Man vs Wild (2)

The sea off Hongju in Chungcheong Province, which had once been swept by the wrath of the gods, was now quiet—as if the man in charge had been fired and no one had bothered to replace him.

People, unfortunately, were not so quiet.

Countless ferries shuttled back and forth between Wonsando and the mainland at Hongju. The strait between them had become a market spanning both sides of the sea.

Drawn-out shouts mingled with the clatter of rocking gunwales, hasty hands with leisurely rowing strokes.

The islanders who had once been treated as criminals, fair game for hunters to shoot without worry, were now springing up everywhere as owners of stores and inns.

The Bobusang caravan was using Wonsan Port as its own harbor now.

Making a separate port had been impossible, and Cha Un-hong’s concerns were justified. On the mainland, even setting aside the navy, there were simply too many powers that could meddle.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

So after granting the people of Wonsando wholesale priority and winning their cooperation, they had begun using the place as their commercial base.

The “illegal seafood” caught on Wonsando was transformed here into “legal seafood.”

It sailed across to Chungcheong together with the enormous volume of goods hauled in from the Imjin River trade network. And naturally, the ships arriving from the Chungcheong Baekimbang were piled high with ramie cloth or grain.

Just as the Gyeonggi Baekimbang did on the Imjin River, the Chungcheong Baekimbang that handled brokerage and trouble-shooting here collected part of the profit as “membership dues.”

Some of that, in turn, went back to the Songdo arrival branch.

No one complained.

The current system could not exist without Taesu’s prestige and Kim Sun-won’s fleet.

Those with sharper eyes also noticed that there ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was almost no interference from the local Song merchants.

There was no doubt that “Cha Un-hong, who backed Park Axe” was exerting influence along the route of the Song merchants.

Of course, the route leaders could not control or direct the entire Song merchant network. But if even a handful of the great merchants in the leadership decided not to antagonize the Bobusang, the difference could be felt at once.

The Bobusang side also adjusted its course under the command of the Imbang leaders. With their power growing, discipline was enforced so they would not start buying up ginseng or horsehair, or hoard goods like Heosaeng, ignorant of the market as ever.

Kim Sun-won had stopped bothering to count the profits stacking up on both sides of the sea.

Instead, he struck up a conversation with Im In-son, the local military official of Wonsando who also served as the harbor deputy.

“I can barely remember the days when I used to lug salted fish around and make a yang every ten days. All of it’s thanks to Park Axe.”

“You can say that again. It’s not even been half a year since Park Axe appeared like a bolt of lightning, and yet what else can you call this but a great reversal of sea and land?”

After taking a breath, Im In-son gestured vaguely in some direction.

“Even the navy can’t lay a hand on us, can it? Well, that’s why the profits are so good.”

“How could they touch you, when you’re the local military officer of Wonsando, Deputy Im? Hah! Come to think of it, even Park Axe has no military office, and yet he’s a great birth despite being only a local official.”

Kim Sun-won thought he had given Im In-son exactly the sort of answer he wanted.

But Im In-son hadn’t been trying to boast about his achievements.

“It isn’t just because I wear this cheap military cap. With so many comrades gathered here, it’s hard for anyone to mess with us recklessly.”

The Joseon army was astonishingly faithful to the basic principles of warfare.

Not only did they avoid fighting anyone who looked likely to win; if there was even a chance they might take one hit, they absolutely would not fight at all.

The Chungcheong navy soldiers, after their withdrawal from the Seven Seas, were impossible to distinguish from fishermen or merchants.

That was a disappointment to the isekai heroes who burned with dreams of turning the Joseon military into a professional standing force. Yet, at this point in time, the Joseon navy was, unexpectedly, almost a professional standing army already.

The court hadn’t carried out some grand reform. That wasn’t how Joseon’s system worked.

Gorip—the practice of paying someone else to fulfill military service—had become so routine that the men who specialized in serving as stand-ins had quietly been absorbed into the official system.

The common people who once paid money to send substitutes in their place now proudly paid that money directly to the military camp, and the camp then paid the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠substitutes. Wages for each role were already fixed.

Hyper-developed military corruption was indistinguishable from a professional standing army.

And being such a “professional standing army,” they naturally had no qualms about side jobs. Given enough money, they would probably even take on treason as part-time work.

The joint operation with the navy produced another effect as well.

Wonsando was sacred ground for government grain ships.

Joseon’s money—grain.

And the people to trade with.

Everything was there. If a market didn’t spring up, that would have been strange. In the old days, the changsi—the market at a government granary—had always stood as one of the two great pillars of Joseon’s periodic markets, alongside the eupsi, the town market.

And wherever the grain ships traveled, there were the Gyeonggang merchants, the largest merchant power in the kingdom, who had subcontracted Joseon’s grain transport.

The Gyeonggang merchants who stopped at Wonsando with rice aboard were, as always, repackaging ordinary rice as government rice.

In other words, they were siphoning some of it off, pouring in water to increase the weight, or mixing in bran and sand to create a full-blown Imo Mutiny set.

Normally, that would have caused no problem. The reason King Gojong-branded rice was distributed during the Imo Mutiny was simply because it was the standard government rice of Joseon, not because the Training Corps had some personal grudge.

But now things were different. The Gyeong merchants were beaten by the navy the moment their shortfalls were exposed.

“You bastard! Tampering with the king’s grain supplies? You must be a traitor!”

“Ack! What, did you drink, officer? What kind of bullying is this?”

The reason the Gyeong merchants could handle grain transport for the entire country was that they had force behind them.

The Gyeong merchants’ maritime strength was far greater than that of the Joseon navy.

They sprang up in fury. This destruction of free-market economics, which infringed on rational profit-seeking, was unforgivable.

But this time the Bobusang were there. And this was land.

“You sons of bitches, daring to glare at the court navy like that? You’re no better than the Western barbarians who invaded Ganghwa Island!”

“We street hawkers who follow Park Axe, the hero who drove off the barbarians, can’t overlook this!”

“Look at the stink of shit on this bastard—his father must’ve been a Frenchman!”

“That just sounds like he got beaten so badly he shit himself.”

The rice the Gyeong merchants had siphoned off was confiscated.

Instead, the missing amount had to be “purchased” with rice supplied by Im In-son and the other local military officers. Ryu Ik-deok, who had always worried himself sick over the court’s efforts to fix the evils of grain transport privatization, was delighted by the results.

Everything was going smoothly.

Im In-son looked at the government troops with more ease than ever before.

“Just as Park Axe said in Songdo the other day. We’re no longer riding on the market’s back—we can set up the market ourselves.”

And perhaps they could set up other things as well.

At the very least, something far greater than what an impotent ruler had ever hoped to build.

The two men, still marveling at Park Axe, naturally drifted back to the letter Park Axe had sent.

“Seems Park Axe caught a good fish in Gangjin. He’s telling us to load the goods and come down to Gangjin as soon as we get the letter. Hm. I wonder if things went well with the Song merchants and he bought up horsehair by the boatload.”

That meant the Chungcheong goods they had loaded now were to be taken not to Ganghwa Island, but to Gangjin.

Im In-son looked somewhat troubled.

“It’s not as though Park Axe would let us take a loss in Gangjin, but it’s difficult right now. The Wonhongju Six Naval Trade Office—no, the Chungcheong Baekimbang—was originally made up of merchants from the east, inland routes. If we’re to gather everyone and change course, you’ll need to give us at least ten days.”

In other words, they wanted to finish their own trade first. It was not an unreasonable request.

But Kim Sun-won couldn’t shake the unease gnawing at him.

The reason he had come here was Taesu’s psychic communication that transcended time.

Of course, Kim Sun-won also believed, as Choe Je-u had said at the time, that Park Axe had seen him drinking and used the opportunity to pass a letter to Yi Seong-nyeo.

And yet, the more he thought about it, the stronger the sense of dissonance became, as though the memory didn’t fit.

That feeling only deepened after he saw Choe Je-u acting as if he had received a revelation and had a shrine built for Yi Seong-nyeo.

Could it be that Park Axe saw the future?

If so, then even the incident with the Sea God Festival, when he had driven away the storm, made a certain kind of sense. In those days, people included magic in logic; they did not set it apart from it.

So Kim Sun-won hesitated.

“Hmm. But there must surely be some meaning in Park Axe’s letter as well. If we dither and miss the right moment….”

Im In-son, guardian of reason, moved to persuade him.

“Even if we set out right away, the sea route changes with the morning and evening storms, so we could easily be delayed for no reason at all. Park Axe must have allowed for that too, no? If we suddenly load up and leave, the navy won’t exactly be pleased either.”

“That’s true enough.”

The Chungcheong navy was an important business partner now. Park Axe would not want them rushing over while antagonizing the navy.

Kim Sun-won was just about to agree with Im In-son at that point.

That was, if a waiting-for-change military officer—not a French officer—hadn’t come running up to Im In-son right then and there.

Kim Sun-won stepped back politely.

After listening to the subordinate officer’s whisper, Im In-son’s expression changed to one of shock, and he turned to Kim Sun-won.

Rewinding time a bit, around the moment Taesu had just sent his letter from Gangjin to Wonsando, an urgent report also reached the court.

It was the message relayed by the Mokpo naval commander, sped along at light speed by the Captain Ogle of survival fame.

Translated, it meant:

“We barged into your territorial waters with an armed warship, but if you don’t want to watch your commander die, feed us, water us, and provide repair materials for our ship.”

As expected, it could only be Britain. France at least had the excuse of a murdered priest; once the opium vanished from a British ship, all that remained was sheer bad behavior.

The court erupted into chaos.

“Those English bastards raided the black cattle used for ancestral rites in Jeju just a few years ago—aren’t they outright pirates?”

“The Jeolla left naval commander was taken down by just one ship? And he claims to be a descendant of Lee Rusong!”

“I told you it was a mistake to take in those illegal Ming immigrant bastards in the first place!”

But they also couldn’t simply leave the provincial commander to die. The ministers phrased it more politely when they submitted their memorial.

“For a provincial commander to be seized by the enemy is an unprecedented and bizarre affair. If he was taken while fighting, how could he have preserved his loyalty through martyrdom? It is certain that Yang Qiu lured him aboard with that vile scheme of his and bound him there, so even if His Excellency Yi Hee-jang must later be interrogated, he should first be brought back.”

They also dug up and submitted the necessary “precedent” for such a case.

During King Yeongjo’s reign, the Huanghae military officer Kim Jeong-wook had been kidnapped by an illegal Chinese fishing vessel and later rescued. The logic was that if even a mere military officer had been saved, how could they fail to rescue a provincial commander?

King I-hwan fell into thought.

Not over the British fleet. As the ministers said, that was no different from the illegal fishing-boat incident in Yeongjo’s time.

I-hwan’s concern was Joseon itself.

In truth, he had already merged with Jeongjo and no longer cared about noble lives.

Besides, the officer Kim Jeong-wook in Yeongjo’s day hadn’t been seized for bravely fighting either.

Like all Joseon officers on the western sea at the time, he had been caught dealing secretly with pirates and smugglers; when the crackdown came, the pirates mistook him for an undercover agent and captured him.

But a reckless war could interfere with I-hwan’s military-virility two-track policy.

He did not want to unsettle the military aristocrats unnecessarily. In Yeongjo’s day, Kim Jeong-wook had also been given only a theatrical display—threatening the pirates at knifepoint to intimidate the Chinese who had been in collusion with him.

The same went for virility. The Western medicine he was taking had likely come through England or France.

At worst, that ship might even be one of the suppliers of the virility tonics he had been tacitly allowing all along.

I-hwan decided to stick carefully to the two-track policy.

“The discussion in the State Council is correct. Even they claim, at least in words, that unlike the French they have nothing at all to do with heresy. Since no one has actually been injured, their claim that they don’t wish to fight is also believable.”

Then someone submitted a statement.

It was Kim Jwa-geun, who held no special military post but was compatible with any office by virtue of being the Queen Dowager’s younger brother.

“Was it not precisely for moments like this that we raised the Chongwiyeong and drove off those French filth? If the provincial commander must be rescued, then even if we do not fight, should we not at least show our might, as when you arrayed the troops and fired the cannons before the Qing envoys during Yeongmyeong’s reign? In the case of Kim Jeong-wook, His Majesty Yeongjo also donned the armor and battle dress from the year of the Muwon upheaval.”

That was Yeongjo’s trademark performance politics. I-hwan was not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trying to imitate Yeongjo; he was trying to imitate Jeongjo.

The would-be monarch’s intentions were obvious to Kim Jwa-geun.

If this were Ganghwa Island, effectively the capital region, that would be one thing—but once an army was sent far out into the provinces, it was hard to bring it back.

It would have to establish a life there. Kim Jwa-geun wanted the Chongwiyeong out of Seoul by any means possible.

Not a chance. The Chongwiyeong existed to protect the king.

By killing ministers.

“First, have Buan County provide water and provisions to the ship that has run aground, the Samarang, and have the Jeolla military commander support the ship that is bound for Gangjin. Meanwhile, the Chungcheong navy will head south to keep an eye on the Chinese fellows and prevent them from running wild.”

It was a reasonable decision.

The Haenam western naval command had lost its commander and its fleet had been shattered. Of course the ships and sailors still remained, but a fleet that would simply take off the moment it met British marines again was no longer part of the equation.

However, if even the Suncheon left naval command were to vacate its post, the gate to Jeolla—the front line of Joseon’s coastal defense—would be thrown wide open.

So this task had no choice but to fall to the Chungcheong navy.

That is, if the Chungcheong navy’s “warships” had not all been sunk into the sea recently by the wrath of Leruye.

At the king’s reasonable decision, Chungcheong naval commander I Min-deok turned as pale as the sky before a storm.

This was what happened when you lied once in a report: something worse followed. I Min-deok was about to pay the price for forgetting the most basic rule of the office worker.

Fortunately, Joseon’s politics of military and civilian cooperation shone again this time.

Im In-son, the newly appointed local military officer of Wonsando and harbor deputy, immediately received the naval commander.

“Our Dobansu, Park Axe, already annihilated the Yangchus on Ganghwa with a single axe. How could we fail to follow his example and step forward? We ask only that the naval commander let our ships sail.”

Now that DEFCON had dropped at the naval command, trade on Wonsando was going to shrink anyway.

No matter how sluggish the Joseon military was—or rather, because they were sluggish—they were sensitive to being made an example of. Merchants would have even less fun now.

So Park Axe’s summoning of the fleet to Gangjin had been nothing short of prescience.

One could argue that Gangjin would also be affected by DEFCON because of the Royalist, but that didn’t matter.

Park Axe was there.

Park Axe had already forced two Western fleets to their knees. And Gangjin, unlike Wonsando, was still a place his caravan had not yet developed, so chaos there would be an opportunity rather than a disaster.

Im In-son and Kim Sun-won had now cast reason aside. They no longer doubted Park Axe.

Although for different reasons, Chungcheong naval commander I Min-deok—who had never had much reason to begin with—was so overjoyed he even shed tears.

That was right. Come to think of it, because their ships were here, I Min-deok could survive without reporting the fleet’s loss. The numbers still added up.

“You men are truly loyal subjects!”

And so the “Chungcheong navy fleet,” accompanied by the one or two remaining vessels on the front lines, set sail south at once.

Whether the British marines—those survivors after the French cholera corps—would be able to endure the wild Joseon was a question that would soon be answered.