To Beijing
At last, every preparation was complete.
Hui-yeom resolved to set out for Beijing to present his gifts to Emperor Sungui.
While the handover of duties for his absence was underway, Dang Un-sang nodded weakly, his face sallow and drained of color.
"Well… Yeom-ah, do you really need to go yourself? As your father sees it, simply sending the gifts up would be more than enough…."
"This is a golden opportunity to make a show of it and pry loose some concessions, is it not? It would be a shame to waste it."
"…Fine…."
Dang Un-sang lowered his head in surrender, and Eun Seol-ran patted his shoulder with a wry smile.
"Dear."
"Mm. All right."
Resigned, Dang Un-sang lifted his head again. The pitiful look from moments before had vanished without a trace; in its place was the solemn dignity of a Family Head, overflowing with authority as he spoke in earnest.
"Go and show Beijing the spirit of our Dang Family, my son."
"Yes. This humble son, Dang Hui-yeom, receives the Family Head's command."
Those departing with Hui-yeom were: first, their watcher and escort leader, Baek Beon; Hui-yeom's fiancée, Sama Yun; his first and second secretaries, Ye-eun and Lee Jinmyeong; Elder Jin Cheong, representing the Financial Branch; Hui-yeom's bodyguard, Dang Su-jeong; Michelangelo himself, who would assemble the gift for the Emperor; and the escort force assigned to see them safely to Beijing—fifty from the Flame Net Unit, ten from the Dokwadae, and ten from the Cutting Wind Unit.
Compared to their previous journey to Beijing with four hundred people, the numbers had been greatly reduced. Part of that was because the river pirates of the Eighteen Strongholds of the Yangtze were no longer a threat, and part of it was the confidence that came from knowing they were armed with their "new weapons."
All seventy-odd members of the Dang Family party were equipped with the flintlock muskets to be presented to the Emperor—or, in the parlance of the Central Plains, suseokchong.
It was the result of relentless research by the weapons enthusiasts of the Innovation Hall, including Dang Un-hwa, carried out even while Hui-yeom's attention had been absorbed by external ventures.
Captivated by the boundless possibilities of black powder, and emboldened by the future knowledge and ideas Hui-yeom had passed down, they had produced achievement after achievement. The flintlock was one of them.
Of course, deep in the Sichuan Dang Family's underground secret vaults, Dreyse rifles that used paper cartridges had already been manufactured and stockpiled.
With Hui-yeom's knowledge of the future, there had never been any real need to cling to muzzle-loading black-powder rifles; he could have skipped the stage entirely. The reason they had made matchlocks and then refined them into flintlocks was precisely to prepare for the day state power would covet them.
A day like this one.
The flintlocks would be demonstrated in Beijing and presented to Emperor Sungui.
The Emperor would be delighted, no doubt.
But the Dang Family's martial artists already possessed the Dreyse—that famous "needle gun" capable of breech-loading with paper cartridges—and they had Gatling guns as well.
For a good while yet, until the Emperor's great armies were fully armed, they would sell flintlocks, or have the Emperor's craftsmen produce them while taking their cut of the rights.
After that, they would sell the Dreyse rifles.
And by then, of course, the Sichuan Dang Family would already be equipped with smokeless-powder brass-cartridge magazine-fed rifles, and instead of hand-cranked Gatlings they would have Maxim machine guns.
Moreover, displaying the flintlocks on this journey to Beijing served as another kind of "smoke screen."
"How is the condition of the Dang-chong that fire using Pokdok-gong?"
"Excellent. Their power is no less than the flintlocks, and in rate of fire and stopping power they outright surpass them."
That was the other purpose—to field the Dang-chong, the weapon the Dang Family's warriors sometimes called the "pop-gun."
Like the Hagyeongchong that Dang Su-jeong used, which required no gunpowder, the Dang-chong was loaded with a bullet and then, in place of powder, a charge of explosive poison that detonated on firing.
What made the weapon unique was that, since no powder was packed in from the muzzle, there was no need to load the bullet from the front either. By that logic, it was their first "official breech-loading rifle."
It was laid down in advance as a smoke screen, so that if the Dang Family were later caught using breech-loading rifles or pistols, they would have a ready excuse to blur the truth.
And from the Nokryong Shingong—transmitted only among the family's direct line—they had isolated just the function that generated "explosive poison" and created a degraded copy version called Pokdok-gong, so that even non-bloodline warriors could learn it.
All of this was the fruit of the Innovation Hall's labor over the past few years, while railways spread across Sichuan and new ventures took root in Yunnan and Guizhou.
Considering they had achieved it while also producing the black powder and the Dabal-shinggi-jeon to present to the Emperor, the countless nights they had spent working overtime had not been in vain.
Thus the Flame Net Unit, much like dual-wielding swordsmen of old, crossed a pair of rifles over their backs.
A muzzle-loading flintlock, and a breech-loading Dang-chong.
In their sleeves they carried oil-paper packets of powder and bullet pouches.
Just as Europe's musketeers, armed with flintlocks, had worn twelve cartridge pouches and called them the "Twelve Apostles," the warriors of the Flame Net Unit named their twelve bullet pouches the "Twelve Earthly Branches."
"I hope the day we get to use them in real combat comes soon."
The captain of the Flame Net Unit stroked his beloved rifle and grinned.
Under circumstances like these, they had been able to cut the numbers drastically.
And while seventy soldiers might be an embarrassingly small force by the standards of a national army, seventy elite martial artists of a Jianghu sect could constitute an entire mid-sized school's full strength—or a number that even a great sect would have to steel itself for a major battle to face.
Leaving the Sichuan Dang Family, Hui-yeom's party boarded an iron-delivery ship from the State-run Ironworks and traveled down the Min River as far as Chongqing. From there they transferred to a private vessel prepared by the Sama Clan and continued down the Yangtze.
Along the way, Hui-yeom stopped from time to time to inspect the docks, wharves, and surrounding facilities under construction.
Construction workers dispatched by Hwi-eon Comprehensive Construction and the laborers of the Angang Water Transport Safety Management Corporation—commonly just Angang, all of them former river pirates—were hard at work. When they spotted the Dang Family party they snapped to attention and offered crisp greetings.
"Welcome, sir."
"Seeing you so far from home is all the more welcome, Section Chief of Architecture Two."
"…Bung-geub-seub-neu-deu…."
The moment Construction Department Manager Gwak Do had received Hui-yeom's construction plans, he had drawn lots to decide which section chief would be thrown into this long-term out-of-province posting. The unlucky Architecture Section Chief Two had been all but dragged out here, and for the next several months—nearly a full year—he would have little hope of escaping bachelor status. The look he fixed on Hui-yeom overflowed with a very particular kind of "affection."
Hui-yeom grinned, quietly called the man over, and stuffed a thick envelope of special bonus pay into his coat, snuffing out the discontent.
"Pocket money your wife doesn't know about."
"I will serve with absolute loyalty."
There was a limit to giving the disease and then the cure. The first "pay stubs" in the Central Plains, which Hui-yeom had instituted and sent home without fail, had made it nearly impossible for household heads to skim a little off the top, and their complaints had been climbing to the heavens. So Hui-yeom had invented this: performance bonuses that never appeared on any stub, doled out now and then as a carrot.
Before pay stubs existed, wives had always assumed their husbands kept some money back from the household. Once the stubs arrived, it never occurred to them that bonuses like these might still be floating around as emergency funds.
Watching the section chief's mood brighten at once over the fat envelope, Hui-yeom asked,
"Are the laborers sent by the government cooperative?"
"Yes. For the most part, they're about average."
This was a state enterprise meant to revitalize water transport along the entire Yangtze. Emperor Sungui had already ordered the Ministry of Revenue to buy out the twenty-two shipping houses that had been operating on the river, and to expand the fleet to make up for the shortfall in vessels.
The infrastructure expansion Angang was carrying out was a massive project involving every province that touched the Yangtze: Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Anhui, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu.
Of course, Angang as the principal contractor did not yet have the capacity to operate in so many provinces at once. Work would begin in Sichuan—Chongqing Prefecture was still counted as part of Sichuan—and then move steadily eastward.
For now, while the construction was still in Sichuan, there would be little interference, and Sichuan's own laborers would remain cooperative. But what about when they reached Hubei, Hunan, and especially Anhui?
Naturally no one would dare openly obstruct a project ordered by the Imperial House….
Still, I'd better season things in advance so they can't pull any tricks.
There was no need for the Sichuan Dang Family or Angang to confront Anhui's Namgung Clan or the Pi Clan that controlled the Ministry of War head-on.
As they rode the Yangtze eastward, Hui-yeom disembarked in each province they passed and paid calls on the provincial administrative commissioner's yamen, the regional military commander's yamen, and the surveillance commissioner's yamen.
There he presented the provincial administrator, the surveillance commissioner, and the regional military commander with considerable quantities of silver and cold-iron weapons forged by Guyaja-je.
"Our humble house is but a local clan of one province, yet we have received His Majesty's excessive favor and have, against our original intent, come to pursue this enterprise within Your Excellency's jurisdiction.
This is not a path for our family alone; it is also the command of His Imperial Majesty for the good of the nation. We would be most grateful if you would look kindly upon us and grant us much assistance.
This is a modest sum, deposited in advance against the possibility that funds may be needed for the works in the future."
He called it a "deposit," but no fool failed to understand it was a bribe.
"…Very well. I shall take good care of it. You need have no worries about the work in our province."
The shock of the provincial administrator corruption scandal in Yunnan a few years earlier had not yet fully faded; high officials were not about to stick a straw into a project the Emperor himself had ordered and start siphoning bribes. They all accepted the "deposits" with humble propriety.
And it was not truly corrupt, either.
In a Central Plains that still ran on guanxi, failing to offer a gift—or refusing one that was offered—was itself a declaration that one intended to sever the relationship. There had never been an option to refuse.
It was a kind of confirmation ritual.
By offering the bribe-that-was-not-a-bribe, Hui-yeom made clear that he would respect the high officials' authority. By accepting it, the high officials signaled that they would not obstruct his enterprise.
A procedure thoroughly in the spirit of "Chinese-style business" proceeded smoothly.
But as is always the way of the world, not every affair could run so smoothly forever.
When Hui-yeom's party at last disembarked at Wuhan in Hubei and set out overland toward the Grand Canal inland, they spotted a group of people approaching from far down the road.
Ye-eun was the first to notice them.
"Young Master, a party is coming from that direction."
"Hm?"
Several sharp-eyed members of the Cutting Wind Unit were sent forward at once to reconnoiter. They reported that roughly three hundred people were blocking the road and waiting.
"Though they wear shabby clothes, every one of them is properly armed, and their discipline looks strict."
"They're dressed like bandits of the wilds, but they are almost certainly either martial artists or regular troops."
"Yeom-ah."
Dang Su-jeong's expression hardened as she heard the report.
"Looks like either the Pi Clan or the Namgung Clan—or someone—wants to rough us up."
"Isn't that perfect timing?"
Hui-yeom gave a soft snort of laughter.
"An ideal chance to put the flintlocks through a live-fire trial."