The Calm Before the Storm (2)
Hwiyeom was a man of common sense.
And a man of common sense judges every matter by the yardstick of that sense.
If I were the young master of the Namgung Clan, what kind of blow would hurt the most?
By Hwiyeom’s measure of common sense, storming into the Namgung estate with a throng of martial artists and forcing a negotiation was far from attractive.
This isn’t even a clash with the unorthodox sects. It’s a confrontation between orthodox forces. Now that both sides have swollen their ranks, a direct collision becomes impossible if either wants to avoid mutual annihilation. Under the Martial Alliance’s mediation, everyone else would be reduced to spectators while the matter is dumped back on the Dang Family and the Namgung Clan to settle themselves. We’d gain nothing and only end up owing favors to every sect that stood with us. Lowest of strategies.
This was never some gangland turf war to begin with. Marching into someone else’s territory, beating them into submission, and seizing their interests—the classic “martial-world” solution—had never been among Hwiyeom’s options.
Hadn’t the entire point been negotiation?
So Hwiyeom decided to invest his effort in the work that had to come before any talks: making the other side ready to accept them. He sought out Emperor Sungui.
After listening to Hwiyeom’s lengthy explanation, the young and capable emperor who steered a great nation distilled it with imperial brevity.
“In short, you want a tax audit of the revenues the Namgung Clan extracts from the lands of Anhui Province, as well as the profits they earn from managing the grain trade. Is that it?”
“Exactly so, Your Majesty.”
“…I ask only because one never knows. Do you understand why the Empire does not itself conduct regular tax audits of provincial magnates’ fortunes, but leaves the matter to the local magistracies?”
“How could I not know?”
The imperial house was no fool. Of course it knew that in the provinces beyond the direct reach of its hand, a certain measure of extortion and embezzlement by local gentry and officials was inevitable. It knew, and it looked the other way. Doing so soothed the discontent of regional powers and secured their support; picking fights with them over every petty matter would throw the entire administration into chaos.
Like a company first sergeant who knows the short-timers are slacking off yet looks the other way unless something critical is on the line.
“You know all that and still make this request? Granted, the tax system will one day need reform. But that is a matter to be discussed only after the Eight Great Families have been sufficiently broken. While we are still busy suppressing them, I cannot play a move that would scatter the support of the provincial magnates to the winds. Denied.”
“And if it could instead draw the provincial magnates’ support to us?”
“Draw their support?”
Emperor Sungui’s brow furrowed.
“Surely you are not suggesting we seize the Namgung Clan’s assets and parcel them out among the other magnates?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Precisely that.”
“Foolishness. The Namgung are a martial clan. Confiscating their property and distributing it to other magnates would provoke every other martial power in the land. The martial clans themselves are simply another branch of the provincial gentry; in the end we would still lose the support of the local magnates. The shock would be milder than a full land reform or blanket tax audit, but the principle remains.”
Far from wilting under the emperor’s dry dismissal, Hwiyeom only smiled a meaningful smile.
“Your Majesty is the shrewdest man I know. Surely you have already seen through this humble subject’s true intent?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why should the imperial house bear the blame? Let the Sichuan Dang Family take the blame instead.”
“….”
Emperor Sungui wiped the boredom from his face, stared at Hwiyeom expressionlessly for a long moment, then gave a short bark of laughter.
“Well, I’ll be damned. In all my years I’ve never met a magnate who walked in and asked me, with his own mouth, to paint him as the villain the world would love to kill.”
The emperor continued.
“Very well. If you have thought this far, you must already have the concrete details prepared?”
“Yes. Through the Legal Affairs Division of our house—staffed entirely by former officials—we have already mapped out the approximate scale of the Namgung Clan’s tax evasion, the bribery charges, and the personnel involved. It is no doubt only the tip of the iceberg, yet it is more than enough to serve as the foundation for a formal petition of audit to the Censorate.”
The picture Hwiyeom had painted was this:
In the name of the Sichuan Dang Family, a petition of audit would be filed with the Censorate. The stated grounds: corruption and collusion between the Anhui Provincial Administration Commission and the local elite. The targets: the Namgung Clan, the Commission itself, and the officials of Anhui Province.
Of course the higher-ups would try to bury it quietly. The Namgung Clan might not be a traditional bureaucratic powerhouse that flooded the court with high officials, yet it still produced its share of office-holders—and how many officials had never tasted Namgung silver?
But if the materials submitted by the Sichuan Dang Family were airtight, and if Emperor Sungui himself took a personal interest and ordered the Censor-in-Chief to conduct a rigorous investigation—and if the Privy Council and the Dongchang were likewise instructed to join the probe?
Not even the Namgung Clan’s great-grandfather could stop the Censorate then. Try to paper over the inquiry under those conditions and the Censor-in-Chief himself would be the first to be crushed.
East or West, past or present, “the profound interest of high places” has always forced everything to be handled by the book—or, more accurately, more strictly than the book.
The Censorate would dig up the fact that the Namgung young master had picked up the dinner tab for an Anhui official ten years ago and twist it into a charge.
In an age without an Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, a certain amount of bribery was tacitly accepted and even expected. That was the charming side of the era. The terrifying side was that once the upper ranks decided to make an example of bribery, a single needle or a single egg could send a man to his doom—romance and barbarism walking hand in hand.
Moreover, a tax audit inevitably dragged administrative irregularities into the light. That would trigger what modern times would call a state audit—here, the Censorate’s formal review under the Great Gyeong Code. Overnight, a colossal martial clan would find itself under the iron maul of state power.
And the martial world would find itself awkwardly unable to cover for them. The emperor had not broken the unspoken rule of non-interference between court and martial circles; he was merely applying lawful procedure to crimes the Namgung Clan itself had committed. Appeal for sympathy and the only answer you would get was:
Well, you should have obeyed the law, shouldn’t you? Heh heh.
Try to rally the provincial magnates with cries of “The emperor is oppressing us! The Namgung are only the first victims! Unite against the tyrant’s tyranny!” and the absolute-protection-of-local-gentry campaign would stall at once. The informant was another local magnate. Talk of non-interference between court and martial world? The informant was another of the Nine Great Noble Families. Imperial oppression and lust for power over the gentry? The tax monies wrung from the Namgung were being redistributed, under various pretexts, to the very local magnates who had long lived under Namgung heels in Anhui…
From the Namgung clan head’s perspective, this plot is so foul he’d wake up cursing in the middle of the night.
Emperor Sungui found himself involuntarily pitying the Namgung patriarch even as he delivered a backhanded compliment.
“I wondered what you were doing gathering retired old monsters to thrash the Yunnan Provincial Administration… so this is what you were preparing. How long have you been laying the groundwork?”
“Since the day our house first advanced into the Central Plains.”
“You madman.”
The emperor let out a hollow laugh.
“You must have eight eyes. You foresaw this and began gathering dirt on a rival from that early?”
“We had already clashed with the Namgung over the Anhui grain trade long before that.”
Of course the immediate trigger had been the dirty trick of pressuring the shipping companies and cutting off their vessels. Anyone who would stoop to that would, the moment things went sour, throw every resource they possessed into harming the Sichuan Dang Family. That much was obvious. What still baffled Hwiyeom was the Namgung Clan’s complacent response. Watching them trust in their own martial strength and assume the other side would answer with martial force left him wondering whether they were naïve or simply stupid.
That may be the average martial artist’s way of thinking… but it’s crude.
Meanwhile Emperor Sungui carefully re-examined the proposal and finally nodded. If the Sichuan Dang Family was willing to shoulder all the resentment, he had no reason to refuse. This could become an opportunity to tear off a chunk of Namgung wealth, scatter it among the surrounding magnates, and begin domesticating the provincial gentry. Establishing such a precedent would also prove useful later, when the time came to turn the blade on the remaining local powers after the Eight Great Families had been dealt with.
Of course, the same blade could one day be turned on the Sichuan Dang Family itself… but this fellow will already have thought that far.
Under the emperor’s strange gaze, Hwiyeom smiled brightly.
“Our house has no tax problems even if we are audited, you know.”
“You creepy bastard. Still, won’t this make every martial clan in the land shun the Sichuan Dang Family?”
“We share a community of fate with the Sima Clan, and we have already formed an alliance with the Zhuge Clan. Winning everyone’s goodwill is impossible, and even if we managed it, goodwill is of little use. Better to be feared. If the Sichuan Dang Family’s intelligence network and political influence come to be seen as an asymmetric power no other martial house possesses, no one will dare move against us lightly.”
Emperor Sungui was silent for a moment. He drained his tea, then spoke slowly.
“I have watched you long enough to know this is neither reckless courage nor arrogance. Yet it may leave a deeper grudge than you expect. The martial world is already split between orthodox and unorthodox; even the Martial Alliance of the orthodox is divided between the Nine Great Noble Families and the Nine Sects and One Gang. And even within those factions, regional interests breed constant strife. I know this.”
“…….”
“I know that, for all the talk of non-interference, the sons of martial houses enter officialdom and labor for their clans. I know that local officials tolerate a measure of illegality and wink at legal gray areas. I know that some even use the court as a backer to oppress rival sects. Yet in the long history of the Central Plains, the number of times the imperial army or the throne itself has directly chastised a martial sect can be counted on one hand. Do you know why?”
“…….”
“To you martial artists, the court is a foreign power. And when you borrow the strength of that foreign power to strike your own kind, the fear that arises—will it truly be the fear you desire?”
Even when yakuza or mafia families went to war, they fought and bled among themselves. They almost never dragged the police into it. They might ask the police to look the other way or lock up a few men; they never put in a call for a special-forces raid to wipe out the rival organization. The moment public power entered the equation, the struggle ceased to be a contest over interests and became a question of the faction’s very survival.
“I ask once more. If you rose to the legendary Realm of Profundity, became the greatest under heaven, and conquered the martial world, every martial artist who worships strength would fear that strength and submit. But if you borrow the imperial blade to strike the Namgung—one of the pillars of the Martial Alliance—that fear may not be the fear you seek. Will you still choose this path?”
Hwiyeom smiled faintly.
“Your Majesty, then allow me one question in return. Do you intend to leave the martial world and the provincial magnates untouched forever?”
“…….”
Powers inside the Gyeong Empire that the emperor’s authority could not fully reach existed because the vast Central Plains simply could not be administered solely by the central court. But the moment transportation and communication advanced under Hwiyeom’s leadership, and the railway network spanning the Central Plains was completed, a great change would come.
It will happen someday.
Perhaps after Hwiyeom himself was gone. Or perhaps far sooner than anyone expected.
“…I can guarantee you this: even if the Sichuan Dang Family’s influence now shakes the world, if those people set their minds to it and gather just three of the Ten Great Masters, your head will leave your shoulders within half a day.”
“I am grateful for Your Majesty’s concern. But that will not happen. If I truly used imperial power to wipe out the Namgung, perhaps. We are not harming any member of the Namgung Clan. The imperial house itself is not seizing their interests. We even possess a justification every subject of Gyeong can accept. And the affair will end in amicable dialogue and agreement. Please set your mind at ease.”
“Hmm. Very well. For Us there is nothing to lose in this bargain. This once, We shall dance to your tune.”
“Not merely no loss—great profit awaits Your Majesty.”
“Speak.”
“After we subdue the Namgung without destroying them, we will disperse the influence they hold over the Anhui grain merchants and return it to Your Majesty.”
Emperor Sungui’s eyes gleamed.
“And then?”
“If Your Majesty permits, I will take that grain and trade it with the Chagatai.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
The emperor’s expression was that of a Privy Councillor who had just watched a drunkard bellow “I am a traitor!” in open court.
“The Chagatai are the barbarians we crossed blades with only recently. And you would sell them grain—a strategic asset? Had you spoken such words in a full court assembly, even We could not have shielded you.”
“Your Majesty, reverse the direction of your thinking. If we sell them grain in abundance, it may become the army rations that feed an invasion. But if we give them only enough that they do not starve to death, that grain becomes the shackles that bind them.”
Using economic aid as a means of binding another nation was a common stratagem in international diplomacy. Of course there were always the hard cases—the kind that begged for rice while launching missiles and still refused to give up the missiles—but…
“…Hmm.”
Emperor Sungui seemed to find something worth considering in Hwiyeom’s words. He pondered a moment longer.
And so the bargain between Emperor Sungui and Hwiyeom was struck.
And then—
“?”
“??”
“!!!”
Anhui Province was turned upside down overnight.