The Thread
With Merchant Lord Eun Hwaran's full backing, I seized complete authority over the silkworm house.
Only yesterday I'd been a lowly porter hauling cargo until my back nearly snapped.
And the very first thing I did with that power was move the hatchery.
"Inseok! Warm yang energy is essential for growing seedlings!"
The workshop master came storming out, furious. He insisted that only by soaking up sunlight could they drive out disease and yin energy and grow as they should.
But silkworms weren't plants that photosynthesized.
Even people went half-mad with a scorched scalp after standing in the blazing sun for an hour of the principal's lecture—how much worse for these thin-skinned little things?
"Big Sis Eun Hwaran."
Explaining and convincing him would be a pain, so I decided to just swing the ultimate trump card.
"Workshop Master, the current methods clearly aren't working. So trust us just this once. The boy seems to know what he's doing."
Having the merchant group's absolute authority at my back felt rock-solid.
The grumbling middle-aged workshop master shut his mouth in an instant.
"Of course, if it turns out he doesn't know anything after all, then when the time comes..."
Why trail off at the end like that after going so well? Trying to scare people?
A look flashed through her eyes—the fate of the merchant group was on the line, so if this was pure bluff, it would explode into a real disaster.
But this body doesn't scare easy.
Dan Mujin's way was proof through action, not persuasion.
That was how I'd always won a client's trust. So it was forward. Always forward.
"So, what's next?"
At Eun Hwaran's question, I pointed to the silkworm trays heaped with droppings and mulberry leaves.
"First, let's relearn how to clean out the droppings."
Before dealing with pests and disease, stop the man-made disasters. I picked up a cast-off skin from a third-instar silkworm.
Then I explained the silkworms' habit of anchoring themselves to the mulberry leaves when molting, and detailed exactly how forcibly peeling them free made them suffocate and die.
"So every time we changed the leaves and the silkworms died in droves..."
"That was because of us?"
Bingo, Silkworm Sorcerer.
Pretty sharp at figuring out their own mistakes.
"And line the trays with dampened oil paper to control the humidity, and manage the light by adjusting how long the windows stay open."
These weren't hardy wild silkworm moths—farmed silkworms were ocean sunfish, pure and simple.
They'd lost most of their survival ability, so they needed careful human hands.
So I thoroughly laid out the proper humidity, ventilation, and lighting for silkworms to thrive.
Information I'd once dug up obsessively, dreaming of getting rich. Once I get hooked on something, I dig into it like a maniac—it's my incurable disease.
Even after becoming a troubleshooter, I'd dug so deep I'd taken a knife in the gut for it, hadn't I?
Anyway.
"Mujin, what's next?"
A little kid was revolutionizing the silkworm house. Whether it was the right path still wasn't certain.
Eun Hwaran tapped my shoulder, asking about the next move.
The imperial inspector's visit was only a few months away, so she must have been getting anxious.
I'd already blocked the direct sunlight that had wiped out half the seed silkworms, and spread proper humidity and light management plus correct droppings cleaning.
That alone should have boosted the survival rate by about fifty percent.
But to hit the promised seventy, there was one vicious cycle I absolutely had to break.
"For the silkworms to survive, the hands that touch them have to be clean. So please prepare water and soap."
I said it while lifting the calloused, black-grimed hands of the laborers of this era.
They probably wiped their asses and ate with these same hands. Unclean hands were ground zero for spreading germs.
"Soap? The facial cleanser noble ladies use?"
"What does that have to do with raising silkworms...?"
Soap here was this era's version—seashell ash mixed with crushed honey locust fruit, set with oil (pig fat).
With even cooking oil scarce, beauty products like this were luxuries and fairly expensive.
At advice that would cost real money, eyes turned to the merchant lord as if asking whether this was really okay.
"We have some scented soap stocked for sale. We'll use that."
Fortunately, the merchant lord had decided to throw her full weight behind me.
People looked puzzled. I ignored them.
This was elementary school stuff back on Earth. Water washes away water-soluble bacteria; soap sweeps away the fat-soluble ones.
"And to disinfect the rearing tools, we'll need a lot of strong liquor. I'd appreciate it if you could requisition that too."
For alcohol to have any real disinfectant effect, it needed to be at least forty-five percent.
But brewed wines like rice wine and Shaoxing, limited by yeast, rarely cracked twenty.
So I planned to distill them hard and refine high-proof spirit.
Just like some video streamer who'd once made fifty-proof distillate out of convenience-store beer.
Disinfect everything that touched the silkworms, and the survival rate would skyrocket without any more mass die-offs.
We might even blow past the promised seventy percent.
"But Mujin, most of that is cargo already loaded on the carts, and the rest was set aside for Master Hwang to drink..."
"That old man needs to quit drinking this time."
I meant it.
He'd guzzle forever and never even burn off the buzz. At this rate he might actually go meet the Primordial Heavenly Lord or whatever soon.
"Merchant Lord, are you really believing this strange talk?"
The workers carefully tried pushing back.
Eun Hwaran studied my confident eyes for a long moment, then let out a small sigh.
"We'll proceed as the boy says for now."
A few words from her crushed the resistance flat.
Truly the absolute power of this merchant group. The type of woman warrior who, once she draws her sword, comes back having cut something down.
"Go to the warehouse and bring out every last drop of liquor."
Reliable as always, House of Eun bloodline.
I inwardly applauded the bulldozer of a dictator.
Banzai. Banzai. Banzai.
Hwang Geolgae pushed himself up off the cold stone floor.
His cheek was molded to the shape of the flagstones, and his hair was a wild bird's nest.
"Mm, that brat still not back..."
Wondering why he hadn't come, he'd grabbed Chief Steward Jin and learned that Merchant Lord Eun Hwaran had taken him.
A message had come later saying she'd just borrow him for a bit and send him back.
So he'd replied that he needed the boy for mind-technique training and to return him at night.
"Sun's already up."
He should knock back some hair-of-the-dog before the hangover fully hit.
"Just one more cup... one more bottle and I almost could've seen the Primordial Heavenly Lord this time too..."
Staggering along, reeking of stale booze, Hwang Geolgae headed for the Eunseong Merchant Group's warehouse.
The old man wobbled and swayed with a mystical, bizarre gait that looked like it should collapse but never quite did.
Like watching the Beggar Sect's Drunken Fist.
"...You're here again?"
The warehouse keeper clearly wasn't thrilled about Hwang Geolgae treating the place like his own home, but orders were orders, so he flung the doors wide open.
"Heh heh. Ho ho."
A pleasantly tipsy mood. Hwang Geolgae clutched his empty stomach and went in with a contented smile, like a freeloading guest arriving at an inn.
"Today, yeah, some well-aged Daughter's Red would be just... Mm?"
And Hwang Geolgae couldn't believe his eyes.
The warehouse that should have been packed with every kind of liquor was completely empty.
"What... the hell is this...?"
Not even Shaoxing wine—even the cheap rice wine had been swept clean. A bolt from the blue.
And buying more outside was out of the question with not a single coin to his name.
"No, why, how..."
Meaning today he'd have to spend the whole day stone-cold sober.
Faced with the scene his disciple's advice had created, Hwang Geolgae's consciousness began to fade.
The cold reality steadily burned away his remaining buzz.
"Haaah... uuuuugh..."
The bizarre groan of a man denying reality.
Today, Hwang Geolgae's world collapsed.
Dan Mujin's silkworm-house rebuilding project.
In other words, about a month since DanKinsey Consulting had begun.
Results were starting to show.
"Wait—when did the silkworms get this..."
"Packed in tight, huh?"
Crunch, crunch.
The sound of silkworms chewing mulberry leaves filled the entire rearing house.
Following my advice—adjusting the rearing tools, disinfecting, changing the leaves properly—the death rate had plummeted.
Which soon led to an explosive boom in silkworm numbers.
"So we really were raising them wrong..."
"That little brat's a born sericulture master."
"What the hell is that kid even?"
There'd been plenty of twists and turns along the way, but once the advice's effects became obvious, the looks around me had softened a lot.
Now they'd jump to follow my orders even without Eun Hwaran's command.
With their own jobs on the line, they were diligent and learned fast.
Yeah. These people could do it too. They'd just lacked the knowledge.
Most information here was passed down by word of mouth. If the state wanted something hidden, you had no way of knowing.
It made me appreciate Earth all over again, where one click poured out information.
And so the sericulture work raced ahead like it had caught a fair wind.
"Ohhh, the silkworms are moving."
"They're climbing into the frames that little guy made all on their own. Weird."
We'd successfully raised the seed silkworms all the way to finger-thick fifth-instar worms.
At last they reached the yellowed "ripe silkworm" stage and began slipping into the rotating frames I'd designed.
The frame shape and size must have been right—the silkworms that climbed up immediately curled into balls and started spinning white cocoons.
"Ohhh, we saved this many..."
A worker marveled as the first frame nearly filled up. Apparently yields like this had been rare before.
"Big Sis, now that we have some leeway, how about we try reeling some raw silk?"
We already had more than enough silkworms for hatching.
No—we had a surplus. Before, the fifth-instar survival rate had been so abysmal that just keeping the line going had been a struggle.
But things were completely different now.
So I floated the suggestion to boost the workers' morale. People need to see with their own eyes how far they've come to feel a sense of achievement.
"Give it a try."
Eun Hwaran nodded with an intrigued look.
Once the merchant lord gave permission, the weavers in the silkworm house—who'd been stuck twiddling their thumbs with no thread to work with—hurried over to me.
"The reeling tools are ready, young master."
"Please, let this succeed."
The craftsmen of this silkworm house.
Because of the nature of their work—no thread meant no cloth to weave—they'd always felt guilty taking pay for doing nothing.
Now that I seemed about to fix that, their eyes were sparkling today.
"Don't call me young master—just call me Dan Mujin."
I picked up a few cocoons with silk wound tight and walked toward the prepared tools, feeling the expectant gazes pouring from every side.
Spinning wheels and silk spindles and all the gathering tools were laid out. So it really had only been the silkworms that were the problem.
Raising living things was like farming, after all—it didn't go as people pleased.
"First we have to find the starting end on the cocoon."
I floated the cocoons in a vat of steaming hot lye water.
That dissolved the sticky sericin coating the cocoon so the filament could be unwound more easily, and let the fibroin inside catch the light and refract it.
Which produced that soft, distinctive sheen of silk we all know.
"Ohhh, the color changed."
"It really is sparkling like the Merchant Lord's clothes."
The workers gasped at the elegant luster.
Seeing the raw material of the silk robes only the high and mighty wore was bound to be fascinating.
Having shared that bit of knowledge before everyone's eyes, I next poked at the cocoons with something like a small broom of twigs.
After a dozen or so prods, something snagged faintly on the rough tips of the twigs.
I lifted the broom over the water bucket, and something white, smooth, and long revealed itself to the world.
"Mujin, is that...?"
Merchant Lord Eun Hwaran grabbed my shoulder, asking with a startled face.
When we find the solution to a difficult problem, we say we've found a "clue"—a thread.
The first lead that would revive the embattled Eunseong Merchant Group.
That first filament hung shyly from the broom of twigs and showed itself to the world.