Countermeasures
“Come in. I’ve been waiting for you anyway.”
The Provincial Governor of Sichuan clutched his forehead as if his head were pounding, fell silent for a moment, then asked,
“Let me ask first—do you have any kind of solution for this situation?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a relief. Whatever I might say would probably be ignored anyway, damn it all!”
The Governor exploded in frustration.
“The mastermind is obvious. Someone among the central bureaucrats is jealous because I’ve been making a fortune exporting iron to the Central Plains and paying heavy taxes to the court with it. Or it might not be just one—they could have colluded together.
For the Regional Military Commander to march Sichuan’s army into Hubei is a clear overreach of authority, and Hubei’s forces have no doubt already been bought off!”
As expected of a man who hadn’t won the governorship of an entire province by pure luck, he already grasped the situation perfectly.
“So, what’s the Tang family’s method?”
“The operation is divided into two stages. The first method is to convert merchant ships into warships, load them with Tang family martial artists, and intercept the river pirates of the Eighteen Stockades of the Yangtze who are launching the raids.”
“…That doesn’t sound like a fundamental solution. If it were that simple, the Yangtze river stockades would have vanished long ago, wouldn’t they?”
“Which brings us to the second option.”
Hwiyeom smiled faintly.
“I will force the Regional Military Commander of Hubei Province into a position where he has no choice but to strike the Yangtze river stockades himself.”
“Hm?”
The Governor tilted his head with a dubious expression.
“Is that even possible? This is different from when we impeached the Governor of Yunnan. Even if we have former officials including Lord Bang Un file charges against the Hubei Commander for dereliction of duty, that alone won’t resolve this problem.”
Hwiyeom smiled.
“Don’t worry—just prepare the ships. Ah, and this time, on the vessels carrying the steel, I’ll load a little less steel and instead increase the number of merchant ships we mobilize.”
“…Fine.”
“If it means giving those bastards a good thrashing, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. Let’s hear the detailed plan.”
“Yes. First…”
After listening to Hwiyeom’s full explanation, the Governor stared at him blankly for a moment, then gave a small shake of his head.
“You really… I’ve thought this before, but you have no qualms about casually using His Majesty the Emperor’s authority.”
“Yes. I suspect His Majesty would agree if he heard the plan himself.”
“I almost feel sorry for the other side…. Well, all right. I’ll give you the ships.”
After finishing his conversation with the Governor, Hwiyeom returned and immediately met with Han Cheol, Head of the Metallurgy Department; Gwak Do, Head of the Construction Department; Dang Unhwa, Chief Researcher of the Innovation Hall; and Michelangelo, who had now become a Senior Researcher of the Innovation Hall.
For reference, Michelangelo had already acquired enough of the Gyeong Empire’s language in less than a month to hold simple conversations.
Was it because he was already a multilingual genius fluent in Latin, Tuscan-Italian, and French? Or simply because a man history records as a genius is a genius in this field too? Either way, I’m jealous.
Hwiyeom himself was multilingual, but that ability had been carved out through bone-grinding effort, so Michelangelo’s short-term mastery of an entire language made him look all the more monstrous.
In any case, the department heads summoned by Hwiyeom had already heard the rough outline from Lee Jinmyeong, so the discussion moved quickly.
“If the ships sank, they probably approached underwater and punched holes in the bottoms.”
“For now, cladding the hull bottoms with iron plates to stop that is doable.”
Han Cheol spoke.
“I discussed it with Gwak. Since these are ships that already haul iron ingots, we can just offload enough ingots to offset the weight of the plates.”
“The problem is that double-bottom structure…. That looks hard to implement.”
In reality, double bottoms only appeared after the age of wooden ships ended and iron hulls were built. Even if they could line the existing hull floor with iron plates, creating an entirely new bulkhead was nearly impossible. It would be better to build a new ship from scratch with an empty space beneath the lowest cargo hold—but that would take an enormous amount of time.
Hwiyeom knew this, so he offered the alternative he had in mind.
“The concept just has to be similar. If we can’t create a true double structure by adding a new bulkhead to the bottom, we seal off the lowest cargo hold and waterproof the ceiling so that even if it floods, water can’t rise any higher.”
“Hmm…”
Michelangelo, who had been listening quietly, cut in.
“I don’t know much about ships, but that ship’s going to be loaded with steel, isn’t it? If you take the lowest hold out of use, the center of gravity rises too high and the risk of capsizing gets serious.”
“…As expected of a genius. You saw straight through to the problem at once.”
Michelangelo, claiming ignorance of ships yet immediately piercing the issue of metacentric height—GM, the distance between the center of gravity and the metacenter. A ship is like a roly-poly doll: heavy cargo must sit low so it doesn’t flip. But if you leave the bottom hold empty against the chance of a hole and load steel only in the upper holds? The top becomes heavier than the bottom, and the ship tips over with alarming ease.
“Don’t worry. We’ll still load steel in the lowest cargo hold.”
“—? Didn’t you just say you were sealing that hold? Did I misunderstand?”
“The seal won’t be permanent—we’ll make it something that can be opened later.”
So the overall plan looked like this:
1. Load steel into the lowest cargo hold.
2. Block the access to the lowest hold and seal it with pitch and beeswax so water cannot enter (but in a way that can be opened later).
3. To prepare for the enemy not merely stabbing holes with short spears underwater but damaging the ship’s bottom structure itself, cover the ceiling of the lowest hold with iron plates and fix them to the hull.
“If we just cover and secure the floor of the middle hold with iron plates like this, there’s no need to deliberately tear apart and rebuild the hull structure itself.”
“Once we arrive safely, we open only the access hatch of the middle hold, break the seal, and unload the steel from inside.
And if we’re attacked and holes appear in the bottom, the flooding will be confined to the lowest hold…”
“Even if the ship sits a little lower in the water, it won’t sink. If it starts looking too close for comfort, we can just jettison the steel from the upper holds to lighten the load.”
The point was that a barrier now existed to stop water from continuously rising past the lower hold into the middle one.
That alone means a few holes in the bottom won’t sink the ship.
Those who had vaguely imagined iron plating like armor sheathing the outer bottom were startled by this design that assumed the bottom would be breached and simply limited the flooding to the lower hold.
At Hwiyeom’s words, Han Cheol, Gwak Do, and Michelangelo turned the idea over in their heads, then nodded.
“Understood.”
“Ah, Senior Researcher Michelangelo—I didn’t call you for that reason. I called you because of the delayed fuse.”
“Delayed fuse?”
“Delayed fuse!! An explosion held in reserve for the future! A seed of restrained destruction, like the supreme pleasure reached only after patience!!”
“…Pardon me for saying so, but is that bastard right in the head?”
Michelangelo twirled a finger at his temple; Gwak Do and Han Cheol coughed awkwardly as if they were the ones embarrassed.
Truly, Dang Unhwa was the sort of man one would be ashamed to introduce anywhere. Pointedly averting his gaze from him, Hwiyeom said,
“Just call him a bit of an eccentric. Once a man goes mad for explosives…”
“Well, I’ve been called an eccentric plenty of times myself, but that one… I’ve only known him a few days and it’s already a lot.”
Michelangelo shook his head and continued.
“I got the rough concept from what that secretary relayed. A delayed fuse originally controls the timing of an explosion by the length of a fuse attached to the powder, doesn’t it? So this time it’s a different concept?”
“Yes. Because we have to make an explosive that detonates underwater, a delay device that burns a fuse won’t work.”
“Burning and exploding underwater…”
Michelangelo scratched his beard.
“I’ve heard the famous Greek fire (ὑγρὸν πῦρ) doesn’t go out even on the waves, but a substance that burns and explodes underwater? Hard to believe.”
Unlike original history, gunpowder was still unknown in Europe in this world, so Michelangelo’s reaction was only natural.
By contrast, Dang Unhwa—long since hardened by handling powder—could not hide his excitement.
“Black powder is vulnerable to moisture! But powder that explodes underwater! Hohohoho—wait!! Is it what I’m thinking?!”
“What now…”
Hwiyeom frowned and dipped a finger in his tea, writing characters on the table.
— Caution: Baek Beon —
Meaning: Be careful, be extremely careful with your words—Baek Beon might be listening somewhere.
“I’ll work out how to make the powder resistant to moisture. You two design a detonation device for exploding the powder underwater. I’m thinking of a spring-driven delay mechanism.”
“A spring?”
In this fight, the river pirates would approach from underwater. Fighting water-arts specialists in the depths was an extremely grueling task even for masters of the jianghu. In fact, the reason many jianghu experts lost their lives to river pirates who would not have lasted three exchanges on land was that they were unused to fighting on ships—or because they were dragged into the water after the ship sank.
It’s like fighting a mermaid underwater.
Given how absurdly capable the “martial arts” of this world could make a person, a pirate trained in water arts might truly have to be regarded as something like a mermaid.
So we absolutely need bombs that explode underwater.
They could not fight underwater, and pouring arrows, hidden weapons, or bullets from outside the water at enemies inside it would have little effect. Then poison the river? Loading enough poison or acid to make the river pirates float up dead was a problem in itself, and the cleanup afterward was another.
Fortunately, preparations for manufacturing TNT are already complete, and TNT is an explosive that detonates normally even underwater.
The molecular formula of TNT is C6H2(NO2)3CH3. As one can see, it contains oxygen. That is why TNT can explode underwater without a separate oxygen supply.
So the problem was creating a device that would make a bomb filled with TNT enter the water and then detonate.
The existing delay method—winding a fuse inside the bomb and controlling time by its length—was useless underwater. The alternative he had conceived was a spring mechanism.
“Yes. You know, right? Leonardo da Vinci also designed devices that used springs.”
A spring was a highly reliable device. The spring-type delayed fuse Hwiyeom envisioned was like a grenade: wind the spring, insert a safety pin to lock its movement, and place a percussion-cap detonator filled with mercury fulminate at the end. Pull the grenade’s safety pin, and the pre-wound spring begins to unwind; when the spring fully unwinds, an internal striker hits the percussion cap, which explodes and sets off the TNT packed inside.
Compared to modern delayed fuses it was crude, but it was the most precise and reliable method that could be realized with present technology.
The question is whether Michelangelo will take this on.
Dang Unhwa the Laughing Explosive Dragon cared about nothing but explosives and was not originally a craftsman who worked metal, so he was the wrong man for the job. Han Cheol the metallurgy chief could handle it, but Hwiyeom wanted to see the skill of a genius the age itself acknowledged—Michelangelo. That was why he had deliberately dropped Leonardo’s name. A man who felt rivalry toward Leonardo would not refuse even if the task was making a weapon rather than architecture or sculpture.
And that prediction proved correct.
“Just you wait. I’ll make something that old man Leo could never even dream of.”
When Michelangelo’s eyes blazed, Hwiyeom smiled in satisfaction.
“Then I’ll leave it in your capable hands.”
As soon as preparations were complete, those bastards would pay the price for daring to make an enemy of Sichuan.