Rejection, and a New Goal
The atmosphere had clearly been good.
To the Yunnan Beast Palace, the Sichuan Dang Family was an important business partner—one that took their otherwise useless rubber tree sap and, in return, steadily supplied them with grain. Historically, the two had also stood as comrades-in-arms who together had held back the rise of the Demonic Cult.
That was why Hwi-yeom went blank for a moment, unable even to conceive that Hắc Hổ Hiến Lang might refuse his proposal. He recovered almost at once.
Right. Things have been going too smoothly for too long.
Negotiation, at its core, was the process of narrowing the gap between two parties’ views. Hwi-yeom quickly collected himself and asked,
“Would you mind telling me the reason?”
Hắc Hổ Hiến Lang answered,
“Every scrap of land fit for farming is already in use. Your proposal amounted to burning the forest to clear slash-and-burn fields. We have forbidden that practice for generations.”
“If it’s the danger of wildfires that worries you—”
“No. It is the law handed down through our ancestors. Even I, the Palace Lord, cannot casually overturn such a rule.”
“Mm…”
It was understandable—and a headache. Traditional or religious matters of this sort were, by nature, impossible to persuade or coax with logic alone.
“Even if I gave permission, the people of the Beast Palace would rise against it.”
“That strongly?”
“Yes. You Central Plains folk seem to think nothing of burning forests into farmland, but to us the forest is something far more sacred.”
“Uuugh…”
Hwi-yeom stroked his chin, pondering.
“I understand. Then if burning the forest is the problem, what about developing the wetlands instead?”
“Wetlands?”
“Yes.”
“That does not sit well with me either. Nature is tightly interwoven. If we erase the wetlands, no one can say what kind of backlash will come around.”
Heh. Honestly, this is fussier than doing business in the twenty-first century.
In the capitalism-ruled twenty-first century, entrepreneurs had simply bulldozed the Amazon rainforest or wetlands that had existed since the Paleozoic. Destroying nature to make dollars was shrugged off and forgiven. Here it was different. Capitalism did not yet rule everything, and people still lived as one with nature. Strangely, Hwi-yeom found he did not entirely mind that. It was a little inconvenient, true—but he decided to think it over more carefully.
When Hwi-yeom accepted the refusal without further argument, Hắc Hổ Hiến Lang looked apologetic, treated him with full hospitality, and sent him on his way. Baek Beon, by contrast, was furious.
“If this weren’t a den of savages…!”
He was currently dressed in Sichuan Dang Family clothes, posing as one of their own. The people of the Southern Savage Beast Palace hated the Central Plains with a pathological intensity; if Baek Beon’s true identity were exposed, the situation could turn quite dangerous. He vented his rage at Hwi-yeom.
“Every inch of land under Heaven is the domain the Son of Heaven, His Majesty the Emperor, received from Heaven itself! And these Southern Savage barbarians, forgetting the grace that even allowed them to squat there, dare to play the master of the place?!”
Hwi-yeom’s brow twitched at the man’s thoroughly Sinocentric rant, then he soothed him with a smile.
“It isn’t defiance of His Majesty’s will so much as obedience to the teachings passed down from their ancestors. That deserves respect.”
“…Ahem!”
Among Central Plains people ruled by Confucian thinking, the excuse of “ancestral teaching and tradition” landed surprisingly well. After that, Hwi-yeom continued to calm Baek Beon with soft words: His Majesty had not issued a direct imperial decree, so there was no need to react so sharply.
Dang Su-jeong asked,
“But Yeom, does that mean you’re giving up on planting that new crop? Or are you going to plant it in Sichuan?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be impossible in Sichuan either… but I’ve got a better idea.”
Arable land was limited. Sichuan still had riverside wetlands that could be developed further, yet Hwi-yeom had no desire to go that route. A better thought had already formed in his mind.
“Where is the poorest land in the entire Central Plains?”
Dang Su-jeong looked at him as if he had grown a second head.
“How am I supposed to know that?”
Baek Beon supplied the answer.
“By tax revenue, the poorest is Qinghai Province, followed by Gansu or Guizhou.”
“In that case,” Hwi-yeom said, smiling at him, “if a crop appeared in Guizhou that could dramatically raise the local farmers’ produce… His Majesty would be pleased, wouldn’t he?”
“Well, of course—wait… you don’t mean—?”
Baek Beon’s face lit with realization. Hwi-yeom grinned.
“That ‘you don’t mean’ is exactly right. Guizhou’s climate is perfect for sugarcane.”
Instead of starting a massive sugarcane plantation in Yunnan, Hwi-yeom had revised the strategy: he would foster sugarcane-growing households in Guizhou.
Baek Beon shook his head.
“That’s impossible. Guizhou has poor soil and little land fit for farming—that’s why its produce is so meager. How could you—?”
“Let’s head back first.” Hwi-yeom smiled. “I have an idea.”
Guizhou Province—the poor province nestled against Yunnan. There were many reasons for its poverty, but the greatest single cause was the soil itself. Guizhou’s earth and bedrock were calcareous, producing limestone caves and karst landscapes much like the Huanglong Valley in northern Sichuan that Hwi-yeom used for limestone production.
The problem was that calcareous soil was poorly suited to rice and barley. Rice thrived best in slightly acidic soil (pH 5.5–6.5); once the lime turned the ground alkaline, the plants struggled to absorb nutrients. The issue could be fixed by neutralizing the alkalinity with sulfur, but no one in this era knew that.
Wheat usually grew well in such soil—that was why Europe had grown wheat instead of rice—but Guizhou had a second flaw: wheat preferred cooler climates, not Guizhou’s sweltering heat. Far in the future a giant like Moutai would seize Guizhou’s GDP by the scruff of the neck and dominate the premium liquor market, but right now, with an economy built on rice farming, failed harvests were fatal.
Sugarcane, though, grows just fine in alkaline soil.
Guizhou’s curse did not end with the soil. Mountains were scattered just densely enough to make large contiguous fields nearly impossible. No matter what anyone did, Guizhou could never match the scale of a Yunnan plantation. From a pure profit standpoint, expanding into Guizhou looked unpromising…
But approach it from the political angle, and it’s an entirely different story.
Sugar was precious and useful in countless ways. Farms in Guangdong were already expanding production, yet they could never meet the needs of the vast Central Plains. If Hwi-yeom and the Sichuan Dang Family took the lead, joined hands with Guizhou, and launched a new crop that solved the people’s livelihood problem—what would the Emperor think?
Even if someone tried to pin a false charge of treason on the Dang Family, he would never be able to cast aside the clan that turned a destitute backwater into a place where people could actually eat.
The Dang Family was expanding on a massive scale. The reason things had settled in Sichuan without major clashes with local powers was a combination of factors: the old saying that a rich family remains wealthy for three generations even after ruin; the Dang Family’s original standing in Sichuan; the timely rescue of the Emei Sect during the cholera crisis, which turned potential enemies into allies; the alignment of interests with the Provincial Commissioner; and the failed assassination attempt on Hwi-yeom that forced the Qingcheng Sect to restrain itself. Without those three strokes of fortune, Sichuan would still be locked in turf wars, market battles, and quite possibly open swordplay.
The Yunnan expansion had been the same. Hwi-yeom had predicted the locust plague a full year in advance and prepared thoroughly, so he could sell the province a life-saving favor at the most dramatic moment. That was how he secured the tea monopoly, replaced the Provincial Commissioner, gained the new commissioner’s support, and used that backing to settle matters with the local Jeomchang Sect. Without it, a Yunnan tea monopoly would have remained pure fantasy.
Now the Dang Family’s influence was ready to stretch beyond Yunnan and Sichuan into the wider Central Plains. Collisions—or cooperation—with local gentry, martial sects, and powerful clans elsewhere were inevitable. And Guizhou offered a particularly easy path for expansion.
“I’m sure I read a report on this…”
Back at the Dang estate, Hwi-yeom summoned Ye-eun.
“There was a report on Guizhou’s situation after the locust disaster. Bring it.”
“Yes.”
A short while later he skimmed the document she handed him and gave a crooked smile.
“My memory was right.”
Years earlier, part of the locust swarm that hit Yunnan had spilled into Sichuan and Guizhou. While the swarm that reached Sichuan was annihilated by the Dang Family’s spectacular efforts, the one that reached Guizhou swept the province’s paddies clean. Guizhou’s Provincial Commission, already poor, had never stockpiled enough relief grain. It petitioned the Forbidden City in Beijing for aid. The Emperor released grain for Guizhou’s people and ordered neighboring provincial governors to join the relief effort.
Sichuan was exempted because it had already committed every grain of rice to Yunnan’s relief. The other provinces, however, responded with lukewarm enthusiasm. Between large and small officials along the route, embezzlement ran rampant; of every ten measures of grain that left the imperial granaries, fewer than four reached Guizhou. This was not because Emperor Sungui was incompetent or lacked control over the bureaucracy; it was simply the nature of the age. Anyone who did not skim was considered a fool, and those who issued the orders knew enough to look the other way. Of course, Emperor Sungui wanted to uproot the practice entirely—but that was another matter.
What mattered was that Guizhou, short by six measures, had been forced to borrow rice from the grain merchants of Anhui. After barely scraping through that year and the next, the province had no sooner caught its breath than it had to tighten its belt to repay those Anhui creditors. Most of the tax revenue that should have gone to the Forbidden City was instead flowing into Anhui pockets as interest and principal.
“Perfect. We’ll grow sugarcane in Guizhou.”
Ye-eun voiced her concern.
“Um… but Guizhou is already a place where farming barely works. Will sugarcane even grow there?”
“Yeah. It will.”
Hwi-yeom gave a short laugh. Guizhou’s sugar output could never rival the large plantations of Guangdong, Zhejiang, or Fujian, yet the alkaline soil and scorching climate produced cane of exceptional sweetness and a distinctive aroma. That was why Guizhou was also famous for its rose-sugar candy.
“If Anhui wants to play games with what people eat… then I’ll play a few games with Anhui’s snacks.”
It was a quiet remark that foreshadowed the start of a very sweet war.