Yep, You're a Traitor
At that hour, Jang Wi-an, head of the Yangtze River Shipping Company, was receiving a distinguished guest.
“Hahahaha! So you turned that Dang Family brat away at the door, did you? What a shame I didn’t get to see the look on his face myself. Well done! Extremely well done!”
The man laughing so heartily was Byeon Jun-seop, one of the stewards of the Namgung Family and the administrator who held the leash of the Yangtze River Shipping Company along with several other shipping firms.
“Steward Byeon, just as you instructed, I made certain that neither the Dang Family nor the Sama Family could secure a single vessel. When the Young Master of the Dang Family came in person requesting an audience, I gave him a suitable excuse and sent him packing.
“But… is this really all right?”
At Jang Wi-an’s question, Byeon Jun-seop, who had been sipping fine tea, let out a short snort of laughter.
“Is this all right? Of course it is. Or what—do you imagine those country bumpkins would dare storm into an enterprise run by the great Namgung Family and cause a scene?”
“This is not something you can take so lightly! The Dang Family is not the Dang Family of old!
“In Sichuan their presence has already become something inviolable. Even the Namgung Family stands to gain nothing by turning them into enemies!”
“They started it first. They had the gall to undercut our grain merchants. And what—now the Dang Family is going to overreach and pick a fight with the Namgung Family?
“Ha! If that ever happened it would actually be convenient. It would give the Namgung Family’s forces a perfect justification to teach some manners to those rural mutts who don’t know a tiger when they see one and go around playing tiger in their own yard.”
“…….”
This is hopeless. I’d be better off shouting at a wall.
Jang Wi-an despaired.
Damn it. If I end up earning the Sichuan Dang Family’s hatred over this, I’m finished too…
As a Sichuanese man who felt a genuine attachment to the Dang Family and understood their standing all too well, he had already reached the conclusion that not even the Namgung Family should treat the Dang Family carelessly.
When people thought of the Sichuan Dang Family, the first things that came to mind were “poison and hidden weapons,” but that was not the sole reason for their fame.
The Dang Family possessed something that every member regarded as absolute law—whether one called it their family precept or their inviolable golden rule. It was none other than Never Forget Grace or Grudge.
—Never forget either a grudge or a kindness; repay kindness twofold, and a grudge tenfold.
—He who earns the Dang Family’s enmity will die of Dang poison at the final moment, no matter how carefully he watches his food for the rest of his life.
—He who earns the Dang Family’s enmity will leave this world struck by a hidden weapon whose origin he never even saw.
The saying might be little more than empty words these days, but among those who still remembered the old Dang Family it had once circulated as one of the unwritten laws of the martial world.
Moreover, unlike Byeon Jun-seop—who had come from Anhui and knew little of Sichuan’s true state of affairs—Jang Wi-an had put down roots in Chongqing, one of Sichuan’s outer cities. There was no way such a man could be ignorant of the Dang Family’s present circumstances.
The Green Mountain Road (as people called the highway managed by the Green Mountain Road Traffic Administration) had not yet reached Chongqing, true enough. Yet even here a Baekga-jaengsik franchise had opened, the Sichuan Daily was being published, and—most importantly—every bar of iron produced by the State-run Ironworks passed through Chongqing on its way inland and into the Central Plains.
The power of the Sichuan Dang Family was no longer what it had been. Frankly, something as minor as the Yangtze River Shipping Company would vanish from Chongqing if the Young Master so much as blew on it.
No—even if the Young Master said nothing at all, the mere rumor that someone had obstructed his commercial journey would be enough for the Sichuanese, who held the Dang Family sacred, to bind that someone to a merchant ship’s anchor and dump him at the bottom of the Yangtze.
Yet if he trusted the Dang Family and rejected the Namgung Family’s hand, the shipping business itself already belonged to the Namgung Family. Once he made an enemy of them, continuing the trade would be impossible.
In the end he was caught between the two.
With no real choice left to him, Jang Wi-an could only tremble in fear.
When he continued to fail to shake off his anxiety, Byeon Jun-seop sneered at him.
A man who claims to run a business with a liver that small?
However high the Sama Family might fly, they were still a step beneath the Jegal Family, and the Jegal Family were nothing but a pack of ink-stained schemers who had crawled in hoping to bask in the Namgung Family’s favor, were they not?
And the Sichuan Dang Family? What era did that Dang Family belong to? Even at the height of their glory they had been nothing more than frogs in a well, playing king inside the countryside of Sichuan.
Ignorant of the fire burning in Jang Wi-an’s gut, Byeon Jun-seop simply found the man pathetic.
When Jang Wi-an still could not hide his unease, Byeon Jun-seop clicked his tongue and spoke.
“Stop fretting. It’s not as if we’re proposing an all-out war with the Dang Family, nor are we sealing their road completely, are we?
“If they grow desperate enough to come looking for you again, simply tell them that I alone can move the ships and send them to me.”
This was nothing more than a simple little operation to flaunt the Namgung Family’s influence before a pack of country bumpkins and to sell them a small favor in the process.
After thrashing about trying to secure a vessel, the Dang Family would eventually return to the Yangtze River Shipping Company. Hearing Jang Wi-an’s words, they would at last come seeking Byeon Jun-seop.
And Byeon Jun-seop intended to act the part of the fretting benefactor—despite being the very cause of the entire situation—and then graciously hand over a single ship as if doing them a kindness.
Once they had been through that experience, even those Sichuan rustics would finally understand how utterly unrealistic it was for the likes of them to try doing business in the Central Plains.
That was when it happened.
“M-Master! Disaster!”
At the urgent voice from outside the room, Jang Wi-an asked,
“I am entertaining an honored guest. What is all this commotion? Is it urgent?”
“Yes—th-this is something that must be reported at once.”
Jang Wi-an looked at Byeon Jun-seop, who gave a rough nod of permission.
“Enter.”
“Forgive the intrusion!”
The moment Jang Wi-an’s leave was given, the steward waiting outside rushed in, his face drained white.
“What is this uproar?”
“W-we’re in serious trouble.”
“Yes, so you keep saying. Speak calmly and tell me what the serious trouble is.”
“Th-that is… the Chongqing County Magistrate has sent soldiers. He says that if you do not appear at the county office immediately, he will have the Master arrested and dragged there in chains…”
A bolt from the blue in the dead of night left Jang Wi-an’s mouth hanging open.
“What in the world—suddenly? Did one of our boys get caught smuggling or something?”
“N-no, it isn’t that…”
“Stop being so frustrating and spit it out already!”
The instant Jang Wi-an roared, a guardsman’s thunderous shout rolled in from beyond the window.
“Jang Wi-an of the Yangtze River Shipping Company stands accused of the crime of deceiving the Emperor! If you have nothing to hide, come forth at once and present yourself at the yamen! Refuse, and you will be bound in iron and dragged there by force!”
The moment the bellowing voice reached him, Jang Wi-an felt the sky turn yellow.
Deceiving the Emperor—the crime of misleading and insulting the sovereign. It was the charge leveled at those who submitted false reports to the Emperor or who sought to cover the Emperor’s eyes and ears.
And the weight of that crime was second only to outright treason.
At the very least it meant death by drawing and quartering for the offender himself; at worst, the extermination of three clans. That was the crime of deceiving the Emperor—in other words, the crime of deluding the throne.
It was only natural that both Jang Wi-an and Byeon Jun-seop leapt to their feet.
“W-what is this nonsense—deceiving the Emperor?! Deceiving the Emperor?!”
“Listen here, Jang Wi-an! What on earth have you been up to in this place that could possibly warrant such an absurd charge?! Deceiving the Emperor?!”
Byeon Jun-seop, his face now deathly pale, sprang from his seat as well.
“Th-the Namgung Family has nothing whatsoever to do with this. Deceiving the Emperor—how could anyone dare entertain such a catastrophic notion…”
“I-it isn’t me, Steward Byeon! I have never—!”
“Then why is the yamen invoking the crime of deceiving the Emperor while hunting for you?!”
Pure chaos.
“Y-you will have to go out, Master. If you do not, the soldiers may soon burst in and drag you away.”
“I-I understand!”
Jang Wi-an bolted from the room and immediately dropped to his knees before the guardsman.
“Th-this humble one, Jang Wi-an, is here.”
“You are Jang Wi-an? With what manner of treacherous intent did you dare stir up storm and wave in peaceful Chongqing?”
The guardsman’s face had gone beet-red with rage. Jang Wi-an knew the man—knew how much silver he had fed him over the years, how many nights they had spent together in pleasure houses.
Yet that same guardsman was now denying all familiarity and roaring with fury.
Something about the situation had gone very strangely wrong.
“I swear upon the surname I inherited from Heaven, Earth, and my ancestors—I have never harbored rebellious intent, nor have I ever acted upon any such thing.
“I truly do not understand what this is about… I am utterly bewildered as to why such words have suddenly been directed at me…”
“Is that the truth?”
“It is!”
“Then you claim it is untrue that you monopolized every vessel the Young Master of the Sichuan Dang Family might have used and thereby blocked His path?”
Why was that subject suddenly being raised here?
“I-it is true that shipping was scarce. But that was never because I sought to obstruct the Young Master. It was simply that the Namgung Family had already reserved every available berth, so no ships remained—how could that possibly be connected to the crime of deceiving the Emperor…?”
Still unable to hide his confusion, he stammered out the answer. The guardsman thundered like a lightning bolt.
“Look at this imbecile! Do you think I would invoke the crime of deceiving the Emperor merely for blocking the path of the Dang Family’s Young Master?!
“Did you not know that the Young Master of the Dang Family is traveling to Beijing in answer to an Imperial Summons Tablet personally stamped with His Majesty’s jade seal?!
“To dare obstruct the Emperor’s summons and bar the road of a loyal subject His Majesty himself has called—this is nothing less than contempt for the imperial will! If that is not the crime of deceiving the Emperor, then what is it?! Furthermore, Dang Hui-yeom himself came in person, spoke of the Imperial Summons, and begged for a ship—yet you refused him! If that is not the crime of deceiving the Emperor, what is it?! Does the Namgung Family stand above His Majesty the Emperor?!”
In that instant, Jang Wi-an, prostrate on the ground, heard something like a great boulder splitting apart inside his skull.
“Huuuuuh…!!!”
The crime of obstructing a solemn imperial command—it fit the present situation with perfect precision. The sky turned yellow before Jang Wi-an’s eyes.
No—if he was traveling under an Imperial Summons, why was that fact never made known?!
Had he known, he would of course have handed ships over to the Dang Family no matter what the Namgung Family said.
No! The Namgung Family would never even have conceived of a scheme like this in the first place!
Hui-yeom had deliberately misled them in order to screw them over, but there had been solid reasons for the secrecy.
The imperial messenger who had originally traveled down to the Dang Family had used the inland routes rather than river shipping—there being no way to sail upstream against the current—and so word had been slow to reach Chongqing.
In addition, the fact that Hui-yeom was ascending under an Imperial Summons had been kept under the strictest seal by all involved.
The fear had been that if news of Hui-yeom’s departure from Sichuan leaked, someone nursing a grudge against the Dang Family or against Hui-yeom himself might attempt an assassination.
How else could one explain that even the Dokwadae, and even Dang Su-jeong and Hui-yeom of the direct bloodline, had set aside the Dang Family’s signature deep-green robes and dressed in ordinary silk?
In any case, thanks to that secrecy Jang Wi-an now found himself completely checkmated.
Against his own will, his trembling tongue began to mutter of its own accord.
“Th-th-this humble one, this humble one, n-n-never, never entertained such a thought, not in the slightest…!”
“You dog! Look at once upon this decree issued by the County Magistrate!”
The guardsman held out the decree. Jang Wi-an snatched it up and, with hands that shook violently, forced the paper open.
And his pupils dilated until they could grow no larger.
This is Dang Hui-yeom, Master Jang.
It is truly regrettable that I should meet you, who have always been of such great assistance in selling Sichuan’s iron goods into the Central Plains, under circumstances like these—but here we are.
To receive such obstruction while traveling under His Majesty the Emperor’s solemn Imperial Summons… how sorrowful His Majesty would be if he learned of this fact.
I myself have no desire to open my mouth outside, for if word of this affair leaks it will become a great disgrace to all of Sichuan.
So let me put it to you plainly.
The ones who put you up to this little game—Namgung Family, right?
Make your choice right here.
Will you keep faith with the Namgung Family and have your limbs torn apart for the crime of deceiving the Emperor,
or will you confess that the Namgung Family instigated this entire affair and place yourself under the protection of our Sichuan Dang Family?
You’re a Sichuanese man too, aren’t you? The Namgung Family is an Anhui house.
Is there any real need for Sichuanese to roll around in the mud with one another?
Think carefully.
The Emperor’s execution may be terrifying… but as for the Dang Family’s poison techniques and our thoroughness regarding grace and grudge—I don’t need to spell that out for you, do I?
Along with the trembling, even his breath stopped.
Panic flooded in, and the single thought that rose through his blank mind was one word: How?
The Dang Family already knew everything.
They even knew that the Namgung Family had been the ones pulling the strings.
He recalled the image of Byeon Jun-seop from only moments earlier—the man who had dismissed him and then cut him off cold as a blade.
A shipping company built with Namgung capital? Namgung revenge?
Did any of that matter now? When the alternatives were being dragged into the Dang Family’s underground chambers to suffer every torture imaginable before being dissolved in the river, or having his limbs bound to oxen and torn apart in the county square?
In a voice from which the trembling had vanished, he spoke.
“In truth… this entire matter was carried out under the orders of the Namgung Family…!”
The light warning shot Byeon Jun-seop had casually tossed out began to swell into something that could no longer be contained.