Omen
In the autumn of 1524, before Hwi-yeom had even set out for Beijing, the plains of Central Asia were already flowing in a direction utterly different from the original history of the world he had once known.
The Chagatai Khanate, which by all rights should have completely collapsed in 1402 when the bloodline of its khans was severed, had somehow endured for another hundred and twenty-two years. Not only that—it had subjugated the Oirats of eastern Central Asia and the Eastern Mongols, rising to become the undisputed master of the Mongol steppes.
Having crushed every major and minor clan into submission and brought the wars of unification to an end, Adiya Khan of Chagatai now faced three choices.
One was to push north and absorb what little remained of the Northern Yuan.
The second was to drive west, strike Khwarezm, and follow in the footsteps of the great Genghis Khan to reclaim dominion over the Islamic and European realms.
The last was to destroy the Gyeong Dynasty—the power that had toppled the Yuan Empire and seized the Central Plains—and take the heartland for themselves.
From the standpoint of justification, the final option was by far the most alluring.
The Chagatai Khanate itself claimed descent from Chagatai Khan, second son of Genghis Khan. Striking Gyeong, the eternal enemy of the Yuan, could therefore be regarded as nothing less than a national mission. Moreover, the Oirats who had only recently sworn allegiance still carried bitter memories of the thrashing they had received for daring to touch Sichuan.
Yet even though the hardliners who demanded war against Gyeong held the advantage in rhetoric, the atmosphere within the court remained tautly divided. The reason was simple: there were men who could not stop talking about exactly what had befallen the Oirats when they invaded Sichuan.
Silver thorn thickets that no warhorse could break through. A meteor shower of fury raining from the heavens. The earth itself shaking as though the sky-god Tengri had flown into a rage, reducing even the bravest noyon to a single stream of blood.
The hardliners dismissed it all as the bluster of defeated Oirats trying to hide their own miserable performance. Adiya Khan, however, had spent the long years of unifying the steppes carefully gathering every scrap of intelligence he could find.
In the course of that search he finally obtained information on Yunnan and Sichuan from a trader who had several times carried mare’s milk and hides into Yunnan.
“Sichuan and Yunnan are thick with checkpoints.”
“Thick with checkpoints? You mean they keep that many regular troops permanently stationed on the border?”
“No, my Khan. Those aren’t imperial soldiers. They belong to a martial faction called Noksan—think of them as a private army. The outpost that smashed the Oirats last time was one of theirs.”
“Is that so? Have you any sense of Noksan’s military strength?”
“Aigo, how would the likes of us know something like that? But there are a lot of them, that much is certain. Once my wife nagged me so hard I went all the way into Sichuan to buy their cosmetics. From Yunnan to Chengdu I must have passed through forty checkpoints.”
“And if one does not go through Yunnan, but straight into Sichuan?”
“I’ve never taken that road myself, but you can’t cross those mountains on horseback. You have no choice but to follow the narrow, winding valley paths. Your army gets strung out in a single long file. Perfect for ambushes, terrible for fighting.
That’s how the Oirats’ thousand horsemen met their end—they never even got past the first outpost.”
One outpost that had swallowed a thousand cavalry. And there were roughly forty such outposts. Simple arithmetic said that forty thousand horsemen would return to Tengri’s embrace before they ever set eyes on the gates of Chengdu.
Was that even possible?
“…Hmm.”
Nomads were far less meticulous about written records than settled peoples, relying instead on oral tradition and song. Even so, Adiya Khan knew the stories of how the Mongol Empire had once conquered the Central Plains. No matter how he turned it over in his mind, the tale of the Oirats sounded exaggerated.
And more than anything else, the situation itself demanded war.
Now that the steppes were united, the warrior class was overflowing and their blood ran hot. A nomadic empire whose entire economic and social structure collapsed unless it continually conquered and plundered its neighbors could not help but thirst for battle. If Adiya Khan refused war, he would be dragged from the khan’s seat.
He made his decision.
“The Northern Yuan is not worth occupying. From the lofty viewpoint of uniting the great steppe it might be necessary, but the frozen wastes they hold in the north are worthless land. We can leave them alone for a while.”
There was no reason to start a war merely to seize a dung-heap.
“Khwarezm in the west is strong. To conquer Khwarezm we must first, as our great ancestor Genghis Khan did, swallow the Central Plains and raise the power of the khanate.”
In the end Adiya Khan arrived at a thoroughly nomadic conclusion: conquer the Central Plains so they could be used as a logistics base.
“We strike Yunnan. Then, using Yunnan as our bridgehead, we advance into the heartland.
Let us raise the great Yuan anew with our own hands!”
“Yes, Khan!”
The noyons roared their approval. Adiya Khan issued his orders.
“The offensive will begin in early autumn, just as they start the harvest. We will sweep down in a single stroke, seize their grain, and make it our own supply.
Begin preparations for war.”
“Yes!”
“Also send envoys to Khwarezm and the Northern Yuan and conclude non-aggression pacts. For Khwarezm, speak of friendship and peace; for the Northern Yuan, guarantee them autonomy. That should suffice.”
Adiya Khan left nothing to chance, carefully laying the diplomatic groundwork so that no one could stab him in the back while he fought Gyeong. Unbeknownst to anyone in the Central Plains, they had just been marked for attack by the Chagatai Khanate.
Having concluded a most satisfactory agreement with Master Hyewon, Hwi-yeom presented the abbot with a Buddhist staff and a Buddhist bell cast from pure black iron as parting gifts. He left Sama Yun behind with the Sama Clan and returned to Sichuan ahead of her.
When the senior retainers of the Sichuan Dang Family, the elders of the Council of Elders, and Family Head Dang Un-sang heard of the political achievements Hwi-yeom had wrought in Beijing, they could not close their mouths.
From the blood-soaked secret pact with the Emperor to purge the Eight Great Families using patent rights, to the containment of the Bingzong Pi Clan, the alliance with the Gongzong Gol Clan, and the alliance with Shaolin Temple—translated into twenty-first-century terms, there had been absolutely nothing to filter out.
Never since the founding of the Sichuan Dang Family had they stood so close to the empire’s core power and spoken of such weighty matters.
Dang Un-sang praised his son’s accomplishments with honest admiration, yet could not entirely suppress his worry.
“The hearts of those in power are fickle. Always remember the old saying: when the cunning hare is dead, the hunting dog is cooked.”
“Father, if the rabbit hunt is finished, then yes, the hound is boiled. But what of a hound that, the moment the rabbit hunt ends, brings back a deer; the moment the deer is taken, brings back a wild boar; and the moment the boar is taken, brings back a great tiger? Can such a hound ever be cooked?”
A hunting dog is boiled only when its usefulness is spent. Isn’t the real problem that you have become worthless? If you simply keep generating so much value that the other side can never afford to cast you aside, then betrayal never even becomes an issue.
Not a single one of the projects Hwi-yeom had just proposed could be completed in a year or two. The crown jewel among them—the Great China Connection Plan—might not even be finished within Emperor Sungui’s entire reign.
Hwi-yeom smiled faintly.
“Do not worry, Father. I am well aware of the danger of being cooked once the hares are gone. I will make certain the Emperor cannot abandon the Dang Family even for the sake of his own position.”
“Very well. I trust you.”
“Yes.”
Hwi-yeom was confident. To ensure Emperor Sungui could never discard him, he needed only to keep fracturing and dividing every existing power base. Shatter the Eight Great Families, return their strength to the Emperor in pieces, and let a portion of that strength fall into the hands of pro-Dang forces such as the Dang Family, the Sama Clan, and the Gol Clan—forces that would then stand as counterweights.
If the Emperor ever tried to strike the Dang Family, he would inevitably strengthen every anti-Eight-Great-Families faction that had grown rich by tying itself to the Dangs—an outcome that would completely reverse the Emperor’s own determined effort to break the Eight Great Families’ power.
That is how the balance of power will settle. And the Dang Family will keep creating unique value of its own. The inventions, the Great China Connection Plan… at least while I live, and even into my grandson’s generation, the Imperial House of Great Gyeong will never be able to cast the main house aside.
Hwi-yeom’s smile faded into a serious expression.
“But Father, His Majesty the Emperor said the movements of Chagatai in the west are unusual. Did you learn anything during my absence?”
Dang Un-sang’s face grew equally grave.
“I was just about to tell you. Your regular customer, Ibn al-Nasir, came looking for you while you were gone. According to him, since last autumn the Chagatai Khanate has been buying up vast quantities of iron and grain. They purchase mainly from the Western Regions rather than from us, so the western merchants have been making quite a tidy profit.”
“….”
Hwi-yeom’s brow furrowed slightly.
“They have not been buying Central Plains rice or iron through Yunnan?”
“Small tribal-level deals are always happening, but nothing that looks like a sudden surge compared to the usual volume.”
“Something smells.”
Once a nomadic people finished unifying the steppes, raiding the settled civilizations was both their ancient traditional pastime and their means of making a living. If they were buying grain and iron—raw materials for weapons—from the west, the target of their next campaign was obvious.
This is troublesome…
If the khanate’s great host moved, its numbers would almost certainly exceed a hundred thousand and could easily surpass three hundred thousand. Hwi-yeom, who was reasonably well-versed in military history, recalled that Esen Taishi of the Dzungar Khanate in his original world had been estimated capable of fielding around three hundred and thirty thousand cavalry. A Chagatai that had unified the Mongol steppes would possess similar strength.
And these Mongol horsemen used martial arts.
Not the martial arts of the Central Plains, but a power unique to their own people. That power would make them incomparably more dangerous than the three hundred and thirty thousand cavalry of original history.
I’ve prepared as much defense as possible through Noksan, but… we’re short on gunpowder.
No matter how abundant the guano of Sichuan, no matter how vastly the saltpeter fields planted as a smokescreen for the Emperor had expanded, enabling the production of black powder in great quantities, the idea that the Sichuan Dang Family alone could stop an entire nation’s cavalry host was close to absurd.
If a mere thousand men somehow slaughtered tens of thousands of horsemen, the feat would be recorded as an impossible, heroic struggle. But what good would that do if the family itself was ruined?
“…We will need to arm the forces of Yunnan and Sichuan with flintlock muskets.”
And for that, the Emperor’s permission was required.
As for another layer of defense…
“Father, we must create a poison mist capable of annihilating a large enemy force.”
“Hm? Something like the Myeonghwangha we used against the locusts?”
“Yes. A similar substance, only this one will act on humans rather than insects.”
“Excellent!”
True to his position as head of the foremost house of poisons and hidden weapons, Dang Un-sang beamed with delight at his son’s words.
Hwi-yeom, however, could only sigh quietly inside.
Gunpowder has too many uses. The Imperial Army is already watching it closely. If the Dang Family is to possess the ability to repel a large-scale foreign invasion without drawing suspicion, this is the only way.
He had been contemplating the idea for some time. Yet his honest feeling was that he would rather never create such a thing.
Poison gas.
Together with barbed wire, machine-gun nests, and trenches, it had turned the trench battlefields of the Second World War into a living hell on earth. And now Hwi-yeom steeled his heart to invent it.