The Dragon Iron League's League Leader.
Black Steed Wild Wave Spear, Cheong Ya.
Known as a man for whom it was hard to find a match in Lanzhou, he was a strong one who had risen from a wanderer to his present seat.
On the base of the Hell King Keep he had taken over a dozen and more inns in Lanzhou as businesses under him, and on the strength of that gold he had founded a place called the White Horse Trading Company, monopolizing various business rights such as estate protection and putting his heat into expanding his influence.
And then something came up that whetted his appetite.
LICK—
Wetting his dry lips with his tongue, he broke into a snickering laugh, heh heh.
“The Jaegal Clan's precious princess must have been aggrieved indeed. To let information about the change in White Spirit Wood's ownership flow openly to our side. Strip a dull-witted fool bare for me, is that it?”
The man prostrate before him was the one who had bought up the White Spirit Wood stock in partnership with Jaegal Rin not long ago.
Having once run a pleasure house in a decently sited spot, he had lost everything helping Jaegal Rin.
“He has brought usable news, so give him a meal and a drink and send him off. Having lost his whole fortune, how bitter he must feel.”
“The meal and drink are not necessary. League Leader, please take me into your service. I will serve you with all my heart.”
“Pavilion Master Wang, who lost his whole fortune to me, says he will serve me?”
“Yes!!”
“Ohaha.”
When Cheong Ya burst out laughing, the subordinates listening along with him roared with him.
But at some point Cheong Ya cut off his laughter and hardened his face, and the hall went quiet again.
Cheong Ya walked over with heavy steps and stood before the Pavilion Master.
“Then go to him and lure that so-called second son of the Golden Manor in properly. If after that you carry out the role of keeping him pinned at a drinking table, I shall bestow a great reward. Who knows? I might even give you back the pleasure house you lost.”
“I will do it!!! I will succeed without fail and earn the League Leader's favor!!”
“Yes, yes. Off you go.”
A while later, after the Pavilion Master had been dragged out, Cheong Ya opened his mouth toward his trusted man.
“When the time comes, get rid of that bastard where neither rat nor bird will know. Keeping him alive only turns him into a rotten tooth.”
“Yes, League Leader.”
“Ah, and gather every piece of information on that second son of the Golden Manor and prepare thoroughly. A hunt is only joyful in its harvest when you go at it with all your strength.”
Unlike what was commonly known.
The place where Cheong Ya had been born and raised was a parched desert, and he came of a band of bandits without blood or tears.
A vicious laugh filled the hall to its brim.
***
Not long after arriving in Lanzhou and taking rooms at an inn, a fellow by the name of Wang Baek came seeking me out.
“So you are the one who served the daughter of the Jaegal Clan's Clan Head?”
“Yes, Young Master. I am called Wang Baek. It is an honor to meet the stately Young Master Geon.”
“You seem to have a good many ears. Knowing who I am, and coming to me like this so soon after my arrival.”
“The Lady sent me word and charged me most earnestly, sir.”
“Charged you earnestly?”
“Yes. Her word was to serve you well and to give what help I could give.”
“Mm… help, is it. We are not close enough for me to be taking help from the Lady's people, surely?”
“Hahaha. Is that so?”
Wang Baek rolled his eyes.
I turned the subject to play along.
“I did hear there was a business partner who handled the small expenses for her, though. So what is your reason for coming to me? Do you mean to claim ownership of the White Spirit Wood?”
“Absolutely not. How could that be. It has been long since I took my hands off that business.”
“From what I hear, the Lady quit suddenly because her father so disapproved of her doing trade. Is that true?”
“Of course. It was quite bewildering, her stopping work in progress so abruptly. But you cannot know how glad I was to hear that you had newly purchased it, Young Master.”
Jaegal Rin, caught by my Soul-Seizing Art, must have explained me in fair detail by carrier pigeon.
Jaegal Rin's business partner, not knowing that I already knew the whole truth, was straining his entire body to deceive me.
In any case, a wicked woman is a wicked woman.
Not content with gaining a chance to recover her funds by stripping me bare, she even sends word to her partner to ruin me more viciously still.
Obvious enough without looking—
She clearly wanted to move the Dragon Iron League through this partner and set a further trap for me.
“Pardon? What do you mean by that?”
“I said the reason you came to me is obvious enough without looking.”
“…….”
“Your scheme is to ply me with drink, get into my good graces and then take on small tasks to earn a few coppers. Am I right?”
“Oh dear, what a thing to say….”
“Spare me the coyness. In any case, Lanzhou is new to me as well, so I'll leave the small matters to you. Let the owners of the medicine halls, martial arts academies, inns and pleasure houses in this area know that I hold the entire White Spirit Wood stock. I'll haggle the price after I've inspected the White Spirit Wood warehouse. The drinking comes after that.”
“Yes. I will move as you have charged me.”
Wang Baek wore a sly smile.
It was plainly the face of a man thinking, this bastard knows nothing at all about White Spirit Wood, what an innocent mark.
***
The western outskirts of Lanzhou.
The cold warehouse, with no sign of human presence, was being managed by wanderers hired by Jaegal Rin and a man who appeared to be Jaegal Rin's own hand directing them.
Perhaps having been sent word in advance, immediately after confirming my standing.
They took from me a written confirmation that I had received the White Spirit Wood and then vanished like an ebbing tide.
After that I instructed Seol Ha to guard the place and followed Wang Baek to the pleasure house he guided me to.
At the pleasure house, just as I had instructed, those interested in the White Spirit Wood had gathered.
But as expected, every one of them requested a purchase at a low price nowhere near what I had paid Jaegal Rin, and after some wrangling the gathering broke up.
Then, when I showed a suitable display of mounting rage, Wang Baek, who had been reading my face, opened his mouth heavily.
“Er… Young Master.”
“Shut your mouth and get out. Can you not see I have just been had by that Jaegal Clan wench? You knew too, didn't you. That the price of White Spirit Wood has gone to dung because of that damned herb. You knew it all and shoved the White Spirit Wood stock onto me!!”
“Absolutely not. Had I known I would have told you long since!! I am a man who wants to help with whatever you undertake in any way I can. Please believe me.”
Wang Baek, prostrating himself before me with a voice and gaze full of trust, quietly brought out his real intent when I stood a while saying nothing.
“I was wondering whether I might introduce one person to you. Would that be acceptable?”
“Who?”
“The owner who holds full authority over the land where White Spirit Wood grows in the first place. The head of the Dragon Iron League, Great Cheong Ya. With him, could you not recover at least a little of the loss you have suffered?”
“Take a loss but negotiate with him to reduce it, you mean?”
“If I have misspoken, my apologies….”
I glared at him a long while, then spoke.
“Bring him.”
“Pardon?”
“Bring him, I said. That League Leader of the Dragon Iron League or whatever he is!!”
At my shout Wang Baek hurried out of the room.
There was no chance I failed to see the smile that flickered across Wang Baek's face as he left.
With him gone from the room, I sat back down and calmly drained a cup of wine.
“Hmm, not bad.”
It seemed the time had come to twist the ending the men who meant to strip me bare had been looking forward to.
Plunder is not something the weak do.
***
The pleasure house where I sat grew strangely quiet.
Drunks deep in their cups.
The courtesans attending the drunks.
The tavern's staff carrying food.
The noise coming from all that crowd dwindled and then, around me, vanished.
Like birds fleeing at the sense of a disaster.
THUD, THUD, THUD.
At the same time someone opened the door of the room I was in and barged through.
“You sent for me, I hear?”
Through the opened door appeared a man with the cast of a wolf.
The escorts lined up behind the man had come with the smell of blood hidden under silk clothes.
“Are you the Dragon Iron League's League Leader?”
“I am the man called Cheong Ya.”
At my question Cheong Ya grinned.
“Most fellows wet themselves at the mere sight of my face, but your spirit is quite bold. The rumor that you lately smashed up some fairly famous prodigies would appear to be true.”
“Do you mean to keep talking from outside the door? It is uncomfortable to look at and uncomfortable to my mood both.”
“I shall come in. You lot stay here.”
Wang Baek, visible over his shoulder, remained outside the door with Cheong Ya's subordinates.
THUD—
The door shut and Cheong Ya sat down facing me. Setting the black spear in his hand beside the chair, Cheong Ya leaned back arrogantly.
“I heard your situation on the way. To be direct, I wish to buy that stock.”
I smiled brightly.
“Then the business is easy.”
“How much do you want?”
“About a cartload of gold plate.”
“What?”
Cheong Ya's face turned savage in an instant.
And no wonder, since a cartload of gold plate is an amount coming to about two gwan in gold chests.
It was an enormous sum, four times the amount Jaegal Rin had been defrauded of in the first place.
I had named money vast enough to buy a hundred fine horses in a single stroke.
It was likely a sum he could only produce by mortgaging not merely the funds he had squeezed out of Jaegal Rin but every one of his business premises.
“From Pavilion Master Wang Baek I heard you had already grasped Lanzhou's reality and were enraged. Is that not so?”
“So Wang Baek is the shill you keep? He played the hunting dog faithfully. But I have a fair number of eyes and ears myself.”
“…….”
“I happen to have learned that the Stone Ridge Herb you lot scattered about in order to fleece Jaegal Rin cannot replace White Spirit Wood.”
Cheong Ya's eyebrow twitched.
And no wonder.
The effects and side effects of the Stone Ridge Herb would not yet have been properly brought to light. The thing called Stone Ridge Herb was an herb discovered recently by Cheong Ya himself.
And however cleverly and basely Jaegal Rin conducted herself, she could not know everything outside her books.
But I am a demonic practitioner broadly learned in a great many things about the future.
“Something of this order. It is hardly worth such surprise.”
“Before long it will be about time word comes out that the Stone Ridge Herb you scattered has no effect, unlike White Spirit Wood. Then the people seeking White Spirit Wood will grow many again, and the one holding the White Spirit Wood stock is none but me.”
I drew a piece of White Spirit Wood bark from inside my robes and chewed it like an ox.
“Nutty. One would forget an endemic sickness in no time.”
“Where on earth you heard such talk I do not know, but if I do not take the White Spirit Wood stock now, you will go home penniless. There is no one on this soil who does not read my face. Which means that unless you wish to grate on me, there will be no one to buy White Spirit Wood from you.”
“So now you will threaten me outright?”
“The Golden Manor is a merchant house, not a martial house, is it not? Besides, with no just grounds, there is no one who will treat me lightly on Lanzhou soil.”
“Because you are a powerful master who holds Lanzhou in his grip?”
“You know it well.”
When I stayed silent, Cheong Ya took up the wine bottle whole, drained it in one go and added.
“Let us wait and see what happens from here on.”
“That seems a thing better worried about right now. You must have thought it was your own intent that kept me in this place until now.”
“What are you….”
“Which is easier to tidy up? You, tucked away tight in your innermost sanctum directing subordinates while the soil of Lanzhou is made noisy? Or calling you here.”
“!?”
“Don't even scream. It will be over soon.”
Drawing the sword I had leaned beside me took an instant.
Cheong Ya's head was separated from his neck in that instant.
A flash of lodestone qi bloomed from the tip of my sword.
His losing move was but one.
That he had not seen himself, seated in this place, as the weak one.
Passing by him, dead without even managing a scream, I called in the hands and feet of his who would be outside.
“Oi, all of you come in. The situation's finished.”
Through the voice-changing art, Cheong Ya's voice flowed from my mouth in an instant.
Not knowing it was I who had called, they came trotting into the room.