Making Cement
When Dang Un-sang’s eyes turned fierce under the elders’ barrage of criticism, the council flinched as one.
They were afraid he might suddenly switch again and cow them into silence.
They cast sidelong glances at Elder Hong Ilgon, the ringleader of this affair, trembling with unease.
Hong Ilgon, however, was brimming with certainty.
Dang Un-sang’s pride as the true heir of a great house runs deep. Last time he lost his temper because his son’s life hung in the balance and they hurled curses at him. Something of this scale will not drive him to act against us.
In a firm tone he addressed the family head.
“Family Head, it is presumptuous of me to say so, yet it is a fact that the costs the Dang Family has borne and the risks it has endured in this matter far outweigh anything we have gained.
Should we not press the Emei Sect further and extract something more?”
Going back after a matter was already settled to demand payment was a truly graceless act, one that would diminish the dignity of the Family Head and the main bloodline of the Sichuan Dang Family.
Yet the elders’ claim was not entirely baseless, so the Family Head would find himself in a difficult position.
That was the plan: pressure the Family Head, then withdraw after extracting a suitable profit from the main household’s treasury.
Dang Un-sang, however, pushed back far harder than expected.
“Have any of you elders even set foot in Seongdo? Have you heard what they are saying about our Dang Family—not only among the Emei Sect, but throughout the streets of the city itself!”
The elders were struck speechless by Dang Un-sang’s bellow, which had discarded even formal speech.
“Everyone is falling over themselves to praise the Dang Family’s virtue and righteousness!
They call us the house of righteous men who risked their lives to save people in a matter that had nothing to do with them, and who demanded not a single coin in return!
Even the land we received was something the Emei Sect offered out of guilt—we refused it at first and only accepted under pressure!
Have any of you ever stepped forward and elevated the Dang Family’s standing like this? How long has it been since the name of our once-declining house was praised so highly!”
“B-but it is still a fact that there was no profit relative to the materials we expended….”
“Where did the Young Master spend family funds? Every last copper of the money spent on this affair came from Hwiyeom’s private purse! He even paid the full market price for every scrap of food taken from the storehouses!
And if profit is all that matters, why does Elder Kwon Dong-hyeon still cling to the Dang Family? Pursue only profit and what are you but an unorthodox sect, not an orthodox one?
As elders of our great Dang Family—representatives of the orthodox path that upholds benevolence and chivalry—do you possess any self-awareness or not!”
“Urgh….”
His words were unassailable. So long as they claimed to be a renowned orthodox house, chasing profit alone would deal a grave blow to their honor.
Why were great houses respected as great houses?
If strength alone were enough, they would be feared like the vile Demonic Cult and nothing more.
Great houses had earned their renown precisely because they sometimes gave and aided those around them for the sake of righteousness and chivalry, even knowing it would cost them.
In the end, the elders, outmatched on the grounds of principle, could only shut their mouths.
Meanwhile, having secured the long-coveted coal mines and hot springs of the Emei Sect, Hwiyeom pushed Elder Bak Chang-eon to purchase the limestone region of Huanglong while simultaneously preparing negotiations for the last remaining coal-mine holding: that of the Qingcheng Sect.
Unlike the Emei Sect, which had gratefully offered land after receiving kindness, the Qingcheng Sect had nothing to lose and proved extremely lukewarm about negotiating at all.
In the end Hwiyeom was forced to push the deal through at what, to outside eyes, looked like a considerable loss.
He signed a fifty-year long-term lease in exchange for three hundred jars of Hogol-go ointment and one hundred iron swords forged from the Dang Family’s Mugyeol-jeonggang every year.
“Anyone can see this is the Young Master’s blunder!”
The elders pounced at once, certain they had found a weakness. To silence their criticism, Dang Un-sang promptly revealed—exactly as he had been waiting to do—why Hwiyeom had bought land that contained coal mines in the first place.
Only then did the elders realize that coal was the fuel for the crucible furnaces; they slapped their foreheads.
“Coal! So that was the secret of the crucible furnaces!”
“That’s why they accepted that useless land from the Emei Sect!”
“Where else produces coal?”
“Contact every collateral branch that runs ironworks or trading houses! Buy up the coal mines and install crucible furnaces yourselves—we must stop the main household’s monopoly!”
Stopping the main household’s monopoly meant breaking the exclusive hold of the Dang Family proper on iron and iron goods.
An elder of the Dang Family actively working to harm the Dang Family’s interests might sound absurd, yet it was perfectly natural.
In Hwiyeom’s eyes, the Sichuan Dang Family was, to its elders, nothing more than a company on whose board they served as directors.
Their own main houses, their wives’ families, or the ironworks and trading houses held by their children—those were the companies they actually owned.
Even if the Dang Family prospered, their stipends would not increase. But if they seized the family’s sources of livelihood and funneled the profit into their own trading houses, their private purses grew fat.
Which elder would refuse?
It was exactly like a modern corporate director committing breach of trust and embezzlement for personal gain.
At least modern corporations banned concurrent posts to prevent people from siphoning funds into companies they owned.
The Dang Family’s structure is riddled with problems.
Viewed through a businessman’s eyes, Hwiyeom found the clan’s governance thoroughly distasteful.
The “seniority system” that promoted department and warehouse heads to elder solely by years of service; the “lifetime tenure” that produced personnel bottlenecks because no one retired until death; the dignity allowances and various stipends that began the moment one became an elder.
I’ll tear the whole thing apart and rebuild it eventually.
That was Hwiyeom’s thought.
Meanwhile the elders were tearing their hair out.
“What? Every coal seam and mining site across Sichuan Province already has an owner?”
“Damn it! What the hell is Hwieon General Trading Company? Who owns it!”
“Negotiate with them! What? You can’t get in touch?! Find a way to contact them somehow!”
No matter how hard they drove their subordinates, there was no way to meet a “Jeong Pansu” who did not exist.
Hwiyeom had already completed his monopoly on coal throughout Sichuan Province, so the exposure of the information meant nothing.
Most of the coal mines belonged to the ghost company Hwieon General Trading; the Qingcheng and Emei mines were monopolized by the Sichuan Dang Family.
The Qingcheng Sect ground their teeth when they learned the truth too late, but the contract was already signed. The Emei Sect felt somewhat aggrieved as well, yet they did not voice it against their life-saving benefactors of the Dang Family.
Making enemies of both Qingcheng and Emei would be unwise. I’ll use Emei’s strength to keep Qingcheng in check.
To soothe the Emei Sect, Hwiyeom personally visited them and agreed to transfer thirty percent of the coal mined on Mount Emei back to the sect.
“Will you truly do that for us?”
“Yes. In exchange, sell that coal only to our Dang Family. A kind of cartel. No matter what price anyone else offers, promise to sell only to us, and we proceed with the contract.”
“We lose nothing on our end. Very well.”
In the end the transaction between Emei and the Dang Family amounted to nothing more than shifting the Dang Family’s own coal from one pocket to the other while sharing a little profit with the Emei Sect. He had handed them benefits without breaking the monopoly.
With that, Emei and the Sichuan Dang Family grew even closer, and a natural two-against-one alignment of Emei Sect plus Sichuan Dang Family versus Qingcheng Sect took shape.
Of course monopolizing every coal mine in the entire Central Plains is impossible, so if they want they can import from other provinces—but that would be idiotic.
Hwiyeom smiled mischievously.
If they did so, the transport costs alone would force them to produce iron at a constant loss compared to the Dang Family and still try to compete.
True, the Qingcheng site would have to be returned after fifty years, but the real question was whether a coal mine mined for fifty years would even still have anything left.
Even if it doesn’t run dry, it doesn’t matter. I’m not planning to live off selling iron for fifty years. There are any number of things I can do in the meantime.
As his plans advanced smoothly one after another, Hwiyeom wore the smile of a well-fed tiger—until news arrived that Elder Bak Chang-eon had successfully purchased the limestone region of Huanglong, and he clapped his hands in delight.
Huanglong was a vast karst landscape formed over long ages as groundwater dissolved massive limestone deposits—famous tourist scenery in Sichuan in the twenty-first century.
In the martial world, however, its extreme elevation of twenty-five hundred meters and limestone terrain made it unsuitable even for farming, so the local magnates of Songpa County who owned the mountains treated it as little more than a scenic spot for the occasional refined outing.
When Hwiyeom asked whether bargaining with a magnate who wanted for nothing had been difficult, Elder Bak Chang-eon gave an unexpected answer.
“Thanks to the Young Master, it was easier than expected.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes. The Zhang clan of Songpa County decided it would do them no harm to place the Sichuan Dang Family—holders of the only physicians who can cure cholera—under a debt of gratitude.”
“Ah….”
A skilled physician was precious in any era.
Being able to cure cholera was equivalent, in modern terms, to the director of a university hospital possessing unique medical technology.
If they ever contracted cholera themselves, could they not request the Dang Family’s aid?
“I ought to write a letter of thanks.”
“Yes. When shall we begin extraction?”
“The sooner the better.”
“But what do you intend to do with the lime…? Whitewashing doesn’t require such quantities.”
“Lime, coal, and then steel and sulfur.”
At Elder Bak Chang-eon’s words Hwiyeom grinned.
“Once we finally have saltpeter as well, the Dang Family’s hundred-year plan will stretch and wake.”
“This old body cannot even begin to fathom the Young Master’s foresight.”
Having worked with Hwiyeom for nearly a year already, Elder Bak Chang-eon still could not guess what the boy intended to create, yet he held Hwiyeom’s abilities in high regard and raised no further questions.
Winter arrived.
When farming stopped, the peasants found themselves idle at home, and as the lean season before the barley harvest began to loom, Elder Bak Chang-eon recruited those farmers as laborers under the name of Hwieon General Trading Company.
“What’s the point of loafing at home? The lean months were already weighing on my mind—better earn a few silver pieces and buy rice and barley with them.”
The farmers threw themselves into the work with enthusiasm.
Of course, building mines was impossible without specialized labor, so large numbers of carpenters were also hired and put to work.
They also sought help from the Zhang clan of Songpa County, hiring people to haul the lime all the way to Seongdo.
“What are they going to make by hauling lime?”
“Who knows? Maybe whitewash the crucible furnaces?”
“Or maybe they’ve secured new land and are building blast furnaces?”
Since every furnace had already been converted from the old steel furnaces to crucible furnaces, such speculation was natural.
Hwiyeom did plan to expand the furnaces, but not yet.
Flooding the market with too much iron would crash the price; a temporary adjustment of timing was necessary.
What Hwiyeom decided to tackle first was none other than the water and sewage system.
“I learned a great deal from the Emei Sect’s ordeal.”
Hwiyeom earnestly explained to Dang Un-sang the necessity of separating clean water from wastewater.
“When human and animal waste seeps into the groundwater and contaminates it, waterborne epidemics will keep breaking out.
We must create separate paths—one for foul water to leave and one for clean water to enter.”
“But is there any clever method?”
“Yes. There is precedent. According to records I read in the journals of the Ironwood Formation, there once existed in the Western Regions a nation called the Roma Empire….”
Hwiyeom described Roman aqueducts and the concept of water and sewage systems to Dang Un-sang.
At first the Family Head looked half-convinced at best—until Hwiyeom showed him the cement blocks he had mixed and hardened as a trial. Dang Un-sang nearly bounced on the spot in astonishment.
“These bricks are made from that lime?”
They were cement produced on principles similar to Roman cement—lime powder, volcanic ash, and straw mixed with seawater.
Though volcanic ash and seawater were unavailable, he had substituted the iron-oxide-rich ash from the blast furnaces for volcanic ash and mixed in eggshells and powdered animal bone, creating excellent cement.
Of course it had not appeared overnight.
Hwiyeom and the craftsmen had spent more than a month discovering the secret of a cement mixture that set to the proper hardness.
“Yes! I formed them into bricks only as a demonstration, but you can also pour it into large molds and set it all at once into massive pieces. I will use this Simanto to construct an aqueduct.”
“You have my permission. Proceed.”
With Dang Un-sang’s approval, Hwiyeom immediately assigned laborers and broke ground.
The water source was the mountain behind the Sichuan Dang Family’s main estate.
Since the entire mountain was effectively under the family’s control, it would be difficult for outsiders to approach the source, poison it, or seize it.
Using the existing groundwater as-is made volume control difficult, so Hwiyeom dug several additional springs where the groundwater already welled up, then laid channels so the water would gather in a reservoir.
He also cut a channel from the lake that already existed on the mountain and linked it to the reservoir.
The channels leading to the reservoir were lined with U-shaped cement blocks, then covered with more cement blocks to keep leaves and animal carcasses from clogging the flow.
Lattice filters were installed at both the inlet and outlet of the reservoir to prevent sediment from fouling it.
Sluice gates that could be raised and lowered controlled the reservoir’s storage and discharge.
From the reservoir the aqueduct followed the slope of the mountainside, supported at intervals by pillars, crossed the estate walls, and collected in a water tank situated in the middle of the main compound.
The tank itself was built of cement; its lid was wood so the interior could be cleaned periodically.
Completing the work this far took nearly six months, and in that time Hwiyeom turned nine years old.
It was a world without proper heavy machinery, yet the presence of martial artists—human heavy equipment superior to any machine—allowed progress at an almost unbelievable speed.
On the day the water tank was finished, under the worried and mocking gazes of many, Hwiyeom turned the tap of that tank while Dang Un-sang, Eun Seol-ran, the rest of the main household, and the elders of the council watched with cold, sharp eyes.
As the water gushed out in a thick stream, the elders of the council wore blank expressions. Hwiyeom smiled sweetly at them.
“From now on the servants of the Dang Family will no longer need to struggle under water yokes, trudging back and forth between the wells and every corner of the estate.”
The people of the Dang Family could not hide their rapture at the water that poured forth the moment the tap was turned.
In particular the maidservants who had once had to carry laundry all the way down the mountain to the washing place gazed up at Hwiyeom as though looking upon a god.
Even the usually expressionless Ye-eun whispered to him with sparkling eyes.
“Young Master, you are the greatest person I know.”
“It’s nothing to make a fuss over.”
He had not yet managed to invent a pump, so the system simply used gravity to draw mountain water into the house—yet the people’s satisfaction was extremely high.
While everyone was still lost in the charm of the waterworks, Hwiyeom broke ground on the sewage system.