Sent Back by the Heavenly Demon — Geon-gon (5)
Golden Manor held a domain of fifty thousand pyeong even within Chengdu, and the great compound alone accounted for twenty thousand of them. Merchants, smiths, scribes, maids, escorts, mineral appraisers — three thousand souls lived there year-round, and those who came and went besides were as numberless as grains of sand.
That was precisely why, in the moment after my regression, I had not walked straight out of Golden Manor despite being ringed by enemies. Without any great effort I could seize an immense financial power and spend it wherever I required. And then there were the fated opportunities — those presumed to have existed here, and those that, at this very point in time, actually did.
I had once belonged to this place, and I had originally intended a thorough revenge; it was only natural that I knew Golden Manor's past and future down to the last detail. Never, while I honed the blade of that vengeance, had I dreamed the manor would fall to ruin. But that was another matter. Within those old memories, I had been searching for a chance.
A place like this.
"Nasty weather."
Geon Pyeong, who had ridden up beside me, spoke with open irritation as I halted my horse on the hill. Snow had fallen in sheets through the night, and the ground was a sucking mire.
"You picked a fight with me just to get a Highland Outskirts Horse Ranch of barely five thousand pyeong, and one woman?"
I gave him no answer. My eyes stayed on the pasture, a little over five thousand pyeong, still lying under snow that had not yet melted.
Most men, now and then, recall the chances they let slip and smack their lips in regret. I was no exception. A humble pasture on the hills — but to me, this was no mere pasture.
"Yeah. That's the deal. I hand over half the funds I've scraped together, and you, Brother, hand me full authority over this pasture and over Seol-ha. All of it, of course, on the condition that you get Mother's permission."
At this point in time Geon Pyeong was planning to expand his business by driving the output of the mines up at a geometric rate, and he was in the middle of a massive infusion of capital. The bargain was only possible because I had driven straight at that weakness. Geon Pyeong, ignorant of it, would have decided I was forcing the matter simply to obtain Seol-ha.
To spend money enough to buy a thousand pyeong on Chengdu's outskirts on five thousand pyeong of pasture stranded far from the city — anyone could see it was no fair return. In the end, apart from wanting Seol-ha, there was no reason anyone could point to.
"Is that bitch worth so much?"
"And who was it that came in with his tail between his legs, just to get his hands on that one person?"
"Watch your mouth. Before you're buried where neither rat nor bird will ever know."
"I belong to Mother. You think I'll blow away like dust, the way that bastard Geon-gon did?"
"Lot of talk from a man about to be thrown out."
"Just sign the contract."
The clerks we had brought exchanged the documents of the agreement.
"Get lost."
"It's my land. Shouldn't you be the one leaving, Brother?"
"Ptui. Rotten luck. Every kind of filth sticks to me."
Geon Pyeong spat and turned his horse's head.
"Move out!"
The subordinates he had brought receded with him like an ebb tide.
"You all head back as well. I'll have a word with the ranch supervisor here, then go."
Left alone at last, I cut through the snowfield and rode down off the hill toward the pasture.
"Heh heh... I'm ashamed. This is all I have to offer you in a place like this."
The ranch supervisor, setting before me warm milk just drawn from a dairy cow, never stopped watching my face. If the second young master appeared out of nowhere, announced that the land had changed hands, and asked for a cup of milk, I would have thought all sorts of things myself.
"It's rich. This is a horse ranch, and yet I hear the milk that comes out of it is of considerable quality."
"Yes. Only, we don't keep many dairy cows, so the yield never amounts to much. Barely enough to portion out as gifts of thanks. Heh heh. It scarcely covers what the cows themselves consume."
"I see. And the horses?"
"Their numbers fell a little from last year. Two of them died..."
"Hmm. Is that so. Then I expect you won't need to worry over such things from here on."
"Y-yes? Then—"
The ranch supervisor's eyes darted wildly, left and right. Then he flattened himself to the ground.
"If you tell us to leave in the dead of winter, we herdsmen and our families will be sitting out in the snow. Please, let us stay until spring. Just this once, have mercy..."
He had misunderstood. With the land changing hands, he seemed to think I meant to replace everyone under him.
"I've no such thought. The previous owner was hardly on close terms with the people who manage this ranch, so it doesn't grate on me."
He seemed to settle a little. The face that had been on the verge of tears looked better than it had a moment before.
"Then just now, what you said..."
"It's winter. No need to trouble yourself over grazing, and the work has thinned out a great deal, hasn't it?"
"Th-that's true. I'll see that we move a little more diligently."
"No. That isn't what I meant."
"......"
I spoke evenly to the man staring at me in puzzlement.
"Let me ask you something first. Among the horses put out to pasture recently, has the number of aggressive ones grown? I imagine it has something to do with the deaths as well."
At the sudden question the ranch supervisor swallowed empty air, astonished.
"How could you..."
"The order to keep quiet held, so your people below did nothing wrong. My hearing is simply a little sharp."
"Ah..."
"One thing more. After you were forced to put those aggressive horses down, did the herdsmen who had been near them suffer deep, lasting fevers?"
The ranch supervisor nodded in a hurry, up and down. There was nothing more to hear. The confirmation was enough.
"Can you lead me to the place where those aggressive horses mainly grazed?"
"Of course. Only, the way is rough. Will the young master be all right..."
"It's no matter. Since we've spoken of it, we'll go now."
I bound my coat and shoved up from my seat, and the ranch supervisor came scurrying after me.
Snow was falling again. Press any deeper and the drop would be instant — we had come to a cliff that made the head swim, the most forsaken corner of the ranch. The flakes were thickening, and it was growing harder by the moment to see at all.
"Young Master, ought you not turn back? If the snow piles any higher, the road home will be cut."
"Go on ahead. I'll look about on my own and then leave. Just leave me the things I asked you to bring."
"How could I dare..."
He could not bring himself to go, so I set a hand to his back and sent him off. Then I began to search the snowfield in earnest.
I had not yet reached a realm in which I could shrug off the cold, and the foul weather fought the search. I ignored the chill that felt as though it would freeze my hands solid, and tore through the snow with both of them. Only after a long time of digging did it show itself — a vine burning with azure light. Even under the snow, that vigor alone was unmistakably alive.
"Clear Blood Vine."
A Clear Blood Vine does not simply come into being one day. It is a byproduct that forms only when Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass exists nearby. The horses turning savage, and men who were no martial artists falling into severe fever — all of it was because lightning qi had leaked from the horses that swallowed the vine.
First I jammed the vines, which had come up in a trailing string, into a leather pouch until the thing was packed full.
"Good. Just as I thought."
The Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass would not be discovered at Golden Manor until some seven years had passed, around the time a true age of chaos began. The manor lord's sudden death. The Grand Lady's rise. The split among three sons who lacked the capacity to hold what they inherited. Threatened by faction after faction, with outstanding figures emerging on every side, Golden Manor too would walk the road to decline.
The Grand Lady meant to sell that priceless treasure and thereby secure still more funds. But the men of the Black Dragon Gang, who had their eyes on the Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass, ambushed her and stole it. She died of that. What mattered was that someone of the Sichuan Tang Clan was entangled in the affair.
In any case, it had nothing to do with me.
What mattered was that one of those priceless treasures which money cannot buy now lay before me — and that it was a spiritual herb indispensable to the second stage of the Heavenly Mortal Transformation Art.
I peeled the Human Skin Mask away with care, sealed it inside a small wooden case, and tucked the case into my robes. Then I lashed the stout rope the ranch supervisor had left me hard around a rock, and wound that rope, together with the pouch tied at the small of my back, around every part of my body. Shoes studded with sharp iron, cinched fast to the ankles. Enough to go down a cliff.
Down, then.
I moved along a small cave mouth opened in the cliff's midsection, through the snow sliding past. The farther in I went, the stronger the wind became, pressing like a blade — yet when I pushed deeper still, the wind stopped altogether. I needed no torch.
Something in the deep dark was giving off an azure light all its own. The Clear Blood Vine I had packed tight into the pouch. The nearer it drew to the Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass, the more fiercely it burned, a faint glow rising to the strength of a clear flame.
Around the time I caught the sound of water trickling between the walls of that narrow, lightless cave, the passage — once so tight a body could barely squeeze through — opened out vast as a great hall. And in measure with the vine's brilliance, the Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass flowering here and there through the cave greeted me with a light as strong and bright as the moon.
"Not four stalks. Ten stalks of Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass. Fortune is smiling wide."
From what I had learned before the regression, there should have been only about four. Standing here, I had never dreamed the number would reach ten. A result that surpassed what I had expected.
I didn't look any further. I loosened my clothes and stepped toward the Lightning-Hidden Azure Dragon Grass. The hour of the second, leaping growth had come.
But it was then. I felt someone, in the darkness, watching me. A cold sense of wrongness climbed from the tips of my feet.
"So. You gave him what he wanted?"
"Yes, Mother. He clutched the leg of my trousers and begged me to do it. How could I withhold mercy from my own younger brother?"
After he had reported everything that had passed with Geon A-seong, Geon Pyeong tacked on a few words more. His pride would not suffer him to leave the account as it stood. Strange. Doesn't this feel exactly like I lost? At most it was a pasture of a little over five thousand pyeong, ground that hadn't even fetched much of a price, and a single martial artist with usable talent.
"You lost. And pitifully."
"What? That isn't—"
"What you wanted from me was plainly that wench, Seol-ha. Even within Golden Manor she bears the makings of a Match for a Thousand, and you wanted her under your hand. So I had your younger brother — the one tied up in this matter — persuaded, and sent to you. And yet here you are, telling me you gave Seol-ha up."
"......"
"Quite apart from losing the wench, you failed to take the high ground. Worse, you let your younger brother intimidate you, and handed over five thousand pyeong of ranch land besides."
"It's useless land. It isn't even wide, fertile ground where horses could be raised on any large scale. In exchange I secured the funds I needed, and had even that useless land bought off me at a steep price."
"I am aware of every fact you think you are presenting."
"......"
"Then did you imagine your younger brother did not know them as well?"
"That's only because the bastard's mad for the wench..."
"Which is to say he appraised her value that highly. Highly enough that this body saw fit to let Geon-gon live."
"......"
At those words Geon Pyeong could say nothing. He clenched his fist until blood welled.
"Leave. Having witnessed your dullness, I suppose the second son's allotted span may be lengthened a little."
Geon Pyeong bowed his head without a word.