The Promised Land (2)
Unusually, the Bobusang who came in with a milmija hanging from his waist like a sword was a young man with sharp eyes.
The peddler walked straight toward Taesu and stopped in front of the platform.
Taesu was impressed by his nerve first and foremost.
And the first thing out of the man’s mouth impressed him even more.
“I’ve heard the heretics have been gathering here a lot lately. I asked around a bit, and there’s even a strange rumor going around that they’re moving to land where they can settle down...”
“So?”
“I thought Park Axe might know the details, so I came.”
Taesu wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t nervous.
The delusion that nothing could ever leak out had been off the table from the start.
Anyone who tries to hide a crime is a third-rate amateur.
Anyone who gets caught but manages to smooth things over during the investigation is second-rate.
Only the ones who never get punished, whatever the arrest or verdict, are first-rate.
Take the Kaesong peddler broker Im Bong-ik and his gang, who were slain by Taesu back in the past at Seungcheon Port—those were third-rate at best.
Kim Jwa-geun and the other high-ranking elite families, or even the king himself, belonged to the first rank.
That was why Taesu and Cha Un-hong, who had made a deal with the king, could perhaps be counted as second-rate.
The Charleville muskets Taesu had supplied mostly had to use percussion caps.
Europe was still in the middle of converting flintlocks at the time, so if they absolutely had to, they could use flintlocks or even matchlocks—but if that was the case, Joseon guns were overwhelmingly more cost-effective.
The same had been true when they acquired the cannon last time. As they had discussed, he hadn’t supplied any more weapons, only percussion caps and ammunition. If he cut that off too, it would be the same as openly challenging the king.
So long as that supply continued, the king would turn a blind eye to whatever happened on the western sea.
Of course, the more that blind eye widened, the greater the danger after the coup succeeded.
Ganghwado was not a place they could leave alone forever. Sooner or later, if the king wasn’t an idiot, he would move to “clean up that side once matters inside the court are resolved.”
That was precisely why Taesu and Cha Un-hong had devised the “Promised Land” operation in the first place.
Sitting there, Taesu looked up at the sky and asked, “Why would you think I know? I fought the Catholics and the French army they brought with them.”
“You’re awfully bad at pretending, aren’t you? People think thieves steal because they want the goods, but really, they steal because they can. The only person who can run a business like this in Ganghwa and Kaesong right now is the head man himself.”
“I’m not involved. Get lost.”
“Wouldn’t it be dangerous to make an enemy out of me? You’ve got backing, sure, so you’re able to pull off something this brazen, but unlike your grand reputation, your underlings are a complete mess. How long do you think the authorities will keep pretending not to know?”
It was a pretty accurate analysis.
Unlike the worldview of conspiracy theorists, no one fully controlled the investigative apparatus—not even the king. That was why this method counted as second-rate.
Taesu leaned back a little.
It was a movement almost lazy in its ease.
But his hand was already reaching for the axe planted beside the platform.
“Who are you?”
“Call me Choi Gyeong-ju.”
“From Gyeongju, are you? Hah, I can tell from the way you talk.”
“Your speech gives no hint of where you’re from, though.”
“Fine. Then you’re not the younger brother of Choi Yang-eop, I take it.”
Since Choi Gyeong-ju had no idea about Taesu and Yi Ha-eung’s meeting—Yi Ha-eung, who was actually a relative of Yi Won-beom—he could only tilt his head in confusion.
In any case, he had no time to be curious.
Taesu slapped down hard on the platform with the arm that had seemed about to seize the axe.
Thunk!
Planting one hand and flipping upside down, Taesu whipped his body around and drove his leg out in a savage arc.
To a Korean, it would have looked instantly familiar as a Nike stance—Capoeira’s kicking style.
It was a beija flor even the plantation slaves of the Brazilian Empire would have admired.
Using the height of the platform, the kick speared down vertically over Choi Gyeong-ju’s head.
At a glance it might have seemed like a flashy trick for the eyes alone, but with gravity behind it, the force made it one of Capoeira’s signature techniques.
Even so, Choi Gyeong-ju blocked it simply by crossing his forearms.
Bang! With a heavy crack, Choi Gyeong-ju’s sekojipshin sandals snapped apart.
It was proof that he had dispersed the impact well. In fact, he did not go down.
Son Yu-jak, who was seeing someone stand up after taking Park Axe’s strike for the first time, started hiccuping.
Choi Gyeong-ju shook out his arms.
“If I’d been a nobleman’s walking stick, that would’ve broken clean in two. Is this how you treat a guest? If you mean to go on like this, I’ll turn around and leave.”
“You think you can just leave whenever you want? Yu-jak! Gather the boys and block the door!”
“Yes, sir!”
Taesu flipped his body over and bounced once.
Landing naturally on the ground, he took up the stance of his own base style, Muay Thai.
It seemed unlikely now that even if Choi Gyeong-ju revealed his real name—Choi Je-u—it would matter much.
* * *
As the religious leader who founded Donghak, many mysterious tales had been passed down about Choi Je-u.
One of them was the ten-odd years he spent wandering the country as a young peddler, much like he was now. That was why Donghak’s organization resembled the Bobusang so closely.
One unusual detail was that he carried a wooden sword with him and practiced sword dance on his own.
His skill had gone beyond hobbyist level, enough that he was said to have taught disciples.
And that was not merely a metaphor for armed rebellion.
Choi Je-u now shook off the straw sandals that had become nothing but an obstacle and tossed them away. Then he drew the milmija from his waist and raised it.
“If you come at me like that, it can only mean you’ve got something to hide.”
After muttering that, Choi Je-u shifted the tip of his left foot slightly.
Taesu had never studied swordsmanship.
But the principle of shifting one’s center of gravity was nearly the same in every martial art.
Besides, the moment you picked up a weapon, you were declaring that you intended to use it instead of your hands and feet.
So Taesu’s high kick flew out as if it had already predicted the future.
Choi Je-u, just as he was lifting the milmija, had not yet built up enough speed and took the strike full on.
Even an ordinary person, if they practiced steadily, could kick and break a baseball bat. With Taesu’s strength and technique, a milmija was no different from a reed stalk.
Crack!
The milmija split clean in two with a single blow. Using the momentum from his right leg as it smashed the weapon, Taesu spun his body around.
“Kkh!”
Choi Je-u was caught by the rotating backspin blow and went tumbling.
Just before Taesu could land the finishing strike, Choi Je-u hurriedly thrust out a hand.
“Wait—I came here to help you!”
“That’s what every con man says.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Taesu’s heel came down hard.
The ground didn’t split open like in a comic book, but Choi Je-u felt almost as if it had.
Rolling aside and saving his life, Choi Je-u had no choice but to spit out the words he’d meant to drag out while keeping Taesu on edge.
“Damn it all, I can handle things better than those useless morons under you! I’m an upper officer of Balgasan!”
Taesu’s foot stopped.
A man from Balgasan—the Bobusang headquarters—of whom he had just been thinking a moment ago.
More specifically, an upper-level administrative officer in charge of affairs.
Too valuable, perhaps, to flatten under his heel like a steel can.
* * *
It wasn’t as if I’d lashed out just because things weren’t going well.
I’m not a thug, for God’s sake. That was all a strategic move to keep that bastard from getting too full of himself once he had the information advantage.
[You’re spouting nonsense worthy of Yi Won-gyun, who left only twelve ships behind just so Admiral Yi Sun-sin could look even more glorious.]
Anyway, it seemed my act had worked beautifully, so I decided to hear him out like a proper modern man.
But the bastard had taken too little damage and didn’t speak right away. Instead, he looked around restlessly.
“I suppose I should be treated to some apgyeongju—wine to settle a startled heart. Hey, boy over there, why are you still planted in the gate like Zhang Yide at Changban Bridge? Hurry up and bring out a bowl of makgeolli.”
“Go fetch him some muddy water from the stable.”
What Yu-jak eventually brought over after much deliberation looked like a fifty-fifty cocktail of liquor and filth, but Choi Je-u drank it down in one long gulp as if he trusted it completely.
“So the title of upper officer is real? You’re awfully young.”
“Khrr. You’re a suspicious one, aren’t you? Among the peddlers, I’m the best-read man here. My late foster father once arranged for me to study under Master Giwah, who carried on the scholarly tradition of Toegye.”
I didn’t care whether it was Giwah or slate. I just really hated bookish little punks like him.
“I’m not a merchant, but we’ve got a guy named Kim Yang-won who can read.”
Choi Je-u didn’t ask who Kim Yang-won was.
“A common brute who lives by squeezing women into selling drinks for him is afraid his lowliness will be exposed, so he starts every conversation by crapping all over the place. Just like Emperor Qianlong in the old days. Didn’t you hear the rumor that at a painting gathering, his so-called friends gathered without him because he wouldn’t shut up about poetry?”
Yang-won’s opinion of you seems pretty terrible. Still, if you’re being compared to some emperor, maybe that’s not entirely bad.
Even if singing contests were a harmless hobby, what the hell was with the shameful gigolo business? I’d have to pass that along to him at some point.
[And who exactly are you calling out? While you were turning the former landlord of this tavern into a slave and extorting private loans from him, you just kept going to Cha Un-hong to borrow money.]
Pretending I favored a civilized conversation, I handed the axe to Yu-jak and sent him off to put it away somewhere far off. The Mountain Spirit Wi-Fi cut out.
Choi Je-u, who had mistaken my restraint for goodwill, began rattling off unsolicited TMI.
Among other things, he even revealed his true name, something Bobusang merchants almost never disclosed unless absolutely necessary.
Choi Je-u?
That was a name I’d heard somewhere before, just like Kim Dae-geon.
Come to think of it, he’d shown interest in the Catholics too. Was he a religious figure as well?
It seemed likely.
“I want to meet the Western Learning people and hear their way,” he said. “From childhood I have studied the Three Teachings—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—as well as the hundred schools, but the way of Western Learning is forbidden by the state, so it has not been easy to hear of it.”
“Why not just convert?”
“That is not what I intend. The Westerners speak of universal love, yet they keep slaves and plunder those they call children of the same Creator. I mean to create an entirely new doctrine and save people from the three disasters and eight hardships.”
I didn’t fully follow what he was on about.
But I could feel Choi Je-u’s resolve.
In a grave voice, he said, “Even so, I don’t mean to burden Balgasan’s office. I’ll help you not as Upper Officer Choi Gyeong-ju, but as Choi Je-u, a man who has set his course. Even one person will be of use.”
The Mountain Spirit, who had heard me out, reacted even more strongly.
For the first time since Kim Dae-geon, this ghost had asked me for a “favor.”
[In my eyes, this man is precisely the one who can find the means I once spoke of—to ‘defeat the cult.’]
‘What?’
[Whether you call it Donghak, the Eastern Learning that stands against Western Learning... even if he speaks of secular prophecies and the like, he does not look like the old band of Hong Gyeong-rae.]
Donghak! Choi Je-u!
Right. Now I remembered. A shard from the history textbook.
Hold on, but if I remember the drama about Jeon Bong-jun I watched, weren’t these guys still part of the “Can’t live like this, Hong Gyeong-rae” crowd?
Between Kim Dae-geon and this, it looked like I was fated to keep tangling with anti-state religious groups.
Or maybe this era was simply so rotten that fanatical rebel cults were getting kicked around underfoot all over the place.
I decided to entrust the work to Choi Je-u.
Of course, as I had learned from the Kim Dae-geon affair, just because a person appears in a history book doesn’t mean you can trust them.
With Kim Dae-geon, I had rejected the Mountain Spirit’s advice; this time, I figured I ought to listen. It was a bit much, yes, but I couldn’t ignore the trouble he’d saved me in dictating and ghostwriting for me so far either.
In the end, it wasn’t a bad decision.
With only a few words of explanation from me, Choi Je-u grasped exactly what I needed.
“As even secular prophecy says, one who wishes to avoid hardship must move to the land of victory. That is what I see in the work you’re planning, Head Man. It seems there may yet be a road between East and West, so I shall devote myself to it.”
The land of victory, huh. Let’s call it close enough to a promised land.
I did what I could.
After introducing Choi Yang-eop to Choi Je-u—I did not introduce Kim Yang-won—I gave a brief order to the two of them.
“Bring me anyone who gets in the way. The rest is up to you.”
* * *
For most of human history, knowledge, religion, and philosophy were the same thing.
Even in the modern world, philosophy and religion occupy the very first classification in libraries. It means human intellect begins there.
Once Choi Je-u, who claimed mastery over the Three Teachings, and Choi Yang-eop, who claimed mastery of Western Learning, were combined, the work moved quickly.
The two of them used the household structure traditional to Joseon.
First, the adult men who served as heads of households were relocated. Moving households as complete units might seem better, but it made it difficult to prevent desertion, betrayal, and going out of contact.
The men first carved out a foothold on the barren island and used abandoned buildings to put up homes.
The highest priority went to those with military experience and those with technical skills.
Taesu, who had actually seen the Joseon army, was skeptical about what use a former Joseon soldier could possibly be, but the Mountain Spirit thought differently.
[Isn’t the other side Joseon troops too?]
To be honest, there was no better option.
Unless Taesu had been an officer or something, the military experience of an enlisted soldier in a conscript army wasn’t exactly something to boast about. All he could really offer was drill.
More than that, in the battlefield conditions of the nineteenth century, too much twenty-first-century military knowledge only got in the way. It was like how, because Taesu could read modern Hangul so well, he still felt irritation rise in him whenever he saw old Joseon cursive script.
As for technicians, they were moved to Goerido, where the forge facilities had been set up.
It wasn’t enough for a forge to have only a furnace, hammer, and anvil. They needed woodworkers to shape handles, craftsmen who handled glue, papermakers, even cooks, if they wanted efficiency.
In truth, these practical details were not things the excited participants noticed very much.
The point in the “Promised Land” project that could truly be called the climax came when Taesu led the first expedition and boarded the ship.
“Head Man! The waves are getting worse!”
“The wind’s too strong! The sail’s torn!”
“Where the hell are the rowers?”
“They just jumped in the water and ran away!”
“Idiots. If they’d just stayed put, they’d have gone under anyway—why rush their own deaths?”
“We’re taking on water! Water’s coming in!”
“This cursed rotten hull! We should’ve realized when those navy bastards were grinning and selling it so cheap!”
The Catholics aboard the ship were in just as much panic.
“Oh dear Lord, we never should have trusted those market-barkers and come along!”
“Lord, have mercy on us and save us from this calamity...”
“Hey, did some idiot forget to pray? The Bible says that if we bind one certain man and throw him into the sea, the storm will calm...”
“You mean the Dragon King? Huh? Are you saying the Lord is the Dragon King, you blasphemous wretch! Deacon, smash that bastard’s skull with the Bible!”
“N-no, I swear, it really says so...”
Then Taesu stepped forward with the axe in hand.
Most of the people here knew of the miracle he had displayed on the Imjin River.
Every single one of them looked at Taesu with eyes full of hope and longing.
Taesu met their expectations.
The promise was fulfilled.
Author’s Note
1. Giwah Yi Sang-won was a scholar regarded as carrying on the orthodox line of the Yeongnam School. He was the teacher of Choi Ok, Choi Je-u’s father, and at the same time Choi Je-u’s own teacher.
2. Jonah, while fleeing aboard a ship after refusing Yahweh’s command, told the sailors to bind him and throw him overboard when the storm grew severe. The storm then ceased, and Jonah was swallowed by a fish (Book of Jonah).