WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Oblivious

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◈ Murim in my Hometown ◈

Chapter 40: Witness

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A young man with a gloomy expression stood up alongside Geuk Hwan.

There was no weapon anywhere on his waist, back, table, or chair.

Did he use Fist-and-Kick Techniques? No.

One shoulder dipped slightly, while both were hunched forward. His posture was awkward and off-balance. He had the body of someone who had never thrown a kick in his life.

His eyes were timid. His presence was weak.

He had none of the sharp aura unique to martial artists. He was an ordinary man, the sort commonly seen in the marketplace.

I did not know his name, but his face looked familiar.

He was the man I had seen on the mountain on the first day I returned home, digging while surrounded by Black Path men.

Back then, I had simply pretended not to see him and walked away.

His face seemed familiar, but he was not from my hometown, and I felt no pleasure at seeing him. There was no reason to risk my life to save him.

I ran into him again by chance when I went to the back alleys to kill Jang Hodal for beating Gusam.

The man had hauled a cart through the pouring rain to deliver jars of liquor to the Gambling-tile den.

Jang Hodal happened to come outside then, so I lost my chance to speak with him.

I had not seen him since.

“Who is this?”

“Let’s sit and talk.”

I unfastened my long saber, propped it beside the table, and sat down. Geuk Hwan sat as well, while the man glanced nervously at my saber before cautiously lowering himself onto a chair.

Geuk Hwan filled the teacups and explained who the man was.

“He works at a brewery. Of the people the Hao clan met while investigating a commission, he was the only one who recognized the faces in the facial composite.”

“What’s your name?”

The man hesitated and looked at Geuk Hwan, who made a small gesture as though granting permission.

“Tell him everything you told me earlier. He’s the client.”

The man nodded and opened his mouth.

“My name is Jin Seokman.”

“Are you perhaps from Seochon? I lived there as a child, and I thought I might have seen you around a few times.”

“No. My hometown is Yulgwang-ri.”

“Yulgwang-ri?”

I must have looked rather frightening when I frowned, because Jin Seokman swallowed hard and hurriedly continued.

“It is two days’ walk northeast of here. It is the closest village to Seochon. Whenever someone in Seochon fell ill, everyone went to Yulgwang-ri to find a physician.”

“Ah... that village?”

I remembered it. I had never been there myself, but when someone fell ill, the people of Seochon had no one to trust but the old physician there.

“What was that physician’s name again...?”

Jin Seokman answered my probing question without hesitation.

“Elder Hwangbae. The villagers called him the One-and-a-Half-Dose Physician rather than by his real name. They said he always used exactly one and a half doses of herbs in every prescription.”

I had thought Han was his surname and Cheopban was his name. So it had been a nickname.

In any case, it matched my memories.

“Where is the facial composite?”

Geuk Hwan took a rolled sheet of paper from a wooden case and spread it open. I pointed to the faces of Soso noona’s family, drawn by the Pavilion Master.

“Do you truly know these people?”

Jin Seokman nodded.

“I had an older acquaintance in Seochon, so I went there to play a few times as a child. That is when I saw them. We were not close, but I know their faces. Didn’t they live in that tiled-roof house at the foot of the southern mountain? They were kind enough to take in an orphan from next door who had lost their parents in a flood...”

The hairs on my head stood on end, and my chest swelled.

This man was real. He was not from my hometown, but he had definitely visited Seochon as a child.

No one else could possibly know that I lost my parents and lived under Soso noona’s family’s care.

“Where are they now? If I can find them, I’ll reward you handsomely.”

Jin Seokman clicked his tongue in regret.

“I don’t know where they are. Nor do I know where they went. But I know who took them away.”

“Took them away?”

A chill ran through my chest at the ominous feeling.

“Who? Where to?”

Perhaps his throat was dry, because Jin Seokman drank tea several times before continuing.

“It was about eight years ago. There was a terrible famine, and every village was in chaos.”

“Seochon too?”

“No. Seochon had its troubles the following year.”

“There was another famine?”

“They were ruined without even getting to farm. Outsiders came flooding in, took control of the reservoir in the mountains, and cut off the water.”

“Who would do such a thing...?”

There was not a single tenant farmer in Seochon employed by a landlord. Their land might have been poor, but everyone farmed their own fields.

“They were martial artists carrying swords. They said they had bought the right to manage the reservoir from the government office.”

I thought I understood what had happened.

“Did any martial artist approach them, claiming they would solve the reservoir problem?”

Controlling the water to disrupt farming was a typical trick Black Path men used to extort money from farmers.

No matter how furious or desperate the farmers were, they could not fight martial artists carrying swords. If bribes had been paid in advance, pleading with the authorities would be useless.

Then, when they were helplessly wringing their hands, a martial artist claiming to be a chivalrous hero would appear and demand payment for fighting on their behalf.

After putting on a staged fight for appearances, they would all collect a tidy sum and leave at their leisure.

It was common in rural villages far from government offices throughout the Central Plains.

But it had not gone that way in Seochon.

“There were a few people who stepped forward as problem solvers. I heard every one of them lost their heads. They killed them all, perhaps to make an example of them...”

Unable to endure any longer, the people of Seochon sold their land for a pittance and had to leave their hometown that autumn.

I could not understand it. Why go that far?

Seochon had barren land. It was not even a transportation hub. What use could anyone have for such land...?

Jin Seokman calmly struck at the heart of the matter.

“They must have sold it. Aren’t all the buildings in Seochon standing on that land?”

The Yongcheon Escort Agency had left Sichuan in search of a new home. Merchants and workers had entered Seochon after them...

If they had sold the land to those people, they must have made an enormous profit.

“Did the residents leave their hometown willingly?”

That could not be.

Farmers’ attachment to their land was beyond imagination. Martial artists’ obsession with weapons was laughable by comparison.

To farmers, the land they cultivated was as precious as their children. No, more precious.

Even when government officials exploited them and bandits extorted them, farmers bowed their heads and offered little resistance because they could not abandon their land and run away.

Once they lost their land, even the most honest farmer would see red and raise a sickle. Some would even storm the government office and set it ablaze.

When famine forced them to leave their hometown in tears to find a way to survive, that could not be helped.

But being unjustly robbed of their land like this was different. Rather than be driven away in resentment, they would choose to die on their own land and become earthbound ghosts. That was what farmers were like.

“They held out and held out, but eventually they all boarded carriages.”

“Carriages?”

“A group of people brought carriages and took all the residents away.”

Thinking about what might have happened to the residents at the end of that journey sent a shiver down my spine.

“Surely they were the bastards who blocked the reservoir and seized the land?”

“No. They were martial artists dressed in black, wearing black hats and carrying swords at their waists. They persuaded the residents that there was somewhere they could relocate to, then put them in the carriages.”

“...Who were they?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t dare ask at the time.”

“Did you see all of this yourself?”

Jin Seokman answered carefully, but without hesitation.

“I heard most of it from the adults, but I saw the residents leave myself. An older acquaintance of mine left Seochon then, and I went to see him off one last time.”

“Are you certain these people left with them?”

“Yes. I can still clearly see them sitting in the back of a carriage, wiping away tears as they watched their hometown grow distant.”

“Is that all?”

Jin Seokman thought for a while before speaking.

“The black hat of the man leading the sword-carrying martial artists came off once. I saw his face briefly then.”

“You still remember his face?”

“I do.”

“You said it happened seven years ago.”

“Whether a face is handsome or ugly, if it has strong character, it is not easily forgotten.”

“Was he that vicious-looking?”

“The opposite. He was a bold-looking handsome man, the sort you rarely see in the countryside. I have never seen such a fine-looking man in my life.”

I stared steadily at Jin Seokman, then turned to Geuk Hwan.

“Can you draw a facial composite?”

“I can.”

The artist summoned at our request was far more skilled than the Pavilion Master.

He repeatedly showed Jin Seokman features drawn on a small mirror, adding and erasing eyes, noses, and mouths before combining them on a single sheet of paper.

Straight features. Thick eyebrows that seemed to writhe. Bright, alert eyes.

Just as Jin Seokman had said, he was a strikingly handsome man, one who would not have looked out of place among the rising junior talents of the orthodox sects.

Geuk Hwan looked at the drawing and asked Jin Seokman.

“Is this the face?”

“Yes. He looked exactly like that.”

“Are you certain?”

“I am. This man led his subordinates and took the residents of Seochon away.”

Jin Seokman spoke with certainty, but Geuk Hwan did not seem able to believe it easily.

“Do you know that face?”

Geuk Hwan did not answer at once. He led me elsewhere, and even after we went down the corridor into another room, he remained silent for a long time.

“Who is it?”

I had been anxious over why he was so reluctant to speak, but once I heard it, I understood.

“It’s Jeok Chuyeong.”

“...The leader of the Black Night Gang?”

Geuk Hwan slowly nodded.

“It is the same face as when I last saw him two years ago. He is younger and sharper in the drawing, but his features are identical.”

My heart dropped.

The Black Night Gang’s arrival in Seochon had not been a coincidence...

They had been involved from much earlier. But why...?

“How closely do the Hao clan and the Black Night Gang communicate?”

“As much as necessary.”

“Could you ask whether they truly took the residents of Seochon away?”

“Jeok Chuyeong has been in seclusion for two years. I heard he meets no one except his closest aides. Even if we met him...”

Geuk Hwan calmly looked into my eyes.

“Would you believe any answer he gave? He’s Black Path.”

Would a notorious Black Path gang lead farmers who had lost their land and homes to paradise? Nine times out of ten, they had sold them off.

I gritted my teeth as rage surged through me. My chest felt unbearably constricted, and my breath came harsh and heated.

Killing intent gathered around my painfully clenched fists.

The urge to storm the Black Night Gang and shout for Jeok Chuyeong to come out felt as though it would make my head explode.

I could not believe it.

Something was wrong. It could not have ended that way. It could not...

Amid the unbearable confusion, one side of my mind suddenly turned cold, as though a blade had touched my back. Only then did I realize.

None of this was fact yet. It was only a one-sided claim.

Just because Jin Seokman knew about the people of Seochon did not guarantee that everything else he said was true.

It was easy to point at people manipulated by schemes like killing with a borrowed knife or goading others into action and laugh at them as fools.

But once you became the one involved, everyone fell for it just the same.

They said people became fools when they fell in love.

Burning resentment and uncontrollable emotions could make people foolish too.

How much could I trust Jin Seokman?

If he had seen Jeok Chuyeong and fabricated these words with some intention...

Even if that was not the case, charging straight at the Black Night Gang would be madness.

First, I had to separate lies from truth, intentions from facts, in what Jin Seokman had said. I had to find out whether he was hiding anything or whether he had misunderstood something.

It would not be too late to act afterward. The Black Night Gang that controlled Seochon’s back alleys was not going anywhere.

I took a deep breath, barely suppressed my boiling emotions, and unclenched my fists.

“All right. For now... let’s watch.”

* * *

After leaving Simhyang Pavilion, Jin Seokman headed straight to the busy district.

Instead of returning to the brewery where he worked or to his home, he entered a fairly large inn.

He looked around the room, then sat across from a man who had arrived first and was waiting for him.

The moment I saw the man’s face while looking for an empty seat, I ended my pursuit.

When I approached, Won Seogang, who had been listening to Jin Seokman, blinked and tilted his head.

“Well, it’s been a while. I heard you’d been busy training in martial arts lately.”

“No matter how busy I am, I still have things to do.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. I followed this fellow. I never imagined he’d go to Brother Won. Seochon really is small. Do you know each other?”

Only then did Jin Seokman turn around. His eyes widened in shock.

Won Seogang narrowed his eyes and scratched his chin.

“We were introduced through mutual acquaintances. He said he had information about the Black Night Gang, so I came to hear it.”

“Is that so? Earlier, he told me that people from my hometown were taken away by someone, and that it was connected to the Black Night Gang.”

“Really? This fellow is more interesting than I thought.”

Won Seogang’s eyes gleamed strangely as he looked at Jin Seokman.

Rather than suspicion, he seemed relieved that this had worked out well.

It appeared Won Seogang also had no particular way of verifying whether the information Jin Seokman brought was trustworthy.

“Let’s move somewhere quieter.”

It would be nice if words were enough, but if they were not, I might have no choice but to become Black Path tonight.

Won Seogang seemed to have the same thought. He tapped the table and stood.

“That would be best.”

He turned and called to a waiter.

“Do you have any private rooms left on the second floor? A quiet room in the corner.”

“Of course. I’ll show you the way.”

I headed for the stairs behind the waiter. Won Seogang followed behind with the thoroughly frozen Jin Seokman.

“Come on, let’s go.”

Terrified as two fearsome martial artists tried to take him somewhere, Jin Seokman trembled.

The nearby customers merely glanced over. No one stepped in. They all had too much food and liquor left to risk getting stabbed for meddling in someone else’s business.

“Uh, where are we going?”

Won Seogang draped an arm around Jin Seokman’s shoulders like they were childhood friends and grinned.

“Where else? The room of truth.”

Footnotes:

The Korean nickname “Han Cheopban” means “one and a half doses,” but it can also be misread as a full name, with Han as the surname and Cheopban as the given name.

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