Chapter 155: Absorption (3)
Translator: bjgoofy
Following the guidance of Lee Tae, chief of the river bandits, we made our way to the Water Stronghold, the bandits' base camp, to have the ship repaired.
I was standing at the prow, watching the direction the ship was heading, when Seol noona came running out of the cabin and asked me a question.
"Ryong, now that its hind legs have come in, can't we finally tell whether it's a frog or a toad?"
It seemed Seol noona had been watching Hwayang's hind legs grow in along with Hwa-eun all this time, and now that the hind legs were out, she was hoping we could figure out exactly what kind of creature the little thing was.
But that hope was a touch premature.
I shook my head and answered.
"We still won't be able to tell yet."
"Why!? Even with the hind legs out, you still can't tell whether it's a frog or a toad?"
'Why!? Ah, no, that's not right.'
I flinched at Seol noona's "why."
It crossed my mind that maybe she'd caught the "but why?" disease from Cho.
But then again, when I thought about it, Seol noona was well past the age for that sort of thing.
I collected myself and answered.
"Right, once the front legs come in and the tail shortens, that's when we can finally tell what the skin feels like, but even being a toad doesn't guarantee bumpy skin, so for now we just have to raise it and see."
"I'm dying of curiosity, though...."
Seol noona had gotten her hopes way up that she could identify the little creature just from looking at Hwayang's adorable hind legs, and now she wore a disappointed expression at my explanation.
Just then, the Helmsman's voice came from behind us.
"Master Soryong, judging by how tall the reeds have grown, I don't think our ship can go any farther. The water looks awfully shallow here.
Should I have the bandits find us another route?"
At the Helmsman's explanation, I looked out beyond the gunwale, and what stretched before us was a feast of reeds as tall as a grown man.
Ahead of the bandit boats leading us, a reed field spread out into the far distance.
I quickly called out to Lee Tae, who was towing his small boat ahead of us.
"Lee Tae, our ship's too big to get through this way, isn't it!?"
"It's all right, just wait a moment! Master Soryong!"
When I shouted down from above toward Lee Tae's boat, he told me to wait a moment.
Lee Tae drew out something like a short bamboo whistle from his robes, and he blew a long note on it, sending a signal to someone.
-Bwaaak.
The signal sound, like the cry of a duck, carried far out across the reeds.
As that cry spread into the distance, a strange thing began to happen.
The center of the reed field split apart to the left and right, and a deep waterway began to reveal itself.
"The reeds!?"
"Huh? The reeds are moving!"
Both the Helmsman and Seol noona, who had been gazing at the reeds beside me, looked startled.
To figure out just what kind of trick had been worked, I focused my eyes more closely on the reeds, and I caught sight of them bobbing up and down on the ripples pushed out by the boat.
Reeds, after all, are plants that normally sink their roots firmly into mudflats or the water's edge.
'Ah.... They must have planted the reeds on floating water plants, like at Inle Lake in Myanmar.'
And the moment I saw that, I understood more or less what trick the bandits had pulled.
It felt just like Inle Lake in Myanmar, where I'd gone on a water snake tour, with water plants woven together and set afloat and reeds planted on top of them.
The bandits had apparently planted reeds on top of floating clumps of water plants, disguising the deep channel as shallow water, and only opened a path when a boat needed to pass.
"You've woven water plants together, floated them, and planted reeds on top, haven't you?"
"A-as expected of you, Young Master."
Lee Tae had worn a triumphant expression at the surprised words of the Helmsman and Seol noona, but he flinched at my question.
"This is how you've been evading the soldiers, isn't it?"
"Heh heh. Yes, well, something like that."
When we followed the revealed waterway inward for a good while, a small dock appeared among the reeds, and beyond the dock a little village began to come into view.
Smoke rose up here and there, curling out of the chimneys.
Maybe because evening was drawing near, the cooking smoke drifting up in soft curls made it look like a typical country village.
Hearing it was the bandits' Water Stronghold, I'd pictured a den of thieves, but contrary to my expectations, the Water Stronghold had the feel of a rural fishing village.
Nets were hung up here and there, too.
Seol noona seemed to think the same thing, for her voice came in a tone of surprise.
"I thought a Water Stronghold would be the lair of vicious bandits, but it's just a village, isn't it?"
"Right?"
Just then Lee Tae's voice came from below.
"This is our Water Stronghold."
"It's more of a village than a stronghold, isn't it?"
"Well, all sorts of folks from across the land who'd suffered some injustice gathered here, and so it turned into a village like this."
Lee Tae claimed the bandits gathered here were people who'd been wronged, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that, since I'd heard all criminals say the same thing.
Among the YouTubers in my past life, there'd been broadcasts run by ex-convicts, and according to them, every criminal in prison insisted they'd been wronged.
And if a violent felon ended up in the same prison, they'd curse him out as a bad guy too.
But as the ship drew closer to the dock, the sight of the people that came into view made me reconsider Lee Tae's words.
There were quite a lot of people at the Water Stronghold, and their faces were as unexpected a sight as the Water Stronghold had been when I first saw it.
Most of the people watching our ship from near the dock, with somewhat fearful eyes, were women and children.
"Ryong, they did say with their own mouths that they were river bandits, didn't they?"
"They certainly did."
Seol noona wore a startled expression at the side of them they kept hidden.
The bandits sent ahead must have already explained everything, because the people greeted us with very tense expressions.
It seemed they were frightened, having heard the heads of their households had been subdued and captured.
When the ship arrived, a sturdily built man who'd been standing in front of the gathered crowd climbed aboard the moment the gangplank was lowered, and spoke.
"A junk ship on the Yangtze.... It's been quite a while since I've seen a junk ship. I'm So Sam-rang, and I worked as a shipwright in Fuzhou. You said the ship is leaking?"
The man, around forty, had both sleeves rolled up over arms as packed with muscle as any martial artist's, and a thick, bushy beard.
The way he spoke while running his hand over the ship inspired considerable confidence.
The calluses I glimpsed on his hands made my confidence rise further still.
"I'm Soryong, the Tang Family's live-in son-in-law and a man of the Beast Palace. Well met. Helmsman, show him where the water is getting in."
I returned the greeting and connected him directly with the Helmsman.
After all, it seemed the Helmsman would be better suited than I to discuss matters concerning the ship.
"Yes, Master Soryong. Understood. That's right. It happened a while back, after we were struck by a tree that came floating down in high water. It's leaking near the prow. Would you take a look?"
"I'll do that."
The two of them went down into the hold near the prow, then came back up to the deck a little while later and began discussing the repairs in front of me.
"To stop the leak, we'll need ramie, lime, and tung oil. The ramie I can have these bandits pull from the mountains, but there's no lime or tung oil here. Do you happen to have any?"
"Of course I do. Will that be enough?"
"Yes, that will be plenty."
"How long do you think it'll take?"
"Mm.... First, come daybreak tomorrow, we'll need to haul the ship out and dry it. Ah, hold on. Lee Tae! Have the bandits go pull some ramie! Plenty of it!"
"Understood!"
The shipwright shouted to Lee Tae outside the gunwale, ordering the grass needed for repairs to be pulled, then carried on the conversation.
"Where was I? Ah, I'd gotten as far as hauling the ship out to dry. Once the ship is dry......."
According to the shipwright, repairing the ship would take ten days.
After hauling the ship out and drying it, the wood had to be soaked again in tung oil, the oil of the paulownia tree, and the gaps that had opened up had to be sealed with a mixture of fiber drawn from ramie and lime. Doing all that and drying it again would take about that long, he said.
The Helmsman, having finished talking with the shipwright, looked over at me and asked.
"So, may we proceed as the shipwright says?"
"Understood. Then I'll leave the repairs to the shipwright. And, shipwright, might I have a word with you for a moment?"
"With me, Young Master?"
"I'm not sure if you've heard, but......."
When I said I wanted to talk, the man tilted his head.
When I explained the full circumstances, he spoke with a look of disbelief.
"Lee Tae, that scoundrel, looks to be selling me out to save his own skin. The Tang Family, eh?.... Well, I've kept every bit of loyalty I owed that fellow.... But will you really be all right with it? This man here beat someone to death."
"You beat someone to death?"
At his words about beating someone to death, if I hadn't seen the faces of the village, I'd have simply repaired the ship and left. But the phrase Lee Tae had used, "folks from across the land who'd suffered some injustice", gently came back to mind.
I asked him again.
"Could I, ah, hear the story in detail?"
At my question he nodded, then plopped himself down on the deck and said.
"But this isn't really something I can just tell like that. Could I have a drink?"
His needing a drink meant it was a story he couldn't tell sober.
Seol noona, who had been watching him in silence, had a sailor bring liquor, and after the man drained a bottle in one cool gulp, the injustice he'd suffered spilled from his lips.
"Well, you see, it was like this...."
***
-Tssrit.
Bin's startled cry rang out as she was about to step onto the deck.
Beyond Bin, outside the cabin, the dawn mist had risen thick over the bandits' Water Stronghold, so dense you couldn't see an inch ahead.
"The fog's come in thick, Bin. Shall we go out after it clears up a little?"
-Tssrit!
Bin didn't care for high humidity, and on top of that, when the fog got too thick my clothes turned clammy, so I shut the door and came back into the cabin, where the shipwright and Lee Tae lay on the floor.
I draped a blanket lying loose nearby over the two of them.
The reason the two were asleep here was that my talk with the shipwright, which had begun last night along with the liquor, had run longer than expected, and the drinking had gotten heavy enough that they'd both passed out right here.
Naturally, Lee Tae, who'd been keeping pace drink for drink, had keeled over right alongside him.
When I lit the lamp in the cabin, a splashing sound came from the corner.
-Splash. Splash.
At Hwayang's cry for food, I set the lamp down near the little creature.
And then I gazed quietly at the sleeping shipwright.
Because the story he'd told me, drunk, last night came back to mind.
'He really was a wronged man, all right....'
Talking with him last night, the shipwright was, by anyone's reckoning, clearly a man who'd been wronged.
In Fuzhou he'd carried on the family trade alongside his older brother, working as a shipwright, and he'd beaten to death a man who was trying to violate his strikingly beautiful sister-in-law. But because that man was the son of a high official, he was instead branded an unjust murderer and made a fugitive.
And fleeing the disaster, he'd wandered the Central Plains before slipping into hiding here.
That was already ten years ago, he said.
Hearing the story, there seemed to be nothing wrong with his character, but the problem was that the warrant for his arrest still hadn't been lifted.
A montage in this era is called a wanted poster, and they aren't accurate, and on top of that it was a ten-year-old sketch, so there'd be no one who could recognize him, but it was still an awkward thing to decide on the spot.
Since it meant taking in a wanted man, I figured I really ought to ask my father-in-law about it.
'It'd be best to head back to the Tang Family and ask my father-in-law, wouldn't it?'
It was just as I was making up my mind, gazing at the sleeping shipwright, that it happened.
A commotion broke out outside.
"Chief! Chief!"
"Chief! Where are you! Get up!"
The voices of other bandits looking for Lee Tae were coming from outside.
"What's going on? Lee Tae. Lee Tae."
"D-don't go poking at me, you brats. Mmmgh...."
-Chirr chirr!
"Eeeek!"
Bin must have been sick of the sight of Lee Tae, because when she shrieked right by his ear, he shot bolt upright as though it were still the middle of the night.
I sent the badly startled man up to the deck.
"Your underlings have come, Lee Tae. Go see to them."
"My underlings?"
Lee Tae, who'd gone out toward the deck rubbing his eyes, came back a little while later with a startled face and asked.
"M-Master Soryong. You'll keep your promise, of course, won't you?"
"Promise?"
"The promise that you wouldn't feed us to your spiritual creatures, I mean."
At Lee Tae's question, suddenly confirming again the promise not to feed them to the spiritual creatures, I nodded.
That matter was already settled, after all.
"That goes without saying. Why bring it up all of a sudden?"
"Th-then. One of your spiritual creatures must have gotten hungry in the night, Master Soryong...."
"What? What do you mean?"
On the deck I went out to, following Lee Tae, the fog was now slowly lifting, and perhaps because of the commotion, Hwa-eun had arrived ahead of us and was examining something laid out on the deck.
Hwa-eun lifted a straw mat and was inspecting something when she cried out in a voice of disbelief.
"This is!? A mummy?"
Wondering what a mummy was, I lifted the straw mat too out of curiosity, and there lay a single bone-dry corpse.
'A mummy was a desiccated corpse!?'
Perhaps because of the fluttering straw mat, the faint scent of cilantro brushed the tip of my nose.
Only now did I understand what Lee Tae had meant.
He apparently thought our little ones had done this.
'Hey now, you bastard? Our kids don't eat junk food like this.'
There was no way our little ones would eat junk food like this.
*****
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