The Gathering - 7
Deliverymen didn't simply drop off the food at a mansion and leave.
No matter that this was supposed to be a martial arts visual novel — at the end of the day, it was still a murim world. Delivery or not, once you stepped through the gates of an estate, you were treated as a guest.
You could ask to rest a moment before heading back. You might be offered a cup of water. You might have to linger while someone fetched the dishes.
Every single scenario was perfectly optimized for learning the inner workings of the mansion.
"That spot in the outer courtyard is where the guards take their breaks. They order late-night snacks from us so often we know it by heart."
With the deliverymen chiming in, a complete layout of the estate came together in a matter of minutes. One by one, they pointed their fingers and began explaining what each building was for.
"This spot in the outer courtyard is where they stock the ingredients that get used constantly — licorice root and the like."
"In this building near the entrance, they pile up the herbs heading to the pharmacy the next day."
"The outer courtyard's mapped out nice and quick. Anyone here been inside the inner courtyard?"
A few hands went up.
"The innermost building of the inner courtyard is where the pharmacy owner and his principal wife live."
"The two buildings beside it house the owner's second wife and his third."
"The pharmacy owner's certainly a capable man, isn't he."
Three wives, of all things.
"He runs a big pharmacy, doesn't he? The profits alone are enough to keep three wives in style."
"Enter the inner courtyard and take the building on the right — there's a warehouse where the truly precious ingredients are stored on their own. Access there is strictly forbidden, so I doubt a single one of us has ever set foot inside."
If they stole the elixir, it would be sitting in that inner courtyard warehouse.
"Anyone know what the remaining buildings are used for?"
With the intel pieced together this thoroughly, I felt I'd earned some lesser version of the Map Revealed 100% achievement, so I asked about the buildings whose purposes were still unexplored.
"Several of the owner's young concubines live in this one. Unlike the wives, they don't get a whole building to themselves — they're divided up by room inside a single house."
"Three wives, and concubines on top of that?"
"Yes, sir. Enter the gate, and the room on the right belongs to a grey-haired concubine — she's the pharmacy owner's favorite. A former courtesan, and her allure is no joke. The way she sways her hips on purpose, like she's begging to be looked at... hoo..."
One deliveryman murmured on as if the favorite's image were still flickering before his eyes. Still — how on earth did you learn all that in such detail?
"You actually got inside the room where the concubines sleep?"
Most places wouldn't let even their own guards anywhere near the concubines' quarters.
"Ah! Hahahaha. Well, you see..."
The deliveryman scratched his head, wearing an awkward grin.
"You see what?"
"She told me I was... firm. Not all soft and mushy like the pharmacy owner — solid, she said..."
Good grief.
"THIS is exactly the kind of guy who embarrasses all of Joseon!"
"Hey! Show some damn backbone when you use the thing!"
The other deliverymen rounded on the man who had shared a heated moment with the favorite concubine, their voices thick with righteous fury.
"No, no, why?! I didn't seduce her! She said I'd worked hard on the delivery and it'd be good for my body, and she fed me some kind of red candy! Then my whole body started feeling all fired up, and when she sways her hips like that with that wicked look on her face — how am I supposed to hold back?!"
A candy that sets your body on fire?
For a moment I considered digging deeper, but the furious deliverymen's reproaches got there first.
"What?! He used drugs?! This—this—THIS guy! Making all Joseon folk look bad!"
"Couldn't satisfy one Central Plains woman the honest way?"
"As is tradition, us black-hairs are supposed to be strong the natural way! Leaning on drugs! You disgraceful pill-popping bastard!"
Why is he angrier about the drugs than about the guy sleeping with the concubine?
"If you don't want to end up crossing paths with a corpse in the street, you'd better watch yourself."
I hardened my expression and scolded him in a stern voice. Keep carrying on like that, and some poor wronged child might grow up steeped in prejudice and one day swear to slash the wrist of an innocent bookstore owner.
"Yes. I'm sorry, Leader. It won't happen again."
Branded a dirty cheat in the span of a heartbeat, the deliveryman floundered and bowed his head over and over.
"Good work, all of you."
Who lived where. What was kept where. How many guards patrolled the grounds. The infiltration map of the estate was, in the end, completed at remarkable speed.
"It was nothing!"
"When today's work is done, drop my name to Sookso and have her set you a proper table with drinks."
"Thank you!"
"Are beer and sweet-and-sour pork allowed?!"
"Order whatever you like."
"Our Leader truly is the greatest!"
Once I'd ushered the deliverymen out of the office, Lim Hayeon came over to me with a small sigh.
"Some people would break their backs to gather intelligence like this. How does your head even come up with these things?"
I broke into a triumphant grin.
"Isn't this exactly why a man ought to put himself in a position where he has people to work for him?"
"Judging by the circumstances, the odds are high it's in the favorite concubine's room."
"So they stole the elixir to use as a virility tonic."
It tracked. The physician had made that elixir to sell to middle-aged men and third-rate martial artists, after all — and Joseon ginseng was renowned for aiding circulation, its tonic effects common knowledge.
Inner power cultivation, wound recovery, restorative tonics, virility boosters. The all-purpose miracle elixir of this world, truly.
"I'll search the concubine's room first, then the inner courtyard warehouse where they keep the precious ingredients separate."
"I'm counting on you. And before you go — there's something you should hear."
After passing my instructions along to Lim Hayeon, I sent her off to the pharmacy owner's estate.
"Only a small amount was in the concubine's room. The bulk of it was in the inner courtyard warehouse."
Lim Hayeon set a single paper-wrapped elixir down on the desk.
Red Ginseng Candy
So it really was written on the paper.
"There was more of it than I expected. But why did you tell me not to bring any out?"
I had warned Lim Hayeon that even if she found the elixir, she was to leave it where it lay.
"If medicine that vanished turns up for sale again at the acupuncture clinic, that's a problem of its own."
For me, returning it would be the end of the matter. But the pharmacy would also learn that the elixir they'd stolen had been stolen in turn — and that could set the pharmacy and the acupuncture clinic clawing at each other's throats.
And since I still had pooled funds to keep collecting, it was better to tie up the aftermath without a single loose thread.
"Then what do we do?"
"We draw up a plan to confiscate the red ginseng candy. One that makes them choke on it — nice and thoroughly."
The victims had been promised half the elixir as compensation, but that alone wasn't nearly enough.
Hadn't the great archmage — guilty of the very same crimes — once declared it? Evildoers have no human rights.
Surely the least a thief caught in the act of thieving owes is double.
"Coming from you, that almost makes me feel sorry for the pharmacy owner."
Lim Hayeon watched me with a faintly queasy expression, as if bracing for whatever scheme I was brewing this time.
"While Sohee's away from her post, I've called the Samgu brothers in for tomorrow."
"You're going to march in there yourself and demand they hand it over?"
"Have Sohee hold down the inn tomorrow. I'll take care of the rest."
I was a busy man, and so was Lim Hayeon.
This operation would run on a simple motto: minimum effort, maximum happiness.
"What brings you here? Huh? You mustn't go manhandling the medicinal herbs!"
The next day, at the pharmacy, I climbed all the way to the third floor — where the precious ingredients were handled — and seized hold of a ginseng root labeled Joseon Ginseng.
"This isn't Joseon ginseng. How exactly did you bring yourself to write that on the label?"
"Customer, what nonsense are you spouting? That is Joseon ginseng."
That expression says he knows perfectly well.
"This isn't Joseon ginseng — it's Central Plains ginseng. Selling the bottom grade of the bottom grade at premium prices! What a trash heap of a pharmacy!"
Merchants cutting flour with other grain meals to fatten the sack — cheating to pad their margins was nothing new under the sun, but still.
There weren't many men in the Eight Provinces of Joseon with a better eye for ginseng than mine. And you would presume to lecture me about Joseon ginseng?
"Has the barbarian bastard lost his mind? Where do you get off nitpicking!"
"What? What did you just say to our Leader?"
"Huh? Where'd you even come fr— Gwak!"
The eldest of the Samgu brothers. A walking golem. Choi Ilgu seized the employee by the collar with one hand and hoisted him clean off the floor.
"Why, you little—!"
"Gyaah!"
A heartbeat later, the employee was slammed down onto a pillar.
"What is the meaning of this outrage!"
As the pharmacy erupted into an uproar, a middle-aged man appeared, his face twisted into a furious scowl.
"You're the owner of this establishment?"
"A Joseon cur? I am."
Honorifics deleted on sight of black hair. Central Plains folk, through and through.
"Rather rude, to a customer who came here to buy medicine. You might want to retrain your staff."
Perhaps trying to size up the situation, the owner looked at me — arrived in the company of three hulking bruisers — and at the employee sprawled at our feet, then spoke again.
"What medicine did you come for? If you'll stop making a scene, I'll personally bring out something good for you."
"A medicine you know quite well."
I said it with one corner of my mouth curled upward.
"A medicine I know well?"
The owner tilted his head.
"Red ginseng candy."
"...Did that Joseon needle-poker send you?"
Apparently only now grasping the purpose of my visit, the owner's scowl deepened.
"I am the leader of the Joseon Hometown Association. The name is Kang Yunho."
At maximum insolence, I spread both arms wide, cocked my head slightly, and looked down at the pharmacy owner from above.
The intimidation, of course, would be supplied by the Samgu brothers at my back.
"The conversation is over. Whether you call yourself a leader or a slab of sashimi, that's no concern of ours."
Whatever the owner spat at me, I kept toying with the fake root beside me — the one labeled Joseon Ginseng — and set the Soyun Mind Image Art in motion.
"So Joseon ginseng truly is a rare treasure. This one's fake! This one's fake too! Just where in this establishment is the real Joseon ginseng?!"
The booming voice rolled through every floor of the pharmacy building.
"What's that man saying?"
"He says the Joseon ginseng sold here is fake."
Ordinarily, whatever a barbarian said wouldn't matter a whit — but the claim that the pricey ginseng bought from one was fake? That wasn't so easily dismissed.
"This isn't my fault! The stable-hand ran off with it! I'm the wronged party here!"
Whether to contain the situation or simply to be rid of me, the owner fed me a lie that couldn't hold water.
"So the thief ran off, and there's nothing left to compensate. Is that it?"
"That's right."
"How strange."
"What's so strange about it?"
"Because to my eyes, the thief seems to be standing very close by."
The thief is you, obviously. I stared at the owner, smiling like a man who knew every last detail.
"You bastard!"
"You bastard?!"
"Enough."
As the pharmacy's guards and the Samgu brothers alike moved for their blades, I raised a hand and cut them off at once.
"Everyone, stand down. I didn't come here to fight. Return the elixir my people made, or pay compensation for it — do that, and I'll wash my hands of this whole affair."
I laid my final offer on the table.
"A Joseon cur drags his mob to my door and swaggers about so high and mighty!"
That's the spirit. I hadn't expected you to fold easily anyway.
"You have until tomorrow. I'm giving you time to think it over — bring the elixir, bring the compensation money, handle it as you see fit."
With an easy expression, I patted the shoulder of the owner as he gnashed his teeth at me, and strolled out of the pharmacy.
"So he didn't come after all."
Even with the next day come and gone, the pharmacy owner was nowhere to be seen.
"Boss— no, Leader. Just say the word and we'll drag the boys over there and smash that pharmacy to pieces."
"This is him spitting in your face, Leader!"
"That's right! Thanks to you, Leader, things are booming at our fortress docks. We've even got boys under us who can handle inner power — give the order and we move!"
The Samgu brothers raged as though the insult had landed on their own backs, itching to charge out the door at any moment.
"Leave it be."
"Leader!"
Even back in Korea, people said that so long as the gangs didn't cause trouble, they were a necessary evil keeping order in the underworld — but let a foreign gang start strutting around Korean streets, and the same people would howl about what the police were even for.
Draw your blade too easily, and you will be ruined by it just as easily.
"But Boss!"
"Instead, let's put the boys to a different use."
This was all well within my predictions anyway.
All that remained was to move on to the next stage of the scheme, exactly as planned.
"I'll have every lad grab a weapon and gather up."
"Not those boys. The Joseon dockhands. The unloaders."
"Sir? They're not even fighters. What would you need them for?"
"I have it all worked out."
A very good plan, at that.
"You know that four-story pharmacy on the main street?"
In a certain inn in Wuhan, a black-haired laborer knocked back a cup of cheap yellow wine as he chatted with the Central Plains men around him.
"Huh? The big pharmacy on the main street?"
"Yeah. Yeah. Word is, when they fill a prescription there, they cut it with fake medicine."
"What?!"
"Is that true?"
"Oh! I heard that one too," another Joseon man put in, washing down a mouthful of yellow wine. "Except it's not fake herbs they're mixing in — it's moldy, spoiled stock."
"Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I got the runs last time after taking medicine brewed at that place!"
One of the Central Plains men spoke up as if struck by a great revelation. In truth, his symptoms had come from an illness — but nobody there could have known that.
"I used to take my prescriptions there now and then. I'm never setting foot in that place again."
Malicious rumors about a pharmacy. Had it been one or two men chattering, the talk would have fizzled out in no time. This time was different.
As if someone had planned it all in advance, the venomous gossip began spreading around the pharmacy simultaneously, from every direction at once.
"So they mix THAT into their medicine."
"That?"
"Shit, my friend. Actual shit."
"Last time they claimed they were out of an ingredient and deliberately compounded something pricier instead. I think these bastards do it on purpose."
"I've been a regular there for years. Surely they wouldn't do such a thing."
"You haven't heard the other rumor? About the black-haired innkeeper. A while back he asked the pharmacy owner straight up why he was selling fake Joseon ginseng — and the man couldn't manage a single word."
"What?! He cheated people with that expensive Joseon ginseng?!"
"He sells even the pricey stuff that carelessly. You think he'd stock proper medicine?"
"That pharmacy owner bastard. Taking three concubines in his twilight years — he's finally gone mad for money."
"Well, he does charge double what the other pharmacies ask for licorice and angelica root."
Joseon folk lived in Wuhan, yes — but they did not speak only amongst themselves.
From a Joseon mouth to a Central Plains ear, and from that ear to other Central Plains ears across all of Wuhan.
And their target was no conscientious, honest-handed pharmacy — but one that had long resorted to near-fraudulent tricks to pad its margins.
The malicious rumors spread like wildfire.
"SKREEEEE—! YOU—you bastard!"
"I gave you a single day, and you're already behind schedule."
In the end, it took no time at all for the enraged pharmacy owner to come storming after Kang Yunho.