One Hundred Riders on the Suguta
"Yeonhwa! If you knead the dough that lightly, how are you supposed to fill a hundred stomachs? Pull your inner power up from your dantian and cut the dough’s breath off at the knees! And all of you cooks—move faster! Haven’t we still got a mountain of ingredients to prep? A hundred people, my ass. At this rate, we won’t even feed forty! And you porters—your hands are too slow hauling ingredients in! If anything, we should just have you preparing food in the storeroom!"
All night long, Elder Cook’s voice rang through Mugung Hyeoptak’s kitchen. The cooks and porters who had been forced to work through the night felt like they were screaming on the inside, too.
They kneaded dough with all their might, shaped it, let the bread rise, hauled over meat to prepare for stir-frying, pulled out onions and peeled them again and again... and again the tears came...
Yeonhwa felt like she was about to die from exhaustion, but weren’t the special task force members coming now even worse off? Or not? If they were riding scooters, then maybe...
A hundred elite iron-horse operatives from Jeong-sa Bon-sa-cheong had been riding hard from Chang'an, through Lanzhou, and all through the night without rest. By rights, the recurring dungeon Manhon Yeon-ok should have opened in Hanzhong, Shaanxi, but perhaps because Mu-hyeon-gok had deliberately twisted things, signs pointed instead to a break in the south of Henan, in Qinghai Province’s Xining. Qinghai lay far from the center of the Central Plains, and even following a well-maintained main road, it would have been a grueling journey to make in a single day.
"Master, if it’s a hundred servings, wouldn’t it be faster to just make a big pot of soup rice or fried rice? Why make these labor-intensive sandwiches instead?"
As the exhausted Yeonhwa asked with a sigh, Elder Cook shoved oak logs deep into the stove and clicked his tongue.
"Foolish talk. Those men are about to plunge into the deepest heart of Manhon Yeon-ok, where gravity and qi veins twist into chaos. If this were individual meals, I might have made something more fitting for each of them, but there are a hundred of them; we can’t cater to each one separately, so I chose the most stable food. That said, it’s also much faster and simpler than the others, which makes it easier to produce in bulk."
It wasn’t wrong, exactly. Yeonhwa shut her mouth and briskly cut through the aged dough, laying the pieces out at even intervals on a massive iron griddle meant for the stove. Beside her, Elder Cook spun his wok and stir-fried thinly sliced beef and onions. When the special soy-based sauce hit the hot iron, it hissed and burned away in a flash.
"Now that the bread and meat are ready, it’s time to brew the Heuk-su—coffee."
Yeonhwa nodded and dragged over a heavy sack. It was stuffed with dark brown coffee beans. In the Central Plains, this was called Heuk-su, a tonic that burned away fatigue and set the heart pounding.
As expected, Koreans—no, people from Haedong—were all about ice-cold drinks. Staying up all night while preparing a hundred servings had helped them immensely. Truly, Lord Lee Do-cheong’s cold blessing was as vast as the heavens, granting the frozen-drink faithful even in this primitive age of the Central Plains. Or so she thought.
They poured boiling water into a huge vat, put the freshly ground beans into a strainer, and brewed it strong. Just the smell of it made fatigue cry out and die on the spot.
"Good. With this much venom, it should be enough to wake up the bleary eyes of the fools who rode through the night on iron horses."
Elder Cook smiled in satisfaction as he savored the scent of the boiling Heuk-su.
Of course, Yeonhwa, the cooks, and the porters were already the ones with bleary eyes. More than a few of them were swaying back and forth as if they might tip over at any moment.
Just before dawn, when a red blush was spreading across the sky and morning mist lay low over the ground, the martial artists who had been watching Yeonhwa doze face-down on a wooden table in one corner of the inn suddenly all turned their gaze in one direction.
Rumble-rumble-rumble—
Yeonhwa jerked awake, thinking there had been an earthquake. Seeing her reaction, Cheol-ya gave an involuntary snort of laughter.
"They’re here."
Hong San, who had spent the whole night seated at the table studying a map of Jeong-sa Bon-sa-cheong and making strategy plans, rose with a broad grin.
Yeonhwa hurriedly straightened her apron and flung open the window wide. The cold dawn breeze rushed in, sweeping away some of the drowsiness—though not enough to make it vanish completely.
Ripping through the blue-black dawn mist with brute force, black iron horses fitted with two huge wheels—the Suguta—were pouring in without end. It was a hundred-member special task force that had ridden all night along the Central Plains’ roads.
What had seemed like an endless procession of Suguta finally came to a stop, and before long they were all assembled in front of Mugung Hyeoptak.
The roar of the inner-energy engines from a hundred Suguta shook the earth all at once. Unlike the sleek models ridden by the messengers of Baedal-ui Hojok, these machines were shaped like wild, fierce beasts, and their massive forms were overwhelming to behold.
"Unit, halt!"
Their commander at the front raised one arm high, and the hundred Suguta instantly cut off their animal-like roar and lined up in the empty yard before the inn.
The commander removed his helmet and tucked it beneath his arm before striding into the inn and dropping to one knee before Hong San.
"Jeong-sa Bon-sa-cheong First Special Task Force Commander Wi Ji-cheon reporting! I have crossed a thousand li at Senior Investigator Hong San’s command and arrived at last!"
"You’ve done well, Special Commander Wi Ji-cheon. You’ve had a hard night, breaking through the darkness to get here."
Hong San let out his trademark booming laugh and clapped Wi Ji-cheon on the broad shoulder. Then he raised his voice toward the kitchen.
"Cook! Please bring out the promised meal for our starving iron horses!"
"We’ve been waiting!"
The kitchen door swung open roughly, and Yeonhwa and Elder Cook came out, pushing two enormous carts.
On one cart, a hundred special sandwiches were piled high: freshly baked baguettes split open, crisp on the outside and soft within, packed to the brim with charcoal-scented bulgogi and crunchy vegetables.
On the other cart sat a giant vat of Heuk-su, boiling fiercely and giving off a dark, bitter aroma. Coffee was supposed to be served cold—ice-cold, if you asked Yeonhwa—but in the ancient Central Plains, the idea of cold tea was something only a person with a properly functioning brain would struggle to conceive, so they had no choice but to serve it warm.
And yet, even while Yeonhwa kept touching the Heuk-su to ice and insisting it was iced coffee—the true frozen-drink way—everyone still kept blinking at her as if to ask whether what they’d seen was really real.
At Wi Ji-cheon’s hand signal, the hundred task force members stepped forward in orderly fashion and accepted one sandwich and one cup of Heuk-su each.
"Cook... is this truly something meant to be drunk? It smells as though poisonous herbs have been boiled in it."
Wi Ji-cheon frowned at the jet-black Heuk-su sloshing in his cup like lethal medicine. Hong San, at that, downed his own cup in one go and said, "Enough talk. It’s bitter on the tongue, but it’s Mugung Hyeoptak’s special tonic—one that instantly sweeps away the fog of fatigue from your mind and makes your heart pound twice as hard. I’m told this Heuk-su’s awakening effect is absolutely essential for enduring the grotesque hallucinations and toxicity of the Yeon-ok."
Wi Ji-cheon squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed the Heuk-su. In that instant, his eyes flew open. The hot, bitter liquid that passed down his throat hit his stomach, and at once his blood vessels dilated and the qi that had gone stagnant after a night of hard riding began to roil violently.
In truth, caffeine stimulates the sensory centers of the cerebral cortex, reducing fatigue and clearing the mind; it also raises heart rate and lessens exhaustion, improving physical efficiency while exercising—and anyway, those sorts of effects were just what it did.
The rest of the men were the same. With their helmets off, they bit into the sandwiches as though swallowing field rations. The meat’s rich juices ran along the bread’s grain, flooding their mouths, and the hot Heuk-su quickly brought their stiffened bodies back to life.
Of course, those who absolutely couldn’t take the coffee had been provided with milk and sugar, so they could mix it in instead. Still, when the others saw them and went around teasing them, it was obvious the men were close enough to joke like that. They must have had a good bond.
It took less than half an hour to feed a hundred hungry men.
Gang Jeog-u slung Jeolrae-do over his shoulder and led the Red Light Society members outside. In their eyes shone vengeance and a fierce resolve.
Cheol-ya also walked out in silence and tightened his worn black cloak.
Hong San let his red robe flutter as he mounted his red Suguta.
"Our objective is Manhon Yeon-ok, which has been relocated to Henan in Qinghai! We will cut down the vile Blood Cult vermin who are making a mess of the Central Plains and set the laws of the martial world right!"
"Waaaaah!"
At once, the hundred task force members all raised their weapons high into the air and roared.
Vroooom—! Rumble!
A hundred Suguta started up at the same time. The wave of spiritual power bursting out all at once made the ground tremble. At Hong San’s signal from the front, they kicked up a terrifying storm of dust and surged southward. Behind them, the five martial artists of the Red Light Society and Cheol-ya followed on their own Suguta.
Yeonhwa stared blankly after the departing task force. Because she had stayed up all night, even though she had only dozed off for a moment, drowsiness seemed to be slowly settling over her again.
"Go upstairs and get some sleep. We’ll handle the cleanup ourselves."
"Okay..."
Yeonhwa went upstairs to catch a little rest, but she had a feeling the people heading toward Manhon Yeon-ok would show up in her dreams, too.
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