A Better Proposal
Jegal Eun-ryeo
“Oh dear. What a shame.”
Jegal Eun-ryeo let her brows soften and smiled with a touch of genuine regret.
“I was half-serious, you know.”
“Half… serious?”
“Isn’t that how political marriages usually work? If the union returns real profit to both houses, I thought it was something worth considering… Though I already suspected Young Master was this sort of man.”
“Lady Jegal, if you don’t immediately explain what kind of nonsense just came out of your mouth, I will make you feel, with your entire body, exactly what it means that I married into the Sichuan Dang Family.”
“You’re taking an awfully roundabout way of saying you’ll poison my food.”
When Sama Yun snarled with lethal sweetness, Jegal Eun-ryeo only smiled faintly.
“The Jegal Family holds no grudge against the Sichuan Dang Family. On the contrary, we wish to draw closer.
If the Dang Family will accept us, we are prepared to pursue a political marriage—and even ready to sever our long-standing ties with the Namgung Family.
Ah, the marriage talk was something my father ordered me to raise, so if it offended you, please forget I mentioned it.”
“Hmm.”
“Mm.”
The moment the conversation turned to re-evaluating relations with the Jegal Family, neither Hwi-yeom nor Sama Yun could keep pressing the earlier remark. Sensing the initiative sliding cleanly into Jegal Eun-ryeo’s hands, Hwi-yeom allowed himself a private, bitter smile.
She really is a Jegal through and through.
Still—there was a way to strike back.
“I have long held deep respect and admiration for the Jegal Family and its lord… yet this proposal leaves me a little puzzled.
Are you saying it is not the Jegal Family that has been moving the Namgung Family and the local clans to obstruct our enterprises?”
You’re the ones cracking the pumpkin seeds behind the scenes, and you still say that with a straight face?
Jegal Eun-ryeo gave a wry smile at Hwi-yeom’s question.
“I came in person precisely because I knew you would react this way. At least we have some acquaintance, and conversation is possible.”
“And someone like that makes jokes like the one earlier?”
“Given the circumstances.”
“….”
Sama Yun, who had boiled past the point of rage and cooled into something far more dangerous, closed her mouth for a moment, then finally nodded.
“I see. A political marriage would indeed be the cleanest way to paper over the present situation. And someone of Lady Jegal’s caliber would give the Dang Family little reason to refuse.”
“It feels a bit shameless to say it myself, but if you consider the cooperation of the entire Jegal Family plus bringing Jihaeng Seobong in as a daughter-in-law… isn’t the recent friction something you could simply overlook?”
“I hate admitting it, but… yes.”
“Of course I know you and Young Master cannot live without each other. So I never expected to be accepted. Therefore, please stop being angry. I just… well, I am a little envious.”
“Envious?”
“How could I not be? Back when I was stuck trailing after Namgung Sang-min, every time I saw Lady Sama walking with Young Master Dang I thought… ugh, I should just stop talking.”
Whether to ease the tension or not, Jegal Eun-ryeo—normally as elegant and lofty as a crane—was now displaying a sly, guileless side that made one wonder if this side of her had always existed. Faced with that, even Sama Yun found it hard to keep her spines raised.
“…Young Master Namgung isn’t a bad person either.”
“No, he absolutely is. A complete bastard. Ha! I’ve wanted to say that out loud in front of people at least once!”
Looking thoroughly refreshed, Jegal Eun-ryeo turned a bright, smiling face toward Hwi-yeom.
“To summarize: by way of excuse, our house and the Namgung Family have been allies for nearly ten years.
It went beyond the usual friendly ties between the Nine Great Noble Families—it was a tightly bound relationship, chained together by the engagement between myself and Namgung Sang-min.
The Jegal Family needed strength to protect itself from the Wudang Sect’s steadily expanding influence in Hubei, while the Namgung Family needed our strategic brilliance if they ever hoped to expand their power beyond Anhui into the wider murim.
Because each needed what the other possessed, the alliance looked like a rather fine choice.”
“And then the situation changed?”
“Yes. Through the Sichuan Dang Family’s actions, our house realized that the balance of power for the Namgung Family—and for the Central Plains as a whole—had begun to shift.
As things stand, the Namgung Family is struggling merely to maintain the status quo.”
“Well… we had reached the same conclusion. Their core businesses are the rice from the great granaries of Anhui, partial control of the Yangtze shipping routes, and using their formidable martial strength from a central location to influence various enterprises… all of which our family has thoroughly ruined.”
By producing chemical fertilizers and pesticides and launching water-control projects, the Sichuan Dang Family had not only dramatically advanced Sichuan’s already fertile agriculture, but had also begun increasing yields in the once-barren lands of Yunnan and Guizhou.
In Yunnan, beyond the Caffa industry, food-crop harvests that had long been meager were rising in a meaningful way. In Guizhou, too, the introduction of water-purification facilities and phosphate fertilizers capable of neutralizing alkaline soil was steadily pushing grain production upward.
Jegal Eun-ryeo nodded.
“Our projections say that within ten years, both Yunnan and Guizhou will surpass thirty percent self-sufficiency in food.
Which means the market for Anhui’s prized rice will shrink.”
“Our calculations match yours.”
Geography played a large part. Centered on the richest heartland of the Central Plains—Henan, Anhui, Hubei and the like—the eastern, northern, and southern regions were largely fertile lands already more than half self-sufficient in grain; they had never been the Namgung Family’s primary customers.
The Namgung Family sold its rice mainly to the western deserts and wastelands of Yunnan and Qinghai, to Guizhou and Gansu where the soil itself hindered farming, and to the outer provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning where both cold and poor soil were problems.
Yet the Sichuan Dang Family had turned those western wastelands—Yunnan, Guizhou, Qinghai—into granaries that supplied grain, while those same lands were growing ever more self-sufficient. As a market, they had contracted sharply.
From the perspective of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Qinghai, why would one buy rice that had traveled all the way from the Central Plains, no longer fresh and inflated by heavy transport costs, when perfectly good rice could be purchased nearby from Sichuan?
“As for the shipping side, it was shattered even worse than agriculture.
The influence they gained by protecting Yangtze shippers from the Eighteen River Bandits of the Yangtze evaporated the moment those bandits were crushed. Whatever faint influence remained was completely broken when the state itself established the Angang River Transport Safety Management Corporation.
From the Namgung Family’s point of view, they woke up one morning to find the country had ruined their business—and the hand behind it was the Sichuan Dang Family.
Of course they would harbor a grudge.”
Hwi-yeom already knew all of this, yet hearing the current situation laid out by a direct descendant of the Jegal Family—the very intellect of the Central Plains—left him with a strange feeling.
Even if many things in this world really do run as zero-sum games… we have, without meaning to, thoroughly salted the Namgung Family’s fields.
What remained for the Namgung Family was to use whatever influence and martial strength they still possessed to force open a new path before their fortunes declined further.
“But that doesn’t mean the Namgung Family can simply declare war on the Sichuan Dang Family and demand a fight. They lack any righteous cause.”
“Exactly.”
Had the Sichuan Dang Family still been counted among the unorthodox, the solution would have been simple. Under the banner of eradicating evil, the Namgung Family would have drawn their swords; with a suitable price promised, the Murim Alliance would have sided with them and destroyed the Dang Family, after which the Namgung Family and the Alliance would have divided the Dang Family’s many interests among themselves.
Jegal Eun-ryeo smiled faintly.
“The Sichuan Dang Family is the Poison Amidst the Orthodox—the one and only house among the righteous factions with irreplaceable mastery of poison and hidden weapons. Moreover, decades ago they stood at the front of the murim’s crisis and threw themselves body and soul against the Demonic Cult; they are a house of righteous heroes.
No amount of political scheming can, at this moment, drive the Sichuan Dang Family out of the Murim Alliance or manufacture a casus belli for war.”
She did not say it aloud, but that same symbolic weight was precisely why, even ten-odd years earlier when the Dang Family’s fortunes had hit rock bottom, the Nine Great Noble Families had never been able to expel them.
“Unless they simply put on a thick face and charged in shouting, ‘Because of you we’re about to starve, so let’s settle this with steel’—but for the lofty Namgung Family, that would be worse than death. The seekers of the Emperor’s Sword, abandoning a long-time ally and behaving like lowly thugs blinded by profit?”
“Pride would be part of it, yes, but such an act would only isolate them further. Still, they seem to have been working the Murim Alliance side fairly hard.”
The Namgung Family had already made repeated attempts through the Murim Alliance to check the Sichuan Dang Family. Hwi-yeom had learned of it through the Sama Family’s intelligence network and through Shaolin Temple.
And that was the problem.
The Namgung Family’s political maneuvers had run into the great mountain that was Shaolin and produced not the slightest effect.
From the beginning, Shaolin—supposed guardian and mediator of the murim—had joined hands with the Sichuan Dang Family beneath the surface. Had they not swallowed the bait Hwi-yeom dangled—the promise of preferential placement for the State-run Ironworks construction site—and agreed to hold the Namgung Family in check?
When the Namgung Family went to a Murim Alliance dominated by that very Shaolin and complained, “The Sichuan Dang Family has gone too far. They’ve ruined the agricultural export market with unfair practices and, with the country’s help, overturned the shipping market as well. Please let us fight them,” what would Shaolin say? Naturally the complaint would not even be heard.
However much the Namgung Family was called the foremost house under heaven, they could not be compared to Shaolin.
As if she knew exactly that, Jegal Eun-ryeo smiled with quiet amusement.
“I heard there was a secret deal between the Shaolin abbot and Young Master. That is why Shaolin is shielding the Dang Family so thoroughly…”
“It is hardly secret. Anyone can see that the second State-run Ironworks is being built on land held by Shaolin; the whole world already knows.”
“Heh. Well, in any case, the Namgung Family apparently foamed at the mouth. They went so far as to say that if the Sichuan Dang Family was not expelled from the Nine Great Noble Families—and even struck from the Murim Alliance—then the Namgung Family itself would leave.”
“They didn’t say that in public, I hope?”
“Of course not. The Namgung Young Master isn’t a fool. He simply exploded in front of his own family.”
From the start, the influence of the Nine Sects and One Gang far outstripped that of the Nine Great Noble Families. In Hwi-yeom’s personal sense of scale, if the Nine Sects and One Gang were a coalition of multinational giants like Google and Apple, the Nine Great Noble Families felt more like a domestic conglomerate alliance—Osung, Mirae, Notae, Hwanha and their peers.
Sama Yun, who had been listening quietly, cut in.
“If the Namgung Family wants to isolate the Sichuan Dang Family inside the Murim Alliance over Shaolin’s objections, they would need at least the help of the Wudang Sect… and yet…”
“Exactly. Because they are allied with the Jegal Family, who are on bad terms with Wudang, that card was unusable.”
“Don’t tell me… the engagement and its cancellation…”
“Yes. It was done at the Namgung Family’s request. Amusing, isn’t it?”
“Good heavens.”
Sama Yun’s mouth fell open.
“Ah. Now the whole picture falls into place.”
Hwi-yeom nodded.
Lined up in order, the events ran like this:
1. As allies of the Namgung Family, the Jegal Family had been helping obstruct the State-run Ironworks construction.
2. Yet both houses knew this could only slow progress, never stop it entirely. The Jegal Family urged a switch from opposition to cooperation and a share of the profits; the Namgung Family refused.
3. The Namgung Family planned to leverage the Murim Alliance to isolate the Sichuan Dang Family, expel them, and then risk open war.
4. But Shaolin, already in the Dang Family’s debt, would never stand by and watch. The Namgung Family realized they needed Wudang’s help to surmount the wall of Shaolin.
5. To join hands with Wudang, the Namgung Family decided to cut ties with the Jegal Family, who held a grudge against Wudang.
6. The Jegal Family, unwilling to become permanent enemies of the Sichuan Dang Family and already quietly weighing the two houses and concluding the Dang Family looked better, accepted the break—but only after extracting a great deal from the Namgung Family as the price of severance.
7. Word spread through the murim that Jegal Eun-ryeo had dumped Namgung Sang-min.
8. Both houses secured their profits, and Jegal Eun-ryeo became the villainess.
9. On top of that, she was shoved here and ordered to see whether she could seduce Hwi-yeom into a political marriage.
10. And after that—well, you already know.
Sama Yun cried out in indignation.
“That—that’s far too cruel!”
“A family is simply like that… I cannot live by my own feelings. For the sake of helping the house…”
The smile Jegal Eun-ryeo wore was bitter, and it stung. For ten years she had been forced to trail after a man she did not love; the fragrant heart of that woman had been worn down until it was nothing but fine, powdery sand.
Watching that smile in silence, Hwi-yeom suddenly spoke.
“A loveless engagement is not the only way to contribute to one’s family. I believe I have a rather good idea. Would you care to hear it?”
“Pardon?”