Toilet Subscription Service
The year turned, and Hwi-yeom was now thirteen.
Even amid a schedule so crushing it could drive a man mad, he had trained his martial arts with relentless diligence. The results showed: his achievements were not yet transcendent, but neither did they lag behind his peers.
Once the foundational body conditioning for hidden weapons was complete, Hwi-yeom began learning basic dagger throwing, shuriken techniques, and the art of hurling throwing stars. His progress there was merely ordinary.
Where he truly shone was in the operation of the Nokryong Singong—the Green Dragon Divine Art—and in his footwork and body techniques.
Dang Un-sang could scarcely contain his astonishment watching his son combine countless toxic properties, material natures, and medicinal essences through the Green Dragon Divine Art.
“Even your aunt, the so-called genius Dang Su-jeong, could only combine four or five toxins when she reached the age of fifteen. Yet you already command more than thirty material natures? What in heaven’s name are you made of, boy?”
It was because Hwi-yeom’s fundamental approach differed entirely from that of the people of this era.
Where the folk of the Central Plains understood water as “the gathered water-qi of the Five Elements,” Hwi-yeom recognized water as H₂O.
Combining energies through the Green Dragon Divine Art was not perfectly identical to mixing substances in a chemistry lab, yet perceiving the process as similar—and approaching it that way—yielded efficiencies utterly unlike those of someone thinking, If a viper’s bite causes tissue necrosis, then if I create a similar toxic qi and combine it with other energies…
Hwi-yeom’s expectations for the Green Dragon Divine Art were nothing short of monstrous.
The most terrifying aspect of the Green Dragon Divine Art is that it can convert the formless energy called “qi” into actual matter. In theory, if I can accurately grasp the structure, I can churn out chemical substances with pure internal energy.
It was a magic that completely ignored the law of conservation of mass—and that was precisely what the Green Dragon Divine Art enabled.
If someone asked whether that made any sense, well… did sword qi and sword force make sense first? Hwi-yeom simply accepted it and moved on.
Having created a material qi-art resembling nitroglycerin, he named it Explosive Poison.
Beyond the traditional toxic compounds, he had recently succeeded in producing ammonia gas.
If I can make ammonia, I can make chemical fertilizer. I can achieve the feat of Doctor Fritz Haber—making bread from air!
The problem was that the energies and substances created by the Green Dragon Divine Art soon scattered and reverted into the ambient qi of the atmosphere.
That meant while brief use was possible, the material form could not be sustained, rendering it useless for the applications Hwi-yeom intended.
His obsessive drive to improve it was only natural.
He also poured every spare moment into footwork and body techniques—for no other reason than to save time.
In a world without automobiles, racing between multiple simultaneous construction sites to assess conditions demanded that Hwi-yeom’s feet be fast.
Of course he could ride in a palanquin carried by martial-artist guards, or travel by horse, but inspecting sites from a palanquin was impractical, and horses were poorly suited to the ravines and mountain terrain the projects crossed.
In the end, Hwi-yeom adopted the philosophy of “If you don’t like it, run yourself” and trained his footwork and body techniques with ferocious intensity.
Most children of martial families trained under the expectations of their elders.
Because the adults tell me to.
Because training makes the adults happy.
Because I want to become a splendid master of the jianghu someday.
Compared to those motivations, Hwi-yeom’s martial training was pure survival-spec building.
It was like the thick Excel and PowerPoint manuals and C-language lectures that never sank in during university—yet once company life began, the same knowledge carved itself into the mind within a month.
While other Dang family children practiced footwork and body techniques simply “because one must learn martial arts,” Hwi-yeom trained with the desperate resolve of If I learn even this much, I can steal half a ke more of free time! and ran until his internal energy was exhausted every single day. There was no way their achievements could match his.
Yet Hwi-yeom never particularly advertised his efforts.
Partly because he felt no need for self-promotion, and partly because he simply had no time for it.
As a result, the gazes of those around him grew increasingly distorted.
Family members who did not know him well thought of him as:
“A genius heaven itself has sent.”
“A once-in-a-millennium prodigy who masters everything in an instant.”
But the elders of the Elder Council, who knew him better, shuddered and called him:
“A madman who manages time down to the cun and ke.”
“A ruthless bastard who sleeps no more than two shichen a day.”
And those who worked closest to him—Dang Un-sang and the master craftsmen of the Innovation Hall—assessed him as:
“A poisonous freak who grinds himself down as if he will die tomorrow.”
“A monster who shows exactly why the Dang family’s poison-heart is called the Dang family’s poison-heart.”
“The deadliest poison in the Dang family is the Young Family Head’s willpower.”
Whatever anyone said about him, Hwi-yeom paid it no mind and simply pressed forward with his enterprises.
The unusually bitter winter passed. Blossoming spring drifted by at its leisure, and the midday sun grew hot enough that it was beginning to become hard to endure.
The waterworks and sewer construction of Seongdo was complete.
He had installed so many fountains that additional aqueducts had to be built to keep the volume of water from each fountain from dwindling—but the effort paid off. Clear water now bubbled up from fountains everywhere within the city of Seongdo.
Though the Yangtze almost never ran dry, as a precaution they had filled the Wonyung Valley with cement and concrete to create a dam.
The dam was designed to maintain a fixed reservoir level and continuously release the excess, so unless the floodgates were deliberately closed during drought, the downstream tributaries would never dry up.
“Well… the water-supply problem is solved… so next comes the sewers, I suppose?”
The sewer works had been planned ever since the Provincial Governor first laid eyes on the flush toilets at the Sichuan Dang Family estate and fell instantly in love.
Of course they could have simply installed flush toilets in the Governor’s residence and the government offices and called it finished—but that would not have been Hwi-yeom.
Hwi-yeom drafted a massive toilet-construction plan encompassing the entire city of Seongdo and brought it to the Provincial Governor.
“Public toilets? These look rather different from the flush toilets installed at the Dang Family. They seem quite crude.”
Examining the concept drawings and blueprints for the public toilets to be placed in government offices, the Governor tilted his head. Hwi-yeom explained.
“It’s a practical issue. If you collect the waste and the water used by that many people into tanks, even a single day would produce an enormous volume.”
The flush toilets installed at the Sichuan Dang Family were, in a sense, structurally similar to modern flush toilets.
Even Korea’s early flush toilets had used septic tanks that collected waste before disposal.
Surprisingly, even into the 1970s one could still commonly see household septic tanks that did not send waste directly to treatment facilities; instead a “honey wagon” came monthly to pump them out.
Expecting modern multi-stage purification—primary and secondary digestion tanks, crushed-stone oxidation tanks, disinfection tanks, then physical and chemical treatment at a sewage plant—was impossible in the Central Plains. The tank method was simply realistic.
And for the Dang Family, with its abundance of strong martial artists, emptying their own septic tanks was perfectly manageable in-house.
The toilet to be installed in the Governor’s residence would be the same type.
The Governor could simply order servants to empty the tank daily and be done with it.
But applying that method to the Provincial Governor’s offices was impossible.
Between the resident officials and the throngs of people coming and going on every sort of business, thousands would pass through each day.
Building septic tanks at such government offices and emptying them whenever they filled was simply not practical.
So Hwi-yeom proposed a different method—the Roman public-toilet system.
Rather than separate septic tanks, a dedicated pipe branched off from the water-supply lines (using elevation differences so the two could never mix).
That pipe fed a constantly flowing channel of water that ran twenty-four hours a day.
Holes were bored in the channel, and toilet seats placed over them.
One sat, did one’s business, and—plop—the flowing water carried it away.
The channel never connected to other water-supply lines; it emptied straight into a river tributary.
For efficiency, of course, many seats would share a single channel.
Thus rows of stalls were built so multiple people could enter and relieve themselves at once.
This was precisely why the method was not used for the high-end flush toilets at the Dang Family or the Governor’s residence: keeping water flowing twenty-four hours for a single private toilet would be an outrageous waste.
The original Roman ones had no partitions at all—people chatted face-to-face while doing their business—but that would be a bit… much, wouldn’t it?
Adding partitions was Hwi-yeom’s small act of consideration.
“Petitioners will use the government toilets frequently. You can charge a usage fee. It will become a tidy little revenue stream.”
“Charge money to use a privy?”
The Governor’s eyes went round. Hwi-yeom grinned.
“Of course. Otherwise the locals will start dropping by the offices not for official business but simply to relieve themselves.”
Rome had been exactly like that. The aristocrats of that age installed private toilets in their homes, and Roman citizens had been thoroughly resentful.
To quiet the discontent, Rome placed flush toilets mainly in the public baths—thus creating the first public toilets.
Incidentally, the first person to charge for government toilet use was Vespasian, ninth emperor of the Roman Empire (reigned A.D. 69–79).
He began by levying fees on government toilets and eventually achieved the feat of charging for the public toilets in the baths as well.
That influence persisted into the modern day: European public toilets, unlike those in Korea, remained paid facilities.
Considering that the Ming Dynasty—roughly equivalent to our Jing—was founded around the thirteenth century, the West introduced this more than twelve hundred years earlier.
So Hwi-yeom spoke with complete confidence.
History itself had already proven the business model a success.
The Governor, intrigued by Hwi-yeom’s self-assured briefing, nodded and gave his permission.
“Very well—do it!”
Compared with the water-supply works, the sewer construction finished almost disappointingly quickly.
Unlike the waterworks, which had required fountains at regular intervals and unplanned extra aqueducts to maintain hydraulic pressure, the sewers needed only the high-end toilets at the Governor’s mansion and the public toilets at the Provincial Governor’s offices.
And the public-toilet construction was simplicity itself.
Lay one water channel, connect it to the existing supply line so it could not back-flow, punch holes at intervals, set the seats on top—done.
Installing partitions barely counted as construction work at all.
Then those public toilets produced an explosive reaction—one that only Hwi-yeom had fully anticipated.
“I say, Jang, where are you off to?”
“To the Provincial Governor’s offices.”
“Eh? Something the matter?”
“Ah…”
Jang gave a slightly embarrassed grin.
“I have business nearby, so while I’m at it I thought I’d use the privy…”
“Going to the government offices just for the privy? Why not go at home?”
“Once you’ve used the toilets at the Provincial offices, you can’t go back to a stinking outhouse.”
“I heard those are paid?”
“Ah, just one iron cash. Skip one dumpling and you’re covered.”
“And it’s worth that?”
“Try it once and you’ll know. Doing your business is actually pleasant.”
The frequency with which people visited government offices rose, and the flush-toilet boom naturally began spreading into private hands.
The pattern went roughly like this.
Anyone who had used the public toilets once—especially those from households of some means—sent word to Hwi-yeon Comprehensive Construction.
“Install one of those high-end flush toilets in my house as well.”
“For high-end flush toilets we use a storage system rather than a continuous-flow system, in order to conserve water. Wastewater collects in a septic tank that must be emptied.”
“What? I have to empty the dung tank myself?”
“You may use your household servants, or if you prefer, we can handle the emptying for you.”
“Eh? Really?”
“Yes—one guan of silver per month. Sign a three-year contract and we’ll knock twenty percent off the installation cost as well.”
“Hmm…”
The local gentry who had first thought, Why spend money when I have servants? were snared by Hwi-yeom’s salesmanship—the chance to reduce the large installation outlay—and stamped the contracts as if entranced.
Wastewater was pumped from private homes, transported to the discharge stations set up at the government offices, and from there flushed into the river through the public-toilet channels.
Since the government public toilets already ran water twenty-four hours a day, there was no reason not to use them.
Thus the so-called “shit-scooping subscription service”—or, more genteelly, the “waste-discharge agency business”—quietly seized control of the households of Sichuan’s gentry.
Of course Hwi-yeon Comprehensive registered a local patent with the Provincial Governor to secure the monopoly.
The elders of the Elder Council had scoffed when Hwi-yeom first announced the plan—“Who would pay good money to have someone haul away their piss and shit?”—but the results were staggering.
“Dol-soe! Why has our inn’s revenue dropped like this?!”
“Everyone’s flocked to that Baekga-jaengsik place just up the road!”
“Nonsense! Ever since we paid a premium to hire a master chef from Guangdong we won the customers back! What’s gone wrong this time?!”
“They say when you eat at our place the outhouse stinks. Every Baekga-jaengsik has flush toilets installed.”
Honestly, I’d eat at Baekga-jaengsik too—cleaner, cheaper, tastier, and they even stamp loyalty cards, Dol-soe muttered inwardly.
The innkeeper exploded.
“Damn it all! Baekga-jaengsik again!”
“Why don’t we just switch over to Baekga-jaengsik ourselves while we’re at it?”
“If we could have, we would have long ago, you idiot! Who’s our backer? The Qingcheng Sect! You think Qingcheng would like that?”
“Umm…”
“…Fine. Go to the Sichuan Dang Family and put in a word. Tell them we want flush toilets installed.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once matters reached that point, orders poured in from every inn and restaurant of any size.
Thus the flush-toilet boom that had begun with the government offices passed through wealthy households and into the public establishments people frequented.
People never hesitate to spend money on convenience. There may be resistance at first, but once they’ve tasted it, they gladly open their purses.
Hwi-yeom’s prediction had struck true.
In addition, public toilets were installed throughout Sichuan for the common folk who lacked the means to install private flush toilets and subscribe to waste-removal service.
People who had once walked all the way to the Provincial offices simply to relieve themselves now had no reason not to use the public toilets near their homes.
The truly poor might have no choice, but those with a little leeway grew thoroughly accustomed to public toilets.
Of course these public toilets also charged a fee.
And that money belonged to Hwi-yeom.
“While I’m at it, I should start one more enterprise. Waterworks Construction.”
Hwi-yeon Waterworks Construction—not a public corporation (gongsa), but a construction company (gongsa).
It would install water and toilet facilities throughout the city of Sichuan, maintain and manage them, and collect usage fees.
Of course it paid taxes to the Provincial Governor.
The Governor had no reason to refuse.
Hwi-yeom’s talent for duplicating tax revenue while sitting still simply made the Governor’s shoulders dance of their own accord.
“If you were not the Young Family Head of the Dang, I would adopt you with both hands!”
“Hahaha—I’m honored.”
Until then it had been common for people to scoop household waste, mix it with straw to ferment as fertilizer, and simply empty chamber pots out the window into the street.
Thus the moment one left the main thoroughfares for the back alleys, human urine ran in little brooks along the ground and human dung rolled underfoot—an everyday sight.
But as the number of people using public toilets increased, Sichuan’s streets became noticeably cleaner.
The people praised this too as the benevolent achievement of the Sichuan Dang Family and the Provincial Governor.
In the process, the faction of Hong Ilgon—who had furiously attacked Hwi-yeom for sullying the Dang Family’s name and wasting money on a lowly, undignified shit-scooping business—saw their speaking rights shrink yet again.
The Qingcheng Sect likewise failed to join the trend.
Songhak Jin-in, Sect Leader of Qingcheng and secretly linked to Hong Ilgon, dismissed the Sichuan Dang Family’s enterprise as “empty and filthy talk.”
But the Emei Sect was different.
Having barely escaped annihilation by cholera, they embraced the subscription service with great enthusiasm.
The nuns of Emei, who had previously suffered the ordeal of racing long mountain distances to empty latrines and chamber pots in distant valleys, brightened with relief.
Ironically, the comparison bred discontent among Qingcheng disciples, who began to grumble.
Even if not the true mountain disciples, most of the lay disciples who had sought entry, or the people who paid to learn martial arts at the training halls, abandoned Qingcheng and moved to Emei.
Songhak Jin-in belatedly requested that Hwi-yeon Waterworks Construction push the toilet-subscription business for Qingcheng as well, only to receive the reply: “The schedule is backed up—you will have to wait.”
That year, in an especially hot summer, while the Taoists of Qingcheng and the elders of the Sichuan Dang Family’s Elder Council sat half-suffocated by the stench rising from beneath wooden boards in their sweltering outhouses, the rest of Sichuan’s people enjoyed thoroughly pleasant bowel movements.
Yet the Sichuan Dang Family’s advance that year did not end there.