Abolition of the Wicked - Chapter 172

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#Episode 172

Early that morning, Geom U-bin set out for the Huashan Faction. By now they’d have discovered their sect leader was gone, and the place would be in upheaval.
Geom U-bin was the only one to have recently made an enemy of the Huashan Faction, so suspicion would naturally fall on him.
Of course, they’d find no evidence, but it was wise to make that suspicion fade as much as possible.
He asked to meet Baek Jong-dan at the Huashan Faction, but was told again that it wasn’t possible.
Geom U-bin left word that “You can’t avoid me forever,” and returned to Xi’an.
Now it was time to deal with the Daseong Merchant Association.
When he arrived at the inn, the Bloodwind Four Lions were waiting.
“I couldn’t miss such an entertaining spectacle.”
Do Pyeong-su’s excited expression shifted to disappointment at Geom U-bin’s reply.
“The disciples can’t go.”
“Why not? No one will know we’re the Bloodwind Four Lions.”
“But they’ll know about Hang Ju-sa-seon, won’t they? With the Huashan sect leader missing, we can’t afford even the slightest suspicion.”
“Are you saying we have to hide ourselves just because we’re afraid of the Huashan Faction?”
“It’s not just the Huashan problem. Now that the Monthly Blood Poison has surfaced, we can’t ignore the Demonic Cult.”
When it came to the Demonic Cult, even the Bloodwind Four Lions had to be cautious.
“Damn it! Losing our chance for fun because of those long-dead Demonic Cult bastards.”
Geom U-bin went alone to the Daseong Merchant Association. If Go Seo-bang had rushed over with such urgency, the Government Office would raid the Daseong by day’s end.
Geom U-bin’s prediction proved accurate. When he’d been sitting across the way at a tea house for barely two hours, a contingent of officials arrived.
But their numbers far exceeded his estimate—nearly a hundred strong.
It seemed the entire staff of Xi’an’s Government Office had been mobilized.
‘The imperial clan certainly has considerable power.’
Even after the officials entered the Daseong, Geom U-bin leisurely sipped his tea. The commotion from the Daseong across the Main Street was loud enough to carry all the way up to the second floor where he sat.
After finishing his tea, Geom U-bin passed through the officials who were carrying goods out of the Daseong.
Most were documents, though several officials hauled out entire safes.
“Magistrate Seo! What in heaven’s name are you doing? After all the money I’ve given you, you dare treat me this way!”
The man shouting was Gam O-heung, and his target was Seo Man-gang, who wore the crimson robes of a magistrate.
“Why did you have to touch someone you should have left alone? That’s your problem.”
“Touch whom? Who did I touch?”
“The Oseong Jang-won in Hangju.”
“Oseong Jang-won? What about Oseong Jang-won?”
“The person backing them is imperial. Imperial.”
“What, what did you say?”
“The leverage you hold is already broken. The Censorate-in-Chief personally ordered the arrest of the Southern Censorate Deputy this very morning.”
“Corrupt officials who pocket bribes deserve punishment, naturally.”
Gam O-heung and Seo Man-gang turned toward the voice. The speaker was Geom U-bin, hands clasped behind his back in a posture belying his years, a faint smile playing at his lips.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk… If you’d only honored your debts from the start, none of this would have happened.”
“Geom U-bin. You, you bastard……”
Gam O-heung gnashed his teeth while Seo Man-gang bent at the waist.
“So you are the young master of the Oseong Jang-won.”
“Your diligence in your duties is commendable.”
“I merely do what is required of me.”
With an imperial patron at his back, Geom U-bin made even a seventh-rank magistrate’s spine bend obsequiously.
Moreover, it seemed to be more than mere acquaintance with the imperial clan. The letter sent to the Provincial Prisons Commissioner of Shaanxi bore the imperial seal and had been transmitted through the Imperial Guard.
No one could set both the imperial household and the Imperial Guard in motion without imperial sanction directly.
Geom U-bin posed a question to Seo Man-gang.
“What charges is Lord Gam facing?”
“Roughly fifteen counts: human trafficking through usurious loans, salt smuggling, wage embezzlement, market manipulation, and so forth.”
“My! You’ve been quite the busy criminal. If you’re properly sentenced, prison awaits?”
“He should receive at least fifteen years……”
Seo Man-gang let his words trail off and glanced at Gam O-heung. The look in his eyes said it would be wise to settle this matter quickly.
Rage burned through Gam O-heung like fire through silk, but he had only one card left to play.
“Will it be settled if I repay six hundred twenty thousand taels?”
Seo Man-gang’s eyes widened in shock at that figure.
“Six hundred twenty thousand taels in debt left unpaid? You deserve this fate. You deserve it.”
Seo Man-gang excused himself from the table, telling Geom U-bin that he had matters to attend to.
“I’ll give you six hundred and twenty thousand taels—stop this madness at once!”
“But there’s a loan certificate, and you never repaid it. How can you expect me to back down on the Master’s word alone?”
“Where in heaven’s name am I supposed to find such an enormous sum right now?”
Geom U-bin feigned an expression of shock.
“So you never even thought of repaying the debt you owe me? Then I suppose arranging the money will take some time. This is quite the predicament. My interest rates are rather steep, you see.”
Geom U-bin turned toward the door and continued speaking.
“Once you’ve arranged the funds, come to the inn where I’m staying. You know which one, don’t you?”
He left the Daseong Merchant Association, ignoring Gam O-heung’s calls behind him.
Gam Dae-cheon, the eldest son, came rushing in breathlessly and called out to his father.
“Father! We’ve found everything—even the secret ledger that was hidden in the magistrate’s office!”
“A secret ledger?”
It contained a complete record of every illegal deed the family had committed over the years. True, it was written in cipher that only the Gam family could decipher, but once that cipher was broken, all their crimes would be laid bare.
“We need to raise funds immediately.”
“Are you thinking of repaying Geom U-bin?”
“It’s infuriating, but there’s no other way to resolve this disaster right now. Let’s settle this matter first, and I’ll repay this debt later, no matter what it takes.”
At that moment, Seo Man-gang returned with a group of constables.
“Master Gam, you’ll need to come to the Magistrate’s Office with us.”
As Gam O-heung left with the officials, he turned to his son and said:
“You handle this.”
“Understood, Father.”
Gam Dae-cheon had spent his entire life learning the merchant trade under his father’s tutelage, so raising funds to repay the debt was well within his capabilities.
‘The cash on hand falls far short of six hundred and twenty thousand taels. I’ll need to borrow roughly three million from the Zhongyuan Money Exchange first.’
A merchant association of Daseong’s standing could easily borrow several million taels on credit alone. But Gam Dae-cheon had to visit five different money exchanges, and not a single one would lend him three million taels.
Word that the Government Office had seized and searched the Daseong Merchant Association spread like wildfire, and soon after, the fact that the imperial family was involved became known.
No money exchange would readily lend to a merchant association that had made an enemy of the imperial household. Gam Dae-cheon had no choice but to open the secret warehouse.
He could have offered land as collateral, but the appraisal and approval would take at least five days.
He couldn’t leave his father in prison for five days. The secret warehouse was packed with treasures—gold ingots, night luminous pearls, and more.
Money’s value can shift at any moment and place. Indeed, rumors of treason had circulated not long before.
No matter who becomes emperor, what never changes is gold and precious treasures.
Gam Dae-cheon gathered a generous amount of gold ingots. Pinching pennies and giving Geom U-bin an opening to find fault would only delay matters further.
He had the banknotes in his robe and the gold ingots loaded onto a carriage. When he arrived at the inn, however, Geom U-bin was not there—instead, Jeom So-i greeted him.
“He said he would return in about two hours. Oh, and he said if anyone came looking for him, I should relay a message.”
“What message?”
“Did you prepare a generous amount for the interest?”
“What?”
“That’s what the guest instructed me to say, sir.”
Gam O-heung hadn’t mentioned interest. The debt itself—six hundred and twenty thousand taels—was already infuriating enough, and now this fiend wanted to extract interest on top of it all!
‘Truly a vicious creature.’
Gam Dae-cheon mentally calculated the amount of gold he’d brought. Fortunately, he’d prepared generously, so he should have an extra hundred thousand taels or so.
‘That should be sufficient for the interest.’
“Will you wait?”
At Jeom So-i’s question, Gam Dae-cheon took a seat in a corner of the dining room. There was nowhere else for him to be at the moment.
While Gam Dae-cheon waited, Geom U-bin was at the Government Office. When word came that Geom U-bin had arrived, the Provincial Governor himself rushed out barefoot to greet him—no one in the office dared obstruct his passage to anywhere he wished to go.
Of course, his every request was granted without delay.
“I’d like to examine the ledgers confiscated from the Daseong Merchant Association.”
The quantity was so vast that it took two hours to bring them all. Geom U-bin read through the ledgers at remarkable speed.
Though he didn’t directly operate the Oseong Merchant Association, he reviewed the ledgers regularly, so reading them was second nature to him.
‘They’re making money with truly evil methods.’
When reading the ledgers concerning usury, anger rose unbidden in his chest. If debtors couldn’t repay, they would sell themselves into bondage, or if they had daughters, the ledgers showed those daughters being sold to brothels and pleasure houses without exception.
Of course, nothing was written explicitly in the ledgers, but the lists and numbers alone made it clear what was happening.
‘In flood-stricken regions, they hoarded goods and manipulated prices to make twelve times their profit. And they colluded with officials to supply inferior goods at premium prices.’
As Geom U-bin scanned through the ledgers, his hand suddenly stopped. Though formatted like an ordinary ledger, the names and numbers didn’t align.
‘What is this?’
After studying it for some time, Geom U-bin realized this was a secret ledger.
“This is interesting.”
The cipher was intricate, but not beyond Geom U-bin’s ability to break. It was the kind of cipher that could be easily decoded by substituting the numbers “one-eight-four-two.”
When he applied the numbers, the characters and amounts fell into perfect alignment.
“It’s a map of the money flows in the Daseong Merchant Association.”
This was the Daseong Merchant Association’s vital point. Gam O-heung had created it to manage the association more easily, but for Geom U-bin, it was a weapon to control them completely.
Geom U-bin went to Hyeon-ryeong and asked him to keep Gam O-heung locked away for the next fortnight.
“It shall be done.”
Hyeon-ryeong walked Geom U-bin to the door of the Government Office and saw him out. When he returned to the inn, Gam Dae-cheon was waiting as expected.
“Shall we go upstairs?”
Gam Dae-cheon followed Geom U-bin, lugging a box with a grunt of effort. Once he’d set it on the table, he withdrew an envelope from his chest.
“Six hundred and thirty thousand silver taels.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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