Chapter 178 Now We Need to Get a Reply, Right? [3]
Chapter 178 Now We Need to Get a Reply, Right? [3]
“Mm. This…”
Kanghyeok rummaged through the box this way and that.
It was beautifully decorated with coral and jade, but he could not for the life of him figure out where or how it was supposed to open.
At last, Kim Seongil stepped in.
“Give it here.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Here, isn’t it this?”
“Ah.”
Once Kim Seongil pointed it out, there really was a small protruding mechanism on one side of the box.
When he pressed it, the lid opened with a dull sound.
Clunk.
The inside of the box was also decorated with mother-of-pearl, making it extremely luxurious.
But none of the group showed any interest in the box itself.
All of them were focused on the reply inside.
“Let’s see…”
Impatient as ever, Kim Seongil unfolded the reply.
“Hm?”
But it had bits of Japanese mixed throughout, making it extremely difficult for Kim Seongil to read.
When he turned his head, Hwang Yungil and Heo Seong were no different.
All three of them were nearly blind when it came to Japanese.
“Then I suppose… you’ll have to read it.”
“Me?”
Kim Seongil abruptly shoved the reply into Kanghyeok’s hands.
Kanghyeok made a rather dumbfounded face, but there was no other way.
In fact, among all of them, Kanghyeok was the only one who could read any Japanese at all.
“Read it for us.”
And besides, were not Hwang Yungil and Kim Seongil asking him with such difficulty?
After clearing his throat once, Kanghyeok began reading through the letter.
At first, there was not anything particularly useful written in it.
“Since the days when I first served Oda Nobunaga, I repeatedly distinguished myself in battle, and after destroying the Azai clan, I built a castle in their former land of Nagahama and became its lord. Later, I killed the traitor Mitsuhide, who caused the Incident at Honnōji, and succeeded Oda Nobunaga in setting out to conquer the realm. What is this?”
Kanghyeok frowned as he kept reading a reply that was nothing but Hideyoshi bragging about himself.
“Is that really all it says?”
Kim Seongil, listening nearby, looked the same.
The expressions of Hwang Yungil and Heo Seong were no different.
The same went for Kanghyeok’s disciples.
“Wait… what kind of reply is written like this?”
“Is it all just self-praise?”
“So far, yes.”
“You seem to be more than halfway through already. Is it still like that there too?”
“Yes. Right now… it’s the part about subduing a man named Tokugawa Ieyasu.”
“This isn’t a history lecture…”
Kim Seongil shook his head with clear displeasure.
The one truly going crazy, however, was Kanghyeok.
The reply was already far too long, and there was far too much nonsense in it.
With his limited Japanese, he was even worried he might be missing something important.
“Ah.”
As Kanghyeok continued turning the pages endlessly, he finally began nodding.
“From here onward, it’s the actual reply.”
“Is he insane? What kind of reply starts with ninety percent self-praise?”
“Who knows… maybe he’s insecure?”
That Toyotomi Hideyoshi had conquered Japan and become Kanpaku, second only to the Emperor, was an obvious fact.
But for him to use grandiose words like “ruler of all under heaven” when Japan was just a small island nation felt ridiculous.
What battles he had fought and what great deeds he had accomplished had scarcely been passed on to neighboring countries.
Even Joseon, the closest country, was no exception.
Even Kanghyeok, who had come from the future, found what he had just read completely unfamiliar.
Did he want to display his authority somehow, even if only like this?
For someone who had fought through long years of war, it struck him as rather childish.
But what could he do? It had already been sent like this.
In any case, this was where the real matter began.
“Please listen carefully.”
“You’ve been saying that for a while now. Hurry and read. I’m too anxious to wait.”
“Yes. Mm. ‘A man’s life does not even exceed a hundred years, so how can one remain trapped in this one place for long?’”
“That sounds like an unsettling start.”
Hwang Yungil tilted his head.
Kanghyeok felt the same.
Was he not essentially saying Japan felt too confining?
“‘I intend soon to enter the Great Ming and change its four hundred provinces to the customs of our country, and to implement the refinement of governance for countless tens of thousands of years.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“That madman…”
“Me?”
“No, the Kanpaku. Is he daring to say he’ll attack the Ming now?”
Kim Seongil trembled with rage, his beard shaking.
To Kanghyeok, that reaction was hard to understand.
After all, the man was not saying he would attack Joseon, but go to Ming, so why get that angry?
Well… he is saying he’ll pass through Joseon to do it, so I guess it amounts to the same thing.
With a bitter smile, Kanghyeok continued reading.
“‘If your country becomes the guide and enters court, then by having distant concerns, you will be free of immediate troubles.’ Why does he have to phrase things so absurdly?”
“He means for us to help with the invasion of Ming.”
“It’s nonsense, obviously.”
“This bastard deserves to be torn to pieces.”
“Son of a bitch.”
The two refined elders suddenly began swearing out loud.
Even Makbong or Dolseok, who roamed the marketplace, would not casually spit out curses of that caliber.
Glancing nervously at the now vicious atmosphere, Kanghyeok asked,
“Should I keep reading?”
“Do you even need to ask?”
“Let’s see what else that son of a bitch wrote.”
“Yes…”
After swallowing hard, Kanghyeok kept reading.
“‘On the day I enter the Great Ming, if I lead my soldiers into the camp, then as neighbors we shall strengthen our alliance all the more. My only wish is to spread a glorious name across the Three Countries.’”
“What kind of madness is this?”
“He’s asking us to contribute troops too?”
“This fucking bastard.”
The two of them hurled curses back and forth without either yielding.
They really do curse well. Were they school bullies in their youth or something?
Even Kanghyeok, who could be rough himself, shrank back a little from the sheer force of it.
In just a few minutes, Hideyoshi had already died in this room several hundred times over.
Only after venting like that did Kim Seongil calm down enough to speak in a composed voice.
“Can we really take this to His Majesty as it is?”
“Hm. It troubles me. Is the content not too arrogant?”
Kim Seongil and Hwang Yungil quickly took on serious expressions and began discussing it.
This, too, was hard for Kanghyeok to understand.
No matter what, this was exactly what that bastard had sent.
There seemed no reason to alter it before showing it.
“Elders.”
“Ah, speak.”
“We’re listening.”
At Kanghyeok’s words, the two of them quite literally leaned in to listen.
In terms of rank, learning, and experience, Kanghyeok was incomparably shallow beside them, yet somehow within this group he had come to hold considerable weight.
That was how things had naturally become over the course of the diplomatic mission’s past months.
“Shouldn’t we just show it exactly as it is?”
“To His Majesty?”
“He would be extremely displeased.”
“Displeased or not… he needs to know the truth. These bastards are doing nothing but watching for a chance to invade.”
“Hmm.”
“That is true as well.”
Hwang Yungil, the more flexible of the two, nodded first.
Even Kim Seongil, who ordinarily would have stubbornly pushed through his own view to the end, relented.
Considering the debt he owed Kanghyeok, it was only natural.
“Then let us return immediately with this reply.”
Chief Envoy Hwang Yungil said this as he placed the reply back into the box.
Vice Envoy Kim Seongil and Recording Officer Heo Seong showed no disagreement.
In the original history, the first reply had been judged too rude and revised multiple times, so by this point history had already changed quite a bit because of Kanghyeok’s intervention.
Kanghyeok himself, meanwhile, was smacking his lips over something else entirely.
Hideyoshi… Tsurumatsu is pitiful, but he’ll go on living exactly as he is and die right when the war is at its height.
Who could he blame?
It was his own fault for indulging in excessive greed.
As Kanghyeok quietly shook his head, Hwang Yungil spoke to him.
He had already carefully put the box away in his robe.
“All right, then get some sleep. Starting tomorrow, things are going to get busy.”
“Ah, tomorrow already?”
“There’s no reason to stay longer, is there? This place is practically enemy territory now.”
“That’s true enough. Understood.”
After paying his respects, Kanghyeok left the room.
Out in the yard, Dolseok and Makbong had finally returned after giving no word.
Both wore expressions of extreme embarrassment.
“Um…”
“I got word this morning that you’d returned inside the castle, so why haven’t you shown up until now?”
“Well… we were a little sick.”
“Sick?”
“Yes, yes. Not seriously. It got better once we rested.”
“Hmm.”
Tilting his head, Kanghyeok looked back and forth between the two of them.
Their flushed faces did make it look as though something had been wrong.
He could hardly tell more than that.
Kanghyeok was a great physician, not a god or a wizard.
And in any case, there were far more urgent matters now.
“Fine, whatever. Can you work now?”
“Now?”
The two looked around with surprise.
It had already been dark for quite a while.
If this had been Hanyang, the curfew bell would have rung long ago.
“Yes. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“That suddenly?”
“Yes. So… pack up all the silver and load it onto the wagons. The diplomatic party already has plenty of baggage, so if you mix it in, no one will notice.”
“There’s a huge amount of it…”
“You spent all day playing around and now you’re going to complain? Want to die?”
“N-no. We’ll do it. We’ll do it.”
Perhaps because they knew they were guilty, both nodded obediently.
Then they hurried off toward the storehouse.
Watching their backs, Kanghyeok smiled faintly.
Silver… there must be dozens of chests of it, right? Then how much is that all worth…
The trip to Japan, which he had only joined because Hwang Yungil requested it, had turned out to bring an unexpected windfall.
It was even possible Kanghyeok had earned more money here than Dongpa, who was probably killing himself treating patients back in Hanyang.
“Ugh.”
“Ow.”
Soon the rough groans of Dolseok and Makbong began echoing through the yard.
Apparently they truly were in pain, because they sounded even more strained than usual.
But Kanghyeok, looking utterly uninterested, simply went into his room and lay down.
So passed one of the few remaining nights in Japan.
“So this is Nagoya… according to what you said, it is soon to become their forward base.”
Kim Seongil narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the surroundings.
At this point it was still nothing more than a rural village.
It did not even look as though it had room for a few hundred soldiers, let alone a forward base.
Had Kim Seongil not already built up trust in Kanghyeok, he would surely have dismissed it as nonsense.
“You said that Yasuharu regretted not being able to come here, didn’t you?”
By now, however, Kim Seongil’s trust in Kanghyeok was immense.
So immense that he missed not even a passing remark.
“Yes. Once we leave, they’ll probably begin construction immediately.”
“Have those bastards developed castle-building techniques to that extent?”
“Think of the castles we saw in Kyoto.”
“Indeed…”
Those war castles built of stone had looked overwhelmingly imposing at a glance.
More astonishing still was how little time it had taken to build them.
They said not even a year had passed.
“It seems that after all those long years of war, it was not only the art of killing that improved.”
“I suppose… that’s true.”
“By the way, where has your servant gone? Why is he taking so long?”
“Exactly. I told him to bring the horse, so did he go off trying to catch it? What’s wrong with that bastard these days?”
Kanghyeok had been standing by the gate waiting for quite some time.
The other members of the party were already mounted, so this was a nuisance of the worst kind.
“Oh, there she comes.”
“Hmm… that’s not Dolseok.”
The one leading the horse from afar was unexpectedly Yeoni.
That was strange.
Dolseok took oddly fierce pride in being Kanghyeok’s horse handler.
“Hup.”
For the moment, because they were already late, Kanghyeok mounted the horse.
Not long after, he asked Yeoni, who was holding the reins, where Dolseok had gone.
He was not the sort who could keep a question in mind for long.
“Where did that bastard go?”
“To the privy.”
“The privy…? Did he go to piss again?”
“Yes. Lately he absolutely cannot stay still.”
“Really…? So he’s got urinary frequency, is that it?”