Step-by-Step Preparations
After dispatching orders for Yi Gyu-chan to come up to Beijing and prepare to take his post, Hwiyeom immediately took personal command of the main enterprise of the Beijing Railway Joint-Stock Company: the railway construction itself.
The critical work was already under way on the secured sites—demolishing buildings and walls, leveling the ground, and shaping the open embankments where the rails would run. Any carelessness in this stage could mean ground subsidence that twisted the tracks, flood damage, or even the catastrophic derailment of a moving train. Fortunately, Beijing’s soil was firm and well-drained enough to support its dense population, which made the work comparatively easy.
Strip the topsoil and compact the subgrade… three months at the outside should be enough, Hwiyeom thought vaguely.
Events promptly proved him wrong.
Roughly two hundred warriors in the martial uniforms of the Hebei Paeng Clan came pouring onto the site. Great sabers rode their backs; their sheer mass made the capital’s garrison troops tense and level spears. Just as a general from the Beijing Yang Clan, charged with the city’s defense, moved to bar their path, a towering man burst from the Paeng ranks, waving.
“Brother Dang~! It’s me, Paeng Sang!”
It was Paeng Sang, the Single Cliff Blade-Dragon.
“Brother Paeng? What brings you here…?”
“What brings me? Everyone thinks of the Beijing Yang Clan when they hear ‘Beijing,’ but our Hebei Paeng Clan keeps its main house here too! I waited for you to drop by once you returned to the capital, but there was never a word, so I came myself. Hurt my feelings, did you?”
He laughed heartily and clapped Hwiyeom on the shoulder. The warm camaraderie only deepened Hwiyeom’s puzzlement.
“But Brother Paeng, why bring so many of your clan’s warriors?”
“Oh, nothing much—just thought we’d lend the Dang Family a hand. You need the earth turned over, don’t you?”
“Well… yes, but—”
Paeng Sang winked.
“I heard the Shaolin arhat monks cut the schedule dramatically during the State-run Ironworks project in Henan. Why should our Paeng Clan do any less? Shaking the earth and smashing rock is one of the specialties of our blade arts.”
“That’s…”
Hwiyeom could only nod. The Paeng Clan’s supreme technique was the Five Tigers Gate-Breaking Saber—a ferocious succession of cuts that tore the ground as if five great tigers were raking it with their claws. For turning soil it was ideal. Still… to say so out loud? What of a martial artist’s pride, the dignity of one’s art?
Perhaps the doubt showed on his face. Paeng Sang gave a short laugh.
“The great Bodhidharma found the Buddhist path even in sweeping leaves, tilling fields, meditating, or reading. So if we seek the way of training while tearing up the earth, where’s the harm? In truth, the Paeng Clan has always practiced blade pressure by gouging river sandbanks with wooden sabers. Think of this as an extension of that—no problem at all.”
He grinned wider.
“And between you and me, I rather fancied turning Beijing upside down for once. Haha!”
“Thank you, Brother Paeng. With your people helping, we can advance the schedule by a great deal.”
“That’s the spirit—leave it to me! Hahaha!”
A single saber stroke flipped dozens of meters of earth; no modern heavy equipment could match it. The result was spectacular.
Golden tiger-claw saber qi rips open the ground.
Indigo thunder-light overturns the soil in waves.
KWA-DU-DU-DUK!! PUH-PUH-PUH-PUH-PUNG!!
Two or three jang of earth flew with every stroke as a matter of course; a little extra force casually opened pits ten jang across. Watching labor power that made excavators look pathetic, Hwiyeom was moved.
If the Sichuan Dang Family had been based in Beijing, we might have hired Paeng clansmen instead of manufacturing dynamite.
Idle thoughts like that crossed his mind.
With the Paeng Clan’s support behind them, construction raced forward as though a galloping horse had been spurred. Whenever administrative or legal snags appeared, officials displayed unprecedented zeal and resolved them in an instant.
“No precedent for this… but precedents are made, aren’t they!”
The official who stamped his seal with a decisive thunk held roughly two hundred shares of Beijing Railway stock.
“The permit schedule can’t be met…? Hahaha! What’s the difficulty? Draw the papers as a land lease rather than civil engineering works and stockpile the materials. By the time you’ve moved them onto the site, the approval will have come through.”
That clerk held a hundred shares. Watching a feast of proactive administration rare even in the twenty-first century, Hwiyeom could only chuckle.
Thanks to it all, the work advanced at astonishing speed. Once the digging was finished, the next tasks were backfilling and laying track.
The Hebei Paeng warriors’ help proved even more valuable because winter was closing in. Excavating frozen ground is brutally hard labor. Hwiyeom, who had once dug trench works with a field shovel in rock-hard frost, gaped when Paeng Sang casually carved a ten-meter-long, one-meter-deep trench with a single cut.
“…The Paeng blade arts truly are extraordinary.”
“Hahaha! For speed and ferocity, our family’s saber technique bows to none under heaven!”
Thanks to the efforts of Paeng Sang and the Paeng Clan’s A-grade laborers, the topsoil stripping finished before true midwinter set in. Next came compacting the foundation soil.
In twenty-first-century Korea we’d use a road roller for this.
No road rollers existed here. Hwiyeom had planned to build a cart that might serve a similar purpose. The straightforward men of the Hebei Paeng Clan demolished that plan.
Mountain-sized warriors leap as one and crash down.
“Haaaaaap—Thousand-Catty Hammer!!”
KUUUUNG!!
Several Paeng warriors, each the size of a small hill, linked hands in a line, sprang high, and slammed down. The earth shook and compacted under the impact.
This is basically the dynamic compaction method used when building high-rises.
It could not match dropping multi-ton steel weights from tens of meters, yet every time the Paeng men crashed from several meters with terrifying force, the ground trembled with the shock.
That such capable people have never been put to construction work until now… what a national waste!
Hwiyeom offered the praise in all sincerity. Paeng Sang laughed.
“Hahaha! If anyone but you had said that, I’d have torn their limbs off and scattered them ten li in every direction.”
“…Eh? I thought you said it was training and you were glad to do it?”
“True enough—but we don’t go around doing it just anywhere. If someone told you, ‘You’re good at throwing hidden weapons—come here and show us a trick,’ would you simply smile and perform?”
“Ah.”
In short, this cooperation was offered only because the partner was the Dang Family. From the Paeng Clan’s view, the Dang Family had trusted them even after taking losses in the Baekgak Mountain Dam attack, and had even mediated with the Namgung Family; that goodwill was being repaid now.
So this is a one-time favor. I’d better squeeze every drop of value from it.
Dang martial arts centered on poison and hidden weapons; they had never been suited to flipping or crushing earth, so Hwiyeom had never employed such methods. Discovering talent this appetizing, he resolved to recruit—or raise—people skilled at earth-turning arts and the Thousand-Catty Hammer, and proceeded to make excellent use of the Paeng warriors as human drop-weights.
“All right—from here to there, numbers one through forty. Ah, Warrior Thirty-Seven! Half a step back. Perfect. Ready—jump!”
“Chaha!!”
KURURURUNG!!
Forty warriors leaped and landed as one; the ground shuddered and dust boiled up. Compaction work done this way would slash the construction period dramatically—the longest phase of all.
After that, only gravel and rails remained. In the modern world, stringing wire, installing signals, switchgear, and attendant equipment would consume another age; here, in a purely manual era, the work was actually simpler.
It was precisely then that Elder Yi Gyu-chan, vice-president of the Sichuan Daily, arrived in Beijing with a handful of directors and staff.
“So this is where the Beijing branch of the Sichuan Daily will stand? Ohhh… already cleaned up neatly!”
Elder Yi Gyu-chan surveyed the printing house Hwang Ji-su had prepared from top to bottom and looked thoroughly satisfied. Hwang Ji-su, pleased by the reaction, allowed a faint smile.
“Yes. Installation of the new-model presses is in the final stage. We should be able to start the presses within a day or two.”
“New-model presses? I hadn’t heard of those.”
In Sichuan they still used the animal-powered presses built several years earlier. Those had been enough; the Sichuan Daily’s print run was never large. Beijing was different.
“Beijing’s illiteracy rate is the lowest in the realm. Only about one-third of adults cannot read—so many officials and merchants, you see. Consequently the Young Master’s analysis is that newspaper circulation here will have to be incomparably larger than in Sichuan.”
“Mmm… no wonder there are so many presses and the plant itself is enormous…”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. Hwang Ji-su asked,
“Elder, about the content for the paper… how do you intend to handle it? This isn’t Sichuan, after all.”
Talk of the Minjeongwon was strictly classified. Black agents of the Minjeongwon, white agents embedded in Baekga-jaengsik and Caffe the One, and yellow agents who repaid debts by gathering information from their own shops or posts—nothing in Sichuan escaped the Dang Family’s eyes. News material never ran dry. But Beijing had no such network. Wouldn’t that be awkward? How should she report it?
While she fretted, Yi Gyu-chan chuckled.
“I’ve given that matter some thought. The plan is to form an alliance with the beggars of the Beggar Sect.”
“Pardon? Beggars?”
Hwang Ji-su’s expression twisted in peculiar dismay.