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The decades after the Hundred Year War were a time of great economic flux. Fortunes that had been secure for centuries crumbled. New fortunes were built overnight, seemingly from nothing. Technology lurched forward, businesses thrived and withered at nightmare speed in a gold-rush atmosphere of unbounded possibility. In this environment, a new form of crime emerged: the confidence game. The legendary grifters and con men of the Restoration Era had a hundred ways of separating the overenthusiastic from their money, but the great development of the era, the criminal equivalent of radio or the Satomobile, was the long con, perfected by the Dao Gang.
This is the story of the time Lee Feng crossed paths with the Dao Gang.
---
The day was oppressively hot, sweat was trickling down Lee Feng's back under his clothes, and the docks smelled like fish, rot, and foreigners. Yu Dao was not making a good first impression.
Ah, but no, Feng reminded himself, mustn't call it Yu Dao any more. That was the name of the first Fire Nation colony in this godforsaken land, the flag of civilization planted among a backward people, and it was offensive to bring up that inconvenient fact nowadays. Might hurt the feelings of the Avatar or his best buddy Fire Lord Zuko. This wasn't Fire Nation territory any more, and it wasn't Yu Dao, where his family had been trading for eighty years. This was Republic City now, and he had to come here in person, leaving his family and his modest estate, to haggle and shove for business like a street vendor.
His first stop was at a bank, to present the letters of credit certifying his funds at their sister bank in the Fire Nation. Planning ahead, he withdrew sufficient cash to cover at least a week of likely expenses, though he could barely suppress a shudder when the clerk handed him a stack of paper. Paper currency was being issued even back home now, but it was all this new United Republic offered, and he could not help viewing it as a dire omen. The postwar economy was tenuous and uncertain, and to Feng's mind, nothing symbolized that so well as the idea of printing money on paper.
A rickshaw ride through the streets raised his spirits a bit, though. Everywhere he looked there was new construction, buildings going up, sewer lines being laid, factories humming and grinding away. The air smelled like money, and that was what Feng was here for. For decades, his family had hovered right on the edge of being properly rich, not merely well-off but rich, as his grandfather had planned for them, but all the efforts of Feng's father and Feng himself had not been able to push them over that threshold.
Now, with this Republic arising and all the old, proper business arrangements thrown into question, a contract signed seventy years ago suddenly wasn't good enough any more. But with this uncertainty came new opportunities, and it seemed possible that Feng might return from this journey having finally secured the fortunes of the Lee family for the next ten generations.
His confidence was bolstered when they arrived at his hotel, a fine establishment in the old Fire Nation style, a good sign if ever there was one. He had his bags sent up to his room and went into the hotel restaurant for a long-overdue dinner. The restaurant catered to a street trade as well, he saw, but he was broadminded enough to eat alongside Earth Nation folk and common workers.
After finishing his meal, he sat contemplating the drinks menu, a mixture of cocktails and liqueurs from all over the world, some he had never heard of, wondering what was appropriate for an aperitif. Unexpectedly, a tap came on his shoulder.
"Excuse me, sir," said a middle-aged Earth Kingdom man with bushy eyebrows, "but I see you're a gentleman who cares about the quality of a fine drink."
"What of it?" sniffed Feng. The stranger's clothes were of decent quality, but faded and years out of style, and while there was a certain patrician cast to his features that spoke of good breeding, he was stooped and had a hunted, desperate look in his eyes.
"I don't like to do this, but I won't allow this to go to someone who won't properly appreciate it." The man held out a bottle, and Feng caught his breath. "This is quite possibly the last bottle of the Hu estate twenty-five-year aged whiskey in the world. Would you like to buy it?"
The sigil stamped on the bottle was familiar; there had been a similar bottle on a shelf in his grandfather's library when Feng was a boy. He had been told they hadn't made any new Hu whiskey since the start of the war and it was only for very special occasions. Unfortunately, those special occasions had drained the bottle before Feng was old enough to try it. The idea that there might be a few bottles still out there, and of the fabled twenty-five-year at that, was proof in itself of the opportunities that this city held.
"How much?" he asked.
"A hundred and fifty yuans," said the stranger, and Feng recoiled. That was more than he had ever heard of paying for whiskey, but… he'd only seen that Hu sigil in the liquor cabinets of much wealthier men. A hundred and fifty was not impossible.
"How do I know it's real?" he demanded cannily. An old bottle might be resealed, after all.
The stranger drew himself up straight, and something in his bearing suddenly seemed greater, more impressive, at least for an Earth Kingdom commoner. "I'm sorry," he said, "I should have introduced myself first. My name is Hu Dao, and this is the last bottle left of the stock my family fled with at the beginning of the war. I would no more counterfeit my family's whiskey than you would dishonor your own name."
The timbre in his voice, Feng realized, was unmistakable; that was proper breeding, the kind of old family that had built things like the Hu distillery. This bottle couldn't be anything but the genuine article, and if so, a hundred and fifty yuans was almost a steal. "A hundred and twenty," Feng said.
Hu Dao hesitated, dropped his head in shame, and held out the bottle. Feng counted out the money and placed the bottle on the table proudly, like planting his own flag, the triumph of the Lee family. Hu Dao slunk back to his own table like a whipped dog.
As Feng mulled over the possibility of having a glass of the precious stuff now to celebrate, or saving it all for his triumphant return home, a tall Fire Nation man hurried up. This man's clothes were sumptuously rich, of the latest cut and the finest materials, and he had the absolute confidence in his manner that came only with the highest birth or the greatest personal achievement.
"Where did you get that bottle of whiskey?" he asked, a bit too urgently.
"I bought it," said Feng, guarded. A man of true class ought not display that much naked intent before strangers, he knew.
"Are there any more?" No introduction, no courtesies, simply commerce from the first word. Apparently it was true what they said about people out here in the colonies. Ah, no, former colonies, Feng reminded himself.
"Not according to the man I bought it from, no."
"Who was he? No, wait, never mind. First things first. I'll give you a thousand yuans for that bottle. And another hundred for the name of the man you bought it from."
Feng's mouth went dry. In his first hour in the city, he could make enough money to cover all his travel expenses, including the hotel, with a tidy profit left over. All he had to do was give up the status symbol his grandfather had had… somehow that idea stung more than anything else.
"In gold, of course," elaborated the tall stranger, jingling a thick pouch at his belt. "None of this paper nonsense."
"Done," said Feng before he was entirely aware he was going to.
The stranger counted out heavy, angular Fire Nation coins into Feng's hand. "My pleasure, sir. I've been on the lookout for a bottle of the real old Hu stuff for some time. I'm a trader in exotic liqueurs, import and export, that sort of thing. My name's Zhu Lai."
"Lee Feng," Feng replied with a courteous nod. "Happy to make your acquaintance." He was more than pleased to meet another export trader; some local contacts might be very valuable.
"I'd invite you up to my suite for a drink to celebrate a mutually beneficial deal, Mr. Lee, but right now I'd rather find the man who sold you that bottle."
"You needn't look far," Feng replied, enjoying the feeling of knowing more than the richer man, "his name's Hu Dao, and he's seated right over there."
Lai looked where Feng was pointing, and one of his eyebrows raised curiously. "Hu Dao, you say? Well. Perhaps I'll invite him up to my suite as well."
---
From the unpublished memoirs of Deng Wu, thrice-convicted member of the Dao Gang:
"The first thing you do is give them a taste. A little piece of the dirty deal you're supposedly offering. It's called the convincer. You offer to put money in their pocket right there, right then, it doesn't even have to be a lot. Because once they touch that money, they lose the ability to believe that you're not for real. If you're not for real, where'd the money in their pocket come from?
"I saw a lot of things in the years I worked with Chiu Dao, but I never once saw a mark walk away after taking the convincer."
---
An hour later, Feng knew he was on the cusp of a great opportunity. Lai's suite was the best in the hotel, luxurious and lush, stocked with the very best of everything, most especially liquor. He didn't just have Water Savage vodka, or Water Tribe vodka as everyone was supposed to call it now, anyone with a few connections could get their hands on that. He had a half-case of Southern Style vodka, which Feng had only heard rumors was being made again, yet somehow there it was, and Lai was happy to share it. It was dizzyingly strong, with an aftertaste like cold salt air and snowflakes on the tongue.
More than a mere canny tradesman's stock, though, Lai had the impeccable manners of a true aristocrat. His table etiquette was perfect, his manners of address to Feng and to an Earth Kingdom commoner like Hu neatly modulated, and he knew precisely how many drops of water to add to dragon brandy (the real dragon brandy, not the cheap knockoff stuff). Two drops, it turned out; Feng was too embarrassed to admit he'd always thought it was three.
The real embarrassment, though, was Hu. He and Lai kept going back and forth on the history and nature of traditional Earth Kingdom whiskey, and most of it was well over Feng's head. He nodded along sagely as though he already knew everything they were saying about onion stills and aging caves and earth notes and all the rest of it.
"Well, the longer the raw liquor ages in the cave, the more it absorbs the flavor--the character I should say--of the earth around it," Hu said, gesturing with a half-full glass of dragon brandy.
"Naturally, of course," replied Lai, "that's why the twenty-year is better than the ten-year, that's a given. But what I want to know is, where can I get some of the good old-fashioned style? I've got a buyer for that twenty-five year bottle already, but that must have been laid down by your grandfather."
"My great-grandfather, Mr. Zhu, I'm not as old as all that," chuckled Hu as though he and the aristocrat were somehow friends. "And you've answered your own question, haven't you? We of the Earth Kingdom are still rebuilding after the war. If a man got a distillery up and running from scratch only two years after the war ended, and his first batch were good enough to lay down immediately, then his ten-year whiskey still won't be ready for another year, never mind anything richer. That's what you, no offense, Fire Nation fellows have never understood. The key to truly great whiskey is simply this: earth is patient."
"Well, I respect your traditions, I suppose," sighed Lai. "Just that there's a lot of money to be made if a man could get his hands on a proper stock of the old-fashioned stuff. It's too bad there's no respected distillers that laid anything down more than ten years ago."
"Well, there--" Hu began, but caught himself suddenly.
Feng looked curiously at the Earth Kingdom man, who knocked back his brandy hastily, as though ashamed of whatever he'd almost said. More importantly, he saw Lai looking at him, a canny glance that said You heard what I heard, didn't you? It felt good to know he was on the same mental level as Lai, the two of them standing above the humiliated wreck that was Hu.
Over the next hour, Lai skillfully plied Hu with liquor under the guise of getting all three of them some more rounds, and bit by bit Hu's story came out. His family lands had been among the first taken by the Fire Nation, and they had had to flee, carrying only their trade secrets and a stock of the family whiskey, which they had gradually sold off to get by. Now Hu Dao was the last surviving member of the family, and today had sold the last bottle of the great Hu whiskey for a fraction of its worth. Even through this sad tale, though, there was an unmistakable pride, a confidence in something unseen.
Finally, after killing a bottle of that exquisite Southern Style vodka, he blurted "Of course, if I just opened up a certain cave, I could buy and sell this whole stinking city, but that's not the point, it's not about money."
Feng flinched at the sound of shattering glass. Lai was staring wide-eyed at Hu, his mouth hanging open most indecorously. His snifter had slipped out of his hand and smashed on the floor.
"You mean…" Lai finally managed, "…the lost cave of the Hu family. It's real."
"Well, that is, I mean, I didn't…" Hu squirmed in his chair for a second, but then straightened, recovering himself. He looked from Feng to Lai defiantly, almost angrily, and when he spoke it was with that same cold pride he'd shown when selling the bottle. "Fine then. Yes. It exists. And I know where. Are you happy?"
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to appear rude," blustered Lai, obviously embarrassed. "It's just that… well. Let me be entirely frank. You seem to be a man rather badly in need of money. And as the last heir of the Hu family, there's no one to stop you simply opening up that cave, is there?"
Hu chuckled bitterly. "Mr. Zhu, for most of my life, there was the Fire Nation stopping me. And in recent years, well. The cave is under what was once my family's land, but is presently held by… people without fond memories of the Hu name. It is not cheap and it is not safe to try to get it out, and I am oversupplied with neither money nor courage. So forgive the pride and caution of an old man, but I would rather live here than die chasing a fortune I cannot afford to reach. Now, if I may be excused for a moment, where is the restroom in this suite?"
The dignity in the older man's voice was touching, but as he left the room in the direction Lai indicated, Feng couldn't help but ask. "Forgive my ignorance, but what is this cave you're referring to?"
"I always thought it was just an old story," Lai said, "something people in the trade would joke about, but… apparently not. I must say I'm awfully glad I ran into you in the restaurant today. You see, the story goes that just before our troops invaded, the Hu family had laid down a large batch of whiskey, dozens of stone casks of it, and sealed the cave with earthbending to wait. But our troops came in before it was ready to be opened, and of course they didn't know it was there. So the cave was never opened. That whiskey, that great Hu whiskey, has been sitting in that cave, aging, maturing, for a hundred and seventeen years."
Feng's eyes widened. The ten-year Hu whiskey had held pride of place on his grandfather's shelf for decades. The twenty-five year had paid for his business trip--in gold!--in mere minutes. There had never been a 117-year Hu whiskey, even earth was not that patient. No one could begin to calculate the value of… had he said dozens of casks?
Hu came back in, and Lai poured him another drink. "Mr. Hu," he asked carefully, "are you sure you could find the cave? It's been an awfully long time, after all."
Hu smirked, and produced an old, many-times-folded piece of parchment from inside his shirt. "This," he said proudly, "was handed down to me by my father. It is a coded map to the cave, one only a member of the Hu family can read. We have never forgotten our legacy."
Lai nodded, and when he spoke it was with shocking bluntness. "Mr. Hu, what would it cost to get this whiskey out, to reclaim your family's legacy?"
Hu sighed sadly and drank. "I have asked myself that question a thousand times, Mr. Zhu. I have dreamed of finding that cave, of being the first member of my family in a century to bottle and sell the Hu whiskey. But even with the war behind us, to reach and open the cave, as well as to begin extracting and preparing the whiskey… I cannot see a way to do it for less than fifty thousand yuans."
Lai sighed. "I was thinking it would be about that. I'd invest in it myself right this moment, of course, but most of my money is tied up in stock. I couldn't raise more than thirty-five thousand right now. Perhaps if you gave me a few months…?"
"Well…" Hu looked aside, embarrassed. "You are not the only person to know of the existence of this map. There are… others. Unscrupulous men. I have had offers of investment that I have been reluctant to take. I have also had, if I may be frank, threats. You are a man of refinement and taste, and with all my heart I wish you to be the one to help open the lost Hu cave, for your name is one that deserves to live in story. But I cannot promise that in a few months it will still be possible."
"For goodness' sake, if it's only a matter of fifteen thousand--!" Feng began, before catching himself. One ought never to mention specific figures in front of one's social superiors, and most especially in front of one's inferiors.
Lai looked at him sharply. "Mr. Lee, " he said, "might I speak with you privately?"
The two Fire Nation men stepped into the bedroom of the suite, and Lai closed the door. Feng felt ashamed after his breach of etiquette, childhood memories of being called into the teacher's office to be punished rising unbidden to the surface of his mind.
"Mr. Lee," said Lai, "I'm not interested in etiquette or refinement right now. I need a serious investor and I need one right away. You seem like a man who knows his way around a business opportunity, and I'll be honest with you, I'm desperate."
It took only a few minutes for them to arrange the structure of the deal. If Feng could provide fifteen thousand yuans in cash by the end of business tomorrow, he was entitled to a forty-five percent interest in the proceeds from the Hu whiskey. Lai would take the other forty-five, and the remaining ten would go to Hu Dao. Feng almost felt guilty about taking such blatant advantage of Lai, but then, he ought to know better than to confess to being desperate in front of an experienced businessman.
---
From the Republic City Free Press interview with convicted swindler Jee Kang:
FP: How would you lead the "marks," as you call them, to commit to larger investments?
JK: We'd spin them a story. Something just crooked enough to be exciting, but solid enough that they believe their money's safe. A real master tunes the story to the mark, gives him just as much as he needs to hear. Some marks want a little romance in the story, some marks want to feel like they're fighting for what's right, some marks just sniff after gold and don't care about the details.
FP: And whether they believed the story determined whether they invested?
JK: No, they all invested once they were in that deep. The story helped decide how much they invested, but the biggest thing there was how much we asked for.
FP: And who decided that?
JK: That was the boss's job. I worked for a few, but the good ones, they could pick out from one look at a mark how much he'd invest. His clothes, his accent, his bearing, it was like an equation. And how much he bought into the story… that was the last part of the equation.
---
It was at the bank the next day, withdrawing the money and requesting that the bank write to his regular bank in the Fire Nation to confirm his credit, that Feng began to feel the bitter pang of suspicion. While an Earth Kingdom hillbilly like Hu Dao might, regardless of his family background, be dishonest, it was much harder to believe that of an obviously well-bred Fire Nation gentleman like Lai. And yet, some part of him could not help being worried that he was about to hand over fifteen thousand yuans to a man he'd known barely a day.
By the time he met with Lai and Hu again, he knew what was worrying him, and he knew exactly how to address it.
"Before I invest this money," he said, leaving his hand firmly on top of the stack of cash, "you should know that we in the Lee family protect our investments. I insist that I come with you every step of the way until the cave is opened."
Lai and Hu exchanged a look, and Lai smiled broadly. "You see, Mr. Hu, it's just as I told you. Mr. Lee is nobody's fool, and we couldn't ask for a better investor in this venture."
"I agree," said Hu, "I only hope he is prepared for a potentially difficult journey. The cave is two days' ride away, and we may encounter… obstacles."
"Ah, our friend makes a good point, Feng. Better head to your bank again and withdraw some traveling expenses."
That made sense to Feng, and he was somewhat relieved to see that his partners in this venture had the same sense of caution that he did. He withdrew another two thousand yuans, and rejoined them with a feeling of renewed confidence.
A day and a night passed in arduous travel, and it was not easy for a man like Feng, accustomed to the more respectable things in life. His lower back did not enjoy a night spent on the ground, sleeping under the summer stars of the Earth Kingdom, and his ass had even more strenuous objections to the hours spent in the saddle, swaying with the loping gait of an ostrich-horse.
His back and his ass aside, though, Feng's heart felt the spirit of what he was doing. This was adventure, this was risk, this was hardship. He was building his family fortune the way his great-grandfather had, with sweat and danger and irritating little flies that kept buzzing around his head. This was the true spirit of business, taking a chance based on his own raw intellect and instinct, not just signing papers that his advisors said were prudent.
When they came to the inn at sunset on the second day, it was perfect, balanced on a hilltop like a beacon of hope. It promised soft beds and a rainproof roof and even a meal that resembled food in some comprehensible way.
Unfortunately, it was apparently on the other side of an Earth Kingdom frontier that demanded some rather harsh passage tariffs. Worse than that, the burly Earth Kingdom officer on duty was unimpressed with their passage documents, and it took almost a thousand yuans worth of palm-greasing before he would acknowledge that Hu was a natural-born Earth Kingdom native and Lai and Feng were obviously his cousins born during the Hundred Year War, whose documentation was naturally rather lax as a result.
The inn, however, was absolutely worth it, the local specialty being roast rabbit-pigeon over rice. It was so tender and fragrant that Feng didn't even notice the cost, instead luxuriating in the feel of a full belly and a feathered mattress, joys he'd nearly forgotten since he last felt them almost three days ago.
The morning, however, brought him back to the grim reality of his current endeavor, as his ostrich-horse loped its weary way under him, ever closer to the lost cave of the Hu family.
Finally, as midday lay its intolerably hot weight upon Feng's shoulders, Hu reined up and pointed at a low hummock before them.
"There," he said, centuries of breeding echoing in his every syllable, "is the lost cave!"
Their expensively-hired native guide wouldn't leave their side for less than a hundred yuans, which Feng irritably paid just to get him out of the way and make sure no Fire Nation troops were in the area. With the guide gone, Hu stood before the hill as though he intended to fight it.
No bending blood had entered Feng's own family, and despite his aristocratic mien, he had to struggle to suppress his awe as Hu bent the ground itself to his will. He had been raised to regard bending as the utmost mark of military prowess or well-bred aristocracy, and to recognize the true, old-blood bending as the mark of a gentleman.
Earth Native though he might be, Hu's stance as he ground his feet into the earth was aristocratic. This was not the workman's gait of the power plants, the casual light-footed movements of the show benders. This was the traditional bending of the old families, traditions passed on from father to son since before there were words. Feng felt a sense of recognition as the hill opened before him.
This was as it ought to be. This was how a man should find a lost cave. Led by a native whose blood ran deep in the roots of these savage lands, waiting to unveil treasures to the man who deserved to find them.
The hillside split wide before Hu's immovable stance, and beneath it lay shadows. Shadows full of tall, thick cylinders. The stone casks of the Hu family. The ancient whiskey that would make Lee Feng rich beyond the dreams of his ancestors.
Into the shadows of the cave they stepped, breathing deep the air that had lain undisturbed for a century and more.
"Taste it!" cried Zhu Lai. "The age, the earth! Feng, your keen eye has brought us to a fortune I could never have dreamt of! We shall be rich beyond reckoning!"
Even as he spoke, however, the day's bright sunlight dimmed. The surface of the hill closed about them almost completely, and all three men wheeled to learn the source of this terrible change.
A stout, middle-aged man stood in the sole remaining crack in the earth, his arms cocked in the sharp angles of classical earthbending style.
"So, Hu Dao," said the stranger, "you would sell our family legacy to these foreigners."
"Hu Jing!" cried Hu Dao. "But… you're dead! I saw you perish in that avalanche in the Great Divide!"
"You only thought I was dead!" cried Hu Jing. "I have survived all these bitter years, thinking only to protect our family's secret cave!"
"But please, brother, understand!" called out Hu Dao desperately. "I have only led these men here to protect the legacy of our fabled name!"
"A likely story!" snapped Hu Jing, shifting his stance as the earthen crack above him narrowed visibly. "What have these outland bandits promised you? Twenty-five percent? Fifteen? They are thieves, and I did not stand over our father's deathbed to see our legacy handed over to thieves!"
"Brother, please!" begged Hu Dao.
"But you wouldn't know about father's deathbed, would you? After all, you weren't there!"
With that, the last sliver of daylight slammed shut, and Feng felt a pang of horror he had never felt before. To be sealed in the earth, buried alive… this was no death for a man of good family, a man of the Fire Nation. All he had wanted to do was see a return on his investment… was that to be rewarded with the slow death of suffocation?
Almost too late, Feng realized that a single shaft of sunlight was still falling on his face. Looking up in desperate hope, he saw Hu Dao in a deep stance, trembling visibly, one hand extended up toward the narrow shaft of sunlight.
"I can hold this open… just long enough… for one person to pass," he gasped, visibly shaking with the effort. "My brother seeks… to bury… us all. You must choose… who shall survive."
Like a bolt of lightning, the realization came to Feng. He must be the one to survive. He, of the aristocratic, or almost-aristocratic, name. He, of the storied family history. He, who had paid for… who had been canny enough to pay for less than a third of this expedition but still get nearly half of the profits. He was the only one whose survival could tip the balance toward those more needful. His… business acumen, and breeding, and… experience, were the skills their group needed now.
It was with the utmost selflessness that Feng stepped forward to climb onto Hu's back and claw his way up toward the sunlight. The only thing that kept him going was the knowledge that his courage would one day be rewarded.
The hillside slammed shut behind him, and he realized that long before he could summon help, Lai and Hu would have suffocated. He could only add this to the burden he was forced to bear. As he ran away, he paused to see the hillside behind him buckle and crumple in on itself. The Hu family, it seemed, was determined to keep its secrets. The dust from the collapse was so thick he couldn't even smell the whiskey.
Making his way back to Republic City, he encountered the same burly, middle-aged Earth Kingdom soldier at the frontier, and it took all his wits and all the remaining cash he had on him to negotiate his way over a border he hadn't known existed.
As Feng reentered Republic City, he knew he was poorer for having made its acquaintance, but richer in life experience. After all, he had survived the terrible collapse of the lost cave of the Hu family, and in the face of that, what terror could home offer him? Truly, he had learned a lesson more valuable than any specific amount of money he had lost, whatever that might be.
---
It was this vital "life lesson", among several other reasons, that left the Lee family completely unprepared for the Bright Forge Monetary Revaluation Act, and its fallout within the Fire Nation. In the end, the remaining Lees were forced to fall back on their sole profitable enterprise, a bicycle factory, which provided no more than a decent living for any scion of their once-envied name. Lee Bicycles are still made today, and considered a reliable model for the price.
The Dao Gang and its small rotating membership continued to operate for twenty years, until an aging Chiu Dao refused to cooperate with an omnivorous new organization run by the man named Yakon, and was found one morning crucified on the docks facing Yue Bay. Its intellectual legacy, the long con, is still practiced today under a hundred guises.