Scholarship Interviews and a Prepared Talent
To understand the upheaval that struck the Qingcheng Sect, one must rewind the clock to the night Dang Hui-yeom sat drafting the proposal for the establishment of Hwieon Comprehensive Finance for the Provincial Administration Commissioner.
Through the long hours of writing, he lamented the chronic shortage of talent. Bak Chang-eon and Jin Cheong, the two elders, had become his hands and feet and were fighting desperately on his behalf, yet there was still no one capable of drafting a proper proposal. Every single document had to pass through Hui-yeom’s own hands.
Of course, the planning of major enterprises ought to receive the CEO’s personal attention. But a CEO’s proper role was to set the overall direction and make the big decisions—not to write every last proposal himself, was it not?
“I need hands and feet. A secretarial staff—no, even just secretaries. And working-level personnel!”
Hui-yeom ground his teeth.
“I already had a plan to establish an educational institution under the Family Head’s Residence, raise orphans, and cultivate talent loyal to the main house so we could keep the branch families in check… but I need to expand the scale.”
And so it was that the national projects advanced under the orders of the Sichuan Provincial Administration Commissioner came to include not only construction, civil engineering, finance, and general merchandise, but a scholarship program as well.
“We give them scholarships and educate them. In return, every graduate must join Hwieon Group and work until their tuition is fully repaid. By the time they’ve paid it off, they’ll already be settled in their positions and have no reason to go elsewhere.”
His brush moved across the paper without the slightest hesitation.
“These won’t be people handling clan secrets—just workers for the company. There’s no need for them to stake their lives on confidentiality. And since the Way of Confucius and Mencius is useless for running a business, the curriculum will focus mainly on practical subjects, mathematics first among them…”
In this fashion Hui-yeom created a modern scholarship education foundation.
The Hwieon Scholarship Foundation.
A modern vocational training school equipped with dormitories and cafeteria facilities.
Boarding schools such as academies and lecture halls already existed in this era, of course. But the Hwieon Scholarship Foundation differed completely in both purpose and curriculum.
Unlike ordinary institutions that taught Confucian classics, raised officials to govern the nation, or pursued pure scholarship for its own sake, the Foundation had only one educational goal:
To produce talent who would work for Hwieon Group.
The subjects, too, prioritized practical fields—mathematics, business administration, architecture, and the like.
“Using this era’s textbooks as they are would be pointless… In the end I’ll have to set up the entire framework myself again. Ugh…”
Why? Why was the path to making his own life easier so long and so steep?
Anyone could see it was a problem of his own making, yet Hui-yeom ground his teeth and prepared it all the same.
And so the Hwieon Scholarship Foundation he had ambitiously prepared finally revealed itself to the world—and the result was the disturbance that erupted at the Qingcheng Sect.
While Songhak Jin-in, Sect Leader of the Qingcheng Sect, was still reeling from the sudden departure of his disciples, Hui-yeom was reading the family background dossiers of applicants to the Hwieon Scholarship Foundation—dossiers gathered through the delivery runners of Baekga-jaengsik.
A family background dossier summarized the official careers of a person’s paternal and maternal ancestors going back four generations. It was much like the modern corporate practice of screening for criminals or prominent figures among an applicant’s relatives during the hiring process; in this era, such dossiers carried enormous weight.
Yet Hui-yeom demanded them not because he was curious about the applicants’ ancestral offices. He wanted to prevent spies from hostile forces of the Sichuan Dang Family from slipping in among them.
Unlike ordinary dossiers that only extracted major facts—officials, criminals, and the like—this kind of investigation required considerable labor. The delivery runners who gathered and sent the information, however, had no idea they were serving as intelligence assets for the Dang Family.
In an age when people knew even how many spoons their neighbors owned, a few casual questions while making deliveries were enough to produce a flood of solid information.
“Who applied to the Hwieon Scholarship Foundation this time?”
“The boy next door—Jeong-pal—is applying, I hear.”
“What sort of men were his father and grandfather?”
The information was still only of this caliber, but with practice they would gradually handle more important and detailed intelligence.
“The Sakpungdae has been heavily reassigned to security work lately, so they have no spare capacity.”
The manpower required simply to maintain the clan’s security had doubled.
“Reinforcements and a bigger budget for the Sakpungdae are urgently needed. Money, money, money—no matter where you go.”
Hui-yeom sighed.
“I’ll have to open a course on intelligence and security work within the educational facilities of the Dang Family Shelter… and I need to hurry with that as well.”
The Spider Office, which accepted orphans and educated them solely for the main bloodline of the Dang Family, was already operating in a rudimentary fashion. For now it merely fed and housed orphans while teaching them basic martial arts and arithmetic; a systematic curriculum and dedicated instructors were still lacking.
“That’s money too…”
Hui-yeom summoned the captain of the Sakpungdae. After listening for roughly one ke to the captain’s endless whining about the lack of men, he said:
“Select two suitable instructors. Have them prepare the teaching materials.”
“Pardon?”
He had just said there were no men—and now he wanted two pulled out?
The Sakpungdae captain’s face froze in cognitive dissonance. Hui-yeom smiled.
“It will be hard for the moment, but think of it as an investment so things will be easier later.”
The words “I can’t” rose as far as the captain’s throat, yet the thought of future reinforcements allowed him to swallow them with difficulty.
“As the Young Master commands.”
“Thank you.”
For the next while I probably won’t manage to get home even once every three days.
Hui-yeom patted the captain’s sagging shoulders—shoulders that drooped from constant overtime and late nights—and spoke with full understanding.
“Hang in there. I don’t even have the concept of commuting, and there’s no one to take my place.”
“…Yes.”
Coming from a man who ground himself in the millstone harder than anyone, the Sakpungdae captain could not complain.
After the captain trudged out, Hui-yeom went back over the materials the man had compiled. Ye-eun, watching him, tilted her head.
“Are you suspecting there might be spies among the applicants from the Qingcheng Sect?”
“I don’t think there are any, but there’s always the ‘what if.’”
“Then why not simply refuse them?”
“I can’t. For a scholarship system to mean anything, it has to be open fairly to everyone. I created this to fill the talent shortage. If I start putting up walls—‘this one’s no good, that one’s no good’—the pool of people I can actually recruit shrinks dramatically.”
“Difficult. So what will you do?”
“Accept them first, then take the time to verify and weed them out.”
Hui-yeom sighed.
“For now… let’s at least hold interviews.”
Lee Jinmyeong was a young man who had almost become a lay disciple of the Qingcheng Sect.
The second son of the renowned Lee Family Wall of Deyang County in Sichuan, he had been sent to the Qingcheng Sect by a father who hoped to strengthen ties between the two houses. Midway through the probationary period in the Outer Hall, however—while his aptitude for becoming a lay disciple was still being tested—his father sent a letter ordering him to leave.
His father had decided that the Sichuan Dang Family now offered better prospects than the Qingcheng Sect.
Lee Jinmyeong, for his part, was privately dissatisfied with the decision.
I wanted to learn swordsmanship at the Qingcheng Sect and become a chivalrous hero of the jianghu.
The Sichuan Dang Family did not transmit its martial arts to outsiders. Even if he entered the scholarship program they were running, he would never learn martial arts.
Is Father telling me to become a merchant?
He was twenty—an adult—yet like any man of the Central Plains he still cherished dreams of becoming a martial arts master. The present situation did not sit well with him.
Well… as long as Father is covering my living expenses, I have no choice but to obey.
He swallowed a sigh. The door of the interview room opened and the man who had gone in earlier came out. A Dang Family warrior called:
“Next—Number Sixty-four, Young Hero Lee Jinmyeong. Please enter.”
“Yes.”
Guided by the warrior, Lee Jinmyeong opened the door and stepped inside.
The room was bright. Facing south, soft white light filtered through the paper windows and filled the chamber with a gentle radiance. Only one place remained in shadow: the boy seated with that white light at his back. The backlight made him appear all the more imposing, radiating an atmosphere that made people tense.
From within that shadow the boy’s eyes—still scanning documents—lifted and met Lee Jinmyeong’s. In that instant Lee Jinmyeong felt his body freeze as if he had come face to face with a tiger on a mountain path.
He knew at once who the interviewer was.
So this is the famous Child Dragon of Benevolent Wisdom of the Sichuan Dang Family—Dang Hui-yeom!
The boy who, at the age of seven, had developed revolutionary cosmetics such as Mi-cheop-muk, Bul-geon-yeon, and Sam-il-seol, as well as the medicinal ointment Hogol-go. The boy who had invented a furnace that produced steel without a hundred refinings, who had planned and executed the great project of drawing water from the upper Yangtze to spout in the heart of the city, and who now, enjoying the trust of the Provincial Administration Commissioner, directed national projects. A genius sent down by Heaven.
And more: when even his own relatives fled from the cholera epidemic, he had risked his life to lead a medical team to the longtime ally Emei Sect for the sake of loyalty—and succeeded in treating them. A man of character.
To young men of the same age throughout Sichuan he was less a person than a hated object of comparison that set their teeth on edge.
If one had to find a flaw, people said his martial arts were shallow compared to the heirs of other great martial houses… yet the moment their eyes met, Lee Jinmyeong was seized by the feeling that even that was mere rumor. An unidentifiable pressure radiated from Hui-yeom’s gaze.
Whoa. What kind of eyes are those…?
The boy was beautiful. Not merely handsome—one had to call him beautiful. Fair skin, a high straight nose, petal-pink lips, long glossy black hair… Yet his under-eyes were dark, as though from illness, and his gaze was deep as an abyss. More precisely, it was hollow—like that of a man who had not slept for three days and nights.
Surely not.
Someone as precious as the Child Dragon of Benevolent Wisdom could not possibly be that busy. People of his station usually just stamped approval on documents while the working staff handled everything, did they not?
“Applicant Lee Jinmyeong? Sit in that chair.”
“Ah—yes.”
Snapping back to himself at Hui-yeom’s words, Lee Jinmyeong sat. The interview began.
After a few simple questions about his personal background, they reached the main point.
“I understand you originally applied to become a lay disciple of the Qingcheng Sect, then withdrew and came down. Why?”
Lee Jinmyeong considered a vague answer—that he simply preferred the Dang Family—then decided on honesty. If he failed here, there was still the faint hope that his father might send him back to Qingcheng.
“I… actually wanted to learn the martial arts of the Qingcheng Sect. But my father seems to believe that at my age the limits are clear, and that becoming a retainer of the Sichuan Dang Family offers better prospects.”
“Mmm. Twenty years old… rather late to begin martial training, yes.”
Hui-yeom’s expression as he asked the questions was indifferent. He feels no particular interest in me, Lee Jinmyeong thought bitterly—and yet also with a sense of relief that things might turn out well.
Then Hui-yeom asked:
“I’ll pose one problem. Speak freely about your thoughts, Young Hero Lee.”
“Pardon? Ah—yes.”
“Recently the Yeowangchae loan sharks have been running rampant, have they not? A banking house offering low-interest loans has appeared. As a result the Yeowangchae are squeezing their debtors to recover principal and interest so they can leave Chengdu. Were you aware of this?”
“Yes. It would be stranger not to know.”
“By unintentionally causing suffering to the debtors of the Yeowangchae, I find myself in a rather awkward position. If you have a good way to resolve this problem, please tell me.”
“Hmm…”
Watching Lee Jinmyeong roll his eyes in thought, Hui-yeom inwardly clicked his tongue.
As if a proper answer would come just because I asked.
In truth the question was little more than a device to fail him. Background checks had revealed that Lee Jinmyeong’s father, the head of the Lee Family Wall, was himself a lay disciple of the Qingcheng Sect and closely connected to them.
Thick-skinned or business-minded—whichever it is, trying to plant one foot in the Dang Family under those circumstances…
From the Dang Family’s standpoint he was an uncomfortable figure. With plenty of other applicants, there was no reason to accept him into the scholarship foundation.
“If you don’t know—”
Hui-yeom was about to say it was enough when Lee Jinmyeong spoke.
“Is the Dang Family trying to rescue the victims of the Yeowangchae out of simple compassion? Or do you intend to make different use of this situation?”
Hmm?
Hui-yeom leaned forward slightly.
“Does the answer change depending on which it is?”
“Yes. If it’s simple charitable relief, then just summon the Yeowangchae operators, repay each debtor’s claims on their behalf, and the matter is cleanly resolved. After taking over the debt documents, tell the victims to repay slowly. The whole of Chengdu will ring with praise for the Dang Family’s benevolence. But I wouldn’t recommend that method.”
“Why not?”
“No real benefit. People will praise the Dang Family for a little while, then quickly forget. Some will resent that their own debts were paid off when they themselves were the ones who borrowed, or will look on you as a soft touch. Debtors from other Sichuan cities outside Chengdu might even come lining up asking you to pay theirs too. And if you refuse, they’ll curse the Dang Family. Of course those voices can be ignored—anyone can see it’s just baseless demand.”
“True. Then what method would you recommend?”
“Well… depending on the approach, there could be two or three possibilities.”
“What are they?”
“First: simple eradication of the Yeowangchae. Just crush them with force. The moment the authorities began supporting the Dang Family’s financial enterprises, unorthodox groups like the Killing Veil and the Asura Sword Gate will already have withdrawn protection from the Yeowangchae. The protection fees the loan sharks pay aren’t high enough to risk clashing with the government. Right now you can wipe them out cleanly with no future repercussions.”
“The problem?”
“Even if you wipe out the current Yeowangchae, others will appear with time. And the people who currently owe them will simply borrow from new ones unless their economic circumstances improve. It’s not a fundamental solution.”
“Other methods?”
“Seize control of the Yeowangchae and bring them under your command. In that case, however, their evil deeds could become the Dang Family’s responsibility. You risk being pointed at by the jianghu. If you take this route, instead of threatening commoners who can’t repay and squeezing money out of them, you need another way to settle the debts.”
“Another way?”
“For instance, arrange jobs so they can work without wages until the debt is cleared. But when offering employment you must give them hope that if they work hard they can both repay the debt and accumulate capital for a fresh start. Without hope, motivation dies. So rather than selling them as mine slaves, introduce them to respectable jobs. Surprisingly, many Yeowangchae debtors aren’t bottom-rung dregs of society; they’re ordinary people who simply couldn’t weather a single crisis in life and ended up mortgaging their futures. Because of the nature of Yeowangchae loans, craftsmen and merchants use them more than simple farmers. It could become an opportunity to hire fairly high-quality labor at low cost. The current Yeowangchae method is far too crude—like cutting open the goose that lays golden eggs.”
“….”
“For those unable to work, have them write down the information they encounter around them and submit it regularly. While they show willingness to work and repay, defer the interest payments. They’ll scatter to various workplaces—waiters in inns, grooms in stables, household servants in well-off homes. Gather the information they bring back, sort the wheat from the chaff, and how is that any different from the methods of the Haomun? You’re already stretched thin running background checks on applicants like us with only the Dang Family’s intelligence organization. Use this chance to run an information network on the cheap. It’ll cost far less than training proper agents and paying them salaries, and you’ll obtain intelligence from many different quarters.”
“Stop.”
Hui-yeom raised a hand, cutting Lee Jinmyeong off. In the backlight his eyes blazed a fierce green.
“I will not accept you as a scholarship student.”
“Ah…”
Lee Jinmyeong’s shoulders slumped. I rambled on about whatever came into my head and he must have thought it was all nonsense. He was a little disappointed, but quickly composed himself.
Actually this is better. I’ll ask Father to let me re-enter the Qingcheng Sect.
Then Hui-yeom spoke.
“I appoint you my Second Secretary. Report for duty starting today.”
Lee Jinmyeong froze for a full three seconds before managing a sound.
“Hiccup?”