Even Theft Needs Teamwork (2)

This time, it really was a normal situation.

Men who looked like bandits, a smashed carriage, and in front of it two frail girls clinging to each other, trembling….

Now this was the kind of scene that made rescuing someone feel worthwhile.

“Stop.”

Cheong Yeon stepped forward before Neung Je-gang did.

“Who are you?”

“What bastard are you?”

The bandits shouted at Cheong Yeon—then their faces twitched with fear. Cheong Yeon stood there with his robe-flaps fluttering in the wind, a sword in hand, and the posture of a master seeped from him in thick waves.

“If you retreat now, I’ll spare your lives.”

As if he had practiced from storybooks, a smooth line flowed from Cheong Yeon’s lips.

At his words, the bandits wavered. If they weren’t proper Green Forest Outlaws, they were the kind of third-rate fighters who barely knew how to hold a weapon. So they knew well that if someone looked like a martial artist, the way to live was to avoid them.

The problem was that if they let this job go, their families up on the mountain would starve. When would another easy target pass by?

Their back-and-forth—run, no, fight—was loud enough that even Neung Je-gang and Cheong Yeon could hear it all.

To Neung Je-gang’s eye, they were bandits who didn’t even have decent gear. Only five of them had actual blades; the rest clutched farm tools like clubs and hoes.

Some even carried sickles, but without proper care—rust clung to them so thickly it looked ready to flake off in red chunks.

If possible, Neung Je-gang wanted to send them back without violence. If he shoved a little money into their hands and told them to go, they would probably turn around at once.

While Cheong Yeon was holding the atmosphere in place, Neung Je-gang walked toward the broken carriage. The “bandits” didn’t even notice him passing right beside them, too focused on Cheong Yeon.

“Are you all right?”

“P-please save us.”

A girl who looked like a maid cried out to Neung Je-gang in a trembling voice.

“Don’t worry. Those bandits won’t be able to do anything. But you didn’t know there were bandits here? How did only you come?”

“There weren’t any bandits here. But the coachman….”

“The coachman?”

“Yes. The coachman was one of them.”

At that, Neung Je-gang felt something turn strange in his chest. If the bandits and the coachman were in on it together, that meant they moved as an organized group. But no matter how he looked, they didn’t seem to have that kind of means.

“Was the coachman someone you hadn’t seen before?”

“No. The coachman and those people—we know them all.”

Neung Je-gang couldn’t make sense of it. So the victims and the “bandits” all knew each other.

“You came without any escort guards, just because the coachman told you to?”

“Th-the escort guards ran away. There were four of them, and they didn’t even try to fight….”

That was strange too. Even a third-rate escort guard would have learned proper martial arts. If there were four of them, they should have been more than enough to protect two girls from a ragtag band.

‘Were the escort guards in on it too?’

If so, their “running away” finally made sense.

“Cheong Yeon!”

“Yes?”

“Don’t harm them. There seems to be some story behind this.”

“Understood.”

The bandits saw yet another man appear from nowhere and calmly exchange words with the girls they had “caught,” and their spirit collapsed. They didn’t even feel confident against one—if there were two, it was hopeless.

“If you just let us go, we won’t do anything.”

The most solid-looking man with a sword stepped up as their representative.

But Neung Je-gang wanted to know why this had happened.

“From what I hear, you all seem to know each other. May I ask why you’re doing this?”

“Well… it’s all because of that pig of a father. We just wanted to take back what that bastard stole from us, but….”

“Stole?”

Once the words started, the “bandits”—farmers in disguise—poured out their grievances one after another. Sometimes, just having someone listen was enough to loosen a tight chest.

After hearing them out, Neung Je-gang looked at the two girls. The one who seemed to be the young lady still couldn’t lift her face. Even the maid-girl who had screamed for help turned her head away uneasily.

From their reactions, the farmers’ words didn’t seem like lies. Still, in any matter, you couldn’t know what was true until you heard both sides.

“Is what they said true?”

“I-it is, but my lady did nothing wrong.”

“Hebei Paeng Clan—was that true as well?”

“O-of course. It’s true.”

The maid insisted it was.

“No. Sir, don’t be fooled. That household has nothing to do with the Hebei Paeng Clan. They’re just using the fact their surname is Paeng to claim they’re the same clan, trying to swallow the village as their own.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, come on! We’ve lived in the same village for decades. How could we not know?”

“You were that certain, and yet the authorities pretended not to see?”

“That’s right, sir.”

The farmers seemed to have decided that since things had come this far, they would cling to Neung Je-gang and Cheong Yeon and gamble on them.

The case itself was simple. A Paeng household, greedy for the village’s land, exploited their shared surname to pose as a cadet branch of the Hebei Paeng Clan, then—with the authorities’ help—registered farmland that wasn’t recorded in the land ledger as their own.

Land not recorded in the ledger meant wasteland. Ownerless land—no, land whose owner was the state itself. If you reclaimed such land and farmed it, the state acknowledged part of that effort and granted you the right to cultivate it. You only needed to pay a set amount of tax.

But these people had dressed themselves up as relatives of an influential house, colluded with officials, and seized it all. The farmers had barely reclaimed the land and finally thought they could live—only to be told it was “owned land” and they had to leave. All they had left was resentment.

“So you can become rich that way.”

Cheong Yeon said it like he’d learned something new.

“What, you want to try it once?”

“Haha. No way.”

“No—let’s try it once.”

“…What?”

“Doing it the same way will be hard, but we can still find another way to recover what they lost.”

“Are you saying we should steal?”

“Then do you have a better method?”

“B-but stealing….”

“Then how will you get back what they lost?”

“Report it to the authorities, or….”

“Sure, that would work. But how long would it take? The local authorities are accomplices, so they’ll pretend not to hear us. If we want to mobilize the connections we have, we’d have to go back to Beijing—and how will these people live in the meantime? And even if we go to Beijing and speak well, how long will it take to investigate the facts and restore what was wrongly taken? In the meantime, they could starve to death.”

“…….”

“Well? Now do you finally regret quitting the Eastern Depot?”

“……Are you provoking me?”

“Working for the people isn’t something you accomplish just by beating up bandits. Often, the ones who torment the people are right there beside them—like this. The reason I tried so hard to get you back into the Eastern Depot was because I know you can’t act like me or Ma-jil. That’s why I said the Eastern Depot was your calling.”

“Was that so?”

“So—do you feel like stealing a little now?”

“…….”

“Haha. At times like this, it’d be nice if you were a bit more like Ma-jil. That bastard would probably burn Paeng’s house down to the ground.”

After saying that, Neung Je-gang went to the farmers and spoke to them. Feeling for their plight, he also gave them money—plenty of it. With that, they could avoid starving for a while.

Then he returned to Cheong Yeon. In front of them, the two girls stared with frightened eyes.

“You’ll go back to the village.”

“Ah…!”

The girls let out breaths of relief.

“We’ll escort you as far as the village, so lead the way.”

“Thank you.”

The maid supported her young lady and began walking.

He didn’t know how far the village was, but following them on foot looked like it was going to be a very dull road.