Handing Down A Judgment

It was the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s plaque, the one Myeong U-jong had commissioned for me some while back.

The government soldier took one look at it, started in astonishment, and went inside, coming back out with the office’s recorder. The recorder had charge of the county’s accounts and knew the seals of the government service better than any man alive, which was why he had been fetched to verify it. I handed the plaque over, and he turned it this way and that, then clasped his hands and bowed to me.

“W-welcome, sir. Cove—”

“Shh!”

I laid my forefinger upright against my lips, and the recorder shut his mouth. The plaque I had been given passed properly only in the Jiangxi region, but that did not mean it carried no weight anywhere else.

While the government soldier and the county recorder floundered at the sight of it, the party, none the wiser, looked at one another.

“E-elder brother. What in the world is your real identity? Surely you are not some kind of secret envoy from the imperial palace, or a secret master?”

I scolded Paeng So-un.

“Young Hero Paeng, have you not been steeping yourself rather too deeply in hero-tales?”

“Then what is it? Let me have a look at it too.”

At Paeng So-un’s words every eye fastened at once on my hand.

“Come now, it is an exceedingly private matter. Pay it no mind.”

I put the plaque away in my robe again and had done with it. The others were all left with faces lost in thoughts of their own.

I went into the county office with the recorder to guide me. He reported to the magistrate, then came back out and said.

“You cannot all go in. Only two of you may enter.”

Seeing the eager eyes of the ones who wanted to go in with me, I let out a snort of laughter. To them it was an important matter in its own way. When a rising talent comes by his fame, anecdotes like this all become the talk of the day.

“Young Hero Paeng, come in with me.”

Bringing in the one among them who followed me most closely was only human nature. Singled out, Paeng So-un leapt in the air for joy; he could not quite bring himself to laugh out loud, and beamed all over his face instead.

There was another reason as well. When I disclosed my standing to the magistrate, letting Paeng So-un hear it was safer than exposing it to the others.

“Let us go in.”

When I went in with Paeng So-un in attendance, the magistrate rose from his seat.

“Welcome. May I see the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s plaque?”

I handed the plaque over and said.

“In truth it is a Jiangxi Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s plaque.”

“And even so you will have a reason for asking to see me?”

I explained to the magistrate the plan the Demonic Cult was contriving.

“This is a thing I have been investigating, so I know it well. And we too have fought that band of Demonic Cult men.”

The magistrate heard me out and dipped his chin.

“So that was it — they meant to throw the country into confusion with a design as deep as this.”

“That is so. They have scattered Demonic Cult martial arts across Hunan in this fashion. And if you take them all in as Demonic Cult men, in the end you move exactly as the Demonic Cult wishes.”

“Four days ago I had some ten of them beheaded, to make an example.”

The magistrate said it with a stricken look. His zeal to take in Demonic Cult men and avenge the Kunlun Sect had brought on a bloodbath.

I said.

“What is done is done, so bring it to a decent close; and if you release the people taken in today, I think they will be grateful for it.”

“I wonder whether it is not too late already.”

“Late as it may be, there is no time like the present. It must be put in hand this very day.”

“Understood. I shall follow the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s order.”

This trouble, I thought, would not be Gojang County’s alone. Still, the magistrate was not a man to dig his heels in, and thanks to that it seemed the business could be brought to a good close. Not every magistrate would be like the one at Gojang County.

This is trouble. It is not a matter of the murim alone.

The magistrate asked.

“What is the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s honored name? I must send up a memorial reporting this state of things and put a stop to the disaster.”

“My name is Cheon Tae-san.”

I gave the magistrate my name and came out.

Paeng So-un looked at me with eyes full of envy and muttered.

“Elder brother, are you mixed up in the scholar-gentry, the government service and the murim all at once? What in the world is your real identity?”

“I would rather Young Hero Paeng did not let out my standing to the others. It is nothing much, but I have no wish to be talked about over a thing like this.”

“Understood. I shall follow the Covert Surveillance Commissioner’s order.”

“Come now, what is all this now?”

Just then the recorder came up and reported to the magistrate.

“A report for the magistrate. Two men have come with a gold ingot, each insisting it is his own, and the magistrate’s wise judgment is needed.”

The Demonic Cult business had the magistrate’s head aching as it was, but the thing had to be done, so he nodded.

“I shall not even be able to see you out. The matter you spoke of I shall deal with properly.”

I spoke to the magistrate as he made to turn away.

“Magistrate, might I watch this judgment?”

The magistrate had no grounds for refusing a man who wished to observe the proceedings. This, too, was one of the things a Covert Surveillance Commissioner did.

“By all means.”

I moved off after the magistrate.

“Elder brother, are you not meddling in a useless business for nothing?”

“Not at all. If the magistrate hands down a wrong judgment, his repute will fall away badly and he will lose the people’s hearts. His name must be at rock bottom already for beheading innocent folk, so he must go carefully. That is why I am worried, and why I mean to watch.”

“Indeed, elder brother’s deep counsel and far sight are a wonder.”

If two men each insisted a lump of gold was his own, then one of them was lying, and I had only to look at the blood flow to know which. I had stepped forward because I could be of help to a magistrate whose hold on the people’s hearts was at rock bottom.

Two men lay face down on a straw mat and made their plea. Before them lay a lump of gold the size of a fist.

“This humble one is called Seok Mo, and is a tenant farmer. This fellow is a friend of mine who lives next door. I dug this lump of gold out while I was working my field and boasted of it, and this fellow stole it away and now insists it is his own.”

“This humble one is called Bang Gak. Everything this Seok Mo says is my own story. It is a wrong done to me. He is taking what I said and passing it off as his own.”

Cheon Tae-san read the blood flow of the two men. What he found there was so absurd that it drew a weak, deflated laugh out of him.

“Ho ho ho.”

Think it over as he might, the magistrate could not tell which of the two was speaking the truth. There was no evidence either, and he had to judge on their testimony alone; so he handed down the safest judgment there was.

“With no evidence at all you each insist the thing is yours, so I can believe neither of you. Therefore I shall hand down the fairest ruling of all. Cut the lump of gold in two and divide it between you. The true owner of the gold is guilty of choosing his friends badly, so it does him no harm to halve it; and the friend who threw his friendship away has gained half a lump of gold but lost a friend, and that too is a punishment.”

As judgments the magistrate could hand down went, it was a decent enough one.

“Magistrate, might I say a word?”

The magistrate did not care for Cheon Tae-san breaking in on his judgment, but the man was the Covert Surveillance Commissioner, and so he gave way.

“By all means.”

Cheon Tae-san spoke to the two men.

“Neither of you two can have this lump of gold.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Because this lump of gold is not yours.”

“What is it you are saying?”

One of the men looked up at Cheon Tae-san and asked.

“Because this is not a thing dug out of a field but a thing that was stolen.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Somewhere hereabouts there will be a household that has lost a gold ingot. Ask around and it will come out. Short of the place being a gold mine, since when does gold come up out of a field! You two both say this gold is your own, so when the truth of it is known you will both go to jail for theft.”

At that the fellow called Bang Gak bowed his head to the ground.

“Oh, my lord. I am no thief.”

“What do you mean?”

“I did take that Seok Mo fellow’s gold, but I did not steal it from anywhere else.”

He was saying he had taken a friend’s property but had done no thieving.

Cheon Tae-san looked across at Seok Mo.

“No. The truth is that seeing the thing bred the wish for it in me, and when that Bang fellow boasted of it I slipped it away. I am sorry.”

Now the two of them were both insisting that it was not theirs.

“You rogue! Seok, how is it you are lying?”

The magistrate, dumbfounded, gave his order.

“Throw the pair of them into jail. They are both thieves in any case.”

Over one lump of gold the two men were shut up in jail.

The magistrate gave a hollow laugh and said.

“What an absurd business… But how did you know it? That the lump of gold was stolen.”

“It seemed to me both fellows were lying, so I pressed them.”

“That is just it — how did you know it was a lie?”

The magistrate asked out of genuine curiosity.

“The truth is that I have trained in the mind-reading art.”

Reading the blood flow was next door to a mind-reading art, so he put them off with that.

“Haa. Is there such a thing? Then again, there is the soul-seizing art, so there is no reason a mind-reading art should not exist.”

The magistrate had himself once been a lay disciple and knew martial learning, so he understood the thing was not flatly impossible.

Hearing Cheon Tae-san’s words, the party flinched and put distance between themselves and him. Dang Jin-ok and Jegal Do-won in particular, who bore him a strong ill will, drew well away.

“Then I shall take my leave.”

“Go carefully.”

The magistrate saw Cheon Tae-san off with full courtesy, and for two hours afterward the party sank into worlds of their own and did not speak.

“Young Hero Paeng. What in the world is Master Scholar Cheon’s real identity?”

In the end Un Sang could not hold their curiosity in, and went up to Paeng So-un to put the question in a small voice. At their question Jegal Do-won, Dang Jin-ok and Dang Ga-ryeong pricked up their ears.

Paeng So-un wanted badly to boast of it, but his elder brother had begged him earnestly to keep his mouth shut, so he held his tongue.

“Hm. I have pledged my elder brother that I will not let this out. How should a man take a promise lightly?”

The words were not the least bit like Paeng So-un, and Un Sang blinked. From a man who ordinarily kept his promises they would have made sense, but Paeng So-un was a long way from being that. Still, there was no forcing a thing out of a man who did not wish to tell it.

“I understand. If it is an identity that must be hidden, then to insist on disclosing it would be no courtesy either.”

When Un Sang withdrew the others went limp with disappointment. Only Paeng So-un, delighted to be the one man who knew, looked at the party and smiled. It swelled his chest that he alone shared a secret with Scholar Cheon.

Cheon Tae-san was glad that from this point neither Dang Jin-ok nor Jegal Do-won answered him back carelessly. They were plainly careful even with their eyes.

This is why I like a bit of mystery. They do not know what manner of man I am, so they take care.

That was what he had been aiming at all along.

Yeo-seol, delighted it seemed that her Brother was so great a man, chattered away.

“There’s truly nothing our Brother can’t do, and he’s handsome, and he’s clever.”

“Of course. In all my life I’ve never seen a man as splendid and as wise as my elder brother.”

Unexpectedly, Yeo-seol and Paeng So-un got on famously when it came to praising Cheon Tae-san.

“Still, for a hellion you’ve got an eye on you.”

Rough as the words were, Paeng So-un did not mind what Yeo-seol said. She was cute, and Scholar Cheon’s little sister besides, so nothing she said raised any ill feeling in him.

“You ugly little thing. Does it not occur to you that my eye is high precisely because I am a hellion? It takes a hellion to know a hellion, does it not? So how much better must I know a fine character when I see one.”

“Oho, so you’re not a complete blockhead?”

“See here, my ugly but cute little Miss. There are things a man comes to understand only after he has tasted all the bitter and the sweet this life has to give.”

“When I look at a great big hellion, I feel the importance of education.”

“Eh? My cute but ugly little Miss, what is that supposed to mean?”

“There’s a saying, isn’t there. That it takes a whole village to raise one child, but only one person to ruin him. I was just wondering who on earth it was that ruined Young Hero Paeng. Think about it — who was it that made Young Hero Paeng’s character so nasty.”

At her words one person came to Paeng So-un’s mind.

Seeing Paeng So-un turn gloomy, Yeo-seol spoke up.

“But with a good teacher, even a ruined person can be mended. Just like a physician. And that physician is our Brother.”

“To have grasped so deep a principle — that is not bad at all, is it. An ugly little Miss, and young, but really rather clever.”

“Hmph! Leave out the ugly part. You hellion of a young master, all size and nothing in your head.”

Yeo-seol snorted, and Paeng So-un burst into hearty laughter. He could not even remember when he had last enjoyed talking with a person like this.

Before they knew it the party had passed Chongqing and was crossing into Sichuan.