Front Row Seats to a Comedy

"Your Majesty, did you not promise that if I uncovered the hidden assets of the yangban, you would grant me exactly one percent of the seized goods as a commission?" I raised my head, meeting King Sejong's gaze as I continued. "Even by a conservative estimate based on the ledgers Your Majesty just reviewed, the value of the silver bullion, rice, and copper they concealed easily exceeds one hundred thousand yang. Therefore, as soon as the final tally of the confiscated goods is complete, I beg you to permit me to claim my one percent commission first, to serve as my special operations budget."

"..."

The monarch who, just moments ago, had held the leash of Joseon's most powerful men and shaken the entire court to its foundations, gasped at my shameless demand for settlement. Even the great King Sejong seemed to suffer a momentary cognitive freeze, staring blankly down at my face.

It was a ruthlessly capitalistic mindset—throwing cold water on a historic, deeply moving moment of statecraft to claim my performance bonus before the physical goods had even crossed the threshold of the state treasury. Sejong stood dazed for a moment, then pressed a hand to his forehead in sheer disbelief before bursting into a hearty laugh.

"Haha! The gold has not even entered the treasury, yet you are already claiming your share! Very well. After all, without you, these riches and this political leverage would have remained buried forever. The moment the final tally is completed tomorrow morning, I shall grant you that sum under the guise of a special operations budget—to fund your future endeavors in unearthing the corrupt wealth of Joseon's eight provinces. Take it with my blessing!"

"Your benevolence is as vast as the heavens, Your Majesty."

The performance bonus was officially approved. I cheered inwardly, pressing my forehead against the polished floor of the hall to hide the broad smirk stretching across my face. After his laughter finally subsided, Sejong swept his eyes over me and called out toward the doors.

"Assistant Minister, you must have exhausted yourself, riding day and night without rest. Guard! Is anyone outside?"

The duty eunuch waiting outside the hall hurriedly opened the doors and bowed. Sejong commanded, "The Assistant Minister's subordinates must be freezing in the night dew outside. Wake the royal kitchen. Have them pack a generous portion of refreshments and snacks, the very same served to me, into food boxes and deliver them."

"Understood, Your Majesty!"

Oh. Now this was a true boss—approving performance bonuses and even throwing in a hefty overtime meal allowance. I prostrated myself once more, loudly singing praises of his royal grace.

When I stepped out of Sajeongjeon, I saw Jincheol and Gaetdong-i waiting for me in the biting dawn air. Gaetdong-i, who had been dozing off while huddled against a pillar in a corner of the palace courtyard, jumped up in fright at the sound of my footsteps.

"H-heek! M-My Lord! You are safe!"

I chuckled and tossed the ornate, three-tiered lacquer food box I had received from the eunuch into his arms.

"My neck is still perfectly intact, and this is tonight's overtime bonus. His Majesty himself ordered this for us as a reward for our hard work, so you and Jincheol eat until your bellies burst."

"A b-bonus...? No, how could a lowly clerk like me dare to consume delicacies personally bestowed by His Majesty... sob, hic!"

I let out a soft sigh as I watched Gaetdong-i weep openly, looking ready to offer the royal snacks to his ancestral altar, while Jincheol mindlessly popped open the box and began munching on a skewered meat patty.

"It's not poison, so stop crying and eat up. You'll need the energy. To calculate the total value of hundreds of cartloads of silver and copper bullion, you're going to be throwing those counting rods until your fingers bleed."

"Yes! Yes, My Lord! I shall count until my bones turn to dust!"

It was a night where even our employee welfare had been perfectly secured. As I walked out of the palace gates, my steps were lighter than ever, buoyed by the anticipation of the Gwanhak Faction's collective mental breakdown at tomorrow morning's royal audience, and the glorious sight of silver bullion piling up in the courtyard of the Ministry of Taxation.

By dawn, the courtyard of the Ministry of Taxation was absolute chaos. The inventory audit, which had dragged on through the night, was finally nearing completion as the sun began to rise.

"Twenty thousand seok of white rice! Fill Warehouses Twelve through Fifteen to the brim!"

"Do not open the silver chests yet! We must weigh each ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one individually and cross-reference them with the merchant group's ledgers!"

The wealth confiscated by the Uigeumbu from the Daedong Merchant Group and the estate of the Chief State Councillor's brother-in-law poured into the courtyard in an endless stream. Hollow-eyed accountants and clerks of the Ministry of Taxation clung to their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠counting rods and abacuses, frantically verifying the physical assets.

In a corner of the bustling courtyard, An Sun, the Minister of Taxation, was flipping through the audit ledger I had submitted, his hands trembling violently.

"Assistant Minister... is this truly all the hidden wealth of the Chief State Councillor's in-laws? This is nearly equivalent to an entire year's tax revenue for the capital!"

Even the Minister of Taxation, a Senior Second Rank official overseeing the entire nation's finances, sounded utterly dumbfounded. I bowed slightly and replied in a dry tone.

"This did not merely come from the underground vaults of the Yang family, Your Excellency. Last night, the Uigeumbu raided the headquarters of the Daedong Merchant Group and four of their secret warehouses within the capital, recovering everything."

Glancing at the preliminary tally sheet Gaetdong-i had just handed me, I continued.

"One hundred thousand yang in silver bullion from the Yang vaults, and another one hundred and fifty thousand yang from the Daedong Merchant Group. That makes a total of two hundred and fifty thousand yang in silver, along with twenty thousand seok of white rice, and forty thousand geun of copper bullion—more than enough to cast a fleet of cannons."

"Good heavens... To think such astronomical wealth was slumbering in the vaults of a single merchant group and an influential family. The Chief State Councillor will find himself in a most embarrassing position."

The Minister of Taxation shook his head, wiping the sweat from his brow. Though he was horrified by the sheer audacity of his direct subordinate stripping the Prime Minister's family bare, he could not stop his lips from twitching upward at the sight of the Ministry's vaults being filled to bursting.

Waiting for the Minister to turn to the final page of the ledger, I quietly drew a royal decree stamped with Sejong's royal seal from my robes and presented it.

"Ah, and one more thing, Your Excellency. In recognition of my services in this seizure, His Majesty has permitted one percent of the total confiscated silver to be allocated to me as a special operations budget. Here is the royal decree."

"What? One percent? One percent of two hundred and fifty thousand yang of silver... He is granting you two thousand five hundred yang as an operations budget?!"

The Minister's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. But it was an official royal decree, bearing the unmistakable red ink of the state seal. Furthermore, since this astronomical fortune would have remained completely invisible without my intervention, the Minister of Taxation had absolutely no ground to object.

"...Very well. How could I dare defy His Majesty's command? I shall instruct the treasury officers to set aside the Assistant Minister's share."

"Thank you, Your Excellency."

Two thousand five hundred yang. A sum far exceeding the one thousand yang I had anticipated in Sajeongjeon last night had just been officially approved by my superior. Though I maintained the placid, unbothered expression expected of a seasoned bureaucrat, a thrill of pure ecstasy shot through my veins. This was exactly why I put up with all the danger and exhaustion.

"My Lord. The physical audit is complete."

As soon as the Minister of Taxation departed, Gaetdong-i, whose dark circles had reached his chin after pulling an all-nighter cross-referencing the ledgers, approached and handed me the documents.

"Good work. Did the quantities match the ledgers exactly?"

"Yes, My Lord. The silver bullion and white rice match the original ledgers of the Daedong Merchant Group down to the last digit. However..."

Gaetdong-i hesitated, trailing off. I took the papers from him and asked casually, "However what? Is there a discrepancy in the numbers?"

"Well... it is regarding the copper bullion."

My fingers froze on the page.

"Last night, we transferred thirty thousand geun of copper from the Yang estate and ten thousand geun from the merchant group's warehouse, totaling forty thousand geun. Yet, the original ledger of the Daedong Merchant Group clearly states that the total amount of copper they have handled to date is sixty thousand geun."

Gaetdong-i was right. I immediately strode to my office and laid out the Daedong Merchant Group's ledger alongside the newly compiled Ministry of Taxation audit record.

This was no simple clerical error. Nor was it possible that the Uigeumbu had dared to defy a royal decree and pocketed twenty thousand geun of copper ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠along the way. That left only one logical conclusion: the Daedong Merchant Group had already secretly sold or diverted twenty thousand geun of copper somewhere.

With cold, focused eyes, I relentlessly backtracked the transaction history in the ledger. When I finally identified the destination where the missing twenty thousand geun of copper had flowed, my brow furrowed.

"...The buyer is the Office of Military Weapons?"

The military agency responsible for casting all of Joseon's weapons and artillery. The ledger claimed they had used a massive defense budget allocated by the Ministry of Taxation to purchase twenty thousand geun of copper from the Daedong Merchant Group. On the surface, it looked like a perfectly normal government procurement transaction. However, my instincts as a former ace auditor of the National Tax Service—who had torn through hundreds of corporate ledgers—were screaming red alerts.

Twenty thousand geun of copper... that is enough to cast and deploy hundreds of new cannons along the northern borders of the Four Counties and Six Garrisons. Yet, not once in recent years has the Office of Military Weapons submitted any budget execution receipts to the Ministry of Taxation proving they cast such weapons or supplied them to the front lines.

The conclusion was clear. It was a phantom inventory—a ghost stock existing only on paper. The corrupt military officers of the Office of Military Weapons had colluded with the Daedong Merchant Group to fabricate a paper-only purchase, embezzling the state budget. Or, worse, they had secretly smuggled the purchased copper to Ming merchants or Jurchen tribes.

"Haha, these crazy bastards..."

A typical loyal subject of the crown would have spat blood in fury, screaming about traitors selling out national defense. But my brain was already firing in an entirely different direction.

Embezzling the budget allocated by the Ministry of Taxation to build a slush fund? This isn't just military procurement fraud. This is a malicious, systemic tax evasion of state funds.

The corners of my mouth twitched upward, completely beyond my control. If they had been committing defense procurement fraud for years behind the massive shield of "military secrets," the scale of the slush funds they had stashed away would dwarf anything the Daedong Merchant Group could ever dream of.

"If I completely strip those rotten slush fund vaults bare... just how much will my one percent commission be?"

The approval of the two thousand five hundred yang in silver, which had made me so ecstatic just moments ago, suddenly felt like a cute little down payment. With a cold gleam in my eyes, I called out to Gaetdong-i, who was still standing there clutching the stack of documents with dark circles under his eyes.

"Gaetdong-i."

"Y-Yes, Assistant Minister!"

"This discrepancy in the copper inventory you just found. Does anyone else know about this?"

"No, My Lord! I personally handled the cross-referencing of the merchant group's ledgers and the physical assets, so no one else in the Ministry of Taxation is aware yet."

I reached out and patted Gaetdong-i on the shoulder.

"Excellent work. Right now, isolate this missing inventory data and draft a clean, separate report. And do not breathe a word of this to anyone until I give the order. Understood?"

"I shall keep it locked in my heart, My Lord!"

Watching Gaetdong-i scurry off to grind ink, I carefully tucked the original ledger of the Daedong Merchant Group into my robes.

"Well, time to head to work."

Not even half a day had passed since I severed the limbs of Hwang Hui, the Chief State Councillor and pinnacle of the civil officials, yet my gaze was already locked onto the throats of the sword-wielding military officers of the Office of Military Weapons.

But before that, there was one piece of entertainment I had to enjoy first. I adjusted my robes and stepped out of my office. This morning, at the royal audience, Chief State Councillor Hwang Hui would be blindsided, and the Gwanhak Faction elders would suffer a complete mental collapse. Once I finished watching that thrilling comedy from the very front row, I would seek out His Majesty and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠propose this massive, brand-new special tax audit.

My steps felt as light as air.