Chapter 911: Tripitaka Master and the Thief of Benevolence and Righteousness (4)

To say they were dressed up as monsters meant they were a meticulous band of robbers who hid their identities while committing plunder.

Qing, too, was a master of disguise—an expert at splitting bodies—and hadn’t she been, at one time, the righteous martial world’s sacred Heavenly Flower Sword, and at another, All-Summer, the living god of mechanisms and formations itself, and at yet another, the justice-dispensing thief-bitch Ju Gillien, a madwoman obsessed with meat?

So she knew well the liberation that came with hiding who you were, and the boldness born from it.

And yet—listen to what they were saying now.

If they didn’t rob people, they couldn’t live?

[“You’ve got all your arms and legs—what do you mean you can’t live unless you rob? Dig up the ground, scour the mountains, do whatever you have to and eat. How does it make any damn sense to say there’s no way to live except banditry? Or what—did someone shove a blade in your face and threaten you? Told you to go rob people?”]

At that, awe rose on the faces of the Eastern Tribespeople.

[“T-that’s right. As expected... for a divine being with such extraordinary powers, do you see everything clearly, laid bare before you?”]

“...Huh?”

Qing’s face, which had been hauling murderous intent up by the throat, turned genuinely stupid.

Thankfully, she had her face veil on, so the majesty of the supreme Tripitaka—who ruled the heavens and enjoyed the authority of Left Yama, Right Shangdi—didn’t crack.

[“What are you talking about? Someone really threatened you with a blade? Told you to go rob people?”]

At the voice full of disbelief, worry settled back over the Eastern Tribespeople.

Ah. So she hadn’t looked into them with some miraculous art—like farsight, or mind-reading.

[“They didn’t point a knife at us, but it’s the same thing. They know—no, they obviously know our situation, and yet—”]

[“Just know it!? That bastard went even further—kept shoving us along, all sly about it! What? People won’t starve to death no matter what? If you pray hard enough, monsters will help you?”]

[“That fucking bastard! Motherless, fatherless little shit!”]

[“That miserable piece of trash—‘stingray dick is easy prey,’ they say—if he thought he could squeeze something out of it, he’d stitch a skin-needle into a rat!”]

[“I should rip his head off and shove it up his asshole. Even if a pussy’s dirty, there’s no one as filthy as that bastard.”]

The Eastern Tribespeople exploded in outrage and poured out their grievances.

From long ago, they’d been a people of curses—spitting venom with razor-sharp profanity mixed in.

In the past—several decades ago—there had been a disaster on the land of Joseon, enormous and horrific.

Truthfully, even before that, Joseon had been a country where people muttered about doom and ruin, where the commoners’ lives were bleak beyond measure.

Still, in its own way, it had kept rolling along—though the problem was that it was rolling downhill, and the nation’s household was steadily tipping over. Even so, it was a Joseon where, somehow, you could still manage to live.

Then, all at once—CRASH—a sheer cliff dropped across that gentle downward curve: the invasion by those Japanese bastards in the Imjin Year, the Imjin War.

Qing’s expression turned strange.

Wow. Even after coming to this pseudo–Central Plain, fake-ancient, parallel world, I’m still getting a history lecture...

But it wasn’t just the war.

That horrific aftermath smothered Joseon.

Because of the Imjin War, three-quarters of the farmland had been lost.

Joseon was, to begin with, an agrarian country that despised commerce, pressed merchants down hard, and had nothing you could call industry beyond household handicrafts.

In a country with nothing but farming, when farmland was cut down to a quarter—of course a terrible famine, starvation, followed.

And chaos—where people died in droves—always invites plague.

That was why, according to those Western, big-nosed heaven-worshippers, the four horsemen of apocalypse came bundled as one: war, famine, plague, and death.

So the result was this: out of ten Joseon people, three lost their lives to the war and its aftermath.

A catastrophe so severe that three-tenths of the population vanished.

And most of that lost three-tenths were commoners and slaves—meaning the lowest strata.

The yangban—the ruling class of Joseon—also suffered tremendous damage.

But the gap between rich and poor before and after the Imjin War only widened dramatically; comparatively, they became even wealthier than before.

The ruling class, in this chaotic age, exploited the commoners—squeezing out their blood and wringing them dry.

[“They run usury with grain—if you borrow one sack of millet or sorghum as food, next year they scream at you to hand over four sacks in rice. No matter how hard you sharecrop, all that piles up is debt, and now everyone’s sold themselves—there’s practically no one left who isn’t a slave.”]

[“Mm.”]

[“If it gets a little warmer, we could dig up mountain greens, strip bark, somehow eat... but if we don’t go out in a masquerade at this time of year, our whole household starves to death before the weather breaks...”]

In the warm south, the ground would be starting to thaw now—hold out just a bit longer and you could, somehow, graze on grass and keep breathing.

But here—in Pyeongan Province, and in this area pressed up against the far-northern Hamgyeong region—new shoots wouldn’t sprout for another month and a half.

So, to live, in the end there was no answer but plunder.

“Hmm...”

If she hadn’t known, she hadn’t known—but now that she’d heard it, they were pitiful and wretched.

No wonder their faces were gaunt, their eyes hollow—looking like they hadn’t eaten in ages.

It was the unmistakable brand of miserable poverty.

[“Still... I hear your plundering gets more and more vicious every winter, that the rumors keep spreading. If that’s true, don’t the villages you raid across the river just run away? Maybe you can hold out right now, but what are you planning to do in the future?”]

[“We’re about to starve to death. When you sleep one night and wake up, two or three people have starved to death—what does the future matter...?”]

At that, Qing let out a long, heavy sigh.

Still, she couldn’t exactly leave this bandit pack alone and say, Your situation’s sad, so go rob other sad people and live. Chin up—work hard at plunder, feed your wife and kids like a proud head of household. I’m rooting for you.

That wasn’t a thing.

And—based on what she’d heard—there was a solution.

[“A moment ago, it sounded like you’ve got an awful lot of resentment toward that bastard—”]

[“That son of a bitch is a fucking bastard!”]

[“Even while the whole district is dying, he’s the only one stuffing his belly with grease—”]

[“The Uniform Tribute Law’s been in force for over twenty years and he still screams for leopard skins—”]

A swarm of curses poured out, loud and furious.

Qing nodded.

[“Sounds like he deserves to die. But if, like you say, the government office takes all your grain... then why not rob the government office?”]

In the first place, what made these bandits was Joseon’s ruling class—especially the local officials.

Just like the Central Plain, Joseon’s local officials had a structure where they had to “earn” their own salary; the more the people below them cried bloody tears, the richer the officials became.

That wasn’t Joseon’s problem alone—it was just the standard of this primitive ancient age, an administrative system as barbaric as it gets.

The difference was, the Central Plain was rich in goods—so even if officials squeezed the commoners, the commoners’ tables merely swapped meat for greens.

They could still live.

They said official exaction was the scariest thing in the Central Plain, but even then, ordinary households still had oil in their kitchens—blanching vegetables and meat in it (stir-frying—Central Plain cooking blanched in oil).

But the Central Plain was the unusual case.

Across all human history, countries where the ruled class could cook meals for themselves were extremely rare.

So in this barren Joseon, ruined by war, the way for these pitiful “monsters” to eat their fill—

And if they wanted to avoid continuing this miserable existence, barely breathing by committing banditry—

Qing looked over the base faces of the “monsters.”

Using I had to eat as an excuse could never absolve robbery.

But if the ones who had the duty to care for them instead drove them into becoming bandits—

A dangerous color swirled in Qing’s eyes.

A light that existed nowhere in the world—an ominous glow spilling from a lonely, malignant star.

What to do?

You screw the ones doing the ripping-off. Tear them apart. Rip and shred.

[“B-but no matter what... how could you do that... wouldn’t that be treason...?”]

[“How could we commit such disloyalty...?”]

[“If a general rides down from the capital with soldiers to punish rebels, not just us—our entire district will be slaughtered!”]

No country took uprisings lightly.

But Qing tilted her head.

[“Then you think your plundering is fine forever? The Central Plain’s troops are living up there—about two thousand of them—building walls right next to Weihwa Island. How can you be so sure they won’t get fed up and invade?”]

[“That’s why we... ended up like this, doing this ridiculous masquerade. It wasn’t us—monsters, it was monsters...?”]

[“...Huh?”]

[“Mm?”]

The Joseon people—no, the “monsters”—slowly made faces like they’d realized something.

Qing nodded.

[“All right. Let’s go. Sun Wukong here, and Zhu Bajie too—”]

“Master. I’ll be Sha Wujing. Isn’t Zhu Bajie a bit much? In fact, Master, you’re the one who suits Zhu Bajie—with that heavy slab of fat hanging up top. And yet you call him Zhu Bajie, not Zhu Wuneng? Joseon people especially call him that... are you deeply familiar not only with the Joseon tongue, but their customs as well?”

“Hey. You can speak Joseon.”

“I never said I couldn’t.”

[“Ahem. Anyway—Sun Wukong and Sha Wujing here were originally monsters too, but they changed their hearts and became my underlings, guarding justice. I will lead you monsters for a while. You won’t need to worry about the spears and blades of the human world!”]

And so—

*****

Suddenly: government-office raid vibes.

If that was the case, then the first thing to do was obvious.

[“All right. First, prepare bamboo spears.”]

[“Ah, Master? Bamboo doesn’t grow around here... is it truly necessary?”]

“Damn it. No bamboo spears.”

[“Why bamboo spears?”]

[“Because a spear made of bamboo is the symbol of resistance that pierces the bellies of vile officials. Easy to make, sharp, and tough. And bamboo symbolizes integrity and loyalty—so forging a spear from bamboo and resisting oppression carries double the meaning, doesn’t it?”]

[“...!”] [“Ohhh!”] [“As expected!”]

If someone heard it, they’d think she was teaching something wonderful.

But the sensibility of someone listening right now was a little different.

“Oh. That was good, just now. The Heavenly Flower Sword doesn’t look like that at all, but it’s interesting how you’ve got this subtle scent of ink about you.”

Anyway.

Behind Qing, riding a black horse, martial-arts bandits and “monsters” followed.

Somehow the party kept growing—and considering they were a bandit pack, it was strange that everyone joining was also a bandit.

Or maybe this was what birds of a feather looked like.

And so, like the founding king of Joseon who once turned his army back at Weihwa Island and built the dynasty, this monster bandit pack turned back from the Yalu River—no, turned up the river—marching with brazen confidence toward their home turf, Pungcheong Village.

But as they went, wouldn’t Qing’s heated rage begin to cool, little by little?

Mm. I heard it and got so furious I wanted to smash those bastard sons of bitches... but is this actually okay...?

And the officials’ extortion—wasn’t it just the one-sided claim of these “monster” bandits?

Maybe the officials had circumstances worth arguing too.

Maybe they were starving too, while the higher-ups above them stripped them bare.

Wait—who’s even Joseon’s king right now? Uh... the Imjin War was that famous runaway king, and then next was... the one who led the war in place of the fleeing king, and then there was a coup... was there? Wasn’t there?

And how did they even drive out the Japanese bastards?

Come to think of it, the Son of Heaven right now isn’t even that famous Joseon-lover Son of Heaven, is he?

Did the Central Plain send reinforcements here too?

Mm. Don’t be curious. It’s not my Joseon, and it’s a parallel Joseon that has nothing to do with me...

More importantly—she’d charged in on impulse, but wasn’t it only right to also hear the officials’ side?

Some local magistrate, probably.

They couldn’t be a picture-perfect, cookie-cutter corrupt official, right?

Qing decided to try talking it out first.

That’s what she thought, but—