The Secret Of Poyang County

A shiver went through Yu Seong. What a magnificent thing to say. Flat, ordinary lines that opened with ‘Die’ or ‘I will kill you’ had never stirred anything in him. For a long time now he had understood death as one more phenomenon of nature, and now here was a man whose thinking agreed with his own to a fair degree.

“Ah!”

— Fwing-fwing-fwing-fwing-fwing!

The beads that had hung in the air shot like light at the Demonic Cult fellows with their fiends’ faces.

— Thock-thock-thock-thock-thock!

The Demonic Cult fellows sagged with their foreheads holed through, like wooden puppets with their strings cut. He could not keep back a cry of wonder.

“Beautiful!”

Yu Seong had shouted it aloud before he knew it.

“O evil! Return to nature!”

He looked at the scholar with the eyes of a believer worshipping the leader of a bogus cult. The Demonic Cult warriors had made up their minds to die, but once the scholar’s beads broke that resolve their will to fight crumbled all too easily.

“Hyeoncheon Asura Corps — charge and annihilate the enemy!”

The Ilji Sect’s warriors blocked off the Demonic Cult warriors who came rushing in at the rear looking for mutual destruction, so losses among the warriors of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps, the Ilji Sect and the Hohyeon Estate were very light indeed. And with the scholar still sending beads out to bore holes in the foreheads of the Demonic Cult’s masters, there was no great danger. Within the hour the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps and Yu Seong had cleanly finished off what was left of the Sacred Heaven Iron-Blood Corps.

“The mine must be taken over.”

Cheon Tae-san said to Gwanryong Jin.

“Our Corps will go.”

“Send word once you have taken the mine over.”

Cheon Tae-san confirmed the mine’s location and sent the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps off at once.

Myeong U-jong ran his eyes over the magistrate and the officials kneeling in the government office.

Yu Seong’s Slaughter Star had evidently not settled yet. He spoke to Cheon Tae-san.

“Shall I kill this lot as well? They are the Demonic Cult’s stooges, are they not? I can do it cleanly.”

“Every one of these people cooperated with the Demonic Cult under a seal. More looking into is needed.”

“A seal?”

Myeong U-jong answered.

“When I pressed them, most of the officials said they had swallowed the Demonic Cult’s gu poison. That is why until now they have had no choice but to obey whatever they were told.”

Hohyeon Byeok asked Myeong U-jong.

“Have you confirmed whether my elder brother is alive or dead?”

Myeong U-jong broke into a grin.

“Of course. Wait just a little.”

Before long Myeong U-jong’s escort warriors came into the great hall of the government office supporting a man between them.

“El— Elder brother!”

The gaunt man looked at Hohyeon Byeok and smiled.

“So my brother has come.”

“Elder brother!”

Hohyeon Byeok could not hold the rush of feeling back and threw his arms around Hohyeon Jun.

“Hahaha. You rascal.”

Hohyeon Jun looked at Myeong U-jong and grinned.

“So you have come, U-jong. Whoever else might not, I thought you would come looking for me.”

“What made you think so? Because I am your sworn brother?”

“Nothing of the sort. Have I not a hundred taels borrowed from you? A man as fond of money as you are, I knew you would hunt me down if only to get it back.”

“Confound it! You still remember that! Let us call it square against my saving you today.”

“That will not do. Have you forgotten the time I saved you? Even setting that against it, a hundred taels are still outstanding.”

“Bwahahaha! Exact as ever. If only to collect it, I had to find you without fail. To be sure.”

Listening to the two of them talk their idle nonsense, Cheon Tae-san smiled without meaning to.

To have a friend you believe would come and save you when your life is in danger — that is a fine thing indeed.

The night had been wild with blood and screaming; now it let out a groan and slowly deepened.

“Uwaaaaagh!”

One of the officials suddenly began bleeding from the seven orifices and dying. People crowded round.

“What has happened?”

Myeong U-jong had gathered the officials apart and was in the middle of questioning them.

A troubled look crossed his face as he answered.

“The Demonic Cult fellows fed gu poison to every one of the officials, and this one died as it was being taken out.”

One of Myeong U-jong’s escort warriors had been drawing the gu out of the official’s body with true qi, and as the gu died its venom spread.

Gwanryong Jin spoke in a grave tone.

“If the gu cannot be drawn out with true qi, how is it to be drawn out?”

Yu Seong took him up indifferently.

“Then they live like that, and when the gu dies they can only die along with it.”

It reacted to true qi and died, so there was nothing to be done.

The magistrate of Poyang County caught at the leg of Myeong U-jong’s trousers.

“S— Save me. Censor.”

To live with a gu in your body that might die at any moment was nothing short of hell. The officials threw themselves down and pleaded as though wailing at a funeral. But Myeong U-jong had no way of his own either.

It was my turn to step forward.

“I think I may be able to find a way.”

Myeong U-jong’s face lit up.

“Is that so? How?”

“Let me check first, and then I shall tell you.”

I called one of the officials over. The official was dragged to me like an ox to the slaughter.

“This is only a moment’s checking, so do not be frightened.”

I checked the official’s blood flow and sensed, inside their body, an object foreign to that flow.

So this thing is the gu.

I sensed the gu’s own blood flow and breathed spirit energy into it. The gu took my spirit energy in easily.

Now that is a curious thing. It puts up no resistance at all. Is it because spirit energy is the foundation a living creature is built on?

Once I had grasped the gu’s blood flow, putting spirit energy into it produced no particular ill effect. Which of course set me thinking.

“I think I can draw the gu out.”

“Form a single line.”

When morning broke I gathered the magistrate and the officials at once to take the gu out. The trouble was that there was no telling where the thing had hidden itself. It might sit in the brain; it might sit in the lungs, or in the large intestine. A gu will settle wherever it likes. Wherever a substance foreign to the blood flow showed itself, that was the gu.

I laid my palm on the place where I judged the gu to be and breathed spirit energy in. Once it answered the spirit energy, drawing it out of the body was not difficult. When a gu the size of a pine caterpillar came squirming out of a nostril, even my own stomach turned.

“Whoa, boil this and it would be good eating.”

Yu Seong seemed to mean it in earnest, but it brought the gorge up in anyone who heard it. Thinking it over, there were still precious few normal fellows anywhere about me.

“Elder brother. How is it that you draw the gu out?”

I stared blankly at the fellow glued to my side calling me elder brother.

It was Yu Seong.

“Since when have I been Young Hero Yu’s elder brother?”

“If we have fought the night through with our lives on the line, we are comrades — brothers, are we not! Is it not so? Elder brother.”

“I do not think one night’s fighting together earns a man the word elder brother.”

“Come, there is the saying, is there not. That even in a single night the Great Wall gets built. And a single night spent fighting side by side — surely that is more than building the Great Wall?¹”

“I do not think that is a saying to be brought in here.”

I got away from Yu Seong and went to find Myeong U-jong. Once I had taken the gu out of the magistrate and the officials, he set about hearing their reports.

“This much is surely enough to have troops dispatched here. Magistrate, request military support from the Regional Military Commissioner at once.”

“Understood, Censor.”

“And though you say the gu was held over you, the burden of evil deeds you have piled up is too great. You will have to take your punishment for it.”

“We know it.”

Myeong U-jong was showing them what an Investigating Censor was.

“We have secured the gold mine.”

The next day Gwanryong Jin came back to the Hohyeon Estate and reported.

“A gold mine after all — no wonder the Demonic Cult fellows kicked up all that filthy fuss.”

Mak Ji-mong muttered when he heard the report.

Myeong U-jong said to Mak Ji-mong.

“From this point the government service will take the gold mine over. We shall send government soldiers, so kindly withdraw all the Hyeoncheon Sect’s warriors.”

Mak Ji-mong’s eyes went round.

“What is this you are saying? Do you not know how many of the Hyeoncheon Sect’s people died holding the Hohyeon Estate and holding that gold mine?”

“Was that not done to help Scholar Cheon?”

“Come now, what talk is this? We helped Scholar Cheon and held the Hohyeon Estate. And in doing so we held the gold mine along with it. Had it not been for us, do you suppose the Demonic Cult fellows would have been driven off at all?”

Myeong U-jong’s face creased into a frown.

“Was this what you were after?”

“After, indeed — when the thing was done out of pure goodwill.”

“No wonder. There was a reason after all for sending so great a force along with Scholar Cheon. Is this the Hyeoncheon Sect leader’s will?”

Myeong U-jong seemed to have grasped clearly how matters had stood all along. In sending the Hyeoncheon Sect’s elite, and in sending his own son and daughter along with Scholar Cheon, the sect leader had held even a situation like this in view.

He asked me.

“Did you foresee this outcome?”

“I had a dim idea of it.”

“And knowing it you kept still?”

“Whatever it was the Demonic Cult fellows were after, my friend’s life came first with me. I could not take the Demonic Cult on alone, and so I did not refuse the sect leader’s help. Had it been for some reason other than the gold mine, the sect leader would have come away with nothing but a loss. That there was a gold mine at all — that I did not foresee either.”

“Hmmm…”

He let out a low groan and went on.

“Gold mines and salt are enterprises the state administers. Goods no private person and no single house may lay a hand on, is what I mean.”

“But there is such a thing as title, is there not? The ancestral burial ground is the Hohyeon Estate’s property, and the one that helped find what lay in it is the Hyeoncheon Sect.”

“You…”

He was looking at the gold mine from an official’s standpoint. I grinned.

“In cases like this I understand the government service divides the profit as well. Four parts in ten to the holder of the title, three to the one who works it, three to the local government service. There are a good many gold mines run on those terms.”

Myeong U-jong looked at me with perplexity in his eyes.

“You had better think it over carefully. What would happen if the government service declared it would hold the whole of the gold mine.”

Hohyeon Jun said to Myeong U-jong.

“U-jong, there is reason in what Scholar Cheon says too. We hold the title to the ancestral ground, but developing it and working it is another matter. We have no choice but to give the working rights to somebody else. And that being so, we have no choice but to hand them to the Hyeoncheon Sect, the overlords of Jiangxi. Otherwise this same business will happen all over again.”

He had read the state of things exactly. Hearing his friend out, Myeong U-jong settled his own mind as well, and seemed to have folded away the notion of the government service owning the whole of it.

“I shall have to take this matter up with the Surveillance Commissioner of Jiangxi. I will report the facts to the Provincial Administration Commission and the Provincial Surveillance Commission at once and try to arrange it.”

I said to Myeong U-jong.

“I will say this much: there is no knowing whether the Demonic Cult will take its hand off the gold mine now. There is no telling when or what the Demonic Cult may do to secure it. You must keep it well in mind that the government service’s strength alone cannot hold it.”

Myeong U-jong nodded.

“I take your meaning well enough.”

The Provincial Administration Commission held a province’s administrative authority, and the Provincial Surveillance Commission the judicial. Only with the approval of both could a gold mine be run on divided shares.

Mak Ji-mong said.

“Censor, we shall give you an escort of the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps’ elite.”

Myeong U-jong thought it over carefully and accepted. There was no knowing when the remnants of the Demonic Cult might attack, and with the Hyeoncheon Asura Corps’ warriors at his back it would be easier to explain matters to them.

“Until I come back, Jun, you take charge of Poyang County for the time being. You are not sound in body either — I am sorry for it.”

“Not at all. Apart from having been shut in a jail I am no worse for it. I am an Investigating Censor myself. Do not trouble yourself — go and see the business through. When do you leave?”

“The moment what I am waiting for arrives.”

“What are you waiting for?”

The words were hardly out before Myeong U-jong’s escort came up and spoke.

“Censor, they are back.”

“Come just in time. Wait a moment.”

Myeong U-jong went outside, met the escort and came back in.

“What is it that has you so serious?”

At Hohyeon Jun’s question Myeong U-jong explained.

“What I gave my escort orders about while I was at the Hyeoncheon Sect has come now. A very important thing it is, too.”

“What is it, then?”

Myeong U-jong held out a good-sized casket to me.

“Open it.”

When I opened the casket, two things came out of it.