Provocation and Sugarcane
To the esteemed Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence,
I am Huiyan, the rightful heir of the Tang family, and one who holds you in the highest regard.
It gives me great joy that fate has at last allowed our paths to cross.
Master, as a man who despises empty ceremony, I shall dispense with the pleasantries and come straight to the point.
To labor under the Pope’s threats and coercion, forced to continue work you never wanted—how stifling that must be.
However immortal your Creation and Last Judgment may one day prove, is your true genius not sculpture and architecture?
The gift I have sent you is a cathedral of my own devising, built after the European manner as best I understand it. In honor of Saint Peter I have named it the Basilica Sancti Petri—the Basilica of Saint Peter.
Well? Could you raise such a building yourself?
I am certain you could surpass it. I am equally certain that, as things stand, you have no confidence you could.
Master—come to the Tang family.
I promise you the finest treatment. Never again will you suffer painting pictures you despise, nor endure the torment of unpaid wages and material costs left in arrears.
Freedom of faith will also be guaranteed. I am a heathen myself, yet I am exceedingly tolerant of other religions. Indeed, among us already reside some fifty Catholic craftsmen, artisans, and scholars of European origin—among them Professor Paracelsus of the University of Basel and Meister Niccolo of Murano in Venice.
Finish the work before you as swiftly as you can, and come. I shall be waiting for the day you join us.
From the far earth of the East,
One who admires you.
That was the truth of it.
The model Hui-yeom had sent was none other than a scale replica of what would become the greatest cathedral in Europe: Saint Peter’s Basilica. In the original history it had taken a hundred and twenty years to build, from 1506 to 1626, and Michelangelo himself would not join its construction until 1547. In other words, the building already contained the hard-won know-how of a Michelangelo who had grown and matured for another twenty years.
Just as a painter cannot fail to recognize his own hand, Michelangelo felt it the instant he looked at the model. The Basilica of Saint Peter that Hui-yeom had sent him was the pure embodiment of an ideal Michelangelo had long studied and dreamed of—an ideal that had always remained just beyond his grasp.
And that was not the only thing that left him shaken.
The Creation! The Last Judgment! How does he know of paintings I have not even shown the Pope?
The Last Judgment existed only as a notion in his mind; he had not yet so much as begun a sketch. Yet the letter spoke of it as if the writer already knew the work—and Michelangelo felt a cold sweat run down his spine.
Is this man a prophet… or a devil?
He read the letter over and over, then turned to Ibn al-Nasir.
“This Huiyan Tang—what manner of man is he? How did he produce a model of such a building, and how does he know of a painting I have only conceived?”
“How he knows of the painting, I cannot say. One thing, however, is certain: he is a genius. One who already surpasses the late Leonardo da Vinci.”
“What? Greater than old Leonardo? Preposterous.”
“It is true. Setting aside purely artistic gifts, as an architect and inventor Tang outstrips Leonardo. He has designed and completed a road that bores straight through a mountain. He has laid a road of iron and set upon it a vast dragon-like carriage that moves of its own accord by the power of boiling water. He has built privies far more hygienic than the public latrines of Rome, and in a foundry larger than a great fortress he has raised a factory that forges steel by the power of a river alone.”
“I cannot believe it!”
“Your belief is of no consequence. What matters is that it is true. If you cannot trust my word, go and see with your own eyes.”
“Of course I will! I will go and confirm with these eyes whether the wretch is a fraud or a true genius!”
No sooner had he roared the words than Michelangelo’s face darkened.
“…But first I must finish this damned ceiling. Bloody hell. Which means I will have to cling to the Pope’s coattails again and beg for the wages he still owes me. Even when I report him for nonpayment, the courts will not take the case! Is the Pope above the law?”
As he fumed, Ibn al-Nasir scratched his cheek.
“Well… no magistrate is eager to risk excommunication by ruling against the Holy Father.”
Michelangelo spat a thick string of curses in Italian.
Ibn al-Nasir continued.
“Listen, Master Michelangelo. Is your real problem simply that you have no money?”
“It is. I have not a coin to hire assistants, nor even to buy paint. All I can do is pray the apprentices who fled back to Florence do not drag me into court for unpaid wages.”
Michelangelo clutched his head and shuddered. Ibn al-Nasir smiled.
“Then if I cover every outstanding wage and every expense required for your work, would you be willing to finish the ceiling quickly and cross over to the Gyeong Empire?”
“By the Lord’s name! I am sick to death of living under a Pope who treats men like insects! I want to meet this Tang—or Huiyan—or whoever he is, and see the inventions he has made with my own eyes! I would go to the deserts of Egypt, never mind the East!”
“Then we are agreed.”
Ibn al-Nasir grinned.
“Write down the sum you need. I shall see it settled at once.”
“…But why go so far for my sake?”
“Not for your sake—for money. Every coin I spend freeing you will be billed straight to Tang, with a modest service fee on top. Of course, I have also been promised a considerable reward for recruiting you.”
“……”
“This is a private observation, Master Michelangelo. From the perspective of a heathen such as myself, that boy of the Gyeong Empire esteems you dozens of times more highly than the Pope ever has. Should not an artist devote himself to his work under a patron who knows his true worth?”
“…True enough. Wait—boy?”
“Ah, did I not mention it? Huiyan turns eighteen this year. Of age, certainly—but still a boy by any reasonable measure.”
Michelangelo’s mouth fell open.
Meanwhile, while Ibn al-Nasir was hard at work recruiting Michelangelo, Hui-yeom was receiving a report from the merchants he had dispatched to Guangdong.
“These, my lord, are the sweet potato—ganzhu—and the sugarcane.”
“Well done.”
Hui-yeom intended to begin cultivation of both crops, which had only recently arrived in China’s Guangdong province. The sweet potatoes would be planted in the trench-fields he had ordered the Noksan outposts to dig—strips of earth between the multi-layered trenches that would otherwise have gone to waste. Sweet potatoes thrived as a famine crop on hillside plots; they would greatly strengthen the food self-sufficiency of Sichuan and the entire Bashu region.
Any surplus can go toward ethanol later… though soju would taste bland to Central Plains palates. As liquor it would not amount to much.
Still, ethanol itself had endless uses. Distilled spirit was already common enough in the Central Plains, but a new source of supply was always welcome.
“And these are the sugarcane seeds.”
Hui-yeom opened one of the sacks filling the crate and grinned.
“After the Ming and Qing, China was never a country short of sugar.”
Unlike Joseon, which produced none of its own and treated sugar as a fabulous luxury, China grew cane in vast quantities across the southern provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang. Yunnan, with its hot, humid rainforest climate, was another major producer.
Truth be told, Yunnan is a cheat code for agriculture…
The province imported rice from Anhui only because tea fetched prices that made paddy farming unattractive; as farmland, Yunnan was richly blessed. The famines that had struck it during the locust disasters were the same story as England’s, when every wheat field was torn up for sheep once wool became profitable and drought left the country starving.
Hui-yeom had no intention of forcing Yunnan into rice production to raise its self-sufficiency. That would erase any reason for the province to keep trading with Sichuan. His goal was the opposite: let Yunnan receive a steady supply of rice, sweet potatoes, and other staples from Sichuan’s agricultural cooperatives, so that it could devote itself without anxiety to high-value crops—tea, coffee, and sugar.
In time Yunnan and Sichuan will become one body. If Sichuan is attacked, Yunnan will have no choice but to move.
Should the worst come to pass—should the Sichuan Dang Family be branded rebels by the Emperor and forced to found an independent state—he could not afford to abandon Yunnan. An isolated nation struggles to survive even when it is self-sufficient; without trade it cannot secure every resource it needs. Yunnan, the gateway open to both the Western Regions and the Central Plains, was land Hui-yeom had to hold.
Not by the crude method of armies and clan force, of course. The real levers are economic dependence and food dependence.
The ideal outcome, naturally, was that such a crisis never arose… but wishing for it did not mean the other side would wish the same. That was a fool’s dream.
“Still…”
Hui-yeom hefted a sack of sugarcane and smacked his lips.
“I seem to recall sugarcane is far easier to plant from cuttings of the stalk than from seed…”
He knew little of farming, so he had hired several Guangdong farmers who had already succeeded with the crop as consultants. As advisors attached to the agricultural cooperatives, they would carry their techniques and experience to Yunnan and teach the local cultivators.
“The real problem is land. The coffee-plantation sites we already hold are full to capacity… Hmm.”
He pondered a moment, then broke into a sly grin.
“Plantations were originally made by clearing the forest, after all.”
It was time to reopen negotiations with the Southern Savage Beast Palace.
When Baek Beon heard that Hui-yeom meant to travel into the southern wilds of Yunnan—specifically to the Southern Savage Beast Palace—for agricultural talks, his interest flared at once.
“I as well! I absolutely must go with you!”
Leaving the Emperor’s watchdog behind was an invitation to later slander, so Hui-yeom agreed without hesitation. Baek Beon’s curiosity and goodwill toward everything Hui-yeom was doing in Sichuan had only grown.
To introduce little-known crops and raise the people’s livelihood—and to cultivate the idle ground around fortified outposts at that…
Seen from a certain angle it could be read as preparation for rebellion, yet Hui-yeom hid nothing. He showed Baek Beon every detail, drafted reports and planning documents that laid out the future blueprint, and submitted them all to the Emperor. Nothing concealed—every measure simply a means to strengthen His Majesty’s realm. A portrait of the perfect loyal minister.
What I have learned since coming to Sichuan is this: in ten years the Dang Family and Hui-yeom have developed the province more than the provincial treasurers managed in the last hundred. So long as he harbors no traitorous designs against the Emperor, he is a minister of unparalleled loyalty and ability. There is no need to provoke him into resentment!
Thus Baek Beon had shed a little of his earlier shamelessness and of late conducted himself with surprising warmth and courtesy.
I have heard the southern savages are fiercely exclusive toward the Central Plains. Yet he is on intimate terms with them and even entrusts them with crop cultivation? I must see this with my own eyes!
If only to erase any suspicion that Hui-yeom might be nurturing ambitions against the Central Plains in collusion with foreign peoples, Baek Beon insisted on witnessing the talks himself—and Hui-yeom consented.
And so Hui-yeom, Baek Beon, Dang Su-jeong, and the warriors of the Dokwadae arrived in the jungles of Yunnan.
Whereupon—
“Absolutely not.”
Having heard Hui-yeom’s proposal, Hắc Hổ Hiến Lang, Palace Lord of the Beast Palace, hardened his expression—a rare sight—and refused him flat.
The atmosphere in the chamber turned ice-cold in an instant.