Wuhan — 2
“Lord Mangeum is waiting for you. Follow me.”
So the moment I set foot in Wuhan with my luggage, the Mangeum Money Market came calling. They weren't exactly waiting on my arrival—so it must have been the name of Daseogak, founded by a friend of Lord Mangeum himself, that carried real weight.
I followed the man who introduced himself as the Chief Steward of the Mangeum Money Market.
“Aren't we heading to the Mangeum Money Market?”
The Market sat in the heart of the commercial district, and the road we were taking pointed in exactly the opposite direction.
“You are to be received at the residence where Lord Mangeum dwells. Though—if you've come from Daseogak, I was given to understand it would be a young master of the Kang clan, not a young lady of the Tang clan...”
“Hwarin is recuperating at the Sichuan Tang Clan.”
By rights it should have been Hwarin standing here, not me. The Steward's suspicion was only natural.
“My apologies. At my age, one forgets. Is it true, then, that she must remain long at the Tang Clan on account of her illness?”
The Steward asked with a faintly embarrassed air, as though only now remembering, and dipped his head slightly.
“Haha! I couldn't say where you heard such a rumor, but who can know what life has in store?”
They'd said ten years—but that could change with my reputation and Hwarin's training. I shrugged with the face of a family member discussing a critical patient with strong odds of recovery.
“Hmm. As I thought... Yes. Who can know what life has in store.”
There was a distinctly 'as expected' undertone to the Steward's voice. What was that? He seemed satisfied with my answer, though.
Come to think of it—how did he even know Hwarin would be staying at the Tang Clan for a long while?
Nursing a question with no answer in sight, I trailed after the Steward.
“I will announce your arrival to Lord Mangeum. Please wait a moment in the garden.”
While the Steward went to report, I quietly looked around the garden.
How much did this cost?
People call garden landscaping 'frugal luxury.' You can pour money into it without limit, but to any other eye it only reads as 'prettier than the next garden'—unless an expert catches the difference.
The garden where Lord Mangeum resided was like a business card that looked merely refined to a layman but would make a connoisseur of such cards recoil at the sum spent on it. Elegant to the untrained eye; to anyone who knew, a garden that must have swallowed tens of thousands in gold.
After all, even the great magnate of Joseon—the father of that scoundrel Kang Yunho—had landscaped a garden just like this. There was no way I wouldn't recognize it.
“Beyond that door, you will find Lord Mangeum.”
“Thank you.”
I stepped carefully through the door the Steward held open.
Once I was out of the Steward's earshot, I took a small, silent deep breath.
One well-chosen word can repay a thousand nyang of debt.
Could I pull it off?
If I failed, I'd lose Daseogak. Stop asking 'can I?' and just do it. I will see this through.
Having steeled myself, I arrived at the room where Lord Mangeum waited.
“So you've come.”
At the sound of my entrance, an old man with a razor-sharp visage responded without turning.
Lord Mangeum, his face precisely as it had been last year, was not looking at me—he was pruning a bonsai.
“It has been a long while, Lord Jang.”
I stepped forward carefully and paid my respects with full courtesy.
“My grandson-in-law has been up to something quite amusing, I hear.”
Straight to the heart from the very first blow, then.
Lord Mangeum still didn't look my way as he spoke.
What do I say?
I have committed a grave sin. Forgive me. Please, just forgive the debt. I absolutely cannot repay it.
No. I wasn't going in with that.
“A man bitten by a mad dog might collapse where he stands, weeping, or simply run away. But there are those who must raise a cudgel again, ready to be bitten by that same cur once more.”
Apologizing solves nothing.
Worse—it would amount to admitting fault. And then, at best, they'd hold off the seizure while pressing me to repay every last coin of the debt.
I had zero intention of conceding to repay debts I didn't even owe.
'Besides—if he were truly angry about his grandson-in-law, he wouldn't open with it the moment we meet.'
If he'd raged and snarled, I had a different gambit ready. But this listless tone, this opening—this was openly designed to crush my spirit from the start.
I wasn't going to play along.
I had to be shameless. Insist I did the right thing. Your family's brat was badly raised. The dog that bit me got off lightly. Come at him hard.
“A cur, is it. You do mean for me to hear that.”
Am I supposed to laugh?
Lord Mangeum gave a dry chuckle as he tended an orchid. Not a smile of displeasure—a 'look at this one' smile.
Good sign, that he didn't take the bait even after I'd provoked him.
“When a parent's love runs too deep, he never learns how wicked his own child has become. Even under a tiger of a parent, a pup can be born—so I hope this serves as a fine lesson in how to become the tiger.”
Fix your family's child-rearing. Before he learns the hard way, bleeding at someone else's hands.
“Heheheh! Yes, yes. I've heard the whole tale of this affair. I knew the boy was courting disaster with his wretched antics!”
Lord Mangeum laughed heartily, evidently pleased, and at last turned to face me.
“Did he, now.”
I let out a small inward breath of relief.
Good. First hurdle cleared—
“But that is no reason for me to show leniency on the debt.”
Lord Mangeum's smile vanished, and he fixed me with a piercing stare.
“......”
So this whole scheme wasn't born of spite over his grandson-in-law. He really did this purely for the money?
“Tell me why I should forgive you.”
Lord Mangeum spoke with a look that said he knew exactly why I'd come.
I quietly swallowed and met the gaze that seemed intent on seeing straight through me.
Bearing debts that aren't mine is unjust. How is anyone supposed to repay money like this? Nonsense. That stare shuts down every argument before it's spoken.
'I have to speak well, right here and now.'
Quibbling over whether my debt was fair was a bad play. It was known, and acted upon already. My opponent was the Mangeum Money Market—an institution with the power and authority to make any unreasonable debt legitimate.
So what then?
Think fast. Combine what you know. Information on Lord Mangeum. Facts I hold. Combine. New intel from just now, too—'frugal luxury.' He cares about how others see him. What cards do I have? Lay out the prepared plays.
Of those—what's the best card?
“Because I am carrying on the spirit of the Lord of Baek Family Manor.”
I declared it to Lord Mangeum, bold and unflinching.
“You claim to inherit the spirit of that Baek fellow?”
For an instant, Lord Mangeum's brow twitched.
Lord Mangeum. The world said you couldn't prick this man and draw a single drop of blood. Then should I give up? No. All I had to do was prick the one spot where blood could be drawn.
And with a card only I could play.
“You will have heard what I did upon returning to Yichang.”
“I heard you took impoverished scholars into your employ.”
Lord Mangeum nodded. Thank heaven, he knew.
“When I resolved the Tang Clan's troubles, the first thing I thought about was how I ought to live from then on.”
“You thought about how you ought to live?”
He was curious now. A green light that the card I'd played was a good one.
“Had it been merely to make myself happy, I would never have thought such a thing. But I couldn't stop there. I wished to carry on the will of the Lord of Baek Family Manor.”
The good deeds the old lord had done until his dying day. I wanted to continue them.
Strictly speaking, I just needed staff who'd raise my reputation stat. But presentation matters in everything, doesn't it?
In the end, how others saw me was what mattered most.
“That is a matter for after the debt is settled, is it not?”
“What merchant fears borrowing, and hesitates at a great undertaking? Money flows naturally to those who act upon a grand purpose.”
The Mangeum Money Market was, by modern reckoning, somewhere between a bank and a loan shark.
The merchant Lord Mangeum favored would be the borrower who succeeded at a grand venture on borrowed money, then took on ever-larger debts and kept repaying—a prized customer, in other words.
So I would become, in Lord Mangeum's eyes, exactly that kind of merchant.
“And what is this grand purpose of yours?”
“My conviction: that business is not about leaving behind profit, but about leaving behind people.”
I spoke as proudly as an upright merchant with a pillar of conviction driven into his chest.
“Hm. Similar to what that Baek fellow was forever chattering at me about.”
“I said much the same to the head of the Yichang Literati Society, and he was astonished to hear it.”
One more line—asserting that though this was my own conviction, it happened to match the old lord's perfectly.
'Before Lord Mangeum's eyes, I cease to be a black-haired barbarian and become the living avatar of his old friend.'
Target his weakest point. Reframe the story: not a barbarian plundering his friend's estate, but a man trampling the one who carries that friend's will.
Lord Mangeum opened his mouth as if to retort, then slowly smiled at me instead.
Did it land?
“Even granting all that—it is an enormous sum. Still no reason for me to forgive the debt.”
He said it flatly. Jerking me up and down. Even this doesn't work, huh.
Then there's another way.
“If you truly insist on repayment of the entire debt, then I would sooner abandon Daseogak altogether.”
Burn the boats. Fight with my back to the water.
“You would give up Daseogak?”
Lord Mangeum's eyes went wide with surprise.
“Yes. Daseogak is the wing that spreads my purpose. But if it becomes a shackle instead of a wing, I would sooner start over penniless. Penniless though I may be, I am confident I can succeed again, carrying on the spirit of the Lord of Baek Family Manor.”
It's Daseogak's debt anyway. Hand over Daseogak and we're square, no? Rather than repay that money, I'll just abandon the place.
The me who first ran Daseogak and the me standing here now are different men. The current me has people, connections, money of my own.
And on top of that, the fame of Hopil.
Give up Daseogak and it'll be hard, but you think I can't rise again? If anything, wouldn't the Mangeum Money Market be the one taking the loss if I walk away from the debt? That was the tone in which I faced Lord Mangeum, head high.
“Heheh. So the great Hopil knows how to demur.”
“You knew...”
The merchant society head uncle. One of the precious few who knew my true identity—and he'd told Lord Mangeum.
“The man who wrestles my own grandson-in-law into the dirt like twisting a newborn's wrist, who writes words that set the world weeping, who works commerce that shakes Yichang to its roots. And a man with the nerve and the wits to walk into the Tang Clan's den and come back alive means to give up Daseogak over a mere debt? You expect me to believe that?”
That merchant society head uncle really oversold me.
“That is precisely why I stand here.”
“You stand here because you failed to do precisely that.”
He really does live up to the name Lord Mangeum.
Lord Jang gave a knowing smile, seeing clean through my little theater. A victor's smile. The expression said: Admit it, and be at ease.
But Lord Jang.
I didn't prepare only that much.
“No. I have come, as the one who carries the will of the Lord of Baek Family Manor, to make one final appeal.”
“A final appeal?”
“His sole bloodline. As his grandson-in-law, I stand here to exhaust every effort possible—before I give up.”
In other words: I make the effort, Lord Jang forces me to surrender. I frame it as the closing act of that process.
What future does Lord Mangeum imagine now?
A man who honored the old lord's will but bowed to unavoidable circumstance, gave up, and started over—while Lord Mangeum becomes the greatest wretch under heaven, who plundered even his friend's property.
Did he grasp it too?
Perhaps he saw the checkmate coming. Lord Mangeum's eyes narrowed as he studied me, and then he snorted a laugh.
“Hahaha! If that old Baek were at my side, he'd boast his granddaughter snagged one fine son-in-law. Very well. Are you truly confident of succeeding penniless?”
“If I must, I will.”
“Then that settles it. Take this.”
Lord Mangeum, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this, tossed me a sheaf of papers from inside his robe.
“A promissory note?”
The paper Lord Mangeum handed over bore a colossal sum.
“Not a promissory note—a test.”
A test? Read the note slowly, Kang Yunho. There—three characters spelling my name.
Along with a clause stating that if I drew on this note and the repayment date passed, the whole of Daseogak's debt would transfer to me.
“What is this?”
“Stake your life on it. Take that note and make money grow—not in Yichang, but here in Wuhan.”
Lord Mangeum spoke like a man delivering an ultimatum, making clear he intended no further concessions.
Only now did it click. A forced recruitment, was it?
The seizure of Daseogak had been nothing but the bait to drag me here.
It ran in the same vein as Jeon Gilsan's offer to scout Hopil for Mangeum Bookstore. The only difference being that this time, they meant to claim the merchant Kang Yunho as well.
In the end—transfer the debt onto me, and bind me tight.
“Why on earth would I go that far?”
I had no reason to accept. Better to start over with a single printing house than this.
Had he read my meaning?
Lord Mangeum wore a knowing smile as he explained why he'd handed me the note.
“Pass my test and satisfy me—and every last coin of Daseogak's debt will be forgiven.”
An offer I could not refuse.