Chagatai and the Rubber Factory
"Mmm..."
"Khan, is something troubling you?"
At his subordinate general's question, Adiya Khan, the ruler of the Chagatai Khanate, scratched his chin and answered.
"No. It's just that what those Oirat bastards said keeps getting under my skin."
"The Oirat? You're not actually taking those cowards at their word, are you? Demonic thorn vines that swallowed six hundred horsemen, and fire spirits..."
"Hmm..."
Not long ago, the remnants of the Oirat had come of their own free will, bearing the head of their former Taishi Bahama, and begged to submit.
On the steppe it was an unwritten law: those who lost a fight became slaves, but those who came voluntarily, seeking to join the tribal confederation, were accepted.
Adiya had taken the Oirat in as one of the Chagatai Khanate's subordinate tribes and replaced their chieftain with one of his own men, sealing their submission.
There had been some friction among the Oirat leadership at losing their grip on power, yet survival came before authority, and they had yielded of their own accord.
At the feast welcoming the Oirat as new members of the confederation, Adiya had casually asked one of their Noyon how it had all come about.
I expected that after our brothers of the Oirat fell to Chagatai, you would strike the Central Plains for food. Yet you failed to achieve your aims there? Why lose so many warriors and choose submission instead?
The Noyon's reply to Adiya's offhand question had been shocking.
We meant to bypass Yunnan Province and strike Sichuan. Along the way we attacked a border outpost... and there our feet were tangled by demonic thorn vines and we were burned by fire spirits.
The brave Batu and Daigon, along with four other Noyon and six hundred horsemen, were shredded into bloody scraps of meat in a single instant.
We still had many riders left, but not a man would spur his horse into that hell.
What kind of nonsense was that?
Half in disbelief, half out of curiosity, Adiya had pressed for more, and the tale only grew more absurd.
Even blades and spears charged with the Great Breath could scarcely cut the demonic thorn vines; the moment they snared you they tightened in a heartbeat—
Man and horse alike were torn to pieces the instant they were caught—
Trying to jump them or ride around was useless; they were laid in multiple broad layers, and the path up to the fort was so narrow there was no gap—
And then a meteor shower poured from the sky—
Every time a meteor struck the earth a fire spirit was born, roaring so the heavens and earth shook—
In no time at all six hundred warriors were gone, leaving only blood and shreds of flesh.
The more he listened, the less sense it made.
Yet... those were clearly the eyes of a man telling the truth.
As Khan who stood above men, Adiya prided himself on his ability to read people. The expression that had crossed the Noyon's face while he remembered had been close to the truth. The hunched shoulders, the gooseflesh rising on his skin, the cold sweat on his brow—those could not have been acted.
Are the people of the Central Plains practicing sorcery?
He had summoned the greatest shaman of the tribe and asked.
"Can you work the kind of magic that Oirat Noyon spoke of?"
The shaman had prostrated himself with a troubled look.
"I dare not claim otherwise, Khan, but such miracles are beyond the power of any human body. What the shamans of the steppe can do is beg the Great Spirits to send hail and blizzards down upon the enemy. To raise a blaze that could kill six hundred mounted warriors at once—even if we offered a hundred cows to the Great Spirits—would be difficult."
"Then how are the Central Plains dogs doing it?"
"They claim to be descendants of the Flame Emperor Shennong, not of the Great Spirits. Shennong is the god of farming and of fire; I can only cautiously guess that they have sought his blessing."
"Mmm... that makes a certain sense."
It was an oddly fitting coincidence. From the Chagatai point of view, the silver thorn vines of Type-Y barbed wire and the fire spirits of Type-A Dabal-shingijeon could be explained as the blessing of the god of farming and fire—silver vines made to grow, flames made to pour down.
"Then if we were to march on the Central Plains... could we hold off their god with the power of our Great Spirit?"
The shaman answered,
"Our Great Spirit Tengri is the Lord of Heaven, the Creator, and the god of weather. A petty Central Plains deity that merely moves grass and flame? When the Great Spirit's hail falls, the silver vines will wither and the flames will die."
In truth the shaman had no confidence that hail could slaughter three hundred horsemen, but he bluffed all the same. To admit he could not might mean being tied to a horse's tail and dragged across the steppe until he breathed his last.
His choice proved correct. Adiya Khan's mood lifted.
"When the day comes that we strike the Central Plains, prepare to show them the true glory of the gods."
"Yes, Khan!"
"Khan, do you mean to strike the Central Plains?"
"Someday. Not yet."
Adiya raised a horn cup of fermented mare's milk and smiled.
"The work of uniting the Great Steppe is not finished. We have swallowed the largest piece—the Oirat—so the steppe is as good as ours, yet remnants of Eastern Mongolia and the Oirat still remain, and countless tribes that belong to neither. Once we have absorbed them all and gained absolute authority over the steppe, we will expand into the world. And when that day comes, our first target will be those Central Plains dogs. Those ignorant, arrogant people who prattle that they are the center of the world! We will reclaim the honor of the old Genghis Khan. On that day Beijing will burn, the Yangtze will be choked with corpses, and beneath the sky only songs praising me and the Great Tengri will resound!"
Thousands of li away in the Mongolian interior, such talk was flying back and forth—something Hwi-yeom, of course, had no way of knowing. He simply submitted the proposal he had drafted to Dang Un-sang.
Dang Un-sang flipped casually through the pages, then frowned at the tables calculating construction costs and projected returns.
"Can gloves and boots really generate this much profit?"
"And that's a conservative estimate. If my expectations are right, this product will conquer the Central Plains faster than any invention the Dang Family has made so far."
"Hmmmm... even faster than the cosmetics?"
The cosmetics Hwi-yeom had first unveiled at the age of seven—things like Bulgeon-yeon and Michen-muk—had already begun selling far beyond Sichuan, across the entire Central Plains. Once the Empress and the imperial concubines began using the cosmetics Hwi-yeom had presented to Emperor Sungui through Baek Beon, orders from the nobles of Beijing had poured in like rain.
The bombardment of gold and silver flooding out of Beijing under the spirit of "Shut up and take my money!" had been so intense that Hwi-yeom had seriously worried about inflation in Sichuan; he had deposited every last coin of the profits with Hwieon Comprehensive Finance and left them untouched so they would not circulate in the market.
The Sima Family, handling the intermediate distribution, had reaped profits nearly as rich as the Sichuan Dang Family's, and those profits were being reinvested to expand the influence of both houses—rolling a virtuous snowball of growth.
Yet Hwi-yeom had calculated returns even greater than that cosmetics business.
When Dang Un-sang looked dubious, Hwi-yeom smiled.
"Father, once you put on rubber gloves, you can handle almost any poison or acid—save a few exceptions—and most alkaline substances as well without the slightest harm. For people of our Dang Family, it's a dream come true."
"That is impressive, but... demand would only come from a handful of sects and families that deal in poisons and acids like us, or from smiths who handle a little acid for metalwork. The market is far too small..."
"That's not all. These gloves block moisture completely. Housewives washing dishes, cooks in restaurants, fishermen diving for shellfish, sailors—there's a mountain of people who will want these gloves. That's why the price is set this low. Even a poor housewife can buy them without great burden, and we pull them all in as our customers."
"But will there be any margin left? Thin profits and high volume are fine, yet won't people just buy one pair of gloves and use them forever?"
Dang Un-sang's point was perfectly reasonable. Hwi-yeom laughed.
"Rubber gloves look sturdy, but they're nowhere near as tough as leather. They develop holes sooner than you'd think, so once people taste the convenience, they'll keep buying them."
"And these rubber boots?"
"Same idea. Sturdier than straw sandals, but they tear more easily than wooden clogs. Wear them a while and the seams along the sides split and let water in."
"...And this rubber wheel rim? If a cart or carriage wheel fails while carrying cargo or people, won't that cause serious trouble?"
"Even if a rubber wheel rim tears, it won't create a major problem. You can rest easy."
It was nothing like a modern pneumatic tire; it was merely a rubber band wrapped around a wooden cart wheel for cushioning, so there was no real danger.
At Hwi-yeom's firm assurance Dang Un-sang finally let out a breath of relief.
"Good. I'm glad to hear it."
"Don't worry. In the end these goods will spread across the entire Central Plains. Even if there's no reaction at first, they will absolutely catch on."
History itself was the proof. The convenience and versatility of rubber products were simply overwhelming. There might be people who had never used them, but there would never be anyone who used them only once.
"All right. But it seems to me that this rubber takes whatever shape you set it in when it hardens, doesn't it? Besides gloves, boots, and wheel rims, are there other uses?"
"Oh, of course. The uses are too many to count."
Hwi-yeom grinned.
"It's springy and soft, and mites can't burrow into it, so it's excellent for bedding. Its waterproof nature makes it outstanding as a sealing material. And above all..."
"Above all?"
"...No, never mind."
Hwi-yeom swallowed the words about electrical insulation and smiled to himself. He would have loved to rush ahead and develop electric motors and generators at once, but there were still many steps that had to come first.
In the end Dang Un-sang clicked his tongue in amazement and stamped the approval seal.
Even now the Construction Department was still buried in the hellish trench works meant to stop cavalry advances around the outposts of Yunnan and Sichuan; a fresh avalanche of work was about to crash down on their heads.
"Ah, come to think of it, they must be busy enough already—the Construction Department, I mean. Building that 'trench-field' thing you talk about."
"Yes."
"I understand the idea of digging deep trenches at regular intervals wherever horses could gallop toward an outpost or wall, turning the ground into land no mount can cross—aside from the paved roads. But making fields inside those trenches... that part I still don't grasp. What exactly do you plan to plant there?"
At Dang Un-sang's question Hwi-yeom smiled and answered,
"I was thinking of getting hold of some sweet potatoes."
Corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes—the holy trinity of famine-relief crops. Hwi-yeom intended to start cultivating whichever of them he could obtain right now.