The Price of the Snow Ginseng
Without preamble, I presented myself at the Patriarch's Hall.
"I have come to ask leave to journey the Jianghu."
The man who had been nothing but daunting to approach in my previous life had, I would say, become quite comfortable to deal with. Everything is hardest the first time around, after all.
"Heh heh."
Patriarch Dancheon Gang laughed — with that distinctive chuckle he wore whenever his mood was good.
A green light, I would call it. Ever since my regression, my running away from home had come around with the regularity of an annual festival, so perhaps he had simply resigned himself to it, as one does.
...Such were my thoughts, and they did not long survive.
"Heh heh. The Jianghu, is it."
Murmuring thus, Dancheon Gang's hand began to grope at his waist.
"Heh heh."
Shring.
"Aigoo, please compose yourself!"
In the space of a breath, my father Dancheon Gang's personal bodyguard had become my bodyguard — by which I mean that Uncle Yeo-baek, having sensed an air far from ordinary, had thrown himself at Father and was hanging on with all his weight.
"Unhand me, I say!"
Thanks to my uncle, I was spared the misfortune of meeting a blade's point inside the Patriarch's Hall. Truly, the only person in this clan firmly on my side is Uncle Yeo-baek.
"Put that down first, and then we shall talk!"
Uncle barely managed to calm my squirming father. You could call it a hair-trigger situation, but I must say, this spectacle — one I never once witnessed in my past life — was a fine thing to behold.
I might have gone to my grave never knowing that my father Dancheon Gang, a man I had believed capable of nothing but pressing his weight upon the world, and Uncle Yeo-baek beside him had such a human side.
"Haah—"
Father, who had never had any intention of shaking off Uncle Yeo-baek's restraint in the first place, flopped back down into his seat.
"And what is it this time?"
Truth be told, I know full well that I no longer have any pretext for wandering the Jianghu. What respectable clan would repeatedly cast its own child into that mountain of blades and forest of swords called the Jianghu?
But then again — does a young man truly need a pretext to set out into the Jianghu?
"There is something I wish to achieve."
Meaning: ambition of this caliber ought to suffice.
"Is it truly necessary?"
Father Dancheon Gang asked, holding my gaze. Somewhere along the way, his eyes had settled once more into the solemn dignity of the Patriarch.
"Yes."
At my unwavering answer, he gave a small nod.
This is the very thing — the part of him that makes me think he is a good Patriarch, and a good father.
A year ago, when I laid the Empty Blue Stone Milk before him, neither Father nor my uncle asked where I had found it, or how. And now Dancheon Gang does not ask why I insist on journeying the Jianghu; he asks only whether I need it.
Father Dancheon Gang may never have showered me in overflowing affection, but I consider him a fine parent who never once stood in the way of my life.
"How long will you need this time?"
Since matters were proceeding so smoothly, I resolved to be honest.
"Would a year or so not be ample?"
To hedge against the unexpected, I had answered with a little more time than I actually planned. Asking permission every single time I set out from home grows tiresome, after all.
Shring.
"Good heavens, why would you do that when you were being so agreeable!"
"You wretch!"
Uncle Yeo-baek sprang to block Father Dancheon Gang once more.
My uncle shot a gesture my way. Judging by the motion of that hand, it did not mean come here — it meant get out, and quickly.
"I shall take my leave, then!"
Without so much as a backward glance, I fled the Patriarch's Hall.
"Good grief."
If a simple journey abroad is this much of an ordeal even for an ordinary member of the household, then I must say — not becoming the Young Patriarch was a truly wise choice.
Just then.
"Safe travels!"
From the roof of the Patriarch's Hall, Uncle Yeo-baek was waving me off. Beside him stood Father, wearing a magnificent sulk.
And...
"When will you be back?"
Somehow, Dancheon Hak had come to stand guard before the Patriarch's Hall, and it was he who asked.
"I shall return before long."
"Hmph. By then, my sword will not go easy on you."
With that, Dancheon Hak whirled about and was gone. My elder brother, I would say, is a remarkably consistent man.
I knew this was his own way of seeing me off. Now that there were people waiting for my return to the clan, a warmth had settled into my chest.
Since time immemorial, ginseng has been ranked foremost among the elixirs that grow wild in nature — for even without a drop of spiritual energy, ginseng carries ample virtue as a tonic.
When a root that is already a tonic drinks in spiritual energy across patient centuries, it inevitably gains potency beyond all comparison with the fleeceflower, which began as no more than a wayside weed. That is why ginseng is treated as a superior-grade elixir where mere herbs are not.
And so, whenever the supreme elixir of ultimate Yin comes up for debate, one name never fails to appear: the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng.
Spiritual essence of ten thousand years. Yin qi imbibed naturally from a life spent in the snow. Add ginseng's own inherent virtue on top of that, and it is only right to call the greatness of the Snow Ginseng inevitable.
The Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Spirit Herb that Yakseon once obtained is precious and rare in its own right, but beside the Snow Ginseng it cannot help but pale. That is simply the truth.
Even among snow ginsengs aged ten millennia, the finest are those born and raised upon the ground of the ten-thousand-year snow — the everfrost. If one were pressed to name them, True Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng might be about right.
Between a snow ginseng that drinks Yin only through the winter months and one steeped the year round in the extreme Yin that everfrost carries, which lies closer to ultimate Yin is not even a question worth asking.
Ordinary snow ginseng is rare enough; this is why the kind steeped in everfrost's Yin is crowned supreme.
Few know it, but everfrost does exist in the Central Plains here and there. The summit of Mount Tai, reaching up to touch the heavens, is always buried in snow that never melts.
Theoretically, then, the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng could grow wild in the Central Plains as well.
The misfortune is that finding one on Mount Tai's lofty, frost-crowned peak is precisely like plucking a star from the sky.
Who in this world would labor up that perilous height and rake through snow frozen hard for ten thousand years, hunting an elixir that may not even be there?
Retrieving the Empty Blue Stone Milk from the sheer peak of Mount Cheonjung had been grueling enough — but beside hunting Snow Ginseng on Mount Tai's summit, it was child's play.
Did not even Yakseon, his spiritual eyes opened wide, declare it no task for a mortal? That is what I mean.
And yet, from the old days onward, the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng has shown its face in this world time and again.
The reason is simple: there are peoples in this world who live alongside the everfrost.
A land where people set down their feet, yet where the ten-thousand-year snow never melts — the barren North Sea, of course.
This delegation of the North Sea Ice Palace had carried their supreme treasure, the Snow Ginseng, as a token of amity with the murim of the Central Plains — and for me, that made it an opportunity beyond price.
"Hoo—"
It was not everfrost, but my footprints were stamped across the pristine white snowfield all the same. My plan to secure the Snow Ginseng had already been set in motion.
"Hoo... there you are."
Even having reached the Harmony Realm, I still needed a deep breath — proof that this, too, had been no easy undertaking.
Tap.
Shielding my hand as best I could with blazing-yang palm energy, I carefully gathered in the snow-white petals.
Petals whiter than snow itself — the Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Spirit Herb. The very specimen Yakseon had secured at its fifth stage of potency.
I tucked the petals at once into the treasure-vessel I had procured at no small expense. Something this precious must not come to harm, after all.
"For now, the insurance is secured."
I had not given up on the Snow Ginseng.
But neither had I come all this way merely to fetch the Spirit Herb as a fallback. If it were a simple fallback, I could have gathered it after failing to obtain the Snow Ginseng — this Snow Spirit Herb will not be found again for a good five years.
"With the preparations complete..."
Naturally, there is a reason I claimed the Snow Spirit Herb first, even at the cost of spending a pricey treasure-vessel. If matters proceed according to the plan I drew up in my days as Myeong-gae, this herb will prove absolutely essential.
You might call it a contingency laid in advance.
"Now then — shall we go and claim the Snow Ginseng."
The Snow Spirit Herb had been the first step of this journey; before the step was through, the Snow Ginseng would be resting in my arms.
There is no place in this world without beggars.
Which is to say, there is no place the Beggars' Gang's web of information cannot reach.
But that claim is not the truth — the saying only holds once you attach the premise 'within the Central Plains.'
Past the frontier commonly called the lands beyond the passes, the Gang's reach grows thin indeed.
And if one were to name the place furthest beyond even that grasp, the answer would be the North Sea, without contest.
Half-naked beggars do not easily survive the North Sea's raw, biting cold, after all.
The North Sea Ice Palace.
Together with the Beast Palace of the Southern Wilds, the Potala Palace of the Western Reaches, and the Changbai Sword Gate of the East, it reigns as one of the Four Great Powers Beyond the Passes — a grand sect in truth.
They are not called 'beyond the passes' for nothing.
Separated from the Central Plains by vast and empty distance, they are beings an ordinary Central Plains martial artist might never lay eyes on in an entire lifetime.
The Ice Palace of the North Sea is famed above all for its seclusion; visits from its people to the Central Plains are exceedingly rare.
'A North Sea delegation visits the Murim Alliance — and they happen to carry the Snow Ginseng.' Rarity stacked upon rarity: an event that occurs at abysmal odds.
Miss this chance and still want the Snow Ginseng, and one must walk to the North Sea oneself — and setting aside even the worry of freezing solid, there would be no escaping becoming a lost soul adrift in endless snowfields.
But my present circumstances were far from smooth sailing. The most crucial step remained.
Namely: how to take the Snow Ginseng from the Ice Palace delegation's hands.
Claiming a masterless elixir from the wild and claiming one that has already found its master are two matters worlds apart in both process and difficulty.
It could hardly be the same as the affair at Black Water Gate, where I had obtained the Ten-Thousand-Year Fleeceflower Root.
From the outset, I had known that Black Water Gate would sell off the Fleeceflower Root for the sake of its sect's prosperity. They were parting with something vital regardless of price, so it was only prudent to count the possibility that its buyer might be me among the cases.
Of course, matters had played out in the best possible way: their true nature as the Demonic Cult's sleeper agents came to light, and I did not have to pay a thing.
But the North Sea delegation desired no money, and the merits of the Jianghu's murim even less so. Winning the Snow Ginseng by proper means was a distant hope indeed.
I did, for the briefest moment, entertain playing the noble thief and spiriting the ginseng away, or playing the highwayman and seizing it by force. Both schemes were rejected outright.
For a rising star of the orthodox murim who dreams of one day standing as the Alliance Leader, such villainy is not to be so much as imagined.
But who am I?
Am I not Dancheon Myeong, who endured the life of Myeong-gae precisely to arrange this very moment? The contingency for it had been drawn up before I ever regressed.
Truthfully, it is not a difficult problem.
Think it through calmly, and the answer comes easily.
With robbery and theft — the first path — struck from the board, only the second remains: to pay an equivalent price.
I must offer a price great enough that the Ice Palace delegation would hand the Snow Ginseng over willingly.
Precisely speaking, I must create a reason, a justification — or a tangible gain — weighty enough to move them to give it up.
And what price could stand in place of a supreme elixir?
It is a question with a single fixed answer, and that answer is the grace of a life saved.
I intended to set the price of the Ice Palace delegation's lives against the Snow Ginseng.