The Axe Mask, Part 2
The rest of the Four Heavenly Kings froze in place as well.
Of course, Park Chang-su and the men under him still had plenty of servants.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Cha Un-hong hurriedly took the flashlight Taesu handed her and shone it on Itkyu.
If anything, this side looked like the one fit for a ghost-story special. The servants stared at Itkyu—the living, breathing proof of Joseon’s anti-Buddhist policies—and recoiled in horror.
“Il-hyu lost?”
They were servants of the First Naesang, Park Chang-su. If anything, they knew more about Itkyu than the Naesang themselves, who rarely had to face violence directly.
All of the servants ran away.
It turned Itkyu’s own reputation into a curse.
And then, right then, Jeong Ja-beom’s men struck flint in unison and raised torches.
Park Chang-su ground his teeth.
“So you’ve betrayed us all for some outsider? How do you plan to face your dead father after this?”
But Jeong Ja-beom’s mind was already made up.
“My late father wouldn’t have rebuked me for this. I may have betrayed you, but I have not betrayed righteousness or loyalty.”
“How proud you’ve become. Do you really think you can escape punishment for storming the Waegwan in the dead of night?”
“And why don’t you speak of your own crime—colluding with the Waegwan to smuggle out deportees?”
“What does a boy like you know? To harmonize all things and keep the peace, that was the only way. If there are criminals pretending to be castaways, of course they should be sent to Tsushima! Without Tsushima, where would the Waegwan be? And without the Waegwan, where would the prosperity of Dongrae’s people be?”
If Katsu Kaishu had been here, he really would have had a chance to test his nickname.
But the Park Axe Merchant Guild was still rampaging across the sprawling hundred-thousand-pyeong grounds of the Waegwan. He couldn’t have come here even if he wanted to.
“...Dongrae can still make a living without taking part in such unjust acts, simply by following the king’s righteous command.”
Park Chang-su did not miss Jeong Ja-beom’s wavering. He pressed the advantage and jabbed a finger at him.
“The king! The king, he says. Ridiculous. Do you think the government offices will listen to me? Or a greenhorn boy raised among outsiders? You think we’ll just keep our mouths shut? By tomorrow morning, every single bastard who set foot inside the Waegwan will be beheaded!”
That was less a genuine threat than bargaining material.
No matter how Park Chang-su tried to bluff, if this uproar became public, he would have a hard time walking away untouched. Right now, Park Chang-su himself was among those who had “set foot inside the Waegwan.”
The compromise was simple: bury the incident properly, keep quiet, cooperate, and he would hand Jeong Ja-beom a little more of the profits from the Giyŏnggye’s ten blades. He would even share some with the Park Axe Merchant Guild.
Not bad at all. It was a mouth worthy of a man calling himself the First Naesang.
The problem, as is so often the fate of eloquent men, was that he had tried to use his wit on someone who did not speak reason.
A voice they had both half-forgotten on purpose rang out.
“Chang-su. Have you lost your mind? That only works if you’re still alive by tomorrow morning.”
That’s right.
All of Park Chang-su’s grand schemes and formidable social capital only meant something while he remained alive.
If they worked, Taesu would have a hard time doing anything about them.
So what was he supposed to do?
Just make sure they never worked in the first place. With one ex-class axe, life didn’t require complicated thoughts.
“Y-you’re not seriously saying you’re going to do something like a bandit raid and cut down the middle commander of the government in the dead of night, are you?”
“Yeah.”
Park Axe trudged forward.
Park Chang-su frantically waved his hands.
“W-wait! Let’s talk this over!”
“No.”
Thwack!
Taesu didn’t even look at Park Chang-su’s rolling head.
The other two of the Park Axe Merchant Guild’s Four Heavenly Kings—excluding the Sea Cucumber King Song Gwang-rak, who had already been secured—namely the candy peddler Choi Ju-han and the interior contractor Hwang Do-won, finally understood what it meant to feel the blood freeze in their veins.
A presentiment, one they could not ignore if they wanted to stay alive, swept over them.
Their lives, long as they had been, ended here today.
* * *
If Choi Ju-han and Hwang Do-won were left alive, then whatever Jeong Ja-beom did, the order of the Giyŏnggye would not change.
The Naesang were a group whose legitimacy came from Japan, not Joseon, so Park Axe’s outside support did not work very well on them either.
Naesang could only control Naesang. And either Choi Ju-han or Hwang Do-won alone was stronger than Jeong Ja-beom.
As soon as Park Axe left, they would restore the old order and make good on Park Chang-su’s boast about beheadings and the like.
So even if Taesu did not want to kill them, he had to kill Choi Ju-han and Hwang Do-won.
It wasn’t as if he particularly didn’t want to kill them.
This wasn’t some careful logical analysis. Taesu could tell, simply from the fact that Cha Un-hong hadn’t stopped him so far, that these two needed to disappear.
Choi Ju-han and Hwang Do-won screamed and drew their blades.
“That lunatic means to kill us all right here! We have to fight!”
At least outwardly, their military background was a gift from the Japanese.
Their martial skill might not be much, but the fact that there were two of them was the problem.
Two against one unarmed is one thing; two against one while armed is entirely another. A sword, unlike a fist, means death if the other side gets the first clean thrust in.
[Get behind that Jeong Ja-beom fellow! Use him as a shield!]
The Mountain Spirit’s devious scheme, always ready with some supreme stratagem, was ignored once again.
Taesu trusted his own eyes.
And no, not his dynamic vision.
[No!]
Choi Ju-han and Hwang Do-won were just as shocked as the Mountain Spirit.
They had assumed Taesu would never dare charge in carelessly. For most humans, that would have been a correct prediction.
Their vague plan had been to take advantage of the moment when Park Axe hesitated in a two-on-one fight and slip away.
But Taesu lunged straight in without delay.
He whipped the axe in his right hand outward, and Choi Ju-han’s blade snapped clean in two.
The force that had been driven to the right spun right back around. His left foot whipped up in a high kick and smashed into Choi Ju-han’s temple.
It was the kind of axe-and-fist combination Taesu had grown accustomed to using lately, and it was paying off handsomely. Choi Ju-han, old as he was, died instantly.
Hwang Do-won, despite his comrade’s death, felt glad.
He thought he might still live.
Stupid fool! The side’s wide open!
Hwang Do-won was a contractor as well as a merchant.
He had a little experience with tools and hard labor. So he decisively tried to thrust his sword forward.
But his hand did not move.
The reason was quite scientific.
At that moment, the neural commands in Hwang Do-won’s brain no longer connected to his arm.
And the one who had severed that connection was not Taesu.
A Japanese man had dropped to one knee with his back to Taesu.
Ching.
The crisp sound of a blade being returned to its scabbard rang out in a flash.
Hwang Do-won’s head fell away at the same time.
Plunging off the ground and streaking past Taesu at impossible speed, he had decapitated Hwang Do-won in a single instant.
Everyone except Taesu had seen only the Japanese man’s finishing motion in that strange mask.
The pinnacle of Jikishinkage-ryu iaijutsu.
“Sashimi” Katsu Kaishu, who had lived up to his nickname in the most perfect way imaginable, removed his mask.
“At last, I’ve found you.”
* * *
Strictly speaking, the first person to “find” Taesu had been Bak Seol-chae.
The reason was simple: as a Bobusang Yeongbansu under Park Axe, he knew more than most about the inner workings of Park Axe’s camp.
Bak Seol-chae saw the thing in the distance flash twice with a light that was “absolutely not fire” and shouted.
“That’s the Western gadget the Dobansu carries!”
It was the flashlight they had used for the ghost-story scare.
Sashimi and Wasabi—who had been nearest to Bak Seol-chae—raced over first.
And Taesu, whose eyes were better than most men’s, caught sight of them first.
That was why he ignored Hwang Do-won and went after Choi Ju-han instead. Taesu, too, acknowledged Katsu Kaishu’s skill with that sashimi-like draw.
When the rest of the Gyeonggi Baekimbang comrades rushed over as well, Cha Un-hong swiftly took charge in Taesu’s place.
“Gather up all these corpses. And the Japanese monk too. Ah, there aren’t any dead Japanese men, are there?”
When everyone nodded, the Park Axe Merchant Guild retreated at once.
Waiting for Taesu were Yi Ha-eung—who had already heard the first half of the story from Sea Cucumber King Song Gwang-rak and the debtor interpreter Hyeon Hak-ro—and, by morning, the rest of the tale as well from Itkyu and the others, who no longer had any business in the mortal world.
Watching all this, Cha Un-hong grew curious and asked,
“Though they were the first to commit the crime, worldly justice often runs backward when it comes to reward and punishment. In Dongrae-bu, where we must mind the Waegwan’s mood, they’ll surely try to pin some of this on us too. What do you intend to do?”
Yi Ha-eung did not say, “Have you lost your mind, asking a commander for a report like some servant?”
He was far wiser than Park Chang-su, so he didn’t waste words on a fool who couldn’t understand them. He simply resembled his master that way.
So Yi Ha-eung answered generously,
“It is the duty of a scholar to set right the order of reward and punishment when it has been turned upside down.”
At once, Yi Ha-eung went to meet the Dongrae magistrate.
* * *
Dongrae magistrate Kang Gi was, as Yi Ha-eung had said, a man slated to become daesagan.
He had originally been an elite official who rotated through the central civil-services offices—Saganwon, Sahaengbu, Hongmungwan—or the Seungjeongwon. His stint as a provincial magistrate had merely been a procedural requirement on the way to a high post.
So when he returned to Hanyang this time, he was supposed to resume the elite path as daesagan.
There was no way Kang Gi cared one whit about Dongrae’s affairs. He just wanted to get back to Hanyang as soon as possible.
But if what Yi Ha-eung told him that night was true, Kang Gi really would be going to Hanyang very soon.
As a prisoner.
Normally, a single smuggling incident at the Waegwan was enough to get the Dongrae magistrate arrested. There was nothing unusual about Kang Gi; this was simply how Joseon bureaucracy worked.
It wasn’t punishment for doing something wrong.
It was punishment because an incident had happened.
And if the matter was as enormous as this one—far beyond some petty smuggling scandal—then arrest would not be the end of it.
After hearing the whole story from Yi Ha-eung, Kang Gi looked as if he might collapse on the spot.
T-this sort of outrageous thing exists? So that’s why my underlings were reporting, so suspiciously, that bringing the Japanese into Dongrae-bu all at once would be inconvenient...!
If they really were spies, they had to be arrested.
If they were not spies, then they had to be properly repatriated instead of being taken in by Tsushima’s lies.
Kang Gi had managed neither. At this rate, not only his future as daesagan but even his qualifications as a central elite official would be seriously questioned.
What was more, according to Yi Ha-eung, Kang Gi hadn’t even known that his subordinates had been pulling the absurd trick of using the magistrate’s authority as a pretext to spirit people away.
Worse, the Naesang under his responsibility had colluded with the Waegwan and failed to stop them from “assaulting and detaining” the so-called “honest merchants” hired by the Jeju magistrate.
It was hard not to wonder whether he was really fit to be in charge of anything at all. He looked less like an official than the king of some other country.
The comedy of the incompetent advising the incompetent is something the Yi family cannot tolerate. The place Kang Gi would now have to govern was not the Saganwon but some ramshackle hovel next door to Kim Jeong-hui on Jeju Island.
Fortunately, Yi Ha-eung had a way to make sure Kang Gi did not end up looking like a disciple before his master.
Now the magistrate has been made to look bad by these sly scoundrels, and for the sake of my own teacher, Master Chusa, I cannot stand by and do nothing.
Kang Gi, whose ancestor had received a plaque from Chusa, straightened his robes at once.
Lord Heungseon, what lesson do you intend to teach me?
How could I, a young scholar with no military post, dare speak of teaching in front of the magistrate? Still, this is a muddy affair among merchants, and however one clears it away, one’s hands are bound to get dirty. So I would like to recommend a trustworthy commoner or two who can consult with you on the matter.
Hire contractors, and they’ll handle the whole thing turnkey.
To a civil servant, it was an irresistible offer.
Kang Gi signed the contract at once.
What Kang Gi did not know was that Yi Ha-eung was already a veteran at brilliantly completing contractor work in Gangjin.
It was an excellent choice.
* * *
First, three of the Naesang Four Heavenly Kings were officially declared “missing.”
They had committed crimes and run away.
What crimes, exactly? The excuse Sea Cucumber King Song Gwang-rak had hastily cooked up yesterday was put to use as-is.
This castaway had a petty grudge against a high official of Tsushima. Through the Waegwan, he secretly conveyed his intention to settle that miserable grudge. Park Chang-su, Choi Ju-han, and Hwang Do-won colluded with the Waegwan to deceive the magistrate and spirit him away, but they failed and fled.
……
Judging by the way they usually smuggled ginseng, arranged smuggling, and extorted the merchants of the josi market—the market held separately from the regular open market, where ordinary traders also participated and goods for the Waegwan’s daily needs were sold—you can tell the sort of people they were.
Dongrae magistrate Kang Gi “severely rebuked” the Waegwan for this lamentable crime.
Under ordinary circumstances, the Waegwan would have snorted, “What the hell is this bastard talking about?” and laughed it off. The local official had already cursed those stupid Naesang and tightened internal discipline.
But the phrase “arranged smuggling” in the report had not been inserted for nothing.
As soon as Kang Gi, following Yi Ha-eung’s advice, suddenly assembled an investigative unit and began carving up the brothel runners like a charging vanguard, alarm bells went off at the Waegwan.
Prostitution-related smuggling was one of the things the Joseon government reacted to most viciously.
The Japanese didn’t understand why prostitution was illegal. In their country, it was legal in the nineteenth century, and it would be legal in the twenty-first too.
So when Japanese offenders were involved in prostitution smuggling, they weren’t punished. But after Joseon threw a fit for a full three-digit stretch of years, the offenders were eventually sent to an island and made into slaves.
That was what had been reported back to Joseon.
To a country with no slave system, it was obvious what that meant.
The island of lies had lied again.
Still, even Hizen in Kyushu—the mainland region belonging to Tsushima’s domain—was part of Japan, so an island was an island. And under the Japanese system, every Japanese person was a slave to someone above them.
Even so, if the Tsushima men were living comfortably under the label of slaves, the fact remained that they had to be recalled from the Waegwan.
Besides, while this was not technically “punishment for prostitution,” there would absolutely be punishment for “making the superiors lose face,” and it would be even harsher.
More than that, if a historic prostitution-smuggling blockbuster of this scale exploded, trade itself could be abolished altogether. They had already heard this king was a bit reckless.
But if trade disappears, won’t that be a problem for Joseon? Where are they supposed to buy copper?
There were indeed hardline voices saying as much.
And they weren’t wrong.
By the nineteenth century, with direct Sino-Japanese trade long since active, Joseon trade held little value for Japan except ginseng. The copper exported to Joseon amounted to barely five percent of Japan’s copper exports.
But Tsushima’s fear of a trade cutoff was not about the trade balance.
You idiot. Then how are we supposed to collect the shogunate’s trade subsidy?
The tens of thousands of gold ryō the island of lies had been skimming every year through fraud and false claims.
If Joseon truly “cut off ties,” then that money—the money the future shogunate had clung to all the way until the Great Restoration, even while the country was collapsing into civil war—would vanish.
It wasn’t just money. Tsushima’s role as a shogunate vassal responsible for “diplomacy with Joseon” would vanish too. An employee stripped of their post loses influence; that’s only natural.
Tsushima could not abandon Joseon.
Because of problems inside Japan, not because of problems with Joseon.
For them to keep fussing about catching more shogunate spies now would be to put the cart before the horse.
If they lost the very Joseon interests they had been trying to protect by catching spies, it would be pointless.
In the end, there was only one thing the Waegwan could say.
How about we call it a draw...?
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