Work Beneath The Surface

The murder case in Guantao ended with the culprit struck down.

The day I finished my business there and left.

The magistrate came out past the town gate to see me off.

“Young hero Yang, you have my thanks. Thanks to you a wretched business is settled. I will not forget this kindness.”
“Not at all. It is I who am grateful that you accepted my proposal. Guantao will find its peace again now.”
“Quite so. Call on me any time you pass through Guantao. I will stand you a cup of wine, at the least.”

I took my leave of the magistrate and set out for Qingzhou. I had come to Guantao alone; I was not going back alone. Behind me trailed Duho and the Red Headband Hall lot.

Duho came up alongside me and asked,

“So — we’re to settle ourselves in Qingzhou, is that it?”
“Right. First you swallow up the outfits that run Qingzhou. Then the Great Saber Gang will come to you. Asking you to come in under them.”
“And then we go in under them?”
“That’s it.”

The Great Saber Gang was why I wasn’t taking Duho and the Red Headband Hall lads back to the Yang manor. Now that I had wrecked the moneylenders, they would be watching for their chance to deal with me one way or another.

Better, then, to build a force in Qingzhou and plant it under them than to walk back into the Yang manor with Duho’s people at my heels. News out of their camp would be easy to come by, and while I was at it I could find out what they were scheming.

They would never know I had planted a dagger under their chin. The assassin you cannot see is always more frightening than the soldier you can.

“Here. Take it.”

I drew a pouch from my robes and tossed it over. Duho opened it and gave a start.

“Whoa! What’s all this money?”
“A war chest. Feed and house your boys out of that, and build me an outfit. Name it whatever you like.”
“Wow… you really are rolling in money, aren’t you?”
“There’s more coming later, so spend it freely on growing the outfit.”
“As you say, Young Master, sir.”

Duho bit down on a gold sycee and broke into a slack, delighted grin.

When we reached the outskirts of Qingzhou I left him and his men there and went on ahead to the Yang manor. The whole house was busy with preparations for an escort run when I arrived. Elder Kang was checking the cargo over with the escort runners when he spotted me and came across.

“Young master! You’ve had a long road of it. You’re not hurt anywhere?”
“No, I’m fine. This escort run’s a big one, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s why the Patriarch and Great Hero Ju are both going along.”
“Uncle Ju as well?”
“The Central Plains have turned dangerous these days, haven’t they? There are so many bandits about now, and the fee is a large one, so the two of them decided to go out on the run together.”

An excellent decision. With two first-rate martial artists along, the run would come off without trouble; even if a pack of bandits fell on them, a few strokes would sweep the lot away.

I nodded and asked Elder Kang,

“Where are Father and Mother?”
“They are inside. Leave the baggage and the horse with me and go on in, young master.”

I went straight in to see my father and mother. The two of them welcomed me as I stepped into the inner quarters, and my mother rose from her seat, came to me and took my hands.

“You have had a long journey of it. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No, Mother. I came back without trouble. And nothing happened with you either?”
“I am always the same. You are back safe, and that is enough.”

My mother smiled and stroked my hands, and the warmth of her touch went right through me. It had only been a few days, but she must have worried a great deal about me.

Come to think of it, it had been the same in my past life. She looked after me before she ever looked after herself. I was grateful for it, and proud to be the son of such a woman.

Something rose in my chest and set my heart beating hard. I cleared my throat to cover the stir of feeling and changed the subject.

“I have returned, Father.”
“Good. How was Guantao? I hear it has been in an uproar over bandits.”
“By the time I arrived, the magistrate had called out his soldiers and finished putting them down. Thanks to that I met with no great hardship.”

I kept quiet, of course, about fighting a murderer trained in the demonic arts. The business had ended well, and I had no wish to worry my father and mother over nothing.

“That is a relief. And the errand for the medicinal herbs — did that go well?”
“Yes. It is all seen to.”
“You have worked hard.”

No matter how many times I heard it, it always felt good when my father said, ‘You have worked hard.’

“Elder Kang tells me you are going out on the escort run. Uncle Ju as well.”
“It runs as far as Hubei, so Cheolsan agreed to come along.”
“It is reassuring to hear Uncle Ju will be with you. When do you set out?”
“As soon as we have hired the escorts and the runners.”
“I understand.”

I finished talking with my parents, and as I came out of the room I heard familiar voices.

“Brother!”
“Benefactor!”

It was my sister Hayul and Doctor Yu’s daughter Yeohui. The two children came pattering over to me.

“Did it all go well?”
“It did. Here, this is a present.”

I stroked Hayul’s hair, then drew a pair of hair ornaments from my robes and handed one to each of them.

“Wow! It’s pretty!”
“Thank you, Benefactor!”

The children took their presents and burst into peals of laughter. I spent a while talking with the two of them, and before I knew it the sun had gone down.

I left the house and made for an inn. Mask on, I went inside and sat down at a table, and after a short wait a familiar face appeared.

“Yo — you’re here already?”

Duho. He dropped into the seat across from me and said,

“That mask suits you. The very picture of a bandit. Run into you at night and I’d wet myself.”
“Not as much as your face would.”
“You really are insufferable. Is there nothing this kid won’t say?”

He shook his head as if lost for words. I huffed a laugh and got down to business.

“Your boys?”
“Standing by. So how are you going about this building-an-outfit-in-Qingzhou business? Let’s hear the plan, at least.”
“All right.”

I gave a nod and went on.

“There are three unorthodox sects in Qingzhou, and this area is the Great Saber Gang’s territory. But the Great Saber Gang is the weakest of the three. Hardly any second-rates, and most of the men in it are third-rate.”
“So we take this place over and build the outfit out of it?”
“That’s it. And we take it as fast as we possibly can.”
“How fast is fast?”
“Three days.”
“What?”

Duho’s eyes went round.

“Three days is cutting it far too fine, isn’t it? Third-rate or not, they’ve got the numbers.”
“I’m not talking about swallowing every bit of territory the Great Saber Gang runs. Just a piece of it. I’ll be helping, so three days is plenty.”
“Well, if you’re stepping in yourself, three days will do it.”
“Then let’s start right away.”
“Good. Let’s go take Qingzhou.”

Once we began, taking that piece of the Great Saber Gang’s territory didn’t take even three days. Two days, and we’d swallowed a fairly wide stretch of it.

The gang’s lower outfits were a rabble, exactly as I’d expected. Most of them were men who swaggered on the strength of the Great Saber Gang’s name and nothing else. Set that sort against the Red Headband Hall, who have seen every kind of trouble there is, and of course they were no match. There were one or two second-rate martial artists among them, naturally, but Duho and I stepped in and dealt with those.

We cleared the area out in no time and put the word about that the Red Headband Hall had taken the territory. Duho dusted off his hands and asked,

“The clearing-out’s about done. What now?”
“We wait. They’re not the sort to sit still when somebody touches their territory. Word will come before long.”

All I had to do was wait quietly until the tiger called.

The Great Saber Gang’s home base.

Black Leopard, the leader of the Great Saber Gang, was hearing a report from his men.

“What was that? The Red Headband Hall?”
“Yes, Boss. They came out of nowhere, and their skill is no ordinary thing. Our boys went down without landing a hand on them.”
“How strong are they?”
“There look to be at least two second-rate martial artists among them.”
“Oh-ho.”

Black Leopard’s eyes glinted.

“Two second-rates, is it…”
“Boss, shouldn’t we hit them at once? The nerve of them, touching our territory!”

One of the men, worked up, shouted it, but Black Leopard shook his head.

“No. Now is not the time for that.”
“Boss?”
“Why is it we’re the weakest of the unorthodox sects? Because we’ve no men worth having. And now two second-rate martial artists come rolling in on their own feet, and I’m to throw them out? I think not.”
“Then…”
“We bring them in. Make them family and put them to use. Send them word — come in under us, and they can run the territory they’ve taken.”
“And if they refuse?”
“Then we kill them.”

He said it in a low, cold voice, and his men swallowed hard.

“Still, it’d be a waste. Better to coax them and keep them under me than kill two second-rate martial artists. Well — beat a man long enough and he learns to listen. That’s what men in this trade are.”
“Yes, yes. Quite so. Just as you say.”
“A windfall come rolling in, vine and all, and at a critical time.”

Black Leopard laughed, well pleased.

Two days had passed since we cleared out the neighborhood. I threw myself into training, as I always did.

Lately it seems I use my fists more than my spear. That could hardly be helped, not while I was wrecking the Great Saber Gang’s men alongside Duho and the Red Headband Hall. The spear would have announced exactly who I was, so fists it had to be.

The spear is what I am surest of, but that doesn’t mean I can’t handle other weapons. On a battlefield you have to be able to handle every weapon there is.

No. You had to handle things that weren’t weapons at all. There was no telling when an enemy would fall on you, so whatever came to hand had to serve.

I had the spear in hand, drilling the fundamentals, when Duho’s face popped up over the wall.

“Hey, Young Master. Hard at it.”
“If you don’t want to die, training is the bare minimum. Don’t you skip it either.”
“Without a decent martial art or heart method, training doesn’t change a thing anyway. Why go that far with it?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Do it and it comes. There’s nothing that can’t be done.”
“That’s the sort of thing you can say because you’ve got a house behind you.”
“Tsk. That’s exactly why you lost to me at the Bound-Hand Duel.”
“What’s one got to do with the other?”
“Because there’s nothing that shows how much work a man has put in like a Bound-Hand Duel. If you’d trained your body as hard as I have, I’d never have overwhelmed you.”
“Ah, whatever, whatever. Never mind that. Word came from the Great Saber Gang.”
“Saying what?”
“That he’d like a look at our faces. The leader of the Great Saber Gang.”

At last they had taken the bait.

“So what do we do?”
“The man wants to see us. Naturally we go.”

I set the spear down and got ready to leave the house.

I was curious what the face of the man hunting me looked like.