Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 39 - Merchant Association (2)
Chapter 39 – Merchant Association (2)
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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“…Why?”
“How would we know? That was simply the directive the association handed down.”
“Hoh.”
This was troublesome. It wasn’t unusual for merchant companies to be blacklisted by associations. But I hadn’t done anything worthy of being blacklisted.
Wait a moment. Suddenly I remembered something Vice Minister of Revenue Jin Mu-byeok had said. If the principles weren’t upheld, the Wuhan Merchant Association would take offense.
The fact that I had little capital and hadn’t paid the registration fee caused them no actual loss. Even so, I understood it. They had entered under certain conditions, and now someone else had gotten in while falling short of them, so naturally they would find it unpleasant.
“Can’t we solve this with words?”
“No.”
“I also have the registration fee for the association.”
“That’s outside my authority.”
It was quite an unpleasant situation. I had already established a foothold in Wuhan. Not only had I purchased land and buildings, but goods would soon be entering the warehouses as well.
But if the Wuhan Merchant Association came out this uncooperatively, I wouldn’t even be able to sell those goods.
“What’s going on?”
“Looks like the Wuhan Merchant Association is tormenting innocent people again.”
As the atmosphere turned ugly, I heard the surrounding whispers. Ordinarily, it would’ve been too far away, but as my inner qi accumulated, it felt as though my senses had strengthened overall.
As more and more people began paying attention, the martial men seemed to receive some sort of signal. Their expressions hardened, and they drove the people back.
“Go. Leave before you end up like him.”
“No. Why exactly should I be the one to end up badly?”
“I’m just doing what I was told, damn merchant.”
In the end, harsh words finally came out of the martial men’s mouths. One of them grabbed me by the collar without hesitation.
His fist flew straight at my jaw, before Myeong-gyeong could even react and rush in. But martial lowlifes like this, the sort used to guard merchant associations, were no longer my opponents.
I snatched the wrist of the hand clutching my collar and twisted his arm.
“Ack!”
His arm bent backward. At once, the other martial man grabbed the cudgel at his waist and swung it down toward my head. Even if it wasn’t a sword, a cudgel to the skull could kill a man, so they truly were merciless.
I swung the man whose arm I had seized toward the cudgel. The martial man who swung the cudgel and the one whose arm I held both cried out at the same time.
“Ah!”
But the momentum already in motion didn’t stop. The cudgel smashed into the forehead of the man whose arm I’d twisted.
“You son of a bitch!”
The martial man who had unintentionally beaten his companion came charging at me, furious. After spending so long looking at geniuses inside Wudang, I felt like yawning at the sight of a street-level martial man like this.
The cudgel swept toward my waist, with enough force to break it clean through. I raised my scabbard and blocked it.
“He’s a master!”
The people who had become interested in the sudden fight shouted out. To be honest, I wasn’t good enough to be called a true master.
The martial man, flustered, even poured qi into the cudgel. A faint blue qi flickered around it. I laughed.
Either coating qi visibly around a weapon was showy posturing meant for appearances, or it was the mark of a novice. In this man’s case, he was simply a novice. Ordinarily, if you knew how to handle qi, you internalized it within the blade so it wouldn’t burst outward. That way it remained condensed and could exert even more powerful force.
“To think I have to deal with people who don’t even know basics like this.”
I clicked my tongue. It truly brought on a sense of times having changed. Thinking of the days when even men like these had made me cower and pay protection money was enough to make me laugh.
I accepted the incoming cudgel with my sheathed sword, sweeping upward. The cudgel flew free of his hands, spinning in the air before crashing to the ground.
The two martial men, subdued by me in an instant, seemed to realize immediately that I was beyond what they could handle.
“Damn it. Hurry inside and bring Great Hero Jeon!”
The martial man who was now empty-handed shouted that to his companion with the split forehead. Pressing a hand to his bleeding brow, the injured man dashed into the association.
“Oooh!”
The people who had been watching burst into cheers. At some point, they had fully surrounded us and turned the scene into a spectacle.
“Wait, isn’t that man the Divine Physician of Hubei?”
“Could it be he came even to stop the tyranny of the Wuhan Merchant Association?”
Several people began recognizing me. But then again, the Wuhan Merchant Association’s reputation was even worse than I had thought. Back then I had worked for a merchant company in a different region, so I didn’t know exactly what sort of place the Wuhan Merchant Association was. But seeing how loudly people cursed it, it definitely didn’t seem to possess much virtue.
I decided simply to wait for this Great Hero Jeon. At that moment, one of the people who had been watching us came hurrying out.
“Divine Physician, you have to run!”
“Pardon?”
Looking more closely, he was one of the people I had treated.
“Didn’t they say Jeon Gil-sang is coming? That man is a human butcher.”
“Who is that?”
I had never heard the name Jeon Gil-sang before. How could I possibly know every martial artist active in this period?
But apparently everyone else knew the name.
“Please hurry and get away!”
The man grabbed my wrist and started running. It was awkward to wrench myself loose, so I followed him. Myeong-gyeong, who had been watching all this with great excitement, ran after me as well.
That was how I ended up entering a certain house without ever actually facing this person called Jeon Gil-sang.
It wasn’t an ordinary family home where wives and children lived. From the look of the men gathered there, all with exhaustion written across their faces, it seemed to be the base of some sort of group.
“Jeong-ga. And who might this gentleman be?”
One of the men already inside spoke. The man who had brought me in replied that I was the Divine Physician of Hubei and had been brought here because it looked like I was about to clash with Jeon Gil-sang of the Wuhan Merchant Association.
The others frowned the moment they heard the name Wuhan Merchant Association. At the same time, they also showed interest in me, the Divine Physician of Hubei.
One man who looked the most exhausted of all walked up to me.
“I am Song Hwan-yeong, Association Master of the East Lake Merchant Association.”
“Merchant association?”
I was slightly surprised. Since everyone in Wuhan only ever mentioned the Wuhan Merchant Association, I had assumed there simply weren’t any others. It was common enough for one association to grow so large that no others could exist beside it. But if another association really did exist, then there had to be some sort of history behind it.
“That’s right. Even if this doesn’t exactly look like one.”
Song Hwan-yeong smiled bitterly. In truth, compared to the Wuhan Merchant Association, it was pitifully shabby. For a thatched cottage with no courtyard to serve as the association hall.
“At any rate, Jeon Gil-sang won’t come as far as here. The Wuhan Merchant Association treats the East Lake Merchant Association as though it doesn’t exist, so they don’t bother coming here on purpose. So after a little time passes, I think you’ll be able to leave safely.”
“No. I’m not leaving.”
“…?”
With this many people here who could work in a merchant company, where else would I go?
I immediately began looking over the faces of the people belonging to the East Lake Merchant Association.
One of the most important things for merchants was outward appearance. Business meant meeting people, and among the skills of dealing with people, grooming one’s external presentation was among the most crucial.
I once knew someone who deliberately drank liquor that didn’t even suit his palate and let his belly grow heavy, all so that he would appear leisurely and well-off.
If there was one common set of things that successful merchants observed whenever they went to meet important people, it was the following:
Neatly groomed beards.
Clothes made from obviously expensive tribute satin.
Accessories in which jewels could be directly seen.
Escort guards who radiated strength.
If one really broke it down, there were a few more points than that, but for now this was enough.
And among the East Lake Merchant Association, there wasn’t a single person who even fulfilled one of those criteria. Every one of them had an unkempt beard, clothes made of worn cotton, no accessories whatsoever, and not only no escort guards, but not even anyone carrying a sword.
“How many merchant companies belong to this association?”
“Ahem. That’s a painful question to ask all at once.”
Song Hwan-yeong coughed awkwardly.
“Ah, my apologies. As you can see, I’m a martial man, so I don’t know much about the commercial world.”
“That must be so. I don’t imagine you asked it knowing exactly what it meant.”
I did ask it knowing exactly what it meant. One only exposed the inner flesh by digging into the wound.
They didn’t know it, but what I was doing right now was in effect interviewing them. I was evaluating them all at once, taking in their sensitivity, trustworthiness, philosophy, understanding, and knowledge.
Merchant associations weren’t like labor markets where people suited for a merchant company were lying about everywhere. Rather, they were places where people already working in merchant companies gathered, and I was looking at them and considering who could be approached with a job offer. In one sense, this was poaching, but if I didn’t do this, there was nowhere to recruit experienced hands. In that sense, a declining merchant association was a better place than anywhere else to fill the ranks of a merchant company.
“What martial man? He goes around saying he’s a merchant all the time.”
At that moment, Myeong-gyeong muttered to himself. I whipped my head toward him. It was a look meant to warn him not to say anything more, but Myeong-gyeong ignored it.
This, I truly hadn’t anticipated. Was fixing my identity inside Wudang now coming back to bite me? Immediately, the looks in the eyes of the East Lake Merchant Association people changed.
“He’s a merchant?”
“Could he be a spy of the Wuhan Merchant Association? Is this another dirty trick to steal away our manpower?”
No. It’s true that I was here to steal away manpower, but I wasn’t a spy of the Wuhan Merchant Association. It was quite an awkward situation.
“No, this gentleman is the Divine Physician of Hubei. He wouldn’t be that kind of person.”
The man who had brought me in quickly argued on my behalf. Only then did the atmosphere, which had been on the verge of flaring up, settle down.
“Ah, right. Isn’t the Divine Physician of Hubei the one who cured the epidemic in Wuhan recently?”
“Forgive me. The word merchant made me flare up for a moment and I forgot.”
“Ha ha. It’s fine.”
I breathed a sigh of relief inwardly and smiled in a deliberately easygoing way. Just as karma came back around, good deeds returned as well. If I hadn’t built up the reputation of being the Divine Physician of Hubei, I would’ve been thrown out on the spot.
“It is true that I founded a merchant company. But I don’t know anything about the affairs between the Wuhan Merchant Association and the East Lake Merchant Association. I only arrived from Jun County not long ago.”
“Hmm. I see. Since those are the words of the Divine Physician of Hubei, I’ll believe them.”
“If I had ties to the Wuhan Merchant Association, then why would I have been turned away at the gate?”
“That, too, is true.”
The people accepted my words fairly easily. Outward appearance wasn’t just a matter of the visible face. Reputation mattered too. In that respect, I had the upper hand over them.
“But I heard the Divine Physician of Hubei was a disciple of Wudang, so how is it that you’re founding a merchant company?”
“Ah, I’m a lay disciple.”
“I see. Well then, if you’re a lay disciple of the Wudang Sect, why would you bow your head before ruffians like the Wuhan Merchant Association? I was mistaken.”
“No, it was an understandable misunderstanding.”
I smiled slyly, then lowered my voice carefully. I needed to probe into their circumstances.
“Since I’m essentially an outsider to Wuhan, even if I am a merchant, I suppose it’s all right to tell me. It’s nothing extraordinary. Originally, it was the East Lake Merchant Association that had established itself first here in Wuhan.”
The moment I heard that much, the rest of the story nearly unfolded itself in my head.
The power of a merchant association that dominated a region was strong. Even the head of a trade guild that handled a single product wielded enough influence to negotiate directly with the market superintendent, so the power of an association master who oversaw whole merchant companies was far greater than that.
Because of that, merchant associations were always trying to check, absorb, and devour nearby associations. It was utterly commonplace among associations.
“Then all of a sudden they opened something called the Wuhan Merchant Association. By using that name, it was as though they had openly thrown down a challenge to the East Lake Merchant Association, which had long been the one active in Wuhan. We tried to negotiate in good faith, but they looked from the beginning as though they had no intention of negotiating with us at all.”
“Mm, mm. I see.”
It was a common enough story, but I listened with eyes full of interest as though I were hearing it for the first time. As I seemed to sympathize, Song Hwan-yeong’s explanation gradually grew longer.
“In the thirty years I’ve run an association in this place, I’ve met all sorts of people, but I’ve never seen brutes as savage as they are. From the very start, they brought ruffians with them and went around damaging the goods of the merchant companies in our association.”
“Really?”
That made me tilt my head slightly. Normally, when one merchant association devoured another, it was done through size or price. Naturally, martial men were brought in too, but that was something done only when things had been pushed to the very end. Proxy matches had been devised precisely to avoid going that far.
Unlike the martial world, merchants were sensitive to national law. After all, for merchants without power, the state was the only place they could lean on.
“Didn’t you try bringing a suit to the Provincial Administration Commission?”
“Do you think I didn’t? But the suit itself never went forward. They said that since this was a matter tolerated in the commercial world, we should settle it among ourselves.”
“I see. That must have been quite frustrating.”
“I can’t even begin to describe it. Well, what can one do? When you have no power, this is what happens.”
“That’s true.”
I myself had been forced to move regions more than once because I was overpowered, so I understood the feeling.
“Then what would you do if you had power?”
At my question, Song Hwan-yeong blinked.
“What exactly do you mean by that question?”
“What do you think?”
I smiled. It was the sort of professional business smile forged over decades.
“I mean that I intend to become that power for you.”