Justification

“…”

What Duho had just told me kept me silent for a moment.

I’d known Black Leopard would make a move of some kind, but dealing in people, of all things. It had never crossed my mind that he would put his hand to human trafficking.

A choice that extreme sent me back through my memories of my past life. Nothing of the sort had ever reached me at Blood Sand Plain, for a start.

What about before Blood Sand Plain, then?

They were trash.

There wasn’t an evil they hadn’t committed. They squeezed money out of people, protection money first and foremost, and beat anyone they took a dislike to for no reason at all. But for all that, I had never once heard talk of them dealing in people.

And now a man like that had settled on human trafficking to build himself a source of funds.

Something was off.

However badly he needed money, I doubted he’d take a risk that could leave him a public enemy of the gangho. I was still failing to make sense of it when a memory surfaced out of nowhere.

The streets were clean.

The Qingzhou of my past life had been strangely empty of orphans and beggars. Someone would turn up begging now and then, and a few days later they’d be gone without a trace. I knew because I used to slip them the leftovers back when I worked at an inn. It meant nothing to me at the time. Turning it over now, I found it strange.

Why were there no orphans and no beggars on the streets?

Looking at it now, I thought I knew.

In my past life the Great Saber Gang was trafficking in human beings too. I simply didn’t know it.

If that was it, Black Leopard’s choice made sense too. It meant the bastard wasn’t turning to dealing in people for want of any other road; he’d had it in mind from the very start. Driving him into a money shortage had only moved the timing up a little.

I asked in a low, flat voice.

“Do you know where they take the people they catch?”
“A cave halfway up a mountain nearby. Carts with people loaded on them go in and out of it. I checked it myself.”
“How many of the Great Saber Gang’s men are guarding the cave?”
“Couldn’t give you an exact count. What’s certain is there’s a damn lot of them. The Great Saber Gang’s men are spread all over that mountain. Take it that every one of them worth anything has been pulled in.”

This is not good.

The more I listened to Duho, the less I could see any way to hit the Great Saber Gang. With my father and Uncle Ju here it might have been another matter, but the two of them had ridden out on an escort run the day before. That left me, Duho, and the Red Headband Hall’s men he had brought with him as the only ones who could fight, and that was nowhere near enough to take on the Great Saber Gang.

I could have asked another orthodox sect for help, except that Qingzhou had no orthodox sect worth the name. This is a place where the unorthodox powers hold sway, the Great Saber Gang among them.

Is the Hwangbo Clan the only place left to ask?

For the Hwangbo Clan, one of the Eight Great Clans, sweeping the Great Saber Gang away would be easier than child’s play. But asking them for help came with a problem.

They won’t agree to see me in the first place.

I could ride all the way to Jinan and there was still no chance they’d let a nameless nobody through the gate. I’d be lucky just to escape a rude dismissal at the door. And even supposing I did get in front of one of them, another problem waited behind that one. I had no proof that the Great Saber Gang was trafficking in human beings.

Would a renowned orthodox clan like the Hwangbo send men out on my word alone, without a shred of material evidence?

Absolutely not.

I nodded to myself and turned to Duho.

“For now, we watch the situation.”
“What?”

Duho’s face twisted at once.

“We’re not moving now, we’re watching? Are you in your right mind?”
“For now.”
“There were children among the ones they hauled in. We just stand and watch, and every one of those kids gets sold off.”
“I know.”
“You know that and you’re still saying we watch?”
“There’s nothing else for it. We can’t take them on by ourselves. All we can do is wait until we’ve gathered proof.”
“Hey! There are kids in there, this isn’t right! We’ve got to do something, haven’t we!”

Duho worked himself up until he was breathing hard. The anger had gone straight to the top of his head; his eyes were bloodshot and his fists were clenched and shaking.

He had reason.

He said he was sold off himself, when he was small.

In my past life Duho got thoroughly drunk once and spilled his past. As a child he’d been kidnapped and sold to a bandit gang as a slave. They treated him like an animal until he barely managed to escape, and after that, the way he told it, he taught himself out of a martial arts manual he happened to pick up and ended up boss of a bandit gang of his own.

For Duho, trafficking in human beings has to be nothing less than a dragon’s reverse scale.¹

I spoke to him, furious as he was.

“Don’t get worked up. Nothing changes because you’re angry. Judge it coldly. That’s the only way we save those people.”
“…Damn it all.”

Duho spat the curse and kicked at the ground.

I know well enough how he feels. Unless you have lived it, you cannot know how wretched and how shitty it is to face a thing and find there is nothing you can do.

And I felt exactly what Duho felt. It was stifling. Anger surged up in me.

This is the very thing I was training to get strong for — so I would never have to see it.

The helplessness I had known in my past life felt like it was rising in me all over again. If I’d followed my heart I would have taken up my spear on the spot, charged in, taken Black Leopard’s head off and set the caged people free.

But that was bravado. It was throwing my life away for nothing.

I was hemmed in on all four sides. But I had no thought of giving up.

First I settled myself. Emotion was no help in finding a method. I put down the anger boiling up in me, cooled my head, and thought it through again.

What do I need in order to stop the Great Saber Gang?

I needed justification and evidence. Secure those two and I could bring the Hwangbo Clan down on the Great Saber Gang and wreck it. The question was how to make the justification.

I was still turning it over when a conversation with Jo Mansik, the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, came back to me.

“My boy has gone out on an escort run somewhere close by this time. He says he will stop at the Yang manor on the way back to pay his respects, so I ask you to look kindly on him. It should take about six days.”

Six days.

Today was the day those six days ran out. Right about now Jo Yeonggwang, the bureau head’s son, would be reaching the outskirts of Qingzhou. The timing was perfect.

This is it.

I raised my head slowly. The breath that had been stopped up and stifling in my chest came free. I had found the opening to make my justification.

“Duho.”
“Ah, what! You said we’d watch! You said we’d just stand there and look on!”

Duho snapped it out, still breathing hard, his eyes full of disappointment and rage at what I had decided. I looked at him and snorted out a laugh.

“Aah— I’ve thought of a way to take on the Great Saber Gang, and there’s nobody to help me.”
“…What? What did you just say.”

Duho’s eyebrows twitched. I carried on as if I hadn’t heard.

“It’s hard on my own. What am I to do about this.”
“What is that way!”
“If only I had a loyal underling who spoke to me with some respect, I could save those people.”
“Ah, hell.”

A curse jumped out of Duho at that. He worked his lips for a moment, then asked.

“…What is your method, Young Master?”

Hearing Duho speak politely startled a laugh out of me. This is what makes teasing him worth it. I let the teasing go there and came straight to the point.

“We become bandits.”
“Bandits? What are you on about all of a sudden?”
“Come here.”

I twisted up one corner of my mouth and told him the plan. The further I went, the wider his eyes grew, until they were full of astonishment.

“You’re serious? Have you lost your mind?”
“Why? Scared?”
“It’s not that I’m scared! What if this goes wrong later and it comes out what you did!”
“Then we don’t get caught, that’s all. You just keep your boys’ mouths shut. This is the only way to make a justification. Or does your conscience prick you?”

At the question, one corner of Duho’s mouth went up.

“Conscience, he says. If I had any of that left I’d never have put a bandit gang together. That plan of yours — let’s do it.”
“You never disappoint. A bandit through and through. Good thinking.”
“I’ve done my share of thieving. Don’t worry about mouths. I’ll pick only the ones who followed me back in Guantao.”
“Good. Then let’s get straight to work.”

We set out to make our justification.

In the mountains on the outskirts of Qingzhou.

A column with the Shandong Escort Bureau’s banner at its head was on the move. Not a large one. A dozen or so escorts and a few escort runners leading two carts, and that was all.

At the center of the column a young man sat his horse. Jo Yeonggwang, the young bureau head, son of Jo Mansik, the head of the Shandong Escort Bureau.

Jo Yeonggwang asked the man beside him.

“Escort Yi, how long to Qingzhou?”

The man he called Escort Yi bowed his head.

“At this pace we will arrive within half a day at the latest.”
“Understood.”
“All the same, do you really mean to stop at the Yang manor? The schedule will be a little tight.”

Jo Yeonggwang laughed lightly and nodded.

“We stop on the way, two errands in one. Father says young hero Yang has outstanding discernment and is a man who will go far, so I mean to make his acquaintance in advance. Better I get my foot in the door before the others stake their claim.”
“Going by this, the Young Bureau Head is the very image of the Bureau Head. The Bureau Head sets great store by connections too.”
“I learned it watching my father. Isn’t that only natural?”

Jo Yeonggwang laid the banter on thick, and a faint smile spread over the faces of the escorts around him.

The mood was peaceful.

He had brought a dozen escorts along after being hit by bandits not long ago, and he was beginning to wonder whether the money had been thrown away for nothing. Qingzhou and the country around it were peaceful enough, and no bandit was bold enough to throw himself at the banner of the Shandong Escort Bureau.

But the thought did not last long.

— Fwip, fwip, FWIIING!

He barely had time to register the sound of something cutting the air.

“Aaagh!”
“Grraaagh!”

The escorts guarding the front and rear of the column went down with cries, sharp wooden needles standing buried in their bodies. The men the needles had hit screamed and rolled on the ground.

“Ambush! Form up!”

Escort Yi shouted it and drew his sword. But the reaction came too late.

Masked men burst out of the forest. Their numbers were not great, but their movements were quick. Instead of meeting the escorts head-on, they kept their distance and sent poison needles flying. The escorts went down helplessly one after another, and in an instant the whole place turned to bedlam.

“Protect the Young Bureau Head!”

Escort Yi threw himself forward to hold his place at Jo Yeonggwang’s side, but poison needles came out of nowhere and buried themselves precisely in his shoulder and his thigh.

— SHUUNK!

“Kraagh!”

His flesh burned and his bones ran cold, and the pain of it dropped Escort Yi where he stood.

With his guards going down around him, Jo Yeonggwang drew his sword and shouted.

“Escort Yi! You bastards! How dare you, against our Shandong Escort Bureau—!”

But he never got the chance to finish. A bandit had closed in without his noticing and struck him at the back of the neck.

— Thunk!

Jo Yeonggwang pitched over limply, and in an instant it was over. Not a man was left standing. The ground was lined with escorts and escort runners, groaning in pain or senseless.

— Nod.

One bandit jerked his chin, and the others moved as one. They forced the fallen escorts’ mouths open and made them swallow the pills they had prepared. They had subdued the escorts by feeding them qi-dispersing poison.

The bandits roped the escorts together like a string of dried fish and tossed them into the baggage cart as so much freight.

When it was all squared away, one of the bandits took off his mask.

It was Yang Mujin.

The bandit beside him took his mask off as well. It was Duho.

Duho let out a short breath.

“Hooo— making a justification isn’t easy.”
“And the preparations?”
“I’ve told the boys everything.”
“Don’t let it show.”
“Don’t worry. My acting is second to none. Right, see you in a bit.”

Duho grinned and put the mask back on, then took hold of the cart with the unconscious escorts loaded on it and started off.

I turned away as well.

All that was left was to wait for the justification to come to me.