The Deal Is Struck

“Elder Kang, show these people through to Doctor Yu.”
“Yes, young master. Everyone, please follow me.”

Elder Kang led the crowd off toward the guest hall.

Doctor Yu was living inside the Yang manor now. After the moneylenders’ attack I had spoken to my mother and moved his lodgings to the guest hall. I could hardly leave a hurt man outside the manor, and having him close meant I could deal with anything the moment it arose. Once I told her he was my own man, my mother, too, was firmly in favor of the move.

But the one happiest about it was Hayul.

Scarcely a day went by that she was not busy playing with Yeohui, Doctor Yu’s daughter. She seemed glad to have a friend her own age, and seeing Hayul happy put me in good spirits too.

In any case, Elder Kang and Doctor Yu would see to selling the medicine themselves. What needed my attention right now was the man in front of me.

I went over to the middle-aged man left standing alone once the others had gone.

“Come inside, please.”
“Yes, young hero.”

I showed Jo Mansik, head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, into the room. He bowed to me, deep from the waist.

“Young hero, you have my thanks. Had it not been for you, my son would have come home by now as a cold corpse.”

What was this, all of a sudden? I could not make sense of what Jo Mansik was saying. I did not even know who his son was.

“I am sorry, but I do not know what you are speaking of, Bureau Head.”
“Ah — forgive me. I was so full of gratitude that I cut off both ends of the story. Let me explain from the beginning.”

Jo Mansik told me what had happened that day, and only then did his words make sense.

Escort Runner Shim has pulled off something big.

I would have to slip him some gold on the side later.

He bent at the waist again as he spoke.

“My thanks once more. Young hero, you are the benefactor who saved my son’s life.”
“What did I do? I only handed some medicine to Escort Runner Shim.”
“I have already rewarded him well enough. From what he told me, it seemed you had foreseen something of the sort. I hear you gave the medicine not only to Escort Runner Shim but to a good many others.”

Sharp.

He had caught on to my plan, as befitted the foremost bureau head in Shandong.

From about this time, for several years, bandit swarms overran the Central Plains.

House Yang took heavy losses in that stretch too, and a few years on my father lost his life to the bandit gang. It was not something I could have forgotten even had I wanted to, and knowing it was why I had handed the escort runners medicine free of charge.

I have reaped that seed properly.

The seed I sowed had gone past sprouting and become a tree too thick to get my arms around. The foremost bureau head in Shandong had come here of his own accord and stood bowing his head to me, after all.

“It was luck. There were ugly rumors going around that bandits were swarming these days, and every one of those escort runners is a man with ties to our Yang manor, so I handed the medicine over out of worry for them. That is all.”
“The discerning eye to read the times, and humility besides. The Yang manor’s future is bright. You are nothing at all like the rumors.”

Nothing like them, naturally.

The man I am now is different. I had earned money through every kind of humiliation for my family and my house, and I had lived ten years on a battlefield straight out of hell. There was no way a man like me could be the same as the man in my past life.

I answered without letting any of it show.

“I can only thank you for thinking so well of me.”
“On that subject — I would like the Shandong Escort Bureau to hold an exclusive contract on the healing pills and wound salve the Yang manor makes. We will take responsibility for everything from sale to distribution.”

A good opportunity. With the Shandong Escort Bureau stepping in, I would not have to worry about sales or distribution. Things were going even more smoothly than I had expected.

The only problem, if there was one, was how the profits would be split. What mattered was how much came back to me.

I waited for the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau to go on.

“I will give you seven parts in ten of the profits.”
“I beg your pardon?”

I asked again, thinking I had misheard.

“I take seven parts in ten?”
“That is right. We will cover the labor and the cost of materials as well. Seven parts in ten of the net profit from the medicine’s sale goes to you, young hero.”

“Hah.”

The split was so far past anything I had braced for that a hollow laugh escaped me before I knew it. Ordinarily, in a deal like this, common sense says the stronger side takes the larger share. I had expected half and half, or four to six at worst.

And he offers seven parts in ten?

And on top of that the Shandong Escort Bureau would bear the labor and material costs. The whole thing was weighted entirely in my favor.

I could hardly believe the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau had proposed such a deal. Terms like that were not possible unless he had a scheme behind them.

I drew a long breath and looked at him.

What is he really after?

I could not think why he would make an offer this absurd. Was he trying to fleece me?

If that was the thought he had come here with, the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau would not get what he intended today. At the smallest hint of anything strange, I would call the whole thing off.

I was still watching him with a suspicious eye when he drew a paper from inside his robes and held it out.

“The contract. The terms are as I said.”

I took the contract and read carefully through it.

In exchange for the grant of exclusive sales rights, seven parts in ten of the profits shall be paid to the Yang manor.

It was exactly as he had said.

I asked the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau,

“Are you truly all right with a contract like this? From the bureau’s side it must be a loss.”
“In exchange, our escorts and escort runners will be safer. Money can always be earned again, but once a man is lost, that is the end of him. For the safety of my escorts and escort runners, this much is well worth bearing.”

He said it with a chuckle, and I found myself nodding.

A great merchant really is a different sort of man.

He had an outstanding eye for people and for the future, not for the profit sitting in front of him. I thought I understood why the Shandong Escort Bureau stood foremost in Shandong.

The terms were good and the man’s character was fine, so there was no reason to refuse the deal.

“Very well. Let’s sign.”

I took up a brush and signed the contract in my own hand, and we each took one copy.

With that done, the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau drew a wooden case from inside his robes and held it out to me.

“This is a token of my sincerity for saving my son’s life.”
“I accept it with thanks.”
“Send the medicine along as soon as it is ready. I look forward to working with you, young hero Yang.”
“Go safely.”

I saw him off courteously and came back to my room.

I have made a connection with a bigger man than I thought.

I had only meant to get some word of mouth going, and it had worked out far too well. In one stroke I had gained both a solid backer and a source of funds in the Shandong Escort Bureau.

The wooden case sitting on the table caught my eye.

A token of sincerity from the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau.

I wondered what was inside, and opened the case in anticipation.

A golden ingot shaped like a horse’s hoof greeted me. It was a gold sycee¹, and one of them was worth upward of fifty taels of gold.

And there was not one of them in the case, but two. Together that was a fortune of more than a hundred taels of gold.

A hundred taels of gold as a token of sincerity?

They say generosity comes out of a full granary; true to the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, he was open-handed indeed.

I had spent most of what I made on the lightning-struck jujube wood and had been fretting over it; this took one weight off my mind. This would hold me until the medicine started selling.

I looked at the gold sycees in the case and smiled, well pleased.

Having left the Yang manor, Jo Mansik, head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, moved off at a slow walk. The steward walking behind him spoke up cautiously.

“Bureau Head, did the contract come off well?”
“It did. Very well indeed.”

Jo Mansik drew the contract from inside his robes and handed it over, and the steward’s eyes went round at what was written there.

“You agreed to give away a full seven parts in ten? Did you not say you would split the profit half and half?”
“I did.”
“Then why sign a contract like this? Three parts in ten is far too little return for the effort we put in.”

The steward’s words drew a short laugh out of Jo Mansik.

“Is that so? To my eye it looks like a trade with something left over.”
“Sir?”
“He sets great store by ties between people, and by a man’s life. A man like that is a rare sight in the world these days.”

That answer left the steward understanding less than before.

“Surely you would not have signed a contract like this merely because the man is good-natured.”

The steward knew his master as a man of great warmth who turned exceedingly hard-nosed the moment a deal was on the table. That such a man had signed an absurd contract like this was more than he could make sense of.

Jo Mansik stopped walking at the question and looked back at the Yang manor.

“That boy Yang Mujin — there is something about him.”
“Something, sir? Of what sort?”
“Just before I handed over the contract, our eyes met for an instant. That… that was no man’s eye. It was a beast of prey’s.”

He said no more, and stroked his chin. He felt as though he had seen that look in Yang Mujin’s eyes somewhere before, and groping back through his memory, one scene surfaced. It was like the heads of the Eight Great Clans he had seen on the birthday of the leader of the Orthodox Alliance.

Am I rating him too generously?

Jo Mansik gave a short laugh. To compare a boy not yet twenty with the heads of the Eight Great Clans. Even to his own mind it was absurd.

And yet, set beside them, Yang Mujin somehow did not come up short. So he had made a contract at a slight loss to himself. Thought of as an investment, it was no great loss. It amounted to making the acquaintance of a man who would be a great figure one day, and forging a connection with him.

Time will tell.

Whether he had judged the man rightly, or misjudged him. He did not think it would take very long.

Do they not call it the awl in the bag? An awl inside a bag is bound to poke its way out.

His sixth sense, though, was certain. This investment would never fail.

I finished my talk with the bureau head and went to the guest hall where Doctor Yu was. He saw me, set his work aside for a moment, and came over.

“Benefactor, you have come. I heard from Elder Kang that the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau was here. Did the talk go well?”
“It did. It went well.”
“My congratulations.”
“It is thanks to you, Doctor.”
“It was possible only because you gave me the method of making it. From now on, whatever you tell me, I will believe it.”

When we had talked of this and that for a while, I asked about the work on my constitution.

“How do the preparations for improving my constitution stand?”
“The medicinal herbs are all prepared. All that is left is to decoct them, so it can be done whenever you wish.”

I nodded and said,

“Let’s prepare it right away.”
“Now, you mean?”
“Yes. This instant.”

I said it firmly.

There was no reason to hesitate when I could become stronger.