No Ships?
No ships?
The party departing from the Sichuan Dang Family consisted of Young Master Dang Hui-yeom and his fiancée Sama Yun, along with Hui-yeom’s first and second secretaries Ye-eun and Lee Jinmyeong.
Add to that the Dokwadae assigned for security, the Iron Cavalry the Sama Clan had attached as escorts, and the laborers who would handle every menial task, and the total already exceeded four hundred people—a truly massive entourage.
“If anything were to happen to this party, the future of the Sichuan Dang Family would vanish. This much isn’t excessive at all.”
Dang Un-sang looked as though he genuinely regretted not being able to send the Hwamangdae and Dokryongdae along as well.
“Father, Elder Jin Cheong is about to pass out calculating the travel expenses for this group…”
“What, you think a little thing like this is going to crack the foundation of our family?”
“Well, no, but it is still a huge amount of money flying out the door.”
“Nonsense! This is a matter of your safety!”
In the end, even Hui-yeom’s whining about the budget failed to shrink the numbers by a single head.
The road from Sichuan Province to Hebei Province, where Beijing lay, measured roughly 4,300 li in a straight line. In reality, however, one did not cut diagonally across the vast continent. Instead, one crossed the Yangtze River eastward, then turned at a right angle and traveled north. The distance grew considerably longer, yet the route actually saved time.
Thus they were currently aboard a merchant vessel sailing from the upper reaches of the Min River into the Yangtze itself. At Chongqing, where the Min ended, they would transfer ships and follow the Yangtze as far as Wuhan. From Wuhan they would board another vessel traveling the North-South Grand Canal to Tianjin. Finally, from Tianjin to Beijing they would finish the journey by carriage, horse, or on foot.
The logistics of the Central Plains depended heavily on the waterways of the great rivers that sliced across the land—the Yangtze and the Yellow River.
Sama Yun pushed out her full red lips in clear dissatisfaction.
“Our family went to all the trouble of sending ships…”
When she pouted, Hui-yeom only smiled.
“I won’t forget the Sama Clan’s kindness. But I thought we ought to travel the same routes ordinary merchant caravans use—it’ll be useful reference when we expand into the Central Plains later.”
He added lightly, “More importantly, if we rode a Sama ship, the Eighteen Strongholds of the Yangtze Waterways wouldn’t even bother coming out to do business with us, would they?”
“Those river pirates? I heard the Sichuan Dang Family wiped out every bandit in the Sichuan region. Are you planning to eradicate the water bandits next?”
That, at least, was the story circulating outside.
Lee Jinmyeong had once clicked his tongue at the way Hui-yeom concealed secrets even from Sama Yun, the woman he had promised to marry. Hui-yeom had answered with perfect calm:
“If I specifically order something kept confidential and Yun still learns of it… wouldn’t that tell us exactly where the information is leaking, and who the spy is? Even if it isn’t a spy, people with loose lips need to be cut out of core work.”
“…Young Master, do you not trust the Sama Clan? Do you not trust Lady Sama Yun?”
“I trust her. That’s why I agreed to the engagement. But trusting her is no reason to leave an internal enemy free to pour my information into outside ears.”
While Lee Jinmyeong was recalling that exchange, Hui-yeom spoke again to Sama Yun.
“If it becomes necessary? But that isn’t the plan from the start.”
“Hmm~”
“Anyway, the road is long. Let’s talk a lot along the way. You have something you wanted to tell me, don’t you?”
“Ah—about the provincial administration and the political scene in Beijing.”
Sama Yun’s eyes lit up.
The power of the Daegyeong Empire was divided between the central court and local authorities.
Of course, the founding emperor had been so terrified of provincial rebellions that he had neurotically limited local power to the bare minimum needed to keep the provinces running. Therefore, anyone who wished to rise in this empire had no choice but to enter the central government and make a name there.
The irony was that even so, the central court still lived in fear of local power growing too strong. And the central court itself had become so dominated by the famed houses known as the Imperial Eight Families that they now threatened the emperor’s own authority.
Consider the situation from the emperor’s perspective.
Local power must be kept weak. If local authority and military strength expand, a future rebellion becomes impossible to suppress.
Central power must be fractured. If the Imperial Eight Families unite to check the throne, imperial authority collapses.
The emperor desires a structure of strong sovereign and weak ministers.
The Imperial Eight Families desire the opposite: weak sovereign and strong ministers.
“So the emperor maintains a friendly stance toward the murim in order to check local forces, while the Imperial Eight Families do the same in order to resist the emperor’s checks. At the same time, both the emperor and the Eight Families keep a wary eye on the murim clans of the provinces. If those clans grow too powerful they might turn into rebels, so everyone prefers to keep things within certain lines.”
“In other words, the Imperial House, the Eight Families, and the murim form and break alliances according to the needs of the moment.”
“Yes. The details are a little more complicated, but that’s the general idea.”
Sama Yun had done her best to simplify the intricate, delicate power struggle, yet to Hui-yeom the whole lecture was yawn-inducing.
When you look at the big picture, it’s just a three-way free-for-all.
And the only things truly required to seize that power were money and military force.
By contrast, what had the political arena of the twenty-first century been like?
Internal party politics were the absolute basics. Because power ultimately came from votes, one had to weigh the interests of countless pressure groups, race, ideology, philosophy—endless variables. All of it shifted by the hour according to oil prices, interest rates, security issues, foreign policy, and the international climate. Scandals and corruption of innumerable candidates spread through gossip rags and yellow journalism, turning the field into pure chaos. One tried to read the board by tracking approval ratings that flipped every day, yet until the ballot boxes were opened no one could know the real outcome.
That had been twenty-first-century politics.
And Hui-yeom had stood at the absolute pinnacle of the business world, a place where survival required catching those political currents faster than anyone else, negotiating with politicians, and forging cooperative relationships.
Compared to that, the power struggles of a centralized empire aren’t a battlefield—they’re a Boy Scout camp.
“Anyway, so the Sama Clan’s ambition is to seize the position of Grand Chancellor of the Cabinet?”
“Not only the Grand Chancellor’s seat. We want to take the key posts of power one by one. The Grand Chancellorship sits at the very peak. The emperor himself needs to draw other forces into the center in order to check the Imperial Eight Families. In a way, our interests align with the emperor’s—though we do have the Jegal Clan as a rival.”
She continued, eyes sparkling as she imagined the future of her house. “The Grand Chancellor, the Grand Academician of the Hanlin Academy, the ministerial posts of the Six Ministries, the Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate—if we can claim all of those core positions, or at least a majority, we can become a towering pillar of the empire capable of tipping the scales between the emperor and the Eight Families. That is the final goal of the Sama Clan.”
Hui-yeom remained thoroughly unimpressed.
“But I have zero interest in becoming Grand Chancellor.”
“You’re joking, right? If they offered it you’d take it.”
“No. Even if they gave it to me I wouldn’t do it.”
“You really won’t become Grand Chancellor?”
“I won’t. I won’t.”
“What? Power is that wonderful and you’re just going to refuse it?”
Watching Sama Yun pound her chest in frustration, Hui-yeom answered with eyes that had gone cold.
“By the way, Yun, aren’t you sixteen this year? Talking about power this and power that at that age is a little…”
“What’s wrong with sixteen? My fifteen-year-old sister already got married and had a child! It’s natural for someone who’s going to be a mother to hunger for the power she’ll pass on to her children!”
From behind them came Lee Jinmyeong’s muttering—“This is… romance? The romance and marriage I imagined were…?”—but the two of them completely ignored him.
Hui-yeom let out a small sigh and sent a sound transmission to Sama Yun.
[Why are you thinking about picking up scraps between the emperor and the Imperial Eight Families? If I just make both the emperor and the Eight Families move exactly as I want, isn’t that enough?]
Sama Yun froze solid. After a moment she answered in a hesitant transmission of her own.
[Th-that’s possible?]
[A certain scholar I know once said, “Power comes from the tip of the spear.”]
In truth Mao Zedong had said power comes from the barrel of a gun, but it amounted to the same thing. While continuing to stroke Sama Yun’s hair as though soothing her, Hui-yeom kept transmitting.
Out loud he said only idle nonsense.
“Aigoo~ Yes, our Yun will make a wonderful mother~”
[Once military force and financial power are sufficiently in place, political power follows on its own. You don’t bow and scrape before the powerful—you make the powerful watch your expression.]
“Ah, stop treating me like a child and teasing me~”
[…Dang-ga, do you realize how dangerous those words are?]
“You’re like a kid, so I tease you like a kid~ Watching a little one hop on tiptoe going ‘I’m all grown up now’ is just adorable.”
[That’s exactly why I’m using this bothersome sound transmission. But don’t worry. I have no intention of raising a rebellion.]
“Ugh, if you keep this up I’m really going to get mad, you know? You have no idea how scary I am when I’m sulking!”
[…Let’s talk about the details calmly later. I think I chose my man well after all.]
In fact, when the warriors of the Dang Family and the Sama Clan disembarked at the docks of Chongqing, they found themselves in a complete bind—they could not secure a single ship.
“Every vessel in the harbor is already reserved, they say.”
“Even when we approach the owners of ships that look completely empty, they insist the vessels are already booked. Offering extra money changes nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
Ye-eun looked around at the dense forest of moored ships.
“There are this many ships and every last one is reserved?”
Sama Yun, however, immediately grasped the situation and furrowed her brows.
“It’s the Namgung.”
“Namgung?”
“The largest shipping company in this region is Yangtze Shipping, which operates under the influence of the Namgung Clan. It seems they’ve made their move.”
“Why would the Namgung suddenly do this?”
Sama Yun answered Hui-yeom’s question.
“I told you before—the Jegal Clan is our enemy. And the Jegal Clan is currently joining forces with the Namgung Clan to expand their influence in the central court. As you know, our Sama Clan and the Jegal are mortal rivals. Most likely the Jegal and Namgung have moved together to check us.”
“Isn’t that a bit of a leap? We did give the Namgung a hard time over the Goksang matter, so this could simply be them settling the score.”
“Well, it could be that too.”
Sama Yun sighed as if to say, This is why I told you we should just use the ships our family prepared, and whispered,
“Anyway… this has become troublesome.”
“Why is it troublesome? This is actually a fantastic opportunity.”
Whoever had planned this petty little scheme, Hui-yeom found them adorable. They were skipping merrily forward without noticing the cliff three steps ahead.
“A fantastic opportunity?”
“We go find this Yangtze Shipping place, of course.”
“You’re not planning to raise a ruckus and demand they hand over ships, are you? That would only give the Namgung Clan a perfect excuse to attack us.”
“Do I look like the kind of man who would thrash around without thinking? I’m simply going to ask them, very politely, to provide us with ships.”
“They won’t hand them over willingly.”
“That’s the entire point—getting refused.”
While the two women stared at him in bewilderment, Hui-yeom drew a silk scroll from his robes. The moment they saw it, both women’s faces stiffened.
Hui-yeom smiled.
“Are we heading to Beijing for a pleasure trip? We are traveling under the Emperor’s own summons tablet, moving by imperial command. And they dare obstruct our path?”
His smile deepened.
“The instant they refuse me, I will go straight to the authorities. And what I’ll say… I think you can already guess.”
You threw the first punch, Namgung.
Hui-yeom’s grin grew even darker.
Answering a light warning jab by going for the kill has always been my specialty. Let’s see how you like the taste of your own medicine.