The Dang Family Hard at Work
In that case, mass-producing paper is the first thing I need to stop putting off.
Honestly, Huiyeom had never worked in papermaking, so he knew next to nothing about the actual process. He understood that pulp paper was made from wood chips instead of mulberry bark, processed under high heat and pressure with chemical treatments—but the finer details of the craft eluded him. Without that knowledge, building a mass-production facility for paper was impossible.
But do I even need to do it myself?
Until now, the desperate circumstances had forced Huiyeom to personally introduce and apply knowledge from the future. He was an engineer and a developer, yes—but before any of that, he was a manager. And a manager's true virtue was not inventing new products so much as making an enterprise run smoothly.
I need Fordism and a Tim Cook-style materials management system.
First, Huiyeom sent people across Sichuan and into neighboring provinces, hiring paper artisans in bulk. Then he sat them down and had them explain the papermaking process.
"I know none of you want to expose your so-called secret techniques. I'm not interested in those anyway. Just give me the rough sequence of steps, and I'll figure out where we can reduce the dependence on manual labor. When you make paper, which part eats up the most manpower?"
The hesitant artisans began answering one by one.
"Well… pounding the boiled mulberry bark until it's soft…"
"Boiling the wood itself. You have to keep working the bellows the whole time."
The part they considered the true secret of fine papermaking—forming the sheets with glue and paste, then drying them properly—was something else entirely. What they were describing was pure grunt work: labor-intensive, unskilled steps that anyone could do. Exactly what Huiyeom was looking for.
"So, steaming the wood into fiber pulp… and the bellows work…"
Huiyeom immediately summoned the researchers from the Innovation Hall.
"I hear the steam engine I requested from Master Han earlier has made considerable progress."
"Y-yes? We're still working on it, but it's only at the prototype stage…"
"This is the perfect project to prove that prototype's usefulness. Design me a device that uses a steam engine—or hydropower—to work the bellows continuously, and another that pounds boiled mulberry bark into pulp."
"Understood."
They had already developed similar equipment while building the State-run Ironworks, so within a few days the Innovation Hall researchers knocked out a set of blueprints. Huiyeom took those drawings and summoned Han Cheol, now the head of the Metallurgy Department.
"One month."
Han Cheol's brow furrowed.
"Impossible. Give us at least two months…"
"A month and a half. Night-shift overtime pay included."
"Even so… even if we run night shifts to the limit, we'd need at least a month and three weeks…"
"A month and a half. Every day you go over, I dock the Metallurgy Department's quarterly performance score by that many days. Finish under the deadline, and I'll add the days you save as a bonus."
"Damn it—a month and a half! Go to hell, Young Master!"
Han Cheol ground his teeth and took the blueprints. And for the stretch that followed, the craftsmen of the Metallurgy Department were ground down like vegetables in a juicer. They were not alone in their suffering, however.
"Damn it all! A month and a half! That Young Master is definitely going to hell someday!"
The carpenters of the Construction Department—who were building the print shop that would house the printing press—were going through the exact same ordeal. How do you raise a building in a month and a half? Isn't that shoddy construction? To anyone asking that, the answer is: it depends entirely on how you use a month and a half. Used properly, it was more than enough.
In the end, the print shop went up in a flash, fitted with paper-production equipment, movable-type presses, and the people to run them.
"…Everything's fine except—why is the print shop right next to my office?"
Ye-eun spoke as though a fig were stuck in her throat. Huiyeom smiled, pure and white.
"Because you're going to write the newspaper articles."
"Excuse me? Me?"
"Yes. You."
"No."
To Ye-eun, whose mouth had fallen open, Huiyeom said,
"To write a newspaper, you need stories. And those stories are all information. Who in Sichuan is the most plugged into that kind of information?"
"…Me?"
"So you write it."
Ye-eun nearly said Oh, that makes sense, then shook her head hard and scrambled for a counterargument.
"At least give me an editorial department. Having the information is one thing—someone still has to turn it into writing people will actually want to read."
"I figured you'd say that. Everyone, come in."
At Huiyeom's word, a crowd of people filed in and bowed.
"These are the people who will handle editorial work under you from now on."
"Where did these people suddenly come from?"
Running a newspaper's editorial department was no trivial job. In the Central Plains, where literacy rates were low, simply being able to read and write was a rare skill—and editing a newspaper was an entirely different craft on top of that. Knowing hangul did not mean anyone could pen a newspaper column.
Huiyeom smiled.
"Students from the practical-affairs track at the Hwi-eon Free School. There's even a geoin—someone who passed the provincial civil-service exam—among them. They're all excellent talent, so feel free to work them… I mean, make full use of them."
"Ah."
Only then did Ye-eun dredge up the half-forgotten students of the Hwi-eon Free School. The first cohort of the practical-affairs track was mostly older—failed scholars who had returned to the countryside, provincial exam passers, people who had pursued classical studies here and there. Ideal candidates.
Knowing her escape route had been sealed, Ye-eun swallowed a sigh.
"Understood."
While Ye-eun was locked in a desperate struggle to hammer a proper editorial department into shape out of a gaggle of bewildered students, Second Secretary Lee Jinmyeong was hardly sitting idle either.
"Hahahahaha!! You hired the junior secretaries for this from the very start, didn't you! Didn't you!"
Lee Jinmyeong—who had been handling every administrative process for establishing both the Legal Department and the newspaper (budget proposals, wrangling and reconciling with the Family Head's office, budget execution, org-chart drafting, structural reorganization, division of duties, and so on and so on and so on…)—burst into laughter that sounded halfway unhinged. Beside him, a junior secretary was drafting documents as if possessed, never pausing for a moment, muttering murmur-murmur-murmur-murmur… under his breath with an aura of pure ghostliness as he plied his brush.
Huiyeom looked at them and smiled with satisfaction.
"That's the spirit! I love seeing people work with a smile, Secretary Lee! Yes—this is how a workplace should be."
"Hahahaha! I'm going to kill you! Hahahahaha!"
"My, if you kill me, does that mean you'll take over my work too, Secretary Lee?"
"Hahahahaha!!! Kwahahahahahahaha!!! Kheuheoeoeoeong!!!"
Having apparently snapped his last tether of sanity, Lee Jinmyeong roared with laughter at the sky—then came charging over with thick tears streaming down his face, seized Huiyeom's pant leg, and began to shake it.
"At least do something about the organizational restructuring! Those people in Legal have egos the size of mountains! No matter what role or title I invent for them, they click their tongues with that look that says, Is this how the Dang Family values me? I'm losing my mind!"
"Well, they were all big shots in their day. With that many of them on the roster, nobody will dare mess with our family casually anymore. Heh—perfect."
"I'm the one who can't mess with the work, you bastard!!"
"Anyway, the real problem is the manpower shortage, so I'll fill that first. Everyone, come in."
Lee Jinmyeong, too, was assigned several students from the Hwi-eon Free School's practical-affairs track.
"From this moment on, all of you are extensions of Secretary Lee. Think of yourselves that way, and support him well. And Secretary Lee?"
"…You're about to give me a few more people and then dump several times as much work on me, aren't you?"
"Secretary Lee, let me teach you a magic spell that can solve any problem."
"…If it's some 'you can do it' nonsense, I'm lying down right here."
"Would I do that? Listen carefully and repeat after me. Al."
"Al."
"Jal."
"Jal."
"Kkal."
"Kkal."
"Ttak."
"Ttak."
"Nun."
"Nun."
"Al-jal-kkal-ttak-nun."
"Al-jal-kkal-ttak-nun."
"Figure it out yourself. Do it clean. Nail it. Stay sharp. Handle the work. Got it? I'll be going, then."
Huiyeom gave the shoulder of a briefly vacant Lee Jinmyeong—who had frozen into a roadside stone statue—an affectionate pat, and slipped out. A short while later, he heard a certain man's scorching roar erupt behind him.
—Aaaaaaagh! Just go to hell already!!!!
"Mmm, overflowing with passion! Excellent!"
Vitality was flooding through the Dang Family. Of course—did that mean Huiyeom simply tossed work at everyone else and lounged around?
Hardly.
That Huiyeom was the busiest person in the Dang Family was a fact that had not changed before and would almost certainly never change. He read every report they submitted in full, pointed out the deficiencies, rejected them, or sometimes personally drafted the remedies and ordered them carried out. Speaking directly with Dang Un-sang, the Provincial Governor, or Lord Bang Un about the finished reports and results was also entirely his responsibility.
If everyone else was living a life where twelve double-hours in a day were not enough, Huiyeom was living each day as though it had twenty-four.
And at last, in the completed newspaper office, the first issue of the Sichuan Daily was printed.
Delivery runners from across Seongdo gathered at the rear gate of the Sichuan Dang Family. They had fought through the sleepiness of a pale, just-breaking dawn for one reason: the Dang Family had goods to deliver, and a notice had gone out that they would be paid a stipend for the trouble.
"All right, everyone. Starting today, when you report to your Baekga-jaengsik franchise shops, take these bundles of newspapers with you. Those of you assigned to government offices, bring them to your respective offices."
"We just deliver them?"
One of the runners asked. Lee Jinmyeong answered.
"Drop them off with the franchise owners—they'll handle the rest. Those going to government offices, hand them over to the clerks."
"Yes, sir."
The runners did as they were told without complaint. It was hardly burdensome work, and with a stipend on top of it, there was no reason to refuse.
"Newspapers, huh."
One Baekga-jaengsik shop owner, arranging the newspapers the runners had brought onto the display stand the Dang Family had instructed him to build, scratched his chin with a dubious look.
"They said to let the customers read them freely? Isn't this a losing business?"
"Oh, hush with that fretting. When has the Dang Family ever started something just for profit? It's all for the good of Sichuan, I'm sure~."
"Well, maybe, but at the end of the day a business has to turn a profit—"
"You go looking for things to worry about. Just get ready for today's trade already~."
"Fine, fine. Don't nag, dear. Tch."
Similar conversations played out across the whole of Seongdo. And when lunchtime came, a scholar who had stepped into a Baekga-jaengsik noodle shop noticed a newspaper stand he had never seen before in one corner of the shop and asked,
"I say, Master Jang—that wasn't there yesterday. What is it?"
"Ah, Scholar Choe. That? Looks like the Dang Family is up to something good again. They told us to put it out for the customers."
"Hmm, is that so? May I take a look?"
"Of course. Just put it back when you're done so the next person can read it."
"Hmm. Let's see."
Scholar Choe picked one of the newspapers from the stand, returned to his seat, and opened it. The paper quality was crude stuff, nowhere near the rice paper used for calligraphy—but the printed characters were clean all the same.
Announcement of the Founding of the Sichuan Daily
So that all the people of Sichuan may properly know what happens in Sichuan, we create this newspaper…
As he read, Scholar Choe nodded.
"Mmm… so that people may learn of the Three Offices' policies, various news items, and local problems, and thus avoid hardship… The Dang Family is doing good works again. Out of their own pocket, no less."
With a pleased expression he nodded and turned the first page.
"Let's see… the lead story is…"
The representative of the standing board is Lord Bang Un, formerly Judicial Commissioner of Henan and other concurrent criminal jurisdictions…
"What?!"
Shouts much like his were erupting, all at once, in every corner of Sichuan.