Summary

In Chapter 23, Min listens to an interrogator question one of the mercenaries. The man says no one can survive on the Fourth Colony because of the ghosts there and the pox spirits. Min notes that the mercenary sounds like a scholar instead of a ruffian. (Min refers to him as the scholar from this point and he is later identified as Scholar Chul.) The scholar says an official named Councilor Chae-Won of the Pearled Halls hired the crew that included the scholar to find the Dragon Pearl, which would mean they were no longer dependent on the Dragon Society. Min knows that people like the councilor did not care about the poor who would benefit most. The scholar explains that the people of the Fourth Colony had grown arrogant and “stopped making offerings to the pox spirits” (188). Those spirits became vengeful and killed...