The Prestige of the Pistol, and On to the Beast Palace
Thanks to the unexpected mutual-benefit proposal Hwi-yeom had put forward, the rest of the negotiations wrapped up in a thoroughly amiable atmosphere.
The agreement drawn up between the Jeomchang Sect and the Sichuan Dang Family could be summarized as follows.
1. The Jeomchang Sect shall take full responsibility for operating the Yunnan tea plantations owned or leased by the Dang Family (which will later become coffee estates). In the event of losses, they shall be liable for damages.
2. In return, when purchasing tea leaves from merchant caravans under the Jeomchang Sect, the Dang Family shall honor the existing prices, thereby guaranteeing those caravans their profits.
Warm clauses, warm negotiations.
The moment the seals slammed down on the contract, the Dang Family members—who had until then been treated as potential enemies of the Jeomchang Sect—became honored guests overnight.
Huh? Wasn’t the Jeomchang Sect coming out behind? After all, they were only preserving their existing interests in exchange for having to manage the Dang Family’s tea fields. That was the thinking of someone who didn’t understand the game.
Among the tea merchants of Yunnan, only those under the Jeomchang Sect’s protection would have their current profits guaranteed. Everyone else’s situation was about to grow desperate.
Even if they ran straight to the Provincial Administration Commissioner who had already granted the monopoly license, no one was going to take their side. The only path left for those merchants was to place themselves under the Jeomchang Sect’s banner.
And so, without lifting a finger, the Jeomchang Sect would see its influence over Yunnan’s commercial world expand.
Then what about the Dang Family? Wasn’t their loss the bigger one this time? One might think so—yet the drop in tea profits would be more than offset by the growth of the coffee plantations.
The more merchants who fell under Jeomchang’s influence, the more the Dang Family could expand coffee production and distribution throughout Yunnan Province.
In the end, the Dang Family thrived, the Jeomchang Sect thrived, and no one got hurt: a gentle, joyful Yunnan for all.
As for the landlords who refused to come under either the Jeomchang Sect or the Dang Family? If they didn’t like it, they could close up shop. If they wanted to keep living, they would come crawling under the Jeomchang Sect’s wing.
That, roughly, was the picture that had taken shape.
While Hwi-yeom and the Dang Family people rested in their quarters, enjoying lavish hospitality, Hyeonseong Jin-in wiped the good-natured smile from his face and headed for Soyang Palace.
Soyang Palace served as the sect’s infirmary for injuries sustained during training. Inside, Il-hyeon lay recovering from the wounds he had taken in his spar with Dang Su-jeong.
“Sect Leader, please, I—”
“Enough. Stay down.”
When Il-hyeon tried to force himself upright, Hyeonseong Jin-in clicked his tongue and pressed him back onto the bed.
The reckless disciple had nearly brought disgrace upon the sect with his rash actions, but scolding could wait until the wounds had healed.
Hyeonseong Jin-in turned to Master Unjung, lord of Soyang Palace and the finest physician in the Jeomchang Sect.
“How are the injuries?”
“Fortunately the hidden weapon struck neither vessel, nerve, nor bone—only a thickly muscled area. Once we extracted it and disinfected the wound with strong spirits, there should be no festering.”
“Hah. It seems the Poison Phoenix showed him mercy.”
Hyeonseong Jin-in let out a breath of relief and looked down at the bowed head of his disciple.
“So. What did you make of the Dang Family’s hidden weapons?”
“…They were nothing like the rumors that circulate through the jianghu.”
Il-hyeon kept his head lowered a moment longer, choosing his words carefully.
“Everyone says the Sichuan Dang Family’s Amgijong has fallen into ruin, doesn’t it? Yet the Poison Phoenix’s throwing arts, at least, are nothing to take lightly.”
“Be specific.”
“The Dang Family’s hidden weapons are said to be both stealthy and relentless. Stealthy, because the projectiles arrive without the target even realizing they have been thrown. Relentless, because they cut off every avenue of escape and pursue to the bitter end.”
“And?”
“That wasn’t what happened.”
Il-hyeon’s face twisted as he dredged up the memory.
“I never even saw the hands that released them. Both of hers remained hidden inside her sleeves, and it was over. And that thunderclap—the speed was faster than the eye. Had that weapon aimed for a vital point, this disciple would have collapsed dead on the spot without ever knowing why.”
“It was that serious?”
“Yes. And the truly astonishing part is that I was hit before I ever heard the sound.”
“That—!”
“Yes. I believe it may have approached the realm our own Jeomchang Sect calls the First-Sound Sword…”
“Hrrrm.”
The Jeomchang Sect, which pursued the absolute extreme of sword speed, spoke of a stage beyond a certain threshold where blade velocity broke the sound barrier. The sword struck first; only afterward did the sound arrive. That First-Sound Sword realm was one of the heights the sect aspired to.
The Poison Phoenix has reached that level?
Even within the Jeomchang Sect, those who had attained the First-Sound in the present generation numbered only the Sect Leader himself, a handful of elders, and a few first-generation disciples.
At that moment Master Unjung, who had been listening quietly at the side, held out a washbasin.
“Sect Leader, this is the hidden weapon we extracted from Il-hyeon’s body. Would you care to examine it?”
“Hrrrm… What in the world is this?”
“A lump of lead.”
It was a crumpled bullet.
The nose had flattened so thoroughly that it no longer looked sharp at all—yet this thing had burrowed into a man’s flesh?
“Some variety of throwing pellet, I suppose.”
Released while the hands remained concealed in the sleeves… then was it similar to the Shaolin Temple’s Finger-Flicking Divine Skill?
While Hyeonseong Jin-in privately weighed the secret of the technique, Master Unjung spoke again.
“Look at these grooves here.”
“Ohhh. Eight grooves, swirling like a whirlwind…”
Staring at the rifling marks left by the bullet’s passage, Hyeonseong Jin-in’s expression grew strange.
Just how did one “throw” a hidden weapon and leave grooves like these?
Knowing nothing of firearms, his mind only grew more tangled.
Unjung added further confusion.
“The wound itself is even more bizarre. I’ve already treated it, so I cannot show you, but to my eye it looked exactly like a wound from a Yang Family Spear.”
“A Yang Family Spear? The kind where the spinning blade tears the flesh open wider upon entry?”
“Precisely. The internal damage was larger and wider than the entry hole. From that detail I would guess the technique imparts a powerful spin to the projectile and drives it out in a straight line…”
“Hrrrm…”
Hyeonseong Jin-in’s brow furrowed.
“It will take far longer to heal than an arrow wound. Had the aim strayed even slightly and struck vessel, nerve, or bone, the result would have been… unpleasant to imagine.”
“That severe?”
“Yes.”
“…Hah. So the Dang Family’s Amgijong is truly rising again?”
Dang Su-jeong had not even aimed for a vital point. That meant she had not used her full strength.
Which means she can throw even harder than this. And if she aims for a vital with that force? If she coats the weapon in poison?
Moreover, no matter how famous the Poison Phoenix was throughout the jianghu, she was still only a rising talent who had just passed thirty.
Given the nature of orthodox martial arts—which only grow stronger with age—there is no way the elders of the Dang Family are weaker than Dang Su-jeong.
Ignorant of the true nature of firearms, his thoughts chained one dark speculation after another, and Hyeonseong Jin-in’s face grew steadily grimmer.
“…It would not be wrong to say the Dang Family is reclaiming the power of its golden age.”
He belonged to the generation that still remembered that golden age.
The overlords of Sichuan, the venomous serpent of the southwest who had forced even the Qingcheng Sect and the Emei Sect to watch their step—the Sichuan Dang Family.
Has the serpent that spent the whole winter coiled in its den finally been released by the spring…?
Hyeonseong Jin-in recalled the bright smile Hwi-yeom had worn throughout the negotiations earlier.
Even now the boy was a slippery old snake who never yielded an inch. What sort of monster would he become once he was old enough to lead the family?
A bitter smile rose unbidden.
“We shall have to maintain friendly relations with the Dang Family.”
Once affairs with the Jeomchang Sect were settled, Hwi-yeom and the Dang Family party left the Cang Mountains under the sect’s farewell escort.
Their next destination lay deeper still into the remote wilds of Yunnan—the jungle known as the Southern Savages.
Hwi-yeom had scoured Yunnan for a hunter familiar with the geography of the south and taken the man on as guide.
His first impression upon facing the jungle of the Southern Savages was brief.
Reminds me of Tears of the Amazon.
The tropical rainforest of the Southern Savages began welcoming the outsiders with ferocious enthusiasm from the very first step.
“Ah, it itches like crazy! When did I even get bitten?!”
Mosquitoes, ants, bedbugs, fleas, and countless other insects whose names no one knew all hungered for their blood and flesh, offering endless handshakes of malice.
“All right, all right—we came prepared for this, didn’t we? Pop some Myeonghwangha and slap on the skin ointment.”
“Yes.”
Myeonghwangha, originally developed to eradicate locusts, was a devastating insecticide that worked on every insect alike.
They detonated it ahead of their path and advanced in the wake of the dispersing toxic mist; after that, the biting stopped.
Just like kids chasing the fogging truck.
Hwi-yeom remembered the children of old who used to race after the white-mist disinfectant trucks. Chasing poison that did the body no favors whatsoever—yet they ran as if it were the greatest game. Had twentieth-century Korea really been that starved for entertainment?
“Cough, cough…”
“Ye-eun, are you all right?”
“Cough—yes, I’m fi—cough—ne.”
“You do this every time the Myeonghwangha goes off. Is your respiratory system a bit sensitive?”
“I’ve always been the type to catch colds easily, cough.”
Ye-eun coughed a little, yet the sight of countless insects lying belly-up and twitching on the ground made abandoning the Myeonghwangha impossible.
On the spots already bitten they applied an ointment blended on a petroleum-jelly base with itch-suppressing agents; the irritation subsided almost at once.
The real problems were temperature and humidity.
“Ugh… this is going to drive me insane…”
The clinging heat and damp of the tropical rainforest made the long, trailing robes of the Central Plains people pure torment.
They were already accustomed to Sichuan’s considerable heat and humidity, yet the jungle’s swelter surpassed all imagination.
Especially for the Dang Family members, whose wide sleeves and voluminous garments were designed to conceal poisons and hidden weapons, the discomfort index soared into the heavens.
Had they faced the insects’ welcoming party unprotected as well, they would have fled on the spot. How on earth had Zhuge Liang marched this road, capturing and releasing Meng Huo seven times?
Hwi-yeom concentrated desperately on other thoughts, trying to forget the sweat pouring down and the clothes plastered to his skin.
“Man, it really is a shame there are no cacao or rubber trees around yet…”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, nothing. Just a tree I had in mind—doesn’t seem to be any around here from a quick look.”
“If that’s the case, a careful search might turn some up, might it not?”
“Yeah… that’d be nice.”
Hwi-yeom glossed over it vaguely.
They pushed through the forests of Yunnan for roughly a week.
Just as Hwi-yeom’s internal monologue was shifting from Tears of the Amazon to Challenge! Earth Expedition Team and was about to land on Man vs. Wild, they finally encountered people.
“Halt! Outsiders, stop where you are!”
At first glance, they did not look especially friendly.
The people who appeared in the heart of the jungle were not dressed in the leaf garments of pure natives, yet by Central Plains standards their attire—covering little more than the chest and the essentials—was decidedly revealing.
…
The Dang Family members, however, did not lapse into the usual Central Plains superiority of “How shameless to walk around in such indecent rags—this is why they’re barbarians!” Instead they stared at those refreshingly cool clothes with faces of pure, mad envy.
Hwi-yeom, if he were being honest, would have ripped his own robes to shreds long ago and converted them into a “Beijing bikini,” dignity be damned.
When the Dang Family party simply stood there gazing at them with naked envy and not a word of judgment, the warriors of the Southern Savage Beast Palace looked momentarily nonplussed before asking:
“That true-green uniform marks you as people of the Sichuan Dang Family. What business brings you to the Southern Savages?”
Hwi-yeom offered a formal fist-and-palm salute.
“I am Hwi-yeom, Young Clan Head of the Sichuan Dang Family. I have come to present my respects and seek friendship with the Lord of the Southern Savage Beast Palace.”
Sweat cascaded from his forehead like a waterfall, yet his smile shone as brightly as any shōnen-manga hero’s.