Jegal Eun-ryeo's Temptation
Gol Jun-sang, heir of the Gongjong Gol Family, was a follower of Huiyeom.
More precisely, he was a train-obsessed engineer born ahead of his time—a man who had taken one look at the Sichuan–Yunnan railway line and the Beijing Railway Joint-Stock Company plans Huiyeom had set in motion and fallen for them completely.
But then…
“I couldn’t just sit around watching the railway construction keep getting postponed, so I came myself!! What’s the problem? Is something wrong with the State-run Ironworks project?”
“Ah, about that.”
Thinking the timing convenient, Huiyeom briefly laid out the current situation for Gol Jun-sang.
It had already been agreed that the 2nd State-run Ironworks would be established in Henan. In exchange for that condition, they were receiving Shaolin Temple’s help in keeping the Namgung Family in check—and in fact, the Namgung Family was having a rather hard time trying to halt the Sichuan Dang Family’s expansion of power.
According to Baek Beon, the Namgung Family had floated the idea of expelling the Sichuan Dang Family from the Nine Great Noble Families, only for Shaolin—the Taishan and Beidou of the orthodox sects—to step in and block it, declaring that “a fracture among the orthodox will only invite the rise of the unorthodox.”
They had received that much aid from Shaolin Temple, so the construction site absolutely had to be chosen on Shaolin land… yet the powerful clans who had caught the scent of money had begun swarming in to interfere.
Naturally these people had brains; they could hardly be ignorant of the various economic benefits that would spring up once a State-run Ironworks was built. Under every possible pretext they pressed Shaolin to abandon the plan, while at the same time dangling assorted carrots and sticks before the Sichuan Dang Family.
However lofty Shaolin’s standing as the Taishan and Beidou of the murim might be, that influence was hard to compare with the political world. The trouble was that this held true only among ordinary people; from the Sichuan Dang Family’s perspective, Shaolin’s influence was something they could never ignore.
Moreover, they had been the ones to propose the deal first and had already pocketed the goodwill paid in advance. To betray that now? That very day the Sichuan Dang Family’s honor as a murim clan would be finished. They might survive as a powerful family basking in the Emperor’s favor, but they would then be reduced to a shackled existence hanging on a single thread of imperial goodwill. All the toil of the ancestors who had put down roots in Sichuan and striven to uphold justice in the murim would turn to foam.
Unable to move either way—that was the Sichuan Dang Family’s present predicament.
“Huu… Then what are we supposed to do?”
“That’s why I’ve been conducting ground surveys for site selection while simultaneously persuading or dismantling the powerful clans one by one.”
Huiyeom had not been idle while Lee Jinmyeong prepared to launch the Sacheon Haenggeo business. He had already met a number of influential local lords, extracted concessions or submissions from them, and slow but steady progress was being made.
Even so…
“But I’m starting to feel that the things I can still accomplish without bloodshed are reaching their limit.”
What Huiyeom had learned while making the rounds of negotiations was that someone was goading these people from behind the scenes.
Clearly, parties that have no business sticking their noses into something like this have gotten tangled up in it. And the way they swagger, it’s as if they’ve got a solid backer they trust completely.
Huiyeom’s own company, Eclipse—grown into a global big-tech defense contractor—had begun as a construction firm. Well, the world-famous semiconductor and smartphone conglomerate Ohsung Group had started as a sugar company called Cheil Jedang, so it was hardly unusual. The important point was that back when Huiyeom had run a construction company, he had run into this exact feeling more than once.
When selecting sites for apartment complexes, there would be the so-called “land-pinning” where someone bought a scrap of the target land and refused to sell in order to jack up the price, or the “iron-pressing” that delayed permits indefinitely. Most of the time it was thugs not even worth calling gangsters, hired muscle, or local bigwigs whose eyes had rolled back at the smell of money. Those sorts usually checked the bed before stretching their legs; if the other side was a major corporation, they did not dare bare their teeth lightly.
Yet there were still those who charged in to take a bite no matter how large the company was—either complete idiots who had never seen a tiger, or people with a backer. In general, when the backer was a district assemblyman or, in serious cases, someone in the National Assembly, they gave off a distinctive feel: that smugly sneering expression, the attitude of “I’m sitting on top of your head—why don’t you put on a little show for me and see what happens?”
Naturally, the backers goading them fell into a few categories.
First, those to whom the very establishment of a State-run Ironworks would be harmful. They were already out of the picture. This was an imperial-sanctioned project; even if they blocked it, there would be no future for them. Fools of that sort did not inhabit Beijing politics, so they could be set aside.
Second, high officials who approved of the establishment itself but wanted it steered in a direction that benefited them. Most of the local lords of the Eight Great Families and the provinces belonged here. The people Huiyeom had actually been meeting and persuading were of this type—people who first played dumb with “Why are you telling me this?” when he brought up the State-run Ironworks, then gradually came around as they listened. Greedy, yes, but they could be won over with the candy of mutual interest, so dealing with them had not been especially difficult.
Third, the ones who did not care about profit and simply wanted to see the Sichuan Dang Family screwed over.
This was the group that remained a problem to the end. After all, “I hate you for a reason” still leaves room for persuasion or negotiation; “I just hate you” has no answer.
At Huiyeom’s explanation, Gol Jun-sang’s brow furrowed.
“They want to see the Sichuan Dang Family screwed… Could it be the Pi Clan of the Ministry of War, with their grudge?”
“I don’t think the Pi Clan is involved in this one.”
The Pi Clan did have a grudge against the Sichuan Dang Family. But at least this time they were not the shadowy hand working behind the scenes.
No head of one of the Eight Great Families would be stupid enough to try plugging a collapsing reservoir with a single hoe…
The construction of the State-run Ironworks itself was already an unstoppable current. If Pi Jae-hyeon had any political sense, rather than obstructing it he would be mobilizing the branch families that controlled roughly half the iron forges of the Central Plains, scheming to supply materials and parts to the project for profit, and preparing hard from this moment so that they themselves could eventually win a State-run Ironworks of their own. In fact, through Baek Beon, Huiyeom had already received word that the Pi Clan was laying the groundwork for exactly that sort of move.
Then who?
There was one candidate: a house that bore a grudge against the Sichuan Dang Family, stood to gain nothing particular from the State-run Ironworks project, and yet could exercise influence over a wide range.
The Namgung Family. And the Jegal Family, with whom they are allied.
The Jegal Family’s standing sat just below the top tier of the Eight Great Families; together with the Beijing Yang Family, the Hebei Pang Family, and the Sima Family, they produced a fair number of high officials and wielded considerable political influence. Judging by the reactions of the lower-ranking local lords and merchants who had seemed oddly confident and unafraid, it made sense if the Namgung or Jegal Family had promised to cover their backs.
They may have calculated that the Jegal Family’s political power plus the Namgung Family’s martial strength would be enough to crush something the size of the Sichuan Dang Family.
The monsters who lived full-time in Beijing politics would know that Huiyeom—who enjoyed the Emperor’s favor—together with the Sichuan Dang Family and the Sima Family formed a combination that not even the Jegal and Namgung Families could simply step on. But provincial lords in Henan who were ignorant of Beijing affairs could easily think otherwise.
The problem was…
Why the Jegal Family?
Even granting that the Namgung Family might do it, the Jegal Family—more a murim house than a political one—might underestimate the influence the Sichuan Dang Family had begun to wield in Beijing politics, or, bound by the unwritten rule of non-interference between civil and martial, might have viewed the matter as a mere dispute between the Dang and Namgung Families and missed the larger picture. Yet the chance that the Jegal Family itself would misjudge so badly approached zero. So why?
Wondering whether Gol Jun-sang might know something, Huiyeom asked about recent movements of the Jegal Family—and received an unexpected answer.
“The Namgung Family sent a matchmaker to the Jegal Family… and were refused?”
Huiyeom’s eyes went round. Gol Jun-sang nodded.
“Yes. They call it ‘postponed,’ but it was effectively a rejection.”
Hadn’t Namgung Sang-min, son of the Namgung Family’s young lord and known as the Thunderbolt Sword Dragon, and Jegal Eun-ryeo, daughter of the Jegal Family’s young lord and known as Jihaeng Seobong, been rumored throughout the murim as lovers? Huiyeom cast his mind back to the beautiful pair who had even attended his own wedding.
Jegal Eun-ryeo, as refined as a single blossom yet carrying a faintly dark corner somewhere, and Namgung Sang-min, a handsome man of splendid features in whom a certain sinister streak could be glimpsed… Hmm. Certainly they had not given off the air of a couple who truly loved each other. If anything, they had felt closer to a show-window couple. Jegal Eun-ryeo had drawn a polite line, and Namgung Sang-min had not crossed it. That had been the impression.
“The Thunderbolt Sword Dragon must have lost a good deal of face.”
“The Namgung Family head laughed it off, but… for the Thunderbolt Sword Dragon as an individual, it can’t have been without effect.”
In truth, in the male-centered medieval Central Plains, when rumor spread that a man and woman were “that sort of couple,” the woman lost out nine times out of ten. If a marriage talk collapsed like this, the damage fell on the Jegal Family, not the Namgung. From the Namgung side it was perfectly possible to laugh it off with “A young man in his prime can meet this woman and that; he might even have his heart broken once.” But for the Jegal Family—especially for Jegal Eun-ryeo—there was no escaping the stigma of “the woman who was once rumored to be involved with Namgung Sang-min.” It might seem unfair, but that was the world they lived in, so there was nothing to be done.
Therefore, if the Namgung Family had been the ones to reject the Jegal Family, the matter could easily grow large; but if the Jegal Family had rejected the Namgung, it became rather awkward for the Namgung side to make a big issue of it. It would look like the wronged party running wild. Or the rumor might spread that “the fellow can’t forget one girl and is clinging to her in an ugly fashion.”
Moreover…
In a picture where the Jegal Family is joining hands with the Namgung to pressure the State-run Ironworks project, why is the love story of those two even coming up?
Gol Jun-sang was no fool; he was a genius who had passed the civil service examinations at a young age. He would not bring up something without context. Thinking a little further, the answer came quickly.
“Is the Jegal Family trying to support the Namgung Family in their struggle against our main house as a gesture of goodwill for having rejected the marriage proposal?”
If that were the case, the whole series of events made sense. In terms of martial force versus martial force, house versus house, influence across the Central Plains versus influence, the great Namgung Family was second to none among the Nine Great Noble Families. If the Jegal Family could simply hold off Beijing politics and resolve Shaolin’s checks, the Namgung side might well judge it a fight worth attempting.
Yet to conclude that…
“The Jegal Family can’t be people who miscalculate profit and loss that badly.”
It was not self-importance. At this point, what did the Jegal Family stand to gain by making an enemy of the Sichuan Dang Family and obstructing the State-run Ironworks construction? As an apology for rejecting a marriage proposal, the cost was far too high—not only the relationship with the Sichuan Dang Family, but also the countless direct and indirect profits they could have reaped by joining the project. Above all, kicking aside Namgung Sang-min’s proposal and then turning hostile toward the Sichuan Dang Family was not the behavior of the Jegal Family, famed for “the art of making no enemies.”
What on earth is it?
After expressing his gratitude to Gol Jun-sang, who had come all this way bringing information, Huiyeom sat alone and pondered the Jegal Family’s intentions.
And while he was still pondering, Jegal Eun-ryeo came to call.
“I have come with a proposal that would benefit both our houses, Young Lord. Perhaps…”
Jegal Eun-ryeo asked Huiyeom with a smile so soft and elegant that one found oneself staring without meaning to.
“Would you consider taking another wife? Myself, for example.”
“Absolutely not.”
Huiyeom cut her off cleanly, still wearing a bright, cheerful smile.
“Shall we first hear what thought process produces a proposal like that? Before my wife has a fit.”