Embezzlement
The Cheon Family controlled the majority of the Menxia Department.
In the original history, the Three Departments and Six Ministries system had vanished by the Ming dynasty, its authority absorbed into the Six Ministries alone. That absorption had been an attempt to strengthen imperial power—and Emperor Sungui of this world shared the same ambition.
He had little choice. The imperial Ju Family, the maternal Cheon Family, and the former feudal Wang Family had seized the Three Departments and used them at every turn to check the throne. The Cheon Family, moreover, had planted its people in key posts far beyond the Menxia Department. Cheon Sang-hun, who held the post of Zhenglang—a Rank Three high official who assisted the Vice Ministers—in the Ministry of Revenue, the organ that handled the empire’s money, was one such carefully placed agent.
Of course, the Cheon’s influence alone had not lifted him to the Zhenglang’s seat. A considerable share of the credit belonged to the wife now glaring at him with eyes blazing, scolding him without pause. In order to expand his influence inside a Ministry of Revenue dominated by the Bang Family, he had contracted a political marriage with the daughter of the most powerful non-Bang minister among the Ministry’s great officials.
The trouble was that she possessed every ugly trait common among the scions of great houses in this age: arrogance that treated subordinates like livestock, a callous indifference to others’ pain paired with hypersensitivity to the least hangnail on her own finger, and a petty vindictiveness that demanded revenge by any means once she felt slighted. So she had acted without consulting her husband.
Had she truly believed a handful of back-alley thugs could damage a Sichuan Dang Family shop? The notion that a store could never harm its customers was far too naïve. And even if harm were done—what of the aftermath? The slightest investigation would reveal who had ordered it.
Yet his wife remained brazen. What can those people possibly do to me? That was her attitude. Cheon Sang-hun bitterly resented his father-in-law. No matter how impatient and averse to study his daughter had been, was it not a parent’s duty to raise the rod and teach her properly? Raised in pampered luxury under an indulgent father, never once forced to endure anything unpleasant, the woman had naturally pushed this affair through exactly as she pleased.
Her thoughtlessness and folly were so complete they almost inspired admiration. Had she not been his own wife, he might have given her a standing ovation for sheer nerve. But she was his wife—and that was the problem. Even with the Cheon Family as his backing, the years of navigating every slight and intrigue inside the Bang-dominated Ministry of Revenue, clawing his way to the Zhenglang’s chair, had been filled with suffering he could not recount without tears. The thought that a single heedless blunder by his wife might turn it all to foam made fury rise to the crown of his head.
“What in the world were you thinking—or were you thinking at all? Why go and do something no one asked for and make this mess!”
His wife refused to yield to the scolding.
“Why are you shouting like that? I only meant well!”
“You know perfectly well the whole main house was thrown into chaos over that Dang Hui-yeom—or whatever his name is! Pouring oil on that fire was already more than enough! What exactly did you do so well that you’re shouting back at me?”
“I entrusted it to someone reliable! The people of the great Cheon Family—who move even the Emperor—are suffering this humiliation because of some lowly provincial clan, and you expect us simply to swallow it? How are we supposed to keep our dignity before the lesser folk?”
“Dignity, my foot! Why can’t you see that your mindless stunt has put the entire Cheon Family in danger?”
“Ha! We are the Cheon Family! And my own father is a Vice Minister of Revenue—one of the two, the other being Sama Seung! Do you truly believe His Majesty will pick a fight with the Cheon Family over a little disturbance at one clan’s shop?”
“You—you—you thick-skulled fool who can’t even grasp the situation! What good is that head of yours if this is how you use it?”
Emperor Sungui’s reaction to the present crisis made one fact crystal clear: given even the thinnest pretext, he would not hesitate to draw his blade against the Eight Great Families.
“Husband!”
His wife’s face had gone pale at the unprecedented abuse. Cheon Sang-hun waved a dismissive hand.
“No more talk. Stay at your parents’ house until things quiet down.”
In the end he shoved the still-protesting woman—still crowing that she had done well—out the door and packed her off to her family. He pressed his forehead and closed his eyes. The steward approached.
“My lord.”
“…The situation?”
“Quiet.”
The steward’s tone was measured.
“The Forbidden City has shown no reaction, and neither Caffe the One nor Dang Hui-yeom has issued any official statement. Those men are currently working off their sentences as laborers for Caffe the One.”
“Laborers?”
“They appear to be hauling heavy stones.”
“Any sign they were beaten or tortured into talking?”
“None.”
“…I don’t understand. Could they already have spilled everything?”
“But my lord, if they had, why has no interrogation reached us? Perhaps the backers were never discovered, and they are being kept deliberately.”
“So if anyone tries to contact those scraps of trash, that person becomes the backer.”
“That is this humble servant’s thought.”
“Ha. So we simply sit and watch? Leave them alone and they may be coaxed or threatened into talking—”
The steward glanced at his master’s face before speaking carefully.
“Well… I doubt the madam would have let anything truly important slip to such men.”
“I know that. But words can always be twisted into whatever shape one needs. Hah…”
After a moment’s thought he said,
“No choice. Keep watching quietly for now, then dispose of them in secret. Is poison feasible?”
His expectation that a few common thugs could hardly share Dang Hui-yeom’s immunity to poison—and could therefore be removed with relative ease—was promptly shattered.
“In the wake of the attempt on Dang Hui-yeom’s life, every assassin organization in Beijing has gone to ground. Even meeting a middleman for a contract is impossible right now.”
“Damn it… What if we obtain the poison ourselves and use reliable men from the family?”
“If it is discovered, it could become ironclad evidence…”
“Call it personal excess. Claim they held a grudge after being beaten by black-society thugs somewhere. No one can drag the entire Cheon Family into it over something that thin.”
“That is… true enough.”
“Then make ready.”
“Yes, my lord.”
At that moment a page’s voice sounded outside the door.
“My lord, a guest has arrived.”
“A guest? I have no appointments today… Did he make one?”
“He did not, yet he said that if I told you his name you would see him…”
Irritation flared, but Cheon Sang-hun reined it in.
“Hah… Who on earth is this person who thinks Cheon Sang-hun will drop everything and clear his schedule at any hour? On what grounds? Who is he? Let me at least see his face.”
“It is… a man named Dang Hui-yeom.”
Cheon Sang-hun’s face hardened for an entirely different reason. He snapped his head around and glared at the steward, who frantically waved both hands.
“I swear there was no sign of any confession!”
“…Tsk!”
So he has come to confront me in person. Fast, I’ll grant him that. But foolish. To dare threaten a direct descendant of the great Cheon Family… Today I will show him exactly why the Eight Great Families are the Eight Great Families.
Having steeled himself, Cheon Sang-hun spoke in a deliberately casual tone.
“Very well. But this is an office, unfit for receiving so distinguished a guest. Tell him I will see him shortly in the tea pavilion of the inner quarters.”
“Yes.”
Cheon Sang-hun cast one last look at the steward and left the room.
A short while later, in the tea pavilion.
Hui-yeom sat in the luxurious inner quarters of the Cheon residence, cradling a warm teacup and gazing at the beautiful scenery around him. He had drunk about half the tea brought for him while he waited when Cheon Sang-hun, immaculately dressed, entered with a perfectly composed expression.
“Welcome, Young Master Dang.”
“I appeared unannounced without so much as an appointment, yet you receive me so warmly. I hardly know where to put myself.”
“Haha. When Young Master Dang, who enjoys His Majesty’s favor, comes in person, a man like myself must of course offer the most careful welcome.”
Cheon Sang-hun’s opening jab was meant to seize the upper hand by needling Hui-yeom’s rudeness, yet Hui-yeom only smiled faintly. Annoyed, Cheon Sang-hun asked,
“So? Why has Young Master Dang requested an audience with this Zhenglang of the Ministry of Revenue? Is there some matter in which I may be of assistance?”
He had prepared roughly seven different counters for the moment Hui-yeom mentioned the thugs’ rampage, and his voice carried quiet confidence. Hui-yeom, however, tossed out a remark that lay outside every one of those seven possibilities.
“The Ministry of Revenue seems extraordinarily busy.”
What on earth is this about? Cheon Sang-hun thought, then decided, Ah, he has come to lecture me about the joint-stock company policy, and pursed his lips. He had indeed been eager to put the brakes on that policy’s progress. He had learned through several intermediaries that the joint-stock companies would prove profitable—or at least that the Emperor was determined to make them succeed—so he did not oppose the policy itself. What he disliked was a system that allowed commoners and provincial clans to purchase the limited resource of shares on equal footing with everyone else; he had therefore been trying to “adjust” the implementation. He had submitted opinions that share-purchase rights should be restricted by statute to those who served the nation as public officials, and he had pressed the working-level staff to produce matching opinions and research findings.
This is why one can’t stand provincial upstarts.
He mocked Hui-yeom inwardly and feigned ignorance.
“Mmm, well, the Ministry of Revenue holds the nation’s purse-strings, does it not? Work always overflows. Of late you yourself tossed us rather a headache…”
“Which is why you used so much paper.”
“Paper?”
The conversation had veered so wildly that Cheon Sang-hun could only blink. Why bring up paper consumption here? While he tilted his head in bafflement, Hui-yeom, still smiling, drew a single sheet from his robe, laid it crisply on the table, and said,
“This is the paper expenditure of Your Honor’s office for the current quarter. Fully two guan of silver—roughly three hundred million won. I looked into Beijing paper prices, curious whether they were truly so high… and discovered that the combined paper costs of every other ministry do not even reach five nyang—about fifteen million won.”
Hui-yeom’s smile turned pitch-black.
“You embezzled it, didn’t you?”
“What—what are you talking about—”
“I learned it by turning the agents you sent. Here—the detailed ledger is arranged on the paper. Feel free to check.”
A few low-life thugs who had merely raised a ruckus at a café had suddenly been transformed into intelligence operatives, yet that was the least of Cheon Sang-hun’s concerns. The exact sum he had siphoned off and the forged entries matched so perfectly that he could not even tell whether Hui-yeom’s gambit was true or false. In the worst case, the possibility that his thick-witted wife had truly recruited the wrong agents and let his secrets pour out was not zero.
But a far more persuasive possibility rose in his mind.
No—how could he… Sama Seung!!!
While Cheon Sang-hun frantically searched for the leak, he remembered that Hui-yeom’s patron was none other than Sama Seung—his wife’s maternal uncle and a Vice Minister of Revenue—and the whole picture snapped into place. As a member of the Sama Clan and a Vice Minister, Sama Seung could easily have been watching Cheon Sang-hun’s every move and uncovered the corruption. If that assumption held, then the Sama Clan, which had until now maintained scrupulous neutrality toward the Eight Great Families, had drawn its sword against the Cheon Family.
Cold sweat beaded on Cheon Sang-hun’s brow. Hui-yeom spoke in a soft, almost whispering voice.
“You go too far. To send such capable agents to dig into my background… and then force me to spend so much effort turning them. Was it really necessary?”
Shameless bastard—!
Cheon Sang-hun’s lips parted to roar, only to freeze solid at Hui-yeom’s next words.
“Still, a man so thorough would naturally go so far as to plot treason.”