The Bravest of Men
Once the minor mourning ceremony concluded, the village returned to its usual state. A quiet, small village, just as it had always been. A secluded hamlet where the household of the Juksan An clan lived together.
If the Minister of Rites and the Provincial Commander lingered too long in a place like this, it would surely bring ruin upon the locals. Before that could happen, some hot-tempered villager might very well take a scythe to those "corrupt officials."
Thus, Heo Jo accompanied Kim Jong-seo back to the Gyeongseong provincial office.
He left the boy with only a brief farewell and a small token of appreciation, wishing to grant him the time and space to process his grief.
Now, Heo Jo was left entirely alone with Kim Jong-seo. The moment he picked up his cup, he spoke.
"You. If you are plotting something, spit it out this instant."
"...Pardon?"
"I spoke with the boy before and after the mourning rites. It seems there truly is a prodigy who has mastered the Four Books at such a tender age."
"Then what else is there to doubt, Lord Minister?"
"Do you expect me to believe that cotton truly grew there without anyone noticing? Just when on earth did you transplant it?!"
"To transplant enough cotton to cover an entire gravesite... how could anyone accomplish such a feat in absolute secrecy, Lord Minister?"
"That is the very proof! You must have hidden it so masterfully that no one could even begin to guess how! Was it not His Majesty who aided you in this?"
Kim Jong-seo felt his breath catch. It wasn't that he was caught off guard; rather, he felt as though he had just witnessed someone shooting an arrow with their toes.
"Do you know what kind of land it was where those cotton flowers bloomed?"
"I do not. Did a dragon ascend from that spot or some such nonsense?"
"It is the very field where we harvested wheat barely two months ago."
"..."
"..."
"...So, it truly was not a lie."
"...It appears so."
In any case, their bickering soon came to an end. No matter how hard Heo Jo tried to deny it, it was futile. He had seen it clearly with his own two eyes. To deny it would require him to reject the testimony of his own eyes and ears—and even that would not suffice.
The numerous servants Heo Jo had brought along, as well as the other onlookers, had all witnessed that exact moment. They had seen the boy's tears.
He had no choice but to believe. No, the option of disbelief simply did not exist.
Heo Jo recalibrated all his political and personal judgments upon a single, newly established premise: The anecdotes surrounding An Heon are absolute fact.
Once his internal adjustments were complete, Heo Jo spoke.
"I truly... find it highly distasteful to utter these words, but..."
There was no need for further explanation. Heo Jo's face already laid bare his profound distaste to Kim Jong-seo. He looked as if he had swallowed ashes. Yet, the words had to be said.
"We must construct a new fort in Aoji. We must devote greater efforts to fortifying that town and securing the northern border."
"Did you, Lord Minister, just perhaps..."
"Do not misunderstand. I still do not look upon the development of the northern frontier with a favorable eye."
As if asking why he would say such a thing then, Kim Jong-seo tilted his head and set down his cup.
Heo Jo, soothing his bitter stomach, spoke again.
"If that wheat were to fall into the hands of the Jurchens to the north, what do you think would happen?"
"Would it not be a tremendous loss to the state?"
"No, it is worse than that."
Heo Jo shuddered. In Aoji, he had seen the granary overflowing with wheat. Because the new granaries promised by the state had not yet been built, the grain had been crammed into a small, makeshift storehouse. Even so, the sheer abundance of that single granary filled to the brim with wheat had left an indelible impression on him. He had also seen the fields where the seeds had just been sown.
What if the Jurchens swept down and plundered it all?
"What if His Majesty, declaring that we must reclaim the seeds and exact vengeance upon the Jurchens, commands us to push even further north?"
"..."
At those words, Kim Jong-seo's imagination took flight.
Under the fierce, unyielding commands of the King, Hamgil Province would expand endlessly to the north. The official pretext would surely be "reclaiming the lands of our ancestors," but the expansion would stretch so far that one might begin to wonder if King Taejo had actually been Mongolian...
And such a monumental task would inevitably be thrust upon the very man His Majesty "relied upon for all matters of the northern frontier."
Consequently, Kim Jong-seo would spend another twenty years rotting in the north. Unable to return home.
And then, one day, he would collapse from sheer exhaustion.
His Majesty would shed tears, decreeing that a grand tomb and a shrine be erected on that very spot. Kim Jong-seo, who defended the northern border, shall remain there even in death...
"We must prevent that at all costs."
"..."
"...As scholars who receive the state's stipend, I mean. Think of how immense the national expenditure required for such an endeavor would be!"
"I agree. Furthermore, the Ming Dynasty would never sit idly by. If our kingdom stretches that far north, the Ming Emperor will surely foam at the mouth."
Heo Jo and Kim Jong-seo shuddered simultaneously, though for entirely different reasons.
"In any case, though I am a civil official and far more ignorant of military affairs than you, even to my eyes, Aoji appeared dangerously vulnerable."
"...I, too, am a civil official."
"Ah, I had forgotten. Since you have been monopolizing the military affairs of the northern frontier for so long."
"..."
"Regardless, my point is this."
Whether Kim Jong-seo's expression soured or not, Heo Jo spoke in a stern, uncompromising voice.
"Having no other choice, I shall throw my weight behind your northern affairs—but this is the absolute limit."
"Thank you, Lord Minister."
"No, do not offer me empty pleasantries. I mean it when I say this is the absolute limit. We cannot afford to pour any more of the state's funds or labor into the north."
"..."
"You must know as well as I how many pressing matters currently weigh upon our nation, do you not?"
Heo Jo had much on his mind. First and foremost, they had to dismantle the local clans. Of course, it wasn't because the blood of those clans was inherently base or corrupt. If one traced the lineage of the current sajok back far enough, they all originated from local clans. It was simply that the state had to seize what was theirs.
Those who climbed the ranks to receive the state's stipend, those who derived the very foundation of their authority from the offices bestowed upon them by the court—they were the ones who must govern this land. Whether one achieved office through the civil service examinations or through ancestral privilege, the authority of a ruler must stem solely from the King.
The notion that "my family has ruled this land since ancient times, and so we must continue to do so" had to be utterly crushed and eradicated. Joseon was a nation founded precisely for that purpose.
"Since we barred the commoners from bringing lawsuits against their local magistrates, do you know what those wretches have been up to? Strangely, tigers have multiplied in every single valley."
Kim Jong-seo understood exactly what he meant. (He, too, was a civil official, after all.) It meant that an suspiciously high number of magistrates had been "carried off by tigers"—or so the local residents claimed.
"When we have so many urgent matters demanding our attention just to govern the three southern provinces! How can His Majesty be so indifferent to them?"
"..."
"And the same goes for you! If you believe His Majesty is pushing things too far, you ought to have the courage as a scholar to offer direct, unvarnished counsel!"
Kim Jong-seo swallowed the urge to reply, 'It is precisely because you speak in such a manner, Lord Minister, that your reputation is high but your relations with others are so fraught...'
Kim Jong-seo had to endure a great deal of patience today.
Naturally, Heo Jo paid no heed to his silence. He was not of a rank to concern himself with the feelings of a "green junior" like Kim Jong-seo.
"By the way, I heard there is a letter you exchanged with that boy."
"From whom did you hear that?"
"Scholar Shin, of course. Who else?"
His interest had quickly shifted elsewhere.
"To be sure, since it comes from a mere youth who has barely reached his twenty-first year, there must be some exaggeration..."
Heo Jo's eyes gleamed.
"But he claimed the boy possesses a scholarship that could define an entire era."
Heo Jo spoke, waiting for Kim Jong-seo to offer an explanation beginning with, 'It is not quite to that extent, but...'
"..."
"..."
Yet, there was no reply. Just as Heo Jo was about to fire off another nagging lecture, thinking the man had taken offense at a senior's bitter medicine, Kim Jong-seo suddenly stood up.
He walked over to a cabinet in the back, opened it, and retrieved a bundle of papers.
"Here it is."
That was all he said. As if to say, 'The very scholarship you spoke of, the one that could define an era, is right here.'
Feeling somewhat bewildered, Heo Jo accepted the sheets of paper.
It was then that Kim Jong-seo spoke.
"It is not An Heon's actual handwriting. It is a transcription; the original has been preserved separately."
"..."
"If you wish to see the original, I shall have it brought to you."
Kim Jong-seo's tone was entirely flat.
"Heon's brushwork is still unrefined, but it is vastly superior to that of his peers. It is slightly awkward to read, but one can get through it without any major hindrance."
...And Heo Jo fell silent.
That was not what mattered. Who in their right mind would go to the trouble of transcribing a letter written by a six-year-old boy? It wasn't as if they were preserving the sacred teachings of a sage...
"...Sounds?"
"Yes. He says he has discerned the general rules governing how the spoken sounds of the world shift and change."
...Ah.
"Furthermore, he has also written of his inquiries into how we might reconstruct the spoken sounds of the ancients."
"Is what is written below... the ancient sounds reconstructed in such a manner?"
"Indeed."
Heo Jo looked down at the text in his hands.
Every single word possessed a clear, orderly logic, and every piece of reasoning was meticulously structured. There were no leaps in logic, nor any discernible errors. Every single character began to pile heavily upon the old scholar's heart.
After a long pause, Heo Jo opened his mouth.
And from his lips escaped a strange, unfamiliar sound.
Naturally, An Heon could not have used the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Had he done so, it would have been nothing more than incomprehensible scribbles to anyone else. Moreover, it could have interfered with the future creation of the Hunminjeongeum, which would have posed an even greater problem.
Thus, An Heon had chosen a traditional method of notation. He utilized the fanqie system, indicating that the initial consonant of a syllable was identical to one character, while the remainder of the syllable was identical to another.
Because he was using existing characters to represent sounds from thousands of years ago, the reproduction was not perfectly precise, and there were distortions in many places.
Even so, Heo Jo followed those strange phonetic guides and chanted a verse from the Classic of Poetry.
A gentle, cautious soul, treading softly as if perched on a fragile branch.
“Mild and respectful men are like birds gathering on a tree.”
Was this truly the melody chanted by the sages of old? Did the ancients truly sing with such sounds?
...There was no way to know.
Yet, Heo Jo chanted it again and again. As if it were some auspicious, sacred incantation.
Having lost himself in the rhythm for a long while, Heo Jo... unconsciously let his lips curl upward into a smile.
“We must import the Complete Works of Zhu Xi and various ancient texts to this Eastern Land, and thereby clarify the ancient sounds...”
"Every word is perfectly reasonable."
"Do you see it that way as well, Lord Minister?"
"...Anyone with eyes who reads this would see it that way."
Heo Jo stood up, a dreamy, faraway look upon his face.
And he spoke one final time.
"Soon, everyone with eyes in this kingdom shall see it that way."
Ah, rites, music, and civilization shall flourish in the land east of the sea.
Thus, the Minister of Rites set off for Hanyang. Carrying with him the freshly transcribed writings of a young boy.
Around the time all the learned scholars of Hanyang were being thrown into utter turmoil, and King Yi Do was left scratching his head—thinking, 'Cot... ton? In Hamgil Province? Is the Minister of Rites spreading wild rumors to keep me in check?'—autumn was drawing to a close, and the "filial piety wheat" seeds had all been planted in the fields.
Everyone threw themselves into the wheat farming with absolute devotion. Even those who were entirely unfamiliar with growing wheat followed instructions diligently, thanks to the instructors Kim Jong-seo had gathered from far and wide.
...This was largely because Kim Jong-seo had threatened them, saying that if this harvest failed, forget about receiving any royal commendations or filial piety gates—the furious King would have all their heads!
Gradually, the village's livelihood grew more comfortable. By now, they could easily afford to have someone like Shin Sukju stay indefinitely. The villagers treated "the master whom the young master serves" with the utmost respect, and Shin Sukju, delighted by the sheer joy of teaching his "genius disciple," completely forgot the physical discomforts of the northern frontier.
An Heon, for his part, acquired the specific characteristics of the new wheat and cotton through his spiritual conversations with Spirit Hong-wi (currently residing in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province).
Everything was proceeding in perfect harmony. In particular, with the northern development gaining wings, the King could not have been happier. Frankly, he still found it hard to believe, but he was also on the verge of securing a supreme talent for the court.
An Heon, Geobi, Jageun-i, the villagers, Kim Jong-seo, Shin Sukju, Heo Jo—everyone was happy.
However, there were indeed those who were not happy.
"Why are those bastards farming wheat over there?"
"I don't know. They say heaven suddenly bestowed a type of wheat upon them that grows well even in these parts."
"...Why the hell would heaven give them wheat on our land?"
"..."
"..."
These were the people who had originally inhabited Hamgil Province. The ones whom Joseon referred to as the "wild Jurchens."
Barely a few years prior, when wars broke out among the various Jurchen tribes, Yi Do had seized the opportunity to dispatch Kim Jong-seo to crush the remaining factions. It was through this that the development of the region, which would later be known as the Six Garrisons, began in earnest.
Of course, the northward expansion had been ongoing since the reign of King Taejong under the banner of the "Northern Expedition"—or rather, even further back, since the reign of King Gongmin of Goryeo. From the very beginning, the current King's pretext was "reclaiming the lands of our ancestors," as this region was the birthplace of the Joseon dynasty.
Here, we must consider a certain point.
Let us think of the historical events to which the word "development" or "pioneering" has been attached.
The "pioneering" of the American West. The "pioneering" of Hokkaido by Japan. The "pioneering" of Africa by the European powers.
"No, but seriously, why are those bastards receiving heaven's blessing on our land?"
"...Because they stole our land so well?"
"..."
"..."
In almost every case, indigenous people lived there long before any "pioneering" took place. The "pioneers" cleared the forests to make fields, eliminated fierce beasts to establish safe villages—and, usually, eliminated the indigenous people along with them.
Of course, Joseon did not go quite that far.
...To be more precise, it was closer to the fact that they wanted to, but lacked the resources to do so.
A pre-modern state simply lacked the administrative capacity and resources to be as systematically cruel as a modern state. For now, they had defeated the Jurchens in battle and fortified several key locations near the "new border," but that was hardly the end of it.
Hamgil Province was vast. It was larger than Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Jeolla provinces combined. Yet, its population density was abysmally low. Joseon had squeezed its population to the absolute limit to send settlers there, but it was still nowhere near enough.
Naturally, Jurchen villages remained scattered here and there, and Joseon's rule was limited to holding a few key strongholds and mountain passes.
Some tribes had submitted to Joseon, shaving their heads in the Joseon style and living under constant surveillance while farming.
But other tribes did not. They crossed back and forth over the Tumen River, either evading the Joseon army's gaze or operating with their tacit approval. Sometimes, they even sought aid from the Ming Dynasty.
"Ugh... our, our land..."
"My friend, look at that cup. What do you see?"
"...The liquor is only half full."
"No! The liquor is half full. That is the difference between you and me! Be optimistic!"
"...Optimistic about what, exactly?"
And frankly, they also had thoughts like this:
"The Joseon people have come all the way here!"
"Right? I heard they're even building a new fort. That's why so many people and resources are gathering! Isn't that why you're crying?"
"No! That means we don't have to travel far to raid them anymore!"
"..."
"..."
"...Oh."
The Joseon people they wanted to raid... were now right before their eyes.
Unlike other ethnic groups who had been helplessly colonized, these people possessed a fierce "spirit." They were semi-sedentary. They were not savage nomads. Were they not the descendants of the Jin Dynasty, which had once made the Central Plains tremble? They had once established an empire and published Confucian classics.
The descendants of the Jurchens exercised "rational thinking" in this manner.
Furthermore, they were not weak, sedentary people. The notion of crying and fleeing just because enemies had arrived was a lazy habit fit only for the farmers of the Central Plains.
The descendants of the Jurchens adopted an "aggressive strategy."
Possessing the virtues of short-term day traders—"rationality" and "aggressiveness"—they made their decision.
Building a new fort in Aoji?
A small number of weaklings who lacked the heart of a beast retreated, crying, "Argh! More Joseon soldiers are coming! Run!"
But the "real ones" were different.
'If more Joseon soldiers come... that means food, equipment, and supplies will pile up there, right?'
'While they're building the fort... they'll be completely distracted by the construction, right?'
'If we pull off a spectacular raid right before the fort is completed... wouldn't that be perfect?'
They were not weak, stability-oriented investors who buy at the waist and sell at the shoulder. They would buy at the absolute soles of their feet and sell at the very crown of their heads.
"Let's go, damn it! To Aoji!"
"Uwoooo!"
The bravest of men prepared for war. The battlefield was Aoji. There, they would see glory.
"..."
"..."
"..."
"They are the Jurchens."
And in front of those brave short-term retail investors, an institutional investor made its appearance.
The institution's name was Yi Jing-ok, Commander of Hoeryeong, Inc.