The Monk in the Secret Room
Jincheol, who was following right behind me, also recognized the man's face and flinched, his shoulders tensing instantly. His hand instinctively drifted toward the dagger concealed at his waist. Without breaking my stride, I reached back and gripped his wrist firmly. I tucked my chin deep into my chest, bowing my head so that my battered felt hat completely obscured my face.
Keep walking naturally, I commanded silently as we brushed past him.
"Hurry up! Shove them inside, quickly!" the man's sharp voice barked, ringing right in my ears. My heart hammered against my ribs, but I controlled my breathing and kept moving forward in silence. Thanks to the thick sea fog and my wretched naval soldier's uniform, he didn't give me a second glance. To him, I was just another faceless laborer.
Once out of his line of sight, we slipped down the narrow, steep ladder leading into the ship's deepest hold.
"Phew..." Jincheol let out a long, pent-up breath as he stepped down behind me. I relaxed my tense shoulders and scanned the interior of the hold.
Lit only by a few flickering oil lamps, the hold was surprisingly spacious. Half of the area was piled high with Joseon rice sacks. But it was the other half that caught my eye—and it wasn't filled with grain.
Massive paulownia wood chests were stacked tightly against the dark wooden hull. One of the chests had its lid propped open, revealing a mountain of Japanese silver ingots, all cast to a uniform size. This was the staggering fortune amassed from selling twenty thousand seok of rice on the high seas. Beside the silver lay bolts of Ming Dynasty silk and crates of exotic spices.
"If you're done unloading, get back up to the deck!" another soldier barked from deeper inside. The other laborers, carrying empty A-frame packs, hurried back toward the ladder. I grabbed Jincheol by the sleeve and pulled him into a narrow gap between the towering stacks of silk crates.
Crouching low and holding our breath, we watched the laborers' footsteps fade away. Soon, hushed voices began to drift from a secluded corner of the hold.
"The cargo on this side is almost fully loaded." It was the voice of the military officer from the deck. He had slipped down into a secret cabin at the back of the hold. I carefully peered through a crack between the silk crates.
Inside the dimly lit cabin, the officer was bowing obsequiously to someone. Given how low a military man was scraping, I had assumed his counterpart would be a powerful Ming merchant guild leader or a Japanese pirate chieftain. But when I saw the figure sipping tea across from him, my eyes narrowed.
The man wore a grey monastic robe, with a thick string of Buddhist prayer beads draped around his neck. He was a monk. In the most secretive cabin of a foreign trade vessel floating in the middle of the ocean sat a disciple of the Buddha. And he wasn't alone; three or four burly, armed monks stood guard at the cabin entrance.
"You have done well," the elderly monk said, his voice heavy as he set down his teacup. "The amount of silver brought in this time is quite substantial. The quality of the silk from the Ming is also superb."
"Yes, Great Master. Our naval headquarters has been launching ships day and night to support the grand vision of our superiors," the officer groveled, pulling a thick ledger from his robes and placing it on the table. It was undoubtedly an inventory listing the quantities and details of the smuggled goods.
The old monk nodded. "We are well aware of the naval headquarters' loyalty. These riches will be transported to the temple tomorrow night without a single discrepancy."
"But, Great Master," the officer whispered, casting a wary glance around the room. "Rumor has it that an auditor from Hanyang recently descended upon Asan in Chungcheong Province and raided one of our merchant inns. If the inland rice routes are severed, the sea routes will eventually be compromised as well. While it is important to look after the high officials in Hanyang, you must also guarantee the safety of our naval headquarters..."
Clack! The old monk slammed his teacup onto the table. A menacing aura, entirely unbecoming of a holy man, erupted from him.
"Watch your tongue," he hissed. The officer flinched, shrinking back at the monk's low, icy tone.
"Do you have any idea how anxious 'His Grace' is because the King refuses to bend his stubborn will?"
"O-of course, this lowly servant understands the gravity of the situation. I only fear that the provincial government office might catch wind of this..."
"Because the Chief State Councillor ultimately yielded to His Majesty's wishes and passed the new tax law, the land and slaves of every noble family in this country are about to be stripped away! If we want to neutralize that law immediately and bind the court ministers to our side, we cannot afford to waste time worrying about the provincial office!"
The conversation was brief, but the fragments of information they angrily spat out clicked together in my mind like a massive puzzle.
The Chief State Councillor. The passage of the new tax law. It was the Gongbeop, King Sejong's landmark tax reform, which I had forced through ahead of historical schedule by cornering Lord Hwang Hui. The reform, which standardized agricultural taxes based on land fertility and size, was an absolute catastrophe for the ruling elite who owned vast tracts of land and countless slaves. Now that the law had passed, those driven to the edge were making their desperate final stand.
This mountain of silver ingots was a massive political slush fund, orchestrated by the highest echelons of Hanyang. Its purpose was to neutralize the newly passed Gongbeop, disrupt its implementation by local magistrates, and buy off the noble class.
"Our temple is not a place where mere provincial constables can barge in as they please. It is a Wondang, a royal shrine dedicated to praying for the prosperity of the royal family," the old monk added. "Even the provincial governor would not dare desecrate a sanctuary of the royal elders. Once the silver enters the vaults beneath the Wondang, no one will ever be able to trace it. So cease your useless worrying and ensure the transaction proceeds without a hitch."
"Yes, yes. I understand." Hearing the old monk rise, I gripped Jincheol's shoulder and backed away. We had confirmed everything we needed to.
Even if we stormed the cabin and subdued them right now, we had no way to safely transport this massive hoard of silver back to land from the middle of the sea, nor did we have enough leverage to expose the masterminds behind them. The true tiger's den was not this ship, but the temple where the silver would ultimately flow.
We silently slipped out from between the silk crates and blended into the rear of the crowd of laborers heading back up to the deck.
"Hurry up and get on! Dawn is breaking!" The deck was a chaotic mess of conscripted laborers scrambling back to their fishing boats. Evading the officer's gaze, we safely boarded our battered rowboat and took up the oars. Soon, the mooring ropes were cast off from the trade vessel, and the empty boats turned back toward the mainland in unison. Looking back at the massive ship receding into the distance, I caught my breath.
"We move the moment we hit land," I murmured to Jincheol, who was pulling hard on the oars. "If Scholar Han tracked the path of the unloaded goods correctly, their destination must be that temple."
Returning to the port of Yeosu, we used the chaos of the bustling docks to slip away from the crowd of laborers. Behind a cluster of rocks on a deserted stretch of the shore, Han Myeong-hoe and Gaetdong-i, whom we had left behind on land, were waiting with anxious faces.
"My lord! You returned safely!" Han Myeong-hoe rushed to my side.
"How did it go?" I asked. "Did you keep watch over the route where the goods were being moved, as I instructed?"
"Yes. Just as you predicted, my lord, they began unloading the cargo the moment their boats touched the shore. However, the goods were not taken to the naval headquarters' warehouses. Instead, they were loaded onto waiting wagons and immediately transported inland." Han Myeong-hoe pulled out his folding fan, snapping it open with a smirk.
"The guards were so heavily armed and vigilant that I could not follow them to the end, but I managed to spot some highly intriguing clues. Every single one of those heavy wagons had thick iron bands reinforcing the wheels, and the horses were shod with rough mountain horseshoes meant for rugged terrain. Furthermore, the escorting officers had dried meat and rations strapped to their saddles—enough to last at least a fortnight."
A quiet murmur of admiration escaped my lips. "So they aren't planning to travel across the flat plains of Jeolla Province."
"Indeed. If they intended to hide the goods within Yeosu or somewhere in Jeolla Province, they would have had no reason to prepare so heavily for a mountain trek. Judging by the direction they took and their rigorous preparations, they are almost certainly crossing the rugged mountain ranges to head deep into the interior of Gyeongsang Province." I nodded at Han Myeong-hoe's sharp deduction.
Gyeongsang Province. Gyeongsang was one of the strongholds of Buddhism, where ancient, powerful temples had been rooted deep within the mountain ranges for centuries. It was also a strategic hub where the waterways and land routes of the Yeongnam region converged. There was no better place to hide and launder the massive hoard of silver ingots gained from selling tens of thousands of seok of rice than the extraterritorial sanctuaries nestled deep in the mountains of Gyeongsang Province, far beyond the reach of local magistrates.
"The navy has been using the sea to amass a fortune in silver, then smuggling it into a temple," I explained. "It is a bribery fund meant to manipulate the ministers in Hanyang who are trying to block His Majesty's Gongbeop." Han Myeong-hoe's jaw dropped.
"Are you saying they mobilized the military and monks to engage in smuggling just to block a single tax reform?"
"The greed of those who refuse to surrender what they own always defies imagination. They have a powerful backer protecting them, which is why they dare to use a temple as their personal vault." I stood up. "We are going to Gyeongsang Province."
At my brief command, Jincheol took his sword from Gaetdong-i and strapped it to his waist, while Gaetdong-i tightly secured the bundle containing our ledgers.
"We need to find out which of the royal Wondang in Gyeongsang Province has expanded most aggressively over the past few years under the pretext of reconstruction."
"What? A Wondang?" Han Myeong-hoe gasped, his face turning pale with shock. "My lord, a Wondang is a sanctuary of sanctuaries, dedicated to praying for the well-being of the King and the royal elders! If we touch that place, we will turn the entire royal clan against us!" Despite his panic, I merely stared with cold eyes toward the rugged mountain ranges of Gyeongsang Province, now painted red by the rising dawn.