The Drilling Rig
Hui-yeom let out a dry laugh.
"I never imagined the water purifiers would get this good a reception."
Sama Yun's face lit up.
"Husband, did you not realize how much clean, pure water means in Guizhou? Outside of a few villages along the rivers that run through the heart of the province, Guizhou is a place where water is truly precious."
"It's rather paradoxical — a city with a great river of clear water flowing through it, and yet drinking water is scarce."
"That's just Sichuan being special. It's common enough in other regions. Guizhou is just particularly bad…"
"Sichuan really does overflow with clear water, being upstream on the Yangtze. And with the sloping terrain, you hardly ever hear of flooding either."
"Sichuan truly had everything — except for being out of the way, and the mountains making transport hard to develop. And you've already solved the transport problem to a fair degree, Husband."
"Still, people could have built something as simple as a basic purifier. Everything but the substance that adjusts the water's acidity can be found easily nearby."
Sama Yun watched Hui-yeom quietly, then gave a small dry laugh.
"Not many people expect those everyday materials to produce that kind of result."
"Hmm…"
Thinking back, Hui-yeom recalled that even African countries struggling with water shortages had been the same. The twenty-first century had far more information than sixteenth-century China, yet people in remote African villages without television still didn't know how to make primitive water filters, drank muddy water, and died of disease.
Looking at this, maybe it isn't that people here are less intelligent — maybe simply coming up with a simple idea is harder than you'd think.
Hui-yeom shook his head.
"Secretary Lee, make sure you still teach people to boil the water filtered through the jar purifiers once before drinking…"
"We're already teaching them… but people don't seem to follow it well. Firewood costs money, after all… and compared to what they've been drinking, this already tastes like nectar."
"…And the moment an epidemic hits, they'll flip on us and blame the main family without a second thought."
This wasn't because the people of Guizhou were bad-natured — it was simply how the world worked.
In the end, Hui-yeom decided to shoulder a little more of the burden.
"Hah. No choice. For now, station Dokwadae members to boil water in cauldrons and distribute it."
"Will that be all right? If all the Dokwadae are reassigned, Young Master's escort…"
"I've got Aunt Sujeong and Ivan. With two Transcendental Peak masters watching over me, what could go wrong?"
"Understood. Then as for the firewood costs for boiling…"
"Bill the provincial office. If they don't like it, they can either free up administrators or educate the people themselves — get them into the habit of boiling their water."
"An excellent plan, sir."
This way the Dang Family would build a good image, recover the money later, and leave the provincial office to take the heat.
"But we can't stop here. Have the hand pumps and animal-powered drilling rigs arrived?"
"Yes. They should be starting trials in Jinsha County any moment now."
"What the hell are they up to now?"
Jinshi Hwang was in a foul mood these days.
When his house guest Ivan — whom he had fed, housed, and even given pocket money — had finally gone out to earn his keep, Hwang had been worried about the aftermath but also rather hopeful.
Then the ungrateful bastard had flipped and attached himself to that Dang Family brat, and Hwang's anger had been secondary to the terror that the Dang boy would come storming in and wipe out his entire household.
Fortunately that hadn't happened… but the lack of any reaction only left him more unsettled, living each day as if walking on thin ice.
And now people were flocking to the village crossroads and putting up some strange post, and just watching it was enough to curdle his stomach.
"I hear they're digging a well, sir."
"A well? Hmph! Another outsider who knows nothing, wasting his time again."
As if they hadn't tried to dig more wells themselves?
This damned Guizhou soil drank water so greedily that even if you mobilized twenty or thirty able-bodied men and dug for days on end — deep enough to bury two or three men standing upright — no water came.
And even if a trickle did appear, it was barely enough to scoop with a gourd, and the taste was foul no matter how hard you worked to draw it.
That was how Hwang's ancestors, who had monopolized the places with water veins, had made their fortune and seized the surrounding land.
Hwang clicked his tongue.
"Tsk tsk tsk. Water management is the way of governance. When a gentleman accumulates virtue and the people praise him, spring water gushes forth wherever he dwells — do they not know this? Truly foolish and pitiful creatures. Ahem!"
He stroked his beard with a pretense of gentlemanly elegance, then asked his servant,
"So why all the commotion? Are they grumbling at the Dang Family for making them work so hard digging?"
"No, sir — they say water is gushing up from the well. That's the sound of people cheering since a little while ago."
"…What?"
Hwang laughed in disbelief.
"You're joking with me. That's absurd…"
"This humble one would never dare mock the master. It's the truth."
"…"
After a blank moment, Hwang shot to his feet.
"I—I must see it with my own eyes. Let's go!"
Hwang hastily took up his cane and headed with his servant toward the gathering place.
About two hours earlier,
people in the open lot were tilting their heads at Dang Family warriors wandering about with two small iron rods.
"Aren't those the Dang warriors who made us the water jars? What are they doing over there?"
"I hear they're digging us a well this time. So they're walking around looking for a water vein."
"A water vein? Good heavens… why are you just watching? You should stop them."
"Stop them why?"
"Man, if kind people are wasting their strength on something useless, you ought to stop them."
"Why is it useless? How do you know they won't actually find a well site?"
"If well sites came that easy, our ancestors would have found them long ago. Just among us, how many times have we grabbed shovels and pickaxes and dug holes all over creation whenever a dry spell hit? This sandy soil drains too well — it's hopeless."
"These are the same Dang people who turned muddy water full of insect eggs into heavenly nectar. They must have some special method. We'll just watch the show and enjoy the feast."
"…"
Short of a reply, the farmer quietly watched what the Dang people were doing.
They were walking around holding thin iron rods bent into an L-shape in both hands.
"What's that?"
"They say those rods find water veins."
"What? That can't be possible…"
Those were the L-rods — water-vein detectors — that Hui-yeom had ordered made.
In truth, L-rods were not scientifically proven water-finding devices.
But in the twenty-first century Hui-yeom would have used geological surveys, electrical resistivity, ground-penetrating radar, and the like — and lacking those tools and knowledge in this era, he had no other method for finding water veins, so he had introduced L-rods at least.
Surely better than blind luck?
Then one warrior's L-rods crossed to one side.
"Here!"
The warrior marked the ground, and others approached at once.
They set a large stake into the ground where the L-rods had reacted and took turns hammering it with full force.
With martial artists swinging heavy hammers, the stake sank into the earth like a pile bunker driving through soil.
After driving in a stake about as tall as a man, one warrior twisted open the stake's "cap."
Indeed — the stake was hollow inside, like a syringe needle.
Like the catheter of an IV needle, when they lifted the stake's cap, a nail-like metal core came out with it.
The stake was structured exactly like a syringe needle and the plastic cap fitted over it.
It was a casing pile, made and shipped by the Dang Family on Hui-yeom's orders — a structure that provided an outer wall so the drilling machine could operate without wobbling.
When they removed the inner structure from the casing pile, only a clear hole remained, sheathed in an iron cylinder to keep it from collapsing inward.
The warriors assembled the drill section of the boring machine they had brought and fitted it into the cylinder.
Moving a long drill whole was difficult, so the drill came in multiple sections that could be assembled and disassembled like Lego blocks.
Clockwise rotation locked them together; reverse unlocked them — so as the drill spun and cut into the earth, the joints only grew tighter and stronger.
The drill head was shaped like a pinwheel, with grooves running up the shaft so that as it rotated and cut the ground, soil and rock chips naturally pushed up along the grooves.
"All right, let's turn it."
Four Dang warriors fitted two steel bars in a cross at the top of the drill, each taking one end of the cross.
Then they began to run.
Round and round and round!!
Screeeeech!!
Like children spinning a merry-go-round on a twenty-first-century playground, as the warriors gripped the drill shaft and ran, the drill spun at a terrifying speed and bored into the ground.
The resistance of soil and rock was heavy enough that even able-bodied men struggled to dig — but four trained martial artists channeling internal energy and using light-body techniques to drive the rig left no rock standing.
Besides, this area wasn't the famously hard granite bedrock but soft limestone through and through — more than enough force.
The drill vanished beneath the casing in moments. When turning grew difficult, the warriors pulled the iron bars free, fitted the next drill section into the groove at the top, reassembled, put the bars back in, and spun again.
This way they completed several meters of drilling work in no time.
What's more, these were men who had blasted through rock with bamboo and black-powder dynamite during the tunnel works in Sichuan.
This level of drilling was child's play.
In less than an hour they pulled the drill free, and muddy water began to bubble up from within.
They immediately installed a hand pump prepared by the Dang Family on top and worked the handle.
After the rock and muddy water from the boring had drained for a while, clear water began to rise.
Groundwater ultimately flows along impermeable bedrock, so even in limestone or sandstone soils, dig deep enough and you can draw this kind of clean groundwater.
Of course, at nearly ten meters deep, traditional shovel-and-pickaxe methods would have been a pipe dream — they would have given up halfway.
The Dang warriors, with their faith in Hui-yeom and the equipment he had provided, had made it happen.
They set a purification jar beside the pump and called out to the spectators, whose eyes had gone wide as startled rabbits.
"From today, anyone is free to use this pump and purifier!"
And far off, watching it all, Jinshi Hwang clenched his teeth.
You little insects of the Sichuan Dang Family, how dare you…!
His power base was built on controlling land and water sources, using them to influence the farmers, then allying with other landlords to meddle in provincial policy from that foundation of influence.
Last time they had somehow made useless land farmable for sugarcane and pulled some farmers out from under his influence — and now they had made it impossible to monopolize the water sources either.
This had crossed the line of what he could tolerate.
He had to do something.
The Dang Family was an impurity that had wormed into Guizhou Province, a pest that ruined the landlords' power.
He flung his cane aside, rushed home, and summoned his steward at once.
"Gather every house guest! And send letters to Saengwon Choi in the next village and Jinshi Yun! We cannot simply stand by and watch this!"