Why Rules Exist - 5
Sa Yun and I moved swiftly through the Hongseong Sect grounds, burying the White Jade Plaque at every spot where demonic qi lingered. With that task complete, we headed straight for the building near the sect's entrance.
"All finished, then?"
She must have been resting after training—Ryu Hyeon was drenched in sweat. Perhaps because she was beautiful to begin with, the way her damp hair clung to her skin looked rather alluring, but that wasn't what mattered right now.
"I'm told the Sword Saint was the one who encountered the demonic cultists. I'd like to speak with the Sword Saint herself..."
Ryu Hyeon's expression darkened in an instant. She seemed willing to cooperate with me as much as she could, but she clearly didn't like the idea of sending the Sword Saint out.
Still, there was no avoiding it. The Magistrate had entrusted me with a duty, yes—but I also had things I needed to say to her.
"Understood. Please wait just a moment."
In the end, Ryu Hyeon nodded and stepped outside. Sa Yun, seated beside me, looked utterly at a loss—but that didn't mean I could stop now.
How long did I wait?
The door burst open, and at the sight of the Sword Saint walking in, I clenched my teeth.
Her attire was strikingly different from before.
Pure white robes.
A garment embroidered with plum blossoms across the chest, made of fabric that clung to every line of her body, with nothing covering either leg—leaving her snow-white thighs bare. Perhaps because it was designed to deliberately flatter her figure, it thrust forward the full, oval swell of her chest while cinching tight around her slender waist. And the single long trouser leg that ran from that graceful curve of her hip down her long leg stood in such contrast to the bared side that it drew involuntary admiration from anyone who beheld it.
The woman came and sat before me, her long deep-navy hair swaying softly.
I could not bring myself to properly face the Sword Saint, dressed in the formal regalia of the Hongseong Sect Leader.
There was no helping it.
For me—
and for all of us, that uniform was longing, and affection, and love—
and proof of the pain Sa Yun had endured.
I stole a glance at Sa Yun. She stood there in her worn training clothes, hugging a tray to her chest.
The moment I recalled the event in which Sa Yun would rise to become the Sect Leader of Hongseong and don that very outfit, my mind bleached white as the garment itself, and my resolve began to harden.
I, who had come this far.
I, who carried the will of everyone.
I knew that I could never allow Sa Yun to put on those clothes while shedding tears of anguish.
A tangle of conflicting emotions scrambled my thoughts.
Even so, I had to collect myself.
Because what I needed to do now was essential to achieving my purpose.
"I should introduce myself first. I am Yu Wol, owner of the Seomhwa Village inn. Please, feel free to speak with me as you please."
"Na Yerin, Sect Leader of the Hongseong Sect. I am in your hands."
She had named herself not the Sword Saint, but the Sect Leader of Hongseong. Which meant she took pride in her station as the sect's leader.
Then this conversation just got easier.
"Let me come straight to the point. I have a proposal for you."
From here on, this was business. Which meant I had to speak not from any familiarity between us, but purely in the realm of profit.
So I shifted my tone at once, and a spark of intrigue lit the Sword Saint's deep eyes.
"You have another proposal, apart from the investigation?"
"Yes. I hear that the Hongseong Sect cultivates medicinal herbs."
"Ah. That."
Apparently the Sword Saint knew of it. She gave a small nod and glanced sideways at Ryu Hyeon.
"We intend to supply them to Old Man Cheol's apothecary in Seomhwa Village."
"Supplying an apothecary, hm. That is not bad at all. Earlier, thanks to Sa Yun's consideration, I visited the herb garden while the demonic qi was tormenting me. The fresh scent of the herbs was quite pleasant. It seems your disciples' painstaking efforts have borne fruit. Even to my eye, those herbs are top grade."
"Ah... th-thank you."
Joy bloomed across Ryu Hyeon's face. My apologies, but that delighted expression would have to be folded away for the moment.
"So how much do you expect all of that to come to?"
"Going by market rates... I believe we could earn at least one nyang of gold each month..."
"Yes, roughly that much. However, there is one problem..."
"A problem?"
"There's no guarantee they'll keep selling, is there?"
"Ah."
Ryu Hyeon bit her lip, realizing too late. I carried on with my explanation, calm and even.
"You know the nature of Seomhwa Village, don't you? Few people are ever injured, and monsters or bandits rarely show themselves. Not many take tonics either—and the ones who actually consume medicine in any quantity are the government office and the disciples of Hongseong..."
The government office kept its own herb garden and used it to produce medicines reserved for official use.
And Hongseong Sect hardly used medicine at all.
"Supply without demand drives the price down. Old Man Cheol would no doubt keep buying at the same price even at a loss, but..."
Of course, the odds that such a modest quantity of herbs would move the market were slim. It wasn't as if the quantity Hongseong would deliver was large enough to crash prices. The apothecary would certainly feel the pinch of unsold stock piling up—but Old Man Cheol, owner of Seomhwa Village's apothecary, was never the sort to call that a burden.
But that wasn't what Hongseong Sect would want.
If they were going to profit by putting Old Man Cheol at a disadvantage, they'd be better off simply taking the donation money their disciples' families sent them.
"Does the Sun-Falling Sword know about the herb sales as well?"
Ryu Hyeon shook her head, then went on to explain things I hadn't even asked. The disciples in charge of growing the herbs were children of martial families or farming households, so the commercial side of things had simply never occurred to them. Blinded by the fervent hope that selling what they grew would help cover Hongseong's operating costs, they hadn't thought to question it. And the reason she hadn't told Hong Ryeon was that Hong Ryeon already had plenty of other duties, and she hadn't wanted her wearing herself out over needless worries.
In other words, they'd been running their rose-tinted fantasy at full tilt and forgotten to think about the risks.
It happens, I suppose. People naturally turn their eyes toward the hopeful side of things rather than the grim. Besides, Hongseong disciples had never done business in their lives—a mistake of this caliber was one you could laugh off.
But Ryu Hyeon clearly didn't see it that way; her face had drained white, and she kept biting her lip.
Right. Now that I'd knocked them to the bottom, it was time to throw down a rope.
"Which brings me to my point. Why not enter into a partnership with me?"
"Pardon? A partnership?"
"Yes. The herbs grown by the Hongseong Sect—and the sachets. You are planning to make sachets, yes? I will buy all of it."
"Um... but merchant houses don't manufacture medicine, do they?"
Quite true.
In Cheonsang Myeongwol, you could craft medicine by combining materials with the Pharmacology skill once you'd learned a recipe. I knew roughly where every recipe in the game could be found, but I couldn't go hunting for them now—and even if I did, I lacked the ability to make anything. Hoping against hope, I'd once bought medicinal ingredients and attempted to brew medicine, only to fail. It seemed someone who actually possessed the recipe and the craft was required... Since nothing could be done about it at the time, I'd let the matter slide. I remembered that much.
Anyway, that wasn't the point.
"Which is exactly why I'm proposing this."
I picked up the sheet of paper lying on the table. Then, with a stub of charcoal I'd grabbed from the kitchen earlier, I began to sketch.
The eyes of the Sword Saint, of Ryu Hyeon, and of Sa Yun—watching me work—grew wider and wider.
"...Huh? Innkeeper, you can draw as well?"
"Wow. That's really good."
"This is... me, and Master. And Sa Yun?"
What I had drawn were the Sword Saint, Ryu Hyeon, and Sa Yun—portraits at the level of a quick croquis.
Why do I know how to draw, you ask?
Too few people were making fan art of our poor, precious girl, so I practiced every chance I got. And back when I was running the Sayun Faction, there was precious little that worked better than fan art—so I worked at it all the harder.
While the three of them stared blankly at my reasonably skillful sketch, I tapped the paper.
"I intend to attach portraits of the disciples to the herbs and sell them as something special."
"What do you mean by that?"
"We would even give them a name—'medicinal herbs grown personally, with loving care, by the beautiful disciples of the Hongseong Sect.'"
Hongseong was a famed orthodox sect, and thanks to the noble—but utterly unprofitable—deeds its members had performed over the years, its reputation stood considerable. Which meant that trading on that name would let even herbs like these sell for well above the market average.
At my proposal, the Sword Saint's brow twitched faintly.
"Shall we review the Hongseong Sect's principles? Hongseong teaches that for those who possess the martial arts to care for those who do not is the natural duty of man, and that no reward should be taken for doing what is simply right. It teaches that we must act in a manner befitting the sect's name. There are other internal rules and policies besides, but... are the essential ones not these—never sell the sect's name through falsehood, and never be swayed by desire? Then tell me: in what I intend to do, what exactly is wrong?"
I did not think Hongseong's teachings were wrong. Naturally, among the Sayun Faction's ranks there were those who grumbled, what kind of dogshit teachings are those?
But even so—what is wrong with pursuing an ideal?
So then, let us simply choose a detour that leaves those ideals untouched.
Now, then. Were the herbs grown on Mount Hongseong? They were.
Are the disciples of Hongseong beautiful? They are.
Did the Hongseong disciples raise them with their own devoted care? They carved time from their rest after training, and the disciples still too new to take missions poured heart and soul into growing them for their hardworking seniors.
Arguing from nothing but pure fact, I left even the Sword Saint without a solid rebuttal. After all, no regulation had been violated—had it?
"And how do you intend to set the price?"
"The goods will go through a measure of processing to make them marketable before delivery, so they will sell for more than what Old Man Cheol's apothecary charges."
When storytelling lends a product a premium, obviously you sell it high. All the more when it's a limited edition.
"Things steeped in history naturally command that kind of value. Even a cheap, common brush, if it was once wielded by a person of high standing, sells as a treasure. If we factor in the name-value of herbs raised on the sacred mountain of Mount Hongseong by the disciples of the Hongseong Sect... we can command twice the price—no, as much as three times."
"...Is that not excessive?"
Excessive, all right.
Truthfully, with the right approach—if I stacked pricey buzzwords like limited edition, regional specialty, and premium, and sold them gacha-style—I could probably rake in dozens of times more.
But even as it stands, this hardly counts as being swayed by desire, so it doesn't breach Hongseong's principles. That other scheme could wait for Season 2.
"If I were seizing the lifelines of Seomhwa Village's ordinary folk as collateral and wringing obscene profits from them, then the Sect Leader's words would hold true. But the people I mean to sell these to—well, that hardly applies to them."
I took a sip of tea, then turned to the Sword Saint.
"They are people susceptible to superstition. And so, herbs grown on the sacred mountain of Mount Hongseong by disciples who have lived nobly, sachets gathered and stitched stitch by careful stitch by those same disciples—such things will be worth far more to them than any market price. That is the value I will charge. Three times? Four? I could ask more still, and they would buy with a smile on their faces. Because what they will purchase is the peace of mind that the names 'Mount Hongseong' and 'Hongseong Sect' bring them."
"You claim that can grant peace of mind?"
When the astonished Ryu Hyeon asked, I answered only with a shrug.
Duh! Ever heard of the placebo effect?!
"...And who, precisely, might 'they' be?"
When the Sword Saint asked, sounding unconvinced, I smiled.
"Wealthy officials hailing from prestigious, moneyed families."
Just as no one but Superman can save the world alone, I could not save Sa Yun and protect the Hongseong Sect single-handedly.
So the first thing I had done was build connections. The Magistrate, naturally—and the Imperial Conscription Department operating under the guise of the Cheonghoe Merchant Guild near Seomhwa Village. And many more besides, like the Ha-O Gate, which even in Cheonsang Myeongwol served as a sort of errand center.
Armed with the information gleaned from cultivating those ties, together with the knowledge I carried, reaching wealthy officials—though the imperial family itself might remain beyond my grasp—was entirely within the realm of possibility. And quite a few among them were deeply sensitive to superstition.
A man flung alone into this world does not have many cards to play.
So I had focused on gathering them, and by now I held a respectable hand.
Toying with the cards won through all that effort, I fixed my gaze on the Sword Saint.
Now. From this point on, this is the realm of persuasion.
"If you refuse, there is nothing I can do about it. But Sword Saint, you must think of your disciples as well. They say even a bad law is still a law—but when people are bound too tightly by rules, they cannot live. Right now, Hongseong's disciples..."
The eloquence honed through every flame war with the wretches who had slandered Sa Yun. The persuasive force I had studied and drilled so that the world would know Sa Yun was the true protagonist. Armed with those, and with every basic qualification a member of the Sayun Faction must possess, I held forth for a long, long while.
The Sword Saint and Ryu Hyeon managed to interject here and there, but at best they were no match for the scum who had smeared Sa Yun's name. At least these two could actually be reasoned with.
After all that talk, the Sword Saint—who had offered no rebuttal and simply listened—cut me off with a stifled laugh.
"There is a measure of willful interpretation in it, and no little sophistry... but no rule has plainly been broken. In that case, I cannot refuse your proposal. And if it would ease my disciples' burdens, I have no right to stand in its way."
The Sword Saint rose from her seat. And then—she bowed deep and low to me.
At the sight, Ryu Hyeon froze, Sa Yun froze—and so did I.
"Innkeeper Yu. I humbly entrust this to your hands."
The Sword Saint.
The Sword Saint—a famed name of the murim, counted among the greatest masters of the realm—bowed to me.
For her disciples.
For the Hongseong Sect.
And so I, too, sprang to my feet and returned her courtesy in full.
"The honor is mine, truly."
For the sake of our pride.
"Now, then..."
The matter was settled. We hadn't drawn up a contract, of course, but that could wait.
Just as I was rising from my seat, my business concluded and ready to take my leave, the Sword Saint pinned me in place with a single question.
"And if the goods do not sell? What will you do if they refuse?"
I answered her question with a smile.
It wouldn't happen—but even if it did, it would matter not at all.
Because I could simply buy it all myself.