The Living Buddha's Bargain
“It has been several days, Master.”
“Indeed it has, Family Head Dang. This humble monk is most pleased that we can meet again with lighter faces now that those tangled affairs have been settled.”
“Is that not all thanks to your decisive courage, Master?”
“Hahaha, decisive courage? Hardly. You had already set the board so that no other move remained. And look here—the true hero of the negotiations stands before us. Young brother, have you been well?”
At Hyeondeok Daesa’s words, Hwiyeom bowed his head with a smile.
“Thanks to you, Master, I have been quite well.”
“I have always held that the rumors of the jianghu are not to be trusted. Yet seeing you this time has opened my eyes. Sometimes a rumor simply cannot hold everything a man is.”
“You flatter me.”
“Well then, if the greetings are finished, shall we move straight to the heart of the matter? I have come on behalf of the Martial Alliance to collect what is due.”
Of course Hyeondeok Daesa had not taken the Dang family’s side merely to hear someone declare, “Thanks to your mediation, peace has returned to Sichuan!” Behind the scenes a not-inconsiderable conversation had already passed between him and Hwiyeom. The time had come to settle that account.
“Yes. The documents have been prepared in advance. Please examine them.”
“My thanks, Family Head. Let me see…”
Dang Un-sang offered a wooden case. Hyeondeok Daesa opened it, scanned the papers within, and nodded with a gentle smile.
“Nothing amiss.”
The document was a memorandum of understanding: the Sichuan Dang Family would supply the Martial Alliance with a fixed annual quantity of iron at cost. Strictly speaking the iron would come from the State-run Ironworks rather than the family’s own forges, but that was easily resolved by accepting part of the payment the Provincial Administration owed the Dang family in the form of iron instead of coin. What mattered was the contract itself—the Martial Alliance would receive vast amounts of iron at production cost.
Hyeondeok Daesa returned the papers to the case, sipped his tea, and continued.
“The Martial Alliance requires an enormous quantity of weapons every year. The mere cost of the metal rivals the annual upkeep of a major sect. If the Dang family sells us iron at this price, our finances will breathe far more easily. That is a far greater gain than anything we might have extracted by siding with the Qingcheng Sect.”
“If the Martial Alliance is to stand with the Dang family, we must offer at least this much so that you, Master, may keep face within the Alliance.”
From the Alliance’s pure perspective it mattered little who won so long as the two sides did not go to open war. Hyeondeok Daesa’s personal position, however, was another matter entirely. Having come all the way down to Sichuan, he would return with something tangible in hand, and his standing inside the Alliance would only rise. Qingcheng had offered to “stand with the Master in every Alliance vote concerning policy,” but the Dang family could have given the same pledge with ease—and on top of it they were delivering iron as well. To a man who had arrived expecting nothing more than Qingcheng’s support, it was as though a whole pumpkin vine had rolled straight into his lap.
“Hehehe, so it is. Thanks to this I shall return home in glory.”
“Truthfully, had any other mediator come we would never have gone this far. We do this only because it is the Thousand-Handed Living Buddha, hero of Sichuan, Hyeondeok Daesa.”
“That is kind of you to say. Hehe. Should you ever need my help in the future, do not hesitate to call upon me.”
“Truly?! You promise?!”
Hwiyeom hopped in place with exaggerated delight. Ye-eun fixed him with half-lidded eyes and let out a quiet sigh. Only at moments like this did her master pretend to be cute; she was certain a century-old fox spirit lived inside him.
Still, from Hyeondeok Daesa’s standpoint he has unquestionably scored a great merit.
She coolly assessed the present situation.
He may even set his sights on the next leadership of the Martial Alliance.
Her diagnosis proved exact. After returning to the Alliance, Hyeondeok Daesa began, step by careful step, to prepare his path toward the position of Alliance Leader.
Having thus secured a major achievement, the Living Buddha departed in satisfaction. Watching his retreating figure, Dang Un-sang turned to Hwiyeom.
“…Are you certain this is all right?”
“Of course. From the Dang family’s perspective this is by no means a loss. On the contrary, it is a considerable gain.”
Hwiyeom smiled faintly.
“Through this memorandum we have opened a direct channel of trade with the Martial Alliance. Under ordinary circumstances we would be the ones pleading for the privilege of selling them iron; instead they have volunteered to become our client. How could that be anything but excellent?”
“But it is a cost-price deal. Once transport expenses are factored in, every sale would seem to deepen our losses.”
“There is a rather large gap between the cost they imagine and the cost we actually incur, Father.”
“Hm? You mean to cheat them and sell at a high price?”
“Not at all. We will sell at the cost the people of the Central Plains believe to be true. Our real production cost simply happens to be about one-sixth of that figure.”
“Ah… now that you mention it…”
“…Father, I am certain I attached a detailed market-price comparison chart to the proposal…”
“Ahem-hem!! Let us skip the trifling details!”
“…Hyeondeok Daesa no doubt believes the Sichuan Dang Family is willing to suffer a small loss in order to favor the Martial Alliance. In reality, our annual profit looks like this.”
Hwiyeom’s fingers flew across an abacus; in moments he produced a figure and held it out. Dang Un-sang’s eyes went round.
“Th-this much?”
“Father, I also submitted this exact calculation in the proposal…”
“Ahem!”
Dang Un-sang adopted an unnecessarily solemn expression and nodded.
“Why, then, is the difference in cost so vast?”
“…Because the productivity gap between mass-production methods and traditional hand forging is simply enormous.”
Being trusted is pleasant enough—why does it still rankle?
Hwiyeom swallowed a sigh and continued.
“Everywhere in the Central Plains except our own house, people still produce refined steel by the old charcoal-and-bloomery methods. Even the bloomery process is treated as a secret technique in some places; workshops that still rely on the lump-iron method are not hard to find. In both volume and unit cost the two approaches cannot be compared.”
Heating hundreds of tiny furnaces to draw out molten iron was far less efficient than packing a single vast reverberatory furnace with coal and coke and melting a great mass at once. Far less fuel was consumed, and far less time. As for labor—while the Provincial Administration proudly claimed the State-run Ironworks had created countless jobs, producing the same quantity of iron by traditional forges would have required more than ten times as many hands. Overall labor costs had therefore plummeted. When one considered how much human effort the river-powered waterwheels now replaced, the answer became obvious.
“In short, the figure Hyeondeok Daesa carries away is today’s production cost. Once the State-run Ironworks operate at full capacity, unit costs will fall so dramatically that we cannot help but profit.”
In other words, they had pretended to take a loss, earned the Living Buddha’s gratitude, and sold him a favor—while the real beneficiary was the Dang family.
“Yet if production costs fall, will the selling price not eventually fall as well? Since the government oversees the Ironworks, we cannot freely manipulate the market price. Once Flawless Steel pours out in quantity and demand is satisfied, the price must drop to some degree. Even if not immediately, the Martial Alliance may later feel slighted.”
“That is precisely the loophole. We will claim we never expected Flawless Steel prices to drop either, and at that time we will renegotiate for a more ‘appropriate’ figure.”
By then the Dang family would hold every advantage and could still set a price a little below the open market. The Alliance, though disappointed, would have no reason to refuse cheaper iron.
Hwiyeom exhaled and smiled, shifting the mood.
“In any case, the troublesome business with Qingcheng is settled for now, is it not?”
As a businessman, Dang Un-sang could never match Hwiyeom’s eye for the flow of commerce; as a martial artist reading the currents of the jianghu, however, Hwiyeom was still the less seasoned of the two. More precisely, a modern sensibility occasionally clashed with martial-world instincts and led him slightly astray. Dang Un-sang smiled and nodded.
“From our side we have received an apology and the land we wanted—nothing to regret. Hyeondeok Daesa has raised his renown in Sichuan and walked away with Flawless Steel—nothing to regret. The Qingcheng sect leader will loudly proclaim that he resolved the crisis by surrendering a few worthless peaks. For the foreseeable future they will be too busy catching their breath and tightening internal discipline to attempt anything.”
A negotiation in which everyone could claim moderate satisfaction had been achieved. Of course, satisfaction and the question of who had pocketed the greatest share of profit were two different matters entirely.
“What I am curious about now is this: is that Bisun Peak truly worth as much as you claim? Enough that we should have ignored every other concession we might have wrung from Qingcheng and gone so far as to force this particular prize?”
“Strictly speaking we will not know the full appraisal until we actually mine the ore…”
Hwiyeom smiled.
“It may not make us a fortune in coin, yet it is unquestionably a great transaction that will bring something else of immense value to our family.”
“Something else?”
“Power.”
Hwiyeom’s smile deepened.
“Starting tomorrow I will assign the core master smiths of Cheol-u-jeon and a portion of the researchers from the Innovation Hall to a secret proj— a secret research program. It will be conducted under the strictest secrecy. Grant me full authority.”
“Permission granted. Once again, surprise me.”
“Surprising only Father would be far too dull.”
“Then?”
Hwiyeom grinned.
“If the State-run Ironworks astonished Sichuan, this will astonish the world.”
Hwiyeon General Trading Company held a near-monopoly on the coal and iron mines of Sichuan Province. Despite the name “general trading company,” its true business was mining. A special task force composed solely of veteran miners renowned for their gift at locating ore veins now stood before Hwiyeom.
He described to them the characteristics of vanadinite, one of the primary ores of vanadium—known in the classical tongue as brown lead ore. The miners scratched their heads as they studied the sketches he had drawn.
“So… we dig into Bisun Peak on Mount Qingcheng and look for minerals of this appearance?”
“Exactly.”
“Hmm…”
One of the older men spoke as though tossing the thought out casually.
“This looks like false jade…”
“False jade? Counterfeit jade?”
“Yes, sir. We often find it near iron veins. It clusters like rock-salt crystals—brown and brittle—on the softer rock around the seams. In the light it sparkles like ruby, but it is nothing of the sort. Squeeze it hard and it crumbles. That is why we call it false jade—fake ruby.”
Hwiyeom clapped his hands.
“That is precisely it!”
Vanadinite’s hardness is Mohs 3.5—gypsum is 2, calcite 3. Glass runs 6–7. At 3.5 a man can crush the crystal in his bare hand without tools.
“If the features are that clear, Young Master, finding it will not be difficult—provided it is actually there.”
“I guarantee it is. And while you are at it, keep an eye out for this ore as well…”
“Hmm…”
The craftsmen murmured among themselves after hearing the next description.
“This one looks familiar—seal jade, isn’t it?”
“Right, right. Also called golden-red stone.”
“Ah! That name is correct!”
Titanium dioxide. At the mention of rutile Hwiyeom’s face lit up, and the miners laughed.
“Easy enough to carve, so we use the low-grade stuff for seals, heh heh.”
“Young Master, you only send us after minerals that are barely worth a coin. Are these truly useful?”
“More than useful. Of course, the fact that I am looking for them…”
“Ah, naturally we will keep it secret.”
“Of course, of course. The Dang family is about great affairs—secrecy is only proper!”
“Aye, aye!”
The old miners laughed with simple honesty, and Hwiyeom laughed with them.
And so the collection of materials for the production of Hyeoncheol began.