A Peculiar Outing
Yesterday afternoon, a small storm swept through the merchant group.
A storm by the name of Geumyado.
There was barely any physical damage to speak of. But the words that storm spat out seemed to have left a scratch on someone’s heart.
“……So you also think I’m not fit for the position of Guildmaster?”
A wine cup rolled clattering across the rosewood desk. I gave it a sniff. It smelled like the pure spirit they used for disinfection.
This stuff’s got to be ridiculously high-proof. Is it even safe for a person to drink?
“Mujin, why aren’t you saying anything?”
Someone who normally wouldn’t even let alcohol touch her lips had, of all things, gone straight for the notorious raw spirit. Eun Hwaran sat alone in the Guildmaster’s office, staging a full “I’ve had a drink” performance.
“Can I just leave?”
“No.”
In the end, I became the designated audience for her drunken rant.
Even she, who usually showed only a calm and razor-sharp side, was starting to fray under the alcohol bombardment. Since it had come to this, I dropped into a seat with the attitude of at least filling my stomach and started demolishing the side dishes.
Oh, what’s this? They even have candied fruit?
“I’m trying to fill Father’s empty seat too, you know. But how is that supposed to be easy?”
Candied fruit was fruit soaked thoroughly in honey, preserved by osmosis—a confection of the preserved-sweets category. And as the “soaked in honey” part suggested, in an era like this it was a fairly expensive snack.
In the wuxia novels everyone and their dog had been sucking on the stuff, though.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
I had once gone undercover at a company for a short stretch. The detective agency had taken a corporate-espionage case, and that was how I learned the art of handling a boss mid-drunk-rant.
“I keep saying I’m working hard, but the convoy heads and branch managers don’t seem to give me any credit…….”
“Mm-hmm. They didn’t give you any credit.”
You just echo the tail end of whatever they say. After about two bottles of soju they never notice anyway.
“The goods aren’t gathering the way they used to, and when the money houses cut off our loans over some weird rumor, the merchants start blaming me without even knowing the situation.”
“I see. They’re blaming only you, Sister.”
I popped a candied fruit into my mouth and kept the back-channel murmurs going.
“And the escorts are delayed because we’re being thorough, but the guards keep grumbling that their convoy pay is short……. How am I supposed to not feel stifled?”
“Right. You must have been terribly stifled.”
I took a bite of a mooncake shaped like a round moon. Having a dedicated chef really made a difference—it was delicious.
“When things get this bad, I start wondering if maybe I’m just running the place wrong.”
“So those thoughts came to you as well.”
She’d clearly been stacking up a lot of resentment, and Geumyado’s one remark had pressed the button. I tore off a dried squid leg and chewed.
“……You. You’re not actually listening to me, are you?”
Crap. She was less drunk than I thought. And she’d caught me.
Eun Hwaran’s eyes narrowed as she looked at me.
“Your head’s far too tangled. In the end you just have to unravel it one thread at a time, following the natural order, don’t you?”
The dark circles stood out against her pale skin. Without even looking I could tell her thoughts were a knotted skein of thread.
“……And you think that’s easy?”
“What’s so hard about it?”
She held the lofty title of Guildmaster and commanded a host of subordinates, but she was still only in her early twenties. Back on Earth that was pure new-hire territory.
The responsibility on both shoulders was crushing, and everyone believed she would somehow fix everything, so she couldn’t even show weakness. No wonder she was getting sick on the inside.
“First, settle the sericulture inspection. Use that result to persuade the money houses and clear the loans, then hire more guards and free lances with the extra capital and make the next convoy succeed. Isn’t that it?”
As the saying went, climb high by starting low. When things get tangled, set an order and solve them one by one.
I crunched through a sugar-preserved mulberry and swallowed. This, too, was delicious.
“You…… for a kid, you sure talk in a strangely capable way.”
Slightly dazed from the drink, Eun Hwaran muttered that while looking at me like some exotic creature.
“Starting with the sericulture……. Come to think of it, something extremely suspicious happened in connection with that.”
“What happened?”
“You already heard that the silkworm inspector the Court sent went missing, right?”
Of course. That was why, clutching at straws, she had dumped full authority over the rearing house on a guy like me in the first place.
“So I hired trackers to look for traces of the inspector. But they said his trail had vanished completely…….”
Now that was an odd report.
The Imperial Court playing dirty tricks on a merchant group they themselves had granted the business rights to.
“Was the grease money maybe a little short?”
“……Is there anything this child won’t say?”
Guanxi was a serious matter. If you wanted to do business in the Central Plains, appropriate bribes were essential.
“Anyway, doesn’t it feel incredibly suspicious?”
“Yes. It reeks.”
But a Guildmaster like her couldn’t possibly be ignorant of something that basic. There had to be something behind it that we didn’t know.
That was exactly why you had to be careful when snatching up a national project.
“It’s already this bad, and I can’t even imagine how many faults they’ll try to pick on inspection day.”
Exactly. Even if the treatment was unfair, there would be nowhere to complain. This was an era where you couldn’t even hope for fairness and justice.
“So after talking with Chief Steward Jin we concluded we simply wouldn’t give them any room to find fault. Prepare so perfectly they can’t make a peep……. Well? You can help, right?”
Something ominous was rising in the flow of conversation.
Yeah. This smelled like overtime.
“I’m already helping.”
“Then help just a little more. Somehow get the silkworm survival rate up to ninety percent for me.”
I had thought she called me over for a drunken rant, but she had been planning a crunch demand all along.
Have I ever met a scarier woman?
Time to extract myself from this room.
“Actually, I’ll just go.”
“I said no.”
As if she had expected it, Eun Hwaran clamped down hard on my arm. Her eyes said, You may enter of your own free will, but leaving is another story.
“I’m asking you, Mujin.”
A beauty’s earnest plea that would have made any ordinary man’s chest boil. But this Dan Mujin was a troubleshooter with ten years on the job. I was long past falling for a client’s cheap tricks to get free labor.
“That reward I mentioned last time—I’ll double it.”
“…….”
In a world without a Labor Standards Act, an employer who actually paid overtime properly—and double, at that.
I scratched my chin in silence. Smooth boyish skin met my fingers.
I had watched her long enough to know she wasn’t a woman who made empty promises. Whatever it was, she would make sure I got more.
“Can you do it?”
When the pay went up, the conversation changed.
There was no telling when I might end up penniless again, so you earned what you could while you could.
“I’ll do my absolute best, Client.”
So the deliberation didn’t last long.
There would not be a single fault to pick in the rearing house.
The training grounds under the moonlight.
“So you’re saying you’ve become an important figure in the rearing house?”
Hwang Geolgae asked while chewing on dried squid.
Out of liquor for once and clear-headed. The Saha world of the Five Turbid Evil Ages still looked packed full of affliction and suffering.
“And because of that you might be late for training?”
He was thirsty for drink. He had tried to attain enlightenment through “no obstruction,” like the great monks who practiced the Unhindered Conduct, yet now that his blurred reason had regained its edge, the Primordial Heavenly Worthy felt strangely distant. If he had just drunk one more bottle at the end, he felt he might have grasped something.
“Yes. The Guildmaster earnestly asked me.”
“Heh. What talent do you have besides killing people?”
“I’m pretty good at raising bugs.”
A truly bizarre claim. It wasn’t as if he were from the Sichuan Tang Clan, famed for rearing venomous insects.
“Anyway, I’ll be late for a while. Whirlwind Steps will be hard, but I’ll keep training the Starfall Heart Method in the gaps.”
“You little brat, who said you could? This old man has not given permission.”
He had been dragged off to do odd jobs, and now he claimed he had become the backbone of a business.
Hwang Geolgae eyed the boy with deep suspicion, wondering whether to believe any of it.
Just then something that reeked powerfully of liquor tumbled out of the boy’s robes.
At the nose-clearing blast of alcohol, Hwang Geolgae’s eyes went round.
“It’s pure spirit. Two bottles of this and you’ll probably meet the Primordial Heavenly Worthy for real.”
……Gulp.
Whether from the forced abstinence or not, both eyes locked onto the bottle and refused to move. His right hand began to creep forward of its own accord.
“Ahem. Hand it over already.”
The brat knows how to grease the wheels.
Hwang Geolgae casually accepted it and cracked the lid. That smell alone was fierce enough to get a man properly drunk.
“Then I’ll be going.”
With those words Dan Mujin turned his back, planning to slip away while Hwang Geolgae was grinning like an idiot.
But a sharp question from behind snagged him.
“What did you get promised?”
That impudent brat would never work that hard for free; Guildmaster Eun Hwaran must have promised him something. In her haste she had even forgotten the promise she already had with him.
“I don’t know yet. Whatever it is, it’ll be better than a handyman’s wages.”
A handyman’s base pay barely kept rice in a man’s mouth. When Mujin explained that point, Hwang Geolgae stroked his beard with a displeased face.
“The ominous star will be waiting for the moment you waver.”
Just as the heart-demon that had tormented him had done, it would desperately pry at even the smallest crack. Greed, one of the Three Poisons, could easily become the kindling for that fire.
“So do not neglect your training. Build the demon-suppressing internal energy that can stand against the ominous star.”
That was the boy’s only path to survival. Even if he came to hold great wealth, he must not waver—Hwang Geolgae offered the warning once more.
“I train hard because I want to live too, but the internal energy builds way too slowly. Is this really a peerless heart method?”
“…….”
You only see as much as you know. At the boy’s doubt, Hwang Geolgae barely swallowed the curse that tried to leap out.
“That is why I told you to accumulate good deeds and thereby increase the internal energy you lack.”
The Heavenly Killing Star gained strength when its host piled up killing karma, and lost strength when its host piled up good karma. He had even taught him a method to shrink the star and a heart method that could steal the star’s energy, and still—
“What a frustrating brat. Tsk tsk.”
Hwang Geolgae clicked his tongue in pity and gulped the clear liquid from the bottle.
“Pwah!”
And immediately had to spit it back out.
His tongue and the roof of his mouth burned as if they had touched fire. What kind of liquor was this supposed to be?
“Ah, that stuff’s pretty strong.”
Dan Mujin only smirked and told him after he had already drunk it.
Back on Earth that was the proof streamers shouted “challenge” before downing. How Eun Hwaran had managed to drink it was a mystery in itself.
“Anyway, I get that I’m supposed to build good karma. It’s just not easy. I’m busy enough trying to eat.”
Even good deeds could only be done when the opportunity came. And the line between good karma and evil karma was so vague that complaining came naturally.
“Opportunity is found by those who seek it, and standards are settled by those who hold a firm measure.”
Hwang Geolgae spoke like a Zen riddle while gently swirling the bottle.
Life was always like that. A process of finding the answer through trial and error. And somewhere along the way, enlightenment arrived as well.
“At any rate, do not be shaken by the profit right in front of your nose. Look far into the future. Then you will be able to obtain something even more precious.”
They said you could know the bottom of ten fathoms of water, but not the bottom of one fathom of a human heart.
Whether this child could truly avoid the crooked path and overcome the ominous star…… was something he would have to watch in silence.
“Honestly I don’t really get what you’re saying, but I’ll try.”
Young martial artists these days, honestly. Even when an elder offered life advice, they took it in one ear and let it out the other.
“Then go. If the Guildmaster needs you, there’s nothing to be done.”
“Yes. I’ll keep training in the gaps.”
Dan Mujin snapped off a quick bow and made to leave.
“Ah, and one more thing.”
Hwang Geolgae’s voice caught his steps again. Wondering if more scolding remained, the boy twisted his head back.
“This pure spirit of yours……. Bring a few more bottles.”
Hwang Geolgae tapped the pale bottle as he spoke. A strange liquor that set heavenly fire wherever it touched.
“……You’ll die, Old Man Hwang.”
“It’s fine. I won’t die.”
He waved a hand and told him just to bring it.
Does he know that’s the last line men say most often before they die?
Who was the one failing to look far into the future because of the liquor right in front of his nose?
Dan Mujin shook his head from side to side.
Beijing’s main avenue bustled with stalls lining both sides, a riot of goods and merchants calling out to customers.
A man in blue official robes who had just left the gates of the Imperial Palace opened his mouth in a careful voice.
“From here on, forget your original station. You are now the fourth daughter of the Oga household.”
He was drilling the identity of “fourth young lady” into a young woman whose face was veiled with light silk. At his repeated caution she only nodded without a word.
Even her ornaments and clothing had been adjusted to the level of a moderately well-off family.
“Cheon Su-gong, it feels as if we are embarking on that ‘incognito outing’ I have only heard of in stories.”
Having been confined to the palace because of external threats, she seemed to find even this rare excursion interesting. And that attitude was more than enough to raise the official’s guard.
“My lady, I must stress again—out here you must follow my instructions.”
Outside the palace there was no telling what trouble they might be swept into. He would have preferred to go alone if possible, but if the other side also had imperial blood involved, the only person who could crush them with sheer authority was the woman before him.
“Of course, Cheon Su-gong.”
“It is Cheongong. We agreed you would call me that.”
“Yes. Cheongong.”
Please let this outing pass without incident.
The man offered that silent prayer and set his steps toward a certain merchant group.