The State of Yan (3)
“Master.”
“It’s been a while. Your face looks gaunt.”
“Even you are going to say that, Master?”
“Hiding one’s true nature is no easy task. Anyone who can see through it should at least acknowledge the hardship, shouldn’t they?”
“You’ve aged quite a bit yourself, Master.”
“You little rascal. How dare you find fault with your heaven-like teacher? The world has been in such chaos that I couldn’t escape the passage of time and ended up facing it head-on, so I’ve grown a little older. Is there a problem with that?”
The last time I had seen my master was during the height of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Even taking into account that there was no such thing as anti-aging technology in this era, my master—who had just entered his fifties—looked so frail that one could easily believe he was a man in his seventies.
“...Are you in good health?”
“Of course, you fool. Even if I must go when my time comes, I intend to at least enjoy a seventieth birthday banquet from my children first.”
“That’s a relief. As Liu Bei probably already told you… if those Clean Stream bastards try anything strange while claiming they want to serve His Highness the Prince of Bohai… I’d like to ask you to handle that for me.”
“Understood. And those men are not of the Clean Stream. They harbor treason in their hearts yet dare to call themselves the ‘clear stream.’ They would be far better suited to the name ‘blood stream.’ In any case, for you to go out of your way to ask this old man for a favor, something must have come up. Will you explain it to me?”
“It seems I’ll need to visit Luoyang once winter arrives. I plan to leave this area in Liu Bei’s hands, but I’ll still need a trustworthy overall commander.”
“Hmm… You’re not thinking of submitting to Dong Zhuo, are you…? Does this have something to do with His Majesty the Emperor?”
“Yes. I promised I would rescue His Majesty if he were ever in danger.”
“Hoh… I see. A man must keep the promises he makes. How exactly do you plan to save him?”
“I intend to jump down from the sky.”
“From the sky…?”
The sky did not belong to humans. At least not until another fifteen hundred years had passed. But I knew the principles behind the hot air balloon that would only be invented fifteen centuries from now, and I had plenty of researchers capable of proving and realizing those principles.
“There is something we’ve named a yeolgigu. The people at the research institute have done quite a job.”
“Hmm… Just from the name, it sounds like a hot balloon… Did you apply the principle of the sky lantern?”
“Yes.”
“I understand the principle, but wouldn’t it be dangerous for a person to float up into the sky?”
“We’ve prepared safety equipment for now. If this operation succeeds… well… it could lead to another tactic for the royal guard to use, so we’ll need a practical example of whether this technology is useful in real combat.”
“Safety equipment… You’re saying there’s a device that can safely protect a person from the sky?”
“Yes. For now we’ve named it a nakahasan… The principle is simple. We simply made large wings out of silk.”
“Oh ho, then it can ride the air and descend slowly.”
Given the era, concepts like the Navier-Stokes equations or gravitational acceleration did not exist, but people with a certain level of knowledge vaguely understood their existence. Flying sky lanterns at festivals had already been a thing for several hundred years, dating back to the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, and people knew well that the power of wind—that is, the power of air—could push sails and move ships.
If one asked why they hadn’t made hot air balloons despite that… I didn’t know either. They simply hadn’t. If knowing the principle was enough to create something, the ancient Greeks should have already entered the steampunk era.
I had assigned this problem to the research institute several years ago, and only now were prototypes slowly appearing. Perhaps they simply hadn’t had the leisure to think that far. Or maybe they thought, We’ve lived well enough until now, so why bother? Or perhaps it was because there hadn’t been a steel-willed secretary capable of gathering the wealth piled up everywhere to plan a five-year project due to the limitations of materials engineering.
“Yes. We’ve jumped off coastal cliffs multiple times and confirmed its safety over and over.”
Regardless, the principles behind hot air balloons and parachutes weren’t particularly difficult or novel, and I roughly knew how to thread parachute lines from my previous life. There was no nylon in this era, but the very first hot air balloons and parachutes had all been made of silk anyway. We had gone through great trouble to airlift the highest-quality silk from Yizhou far to the southwest, conducted multiple tests, and even had several members of the royal guard ride it themselves to complete safety inspections.
We hadn’t deployed it in actual combat yet, but if the sericulture industry in You Province and Ji Province got on track properly, we might be able to operate at least one unit for reconnaissance purposes.
“We plan to travel to Luoyang mixed in with silk merchants. Once night falls, we’ll launch the hot air balloon, lower rope ladders, and escort His Majesty the Emperor. In an instant, without anyone noticing.”
Of course, launching a hot air balloon on a winter night with strong winds was pure madness. But if we weren’t planning to launch a direct siege on Luoyang, there was no sharper method. There might be secret passages the emperor used, but if such things actually existed, he would have already fled long ago, so it was more comfortable to assume they didn’t.
“With that massive body of yours, is it even possible?”
“There were no issues during practice. From now until winter arrives, we’ll repeat training… and perfect the plan.”
Launching a hot air balloon at night was indeed insane even by 21st-century standards. But charging into the capital of a nation was also insane. If I had to choose between the two… hmm… the 21st-century brand of insanity seemed slightly better.
“...Ah, that’s right. My disciple, you are now a feudal lord.”
“Pardon?”
“His Majesty has combined Ji Province and You Province and named it Yan Province, appointing you as its Inspector and the Duke of the State of Yan. In Dong Zhuo’s mind, it was probably meant to divide the realm into three parts… but if you bring His Majesty back, the story will change quite dramatically.”
“Wait… hold on. What did you just say?”
“Why do you look so surprised, Your Grace the Duke of Yan? From a countryside merchant to a Colonel in Luoyang, and from a Colonel in Luoyang to the Duke of an entire principality. Hah, it seems I raised one disciple rather well, didn’t I? Of course, it’s obvious he’s trying to cut off the military grain support from Ji Province to tie down the feet of the eighteen coalition lords… Heh heh heh. My disciple, if things go well, your ideals may be realized sooner than you think. If you bring His Majesty the Emperor and establish legitimacy while declaring absolute neutrality, at least the State of Yan will be able to avoid the chaos of this turbulent age.”
“Master, my ideals are not simply to keep this one tiny patch of land called Yan Province in peace.”
“...Didn’t you say you wanted to live comfortably with your family in Liaodong?”
“That was a lie. Because I had concluded that I could never achieve my ideals on my own, I was deceiving myself.”
“Have you now seen even the slightest possibility?”
“Well, at least a little.”
It would probably be a path of thorns, but in any case, a path existed.
Although the late autumn rainy season had slightly damaged the crops, it was still the height of the harvest season. The vast fields of Ji Province were dyed in golden hues, and anyone could see it was clearly a bumper year, yet the farmers’ faces showed no sign of brightening.
“I wonder how much they’ll take from us this time…?”
“It was better when the Great Worthy Grand Administrator was here.”
“Hey! What if someone hears you saying such treacherous things!”
“Have I said anything wrong? We pay our taxes like we’re supposed to! Then they take more military rations saying they’re going to catch some traitor named Dong Zhuo or whatever, and then they take even more to send to some guy called Yuan Benchu or something. Even in a good harvest, they sweep away everything except a few bushels of millet. I’m telling you, it was better back when we were chopping off the heads of those arrogant bastards!”
“Hey, Chun-bok!”
“In the end, it’s just the heads on top that changed! That Gongsun Zan or whoever will probably be the same. I’m not even hoping anymore.”
“...I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Hah?!”
It had been two days since Ji Province and Yan Province were merged into the State of Yan, and I had become its ruler and the Prince of the northeastern vassal state. The public sentiment in Ji Province that I visited to assess the situation was utterly grim. Never mind war support—even a peasant uprising seemed imminent.
“There’s nothing we can do about the grain that’s already been taken, but I will do my utmost to ensure you can all live your daily lives.”
The land of Ji Province had been famous for its farmland since ancient times. If one were to compare, the southwestern Yizhou—modern-day Sichuan—also had quite decent farmland, but the plains of Ji Province, which could easily utilize the Yellow River for water transport, were the breadbasket of the Han Dynasty in this period. Moreover, Sichuan was such an abominably difficult land to traverse without airplanes that even if Inspector Liu Yan threw a tantrum about independence, the reality was that they couldn’t even send a punitive force.
Naturally, the warlords of this era, without the slightest consideration for public sentiment, happily squeezed the life out of Ji Province’s food supply to fuel their wars. And the farmers of this age—who had not yet been steeped in red or pitch-black ideologies—were hardly going to quietly endure the exhaustion of war while eating bread mixed with sawdust.
Already during the time of the previous Inspector, the elderly Han Fu, public sentiment had turned against the government, with waves of young people fleeing to Liaodong. The farmers who remained were preparing to rise up with sickles and hammers at any moment, ready to become supermen.
Before winter arrived, my workload had increased.
“Ganeung-ah, bring a few blocks of tofu.”
“It’s Gabineung, Your Grace the Duke.”
“Right, Ganeung-ah. If you don’t like it, just fight and win. Isn’t your law the one that says the strong one’s word is the law?”
“...Is that really acceptable? Ha… Understood for now.”
I sent one of the royal guard members to fetch some of the era’s finest combat rations—dried tofu—and sat down to talk with the farmers. Time was not exactly abundant, but half of civil affairs operations were solved through simple conversations like this. The other half was solved with money. In truth, most problems naturally resolved themselves if given enough time and budget. The warlords of this era simply didn’t know that. Or perhaps they knew and chose to ignore it.