What a Mess
Hwang Geolgae's training was simple, and it was brutally effective.
He was the kind of man who could pour killing intent even into a feint. This body of mine, host to the Heavenly Killing Star, reacted on pure instinct the moment it registered a punch as a killing move — like an intercept radar locking on.
The air-splitting crack of a fist. The faint outline of a trajectory. Arms and feet that moved to survive without waiting for me to think.
"…Ha. I really thought I was going to die."
Hit, then hit again. If you failed to dodge, the old man beat the dust out of you. After a long, merciless flurry of fists, I finally managed to bolt free of that rain of blows — though, of course, he had probably decided I had had enough and let me go.
"Aigoo, my poor joints."
My whole body throbbed as if I had been rolled up in a straw mat. The shoulder he had clipped at the end burned with a particularly vicious ache. They may not have been true killing strikes, but he had still pounded me, and welts and bruises were rising all over. Hwang Geolgae claimed he had been activating my acupuncture points and meridians while he hit me — that if I ran the small heavenly circuit now, the flow of qi would feel clearer than before.
Give the disease, then hand out the cure. Typical of him.
"All right, get back in. Killing Star."
I said it toward the red mist that had bloomed in answer to the fighting spirit. But the thing was a vicious bastard that was always looking for a chance to seize this body — as if it would ever take an order from me. Dense killing aura still prowled the air around me.
Seongryeong Hoiilche… Suceon Gipase… This is the expression of a steadfast will that drives out the demonic…
The moment I recited the formula and ran the Seongun Simbeop, the Heavenly Killing Star's energy finally slid back inside me, almost sulking as it went. The inner energy carried a demon-subduing quality — that much was working. If I did not want the Heavenly Killing Star to devour me, I would have to secure more of that power by any means necessary.
"…So where the hell am I?"
When I finally got my bearings, I was standing among neat rows of modest trees. Saw-edged leaves framed clusters of purple fruit hanging heavy on the branches. Apparently I had fled straight into a cultivation plot belonging to the Eunseong Merchant Group.
"Ah. Mulberry trees."
Up close, the shape was familiar. The fully ripened purple fruit were mulberries. I was hungry enough that I grabbed a handful and crunched into them. Tart sweetness flooded my mouth; purple stained my fingertips.
"Growing this many mulberries… is the Eunseong Merchant Group into sericulture?"
The sheer scale of the mulberry field and the fruit left unharvested until it was this ripe pointed that way. Not something most people get to try, but I had raised silkworms once myself, a long time ago.
"Brings back memories."
Back when I was still a snot-nosed kid, the orphanage director had brought in a silkworm-rearing kit. The same idea as those kindergarten classes that keep a hamster "to build character." The director had wanted to put a little warmth into an orphanage full of problem children — me especially.
And so the wriggling Gold Silk variety ended up under my care. At first it was nothing but a nuisance. Then the little thing chewed through mulberry leaves and spun a luminous golden cocoon, and my opinion shifted.
In those days I was short on pocket money and had already discovered the hustle: reselling Pokémon bread from Carrot Market, holding places in line, walking other kids' pets, sketching quick drawings for spare change. Gratitude and cash for solving small problems.
I looked the cocoon up. Turns out it was raw material for expensive silk — a natural resource ordinary people almost never saw, rare and a little mystical. I knew at once it could make money. I listed a few for a few thousand won, and neighborhood people bought them out of curiosity.
The moment a chore I had been forced to do turned into a revenue stream. The director paid for the feed anyway, so I just raked in the profit — pure upside. I found decent wrapping paper, stamped it with auspicious lines like "Great Fortune," "Exam Success," and "Business Prosperity," and customers actually started coming.
I was about to expand the silkworm count, hire a few of the other kids, and go full commercial when—
"Of course I got caught right then."
The director noticed my sudden spending, shut down my little silk factory, and that was the end of my silkworm empire.
"Still hurts to think about."
But it had also been a valuable lesson, learned young: where there is demand, there is opportunity. That truth became excellent groundwork for the troubleshooter I eventually became.
Crunch. Crunch-crunch.
Chewing the sweet-tart mulberries after so long brought the old life flooding back in pieces. Then the click of high heels cut through the trees, and a face as white as moonlight rose between the mulberry leaves.
"Huh?"
"Oh my."
Our eyes met, and surprise burst out of both of us at once. A folding fan neatly closed in one hand, silk robes embroidered in gold thread with lotuses — the woman was staring at me with a look that said, What are you doing here?
"Big sister Eun Hwaran?"
The woman was pureblood of the Eunseong family, young and rich merchant-lord Eun Hwaran herself. She seemed to have been walking the mulberry field lost in thought.
"That 'big sister' title is really… ugh. Never mind."
Eun Hwaran flinched at a form of address that left no distance at all. She looked ready to scold me, then seemed to decide I was still young and Hwang Geolgae's disciple, and let it go. Guanxi shield: fully operational.
"Dan Mujin, was it? How did you end up all the way out here?"
Even within the estate, this cultivation plot sat in a fairly remote corner. Her eyes were full of puzzlement.
"Well… I was being chased so hard I just sort of washed up here."
Killing-intent fists flying at my back, the Heavenly Killing Star thrashing in response, Seonpungbo burning under my feet as I ran — there had been no time to get my bearings.
"What do you mean, chased? Inside the estate? Who on earth would—"
She asked with genuine worry, afraid something ugly might have happened.
"There is someone. An old man who loves beating kids."
I rubbed my swollen cheek and the lump on the crown of my head as I grumbled. He had really gone all out. Who would have guessed the so-called Bluffing Daoist kept that much of himself bottled up.
"…?"
Eun Hwaran looked even more confused. The idea that I meant Hwang Geolgae did not seem to cross her mind at all. The old man had managed his image well — to everyone else he was still a mysterious Daoist. After living with him, I could say there was no bigger beggar among beggars.
"Is someone in the merchant group bullying you? If so, tell me the name."
She seemed to think the newcomer rock had been getting shoved around by the stones already planted. In truth I got along fine with the escort runners. I hauled two or three times the usual cargo, after all.
"Um, well…"
Spilling the truth and wrecking my master's mystique felt wrong, and explaining Heavenly-Killing-Star-style training was too awkward to attempt. I hedged, and the conversation cut off into an uncomfortable silence. We barely knew each other, and she clearly was not used to chatting with a kid who called her "big sister." Small talk was the only way out of that kind of freeze — a social skill I had polished in my detective-agency days. Start light. Weather, work, anything. Build common ground.
"Seeing this many mulberry trees… you raise silkworms, right?"
A casual throwaway line.
"…What?"
"I raised some myself once. At this scale, you must get a lot of cocoons."
I figured the money would be excellent. In this era, sericulture was a technology-intensive industry that raked in cash by the armful. But the look on Eun Hwaran's face was not normal. Her eyes had gone round — as if something had truly shocked her.
"Y-you… you've raised silkworms before…?"
I had tossed the words out without thinking, and the elegant Eun Hwaran started stuttering like a broken mechanism.
In this world, you needed money to even count as a person.
Even the soaring legends of the Murim still had to eat, shit, and wear clothes. In that they achieved those things through violence, they were, in a way, more enslaved to desire than anyone else.
"Borrow the wind to sail the boat;
money can move the gods."
That grand-sounding maxim hung on one wall of the Mangeum Money House proprietor's study. A middle-aged man with jowls hanging like a sack of greed was tapping the stone-carved desk with his fingertips, clearly dissatisfied. On the desk, yellow-gold horse-hoof ingots glittered beside an elegant gilt-bronze incense burner. Even with Western jewels and ornaments flooding the room in every color, his face was the face of a man who still wanted something more.
"This month's tribute, Lord Geum Hwangdo."
One of the Mangeum Money House's main revenue streams was the kind of moneylending that put money on money. The house's chief steward, distinguished by a sparse goatee, set down a gold chest heavy with someone's blood and sweat. The weight was truly substantial; he tugged the tip of his thin beard with a look that asked whether this was not rather excellent.
But Geum Hwangdo only wore that unsatisfied expression, even with bright yellow gold flashing under his nose. What he wanted was not the mountain of goods already piled in his warehouse.
"That woman Eun Hwaran. How did she answer our proposal?"
Geum Hwangdo's dream was larger. He wanted to swallow the entire Eunseong Merchant Group, whose main beams had already begun to creak — not just the moneylending, but a nationwide distribution network, caravan routes, and escort capacity. He meant to remake himself as the greatest commercial power in Beijing. Until now, the merchants had clung so tightly together that he could only lick his lips outside their circle. Then the Eunseong Merchant Group had set its sights on the sericulture trade, said to birth both brocade and gold. Someone in the Imperial Court had taken that very ill and offered Geum Hwangdo a hand, and the whole affair had fallen into place like a fisherman's windfall.
"She asked for time to consider, my lord."
A woman of that beauty who had still kept her name free of scandal and remained chaste. Under ordinary circumstances she would have thrown out the Fourth Prince and his filthy reputation long ago — the mere fact that she asked for time was proof that Eunseong's situation was dire.
"So she means to buy time. A useless game."
She was no doubt waiting for the person who would teach them silkworm rearing and take command of the sericulture venture. But two weeks had already passed, and the sericulture master she was waiting for with her neck stretched out would never arrive. Geum Hwangdo alone knew that fact, courtesy of a certain faction, and he stroked his jowls with a smirk.
Lately she had been running herself ragged trying to save the merchant group — for all the world like a white butterfly thrashing its wings in a spider's web.
"A gentleman's revenge is never late, even if it takes ten years."
Eun Jincheong. That upright old man who could not abide injustice was gone. There was no path left for the Eunseong Merchant Group, hanging by a thread in a storm. All that remained was a pretty girl who had inherited the merchant-lord's seat without knowing the full story after her father collapsed. Once the Imperial Court reclaimed even the silk trade rights, the fire would be on their feet. Then they would have no choice but to accept his proposal under still harsher terms. He would eat into the group piece by piece, and the day that woman toppled after her father, Eunseong would be finished. The merchant group would fall into the Fourth Prince's hands, and Mangeum would be reborn as a colossus that held Beijing in its grip.
Foolish Eun Jincheong. You brought this on yourself.
He had to admit the man's ability. Snatching a sericulture franchise known to be as hard to reach as stars in the sky — that was no small feat. But excess greed always turned to poison. To close the deal, the man had joined hands with Princess Dohwa of the Imperial Palace, and that had unsettled more than a few people. They feared the princess gaining the power of gold. The sericulture master's "disappearance" had happened in that same context. The Eun family would stamp their feet in confusion and sink without ever knowing why.
"If that bastard Eun Jincheong were still whole, he might have found a way to save them."
Unlike Geum Hwangdo, the man had earned the respect of Beijing's merchants and a thick network of good will. But the hand on Eunseong's tiller now was a young woman with barely any experience. Even a century-old great tree falls if you keep chopping at its roots.
"Send another marriage proposal. This time pack it with language that will make her understand her place."
"Yes, Lord Geum Hwangdo."
For a long time they had endured scorn and oppression — called a money-grubbing beast with a human face, a pig of gold, all for the infamous reputation of their usury. But soon no one would be able to ignore them. They would seize the commercial rights of Hebei.
The place where silkworms eat, sleep, and shit is called a jamsil — silkworm house. The characters for silkworm and room. Same as the Jamsil neighborhood back in Korea, because that area had once been the headquarters of the sericulture trade. Not even that long ago. Then the chemical industry advanced, artificial silk arrived, and the silkworm business naturally went into decline. That was why the genuine golden cocoons I had made felt so unfamiliar and precious to people.
"Mujin. Now that you've seen it for yourself, what do you think?"
And today I had been hauled, after getting caught stealing mulberries, into the Eunseong Merchant Group's silkworm house. At first I thought this silver-spoon woman wanted to show off the business that raked in her money. A closer look at how things were running told me it was nothing of the sort.
"…Wow. What a mess."