Men Raising Their Heads (1)
Taesu thought it was nothing more than tax theft.
He had simply kept quiet because he couldn’t come up with an alternative way to secure enough grain to feed several hundred people.
“The court has been harshly banning our church all this time, and in many cases it has killed people at random or dragged them off for punishment even when they’d committed no particular crime. You could call this the repayment for that.”
Choe Yang-eop, who had somehow become grotesquely corrupted and was now spouting sophistry, got kicked in the ass by Taesu.
For a corrupt official, it was the kind of situation he’d probably enjoy.
But Taesu was stressed.
And that stress was vented in a very healthy direction.
Bang!
The heavy bag hanging in front of Daehan Gongjosa swung wildly from a single kick.
Of course, a leisurely piece of equipment like that had not been included in Taesu’s prison-break kit.
Along with the Daehan Gongjosa building, which had been transformed from a thatched hut into a tiled-roof house and from a wattle fence into a stone wall, this heavy bag was also the result of steadily repeated smuggling operations up to this point.
* * *
When the tanned leather sold surprisingly well, Taesu came up with a new business plan.
People often lump it all together as leather, but the two are different.
Raw hide stripped from an animal is called pi, and once the hair has been shaved off with a knife it becomes hyeok. That was why, when you launched a revolution, you were essentially shaving the country clean with a blade.
The leather chemically treated to make it soft is called wi.
Joseon used raw hide and processed leather, but it lacked the technology to make wi. It was behind not only Europe, but even neighboring China.
Through Kim Dae-geon, Taesu brought in a leather craftsman from China.
Once Kim Dae-geon heard about the “Promised Land” project, he couldn’t exactly refuse to help. And there was no shortage of craftsmen in Jiangnan driven into debt by opium.
Drug addiction usually begins with an information gap, social coercion, ingestion through hierarchy, or Britain. Very few people start purely of their own free will.
Taesu, who understood that well, tried a gentle treatment using modern knowledge.
“Take this and endure it, all right?”
It was Pyongan Province tobacco, and it wasn’t cheap even in Joseon.
Cheap meth addicts often developed trembling hands, and Taesu remembered cases where giving them cigarettes calmed them down for a while.
Those who refused the addiction-treatment program were disciplined with the samneungjang, the weapon of Jangmokwang, wielded by Kim Yang-won. After being stabbed three times and whipped nine times under the Injo-style whip law, every Jurchen swore to start a new life.
The work made progress. Various products made from softened leather were produced on Goerido.
It wasn’t as if Taesu had the grand idea of exporting finished goods instead of raw materials.
In nineteenth-century Joseon, no matter how many handmade goods you produced, China would crush you on price. And the West was no different.
This was for domestic use. High-end goods like hogap—precious-item boxes—scabbards, winter hats, and rain covers sold well as unmistakable Chinese-made products, with Joseon as the OEM.
* * *
Taesu set aside one of those leather goods for his own use.
It was a heavy bag made to three times the usual standard, weighing about 300 pounds, or 135 kilograms, to match Taesu’s strength.
In Joseon, it was hard to find a doorpost that could support that weight, and even green wood couldn’t be trusted.
So it was hung by chains from iron pillars and supports cast on Goerido.
He even made a zipper. The zipper prototype, created using Taesu’s backpack zipper as a model, was almost a miracle.
Honestly, it was hard to believe it would even open once it was closed, but many of the craftsmen here were copper masters who had made “counterfeit currency,” so imitation, at least, was possible.
Leather processing.
Production of large metal objects like iron pillars.
Precision metalworking, or at least attempts at it, with chains, zippers, and the like.
It might not look like much, but these were the skills that had to exist at the foundation of any attempt to copy firearms or build warships.
Importing machine tools or technical books was the next step. Just like exercise: first you build the body, then you learn the technique.
This “Promised Land,” which had brought in more craftsmen than an entire government department and of wildly different nationalities, could become the foundation of basic industry.
Taesu’s heavy bag was not merely a toy, but a comprehensive symbol of that foundation.
By contrast, the Mountain Spirit thought this object was a comprehensive symbol of Taesu’s violence.
[What need has one blessed with divine strength to train martial arts anew? You are simply itching for something to beat.]
Taesu didn’t want to admit the spirit was right, so he immediately came up with an excuse.
Out here, every fight turns into guns and blades, so with my current level I can’t exactly relax. There seem to be plenty of real experts too.
Strictly speaking, there was no way Joseon had more masters than modern Korea. Before anything else, the population was smaller.
But the problem was the line of work Taesu had fallen into. Since he was on the Grand Line, he was bound to run into a lot of Haki users.
Still, Taesu’s words weren’t entirely wrong.
Just as a monster engine with no gears was useless, even overwhelming strength had to be trained before it could be used at one hundred percent.
If anyone ever uses an axe, I should learn from them too, but for now I need to start with what I already know.
Taesu jabbed at the heavy bag. It wasn’t bad, surprisingly enough.
Its durability was far below that of modern chrome tanning, but even so, it was cowhide. It shouldn’t burst under human hands.
That was a mistake. Cowhide was tough, yes, but the stitching wasn’t.
After trying a light barrage of one hundred middle kicks per minute for about a minute, Taesu was forced to witness the heavy bag explode gloriously around the fortieth strike.
Stuffing ripped out through the seams like guts spilling from a corpse. It was made of foot wraps and scraps of old clothes gathered from the bobusang.
Taesu turned to Son Yu-jak, who had been standing by, ready to praise his boss’s martial prowess.
“Bring that bastard from the Choe family here. Did he give us fake leather?”
It was the sort of fury you’d expect from someone in the twenty-first century after punching a genuine cowhide sandbag.
“Huh? There’s fake leather too? Do you mean dog hide?”
Choe, no less than Son Yu-jak, would surely be bewildered right now. If he had invented commercial polyvinyl chloride eighty years early, why would he ever give it to Taesu?
Luckily, no future knowledge would be leaked.
Cha Un-hong, in her male disguise, had just come in.
“What happened here?”
Son Yu-jak, who thought Cha Un-hong was just a servant in the household, proudly explained the scene as though he himself had burst the cowhide.
Cha Un-hong waited until Son Yu-jak had called the others and hauled the heavy bag away, then looked toward Taesu.
Only then did she speak to him, as he stood on his hands doing push-ups.
“You seem angry about the relief grain issue. I know you hate sly tricks, but let’s let this one pass. You might think you’d rather grab an axe and raid the military arsenal yourself, but….”
If Taesu were that much of an idiot, he’d have gone out alone to face the French army when they invaded, only to get hit by cannon fire and die.
“Courage and recklessness are not the same thing.”
“A fine saying. What book did that come from?”
“Anyway, what I’m worried about is that the Catholics aren’t in any position to act so boldly. If they fail to repay the relief grain, won’t the authorities end up sending searches to Seogeomdo, Gyodongdo, or Goerido because of it?”
“So you’re saying it’d be like scratching a scab until it opens? You needn’t worry too much about that.”
Still balanced upside down, Taesu lifted only his head to look at Cha Un-hong. She spoke calmly.
“If it comes to that, we can simply repay in cash in the autumn. Grain is cheaper in the fall, so the magistracy would probably prefer money anyway. And….”
Cha Un-hong stopped speaking and came over to crouch in front of Taesu.
Then Taesu and Cha Un-hong faced each other, looking at one another upside down.
Under normal circumstances, this was a scene that should never have happened because of their height difference. Cha Un-hong found it amusing and rested her chin on her hand.
Her lips were less than a handspan away from Taesu’s.
At moments like this, having to “talk” was rather regrettable.
Thinking there might be more valuable uses for lips, Cha Un-hong whispered,
“We may not even need to repay at all. Soon the country will be in total upheaval, so who would care about relief grain?”
* * *
King Yi Hwan ultimately intended to bring not only the Andong Kim clan but all the great clan families of the Three Han under control.
But that raised the same problem Kim Jwa-geun had already foreseen: if that happened, who would form the new ruling class?
Of course, democracy was an unimaginable concept to Yi Hwan. The first group he could consider was the royal family, who had been sidelined from politics until now.
For example, Yi Ha-eung, the Prince Heungseon, who had raised a righteous army on Ganghwado.
But there was a reason the royal family had always been excluded from power since the early Joseon period. To overcome the crisis of a retainer scheming for the next throne, Yi Hwan first needed to secure a firm line of succession himself.
First, I need to make a son.
Besides, the Grand Queen Dowager’s order to select concubines was not something he even had the right to refuse.
The problem was that this wasn’t something a concubine could solve. Conveniently enough, however, there was a method that could both recruit royal kin and strengthen his virility.
Yi Hwan summoned Jang Sun-gyu, the aekrye, the palace functionary responsible for matters too private to tell others, in other words, the special attendant.
He was the same Jang Sun-gyu who was close to Yi Ha-eung.
“Go and find me a medicine that can restore my vigor. Just as that merchant Park once brought in the matchlock guns, if there’s any foreign miracle drug, I won’t ask where it came from. I know well of Prince Heungseon’s and your own loyalty, and that is why I issue this command.”
It was, in fact, the special attendant’s job to go fetch whatever trivial thing the king wanted.
Jang Sun-gyu went straight to Yi Ha-eung and delivered the king’s will.
Yi Ha-eung fell into thought as he tended his orchids.
Joseon wasn’t a place where high rank came with a neat, regular pension or anything of the sort. This was a country where money and virtue had very little to do with each other.
So Yi Ha-eung had to work for his livelihood as well. This orchid was the kind of thing that would later become the initial work of Seokpa Orchid, forged from that hungry spirit.
The twisting tip of the orchid showed depth and dimension.
Yi Ha-eung’s loyalty was not to Yi Hwan as a person.
His goal was to sweep away the powerful clan families and establish royal authority.
But Yi Hwan would not live long. Even if he managed to produce a son with the help of some virility medicine, he would surely die before that son came of age.
What’s more, in this era the survival rate of children in the royal house, after overcoming infant mortality, was lower than that of puppies. The heir might as well not exist.
Then was there any value in maintaining an alliance with Yi Hwan?
Paradoxically, yes.
Precisely because Yi Hwan had little time left, it was worth considering becoming the sort of close aide who shared his secrets and followed his wishes.
If the king burned his final reserves of vigor, wiped out the Grand Queen Dowager, the Andong Kim clan, and the rest of the ruling families, then died, the balance of power would change dramatically.
That was because the Grand Queen Dowager Kim’s right to appoint the next king would no longer function.
By then, the right of Queen Dowager Jo, who stood second in line, would also be meaningless. The Pungyang Jo clan had already made it clear, by refusing the anti-corruption law, that its essence was on the side of the nobility, so it would be hard for them to escape a purge.
There was still Queen Hong, but though the Namyang Hong clan was an illustrious house, it could not compare with the Pungyang Joes or the Andong Kims.
In such a scorched political field, the royal faction represented by Yi Ha-eung could attempt to reclaim power by targeting the greatly weakened great clan families of the Three Han.
And the key to power was always violence.
No matter how things turn out, I can’t leave out Park-Axe, who has a name among the peddlers.
Even in the original history, he would be the sort of man who could manipulate the son who became king and drag the bobusang into politics as an instrument of force.
Judging by the outcome of war alone, Park-Axe and the bobusang were a military force superior to Chongwiyeong.
And one peasant from Ganghwado, who was close with him, was in truth the first in line to the throne by agnatic succession, though nobody dared say it aloud for fear of being accused of treason.
If Yi Ha-eung could place both of them in his grasp and set the course himself, then the Yi royal authority would stand on bedrock.
Yi Ha-eung rubbed the finished orchid painting with a wet cloth.
“I suppose this will at least buy me enough fare to get to Songdo.”
* * *
When Ha-eung came in person instead of sending a subordinate, I thought at last that the king must have done something outrageous.
Outwardly, it didn’t look all that different. I was dumbfounded.
“You want me to find an aphrodisiac?”
I’m a merchant, so I shouldn’t complain if the money’s good, but that product line is a little much.
No, I’d already heard about this whole virility-coup business directly from you, so I knew what was going on. But couldn’t you handle something that private with the court physicians or whoever, out of sight? Why do I have to help with this?
[You are looking at it too narrowly. By any measure, isn’t he pitiful? A gallant man should help the unfortunate. Even the lord of all living beings can sometimes not move one limb as he wills.]
You’re the one poking the king all over the place right now.
[And lately Prince Heungseon seems to fancy you too… if you play it well, you could make a great deal of money, exactly as you wish.]
Ha-eung said something similar.
“This is even more important than the last batch of matchlock guns. I’m sure you’ll receive an even greater favor than before.”
“You mean more money?”
“Money is a given, of course. How could the sovereign’s sacred generosity stop there? You’ll know soon enough.”
“I’ll say this in advance: if you’re hinting at some local magistrate post or the like, I’ll refuse. That’s not what I’m after.”
Ha-eung replied with a look full of meaning.
“I don’t want you to dirty yourself by stepping into officialdom either. You’re better as you are. In any case, I’ll make sure you’re not disappointed, so please handle that foreign medicine well.”
* * *
The Mountain Spirit maliciously claimed it was because this was a post even a blind man could not carry out, but even if I can read, I still don’t want a government office.
Just as I’d thought while talking with Cha Un-hong before, that whole thing was their rulebook.
I’m not going into that game. We’re doing things our way.
[For now, they say they’ll pay. Let us secure the medicine. You gave Hoesu to Wonbeom as well, so why are you so stingy with the king?]
“Is Wonbeom the same as a king? Ah, right. Fine. Do we have any more of that Hoesu?”
[There is some, but if it’s just medicinal herbs from Ganghwado, wouldn’t the king take the whole lot as tribute? That is surely why Prince Heungseon called it foreign medicine.]
Useless bastard when it matters most.
I rummaged through my backpack, but most of my emergency medicines were antibiotics or wound treatments.
Should I import it from China? At the end of the day, both systems would be rooted in Eastern medicine, so would China really have anything all that different from Joseon?
In the end, I had no choice but to speak to de Thierry on Seogeomdo.
Rather than because the king was involved, it was just that the matter was embarrassing, so I left Choe Yang-eop out of it and carried on the conversation in English.
That French bastard, just like the Mountain Spirit, grinned in an annoyingly sly way.
“At first glance, you seemed like the sort of man who wouldn’t trouble himself over such things at all. How unexpected… gah! Why are you hitting me?”
“It’s not for me.”
After crouching and trembling for a while, de Thierry got up and snorted.
“A-anyway, as you say, you’d do well not to expect much from China. Use the latest European medicine here. Leave any medicine meant to please a lady to me.”
“What do you know about it? Are you a doctor?”
“A doctor? Ha….”
De Thierry laughed as if the idea were ridiculous.
The moment I clenched my fist again, he said with great dignity,
“I am French.”