Hoeju — 5
The Mangeum Lord's estate.
"How are things coming along?"
Gazing out over the pond set in his garden, the Mangeum Lord put the question to his Chief Steward.
"Young Master Ha has opened a fabric shop near the wharf, they say."
"A fabric shop?"
"One of those fabric shops that deals exclusively in silk, they say."
"Silk, hm... That will take a great deal of capital."
It was not a bad choice. Merchants sailing up the Yangtze in search of Shu Brocade—the famed silk of Sichuan—often came no farther than Wuhan rather than pressing on all the way into Sichuan itself. A silk shop would surely turn a handsome profit.
Of course, a shop near the wharf sat in the busiest of busy districts. Outfitting a fabric shop and stocking it with silk would cost far more than the promissory notes he had been allotted. So how, then, had the boy covered the gap?
"He is sourcing his silk from a shop run by his own father, they say."
The father of the young man called Young Master Ha was himself a man who ran a sizable fabric business in Hubei Province.
"I told him to start a business of his own. I don't recall telling him to help his parents with theirs."
"W-well, they say his trade is thriving."
"He is doing exactly what his father does. It would be strange if it didn't."
"They say the volume of silk circulating through Wuhan has dropped. His father appears to be controlling the supply."
In his report, the Chief Steward explained that the father was, in effect, cornering the market to see his son's silk trade flourish.
"Hah. I see. What devoted paternal love. And what of my other grandsons?"
With a small sigh, the Mangeum Lord offered his verdict in a voice thick with sarcasm, then asked after the rest of his grandsons.
"Well, you see..."
Straining to hide the cold sweat trickling down his back, the Chief Steward began to explain the situation as it stood. Young Master Ha had been one of the better cases.
Most of the others were either leaning on the family's influence, or had seized businesses that did subcontract work for the clan and were running those in their stead.
"Tch. Pathetic lot. I tell them to build businesses of their own, and not one of them will leave their parents' laps."
Facing the tongue-clicking Mangeum Lord, the Chief Steward decided to bring out the one piece of good news he had.
"Not every one of them leans on the family. Young Master Gong is running a tavern, they say."
"A tavern? You mean a courtesan house?"
"A mere tavern, they say—but he seems to have a gift for trade, for his establishment never lacks for customers."
He had told them to go into business, and the boy had taken to selling liquor. Better than the ones before him, the Mangeum Lord allowed—but this news, too, left a sour taste.
"Now then. Kang Yunho. What is that boy up to?"
Without betraying the anticipation he held for his last remaining hope, the Mangeum Lord asked evenly.
"They say he is doing delivery work."
"Delivery? Did he go and found an escort agency?"
"Not an escort agency. He has taken over an inn."
"Delivery work, out of an inn? Tell me exactly what is going on here."
Now this was interesting. The Mangeum Lord—who had kept his eyes on nothing but the pond through every report on his grandsons—looked at his Chief Steward for the first time that day.
"Well, you see..."
The Chief Steward laid before the Mangeum Lord, in thorough detail, everything he had seen and heard.
"Heh heh heh! So he built a business that delivers food using those delivery boxes of his?"
At news of a venture he had never once heard of in all his born days, the Mangeum Lord burst into hearty laughter.
"Everyone balks at the price at first, they say—but once they have tried it, the convenience keeps them coming back."
"I told him to make a business in Wuhan, and this is the boy who balked at the very notion. And now you tell me he rallied the Joseon people of Wuhan in a single stroke and became their Hoeju? I see. He had no ties in Wuhan, so connections were what he needed. Then he gathered the talented about him. Started a business no one had ever attempted? And it is even thriving?"
True, he had ordered it done. But was the boy not doing far too well?
"I knew he was a talent worth grooming, but never in my dreams did I imagine he would set something of this scale in motion."
"The boy has eyes that can read the currents of the world. He is the sort who knows how to find his own path within the flow."
He knew how to fill what he lacked. He knew what Wuhan was missing. And he had grasped at a glance how the money was to be made.
A man who would make great wealth must have eyes that truly see the world.
He was the finest merchant material there was—the very quality the Mangeum Lord had once said he wished the lord of the Baek Family Manor, along with his children and prospective sons-in-law, had possessed.
Rare for him, the Mangeum Lord could not contain his excitement over the talent he had discovered.
"I shall bring the young lady here as swiftly as I can. But there is one matter I must report."
"What matter?"
"I have obtained intelligence that Lady Tang Hwarin is being treated as an equal to the direct bloodline of the Sichuan Tang Clan."
"The direct bloodline? Is that girl Hwarin not an illegitimate child?"
The Mangeum Lord, too, knew in broad strokes how Tang Hwarin had come into the world.
"There is no group in this world that prizes blood as the martial clans do. It would seem they have marked Lady Tang Hwarin as a future Rising Prodigy of the Tang Clan—one who will one day lead the murim itself."
"You mean to tell me that girl Hwarin's talent runs that deep?"
Talent alone, however exceptional, could not breach the wall of the collateral line. It meant she was a genius of such staggering caliber that she could leap clean over the discrimination of blood itself.
"If the Tang Clan is backing Lady Hwarin that heavily, then I fear for your plan, my lord."
The plan to pair Kang Yunho with his granddaughter.
Of course, even the Mangeum Lord had no scheme to steal away the Baek Family Manor lord's grandson-in-law. But for a man to keep several wives—was that not a thing beyond reproach?
Admittedly, which of them became the first wife was a question of some weight.
And that was precisely what the Chief Steward feared.
"It is of no concern."
The Mangeum Lord declared flatly.
"But—"
"It will be enough to pair him with a daughter of a house even the Sichuan Tang Clan cannot afford to slight."
For the Mangeum Lord had one daughter who had married into a house that even the peerless Sichuan Tang Clan dared not look down upon.
Hubei Province. Longzhong. The grand estate of a village that had grown into the settlement of a single great clan.
A middle-aged woman was stalking through the mansion, eyes blazing, brow knotted in a deep scowl. For all her years, her beauty still overflowed with aristocratic grace—and through it ran a bold, imperious temper that showed itself plainly.
"She's skipped the matchmaking again?! What were the lot of you doing?!"
The middle-aged woman raised her voice at the servant beside her.
"Sh-she was certainly there right up until she boarded the carriage. But when we opened the door, there was nothing but a wooden doll dressed in the young lady's clothes."
"Her handiwork gets finer by the day! Where is that brat?!"
"She is in the annex, my lady."
The woman made for the annex, a good dozen servants trailing behind her.
"Your mother is human too! Human! And this time I trusted you, I really did!!!"
Flinging open the annex entrance, the middle-aged woman shouted loudly enough for everyone inside to hear.
"Sh-she is in the innermost room."
The servant pointed toward where the woman's daughter was supposed to be.
With every step the woman took, the fury on her face boiled closer to the surface.
"I married at sixteen! Your father—that blockhead who can barely hold my hand properly—I managed his household and raised him all the way to clan head! Your sisters are all married off already! Your brothers are married too! What could possibly frighten you so much that you wall yourself up inside this house day after day?!"
"The young lady is not here!"
A servant came tumbling out of the room where the middle-aged woman's daughter should have been, his face drained white.
"I know you can hear every word!"
The middle-aged woman unleashed a roar at the daughter who was surely listening to her tirade.
"If you hate matchmaking that much, then prove your talent like your sister the famous poetess! Or bring home a man you actually like—that is what I told you, was it not?!"
"We will search the surrounding rooms."
Reading the mood with practiced speed, the servants began opening the rooms of the annex one by one.
"Walled up inside the house all day! Doing only what pleases you! Sleeping when you feel like sleeping! Awake when you feel like being awake! Just how do you expect to meet a good man straight out of some novel?!"
"She is not in any of her usual hiding places!"
"That brat, honestly! Find her, all of you! The empty spots by the well! The wardrobes! The chests! She hid under the stove last time, so check the stoves! This time I am going to bind that brat hand and foot and plant her right in front of her match!"
"Ma'am!"
"And if any of you hides her this time because the little brat begged you to, understand that you will be thrown out alongside her!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"What are you doing?! Search, and quickly!"
"Ma'am!"
At the words of the middle-aged woman—wife of the clan head—servants and guards alike set to combing every inch of the grounds.
"Is she gone?"
By the time the search had ended—a search thorough enough, it seemed, to have flushed out even a single rat hiding somewhere in the estate—the middle-aged woman asked her guard with a perfectly composed expression, as though she had never been angry at all.
"The young lady has finally left the estate. We confirmed her climbing secretly into the luggage compartment of her grandfather's carriage—the one that came bearing his letter."
"Heheheh. Hounded through every last crack like lice in a seam—there was nowhere left for her to hide but there."
No matter how high you fly or how far you crawl, my dear, you are still beneath your mother. Smiling, the middle-aged woman read the letter that had come from her father, the Mangeum Lord.
The letter told of matters concerning the succession of the Mangeum Money Exchange, and of a certain man its lord had chosen with his own discerning eye.
"Are you quite sure this is wise, my lady? She so rarely sets foot outside the house that I cannot help but worry."
"It will be fine. Father will assign people to look after her."
"It sits ill with me as well that the man is a black-haired barbarian. To think he would match a daughter of the family with..."
"He is a man my father has guaranteed."
With a voice cold as frost, the middle-aged woman—the Mangeum Lord's daughter—turned her gaze upon the guard.
"Forgive me! I have brought shame upon the peerless Mangeum Lord!"
Dropping to his knees, the guard begged pardon for his blunder.
"It matters not whether she takes a liking to him. That girl needs a little experience with men."
"Yes. I too hope the young lady gains some experience of the world this time."
"Heheheh. All she remembers of her grandfather is being spoiled rotten at the holidays—so she is crawling into the lion's den of her own free will."
Jang Yeongyeong, daughter of the Mangeum Lord, laughed as she pictured her daughter boarding that carriage, never suspecting it was a trap.
This time, there would be no escape. She would hardly wall herself up again—not in a house that was not even her own.
Hoping her daughter would, just this once, please bring home a man, Jang Yeongyeong smiled a bittersweet smile.
Her father had heaped praise upon the man at length, so he was surely a decent fellow. If anything, it seemed likelier that her daughter would turn him away, claiming he was not to her taste.
But the man, the moment he heard her daughter's family name, would find refusal impossible.
The family Jang Yeongyeong had married into was one that could turn even the impossible into the possible.
The most illustrious martial clan in all of Hubei Province.
The Zhuge Clan.