The Road to Suzhou
Hwiyeom’s party decided to travel from Huangmei County to Suzhou aboard the water taxis known as Personal Boats.
Needless to say, calling them water taxis did not mean the vessels were the size of a land taxi that held only four passengers.
Hwiyeom, Dang Su-jeong, and Sama Yun—the three direct bloodline members of the Dang Family—along with their secretaries Ye-eun and Lee Jinmyeong shared one boat, while the rest of the Dokwadae members split into vessels of roughly ten to twenty each.
The luxury Qing-class Personal Boats that carried Hwiyeom’s group, in particular, were so large that the name barely fit. Too small to be called merchant ships, yet more than ample for five guests: the interior was divided into decks with separate men’s and women’s cabins and a dining room.
Of course, even a martial master could not pilot a craft of that size alone. Rowers were stationed on the lowest deck, driving dozens of oars like a Roman galley while the captain—Qing-badge boatman Seok Sung—commanded them from above.
Including labor, the fare would not have been cheap, but anyone who booked a Qing Personal Boat already had more than enough money not to care.
The route to Suzhou did not fight the current, so the boat simply glided eastward with the flow of the Yangtze.
Hwiyeom asked Captain Seok Sung,
“Captain, are all the Qing-badge Personal Boats this size? It seems rather wasteful for a single passenger.”
Still rigid with tension, Seok Sung answered,
“Boats come in different sizes for different purposes. Mine is meant to host family parties in comfort and luxury, which is why it’s this large. Trading houses that need to move heavy cargo and many people, on the other hand, use vessels so big that calling them Personal Boats is almost a joke. Those are simply privately owned merchant ships registered as Personal Boats—like a rich man chartering an entire freighter in the old days.”
“I see.”
“Then there are the ones built to get one or two passengers to their destination as fast as humanly possible. In the Qing grade those boats are… terrifyingly quick. I watched one once—the hull skimmed and bounced across the surface as if it were half-flying.”
A speedboat? Incredible.
Hwiyeom could not help thinking how pathetic the old Yangtze River Eighteen Strongholds looked—men who had possessed such skill yet wasted it on mere river piracy.
Perhaps the thought showed on his face; Seok Sung gave an awkward smile.
“If this humble one may dare say… the world is full of bad people, true enough. Some of the river pirates were rotten from the start. But there were also those driven into piracy simply to survive. Still, others in the same circumstances never chose that path, so ‘I was forced’ is no real excuse.”
“And?”
“Whether a man is good or bad, he still needs the chance and the circumstances to become something else. In that sense I wanted to thank the Chairman for creating the Personal Boat business and giving us that chance.”
“Think nothing of it.”
Only then did Hwiyeom’s expression soften into a smile.
“I’m glad you’re living a new life.”
Suzhou was a canal city known as the Venice of the East. The old saying “Beneath heaven there are Suzhou and Hangzhou” was no exaggeration: both cities were vast, prosperous, and breathtakingly beautiful tourist destinations.
Suzhou sat on the Grand Canal that linked Beijing and Hangzhou. The city itself had grown along that artery, at the very confluence of the Yangtze and the canal. Countless tributaries and waterways threaded the whole metropolis; bridges arched over them by the score, and Personal Boats slipped beneath the arches—exactly the picture that had earned it the comparison to European Venice.
That scenery, plus its role as the logistics hub joining the Yangtze to the Grand Canal, drew literati and merchants from every corner of the Central Plains until the streets and waterways thronged day and night.
The moment Hwiyeom’s Personal Boat entered the city proper, boatmen appeared from every direction, faces dark with anger, ready for a fight.
“What’s this? Never seen this boat before—who gave you permission to work these waters?!”
“Is there a problem?”
“Ah—oh my! Forgive me for not recognizing the heroes of the martial world! M-may your business prosper!!”
The boatman who had been about to explode turned paper-white the instant Seok Sung and Hwiyeom showed their faces over the gunwale, then fled in panic.
Hwiyeom watched the retreat with a puzzled tilt of the head.
“Boatman, are you famous?”
Seok Sung gave a wry smile. The extreme tension of their first meeting had long since eased after days of sharing the river with the man himself.
“Hardly. A nobody like me isn’t someone ordinary boatmen would remember by face. It’s because of you, Chairman.”
“Me? Then what’s going on?”
“They almost certainly came from the Suzhou Boatmen’s Association. Unfamiliar boats poking around their turf—so they came to pick a fight. Then they spotted the Chairman in the jade-green robes of a Sichuan Dang Family direct heir and bolted.”
“Ah. So it’s because of me…”
“Yes. When you’re dressed that recognizably, or when the passengers are obvious martial artists, they can’t risk a quarrel. One wrong word and an offended master might send their heads into the canal.”
“Ohh… so a business like Personal Boats already existed in Suzhou?”
Seok Sung shook his head.
“What they do is similar to Angang Personal Boats, but the field is different. They only operate inside Suzhou.”
“Why haven’t they expanded along the Yangtze… ah. Because of the Yangtze River Eighteen Strongholds?”
Hwiyeom had the answer at once.
Even the most lawless black-path pirates of the Eighteen Strongholds couldn’t openly run a business inside a major city that still had government troops on the walls.
Seok Sung nodded.
“Exactly. In short, they’re like carp that never leave the reservoir pond because they’re terrified of the open river—yet they still swagger around as if they’re the masters of the place.”
In other words, the Personal Boat enterprise Hwiyeom had designed was a logistics-and-tourism network that moved people and goods across entire regions. The Suzhou boatmen, by contrast…
The Suzhou Boatmen’s Association that grew up around here seems focused purely on local tourism—ferrying sightseers to scenic lakes, riverside restaurants, and famous viewpoints inside the city and collecting fares. There might be real value in a partnership.
Intrigued, Hwiyeom asked,
“Their attitude at first was pretty fierce, though. Ordinary passengers who aren’t martial artists could easily get squeezed by that kind of territorialism.”
“Haha—no chance.”
Seok Sung snorted.
“Anyone who makes it as far as Suzhou is at least a Black-badge boatman. And from Black-badge up, every last one of us is… from that background. Would we flinch at the posturing of ordinary watermen? These are the same fellows who were so scared of us they never dared show their noses outside Lake Tai.”
“Ah. I understand perfectly.”
Most Black-badge and Qing-badge boatmen had once been ranking fighters inside the Yangtze River Eighteen Strongholds. The stronghold lords themselves had become directors and managers and no longer worked the decks, but plenty of former action captains and strike leaders now wore the black or blue badges.
Seok Sung himself was a former river pirate with a proper epithet in the martial world—someone who could smile and gently increase the Yangtze’s weight if a mere boatman tried to start something.
“That kind of territorial nonsense will vanish soon enough. They’ll learn their place.”
“Hmm. It’s less worry than opportunity. A business partnership that lets both sides make more money would be better for everyone.”
Sama Yun, who had been listening quietly, tilted her head.
“But Husband, even if we offer a partnership, why would they accept? If I were them, it would look like an outside force suddenly barging in to stick its chopsticks into a pie we’ve been eating quite nicely on our own.”
“That’s only if our boatmen try to operate inside Suzhou. We don’t need to. We just create profit by connecting the two sides.”
“How?”
“Suppose a Suzhou boatman partners with Angang. Then every passenger Angang brings to Suzhou is handed straight over to him.”
“Ah—so Angang carries them to the city entrance, and a partnered Suzhou boatman is already waiting to take them on?”
“Exactly. From the Suzhou boatman’s point of view, his Angang business friend keeps delivering customers without him having to tout for a single one. Anyone who deliberately rides a Personal Boat—especially a Black- or Qing-class one—all the way from another province is by definition a high-paying premium client. That’s a huge advantage.”
“And what’s in it for our own Angang crews?”
“They can take a commission per hand-off. Even without that, the marketing edge is obvious. ‘Ride with us and you won’t need to haggle for another boat once you reach Suzhou—your dedicated guide will already be waiting to show you the sights.’ If it were me, I’d pay a little extra for the second option every time.”
“When you put it that way… Husband, your business sense really is extraordinary!”
“It’s less that my head is especially sharp and more that people instinctively prefer to stand completely alone rather than ally with outsiders.”
A hallmark of Central Plains culture is extreme generosity and devotion toward “one’s own people,” paired with startling coldness and indifference toward everyone else. Some say it grew out of the region’s history.
Hwiyeom had read a column on the subject in his previous life. Discussing Chinese guanxi, the writer argued that centuries of local strongmen, overnight changes of dynasty, and constant chaos had taught people that country, king, and abstract values were unreliable—only blood, kin, and sworn friends mattered.
Whether the theory was true or not, Hwiyeom thought it fit the martial world uncannily well.
To most martial artists the emperor and loyalty mean nothing. The only things that matter are my sect and my family.
The natural result was a tendency to fence off one’s territory, shut out outsiders, and monopolize every scrap of advantage. So when Hwiyeom looked at two similar businesses operating in adjoining ranges—the Yangtze and Suzhou—he immediately saw economic synergy through connection and collaboration. People of this world, like Sama Yun or Seok Sung, first asked, “Why would anyone who already monopolizes the market agree?” or “Is the other side a threat? Am I stronger?”—and their thinking stopped there.
Dang Su-jeong, who had been listening in silence, tilted her head.
“I’ve been to Suzhou before, but I’ve never heard of any ‘Suzhou Boatmen’s Association.’”
“Really?”
“Mm. Back then they just fought among themselves. ‘You stole my customer!’ ‘I had my eye on that spot and you cut in line!’ At the pier they even rolled up their sleeves and started swinging oars over who would get to carry me. I was so dumbfounded I dunked both of them in the canal to cool their heads.”
What kind of person dunks boatmen in the water for that?
Hwiyeom’s mouth fell open. Sama Yun politely averted her gaze. Even Ye-eun and Seok Sung clamped their lips shut. A delicate silence settled over the boat.
Realizing her slip mid-sentence, Dang Su-jeong hurriedly scanned the others and then checked Lee Jinmyeong’s reaction.
Lee Jinmyeong, however, nodded with an expression of genuine admiration.
“I completely understand.”
“U-uh? Secretary Lee, what? It’s not that I necessarily acted that violently, I mean—”
As she scrambled to recover, Lee Jinmyeong met her eyes with unwavering, solemn sincerity and nodded again.
“When a fairy descends right in front of you, any man might lose his reason fighting to be the one who carries her. Perfectly natural. The fact that no blood was shed already shows deep cultivation. Living with the broad Yangtze before their eyes must have made them broad-chested great men.”
“Kyaa—ah, no, I—that’s—wait, eeh?!”
Dang Su-jeong began writhing in mortified confusion.
Watching through half-lidded eyes, Sama Yun leaned close and whispered in Hwiyeom’s ear,
“…Just send Mother a letter. Let’s hold one more wedding this autumn.”
“…That might be best.”
Hwiyeom laughed helplessly and changed the subject for his flustered aunt’s sake.
“Boatman Seok, take us to the Suzhou Boatmen’s Association. I need to discuss business with their chairman.”
“Ah—my apologies, Chairman. I don’t actually know where it is… I’ll find out at once.”
“Of course. Since the group apparently didn’t exist before, that’s only natural. Take your time.”
And so the boat carrying Hwiyeom turned its bow and glided across the water in search of the Suzhou Boatmen’s Association.