Geon Pyeong (5)
A yellow oil-lamp flame wavered between the rafters of the low-slung ceiling. The cellar reeked of damp earth and of sweat gone rank with tension, and the acrid smoke of long-stemmed pipes hung so thick underground that it seemed to choke the breath itself.
Madness filled the place. Dice rattled and tiles snapped over, and through it all groans and cheers traded places without end.
This was the underground gambling den the Geumhwa Department had been running for quite some time under Geon A-seong. In truth, the department had never originally possessed any organization for operating gambling houses. But Geon A-seong, obsessively fixated on the tables, had set in motion the department's only armed force — the Goods Protection Hall, led by the Twin Ghosts. With them he ruined the neighboring dens and raised five substantial houses of his own.
For all that the venture had been started by that careless man, the dens prospered beyond anyone's expectation. At present they brought the Geumhwa Department its highest returns after the fabric trade.
And so the department took its present shape. The Cloud Harmony Hall handled fabrics. The Pure Curio Hall dealt in luxuries. The Goods Protection Hall chiefly ran the gambling dens, while also lending armed support wherever the other halls required it. Those three together were the Geumhwa Department as it now stood.
But that was before I began living under Geon A-seong's name. The Goods Protection Hall of the Twin Ghosts, once trusted even more than the chief clerks, had been left out in the cold. I had far too much to do to bother summoning them. It was only natural.
Perhaps that was why, not long after I stepped into the den, the Hall Master of the Goods Protection Hall came and bowed his head before me. A square-jawed man, solidly built.
"I am Jung-ak, Hall Master of the Goods Protection Hall in the late Twin Ghost brothers' stead. I ought to have presented myself sooner. Only now do I offer you my greetings, Young Master."
"Yeah, enough. I never called for you."
"Allow me to escort you to the inner guest room. Shall I send word to the friends who usually accompany you?"
"Friends?"
He seemed to mean Geon A-seong's friends. I could vaguely place two such characters. Of course I shook my head.
"No. Forget it."
"Then I shall have Many Treasures prepared — the game you favor."
"Oh? But the floor out here looks more interesting today. Let's enjoy it a little longer, then go in."
I sat in at a table and killed time with a moderate round of card gambling, double-six, and the like.
How long passed?
"Shall we head in?"
Having gambled just enough, I followed the watchful Jung-ak into the guest room.
Past the iron door guarded by warriors of the Goods Protection Hall, the acrid, foul-smelling den gave way to a guest corridor scented with fine incense. Beyond it lay a circular courtyard. Amid the refined lanterns and ornaments on display, ten private rooms lined the curved wall.
I entered one and sat. When Jung-ak took the seat beside me, the dealer running Many Treasures drew three jade-hued dice from a gilded box.
"I have ordered your preferred liquor brought out."
He was working hard to get into my good graces. I took a mouthful from the cup a den attendant set before me.
"Since when have you been so thick with the chief clerks?"
"Pardon?"
"Has the Goods Protection Hall's monthly pay gone up already?"
"......"
"You've barely become Hall Master, and already you're draped in bracelets and necklaces flashy enough to blind a man. Anyone looking would think you were the second son of Golden Manor. Grown richer than the Twin Ghosts already, have you?"
I gestured for the nervous dealer to begin. He dropped the three dice into a black-lacquered bamboo cylinder on the ebony table.
Clack. Clack. Under the dealer's dazzling handwork the dice scraped along the cylinder walls, and the sound only hardened Jung-ak's face, already tight with tension.
"I hear there's a freight wagon that comes in on a regular schedule."
"......"
"Don't bother denying it. I came here already knowing everything."
Jung-ak's eyes darted. Until he knew how far my knowledge reached, he had no intention of opening his mouth.
"Hey. The master of the Geumhwa Department isn't some chief clerk. It's me. Do I have to kill you where you sit before you'll talk? I'm a man who'll hound even his own elder brother all the way to the grave. You think I can't finish one wretch like you?"
And yet, unexpectedly, even that threat failed to loosen his tongue. He only rolled his eyes and kept his mouth shut.
I had thought this much would make him spill everything. That he stayed silent suggested someone stood behind this besides the chief clerks. And if they were going so far as to cook the ledgers, that meant deceiving my eyes. Would the Grand Madame have done it? She had no reason to fear me.
Hmm.
Then the only ones capable of holding the chief clerks in their palm were the eldest or the third. But until recently the eldest had been sweating cold over a money line gone dry.
The answer was obvious.
"The third. Geon Hyu, isn't it?"
At that single line, Jung-ak was thunderstruck.
Well. Among the Grand Madame's sons, he was the sharpest of the lot. In the life I lived before the regression, once the Grand Madame was dead, Golden Manor fell to the third brother, victor of the war among the siblings. Thereafter the manor was swallowed, step by step, by the merchant power the Sichuan Tang Clan had been raising in the shadows. When the third died on his way home from signing a contract with a new trading partner, that too had the Tang Clan's him behind it.
In truth, it had little to do with me. What I wanted was not the crown of Golden Manor, but a foundation from which I could rise.
"Die this way or that, you're dead either way. Whose side are you taking?"
The dice in the cylinder stopped at the same moment as my question.
"My apologies, Young Master. I have a promise from the Third Young Master. Beginning to feel it, are you?"
Jung-ak rose heavily from his chair, and his gaze slid to the cup I had drunk from.
"Qi-Dispersing Poison. Your inner energy is sealed, so..."
Shwick— crack— Jung-ak drew a dagger from his sleeve and hurled it at the dealer who had been rolling the dice.
Of course, the chair I threw was faster.
Going to slaughter me and wipe out my house, are you?
Bang! The dagger struck the chair and buried itself in the floor. The dealer screamed and shook.
"Well? Aren't you leaving?"
At my words the dealer bolted through the door, and I stepped leisurely into his path.
"How... I clearly..."
"Ah, the Qi-Dispersing Poison? You should have used a better grade."
My magnetic constitution harbored a powerful thunder qi. The magnetic qi coursing through my whole body surrounded the poison and seized it, and the heavenly thunder qi burned it away. A Heavenly Bone was a fine thing indeed. What others strained through every manner of training to achieve, I simply accomplished.
"Don't tell me you got swindled. This is why you use a poison with a name. Should have bought it from the Sichuan Tang Clan."
"......"
"That face says it's Tang Clan stock. The Sichuan Tang Clan had better wake up."
I grinned, and Jung-ak shouted.
"Come in!!!"
More than thirty vicious warriors of the Goods Protection Hall burst in. They were already heavily armed, so Jung-ak had clearly had them ready from the moment of my visit. He shoved through their ranks and drew his saber.
"Whoever brings me that man's head, I'll give him enough money to change his life."
In the narrow room, dozens of blades swung toward me. There was nothing worth dodging. In the instant my eyes burned hot, magnetic lightning burst from the tips of both hands.
Thousand-Hand Avalokiteshvara
Palm-shadows to rival a thousand filled the room, and every weapon that met them shattered like paper.
KRRRASH! The exploding fragments were caught in the palm-force I drove outward and shot back the other way.
"Gyaaah!!"
As the chaotic screams piled atop one another, the warriors of the Goods Protection Hall collapsed, hacked to pieces.
"Nngh..."
Jung-ak, who had barely survived by using his men as shields, shoved their corpses aside and prostrated himself before me.
"Young Master!! P-please spare me!!! This humble one only joined hands with the chief clerks who kept the Third Young Master at their back!!! I don't know anything!!!"
"If you know nothing, then you die."
"I— I do!!!"
"Just came back to you, did it?"
"Yes!!!"
"Then let's hear it."
I had taken a few steps and was standing over the prostrate Jung-ak when a blade flew at the top of my foot.
Ting— The heavenly thunder qi wrapping my instep flicked away the short saber he swung, all in an instant. The rebound sent the saber flying into the wall, where it stuck, and Jung-ak's palm tore open.
"Aaaagh!!"
I set my foot on his chest and ground down, slow and heavy.
"Hk— hk—"
When a force weighing more than a thousand catties crushed him, Jung-ak went white. He could not even string his words together, only fumbling toward me.
"The information... I know... is something... you would put... to precious use..."
I let out a short laugh at the man begging for his life on the claim that he held precious information.
"When I came looking for you in the open, there was a reason. My objective is already complete."
"Wh... what... do you... ghk—"
Amid his roughening breath, I was calmer than I had ever been.
"I wanted to know just how far the Goods Protection Hall and the chief clerks were strung together. Chase the money alone, and only the chief clerks get ground down. Isn't that right?"
I looked down at him from even closer.
"Thanks."
"!?"
"Now I have the justification you handed me. A very fine justification — that the Goods Protection Hall was set on me. Where else would I find a better chance to sweep the Geumhwa Department clean and cut my rivals down?"
Thud! At last Jung-ak's breastbone, unable to withstand my energy, caved in completely, and his eyes clouded to ash-gray.
When I came outside, Seol-ha, who had taken a separate order from me, was waiting. Despite the commotion in the guest room, the den was running much as it always did. Everyone's eyes were glued to the gambling. Indifference was inevitable.
"While you were inside, the Goods Protection Hall moved sacks of silver taels onto a freight wagon."
"Moved right on the time Clerk Ju gave us, then."
"Yes. They moved as precisely as if they'd measured it with a ruler, without a single gap. I tailed them at once and confirmed where the transport wagon arrived. After I came back, I waited here for you to come out, Young Master."
"Well done."
Seol-ha nodded, then her eyes lit as they found the blood on my robe.
"So in the end, the Goods Protection Hall tried to bite its master."
"Exactly what I wanted. Anyway, where was the wagon headed?"
"Not far. But..."
"But?"
"The security is tighter than I expected. It looked as if they'd hired wandering martial artists and outside retainers as well. I don't think they're simply guarding a slush fund."
"They aren't trying to guard anything."
"Then what?"
"Geon Hyu, the third, is quietly gathering a faction of his own and preparing to seize Golden Manor. That place is the hand itself — the one he cannot let anyone see."
I was certain of it. Yet afterward, contrary to that certainty, the small fortress Geon Hyu had hidden away held something I had never taken into account. A regression did not mean I knew every answer.
To think that it would be there.