Three Pills
There had been a brief stir of commotion, but with everyone from the Beggars' Gang and the Murim Alliance now arrived, pressing ahead with the matter at hand was the right course.
"Now that all are gathered, let us move to the matter itself."
As if my words had been the signal, Wonpyeong-gae stepped forward.
"I have recalled every unit I had dispersed across the slopes and massed them at the foot of Mount Heng. We are sealing it at the source."
Paeng Ga-heon, the Reckless Blade, who had arrived together with Yeom Gi-ha, came forward as well.
"The martial forces of the Shanxi Branch have mustered at Mount Heng too. Every last man among them was hand-picked for trustworthiness."
The beggars of the Gang would hold the mountain, while the warriors of the Shanxi Branch gathered and bore away the spiritual herbs. A flawless division of labor, I would call it.
"Let us be off."
With that, I unfurled my lightness skill. Not one common soul stood among the faces gathered here, so it was not long before we reached Hwanragwon in the valley of Mount Heng.
"Ooooh—"
Everyone who beheld Hwanragwon lost the power of speech — even Musan-gae, who had surely weathered every storm this world could offer.
"A place like this...!"
Most striking of all was the Medical Hall Master, eyes blazing as he drank in the garden. His gaze put me in mind of a warrior who had just shattered through a wall of his own.
Within the Beggars' Gang, a Five-Knot beggar is addressed as a Hall Master.
Thus "Hall Master" is both a rank denoting five knots and the office of governing one of the Gang's many Halls. A Hall, in turn, is a senior organization that commands and administers numerous branch posts. If the branch posts are the roots of the Beggars' Gang, the Halls are its stems — and those who shoulder its real work and its prestige are precisely the Hall Masters.
From five knots onward, in other words, a beggar is counted among the pillars of the Gang. Nor is that empty praise: the masters of powerful Halls sometimes wield strength and authority to rival a Seven-Knot elder, outstripping even a Six-Knot Dharma beggar. And the Hall Masters posted not to some humble castle on the fringe but to the Head Chapter in Kaifeng have their rise to elder all but promised — beggars with the future spread wide before them, you might say.
Three Halls stand out for their power and influence within the Beggars' Gang.
The Rumor Hall, which handles and oversees the information that is the Gang's very foundation.
The Martial Hall, which gathers, studies, teaches, and advances the martial arts of the Gang.
And the Medical Hall.
That the Rumor Hall's prestige runs strong is simple arithmetic. The identity of the Beggars' Gang as an organization comes down to just two words, after all — beggars and information — and in a group that styles itself the Jianghu's foremost intelligence network, it is only the natural order for the Hall that commands information to hold power.
That the Martial Hall is mighty is equally inevitable; martial arts matter to any force that means to stride across the Jianghu. The Gang's proud seat among the Nine Sects and One Gang was not won by numbers and a head start on information alone. It was won because the Gang's martial arts were acknowledged far and wide as the peer of any great sect's — and the Martial Hall was the forge that hammered out that achievement. What more need be said?
Truthfully, a sect that lives by the Jianghu yet fails to prize its martial arts could fairly be written down as half-illiterate.
Which is what makes it look, at first glance, like an anomaly that the Medical Hall should stand strong enough to be named one of the Three Great Halls. All the more so given that its prestige was built on nothing but the Hall's own outstanding ability.
One might well ask: what would beggars know of medicine?
But this, too, becomes entirely persuasive with only a little logical deduction. In the world of the Jianghu, you see, the healing arts mean a discipline of awakening to the turning of qi through hard empirical practice.
So how did the Beggars' Gang's medicine advance? Looking back, that, too, was the work of fate walking under the name of necessity.
To begin with, the beggars of the Beggars' Gang are, truly, beggarly — filthy, that is to say; in other words, they do not wash. The Gang's bylaws contain no clause forbidding bathing, yet most beggars treat a thorough scrub as taboo, and a place where a man who washes too often is even despised for it — that is the Beggars' Gang. It seems to be their reading of the Gang's creed that a beggar must look the part, and the fairest description is a kind of common law.
Anyway...
In the old days, every contagion under heaven made its regular rounds through the Gang. The Medical Hall's research concluded that poor hygiene was the mother of it all, and so the Hall demanded that the beggars manage their cleanliness.
The result, of course, was this:
"Go about washed pink and clean — and pray, what would make you a beggar then!"
The backlash was furious.
"Filthy beggar scum. Fine — then don't come wailing when sickness finds you."
Thus the Medical Hall's people cursed the mass of beggars. The sorry truth, though, is that even those cursing Medical Hall beggars flinched from frequent bathing themselves — they had no more wish than the next man to become the beggar all others scorned.
Sometimes, it is said, inefficiency is the royal road to progress. Rather than fight the current, the Medical Hall had the audacity to advance its art until every disease could be prevented and treated even with hygiene left somewhat neglected. And so the Beggars' Gang found its peace through the Medical Hall's power.
Partly that was the outstanding skill and devotion of the Medical Hall's beggars — and partly it was that an overflowing sample of one hundred thousand beggars stood as the great experimental bench upon which their craft was honed.
Nor was that the end of it. Beggars will eat anything. Begged food is all too often spoiled or turned, and treating the beggars it laid low was the Medical Hall's work as well. If anything, when the culprit is food, the trail is easy to follow. Just as common was the beggar whose begging had come up empty, who plucked some nameless weed or berry on the mountainside, poisoned himself, and was carried into the Medical Hall on another's back.
"You beggar bastards, how many times must I tell you not to swallow just anything you find!"
"We are not beggar-like — we are beggars! And since when does a beggar pick and choose his food? Must be pleasant, you well-fed Medical Hall pups."
"...You have a point, all of you."
And so the Medical Hall became masters not only of disease, but of every poisonous herb and manner of poisoning known to man. Thanks to that boundless sample pool and their unstinting toil, the medicine of the Beggars' Gang rose to a height one could justly call one of the Jianghu's singular marvels.
"I am Uisaeng-gae, Master of the Medical Hall."
The present Medical Hall Master, Uisaeng-gae. A middle-aged beggar who carried the mild, bookish air of a scholar — yet no one alive could afford to look down on him. To stand at the head of so outstanding a body is, after all, to be an outstanding man oneself.
"Myeong, second son of the Dancheon Sword Clan."
"So I finally meet the Great Hero of Dancheon, whose name has been on every tongue of late."
"You flatter me."
The Medical Hall Master of the Head Chapter — a rising heavyweight whose elevation to Seven-Knot elder was treated as a matter of time — Uisaeng-gae knew his courtesies, most un-beggar-like of him.
"How does it look?"
At my question, Uisaeng-gae's gaze swept across Hwanragwon. That smoldering light in his eyes remained a striking thing.
"Of the nineteen spiritual herbs required for the brewing of the Chwigu-hwan, I have found fourteen."
Uisaeng-gae's role on this expedition had been none other than sorting and gathering the Chwigu-hwan's ingredients here in Hwanragwon. It was why Chwipung-gae and I had begged the honor of the Medical Hall Master's presence in the first place.
I, too, had studied spiritual herbs and medicinal plants at length — near enough to call myself an expert. Skilled enough to play the herb-hunting mountain hermit without breaking a sweat, at any rate. Living in the Beggars' Gang, that treasure vault of information, while taking up the Yakseon Heart Decision in preparation for my regression had seen to that.
But I also knew that Uisaeng-gae was the greater expert still. Partly because I knew him to be one of the precious few who had received the full transmission of the Chwigu-hwan's refinement method as Medical Hall Master of the Head Chapter. If the pill was to be made, better by far that the man who would brew it inspect the ingredients.
"As for the five that are missing — that is simply a matter of vegetation; they are species that cannot grow in northern climes or mountain terrain. Truth be told, a spiritual herb colony of this scale is a first for me. The scale is one thing, but the variety is vast beyond belief. If such an ecosystem could be wrought by human hands..."
Uisaeng-gae had gone on talking unasked, his face flushed crimson with excitement. Not coveting a trove of spiritual herbs for its worth, but thrilling at a medical discovery — as expected, that beggar, too, was no ordinary beggar.
I would gladly have indulged his rapture, but time was not so plentiful.
"And what are we to do about the ones we lack?"
Five species of spiritual herb is no small shortfall. A solution would have to be found.
"Hmm. That is indeed the question. I have no idea."
"Hm."
Alas, the Medical Hall Master Uisaeng-gae was a fool who knew nothing in this world but medicine.
Then —
"There is a way for all things."
A voice of salvation. It was Musan-gae, the Dragon Head Sect Leader.
"Secure enough herbs of comparable grade, and we can trade one for another."
A proposal to put the Gang's networks of men and materiel to work. Coin can hardly buy spiritual herbs, but trading herb for herb is less trouble than one might think — provided one can borrow the Beggars' Gang's vast web of information.
"My thanks."
It was, in truth, an offer made lightly by a man of his standing — all the more reason to give thanks where thanks were due.
I turned my gaze and found Alliance Leader Yeom Gi-ha wearing an expression of magnificent boredom. Commanding the alliance's members was Paeng Ga-heon's share, and so the Leader was at present no different from a barley sack the mice had abandoned — idle through and through.
I understood his state of mind. Setting aside singular cases like the Ten-Thousand-Year Supreme Blood Treasure, a spiritual herb was to Yeom Gi-ha no different from any roadside weed — all the more so for a man who stood wholly above money.
"Alliance Leader, come here a moment."
"What do you call me for?"
Sensing, perhaps, that something amusing was afoot, the Leader came trotting over at once.
The Leader, Musan-gae, and I — the representatives whose word could bind each party's interests had gathered anew. Before the moment passed, I laid out the heart of the matter.
"Now, let us negotiate."
"Hm."
"Ahem."
There is one fact that must not be forgotten: the original discoverers of this Hwanragwon were none other than Chun-baek and me. For the peace and future of the Jianghu, it is right that Hwanragwon's herbs flow to the Murim Alliance — but that is not the same as saying I intend to surrender my rights.
The Murim Alliance Leader, Tyrant Emperor Yeom Gi-ha. He did not care for negotiation.
The reason, in short, is that negotiation is conducted with words. To a man who had always obtained what he wanted by beating down whoever displeased him, the practice of asserting one's rights through glib talk registered as tedious and inefficient in equal measure.
The strong beat down the weak and seize the treasure — but the strong, being men who understand honor and cooperation, divide out a fair share for the weak. That was Yeom Gi-ha's idea of justice, of fair distribution. In such a process there was no room for sly schemes like negotiation to intrude. At least, the Yeom Gi-ha of his youth had believed so.
But Yeom Gi-ha, having become the Murim Alliance Leader, had reached an age at which he knew that not all the world's affairs could be settled by force. By his own measure it was a compromise with the ways of the world, but there was no other road. That, presumably, was how a man grew into an adult.
In any case, dispatching Yeom Gi-ha as the man in charge of Hwanragwon meant he would have to sit at the negotiating table, and so Singija had seized the sulking Leader and drilled him mercilessly in the art of negotiation.
"Yeom Gi-ha."
"What?"
"Young Master Myeong will almost certainly concede the Beggars' Gang first pick of the Chwigu-hwan's ingredients. The Gang will covet nothing beyond those ingredients, so there will be no grounds for dispute."
"Ki-ja, since when were you a fortune-teller?"
"Silence. Commit it to memory."
"Aye."
Setting his reverie aside, Dancheon Myeong put the very question to the beggars of the Beggars' Gang. As though the two had rehearsed it beforehand, it matched Singija's briefing word for word.
"Would first pick of the Chwigu-hwan's ingredients suffice for the Beggars' Gang?"
"That will be quite sufficient."
Medical Hall Master Uisaeng-gae answered, visibly satisfied.
"Good."
That the exacting old Musan-gae did not so much as quibble meant the proposal was fair beyond dispute.
"Then what will the Beggars' Gang give Myeong?"
"Most likely two pills of the Chwigu-hwan and an honorary branch post."
"An honorary branch post?"
"By my prediction, authority equivalent to a Fourth-Knot Protector."
"The Beggars' Gang shall give you two pills of the Chwigu-hwan."
Once again Singija's forecast had landed true, and Yeom Gi-ha swallowed the startled gasp rising in his chest.
But then, the current began to bend toward a direction no one had foreseen.
For it was Chwipung-gae who had cut into Musan-gae's negotiation. A development unforeseen even by Singija, the finest mastermind in all the Jianghu.