Word Is the Foresight Dragon Has Been Jailed
Word is the Foresight Dragon has been thrown in prison.
Upon receiving what was labeled a request for counsel—and read as a summons—Grand Master Bang Un raced over without a moment’s delay. He took one look at Huiyeom’s letter, his face hardening to stone, and clenched his teeth.
“What kind of corrupt official is this?!”
He immediately summoned the officers of the Legal Affairs Division.
“Anyone here know anything about the Yunnan Provincial Administration Commissioner?”
At Bang Un’s question, one man raised his hand.
He was Lin Ren, a former official who had finished his career as Deputy Commissioner of the Yunnan Judicial Surveillance Office—the post immediately under the Surveillance Commissioner himself.
“He rolled into Yunnan around the time I retired. From what the juniors tell me, he’s a textbook corrupt official.”
“Then why hasn’t the Yunnan Surveillance Commissioner cut him out?”
“His adoptive father is a Chiliarch of the Penal Office in the Eastern Depot. And the Yunnan Surveillance Commissioner is eyeing retirement. He has no intention of poking a sleeping hornet’s nest.”
The former Yunnan Deputy Surveillance Commissioner’s intelligence was vivid and precise.
Having grasped the situation at once, Bang Un snorted.
“If he doesn’t want an undignified exit, we’ll have to take a whip to that heavy backside of his and make him get up.”
“How do we proceed, sir?”
“We can split this into two issues. First, the imprisonment of an innocent commoner. Second, illicit enrichment. Once we’ve sorted the legal principles, we draft a formal accusation to the Yunnan Surveillance Commissioner.”
“Ah… but it isn’t exactly the imprisonment of an innocent, is it? They say he hurled insulting abuse right in the Commissioner’s face.”
A junior clerk—stuck at the fifth rank of Associate Commissioner before being recruited into the newly founded Legal Affairs Division—tilted his head. Bang Un clicked his tongue.
“Where in the Great Gyeong Code does it say insulting an official is a crime? Which clause? Do you remember?”
“Uh…”
The Associate Commissioner, who had assumed as a matter of course that this was illegal, ransacked the law code in his head and promptly flushed.
“Th-there is no explicit provision. However, by custom one would attach charges of insulting an official and obstructing public duty and administer twenty strokes of the heavy rod…”
“Custom and convention. That lies within the discretion of the Surveillance Commissioner, not the Provincial Administration Commissioner, and it is not written in the law.
“People commonly make this mistake: a Provincial Administration Commissioner has no judicial authority. Because they cannot plant the Three Judicial Offices in every little county, the county magistrates end up waving the local judicial power around. So plenty of fools assume that the higher-ranking Provincial Administration Commissioner must hold judicial power as a matter of course. If that were true, why separate the Surveillance Commissioner from the Provincial Administration Commissioner in the first place?”
“Your words are entirely correct, Your Excellency!”
The former officials who had come up through the Surveillance offices lit up with twin flames in their eyes.
“Moreover, locking a man in prison because he spoke insultingly after arriving on the Provincial Administration Commissioner’s own orders to provide relief, then threatening to cripple him unless he hands over relief grain? That is a blatant violation of the law.”
Bang Un’s gaze on the Associate Commissioner was thick with exasperation.
The Associate Commissioner hung his head like hair curling away from a fire.
“I apologize, Your Excellency. My thinking was shallow.”
“No need for apologies. Instead, you will take charge of the legal analysis of this case and the first draft of the public proclamation. This, too, is study.”
“Understood!”
“Your Excellency, even if we submit the accusation, will the Yunnan Surveillance Commissioner actually move?”
Lin Ren, who knew the Surveillance Commissioner’s temperament well, tilted his head. Bang Un’s smile turned cold.
“If a nobody like him refuses to move? Then we make him move.”
A former official was, by definition, a former official. That meant he currently held neither authority nor obligation.
Yet the medieval Chinese bureaucracy, tightly bound by regional ties, academic connections, blood relations, and debts of gratitude—the whole web of guanxi—made a mockery of mere “authority.”
Was this not the romantic Middle Ages, where a single word from a famous scholar living in rustic retirement could set the entire realm trembling?
And what if the story concerned a corrupt official fleecing the common folk who were already suffering under locusts, while persecuting an innocent local magnate who was struggling to save those same people, all so he could squeeze grain out of them for private gain?
Any man who heard that tale and kept silent was unfit for politics.
High officials would inevitably find ways to turn the story to their own advantage—from direct pressure on the Eastern Depot to twisting the narrative to suit whatever policy they wished to push.
Moreover, the networks of these former officials stretched across the entire Central Plains and deep into the Beijing political world.
“What do you intend, sir?”
“That Provincial Administration… the title itself is wasted on him. You said that corrupt dog’s backer is a Chiliarch of the Penal Office?”
“Yes. A man named Zhang Bisheng.”
“Hold a moment. When I served a stint in the Censorate, I handled the confirmation hearings for the Brush-Wielding Eunuch… Is Qiu Jiongshou still holding the Brush?”
At Bang Un’s question, a junior clerk recently recruited from the Beijing Censorate answered with a stunned expression.
“Q-Qiu Jiongshou is the current Seal-Holding Grand Eunuch…!”
“Oh, is he? I thought a man that clean would never rise far, yet he made it to Seal-Holder? If he plays it right he might even snatch the Superintendent Grand Eunuch post. I can’t tease him for being a greenhorn anymore.”
Bang Un nodded.
“I’ll send a memorial to Seal-Holder Qiu. Local corruption and judicial disorder—surely matters the Eastern Depot ought to know and examine?”
“…Hah.”
The Eastern Depot was the Emperor’s personal intelligence organ, but its true work was that of the Emperor’s hunting hounds. It existed to purge those who defied the throne; therefore “under investigation by the Eastern Depot” was close enough to “your entire house is finished” that the distinction hardly mattered.
Central power always watched local power for signs of betrayal and rot. Corrupt local officials either drove the people into rebellion or set themselves up as regional kings until ambition turned to treason.
The reason the Yunnan Provincial Administration Commissioner had thrived so long without mishap was that a high eunuch of the Eastern Depot—the very organ charged with watching the provinces—had been his adoptive father.
Yet no matter how fearsome the Chiliarch’s edge, the Seal-Holding Grand Eunuch stood above him. Once the Seal-Holder opened an investigation into Yunnan, that Chiliarch who served as the Commissioner’s backer would have to cut off his own adoptive son’s head with his own hands simply to keep breathing.
And even that might not be enough.
The clerk from the Censorate, well acquainted with the terror and tenacity of Beijing power, believed the matter was as good as settled.
Until another former official spoke.
“Wait—this is not solely the Eastern Depot’s affair. A Provincial Administration Commissioner who behaves like that cannot possibly have failed to send bribes to the Chiliarch protecting him. This exposes corruption at the heart of the Beijing court itself. The Censorate should act, Your Excellency.”
“Does the Left Vice Censor-in-Chief have a good idea?”
When Xing Cheng—former Left Vice Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate—broached the subject, Bang Un inquired. Among all the former officials in the Legal Affairs Division, he was one of the few whom Bang Un still addressed with respect.
Xing Cheng said to Bang Un,
“A junior from my hometown succeeded me in the Left Vice Censor-in-Chief’s seat. It seems a good time to send a long-overdue letter of greeting.”
“Hahaha. Your junior will be delighted. A ready-made chance to pressure the Eastern Depot has just walked in. Beijing will be lively for the first time in ages.”
The Censorate that supervised bureaucratic administration, the Eastern Depot that investigated officials, and the Embroidered Uniform Guard that arrested those who broke the law formed Beijing’s three great intelligence organs—and they loathed one another as rivals.
So the Censorate would now apply pressure over the Eastern Depot’s own blunder?
Under the Superintendent Grand Eunuch’s bright smile, no one could say how many heads would roll—not the kind of rolling that meant overwork in the Sichuan Tang Family, but the kind that meant departing this world for good.
If the Embroidered Uniform Guard steps in, that will complete the set, won’t it?
A rough, heavy voice thundered in the ear of the already shell-shocked junior clerk.
“I’ll write a letter myself as well. Those Eastern Depot bastards pull this sort of stunt and you miss it? These sons of bitches have gone soft…!”
A man with a martial bearing, face flushed crimson and snorting through his nose—none other than Li Zhongxian, former official of the Southern Pacification Office of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
The junior clerks of the Legal Affairs Division wore expressions that said they wanted to faint and simply stared at the ceiling.
Why on earth are such terrifying Excellencies drawing a mere clan’s salary?
Is this even possible? Am I dreaming?
It sounded absurd, yet it also made perfect sense.
Bang Un, Xing Cheng, and Li Zhongxian were all high officials originally from Sichuan who had retired to spend their twilight years in their native soil. Bang Un had come to repay the Tang Family’s kindness; Xing Cheng and Li Zhongxian, already watching the Tang Family’s progress with no small interest, had joined with a show of reluctance once Bang Un’s letter of introduction arrived.
From their perspective there was no reason to ignore a summons from Bang Un—a senior colleague and famous incorruptible official—and, more importantly, it looked fun.
“An old man who retires simply chews over past glories until he rots, does he not? There is still work we can do for His Majesty the Emperor. Shall we not watch over a family that develops the very Sichuan soil we live on and that our descendants will inherit?”
Those words of Bang Un’s had sealed the matter.
Later, when word reached Huiyeom that the letters from Bang Un, Xing Cheng, and Li Zhongxian had been delivered to the Eastern Depot, the Censorate, and the Embroidered Uniform Guard respectively and that Beijing had been turned upside down, he offered a brief assessment.
“…So a corruption scandal blew up at the National Intelligence Service, and a retired official snitched on them to his juniors who happen to be the NIS deputy director, the vice-chair of the Central Administrative Appeals Commission, and the vice-minister of Justice—basically telling them, ‘You little shits better shape up or else’…”
Even so, he shook his head as though he had never expected the shockwave to reach quite that far.
While the Legal Affairs Division moved in that fashion, the Sichuan Tang Family did not sit idle either.
The moment Dang Un-sang finished reading the letter, he requested an immediate meeting with the Provincial Administration Commissioner and the Surveillance Commissioner of Sichuan.
The two men who held Sichuan’s administration and judiciary in their hands flew into a rage the instant they heard Huiyeom’s story.
“Those Yunnan country bumpkins dare lay hands on Sichuan’s treasure?!”
“This is a challenge to the Sichuan Judicial Surveillance Office itself! They dare put a subject of Sichuan on trial in Yunnan—and for the crime of ‘annoying us,’ which doesn’t even exist in the Great Gyeong Code?!”
From time immemorial it has been human nature that even the village idiot returns furious after a thrashing in the next village over. How much more so when the finest god of wealth Sichuan had produced in decades had been unjustly imprisoned? Both men snorted with fury.
“They say even the Son of Heaven gets cursed when he’s not around! What is a Provincial Administration Commissioner that he throws a man in prison over a few insults?!”
Dang Un-sang looked briefly taken aback at the sitting Provincial Administration Commissioner himself roaring “What is a Provincial Administration Commissioner that he dares…!” Then he shook his head and spoke.
“The Tang Family intends to prepare a memorial of grievance and submit it to Beijing. The Legal Affairs Division is preparing one separately as well.”
“…There will be a bloodbath.”
At the mention of the Legal Affairs Division the Provincial Administration Commissioner flinched and looked as though goosebumps had risen, while the Surveillance Commissioner’s expression said he was thoroughly screwed.
“I trust Sichuan itself won’t get caught in the splash, Family Head?”
“Of course not. The Sichuan Surveillance Office has done nothing wrong.”
“I will personally prepare a memorial vigorously defending the Tang Family.”
“That is reassuring.”
Terrified of being beaten simply for standing next to the wrong man, the Surveillance Commissioner immediately set his Deputy to work. The pitiful Deputy Surveillance Commissioner could not even go home; he drove the Associate Commissioners to assemble evidentiary documents for Beijing. His misfortune was only beginning.
“Damn it! What kind of bolt from the blue is this…!”
“Deputy Commissioner! A guest has arrived!”
“Tell them I’m busy!”
“Hahaha. Are you, now? That busy?”
“Hah?! Senior?!”
“Let me give you a hand. This is the formal opinion the Sichuan Tang Legal Affairs Division has prepared on the present case…”
Former officials who had once served as Deputy Surveillance Commissioners of both Sichuan and Yunnan, together with section chiefs, team leaders, and junior clerks from the Legal Affairs Division, swarmed in and occupied the Sichuan Surveillance Office.
As the average rank of the occupants of the Deputy’s office suddenly jumped two or three grades, the Associate Commissioners felt as though their souls were about to leave through their mouths.
To the Deputy who had frozen solid as stone, his former superior said,
“Hm? What are you doing? Aren’t you working?”
“Pardon?”
“Did I retire a bit too early? Should I have trained you a little longer before I left?”
“N-no, sir!”
“Stop standing there like a stone statue and bring me the precedents from the year of the Earth Ox. They’ll be in the Record Office, second row of the traveling chest. I handled the case myself, so I know.”
“Yes, sir!”
Suddenly displaced from the seat of honor and forced to scurry about like an Associate Commissioner himself, the Deputy set the Associates moving as though they had become runners; they began to employ something like the art of multiplying bodies.
While Sichuan moved in that fashion, the Dokwadae and Lee Jinmyeong in Yunnan were carrying out their own separate assignments.
“You there! Bring more sacks!”
“No horses?”
“Where would we find grass to feed them? They all starved. Even the oxen we brought are on the brink because there’s nothing left to eat!”
“Damn it, then we’ve got no choice. Move it by hand.”
“I didn’t master martial arts for this… Ugh…!”
The Dokwadae stepped in to perform the recovery work that the common folk, lost in despair, had abandoned. They dredged the locust corpses choking the roads, the paddies, and the wells, packed them into sacks, and cleared them away. They opened the water gates of the fouled paddies to drain the sewage, then dug out the spoiled earth and brought in clean soil so next year’s planting would be possible. In the process they even repaired long-neglected, collapsing buildings.
“My child drank from the well and now his stomach hurts and the diarrhea won’t stop…”
“Food poisoning. Wait a moment; I’ll prepare medicine.”
Members of the Tang Family, masters of poison, made far better physicians than half-baked doctors when it came to poisoning or food-poisoning symptoms.
While the officials of the Provincial Administration Office and their runners stood idle, the people of Yunnan watched the Sichuan Tang Family restore the province’s ruined lands and wept with gratitude.
“The people of Sichuan are our saviors.”
“The Sichuan Tang Family is a true house of righteous men!”
“Mom! Let’s move to Sichuan too!”
Belatedly learning of this, the Yunnan Provincial Administration Office sent soldiers to drive the Dokwadae out.
“By order of His Excellency the Provincial Administration Commissioner, cease all relief activity and leave the province.”
At least the man had the grace to feel shame; his face was flushed and his head bowed as he spoke. Dang Su-jeong stared at the officer in charge, then raised her phoenix eyes.
“Aren’t you ashamed? This is work you should have been doing yourselves.”
“…I know that.”
“Then why are you doing this? Why did you become an official in the first place? Wasn’t it because you wanted to serve the people?”
“….”
“Instead of this, work with us. If that’s too hard, at least close your eyes.”
“….”
After a moment’s struggle the official let out a sigh.
“I… I’ll try to buy you some time…”
“Thank you!”
“No—we’re the ones who should thank you. Please do what you can…”
The official bowed and turned away with heavy steps.
Meanwhile Lee Jinmyeong, accompanied by a couple of warrior escorts, moved among the villages meeting people.
“So you’re saying the Provincial Administration Commissioner ruined that family completely just so he could take the second daughter of the persimmon-tree house as a concubine?”
With his open, friendly face, Lee Jinmyeong set out rice wine and side dishes, opened with talk of the times and curses against the locusts, then gradually steered the conversation toward the Provincial Administration Commissioner. The old man poured out stories as though a dam had burst.
“Of course! That family was a local pillar, mind you. The father was Scholar Bai—passed the provincial examination and everything.
“Well, he kept finding excuses to torment them until the eldest son finally snapped and talked back. They beat the boy until he was crippled and threw him into the underground dungeon.”
“Good heavens!”
“When they told Eun-sil she’d get her brother back if she became a concubine, the girl gave in. Such a kind, pretty child… Aigoo… tsk.”
“And then? Did they free the eldest once she became a concubine?”
Lee Jinmyeong fed him the right responses; the old man, thoroughly warmed up, downed a cup of rice wine, let out a sharp “Hah!”, and thumped his chest as though rage would burst it.
“Not a chance! He kept her around for a month or two at most, then tossed her out on a straw mat.
“Whether it was the main wife’s jealousy or some other filthy business, I don’t know. When Scholar Bai’s wife saw her daughter’s ruined corpse she fell ill from the shock and died. The eldest son swore he’d kill the Commissioner, went to the yamen at night with a knife in his teeth, and the sentries shot him full of arrows.
“Scholar Bai submitted dozens of memorials to the Surveillance Office pleading injustice, and even sent memorials all the way to Beijing, but every last one was buried. In the end he hanged himself from that persimmon tree.”
“That man isn’t even human.”
Even as he burned with anger, Lee Jinmyeong carefully recorded every word.
Meanwhile the Yunnan Provincial Administration Commissioner, who had never dreamed events would take this turn, was still cheerfully planning how to fleece the Tang Family.
“Send a letter to the Tang Family. If they want their heir back, tell them to deliver ten thousand piculs of rice.”
It would take roughly half a month for a messenger from Yunnan to reach the Tang Family and another half month for the return journey. The Commissioner was utterly convinced that within a month the Tang Family would come rolling back with carts full of grain.
Yet a month passed with no sign of them. The Commissioner, who had waited with leisurely confidence at first, grew irritated.
“Send another messenger. Tell them that if the grain does not arrive by the month after next, their precious heir will be beaten with the heavy rod until he can never sire descendants.”
In his own mind he was being magnanimous, allowing for travel time and the period needed to haul the grain.
And exactly two months later, lightning struck Yunnan.