It’s None of My Business (3)
“...This is insane.”
“It just keeps going and going.”
The Mount Hua disciples shuddered as they stared at the endless lake of ice stretching out before them.
They had already traveled between Shaanxi and Sichuan twice. One of those trips had even taken them all the way to Yunnan, hadn’t it?
But back then, at least the scenery had changed enough to feel like they were actually somewhere new. Even over the same distance, the landscape shifted; the view changed, and that alone told them they’d come a long way.
But this damned lake was the same no matter how far they went. All they could see were snow-covered mountains, open fields, and ice. It felt less like traveling and more like they were walking in place.
A beautiful view they’d never seen before? A vast, blinding expanse that made their skin tingle?
That had only been true the first time. After staring at the same sight for days on end, they were past tired of it and were heading straight for madness.
Now and then, a blizzard would sweep in and block their view, but there was no point calling that refreshing either. You couldn’t exactly find novelty in not being able to see, could you?
“Sasuk. How much farther do we have to go?”
“...If I judge by the time we’ve been running, we should be almost there.”
To Jo Gul’s question, Baek Cheon also stared ahead with exhausted eyes.
Oddly enough, his body wasn’t all that strained. Unlike the Central Plains, where they had to cross hills, rivers, and even mud, this endless ice lake was flat from beginning to end.
Once they’d grown used to running over ice, they could actually move faster and more smoothly than before.
The problem was that no matter how far they went, the end still didn’t seem to be in sight.
“Are we even getting there?”
“...I’m sick of seeing white.”
“It was pretty at first.”
“Right? Sago? I thought it was nice at first too?”
About ten days after arriving in the North Sea, they had come to understand perfectly why people longed for the warm south.
Baek Cheon gave a wry smile.
Up until now, everyone had grumbled about how hard it was to pull the cart, but none of them had ever complained about being bored. The fact that even those guys were talking so much now was proof enough that the North Sea was something else.
“We should be almost there. Everyone, hang in there.”
“Yes, Sasuk!”
“Understood, Sasuk.”
Baek Cheon steeled his tired mind as well and tightened his grip on the cart.
Then Jo Gul, stretching his neck out as far as it would go, suddenly shouted as if he’d spotted something.
“Ah! There!”
“What is it?”
“Sasuk! Look over there. Isn’t that a village?”
“Hm?”
Baek Cheon narrowed his eyes and looked where he pointed.
“It does seem like it.”
Perhaps because the blizzard had died down, the view ahead had opened up. The jagged mountains that had stood tall began to lower little by little, and beneath the slope, tightly packed huts finally came into view.
“It’s a village.”
“It’s houses!”
The Mount Hua group had gone nearly ten days without seeing a village. Naturally, they had to cheer as if they’d seen nectar in the middle of a desert.
“Sasuk! Let’s go!”
“All right.”
Baek Cheon nodded and turned the cart in that direction.
Jo Gul’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Hmm...”
Yoon Jong tilted his head as well.
“Hmmm.”
All of Mount Hua looked at the scene before them with expressions that suggested something was off.
Huts.
Unlike in the Central Plains, the wooden homes were lined up side by side. If they had to compare them to anything, they were somewhat like the fishing villages of the Central Plains, though the houses themselves were different.
Still, there was one thing about this place that felt completely unlike a fishing village in the Central Plains...
“There’s nobody around?”
“Looks that way.”
The houses stood in a row, but there wasn’t a trace of human presence.
A village with all the people gone and only the houses left behind?
No. It wasn’t even that.
Smoke was still rising from the chimneys of each house. That meant fires were burning inside.
“Do they just not come outside?”
“...Could be. It’s cold.”
“Even so, for not a single person to be out...”
Jo Gul tilted his head.
The overall feeling was strangely bleak. It was clearly a village where people lived, and yet there was no sign of life or energy anywhere.
“Could something be wrong?”
“...I think I’ve seen something like this before. A village struck by plague looked just like this.”
“Then maybe it really is a plague.”
“What plague? In this cold, even the plague god would freeze to death.”
Listening to their conversation, Yu I-seol spoke quietly.
“Let’s knock first. On a door.”
“Hm. Good idea.”
Baek Cheon nodded and approached the nearest house. Taking a small breath, he knocked.
Thud, thud, thud.
“Is anyone there!”
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
“Is anyone there!”
No matter how many times he knocked, there was no answer from inside. Baek Cheon’s brow furrowed slightly.
“...Should we try another house?”
“Seems like we have to.”
But the result was the same everywhere else.
They knocked on several other houses nearby, but not one of them answered.
“...What the hell is this place?”
Jo Gul’s face twisted.
“They said the people of the North Sea were friendly, didn’t they? This isn’t friendly, it’s downright harsh.”
Yoon Jong frowned at that.
“Watch your words. This is a place where outsiders rarely come, so they may simply be extremely wary. Don’t speak so easily about matters you haven’t lived through.”
“...Yes.”
But even Yoon Jong looked unsettled, as if something about this was bothering him too.
There was clearly movement inside, and yet no one answered. It was maddening.
“Sahyung. Try knocking some more. Just a few houses.”
“Hm. Very well.”
It would be a shame to turn back like this, so Baek Cheon headed for another house.
“Is anyone there!”
This time, he knocked a little more cautiously than before.
“We’re travelers passing through. We mean no harm. We only have a few questions, so if you’d just open the—”
Bang!
And this time, fortunately, the door flew open at once.
“Ah. Thank you—”
But he didn’t even have time to finish his thanks. Baek Cheon quickly stepped back, because something bright had flashed inside the open doorway.
His hand flew reflexively to the hilt of his sword, but when he saw the person who appeared in the doorway, he relaxed his grip again.
The large kitchen knife in the old woman’s hand was certainly threatening, but the one holding it was a wrinkled grandmother. Her bony hand trembled so badly it was almost heartbreaking.
“A-again... again! Who are you taking this time? You bastards who deserve to rot in hell!”
The old woman shouted in a cracking voice, tears welling in her eyes, and swung the knife.
Baek Cheon was so startled that he stammered a little.
“W-we’re not like that. We just stopped by to ask for directions.”
“And you think I’d believe that?”
At her hysterical waving of the blade, Baek Cheon jumped and took another step back. He could subdue her in an instant, of course, but if he hurt a frail old woman, that would be a disaster.
“Grandmother, we’re not bad people.”
“Get lost!”
Bang!
The door slammed shut with force. Baek Cheon stood there, dumbfounded, staring at the closed door.
“...What the hell was that?”
“Didn’t she say someone was being taken?”
“Could there be human trafficking or something?”
The Mount Hua disciples’ faces stiffened.
They had visited many cities before, but this was the first time they had encountered a place so openly hostile.
Amitabha.
After chanting the Buddha’s name a few times, Hye Yeon spoke with a troubled expression.
“What worries this monk is how frightened everyone seems to be. It does not feel as though they are merely treating us coldly because we are outsiders.”
Baek Cheon scratched his head, looking flustered. Hye Yeon was right; there was definitely something strange about the reaction.
“Chung Myung.”
Chung Myung, who had been standing in silence at the back, raised his head slightly.
“What are you going to do?”
“Hmm.”
Chung Myung quietly looked over the village with calm eyes, then shrugged.
“If even Dong-ryong’s face doesn’t work, this situation’s pretty bad.”
“Is this really the time for jokes, you punk?”
“Who’s joking?”
“...?”
A vein twitched beside Baek Cheon’s eye.
But before he could explode, Chung Myung cut him off cleanly.
“Let’s go.”
“...Go?”
“I do have a few things I’d like to ask, but...”
Chung Myung trailed off for a moment and shook his head.
“You don’t mess with people who are already terrified. Something we do carelessly might only make things worse for them.”
His voice was oddly heavier than usual.
“Understood.”
Baek Cheon nodded without another word and turned around.
“...Sasuk, are you sure that’s all right?”
At Yoon Jong’s question, Baek Cheon let out a sigh.
“What do you expect us to do if they’re afraid of us?”
“If people are afraid of other people, it means something is wrong. Is it really all right to leave it like this?”
“...”
Baek Cheon slowly swept his gaze across the village.
“...I understand how you feel, but Chung Myung isn’t wrong. We’re outsiders. If we interfere recklessly, we may only make matters worse.”
“...Yes.”
“For now, let’s find the Ice Palace.”
Just as Baek Cheon was about to move on with a hardened expression, a voice suddenly rang out.
“A-are you from outside?”
At the unexpected voice, Baek Cheon hurriedly turned his head. Behind one of the huts, he could see someone half-hidden from view.
Apparently terrified of something, the man wouldn’t show himself fully. Even the head he poked out was trembling faintly over and over again.
“Yes, we came from the Central Plains.”
“T-the Central Plains!”
At those words, the man jolted as if burned, then ducked back behind the hut in a panic.
“We aren’t bad people. We only came to ask a few questions.”
“How did people from the Central Plains get all the way here? Y-you need to leave at once! Right now!”
“We came looking for the North Sea Ice Palace.”
“T-the Ice Palace?”
The man cautiously peered out again.
“Then did you receive permission from the North Sea Ice Palace?”
“To be exact, we didn’t get permission. We were introduced here. The Ice Palace won’t mistreat us.”
A trace of suspicion flickered in the man’s eyes, but before long his tension eased a little and he leaned out a bit farther.
“Well now... no one would dare come this deep into the North Sea in winter unless they had the Ice Palace’s approval. Not if they had any sense.”
“...”
Baek Cheon glanced at his fellow disciples, but they all kept their faces perfectly straight, not the slightest change in expression.
Warmth spread through Baek Cheon’s heart despite himself.
Where in the world did they gather so many shameless con artists?
Whether the swindlers had entered Mount Hua, or Mount Hua had turned into a factory for swindlers.
No... either way, that was still a problem.
“Yes. We’ve been running nonstop along the lake, and we were told the Ice Palace should be around here. If you know the way there, could you tell us which direction to go?”
“The Ice Palace is... cough! Cough!”
But just as the man was about to answer, he suddenly began coughing violently.
“Are you all right?”
“...I’m f-fine... cough! I’m fine.”
And then, in that very moment—
“Kugh!”
As the man’s whole body jolted with another fit of coughing, something white flew out of his mouth and dropped to the ground with a soft plop.
“Huh?”
“D-did he just lose a tooth?”
The Mount Hua group instinctively jumped back.
Whenever the man covered his mouth and coughed, blood seeped out with it. Red droplets scattered across the pure white snow.
It would be natural to think bleeding came from losing a tooth, but seeing the man’s pallid face and gaunt body made it hard to accept that explanation.
“...Some kind of strange illness?”
“D-didn’t I tell you? It’s a plague!”
As if his own words had just been vindicated, Jo Gul shouted, and Baek Cheon jerked his head around to stare at Dang Soso.
“Soso.”
“Yes.”
Dang Soso hurried over to the man.
“D-don’t come any closer.”
“Hold still! I’m a physician!”
When Dang Soso barked the words, the man flinched.
Usually she was playful and lively, but the Dang Soso who stood before the injured and the sick was stricter than anyone else.
After taking his pulse and prying his mouth open slightly to inspect it, Dang Soso’s expression darkened.
“...How long has this been going on? Is there anyone else in the village with the same symptoms?”
“Huh? Y-yes... about two months ago...”
Her face twisted sharply as she asked in a flat tone,
“You can open your doors, right?”
“...Pardon?”
“We need to check everyone in the village. Please persuade them and get them to open the doors! Quickly!”
Baek Cheon, watching beside her, asked with an even graver expression.
“...What illness is it?”
“I don’t know yet. But his condition is far too serious. Whatever it is, he won’t last long like this. I need to see more patients and check them properly.”
“...”
“Hurry!”
“A-all right.”
They took the man with them and rushed toward the nearest house. Every face had gone grim with concern.