The Result
Why? Why won't it sink?!
In the end, Lee Chae-jun dove straight down through the chaos of the melee all the way to the ship's underside. He risked his life to do it for one simple reason: he could not make sense of what was happening. He had to see it with his own eyes.
When he reached the hull and found the bottom riddled with holes like a worm-eaten fruit, he nearly choked on his own breath.
What the hell is this?!
He gathered his internal energy and swung his beloved broadsword in a great slash across the underside of the ship. With a wet crack the wooden planking tore open, and heavy iron billets tumbled free into the water with a series of dull plunges.
But the ship did not list.
What?
Holding what little air remained in his lungs, Lee Chae-jun peered up through the gaping hole in the hull. Above the flooded lower hold, leather sacks lay spread across the ceiling of that hold—the floor of the middle deck—like a quilt.
They stopped the water with those leather bags?
Of course. The enemy must have anticipated that river pirates would go for the underside of the hull. One corner of Lee Chae-jun's mouth twisted upward.
You think a cheap trick like that can stop me?
He closed in under the sacks and swung his blade with all his strength.
A long, tearing rip—and something poured out into the water.
The water began to hiss and boil. Sensing that something was terribly wrong, Lee Chae-jun twisted to flee—but it was already too late.
The leather sacks had been made from animal guts resistant to stomach acid, specially treated on the inside with beeswax and acid-resistant tree resin. They had been filled to bursting with high-purity sulfuric acid. That acid poured over Lee Chae-jun's body and stole his sight in an instant.
A gurgling scream tore from his throat. Clutching his eyes in agony, he shrieked underwater as the acid-laced river water flooded into his mouth, searing his esophagus and windpipe. Writhing and thrashing in hellish torment, he slowly sank into the depths.
The idea that sulfuric acid dissolved into a river could turn the whole river into acid was pure fantasy. But before the high-purity acid could dilute in the water, it still held more than enough strength—right in front of his face—to burn out Lee Chae-jun's eyes, scorch his skin, and deliver a pain indistinguishable from death.
Even now the acid reacted violently with the water, bubbling and boiling as it showed the same hell to every other river pirate who had made the same choice as Lee Chae-jun.
Some of them were luckier. The ones who approached only after their vanguard had been drenched in acid, clawed at their eyes, and sunk while coughing up their last breath found that the acid had already diluted. Their eyes stung fiercely, but it was bearable.
Then they tried to punch through the ceiling of the lower hold where the acid sacks had hung—and froze in disbelief.
There's an iron plate over the wooden floor!
The iron plate was what had stopped water from seeping up into the middle deck. That was why the ship would not sink.
Knowing the cause did them no good. In the water, even masters struggled to show their full ability against the resistance of the current and the limits of their breath. River pirates trained in aquatic arts might swim like merfolk, but punching through an iron plate underwater was a completely different matter.
In the martial romances sold on the street, any dog or cow could slice iron plate like tofu. Reaching that level in reality, though, demanded at least upper First-rate rank, if not Peak mastery—and underwater, you would need something like mid Peak just to have a chance. To ordinary river pirates, the sheet of steel before their eyes was an impregnable fortress they could never breach.
After all that desperate effort and so many dead, the pirates who had reached their goal sank into hollow confusion. Their entire plan had rested on a single premise: no matter how many men they lost, if they could just dig under the ship and punch holes, they would win. With that premise shattered, the operation could no longer stand.
And when they realized that Lee Chae-jun—the one who had roared orders and driven the assault from behind them—was gone as well, the pirates surrendered to the instincts of base criminals and fled in every direction.
Like insects scattering the moment a stone is overturned, they poured out from beneath the merchant ship and scattered across the river. Watching them, the commander of the Fire Net Unit bellowed:
"Cast the lead sinkers and the barbed sea-stars!"
They cast the sea-stars wide, like fishermen hauling in a catch. Half water, half fish—it truly felt like that. The demonic sea-stars sank into the depths, each one wrapping itself around three or four pirates and dragging them down as unwilling companions.
Entangled in the barbed wire that bit into their bodies, unable even to move their limbs, the pirates stared up through eyes stained with terror and despair at the Dang Family ships on the surface as they drifted toward their promised drowning.
The ships cut proudly through the current that had turned red with blood, pressing ever forward—and for a moment they looked like the future of a clan that walked the path of hegemony itself.
The Flood Dragon Stronghold was annihilated.
No naval force had surrounded the stronghold and set it ablaze. Yet overnight, the Flood Dragon Stronghold was reduced to a wasteland. Nearly everyone who had joined the fight was dead, and the few who survived lost all confidence in working the Yangtze again so long as ships like that plied its waters—and fled.
The rumor raced the length of the Yangtze in an instant.
Ha Tae-ryong, Grand Chief of the Eighteen Strongholds of the Yangtze Waterways, spat out the cheap wine he had been drinking.
"Pffah! Wh-what? The Flood Dragon Stronghold… wiped out?"
"That is so."
"How the hell could those bastards… Don't tell me the Master of Ten Thousand Poisons, Dang Un-sang himself, was on board?"
No—even if Dang Un-sang had been aboard, he could not have shattered an entire water stronghold from the middle of a river. Ha Tae-ryong's mind spun at high speed. Then he arrived at the most reasonable answer his head could produce.
"We've been had. It wasn't a merchant ship—it was a warship. Looks like the Sichuan Provincial Administration and the Regional Military Commission finally decided to move in person."
"What do you mean by that, Grand Chief?"
"This is what I get for keeping you lot as water-bandits…"
Ha Tae-ryong's brow knotted hard. He let out a long sigh, then barked at the subordinate who served as his military advisor.
"Hey! Ink-stain—explain it!"
"…In my view," the advisor said, "a water stronghold the size of the Flood Dragon Stronghold does not vanish overnight through the work of some single martial clan. This wasn't a pitched battle in formation on open ground—it was a river fight, and one that started with our side's ambush, no less. Even the mighty Namgung Clan couldn't handle us and ended up paying transit tolls, did they not?"
"That's right."
"Yeah, yeah."
The officers nodded along. The advisor continued.
"They must have mobilized government troops. To head off any protest from the Hebei Provincial Administration, they stuffed warships full of government soldiers disguised as Sichuan Dang Family warriors, then passed the ships off as merchant vessels. Nothing else makes sense."
"Ahhh…!"
At last understanding (or so they thought), the officers slapped their knees and marveled at their chief's insight. Ha Tae-ryong stroked his rough beard.
"Nothing for it. For the time being, we don't touch any ships coming out of Sichuan."
"Grand Chief—will that be all right? If we stop obeying, the Hebei Regional Military Commander might decide to come after us."
"Then let them go block the Sichuan Regional Military Commander themselves. We've got an excuse now too. And I'm not saying we give up for good. We're only stepping back for a while."
"For a while?"
"Right. This isn't some East Sea coastal office that keeps a permanent navy. How long do you think some backwater inland yamen can keep this up? If we keep prodding them, they'll feel the need to stay ready—but if we leave them alone for a stretch, their guard will slip. That's when we hit and run again. Harass them like that, back and forth, and you force double losses on them—ships destroyed and grain burned just keeping troops in the field."
It sounded plausible enough. The advisor nodded.
"Grand Chief, shall I draft a suitable letter around that point?"
"Do it. Send it to the Hebei Regional Military Commander. Bastards. If you're going to use people, at least set the board properly first. I've never seen a single one of those state-fed parasites do a job right. Just order it and it's done, they think—useless, corrupt tamgwan-ori…"
Ha Tae-ryong spat.
And so the Eighteen Strongholds of the Yangtze Waterways resolved, for the time being, not to touch ships coming from Sichuan.
Word of that decision reached the Hebei Regional Military Commander, who nearly jumped out of his skin.
"This is a clear overreach of authority!"
He immediately sent the Sichuan Regional Military Commander a formal letter of protest over the projection of force into his jurisdiction. The Sichuan commander replied with two words: Groundless claim.
Convinced by the circumstances that this was barefaced Sichuan arrogance, the Hebei commander promptly ran and tattled to the Pi Clan in Beijing.
It was not that these men were fools or delusional. They simply reasoned—quite rationally—that a force of a mere hundred and fifty martial artists could not literally vaporize an entire water stronghold. Dealing with river pirates on open water was that reckless a proposition.
And once the Pi Clan received the report, they wasted no time launching their political games.
The Military-Origin Pi Clan—privileged by imperial grant to stamp that arrogant phrase, "source of all armies," before their family name. One of the founding houses of the Gyeong Empire, a great clan that held the Ministry of War in an iron grip, and one of the Eight Great Families of the Empire.
A great tree cannot grow from shallow roots. The Pi Clan's roots sank deep across the entire empire. For this particular affair they chose a blood relative planted at the very tip of one of those roots. A registrar of the fifth rank, attached to the Five Armies Commandery—just the right tool: not too blatant, not so extreme as to look completely unprincipled.
Registrar Pi Jeong-hun received the family's secret order and submitted a memorial. The next day, when Emperor Sungui was discussing state affairs in the audience hall, the memorial came up for debate.
"The Sichuan Regional Military Commander overstepped his authority by sending troops into Hebei and operating them there, and should be punished? Minister of War—do you know anything of this?"
Emperor Sungui asked with an expression of pure disbelief. Minister of War Pi Jae-hyeon bowed and answered.
"Your Majesty. Upon examining the contents of the memorial, not long ago a merchant vessel carrying steel billets produced by the State-run Ironworks under the Sichuan Provincial Administration was attacked by Yangtze river pirates while traveling by water. The Hebei Regional Military Commission, within whose jurisdiction the matter fell, took note and deployed troops—searching out pirate strongholds and commandeering small craft to comb the Yangtze. The pirates, however, proved extraordinarily elusive, and beyond the suppression of a few minor strongholds, little was achieved.
"Yet despite the Hebei commander's efforts, the attacks on merchant ships continued. Unable to endure it further, the Sichuan Provincial Administration is alleged to have requested that the Sichuan Regional Military Commander send troops into Hebei—thus overstepping his authority."
"Alleged?"
"It is not certain. But if Sichuan did not mobilize its forces, would the pirates have simply vanished of their own accord?"
Emperor Sungui gave a short laugh. Through Baek Beon he had already received word that Hwi-yeom had wiped out the pirates, so the full shape of the affair was plain to him.
They wanted to strike at the Sichuan Provincial Administration and couldn't manage it—so now they'll clamp onto the Regional Military Commander and try to interfere in the provinces.
The places the Pi Clan—who nearly monopolized military authority—had never quite managed to reach were precisely the provincial armies and the Emperor's personal guard. The Regional Military Commissions of the thirteen provinces were all appointed directly by the Emperor, and men who listened well to the Pi Clan had been carefully shut out. In truth, even drawing in the Hebei Regional Military Commander for this affair had cost them considerable effort.
Having seen through the Pi Clan's design to use this incident to expand their influence over Sichuan's provincial forces, Emperor Sungui smiled with perfect composure.
"If that is the case, then it is settled. The force that suppressed the pirates was not Sichuan's army, but the strength of a single family."
"Pardon?"
So unexpected was the answer that Pi Jae-hyeon looked straight up at the Emperor before hastily dropping his gaze again.
"We have already received the report from Our Eastern Depot. We commanded the Sichuan Dang Family to punish that rampant pack of river pirates. This was their doing—there is nothing further to investigate."
"Your Majesty, I speak in dread, but if that is so, then the matter is all the more grave."
Pi Jae-hyeon countered at once.
"Grave?"
"Indeed. What a provincial government army could not accomplish, a private martial force of some regional clan has done. Should they ever harbor other designs, I fear they would throw the provinces into great turmoil.
"If they hold no treacherous intent, then they ought to surrender all their weapons to Your Majesty and either disband of their own accord—or else enlist in the government forces. That, I submit, is the proper course."
A demand, in short, that the Sichuan Dang Family be destroyed.
The atmosphere in the audience hall began to turn strange.