Goodbye, Peking Duck
「Pow! Bam. Pow! Bam.」
“Eeek! I quit!”
“I'm sorry? You're the one who suggested we play in the first place?”
I really, honestly thought I could play badminton with these kids.
I figured a shuttlecock couldn't fly faster than a certain speed because of air resistance! I actually thought that!
Damn it. Since when was it this fast? My reflexes are decent, at least, so I can keep up with it, but all I have to do is hold my racket up and it flies right back over the net. I'm basically a punching bag here.
“I quit!”
“My, my?”
“Eeeeek!”
Right, of course you don't understand. The frustration of the weak. Look at that shameless face! It makes my blood boil. It really, really makes my blood boil.
Was there truly no way to win? Go? Chess? No, winning with my head doesn't count for anything here.
And telekinesis would just be cheating anyway.
“Were you really going easy on me?”
「Grrrrr」
“Oh? Is that a dog? Honestly. Watch closely.”
With that, she gracefully tossed the shuttle into the air and—
「Bang!」
“Huh?”
The shuttle exploded. Feathers scattering everywhere like some cartoon. Ha. I give up. No, wait, I don't! You little—
“Show-off.”
“Pardon?”
“You poop some seriously hefty logs.”
“Huh? How would you know that? Is it a constitution thing? Mine come out thick and short, actually.”
It's not a constitution, it's muscles compressing everything and firing it out in one shot.
「Knock knock」
“The Chancellor is here, Haneul-nim.”
“Ah. Tell him to come in.”
My energy drains just from morning exercise. Come to think of it, has anything needed my attention lately? It's been a while since he dropped by.
“Greetings, Haneul-nim.”
His name is Down, I believe, though honestly I can't remember which number chancellor he is anymore. Sorry~
“I must be getting old.”
“Pardon?”
Ah. My thoughts leaked out of my mouth again, didn't they.
“Nothing. So, what's going on?”
“You told us to keep watch on the neighboring countries, remember? Well, a nation has appeared on the vast lands to the west.”
“Only now? Which country is it?”
Drumroll, please. Is it the age of Yao and Shun? Or the Zhou dynasty?
“Xia? A place they called with a single character, ‘Ha’?”
Oh? You're telling me we're in the age of myth? Now that's an interesting development! Which means I get to claim my own corner of mythology!
Though I suppose that was a given, considering I already fly around and smash things.
“Anything else?”
“Unlike what you described, it wasn't on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, but on a different large river further down below it.”
Huh? Did they abandon the Yellow River and move? Or is it an entirely different country? Our slave raiders must have done something terrible...
Will a country called China actually come into being? Well, if it's the era of Yao and Shun, that's supposed to be a golden age...
“Mm, good work scouting it out. We don't take slaves anymore, right?”
“No, Haneul-nim. Rather than deal with those insect-eaters, we find it easier to do the work ourselves.”
“Good. Keep it up.”
So slavery has all but vanished. I thought it would disappear overnight, but it took surprisingly long.
Sixty years or so? So many people insisted they wouldn't give it up, after all.
“That said, they're building fortresses along the lower Yellow River. What should we do?”
“Why would they build fortresses there?”
“Hard to say?”
Our people used to go slave-raiding by boat back in the day, remember? Would they really go to the trouble of building walls? The nomad kids have gotten docile since we started feeding them, so they shouldn't be crossing over anymore either.
“You're really not going slave-raiding these days?”
Could they still be sneaking out? I go out now and then, and I never see anything like slaves anymore.
“Even if we caught them, they'd just run? They're more trouble than they're worth.”
“Are they building a border wall for defense?”
“Why would we need one?”
“Because you're worried we'll invade?”
Hmm. I genuinely can't figure out the reason.
“If you invaded, wouldn't you come by ship anyway?”
“I don't get it either.”
It feels like a Great Wall sort of thing... They started building this early? A wall means, “We won't cross, so don't you come either,” doesn't it?
No, seriously—how much did we torment them that they've given up on their entire north?
“So no Peking duck for us, then.”
“Duck roast?”
“Mm. Duck roasted until it's crispy. It's incredibly delicious.”
“More than fried?”
“Well, you baste it with seasoning while it roasts... Hmm?”
No? That's not the point here! Wait, though—can you actually build fortresses in a river that floods all the time?
“No, forget that! They can build fortresses there?”
“Honestly, in its current state, they say it's better described as a levee.”
“Could it be flood control work?”
“It's too far from the river for that. Far too far, apparently.”
Did they build close, fail, and keep backing away? Well. They'll figure it out.
“Are you managing to talk with them at all?”
“They run the moment they spot our people, which is a hassle, but if we catch one, sit him down, and strike up a conversation, it works fine.”
Hmm. That's still going on, even after all this time?
“Don't go roughing them up. Just ask them why they're building it.”
“If we hit them, they die. We merely stroke them ever so gently.”
And you call that not hitting them? No wonder they run... Where did the peaceful, white-clad people of the calm morning land go...
It's nothing but violence and bloodshed around here.
“For now, read the mood and ask whether they intend to use that place as a border.”
“Do we even need that territory?”
He had a point. Our land is already so vast that we're short on people, so why would we want more?
“Because if they do their flood control properly, that land grows crops beautifully!”
“We have plenty of farmland already.”
Fair enough? Potatoes grow just about anywhere, after all? Our notion of what counts as farmland has gotten absurdly generous.
The World Tree's power is the likeliest cause, but if its range extends that far north across the plain, it'll affect China too. Can't have other people enjoying all the benefits now, can we? Heh heh heh.
“Also, we can scoop up the clay lying all over that river and make our hwanghae porcelain from it.”
“Ah! Now that sounds worthwhile? I'll look into it.”
Scooping clay out of a river is far easier than hauling kaolin down from the mountains.
“Though I suppose you'll have to run plenty of experiments to find the right glaze recipe again?”
It took a few years last time, if I remember right. With so many more people now, maybe it'll go faster?
“It's certainly easier than hauling it down from the mountains. Haha.”
Right—no matter how strong these kids are, a river beats a mountain any day.
“One more thing. Wouldn't you care to visit Moda at least once?”
“They'll manage on their own...”
Truthfully, they've been treading water for centuries, but judging by how other nations are springing up, I don't think there's any need to rush them.
They're already good at smelting and casting, at least. The problem is steel. They still can't control the carbon content while the metal's molten.
Well, there's no proper way to measure it, so they go by feel. Can't be helped.
“Tell them to keep at it. The way I see it, whenever I teach them something myself, the technology develops more slowly.”
It's already been four hundred years since Akta first drew iron from the ground, after all.
“Understood. I trust there is a deep meaning in that.”
“Mm. Send people over to Xia and see if we can get along with them. Try to stay friendly if at all possible.”
“You think that will work?”
That's what worries me too. Has the fear been engraved into them at the genetic level? If it doesn't work, oh well. It's hard to stay on good terms with your closest neighbor. That's a truth that held true even into the modern era.
Hmm... But did these Xia folks conquer and absorb others through war, or just get absorbed peacefully?
We never had much to do with the Yangtze region... Maybe we could manage a decent relationship.
For now, whatever it is, Xia is Xia, right?
That day, Down came in carrying a whole armful of something. Dishes made of a metal with a faint golden sheen to it.
“Oh! I know this stuff!”
Bronze, was it? Something about it having antibacterial properties, supposedly?
“This is a metal Moda made long ago. It used to be too soft to be of any use, but they say it hardened while they were hammering at it out of boredom, so they fashioned it into dishes and brought it as an offering. Does it please you?”
“Of course! This is a seriously good thing!”
Just the dishes alone can prevent a fair amount of food poisoning! And that subtle glow looks just like gold, doesn't it?
“Does it?”
“Those dishes will cut down on people getting sick after meals.”
“It's just a dish, though?”
That's exactly why copper is wonderful, my friend. That's why I keep telling you to hunt for it harder than iron. Heh heh.
“Oh, but this is important—you need to assign dedicated craftsmen to make these. It'd be great if lots of people used them.”
“The blacksmiths have been raising a fuss lately about having nothing to make. I suppose I'll put them on this.”
Huh? The workshop has no work? That can't be right?
“Why would there be no work?”
“Whatever we make has to wear out before anyone needs to make more, doesn't it?”
Right, they pour molten metal into molds and then hammer it out afterward, apparently.
Is hammered iron really that good? Didn't they turn a hoe into a sword just because they were bored one day?
“Just have them make weapons, no?”
Their main weapon is the spear, so they probably don't need all that much iron? Even the arrowheads are made only finger-sized. And here I'd imagined full arrow-shaped things.
“What's the point of making more than we already have? Every citizen in the nation could march out carrying one.”
No wars, so nothing wears out or gets lost! Should I be glad about that?
“So, to be clear, you want more of these dishes made?”
“Look at this properly—doesn't it look like gold? We could sell it for a fortune someday.”
It'd fetch a pretty price out west, no? Like our silk does.
“Isn't that fraud, though? The raw material is incredibly common.”
Hmm. Fair point. From the northern peninsula all the way through Manchuria, there's a staggering amount of iron, copper, coal—everything worth using, really.
And fraud? Tsk, tsk. Look at that irreverent expression.
“What does it matter? We won't go around calling it gold, but set it out and people will buy it on their own.”
“Since you mention selling, I've been curious—will you keep the trade route through the steppe running?”
Truth be told, we get hardly anything out of it. We're basically just showering our nomad friends with goods to keep it alive.
“Why? Is it a burden?”
“No. All we give is potatoes—hardly a strain. It's simply that we get nothing in return.”
“Then just find some pepper and cats, and you can wrap it up after that.”
Pepper matters. Wasn't an entire crusade launched over that one spice? We'll get the seeds and grow our own!
“Cats?”
“Mm. Domesticated so people can keep them at home and have them catch rats.”
“Our ferrets catch them quite well already?”
Ferrets? Weren't those things more vicious than people thought? They can be domesticated? I remember them absolutely devouring chickens...
“Do they actually obey?”
“They'd better, if they don't want to die.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Well, they know what happens if they lunge at us, don't they?”
Huh? Is that the law of the wild? I did hear recently about someone who wrestled a bear bare-handed and won...
Have they already transcended the human species entirely?
“The ferrets don't hunt the other livestock, do they? Birds especially?”
“I doubt any stock with those habits survived to breed.”
Ah. So only the gentle, obedient ones are left? I'll just understand it that way.
“Rats are a constant headache, and they carry an enormous number of diseases. Mosquitoes too, for that matter.”
“You worry about the strangest things.”
“What?”
“Mosquitoes only bother newborns, don't they?”
What? Why? You must never underestimate those little devils! Do you have any idea how vicious a three-stripe mosquito is?
“By the time one can bite an adult, the poor thing's already at death's door. Until their muscles come in, that's all they're good for.”
I have seen mosquitoes completely helpless against a flexed muscle...
So our Daehan is a country where the weak simply cannot survive? Thank goodness we're not at war with anyone. Handled wrong, we really could wipe them off the map...
「Poke poke」
I gave Down's arm a little pinch. Hmm? It doesn't feel as hard as I expected.
“What are you doing?”
“I was wondering why mosquitoes can't get through.”
“Hk—!”
Good grief. Tense it up and it turns to stone? Are these people seriously crushing rocks with their bare hands?
“Hey!”
“Yes?”
“No, we eat the same things—why are you the only one like this? What have you been eating behind my back?”
“Pardon?”
So unfair. Same food, so what's the difference? Wait—could this be an immortal's perk? Did I change and then change back at some point?!
“Never mind. Just talking nonsense. I should get some rest.”
“Understood. I'll take my leave, then.”
So that's the secret at last. In this place, I'm the only weakling. Physical labor is officially off the table for me.