years to come."
"And that didn't move them an inch, I take it."
"No. It didn't."
It had been a Goguryeo-era golden Buddha statue.
A golden reliquary casket, a golden gourd-shaped bottle, and countless other golden relics — the first such discoveries in the history of the Republic of Korea.
And their plan was to weigh it all on a scale and buy it at scrap gold prices.
The gold bullion that stood as evidence Japanese pirates had raided all the way into Hamgyong Province during the Imjin War and looted our relics — we should just dispose of it quietly ourselves. In exchange, they'd close their eyes.
'Melt it all down and make it disappear, they say. I'm absolutely livid.'
Moon Sung-il opened his mouth, saying that even he couldn't bring himself to do that.
"Big Madam owns three of this country's greatest private museums."
"Ah, the woman who bought Bohwarok?"
"Yes. Her personal fortune alone runs into the trillions of won."
"A living witness to modern Korean history, truly."
At my words, Moon Sung-il nodded.
"She is. Big Madam is a devout Buddhist. And she has devoted her entire life to preserving and protecting cultural artifacts. She's promised the gold bullion will be preserved in its original form as well."
She'd also promised a generous price, he said. Then he brought up the golden Buddha auction that had made headlines most recently.
"You remember when the Gansong Museum, drowning in debt, put a gilt-bronze standing Buddha and a gilt-bronze standing Bodhisattva up for public auction at a starting price of 1.5 billion won?"
"I read about that too. Honestly, my first thought was — who's going to bid on a golden Buddha at a public auction?"
Fine antiquities almost always change hands through private sales. The Gansong Museum putting pieces up at open auction could only have been a signal flare announcing their financial distress.
After all, no one should have to go bankrupt trying to protect cultural heritage.
Moon Sung-il went on.
"Public auctions almost never produce a sale. Whoever buys becomes the target of media scrutiny, so bellers shy away. In the end, no one bid, and the National Museum of Korea bought them for under 3 billion won."
A gilt-bronze standing Buddha and Bodhisattva crafted in the Silla and Unified Silla periods. Portable devotional Buddhas, so they stood only about 38 and 30 centimeters tall.
The Goryeo-era golden Buddha we'd uncovered stood 99 centimeters — an absolutely commanding size, and breathtakingly beautiful besides.
'So it should fetch well over 10 billion won.'
Moon Sung-il was thinking along precisely the same lines.
"I'm projecting that the golden Buddha alone will exceed 10 billion won."
And since I took half of all proceeds unconditionally, a single statue meant 5 billion won in my pocket. The golden reliquary, the golden gourd bottle, and the rest — the golden treasures numbered more than twenty pieces.
Do the math on all of that.
"All right."
I lifted my head, the decision made in my heart.
"Let's hand this batch over to Big Madam. I think it's wise not to push too hard on this particular deal."
The gold bullion we'd found in Hwacheon alone was worth over 500 billion won.
'If we count the cultural artifacts including the golden Buddha at 600 billion, that makes me a man with 300 billion won in assets.'
And this was only the beginning.
I wasn't saying that idly, either — just moments ago, I'd found an actual gold mine.
"Another way to find more gold and cultural artifacts just came to me, actually."
"Something besides the Amashita Gold mine?"
"Let's leave the Philippines for later. Treasure hunting should start close to home."
I went on with a smile playing on my lips.
"I've been thinking about Jinryeonggun just now — Empress Myeongseong's shadow ruler, the power behind her throne."
"Ah, Jinryeonggun? The shaman who brought the nation to ruin."
A mere village shaman who'd received a royal title, seized the power of Jinryeonggun, and sold offices and honors to the highest bidder. She meddled in politics and emptied the national treasury down to the last grain of rice. And so she drove the already-faltering fortunes of Joseon straight into the mire.
'And that woman could open the gates of the underworld?'
She must have been a transcendental medium, just like me. Only she never soothed restless spirits or delivered them to their rest, never destroyed evil apparitions — she used her gift solely to indulge her own greed.
Would a woman like that have died quietly? Would she really have handed her entire fortune over to Japan?
I turned my gaze toward the window. Out in the garden, the White Porcelain Grandmother was strolling among the roses, breathing in their fragrance. I studied her closely.
'She looked like she had plenty of grudges of her own against Jinryeonggun.'
An enemy's enemy can become a friend.
It seemed entirely possible to track down Jinryeonggun's hidden treasures through the White Porcelain Grandmother.
And if, by some chance, Jinryeonggun's soul was still wandering the nine heavens? Then I could get answers — about my own powers, and about the mysteries of Ugok 1-ri itself.