There's Always a Plan
“Get in!”
“You don’t have to shove me. I’ll walk in on my own.”
The moment they arrived at the prison, a jailer roughly shoved Dang Hui-yeom into the cell. Hui-yeom casually brushed the man’s hand aside as he spoke, and only then did the jailer seem to realize he was dealing with a martial artist from the murim. His expression tightened a little as he muttered,
“A martial artist?”
Incredible. To look at someone dressed in bright green robes and still assume he was just some untrained kid—Hui-yeom was reminded all over again that this was not Sichuan. Or maybe the Dang Family had stayed so quiet for so long that their reputation simply evaporated the moment you left the province. Domestic brand only? No, that couldn’t be it. More likely the man was just an ignorant oaf who knew nothing about the murim. While Hui-yeom ran through the possibilities, the jailer decided he was plotting something and rested a hand on the six-sided club at his waist.
“Don’t even think about trying any funny—”
Crack.
Hui-yeom put a little strength into it and snapped the binding ropes. The jailer’s mouth worked soundlessly.
“Funny business? If I’d wanted to pull something, I would have done it long before now. First time dealing with a martial artist, is it? Honestly, I expected you to seal my pressure points or at least wrap me in iron chains. Ropes? Really?”
He reached toward the jailer, who had gone rigid and was about to blow his whistle.
“Ah, ah—relax. I’m not planning a jailbreak or anything of the sort. I’ll walk in and sit quietly. You’ve got a hard enough job as it is.”
“….”
“The Provincial Governor’s a real bastard, isn’t he? Does he at least pay your wages on time? Or does he mix sand and chaff into the grain rations?”
“How did you—?!”
“Wait, seriously? Wow. Zero creativity.”
Hui-yeom sighed with a look that said truly impressive, then pulled a silver ingot from his robes and held it out.
“Bribe. Take it and bring me something decent to eat.”
Suddenly handed a sum equal to a full month’s wages—not some thin silver scrap, but a proper silver ingot—the jailer’s brain short-circuited.
“Uh. Uh?”
“Why are you freezing up? We’re all just trying to make a living. The Governor takes bribes and lines his pockets—what law says a jailer can’t do the same?”
“Ah…”
As the man hesitated, Hui-yeom spoke as if he pitied him.
“Don’t overthink it. Think of your wife and kids. Nothing bad will happen just because you took this.”
“…Thank you.”
In the end the jailer accepted the silver with a grim face.
“Wait here. I’ll bring a meal.”
Hui-yeom grinned at the sudden change in attitude.
“Yes. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying, but take good care of me.”
“Are your nerves made of wire? You’re in prison and you’re acting like— Is this because you’re confident you can escape anytime?”
“Something like that.”
Hui-yeom stepped into the cell, casually brushed the dust off the floor, and flopped down flat on his back. The jailer stared at him as if the world had gone mad, then left to fetch the food.
The jailer turned out to be a man who understood how things worked. Having swallowed a whole silver ingot, he somehow managed to return with a meaty stew, white rice, and two dumplings. Hui-yeom ate every bite with relish. After dinner he was even served tea, and when night grew late he said to the jailer,
“Go get some sleep. I won’t escape.”
“Even so, I have a duty—”
“When someone tells you to rest, rest. If I decided to break out, do you honestly think you could stop me?”
“Well, that’s true, but still—this brat’s got a mouth on him…”
“Hui-yeom.”
“?”
“Not ‘brat.’ I’m Dang Hui-yeom.”
“Mak Yeo.”
“Fine, Uncle Mak. Go rest. I won’t get any ideas. Oh, and it’s boring in here—if you could bring me paper, brush, and ink, that would be even better.”
“….”
Mak Yeo sighed and eventually brought the writing supplies. As he left the prison he warned,
“Absolutely, under no circumstances, try anything stupid.”
“Yes, sir~.”
And then Hui-yeom was alone in the cell. Using the moonlight that filtered through the bars as a lamp, he began writing letters.
How much time passed? Hui-yeom had finished several letters and was waiting for the ink to dry when the underground prison door opened without a sound. A moment later a refined voice spoke from the darkness.
“Young Master.”
“Ye-eun? I expected Auntie. This is a surprise.”
At his words Ye-eun stepped out of the shadows, revealed herself, and gave a light bow.
“Chief Dang Su-jeong and her Dokwadae are currently under surveillance by the Governor’s troops. So I came myself.”
“Heh heh heh. Alone, slipping past the eyes of every jailer on duty?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Even if you got rid of the jailers, there had to be more than one or two people between here and the entrance. And you expect me to believe a perfectly ordinary teenage girl with no martial arts training made it all the way without being seen by a single one?”
“I may not be able to, but silver can.”
Ye-eun lifted a money pouch and gave it a little shake so it clinked.
“They all looked like they’d taken bribes a time or two before. The atmosphere here is completely different from the Sichuan Provincial Office.”
Hui-yeom still eyed her with suspicion, but he nodded for the moment.
“Already tasting the sweet side of bribery. Truly worthy of my First Secretary.”
“I’ve always been a quick study.”
“So—what’s the situation outside?”
Hui-yeom cut the banter short. Ye-eun’s expression turned serious to match.
“Troop morale is low, but the Governor is confident that our family’s martial artists would never dare attack a government office.”
“Only because no one’s cracked his skull yet. In the end he’s just a greenhorn.”
It had been clumsy—painfully clumsy. Hui-yeom had dealt with every kind of corrupt official imaginable; he had done business with them and, when necessary, destroyed them politically. A world-class conglomerate was never built on management skill alone. In his eyes, if you ranked corrupt officials, this Governor was the lowest of the low.
“High rank is all he has. No caution, and not even enough cunning to cover his own crimes. If he’d been a higher-level operator, he would at least have pretended to be a dedicated public servant in front of us.”
“What do you intend to do? You provoked him like that—surely not without a plan.”
“Of course not.”
Hui-yeom grinned.
“From the moment we entered Yunnan until I faced the Governor, there were countless clues. Using those clues I reached a conclusion: that bastard is not someone we can build a business with. Better to remove him.”
“But was it necessary to provoke him to the point of getting yourself thrown in jail?”
“If all I said was ‘Hand over the relief grain,’ he could just claim it never happened—no proof. But if I go into the clink and he uses me as a hostage to extort that grain, he can’t deny a thing. I figured if I scratched just hard enough, he’d react exactly like this.”
“Haa…”
Ye-eun shook her head for a moment, then asked,
“What do you need me to do?”
Hui-yeom held out the four letters he had written in prison.
“First, deliver this one to Auntie. This one goes to Secretary Lee. And take these two back to the Dang Family yourself—one for Director Bang Un of Legal Affairs, one for Father.”
Ye-eun received the letters, tucked them into her robes, and bowed respectfully.
“Will that be enough?”
“For now. Go.”
“Yes. Then please take care of yourself, even if only for a short while.”
Ye-eun stepped backward and melted into the darkness as if dissolving into the shadows. Watching her go, Hui-yeom gave a short snort of laughter.
“Silver coins, my ass. More like a ninja.”
“Shouldn’t we rescue the Young Master right this moment and head back?”
At the Dokwadae captain’s urging, Dang Su-jeong gnawed on a perfectly manicured nail and muttered,
“Wait.”
“But we have no idea what might happen to him. Didn’t you hear what the Governor said? For a pardon we need to prepare bail money! If we don’t, he’ll order a caning and cripple the boy so he can never walk again!”
“Yeom isn’t a child who acts without thinking. This is the same boy who normally flatters the Sichuan Provincial Governor until the man’s palm prints wear off. He deliberately behaved that way even though he knew exactly what would happen. He clearly has a plan. We just need to trust him and wait.”
“Even so…”
“We’ll talk when Ye-eun gets back.”
“She’s nothing more than an ordinary maid with no martial arts. Entrusting her with something this important—”
“….”
An ordinary maid with no martial arts, huh. I somehow doubt that.
Dang Su-jeong recalled Ye-eun’s almost inorganic face. During the long journey to Yunnan, sharing a carriage with the girl, she had realized something: she could not sense Ye-eun’s presence at all. A Peak master of Dang Su-jeong’s caliber unable to detect the qi of someone sitting right beside her? That was strange no matter how you looked at it.
And yet there’s not a single trace that she’s ever trained martial arts either.
So Dang Su-jeong had casually—or under the pretext of female bonding—poked and prodded Ye-eun’s body trying to find signs of training. Nothing. And the girl’s past? No matter how hard they looked, the records were spotless. In the household registry her information had been blacked out and erased. Reason: direct order of the Family Head.
She is absolutely not ordinary.
Just then Ye-eun returned.
“I have letters from the Young Master.”
“Letters? Written in prison?”
“He seems to have bought the jailers. And he clearly already has a full plan. This one is for you, Chief. This is for Secretary Lee. And these two are mine.”
“Mine as well?”
Dang Su-jeong and Lee Jinmyeong each took their letters and read them at once.
“Hmm, hmm.”
“Ah… damn…”
Dang Su-jeong’s eyes lit up; Lee Jinmyeong’s face twisted as if his head already hurt. But once both had finished reading, they nodded as if their course of action was decided.
“Understood. We’ll proceed exactly as written.”
“…Same here.”
“And First Secretary?”
“I must return to Sichuan.”
“Want an escort?”
Dang Su-jeong’s eyes gleamed with a peculiar light. Meeting that gaze—which clearly said Do you really need one?—Ye-eun flinched for a second, then looked away and mumbled,
“I… thought it might be faster if I just rode a horse alone…”
“Ahh~ a horse. Nice. Clip-clop, clip-clop.”
Dang Su-jeong smiled with an expression that said Don’t talk nonsense. Racing a horse through the rugged mountain roads between Sichuan and Yunnan was synonymous with “Let’s find out how easily a horse’s ankles can break.” Ye-eun’s face colored slightly, but Dang Su-jeong did not press further.
If it’s a direct order from the Family Head, then at least Oppa knows who this girl really is and decided she was trustworthy enough to attach to Yeom. I should just focus on my own job.
“All right, let’s move immediately. Secretary Lee, what’s your assignment?”
“Evidence gathering, apparently. Looks like I get to play at being Minjeongwon even though it’s not in my stars.”
“You’ll need escorts, right? Want me to assign three?”
“If possible, people with friendly faces, please. Overly intimidating types make investigative work difficult.”
“Done.”
And so, while the Dokwadae, Dang Su-jeong, and Lee Jinmyeong began moving in Yunnan, Ye-eun set out alone on the road back to Sichuan. Less than a full day later, the Sichuan Dang Family was able to welcome her return.
“What—you’re back already? You shouldn’t even have arrived one way yet. Has something happened?”
Without a word of explanation Ye-eun held out two letters. Dang Un-sang unfolded the one marked To Father. His face hardened in an instant.
“Request an immediate legal consultation from Legal Affairs.”
After the quiet that had followed the battle with the Qingcheng Sect, storm clouds of war once again began to gather over the Sichuan Dang Family.