The Departing Sacheondang Family (?)
The next day.
Jong-geun, a man of Jinsha County who had come to the site of the water purifiers, cocked his head at the strangely unsettled atmosphere. The people around him looked thoroughly worked up, voices raised and tempers flaring.
“What’s all this racket about?”
He approached and asked. One of the men who had been shouting with veins standing out on his forehead spun toward him and bellowed.
“Hwang Jinsa! That goddamn bastard stuffed a rotting dog carcass into the purifier we drink from, trying to make us all sick and die!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at that!”
Jong-geun followed the angry villager’s pointing finger. There on the ground lay a half-rotted dog carcass crawling with maggots, half-pulled from a sack and left to roll in the dirt. Someone had also stuck a sheet of paper to the great jar.
“I—I’m illiterate. Can someone read what it says?”
At Jong-geun’s words the crowd answered.
“We’re all the same, but Master Han read it out for us. Here’s what it says…”
They told him the contents of the paper. The writing ran as follows:
I was a guest retainer who lived under the patronage of Hwang Jinsa of Jinsha County. I know full well that to betray the man to whom I owe my living is to cast aside chivalry itself. Yet to close my mouth and simply allow evil to be done is no path of righteousness either. I wrestled long with this conflict between righteousness and chivalry.
In the end I concluded that righteousness which serves all the people under heaven is the greater principle, while the chivalry that would repay a personal debt to Hwang Jinsa alone is the lesser. I chose the greater principle, and so I expose his crimes.
For years Hwang Jinsa monopolized the best land and the water sources, then doled them out as if bestowing favors—leasing fields and controlling the channels—so that he might hold sway over every soul in Jinsha County. When people from the Sacheondang Family arrived, reclaiming abandoned land for sugarcane, digging wells, and building devices to purify foul water, the landlords grew afraid. The very tools that had protected their privileges were crumbling beneath them.
Thus Hwang Jinsa and the other landlords beseeched retainers like myself to drop poison or rotting animal carcasses into the jars. Their scheme was simple: once the people who drank that water fell ill, they would petition the court and lay the blame at the feet of the Sacheondang Family. Nor was that all—they poured lye upon the sugarcane fields to ruin the crop. Seize any landlord’s servant and question him; the truth will spill out.
All of it was nothing more than the petty tricks of small men terrified of losing power and wealth. Though I have abandoned chivalry, I have not abandoned righteousness, and so I stand unashamed beneath heaven. I take my leave now, yet I pray that only good fortune visit Jinsha County hereafter.
Once a guest retainer of Hwang Jinsa, and a good neighbor to you all—
Black Wolf Sword Ga Gyu, with deepest respects
When Jong-geun heard the words written on the paper, his eyes nearly rolled back in his head.
“What? These goddamn…!”
Naturally the news reached Hwang Jinsa’s house as well. The steward, face ashen, reported to his master.
“Public opinion is extremely bad. The situation is not good.”
Hwang Jinsa ground his teeth.
“Damn it! How can a retainer I fed and housed for years throw away my kindness like this?!”
To the Chinese of this age, “chivalry” was something quite distant from the modern notion of public justice. No matter how wicked the landlords might be, a retainer who turned his back on them in such a moment would himself be pointed at as an ungrateful scoundrel who knew neither favor nor honor. A modern mind might find it hard to grasp, yet that was the shared understanding of people living in this era. That was why Hwang Jinsa had trusted his retainers with the work, and why their betrayal now made him shudder with rage.
Still, Ga Gyu and the other retainers had their own excuses. Put yourself in their place: with the Sacheondang people holding a gun to your skull and demanding surrender, would Hwang Jinsa himself have kept faith?
“Hell and damnation! All they’ve got is one miserable scrap of paper and a sack of rotting meat! After all the kindness I’ve shown this village, they try to smear me with that alone?! Ungrateful dogs—this is why they say never take in a black-haired beast…!”
“….”
Of course the “kindness” Hwang Jinsa claimed to have shown had, in truth, been lending grain at ruinous rates during famine and then seizing the fields when the debt could not be paid. But people naturally see the world from their own vantage; he felt sincerely wronged.
“I—I can’t just sit here. I must meet the other landlords and devise a plan…”
“You must not, Master. If you gather with the other landlords now, you will only confirm that you plotted this together.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?!”
What else? Get down to where the villagers are gathered, prostrate yourself, and do whatever it takes to cool their fury!
The steward’s true thoughts never left his lips. Speak them aloud and he would be branded a co-conspirator and rolled up in a straw mat himself. So he stood there, a mute with a mouthful of honey, while another servant came racing in from outside.
“Master! Master!”
“What now?! Have the Sacheondang ruffians come marching in with an army this time?”
Irritation laced Hwang Jinsa’s question. The servant answered in a fluster.
“N-no, it isn’t that…”
“Then what?”
“W-well… um…”
“Out with it! Speak clearly!”
After a moment’s hesitation the servant forced the words out.
“The Sacheondang people… are sealing the wells and smashing the jars.”
“…What?”
That was precisely what Hwang Jinsa had hoped for. Yet he could not begin to understand why the Sacheondang lot would suddenly do such a thing—as if they had taken leave of their senses. And he had no idea what consequences that action would bring.
With the crowd gathered around him, Choi Jin-su of the Dokwadae spoke in a heavy voice.
“People of Jinsha County. I am a man of the Sacheondang Family’s Dokwadae, come by order of the Young Master to forbid further use of the wells and water purifiers we installed.”
The villagers erupted in protest.
“Why all of a sudden? You dug the wells and built the purifiers, and life was finally becoming livable—why now…?”
“You give and then you take it back?!”
For ordinary folk who normally feared anything to do with the murim, even this much complaint took real courage. That was how desperate the question of drinking water was to them.
Choi Jin-su sighed and continued.
“Of course we understand your plight. That is why our Sacheondang Family dug eight wells and built ten purifiers throughout Jinsha County without asking a single coin from any of you—or from Jinsha County, or even from Hwang Jinsa.”
The people, who had assumed the county magistrate or the landlords must have paid for such useful devices, for the unfamiliar equipment, and for the murim experts who had sunk deep wells, now stared in shock. Who in their right mind would pour precious capital and labor into another man’s territory for no return at all?
As pupils dilated in the crowd, the Dokwadae warrior pressed on.
“Some will call us fools. Yet our house believes that wishing every soul under heaven to live well together—saving the hungry and the thirsty without regard to region or clan—is the natural and honorable duty of a great family and of a landlord.”
“Ahh…”
“Such… such nobility…”
Awe rose on every side. The Dokwadae man pretended not to hear and went on.
“So the Young Master ordered the work done without seeking any reward. Yet…”
He paused, face troubled.
“It seems we thought of Guizhou as if it were Sichuan. Every region has its own circumstances and customs, just as the local landlords say, yet we charged ahead on zeal alone. The present crisis is simply the explosion of those landlords’ discontent.
As fellow great families, how could we ignore the grievances of other great families? They, too, have devoted generation after generation to protecting your lives in this place. Our Sacheondang Family has therefore accepted their ‘request’ and decided to dismantle every well and purifier we installed.
This decision was made out of respect for the landlords and great families of Guizhou who have shared your lives. We ask that you not blame our house too harshly.
Now—begin.”
At his command the warriors raised hammers and smashed the purifiers. With a great crash the thick jars shattered; stones, sand, gravel, charcoal, and ceramic balls spilled out. The people watched and groaned.
“Do you see? Nothing unclean was inside the purifiers—only stone, gravel, sand, charcoal… the one slightly special item being these purification stones baked from clay. Everything you yourselves could find nearby. Yet Hwang Jinsa was so distressed that he wished to put animal carcasses in them and give you plague…”
“…!!!!”
Everyone already knew about the animal carcasses. Twin flames kindled in the villagers’ eyes; the whole affair had become crystal clear.
Had the Sacheondang people simply exploded in fury, threatening to kill or spare Hwang Jinsa, public feeling would never have turned so thoroughly against him. After all, Hwang Jinsa had lived in this county for many years and had given the people real help more than once. But the Dokwadae, acting under Hui-yeom’s orders, framed the Sacheondang Family with meticulous care as the pure and blameless victims.
The picture that emerged—greedy landlords who, blinded by avarice, had used filthy, contemptible tricks to drive out the benefactors of the county, and Sacheondang people who nevertheless withdrew of their own free will so as to cause those landlords no harm—turned the villagers’ stomachs. And because everyone knew the Sacheondang Family was not doing this from weakness, the gesture carried all the more moral weight and persuasive power. The clan possessed the strength to wipe out a country landlord’s entire household without a whisper if it so chose; it possessed the wealth and authority to transform the whole of Guizhou; and it was the house of heroes who had defended the Central Plains against Mongol invasion.
So, on the day the purifiers were smashed, their contents dumped into the wells to choke them, and the Sacheondang people departed—riots erupted across the whole of Guizhou Province.