The Laughing Explosive Dragon
There was no one.
The Shingijeon.
Mention the word and most people picture a cart bristling with dozens of fire-arrows, all lit at once and loosed in a single roaring volley. In truth, that weapon is the Munjong Hwacha—a refinement of the original Shingijeon developed in King Munjong’s reign.
The Munjong Hwacha works by simultaneously igniting the powder tubes bound to each arrow, using the force of the gunpowder to hurl hundreds of shafts into the air at once. In other words, it is not a weapon that detonates with powder; it is a weapon that flings arrows with powder.
Hwiyeom, however, had no interest in merely launching arrows. What he wanted was for those arrows to explode at the end of their flight.
There was a reason for that.
What we’re going up against aren’t ordinary foot soldiers—they’re murim fighters!
Even with gunpowder behind them, how much good would plain arrows, carrying no internal energy whatsoever, do against martial artists?
So Hwiyeom commissioned Dang Unhwa to build a Dabal-shingijeon of a rather different design.
The first thing that rose in Dang Unhwa’s mind when he read the specifications on Hwiyeom’s order form was a powder-tipped arrow. The principle was the same as the classic Shingijeon, but in addition to the solid-fuel rocket that drove the shaft, a second powder chamber would sit beneath the warhead, engineered to detonate once the projectile had flown a set distance. And for good measure, the chamber would be packed with caltrop-shaped metal fragments to multiply the killing power.
He mulled the design over for a long while—then his brow furrowed.
"If you hang an explosive pouch on the front like that, the air resistance alone will be a nightmare, never mind the center of gravity… It’ll be hard to throw far, and the accuracy will go to pieces…"
Hwiyeom had evidently shared the same worry. On the reverse side of the order, he had thoughtfully written out the solution.
There is no need to cling to the shape of an arrow. Build it in this form instead.
What followed was a rocket assembled by rolling stiff, thick paper—the same waxed stock used for paper cartridges—into a sturdy tube and packing it with powder. Strictly speaking, it was the Central Plains’ first multi-warhead missile.
Dang Unhwa’s eyes lit up.
"In this shape…!"
And he threw himself into building it at once.
First he needed a bulkhead that would keep the propellant powder separate from the bursting charge. He also needed a way to keep the missile body from burning up while the motor was firing. The know-how he had gained building paper-cartridge feed systems for the Gatling guns proved invaluable here.
A thin wooden panel was set inside the casing as a partition, isolating the propellant from the warhead. The propellant chamber was lined with lime and clay to serve as insulation, so the heat of the burning motor would neither consume the missile itself nor cook off the bursting charge mid-flight. Graphite was mixed into the propellant to lower its purity, ensuring it burned rather than detonated and thus produced thrust. The warhead, by contrast, was filled with high-grade black powder cut with only a trace of graphite so that a jolt or a bump would not set it off. At the very tip of the warhead, a ceramic vial of nitric acid was seated.
Then they fired it.
KWAANG!!
"Mmm…"
The blast itself was excellent. On impact the ceramic shattered, the nitric acid flooded into the black powder, and the mixture went up in a far more violent explosion. The flight, however, was a complete disaster.
The Central Plains’ first homemade missile leapt from the launcher, wobbled almost immediately, and slammed into the ground—not even in a straight line, but off at a wildly skewed angle.
Dang Unhwa’s eyes glittered all the same.
"Still, I can see the potential. Heeheehee! Let’s give it a proper try!"
From that day forward, the desertification of the nearby hills the Sichuan Dang Family had purchased proceeded at a startling pace. Dozens of Shingijeon exploded every day; to keep the surrounding farms’ livestock from dropping dead of fright, the tests were held deep in the hills far from Seongdo. The scorched, barren slopes were then quietly converted into camouflaged Chojeon—vast saltpeter fields meant to hide the family’s black-powder production from the emperor’s eyes.
For the record, the provincial administration commissioner and the regional military commander of Sichuan eventually began to object to the Tang clan’s habit of torching perfectly good mountains. Then Dang Un-sang murmured, very quietly,
"You must never, under any circumstances, speak of this elsewhere…"
—and the moment the words "by His Majesty’s imperial command" left his lips, both officials ceased all interference on the spot.
In any case, after two entire hills had been turned into disguised Chojeon, after the family’s black-powder reserves had dwindled to a thread, and after Bak Chang-eon’s eyebrows had migrated from their usual cheerful ^^ into a pair of inverted, ink-drawn slashes (∖∕), Dang Unhwa finally struck gold.
He gathered Dang Un-sang, the officers of Cheol-u-jeon, the Innovation Hall, the Elders’ Council, and every other person of note in the clan for a formal demonstration of the Dabal-shingijeon, a.k.a. the Laughing Explosive Dragon Ver.
When Dang Unhwa hauled out the cart laden with the multi-launchers, Dang Un-sang asked,
"So this is the new weapon Yeom ordered you to build?"
"Yes, elder brother. We call it the Dabal-shingijeon."
"Hmm… Looks like something that fires a great many hidden weapons at once…"
Dang Un-sang pointed at the scarecrows Unhwa had planted all over the test range.
"I’m sure it’s powerful enough, but isn’t this a little excessive?"
They had used armored scarecrows for the Dangroe demonstration as well—but today Unhwa had packed a circle thirty jang across, nearly ninety meters, with enough dummies to pass for an army.
A single Dangroe, currently rated the deadliest hidden weapon the clan had ever produced, could turn a one-jang radius into a honeycomb of iron shot. Just how ferocious did the Dabal-shingijeon have to be to justify a setup like this?
To Dang Un-sang’s eye it looked like pure overkill.
But then—
Dang Unhwa grinned.
"Just watch, Family Head."
"…Very well."
Knowing full well that no one on earth took explosives more seriously than his younger brother, Dang Un-sang folded his arms and fell silent.
A moment later:
"Fire!!"
Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-!!!
The fuses were lit; a brief wait while they burned down—and then the Dabal-shingijeon began to hurl pillars of flame into the sky one after another. The endless stream of rockets looked like the breath of a dragon, or a meteor shower turned upside-down and flung back at the heavens.
The elders who had been sitting to watch surged to their feet.
"Th-that—!"
The rockets that had climbed so high began to arc, falling like shooting stars. While the audience held its breath, the first Shingijeon met the ground.
KWAAAAANG!!
Unlike the Dangroe, which packed relatively little explosive and relied on iron shot for lethality, these Shingijeon had been built from the start around pure blast. The visible detonation was far more spectacular. Crimson and orange fire erupted with a roar and smashed outward in every direction; the scarecrows caught in the blast were shredded and scattered.
Puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-PUHNG!!
An endless rain of destructive stars. Mouths hung open. At last the last explosion died away.
What remained on the field was a litter of crumpled helmets and armor scraps that had once been a model army.
"Hahh…"
In real combat, a single salvo would have turned several hundred foot soldiers into so much meat. The clan could not close their mouths.
"At this level… it’s scarcely inferior to a Transcendental Peak master unleashing sword energy."
"I’d have to spend a fair amount of internal energy myself to hit that wide an area that hard. Well done. Truly excellent."
A monstrous weapon that should never have existed in this era had been born—yet not everyone was struck by world-shaking awe. Martial masters, after all, could already produce comparable destruction with their own bodies. A Peak expert who could project sword energy might struggle to match the full display, but could still take a dozen heads in a single stroke. A Transcendental Peak master would find the Dabal-shingijeon’s level of devastation well within reach. Dang Un-sang himself could do it without much trouble.
So Dang Unhwa clicked his tongue, dissatisfied with the power.
"There’s still plenty of room for improvement. We could pack metal fragments into the powder to raise the kill radius, or mix in poison so that the blast releases a toxic cloud…"
"Mmm…"
"Unhwa. You seem to think this weapon’s value lies in its raw power—but hasn’t Hwiyeom always said otherwise? The true worth of these gunpowder weapons is something else entirely. It is that anyone at all—not a murim fighter lighting the fuse—can produce that kind of force."
Dang Un-sang gave a short laugh.
"Improving the yield is fine, but what we need first is enough black powder to field these things in bulk. Even launching that many just now burned through a considerable store, didn’t it?"
"Ah—damn it! That a man of my caliber should forget something so basic!"
Dang Unhwa smacked his forehead and began to imagine.
A hundred Dabal-shingijeon equal the sword-energy barrage of a Transcendental Peak master, so nothing special? Then what happens when you drop a hundred thousand of them all at once?
Could even a Transcendental Peak master stop that?
A vision unfurled in his mind. The world was burning. Arms spread wide, face turned to the heavens in a peal of mad laughter, Dang Unhwa stood with endless pillars of flame rising behind him like the wings of a phoenix. They traced arcs as beautiful as rainbows and rained down upon the enemies arrayed before him—black-clad, therefore evil—and exploded. The world burned. Detonations bloomed like fireworks and swallowed heaven and earth in every direction.
Ah! The world was full of explosions!
He could not stop the laughter climbing his throat.
"…Family Head, I believe… ah… he has fainted."
Dang Unhwa had listened to his brother’s words, trembled as if struck by lightning, then begun to laugh like a madman, bellowing "EX—PLOOOOSION!!"—before his legs gave out and he toppled over, still twitching. Everyone jumped. A supervisor from the Innovation Hall rushed to catch him, felt for a pulse, and reported with an apologetic air. Dang Un-sang’s face went blank with disbelief.
"The bastard’s still grinning."
"…Leave him, Family Head. He’s probably dreaming of blowing up a powder magazine."
"…Am I strange for thinking the days when he was plotting rebellion for the Family Head’s seat were somehow preferable? As a human being, I mean."
"…Even looking like that, he contributes to the family. And more importantly, he’s deliriously happy… Shall we go have a drink?"
"…Let’s."
Honestly. Getting so excited about an order for mass powder production that he passed out cold.
"Ah… ahh… my brain… is shaking… explosion…"
Was that not, in fact, a mental illness?
Dang Un-sang found himself genuinely worried, for the first time in a long while, about Dang Unhwa’s sanity.
The finished concertina wire was erected at every critical traffic node by the hands of the Noksan Road Traffic Management Corporation.
"Don’t forget the warning signs! We don’t need herb-gatherers and hunters getting tangled up for nothing."
Since the wire’s purpose was to obstruct enemy movement in any military clash, it went up first along the mountain side-paths. The goal was to force all army traffic onto the main roads Noksan controlled.
"Even with this, small detachments and murim fighters will just ignore it and keep moving…"
Concertina wire drawn from soft iron was far too strong for ordinary hands to cut—but a martial artist, even without sword energy, could shear it in a few strokes, and with sword energy, in a single slash. Expecting real stopping power against murim fighters was unrealistic. If they got annoyed, they could simply jump over it.
"Still better than nothing."
"At the very least, it should slow low-grade bandits and regular troops."
In front of the checkpoints on Noksan’s roads stood steel barricades and star-shaped obstacles of the kind one might see in a twenty-first-century army. Until a Noksan employee dragged them aside, no cart could pass.
Tweeeeet—
A whistle blew from a forward post hidden off the road. The Noksan workers laying wire headed for the checkpoint.
"Customers coming—get ready to collect!"
"Yes, sir!"
In their Green Forest days they would have reached for weapons first. Now they pulled on gloves, beamed, and stepped out in front of the post.
A short while later, a string of freight wagons appeared, escorted by armed guards. Their apparent leader eyed the Noksan staff blocking the road like a military outpost and demanded, full of suspicion,
"Who are you people? Green Forest men from the Great Tiger Stronghold?!"
"Oh my, no, no. We are the Noksan Road Traffic Management Corporation, officially licensed by the Sichuan Provincial Administration. We maintain the safety of this road and collect the tolls."
The employee smiled as he spoke. The merchant captain tilted his head.
"So… you’re collecting a passage tax?"
"Well, when you boil it down, yes."
"Isn’t that just Green Forest banditry? Did you merely change your business model? I’ve already prepared the usual toll for the Green Forest, so…"
"Good heavens, no—please don’t lump us in with those mountain thieves. We are employees of a perfectly clean enterprise. We pay our taxes properly. We even commute to and from the villages. Yes, yes—heh heh heh."
"…?"
A man who looked every inch a bandit rubbing his hands and chuckling only deepened the merchant’s confusion.
"Anyway—we can pass without a fight?"
"Of course, of course. Just a moment while I check the toll."
"Is there a schedule? The heroes of the old Great Tiger Stronghold used to take about four percent of the cargo…"
"One moment—our regulations are… ah, here."
The Noksan man pulled a sheaf of paper from his coat and read aloud.
"Five copper nyang per adult male. Thirty copper nyang per cart. Twenty per horse. Twenty-five per ox. And for the cargo on the carts, one silver tael per hundred catties of weight."
The merchant finished the arithmetic in his head and cocked an eyebrow.
"That’s… cheaper than the old Green Forest toll."
"I keep telling you we are not criminals of that sort."
"Then why, exactly, should we pay you anything?"
If the other party was not threatening them with weapons, why humor people who simply blocked the road and demanded money?
The Noksan employee answered,
"You saw the road on the way here, didn’t you?"
"I did."
"And how was it?"
"How was it? Excellent. Especially that stretch cut straight through the mountain—I thought it was some goblin’s magic."
"And who do you suppose performed that goblin’s magic?"
"……Surely not you gentlemen?"
"Indeed! Our Noksan Road Traffic Management Corporation cut these roads for easy travel and keeps them maintained. Doesn’t that deserve a service fee?"
Strictly speaking, Hwieon General Construction had cut the roads and Noksan only managed them—but who was counting? Unlike the Green Forest, which simply blocked mountain paths and extorted money under threat of violence, the "road" these men maintained was plainly worth paying to use. Rain did not turn it to mud. The surface was graded and paved, so cart wheels and axles were spared. There was no need to wind around the mountains, so travel time shrank several times over. If anything, one wondered whether the fee was too low.
"Do you even turn a profit at these rates?"
"Well, it’s a public-interest enterprise. The construction costs can be recovered slowly over the years—or so our president says."
"I… see. And the Green Forest bandits…?"
"Ah, we wiped those fiends out completely, so rest easy."
"…No, but no matter how I look at it, aren’t you the same fellow who collected a toll from me last time?"
The merchant captain pointed at one of the employees. The man answered without blinking.
"Ah, I’m a twin. My idiot younger brother ran off into the mountains, took up banditry, and got himself cut down by some murim fighter—you must have seen him. I’m an honest laborer, so kindly don’t look at me like that."
"……"
Suspicion overflowed; proof and retorts alike were nowhere to be found. In the end the caravan paid a toll cheaper than usual and passed the checkpoint.
And they went about telling everyone of the strange experience.
As a result:
"The roads into Sichuan are so well kept you can come and go in no time."
"No Green Forest bandits, and no wild beasts either!"
Once word spread, merchants’ feet naturally turned toward Sichuan.
"Is that so? I’ve heard Sichuan has changed beyond recognition lately. Maybe I should open a line of trade that way myself."
Convenient transport draws people, and the influx of people brings regional development. One by one, the seeds Hwiyeom had sown began to bear fruit.
And at last, late in the summer, Hwiyeom and his company crossed the border into Sichuan.