“He has… a… wakened… The descendant of the one who wore the iron mask… has woken from his long sleep… He has taken up the sword of vengeance… and he seeks the throats of the snake and the dragon… My children… make ready… Ohh! Fearful, how fearful… Trample, trample, and trample again!”

Sssssssss.

Hazy blue incense smoke curled up at the head of the room.

A young man standing before the censer frowned as he muttered.

His robes were half gold, half black.

The voice that flowed out of him was grotesque, neither a man’s nor a woman’s.

Tatami covered the floor, and on the wall facing it hung a painting of a black snake and a golden snake coiled together, tangled in one another.

And below the dais, three men knelt, prostrate and reverent.

They were dressed in white and black.

“We will trample, and trample again!”

Thud! Thud! Thud!

They slammed their heads against the wooden floor as hard as they could, bowing low.

Their foreheads were bruised with blood.

Anyone could see it was the deepest form of worship.

The young man’s eyes had been closed. Now they opened.

He turned slowly and looked at the three men.

There was no telling his age.

His face was plastered with gold and black paint.

Fwaaash.

His eyes were deformed, like a snake’s.

They glowed an eerie yellow.

“Find the heir of the iron mask.”

It was a human voice, but it didn’t sound human.

“His seed must be wiped out. Find him before the Heaven and Earth Society dogs do.”

It was an order no outsider could have understood.

“And trample him. Burst him and tear him apart, just as a hundred years ago!!!”

Murderous light burst from the man’s eyes.

“We obey the will of the Snake Spirit!”

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The three slammed their heads down again, and blood burst from their foreheads.

It was the command of a heavenly ancestor, and none dared defy it.

“You may call on all the power of the Divine Land. Before the god’s anger falls, the descendant of the iron mask… destroy him!”

The order to kill came down.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Their heads soaked in blood, the three men pressed their faces to the floor.

“Oh! It’s perfect! So this is the beauty of Korea…”

Madame Emmanuelle gasped in admiration.

She turned out to be French aristocracy.

We’d talked a lot in the car on the way to the country house.

Lee Zhangchang was pleased with the luxury car, the kind you rarely see even in Hong Kong.

Clara sat beside me, peeling sweet roasted chestnuts for me.

What else is there to do in a car?

We traded the family history we hadn’t gotten around to in Hong Kong.

Anyone watching would have thought it was the son-in-law’s second-round interview.

I liked Clara, but it went no further than that.

Clara didn’t press me to say I loved her, either.

We both knew we were closer than a fling and further than lovers.

Both of us had a lot on our plates.

Meeting up like this now and then for a date wasn’t bad at all.

As we swapped stories, I learned that Madame Emmanuelle was the daughter of a grand French aristocratic family, and that Lee Zhangchang was a big name among the overseas Chinese.

I’d sensed it the moment I saw their luxury house in Hong Kong.

Wealth sat on them naturally, in a way no nouveau riche could fake.

They had the same air as Mom, who’d grown up a conglomerate’s daughter.

“Welcome.”

Mom came out to the front of the house to meet us with a lovely smile.

“Mommy!!!”

Clara wasn’t even her daughter, but she cried Mommy and threw herself into Mom’s arms.

“Clara. You’ve gotten even prettier since I last saw you.”

“And you’ve gotten even more elegant, Mommy. I missed you.”

For someone with the best education money could buy, she talked more like a spoiled kid than the twins.

Her flattery was top-notch, of course.

“Annyong-hasheyo. I em Emmanuelle.”

Madame Emmanuelle greeted her in awkward Korean.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Ju Seol-ran.”

“Oh! You speak French.”

“I learned a little.”

“That’s not a little. That’s a true Parisian accent.”

Madame Emmanuelle was bowled over by Mom’s cultured French.

She went straight in with a warm bisou on Mom’s cheek.

Mom took the bisou without the slightest awkwardness.

“I’m afraid we’re imposing on you. I am Lee Zhangchang, Clara’s father.”

Lee Zhangchang, too, greeted her politely in French.

“Welcome. You’ve come a long way. Tea is ready inside.”

Mom fit the role of mistress of the old house perfectly.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He had some business at Nonghyup. He’ll be back this evening with the twins.”

“Okay.”

Just as we were about to go inside with Mom—

“Hao!”

Lee Zhangchang suddenly looked up at the mountain behind the house and let out a hao.

He saw it! He really saw it!

I’d figured out long ago that this Lee Zhangchang was no ordinary man.

But today I learned he knew feng shui well enough to find the vein on the first try.

“Is something wrong?”

I asked, playing innocent.

“Remarkable! To think I’d see a prime site in the shape of the golden hen sheltering her eggs, here of all places!”

“Pardon? A prime site in the shape of the golden hen sheltering her eggs?”

“You’re still young; you won’t have studied the lie of the mountains yet, so listen well.”

Lee Zhangchang raised a finger and happily launched into an explanation.

He had no idea he was showing off his learning in front of Confucius. (TL Note: The Korean saying is “quoting the classics in front of Confucius”—lecturing the one person who knows the subject far better than you do.)

“Generally speaking, the house of the dead follows the principles of feng shui for graves, and the place where the living dwell follows the principles of feng shui for homes. Now, the mountain at the back, the one standing guard behind the house—doesn’t its shape look like a mother hen’s body and comb?”

“Ah!”

The polite thing was to act amazed.

This was the most basic of basics.

“The energy of the mountain at the back is pure, the White Tiger guards the right and the Azure Dragon the left, and they serve as the facing hill as well—so isn’t this the very image of a hen carefully sheltering her eggs?” (TL Note: In feng shui, the ridges that enfold a site are named for guardian beasts: the Azure Dragon on the left, the White Tiger on the right. A site cradled by both is well protected.)

Lee Zhangchang read the mountains without a moment’s hesitation.

He was so excited that his Cantonese came pouring out hard and fast.

China was vast, but it had few great mountains, so prime sites were hard to come by—no wonder he reacted like that.

It was the same for Japan, with all its volcanoes.

Japan lay in the position of an outer Azure Dragon, blocking the Pacific’s waters, so it had no site worthy of the name.

The fire energy of the volcanoes and the water energy of the Pacific clashed constantly, so the mountains were harsh and the earth’s energy never settled.

Earthquakes and volcanoes plagued it all the time, so it didn’t deserve to be called a prime site.

Seen through the lens of feng shui on the grandest scale, the Korean Peninsula itself is a prime site, protected by China as its White Tiger on the right and Japan as its outer Azure Dragon.

If it were a house, those two countries would be the roof and the walls, keeping the inside calm.

That’s why, though the peninsula was invaded countless times, its people kept their lineage alive.

Only recently had I realized that the spot where our house stood was the very heart of that vein.

They say that a prime site is generally granted by the mountain god only to a family that has piled up virtue for three generations.

It takes the praise of the people in the neighboring villages, who are human in life and gods in death.

But the site of our house was one that required ten generations of ancestors who’d committed no great sin.

The energy in its heart was so enormous that its blessings were slow to arrive.

“And this is what we call the living man’s prime site in the shape of the golden hen sheltering her eggs!”

Oh! Clara’s father knew his stuff.

At this level, he might not be called a grand master of feng shui, but people would call him a man of real insight.

“There wouldn’t happen to be a well inside the house, would there?”

“There is.”

He’d guessed right without even seeing it.

“The water is clear and clean all year round, and it never runs dry even in a drought, am I right?”

Anyone who didn’t know better would have called him a ghost.

“How did you know?”

I asked, knowing full well.

It was time to rewrite my assessment of Lee Zhangchang.

“That is what we call true response water. It forms only at the heart of a prime site—the sign of fortune in wealth.”

For that, he earned an upgrade from a man of insight.

Feng shui masters who could grasp that much at a single glance numbered fewer than five in all of Korea.

If I hadn’t inherited the true teachings of the immortal Nam Sa-go, I wouldn’t have known it either.

The very term true response water was a secret known only to the great masters of feng shui.

“It truly is a fine site for a house.”

And with that, Lee Zhangchang was done.

A fine site for a house, he’d said—no more, no less.

To my ears it meant: good enough to raise a chaebol family, and that was all.

“Ah! I see!”

I played along.

But I didn’t agree with him in the least.

Lee Zhangchang didn’t live around here, so he didn’t know.

The mountain behind our house was the last peak in a line running from Mount Gyeryong.

It’s where the true vein of the Geumnam Range flows.

It’s the final destination of the earth’s spine, which rises all the way back at the Himalayas, runs through the Pamirs, the Tian Shan, the Greater Khingan and the Mongolian Plateau, and stretches down the Baekdudaegan.

At first glance it looked like a prime site in the shape of the golden hen, but from higher up, the mountains took on a different shape.

It’s a place where the energy of the mountain taegeuk and the water taegeuk swirls.

The mountains curve in the shape of the taegeuk, and the water flowing around them takes the same shape.

Picture it.

The energy that flowed down the earth’s spine, gathering here at last and swirling like a whirlpool.

The place where all that gathered energy merges is a supremely auspicious site called the hen crows and the dragon soars.

It’s a prime site formed where the golden hen meets the flying dragon rising to heaven.

In other words, it’s an ideal place of clear breezes and a bright moon. (TL Note: A classical four-character phrase, “clear breeze, bright moon,” for an unspoiled, peaceful place—and for a person of clean, upright character.)

If Lee Zhangchang spent a few days walking the area, he’d sense that something was unusual.

But that was a secret too.

Without the true teachings of the immortals Nam Sa-go and Park Yu-bong, no one could ever see it clearly.

“The house is ideally placed, too! Oho, even the front gate keeps the energy from leaking out by so much as an inch!”

Lee Zhangchang was amazed even as we went inside.

I’d advised Mom on the everyday feng shui, too, and she’d made changes.

The master carpenter who’d restored the house knew feng shui well, too.

“Is that so? Ohh! That’s amazing.”

I followed behind him, chiming in.

For a guest who’d come from so far away, I could dish out that kind of hospitality chatter all day long.

“What? Jang Tae-san? And who the hell is that little shit!”

Chairman Oh Seung-hyeok of the Ana Group roared.

He owned a conglomerate, but the way he talked was as cheap as it gets.

“Young Dong-seong’s junior at the university.”

Manager Yu Byeong-seok, his closest aide, went on with his report, unfazed.

That was the secret to surviving as right-hand man to a chairman with a hellish temper.

“His junior in the law department at Hanguk University?”

“He’s a freshman. Just started this year.”

“What’s some freshman got to do with Dong-seong? It’s not like that little shit fed him the drugs! You people aren’t earning your keep!”

Oh Seung-hyeok talked down to everyone in private, executives included.

He’d been in a murderous rage lately.

Oh Dong-seong—the baby of his three sons, the one he used as a shield against the press and to polish the company’s image—had caused a disaster.

Drugs alone, he could have smoothed over; this, there was no wriggling out of.

The company’s image had taken a hit, and the stock price kept sliding.

His son had been branded a lunatic who ran naked down Gangnam-daero, high on drugs.

He couldn’t go to school anymore.

It wouldn’t be easy to marry him into a distinguished family from now on, either.

And on top of that, a detention warrant had been issued for the boy on charges of taking psychotropic drugs.

He’d paid the incoming government a hefty sum under the table, but they’d promised to get the boy out only after the presidential inauguration.

Public opinion was too hostile.

The new government had won power by a landslide, but it was early in its term, and the timing was bad.

He’d poured money into the press and patched things up for now.

Interest had cooled quickly thanks to the inauguration.

He’d sent a lawyer to the detained Oh Dong-seong to find out what had happened.

And he’d dug up some strange information.

“We haven’t found out who attacked him that day. There’s no CCTV in the area. But the girl who was with young Dong-seong reportedly called the attacker oppa. She has no brother of her own, and the only one she’d call oppa is a kid named Jang Tae-san.”

“You sure?”

“We put the intelligence team on it and confirmed it.”

“So you’re saying that punk attacked him and fed him the drugs? What do the president there and his little brother say?”

“They say they never saw his face. They went down with one punch.”

“A Hanguk University kid who fights that well?”

“He took down knife-wielding mobsters in his hometown. You know about it too, Chairman. The provincial gang sweep two years ago.”

“What? That little shit was Jang Tae-san?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Is that so???”

Oh Seung-hyeok’s eyes gleamed.

He looked like a jackal that had spotted its prey.

It was Oh Seung-hyeok’s nature: find an enemy, go for the throat, kill with a single bite.

All his mergers and acquisitions had been like that.

Surround the target on all sides, then take it in a single stroke.

“You really sure?”

Even so, he was careful.

A law student at Hanguk University wasn’t someone you could touch lightly.

“We’re over ninety percent confident.”

“So you’re sure… then bring him in. Let me see his mug.”

“From what we’ve found, he has quite a lot of money, too.”

“Money? How much could a kid have! Send the Team Two boys and drag him in!”

“T-Team Two?”

“You said the little shit can fight, didn’t you? Who else but Team Two?”

“Understood…”

Security Team Two, known as the chairman’s personal unit.

The chairman’s private bodyguards, called the close-protection team.

In anything involving the chairman, they were more brutal than the mobsters.

“Jang Tae-san… if it’s true… you’ll just have to die.”

(End of Chapter 107)