For the New Project
Though the businesses thrived, Hwi-yeom remained extremely busy with matters far beyond commerce.
The first of these concerned Tangga Manneung-go, the raw material for both cosmetics and Hogol-go.
Tangga Manneung-go—essentially Vaseline—served admirably as a base for cosmetics and ointments, yet its original purpose had been far more practical: to let poisons be coated onto hidden weapons with greater ease and lasting effect. Consequently, the family’s Poison Hall, the department charged with the manufacture and management of toxins, threw itself into lively research on new poison combinations and which mixtures proved most effective when applied to throwing weapons.
Hwi-yeom could hardly stay away. As Young Master who would one day lead the clan, he was expected to be thoroughly versed in the very foundations of the Dang arts—poisons and hidden weapons. Compounding those toxins offered the perfect practical training.
There was a great deal to memorize… and a great deal of poison to swallow.
From early childhood the Dang Family force-fed its children diluted toxins, both so they would recognize the sensations and symptoms of real poisoning and so they would build resistance. After ingesting an extremely diluted dose of river-puffer toxin, Hwi-yeom collapsed, gasping on the floor for roughly half a shichen before finally staggering upright. Once no one could hear him he muttered a string of quiet, vicious curses.
“As if tetrodotoxin builds immunity, you bastards. ‘A half-trained shaman kills people,’ they say. What’s next—feed me mercury to give me heavy-metal resistance?”
Still, orders were orders. On top of everything else, he had martial arts to cultivate.
From the age of five Hwi-yeom had begun training in the family’s secret arts: the Man-dok Gwi-won Divine Art, along with the Three Yang Hands and Three Yang Fingers. The internal method itself was not physically brutal, yet it was thoroughly nauseating. While his father and the senior elders guided his qi, the early stages—taking precious elixirs and circulating energy—had felt almost pleasant. Watching internal power pile up in days what others spent years to gather, he had once thought, So this is why people call it a golden spoon.
That happiness proved short-lived. The moment a foundation formed in his dantian, Hwi-yeom was made to swallow every poison imaginable. Days spent merely chewing toxic mushrooms or herbs counted as lucky. Insect venoms—snake, spider, centipede—were useless unless they entered the bloodstream. And the Central Plains possessed needles but no syringes. How, then, did they introduce the toxins?
They scored the skin in a dozen places and submerged the child in a vat of venom.
Literally dunked him. Of course it was never pure poison; various medicines that purified internal energy, prevented lockjaw, and aided recovery were mixed into a lukewarm medicinal bath. Still, after sitting for several shichen circulating energy, Hwi-yeom sometimes wondered whether he was a person or an ingredient for snake wine.
As if that were not enough, he also had to master the Three Yang Hands and Three Yang Fingers for throwing hidden weapons. That training was pure torture with no intermediate stages.
“I am not a goddamn rubber man!!!”
Even when Hwi-yeom finally snapped and cursed, the elders only smiled with fond satisfaction. Everyone went through it, they said.
“Good morning~.”
When the hollow-eyed Young Master trudged into the Ointment Bureau, the manufacturing apothecaries bowed and clicked their tongues.
“Truly, not just anyone can be Young Master.”
“Who said otherwise? He rises at the first hour of the Tiger—four in the morning—spends the entire morning on internal energy and basics, swallows poison and elixirs in place of breakfast, studies toxins, then comes straight here the moment lunch is finished.”
“Is that all? After inspecting every batch we prepared that morning, he receives the sales reports and then drafts the summaries that go to the Family Head’s Hall and the Council of Elders.”
“Reports? At seven years old?”
“The Young Master’s reports are said to be clearer and more accurate than those of accountants with twenty years’ experience. Have you ever heard of double-entry bookkeeping?”
“What’s that?”
“Remember when the cosmetics sales figures came in and Elder Bak Chang-eon and the Young Master raised their voices at each other?”
“Ah, that.”
“The Young Master claimed Elder Bak’s report was wrong. Everyone thought it was just a child picking nits—until they applied this double-entry method the Young Master had devised. Suddenly the flow of money became crystal clear. Even the leaks no one had noticed before jumped right out. I saw Elder Bak slap his knee and apologize most politely!”
“Come now, impossible. How could a seven-year-old invent such a thing?”
“And a seven-year-old inventing Tangga Manneung-go is perfectly believable?”
“That one… surely a production staged by the Family Head’s Hall to bolster the Young Master’s authority for the future…”
“You dense man. If that were the case they would simply credit the Family Head and raise his prestige. Have you not felt the atmosphere in the Poison Hall? This is an invention of real worth.”
“Ah…”
“And once the paperwork is finished he eats dinner and then stays late in his office planning new ventures and new medicines.”
“New ventures? New medicines?”
“This is the genius who created those medicines and those businesses! Clearly he is already cooking up something else spectacular!”
“Heh… I simply cannot believe it.”
“Then don’t. No one’s forcing you.”
That exchange captured the recent mood of the Sichuan Dang Family better than anything else. Thanks to the latest windfall, Hwi-yeom’s standing had risen sharply. As Young Master he had always possessed authority that even collateral elders dared not address lightly, yet that authority had rested solely on bloodline, not personal ability. Now, though skeptical glances still predominated, men who acknowledged his competence had begun to appear—an encouraging sign.
Meanwhile, the subject of all those rumors…
“…Done.”
Hwi-yeom gazed down at the finished proposal with hollow, satisfied eyes.
“Luck was on my side. To think they already had not only coal but coke as well. That shortens the plan by years.”
It bears repeating: the Sichuan Dang Family was the foremost house of poisons and hidden weapons. Because a secret weapon lost most of its power once its design became known, production remained entirely in-house. Ordinary needles and iron pellets might be purchased like bows or spears, yet the truly important weapons were all hand-forged. Naturally the clan boasted blacksmiths—metal craftsmen—of the highest number and quality under heaven. And just as naturally, it maintained its own blast-furnace facilities for producing iron.
When Hwi-yeom visited those furnaces and smithies of the clan that prided itself on being the finest in the Central Plains, he was staggered—not by their exquisite craftsmanship, but by the primitive state of their iron-making.
I already suspected as much when I saw the gunpowder situation, but good grief… On Earth they developed the co-fusion steel method during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, long before the Qin even, and by the Northern Song it was routine. Yet in this Ming-equivalent era they still use the crude ‘second-steel’ process? This world’s level of civilization is all over the place!
Hwi-yeom had already concluded this was no mere past version of Earth. The existence of martial artists who split boulders and flew through the sky had made that obvious, but the technological timeline was completely different as well.
Same reason as gunpowder, I suppose. The drive to invent stronger metals comes from farm tools and weapons. Soft metal is fine if you pour internal energy into a plowshare; as for war, martial arts exist precisely so people can ignore material quality.
Still, good for me. If they are still stuck on the old method, the iron from the crucible furnace I am about to build will crush theirs in quality. And iron is the rice of industry—used everywhere.
Steel served every field: the firearms Hwi-yeom aimed for, the hidden weapons the clan longed to restore, even kitchen knives. Steel itself commanded high prices, was vital to the development of the family’s weapons, and above all was indispensable for gun barrels that could withstand powder explosions. The problem was that producing true steel required raising furnace temperatures past a certain threshold.
At present the Dang used charcoal made from burned wood for their crude refining. Charcoal’s heat had limits. They needed coal and coke—specifically the sticky coking coal among bituminous coals.
The Sichuan Dang Family’s base was Seongdo; the entire region of Sichuan, ringed by mountains, was rich in mineral veins. As one of Sichuan’s great houses the clan owned numerous mountains, and the iron ore for their hidden weapons was mined from family-held deposits. Hwi-yeom’s memory told him that Earth’s Sichuan was one of China’s greatest mineral producers. Reasoning that coal seams must exist as well, he had asked Dang Un-sang at age six to begin surveys. Miners recalled abandoned shafts left idle because, instead of the expected rock salt, iron, gold, or silver, they yielded only black lumps of stone. Hwi-yeom ordered samples brought; they proved to be coal and coking coal.
Heaven itself seemed to smile upon them. Better still, no one in the Central Plains yet understood coal’s true value.
I’d love to buy up every coal seam in Sichuan and monopolize them, but people would call me mad…
Regretfully he decided to demonstrate usefulness first with the coal from family mountains. After long delay he at last planned the next step toward steel production—the installation of a crucible furnace—and now the finished proposal lay before him.
The moment the evening meal was cleared he urgently requested a private audience with his father, Family Head Dang Un-sang, and presented the document. Dang Un-sang accepted it with a faintly twisted expression and sighed.
“The heir of the house, and he only hands his father more work.”
After the half-joking grumble he composed his face and read the proposal in earnest, then tilted his head.
“We already have blast furnaces. Will simply changing the shape and the fuel really improve the iron’s quality so dramatically?”
Faced with his father’s open doubt, Hwi-yeom grinned.
“Once this furnace is introduced, more than eight-tenths of the iron produced will emerge as hundred-refined pure steel without ever needing a blacksmith’s hand—and at a quality equal to the hundred-refined pure steel our smiths make now.”
“What? Hundred-refined pure steel? Do you even know what that means when you say such things?”
Dang Un-sang’s face contorted as though he had heard pure nonsense. Hwi-yeom only answered with greater confidence.
“Know it? Of course I know it.”