Changbong Hall - 2
The reason he had become the representative of the ginseng smuggling trading house was a simple one.
He was fond of wine and women, helpless before a pretty face, and a wastrel in his youth—but he was the illegitimate son of a powerful Joseon family.
The merchants had agonized over it. The ginseng trade had to resume. But after the treason affair, the risks had grown too great. What they needed was backing.
A living power, one that could blind the eyes of every other power. That was why this man had been chosen.
As the condition for making him the trading house's representative, the merchants had ceded him a portion of the estate and business interests of the Kang family—property left ownerless in the world.
Once he began wielding his family's power and, through the merchants' concessions, laid claim to a large share of the Kang estate, he carried himself as though he had become some great merchant—but none of them minded.
All they wanted from him was this much: that he not be crushed in the war of nerves with the merchants the Moyong Clan sent, that he threaten to seek out new buyers elsewhere, and that once the broad strokes of the deal were drawn, the detailed negotiations be left to them.
That was all the merchants asked. And it was true, as they say, that the seat makes the man—upon arriving in Liaodong Province, the fellow steered the negotiations with a cool head and no small skill.
The moment a woman named Moyong Sang-ah arrived, however, everything came apart at the seams.
Was it because the woman possessed a beauty that could knock the souls clean out of every Joseon merchant present?
Or because the man they had propped up as representative was a wastrel utterly helpless before her?
Whatever the reason, what the Joseon merchants were looking at now, before their very eyes, was ginseng swallowed whole by a fire demon.
At the heart of the fire demon.
Amid the flames fed by the most expensive firewood in the world, a beautiful flower was in bloom—burning cold.
"You bitch!!! What is the meaning of this!!! Everyone, throw yourselves on it and put the fire out, now!"
The representative of the ginseng smuggling trading house burst from the tent alongside the other merchants and roared himself hoarse.
"Burn it all."
With that one sentence from Moyong Sang-ah, the merchants' scramble became a meaningless resistance.
Even if a water source lay close enough for buckets to be hauled up in an instant, even if there were more than enough hands to smother the blaze, what stood barring their way was the hegemon of Liaodong Province—the Moyong Clan.
"You bitch! Since when does someone come to trade with merchants and strong-arm them like common cutthroats!"
"The one standing before you is the Master of Changbong Hall of the Moyong Clan. Moyong Sang-ah."
The one who had come to trade with you was no merchant.
The one you had insulted was no helpless woman.
The hegemon of Liaodong. The clan no one in Liaodong Province would so much as dream of resisting. The Master of Changbong Hall, which split the Moyong Clan in two.
Moyong Sang-ah.
Gazing at Moyong Sang-ah amid the raging fire demon, her figure flickering in the wavering light, the merchants remembered once more that this was the woman whose infamy as a wicked woman had spread across the Central Plains.
"Ugh! You think you'll walk away unscathed after this, you wench?! I will see this reported to the Joseon court, I swear—!"
"Ha! Go right ahead. Tell them your ginseng burned while you were smuggling it."
"Guh—!"
It was unauthorized trade. Ginseng smuggling—of a good whose export the state governed with an iron grip.
If this matter surfaced before the court again without first being buried by the hands of the powerful, then every head connected to it would have no choice but to roll.
"The Female Mantis who devoured her own husband means to swallow the sweat and blood of Joseon men as well! Subdue the woman! Seize her alone and every problem is solved! Strike!"
At the trading house representative's command, men in black appeared from who knew where.
"What? I've never seen these warriors before."
"Do not make this any worse than it already is!"
"What in the world is going on! What were they even for!"
"When I return home, I will most certainly not let this pass! For now, everyone fall back!"
Who on earth were these men in black? Why had they come along on a trading mission only to start swinging blades? How had things come to this?
The Joseon merchants had no shortage of things they wanted to say, but none of them fancied dying on a blind blade, and so they fell back.
And so, with the Joseon representative's smile brimming with triumph, some ten-odd men in black drew their swords and advanced.
"Protect our lord!"
These men were no ordinary foes. Changbongdaeju shouted to the Changbong Corps, his voice taut with tension.
"I will handle them myself."
"My lady!"
Paying no heed to Changbongdaeju's alarmed cry, Moyong Sang-ah walked toward the men in black.
Their blades reached her in the space of a breath. At that speed, an ordinary man's head would have been rolling in the dirt. Moyong Sang-ah turned it aside with her sword as if it were nothing.
Sizzle. The moment a black-clad blade met hers, there came not the ring of steel on steel but the sound of kindling being licked up by flame.
Moyong Sang-ah flinched at the strange sensation, and in that instant another blade came rushing in. But only for a moment. She deflected the black blades one after another, then broke away and put distance between herself and the men.
Skill far too formidable for mere caravan guards. Black qi clinging to their blades. Black robes covering them from head to toe to hide who they were.
For Moyong Sang-ah—and for Changbongdaeju, who watched with his heart in his throat—there was no difficulty at all in naming them.
"Demonic Art! My lady! Fall back! Protect my lady at once!"
"I'm fine. Stay where you are."
Moyong Sang-ah's voice was calm.
So it had been a trap.
Something had felt off from the start. Had her brother's hand reached this far? Or was that man a running dog of the Demonic Cult? Moyong Sang-ah watched the black qi ripple across the blades of the men in black, all at once.
Black blades surging in as one.
Even as demonic cultists of no ordinary skill came rushing at her, not a flicker of fear crossed her face.
It didn't matter.
There was no need to be afraid.
The wicked woman who had killed her husband lived for one purpose alone—to kill them.
At the heart of the fire demon, the phoenix's dance that burned the cultists to ash was beautiful and cruel.
"Th-this is impossible!"
Having watched every last man in black cut down, the representative of the Joseon trading house collapsed in terror before the woman slowly approaching him and scrambled backward with his whole body.
"What is your connection to these men?"
Moyong Sang-ah looked down at him, gesturing at the severed heads lying strewn across the ground.
"M-my, my, my own guards. I brought them from Joseon... Joseon? No, the Central Plains...? The border...? Where was it? Where did I meet them? ...Ugh?!"
The man clutched his head as a sudden headache crashed over him.
When had he hired them? It had been night. Someone had come to see them the moment they crossed the border. They would give him the strength to stand against the Moyong Clan. They would take no money.
They would even lay on a drinking party with beautiful Central Plains women. Come along, they had said. It had been enjoyable. How, exactly, had it been enjoyable...?
He could not remember that night.
Through pain that felt as though his skull would split open, the man watched the woman draw near.
Yes. The woman had been beautiful. Too beautiful.
Beautiful enough to make him want to toy with her the way he had toyed with other women. Enough to make him want to make her his own. Enough to forget that this was the Central Plains, not Joseon. Enough to forget that he was in the middle of a smuggling run.
"Why did I? Huh?"
Why? Why had he acted that way?
Black blood began to trickle from the man's nose.
—So you have a taste for beauties. Yes, from now on, you will...
Who had it been?
That was the last thought the man had in this world, as he crumpled onto the cold ground spilling black blood.
"So he had fallen to a Demonic Art."
Had the culprit been Moyong Bi? Moyong Sang-ah looked down at the dead man with bitter eyes.
"Spare me! Please, I beg you, spare me!"
The representative had died at a single word from the Moyong Clan's wicked woman. If things went on like this, they would be next.
The Joseon merchants were sharp to the ways of profit and utterly ignorant of the ways of martial power, and the terror of death had paralyzed their reason, leaving them unable to grasp what was actually happening.
"Take the ginseng, the money, all of it! Please, please, just spare our lives!"
Moyong Sang-ah looked on, unmoved, at the black-haired merchants groveling flat in the dirt.
She could make a fair guess as to which Demonic Art the man had fallen to.
An art that strips a man of the power to restrain his impulses. Because it worked upon the brain, it took hold only in those without inner strength and without wits—and they died within days all the same.
The sort of thing only demonic cultists would stoop to. But Moyong Sang-ah had no intention of correcting their misunderstanding.
She needed their fear.
"The Lady commands it! Put out the fire!"
Moyong Sang-ah raised her hand and ordered her subordinates to extinguish the flames.
"Only about thirty percent of it burned. What a relief! A stroke of heaven's fortune!"
Because Moyong Sang-ah had single-handedly dispatched the cultists and brought the situation to heel, only three parts in ten of the ginseng had gone up in smoke.
"For today's transaction, I will pay you only half the usual price."
Watching the merchants sag with relief over the extinguished ginseng, Moyong Sang-ah opened her mouth to do business.
"Wh-what?!"
Half price? The very idea. The merchants' eyes went wide as saucers.
"My ginseng burned, and I took the loss. It is only right that you make it good."
The merchants could only gape at Moyong Sang-ah's brazen composure.
The reek of burnt ginseng stinging their nostrils came, quite unmistakably, from ginseng they had failed to sell. And it was hers?
"H-how can this ginseng be yours?"
Moyong Sang-ah did not answer. She raised her hand once more.
At their lord's gesture, the Changbong Corps moved as one body.
Those standing close to the ginseng raised fire in their hands; the rest converged in a single motion around their lord.
At this rate, they might all become guests of no return.
The moment that ominous premonition flashed through the merchants' minds, a chest brimming with money was pushed out before them.
Fire, and money.
Take the money and be content. Or watch every last root of ginseng burn.
In all this place, the only soul too dull to read Moyong Sang-ah's intent was the wastrel who had died spilling black blood.
Moyong Sang-ah declared it quietly.
It was the moment she took the ginseng smuggling trade into her grasp.
"It has been agreed that all ginseng traded in the border region will be purchased by the Moyong Clan from now on."
Late that night. The merchant representative under Moyong Sang-ah's command came calling alongside Changbongdaeju and handed his lord a paper setting down the detailed terms the merchants had hammered out among themselves.
"Well done."
"However, that outrageous price of fifty percent will stir up trouble again before long."
The greater part of the Joseon ginseng smuggling route passed over Liaodong soil.
Not one of them had breathed a complaint to their lord today, but the moment they decided their money mattered more than their lives, those grievances would come bursting out.
The merchant spoke in a troubled voice.
"Adjust the prices in step with how warmly they come to treat us."
Moyong Sang-ah replied as she turned the pages of the documents awaiting her attention.
"You are saying to buy at higher prices?"
"The caravan that wags its tail at us the hardest—buy from them first, and buy at a higher price. Keep sowing division among them. Set them snapping at one another over scraps. In the end, they will be so dazzled by the bait I dangle that they will have no room left to be angry with us."
"Hehe. My eyes are being opened wide indeed. I shall carry out your commands to the letter."
Smiling in satisfaction, the merchant took his leave.
"Changbongdaeju. Was there something you still wished to say?"
Moyong Sang-ah addressed Changbongdaeju, who had not left with the merchant and stood smiling gently down at her.
"You bore yourself remarkably well today. Day by day, you grow into the very makings of a Clan Head. I am certain Young Master Kang would be most pleased."
She had been threatened with her life. She had been entangled with demonic cultists. It was a situation in which she could have ordered every Joseon merchant put to the sword. And yet today, unlike before, no useless blood had flowed.
Changbongdaeju was well pleased.
"...You must be exhausted. Go inside and rest."
"As you command."
Changbongdaeju bowed his head to his lord and withdrew to his post.
Only when no sign of another's presence lingered anywhere near did Moyong Sang-ah set down her documents and open the window.
The heart of Changbong Hall, guarded twofold and threefold over, lay so still that not even the chirr of a grass insect could be heard, and a single cold, desolate gust brushed across her soft face.
Moyong Sang-ah looked up, unseeing, at the glittering night sky.
It had been a wearying day.
She had become the lord of a faction that split the Moyong Clan down the middle. Handling subordinates, running an organization, living each day exposed to endless conspiracies, schemes, and assassinations.
Days far too heavy for a woman who had simply loved the sword to bear.
"It's hard."
She murmured in a grieving voice to someone who could no longer hear her.
If even one thing had gone wrong today, I might have put everything you left behind in danger, my lord.
My lord, I had such a hard day today. She wanted to lay her head against his broad chest and murmur the ordinary happenings of her days to him. To tilt her face up toward his and fuss, just a little, the way she once had.
But she could not.
Because she was the one who had made it so.
—I am certain Young Master Kang would be most pleased.
Changbongdaeju's parting words sank deep into her chest, leaving a hollow ache.
"I'm only struggling through, that's all."
How could she dare hope for praise?
All she could do was kick and struggle with everything she had. Hoping that someday, upon the judgment seat she was destined to climb, she might look upon his face just once.
So that when at last she stood before him, she might receive one cold glance fewer—one glance fewer for having failed to keep in order even a single thing he had left behind.
A chill wind swept past.
Steeped in sorrow, she gazed up at the sky. Her face, brimming with moonlight, looked more pitiable tonight than it ever had.
But there was no man to gather her struggling form into his embrace. Nor did she wish for one.
For the only man she longed to be held by was in the world beyond.
That day, too, her infamous name only grew.