Those who had been staring blankly at the landslide began whispering among themselves, then turned to look at me.
“Under normal circumstances, we’d be passing through there right now, wouldn’t we?”
“Y-yeah. We would.”
“Then… Deputy Merchant Lord Eun Seo-ho saved us from dying?”
“Uh…”
They rushed over to me, bowing again and again as they thanked me.
“Thank you!”
“Thank you so much.”
Then the Assistant Director came over to me.
“Truly, thank you! If it hadn’t been for you, this could have ended in disaster!”
“I only did what needed to be done.”
The Escort Chief also expressed his gratitude.
“All of us owe Deputy Merchant Lord Eun a debt for saving our lives.”
“I only did what I had to do, so if you keep saying that, you’ll make me embarrassed. Hahaha.”
I glanced behind me.
The people who had been grumbling earlier about taking the detour were now staring at me with eyes full of awe, as if they had never complained at all.
I looked at Escort Guard Seo Wu, and he shrugged with a faint grin.
The Assistant Director said,
“It’s fortunate we’re safe, but I’ll have to send someone to inspect that area.”
“Yes.”
The Assistant Director immediately sent the Imperial Guards, and after checking the site of the landslide, they returned and reported.
“Reporting, sir. The road east of Rabbit-Rump Mountain has been completely blocked by the landslide.”
“It looks like restoring it will require a considerable amount of manpower and time.”
“Fortunately, no one seems to have been passing through at the time, so there appear to be no casualties.”
“No casualties? That road sees quite a bit of traffic, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Someone placed a huge boulder in front of the road, so people who couldn’t move it seem to have taken a detour instead.”
After hearing that, the Assistant Director came over to me.
“Deputy Merchant Lord Eun.”
“Yes.”
“Were you the one who blocked that road?”
“Ah… If you mean blocking it with the boulder, then yes, that was me. The landslide was certain to happen, and I thought it would be far too tragic if someone passed through and got caught in it.”
So I did the same on the other side as well.
I also made sure no one was passing through.
“You must have taken quite a bit of abuse from the people who tried to use that road.”
“It’s fine. I already get cursed at plenty, so what difference would a few more people make?”
At my words, he burst into a hearty laugh.
“There really isn’t anyone better suited to the epithet Handsome Young Hero than you.”
That epithet still makes me uncomfortable.
When am I ever going to get used to it?
“I’ll go see this village’s County Magistrate.”
“Understood.”
The landslide was severe.
So he needed to inform the County Magistrate and have him take action.
Well, if he ignored it and simply went on to Nanjing, the Emperor would later find out and rebuke him for it.
Whether he was doing it out of genuine concern or simply because he didn’t want to be scolded, I couldn’t say.
Still, taking care of the problem before getting scolded was a skill in itself.
“Then I suppose we’ll be camping nearby tonight.”
“It seems we will.”
I gave the landslide site one last look and thought,
As expected, lowering your guard is never an option.
That evening, the rain stopped.
That’s a relief.
Honestly, when you’re transporting goods, there’s no way rain could ever be a good thing.
And the Assistant Director, who had gone to the Magistrate’s Office, returned as well.
“You’re back. How did it go?”
“The County Magistrate said he would report it to his superiors.”
That would be much faster than us going all the way to Nanjing and reporting it ourselves, since the County Magistrate could send an urgent dispatch.
.
.
.
The next day.
We set out for Nanjing again.
Because we had taken the detour, we spent an extra day on the road and arrived in Nanjing after five days.
“Welcome.”
Lord Ak, the Provincial Commander of Nanjing, personally came out to greet us.
“To have you come out and receive us in person, my lord… I hardly know where to place myself.”
“Aren’t you precious guests who came bearing His Majesty the Emperor’s command? I am merely treating you as such.”
Mm. There was an edge hidden in those words.
He meant that if we failed to properly carry out the Emperor’s command, we would be dealt with accordingly, didn’t he?
“Rest comfortably. The river route ahead will be rather rough, won’t it?”
“Thank you for your consideration.”
After Lord Ak finished speaking that way, he turned to me.
“Come to think of it, I heard you went out to meet them.”
“That’s correct.”
At that, the Assistant Director smoothly stepped in.
“In truth, we nearly suffered a tremendous disaster on our way here.”
Then he explained everything that had happened with the landslide from beginning to end.
“My word! To think such a thing happened! It is truly fortunate that everyone is safe.”
“If Deputy Merchant Lord Eun Seo-ho had not run ahead and warned us, we would never have made it here unharmed, and we would have failed to properly fulfill His Majesty the Emperor’s command.”
At that, Lord Ak looked at me with a deeply satisfied expression.
For some reason, that gaze made me feel a bit awkward.
“I wondered why Bang Hyo-myeong chose you as his successor. Now I understand.”
So Lord Ak also knows that I became the Sixth-Sense Duke’s successor.
Well, this place is also within Lord Bang’s sphere of influence, so…
“Now, everyone should get proper rest.”
“Yes.”
I headed to my quarters.
“My lord!”
“You’ve returned, my lord.”
Escort Guard Chang Un and Escort Guard Myeong Jong, who had remained here, welcomed me.
“Nothing happened while I was away, right?”
“No.”
“That’s good.”
I continued,
“Where is Deputy Gwak?”
“She is in her quarters.”
I needed to tell Brother Jeong-ho I had returned, but before that, I had to meet Lady Seohyang.
“Deputy Gwak.”
“Yes, come in.”
I opened the door and stepped into Lady Seohyang’s guest room.
She was going through documents at the writing desk.
“Were you handling the paperwork in my stead? I’m sorry about that.”
“Not at all. It’s work I should be doing.”
She set the documents aside and greeted me.
“You returned safely.”
“Yes.”
I nodded and said,
“Thanks to you, everyone is safe.”
“That’s such a relief.”
Why did her smile look so beautiful?
“I saw the changed future. It was an unbelievably terrible one…”
She continued,
“And you changed that future, Deputy Merchant Lord.”
Was it only this incident?
When I thought about it, there were quite a few futures I had changed.
There had been times when the changes brought crises I never expected, but I had always managed to resolve them with help from people whose lives had improved because of the futures I changed.
Whenever that happened, I sometimes felt as though the futures I changed were repaying me.
.
.
.
The next day.
The cargo loading began.
As for the goods being loaded onto the Eunhae Merchant Group’s ships, every single item had to be inspected by Brother Jeong-ho and me before boarding.
A significant portion of the cargo we were taking was wine.
There were not only the wines selected at this Tasting Competition, but also wines produced by the Eunhae Merchant Group itself.
The wine bottles that Merchant Lord Go of the Cheongsu Merchant Group and Deputy Merchant Lord Dam of the Mudong Merchant Group had created with the Imperial Family’s support were beautiful enough to be works of art in their own right.
They must have worked the potters to the bone making these.
With these, demand in the Great Yue Kingdom and the Maraeseo Kingdom would be immense.
They would bring in an enormous profit from now on.
Brother Jeong-ho and I checked every item again, then had them sealed once more before our eyes.
“You’re making this quite difficult.”
A eunuch who saw that said as much while looking at me. He had come together with the Assistant Director this time.
For matters like this, a eunuch trusted by the Emperor would often accompany the group and supervise the work.
But even that eunuch could not behave arrogantly, because the Embroidered Guard was here as well.
Since there was a subtle rivalry between the two sides, they had no choice but to be aware of and cautious around each other.
And that wasn’t all. There was also an unseen shadow here.
A Censorate Inspector, like me.
I smiled and said,
“Brother and I came here as the people responsible for this matter. If anything is amiss, we’ll have to answer for it, so we have no choice but to be thorough.”
I continued,
“Besides, this mission is also meant to spread word of His Majesty the Emperor’s grace. How could we possibly treat such work carelessly?”
“That is true.”
Of course, those two reasons I gave were part of why I was checking everything so thoroughly, but there was another reason as well.
At some point, unauthorized goods had begun appearing inside the crates packed for foreign trade.
In other words, contraband.
When trading with foreign kingdoms like this, every single item a merchant group intended to sell had to be reported without exception.
Then, based on the proceeds from selling those goods, they would purchase grain and bring it back.
But if they smuggled in and sold items other than the goods reported to the Imperial Palace, then the profit from those smuggled goods had no official basis, meaning it became pure income for the merchant group.
Later, once the famine ended and there was no longer a need to purchase grain, this became even more widespread.
At that time, ships engaged in foreign trade were taxed on both the goods they sold overseas and the goods they brought back from abroad.
The stated reason was to encourage self-production and direct sales, and the tax itself was not particularly high.
But apparently, even that much felt like a waste, because they used every bizarre method imaginable to smuggle goods and avoid paying taxes.
Naturally, the trail eventually became too long to hide, and once it was exposed, the Emperor punished them severely.
After all, they had deceived the Emperor himself.
Quite a few people from those merchant groups died in the Underground Prison back then.
I was acting like this to prevent that from happening from the very beginning.
It would serve as a warning to any employees of the Eunhae Merchant Group who might think about smuggling, and it would build trust with the Emperor’s people and the officials.
Then it happened.
“Seo-ho! We have a problem!”
“What kind of problem?”
“This cart… the things that should be here are gone.”
“What?”
I hurriedly checked the goods on the cart. The crates were empty.
That cart was supposed to hold crates of small liquor bottles.
small liquor bottles came in bottles about one-fifth the size of ordinary wine bottles, and the wines inside were the ones selected at this Tasting Competition.
The idea had come from the gifts the Emperor had previously given to high-ranking officials, and these were meant to be presented to the kings of the Great Yue Kingdom and the Maraeseo Kingdom.
Each small crate contained ten wine bottles. There were ten crates to a cart, for a total of twenty crates.
One cart was bound for the Great Yue Kingdom, and the other was bound for the Maraeseo Kingdom, but the goods meant for the Great Yue Kingdom had vanished.
If it were ordinary cargo, we could simply accept the loss and move on, but losing goods meant to be presented to a king was not something that could be overlooked.
Naturally, chaos broke out.
“I definitely loaded them onto the cart.”
“I also confirmed them being loaded onto the cart.”
Everyone said they had unquestionably been placed on the cart. They also said the quantity and contents had been checked at every checkpoint.
Yet they had vanished without a trace.
Then that meant they had disappeared recently, didn’t it?
Ah, seriously… I can’t lower my guard for even one moment.
I silently sighed.
Then did that mean someone had switched out the cart sometime between their arrival at the Provincial Command Office in Nanjing and now?
Escort Guard Jin Yu, who stood beside me, said,
“But as far as I know, the cart was also being guarded the entire time.”
“Yes. That’s correct.”
“I have no idea where or how an opening could have appeared.”
Those in charge of security could say nothing and only stood there with troubled expressions.
They certainly bore some responsibility.
But right now was not the time to assign blame. It was time to solve the problem.
Still, if I had sensed even a trace of Unorthodox Qi from the cart, I could have used that as a clue to track it… but there was nothing of the sort.
Should I call Chun-il or Geun-seong?
Just then, I suddenly remembered the pirates in Nanjing’s Underground Prison.
At this point, I’d borrow a cat’s paw if it could point me in the right direction.
Even the smallest clue would be enough.
The fact that Lady Seohyang had not mentioned this meant either she hadn’t seen it, or that it would be resolved properly.
Then Palgap tilted his head.
“What is it?”
“I smell roses from somewhere, sir.”
“Now that you mention it, you’re right. Roses aren’t supposed to be blooming yet, so someone must have sprayed rose scent around.”
“Still beats the smell of rotten fish, sir.”
I arrived at the Underground Prison in Nanjing.
“Have you been well?”
I greeted the former pirates in the Underground Prison.
“We’ve been eating well and sleeping well, thanks to you.”
“Kekekeke, this place is practically paradise.”
I plopped down in front of them.
“The truth is, I came here because I need advice.”
“From bastards like us?”
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“Confucius said that when three people walk together, one of them is certain to be his teacher. And if those people are experts who have mastered a particular field, as all of you have, then they are more than worthy of being asked for advice.”
At my words, one of the men spoke.
“Is this related to pirates, by any chance?”
“I don’t know that yet.”
I explained the matter in detail.
“…and so, I’m in quite a difficult position right now.”
After hearing me out, they began discussing it among themselves.
“The entire cart was switched out, but nobody knows anything about it?”
“No gaps in the guard, and nobody who’d betray their trust.”
“And if there wasn’t anyone disguised and hiding among them…”
As they put their heads together and talked, someone suddenly clapped his hands and said,
“Huh? Then maybe it’s that thing, isn’t it? The thing that makes people go all dazed and obedient!”
“You mean that method we heard about when we were drinking with other pirates a while back?”
“Weren’t those guys the Blood Claw Pirates? The ones active around here!”
“That’s right! Yeah! The Blood Claw Pirates! That’s the method they’re known for. What was that incense called again?”
“I think they called it Soul-Enslaving Incense.”
I was startled and asked them again,
“Soul-Enslaving Incense?”
I knew about Soul-Enslaving Incense.
“That’s right. There’s a pirate group called the Blood Claw Pirates, and their captain possesses an Artifact. It’s an Artifact called Soul-Enslaving Incense, though I don’t know what it looks like. But they say that once someone smells that Artifact’s incense, they begin obeying the Artifact owner’s commands.”
Ha… Is it Heaven’s will that I ended up facing that evil Artifact like this?
–TL Notes–
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