Chapter 10
Even as the business continued to thrive, Hwiyeom was just as busy with matters outside of it.
The first reason was Dang Family Universal Paste, the base ingredient used in the cosmetics and Hogolgo.
Although Dang Family Universal Paste (petroleum jelly) worked perfectly as the base for cosmetics and ointments, its original purpose had been to make it easier to coat hidden weapons with poison.
Because of that, the Hall of Ten Thousand Poisons (Mandokjeon), the department responsible for producing and managing poisons, was actively researching new poison combinations and testing which mixtures worked best when applied to hidden weapons.
Naturally, Hwiyeom could not stay out of it.
As the future head of the Dang Family, he had to master both poisons and hidden weapons, the foundation of the family’s martial arts. Every experiment mixing poisons became practical training for him.
There was a lot to memorize.
There was also a lot of poison to consume.
The Dang Family deliberately fed poison to its children from an early age, claiming it allowed them to understand the symptoms of poisoning firsthand while gradually building resistance.
After swallowing an extremely diluted dose of pufferfish poison, Hwiyeom collapsed on the floor gasping for air from respiratory paralysis before finally recovering about half an hour later.
Making sure no one could hear him, he quietly cursed.
“Like hell you can build immunity to tetrodotoxin. Damn quacks kill people. What next? Are you going to feed me mercury so I can build immunity to heavy metals too?”
But if he was told to do it, he had no choice.
On top of that, he also had to train in martial arts.
Starting at the age of five, Hwiyeom had already begun learning the Dang Family’s secret arts: Mandok Guiwon Divine Art, Samyang Hand, and Samyang Finger.
Training the internal energy method, Mandok Guiwon Divine Art, was not physically painful.
It was simply disgusting.
With his father and the elders guiding the circulation of his internal energy, he initially had no complaints. The process started with consuming rare medicinal elixirs before cultivating his qi, and he was actually pleased.
Watching his internal energy grow at a speed that would normally take others years of training, he had once thought,
“So this is what people mean by being born with a golden spoon.”
Unfortunately, his happiness did not last.
As soon as his dantian had a stable foundation, Hwiyeom was forced to consume every kind of poisonous substance imaginable.
Chewing poisonous mushrooms and toxic herbs counted as lucky days.
Snake venom, spider venom, centipede venom…
Poisons from venomous creatures only worked if they entered the bloodstream.
The even worse problem was that this world had acupuncture needles—
—but no syringes.
So how did they inject venom into the body?
They cut wounds all over the skin…
…and submerged the person in poison.
Literally soaked them in it.
Of course, it was not pure poison. The warm medicinal bath was mixed with various medicines that purified internal energy, prevented tetanus, accelerated healing, and served other purposes.
Still, after sitting inside the vat for several hours while circulating his internal energy, Hwiyeom sometimes found himself wondering whether he was a human…
…or the ingredients for snake wine.
As if that were not enough, he also had to learn Samyang Hand and Samyang Finger for throwing hidden weapons.
That training skipped straight past hardship and became outright torture.
“I’m not a damn rubber man!!!”
Even when Hwiyeom finally exploded in frustration, the adults merely smiled warmly.
Everyone had gone through the same thing.
“Good morning…”
Hwiyeom walked into the Ointment Workshop with heavy dark circles under his eyes.
Watching him, the pharmacists manufacturing ointments clicked their tongues.
“Being the Young Patriarch really isn’t something just anyone can do.”
“No kidding. He wakes up at the first hour of In Time—four in the morning—trains internal energy and basic martial arts all morning, eats poison and medicinal elixirs instead of breakfast, studies poisons, and only after lunch comes here.”
“And that’s not even all.”
“Hm?”
“After inspecting everything produced here throughout the afternoon, he receives sales reports, then prepares reports for the Patriarch’s Hall and the Council of Elders.”
“Reports? At seven years old?”
“They say the Young Patriarch’s reports are clearer and more accurate than those written by accountants with twenty years of experience. Have you ever heard of double-entry bookkeeping?”
“What’s that?”
“You remember when Elder Park Chang-eon and the Young Patriarch had that huge argument over the cosmetics sales report?”
“Oh, right.”
“The Young Patriarch claimed Elder Park’s report was incorrect.”
“Everyone thought he was just making trouble.”
“But then they used that bookkeeping method the Young Patriarch invented…”
“The flow of money became unbelievably clear.”
“They even found financial leaks no one had noticed before.”
“Elder Park Chang-eon actually slapped his knee and formally apologized. I saw it myself.”
“No way. How could a seven-year-old invent something like that?”
“Then how do you explain a seven-year-old inventing Dang Family Universal Paste?”
“Well… maybe the Patriarch staged the whole thing to build the Young Patriarch’s reputation…”
“Oh, come on. If that were the case, the Patriarch would have claimed the invention himself. That would have boosted his own authority.”
“Besides, have you seen the atmosphere in the Hall of Ten Thousand Poisons lately? That invention really is worth that much.”
“…”
“And after finishing all the paperwork, he eats dinner and stays in his office until late at night planning new businesses and inventing new medicines.”
“New businesses? New medicines?”
“He’s the genius who created these medicines and built an entire business from them! Of course he’s planning something incredible again.”
“Haha… I still can’t believe it.”
“Believe it or not.”
That conversation perfectly reflected the current mood within the Sichuan Dang Family.
Thanks to the enormous success of his inventions, Hwiyeom’s standing had risen dramatically.
He had always possessed the authority of the Young Patriarch, a status that even branch family elders treated with respect.
But that authority came from bloodline alone.
Now, while many still doubted him, there were also people beginning to acknowledge his ability.
As for the subject of all those rumors…
“…Done.”
Hwiyeom looked down at the completed proposal in front of him and smiled tiredly.
Budget Proposal for the Construction of a Crucible Furnace
“I got lucky.”
“I never imagined they’d have not only coal…”
“…but coke as well.”
“That shortens my plans by several years.”
As had been said many times already, the Sichuan Dang Family was famous for poison and hidden weapons.
Since hidden weapons lost much of their effectiveness once their secrets were exposed, the most important ones were all handcrafted.
Ordinary needles or iron pellets could be purchased outside, much like swords or spears.
The truly important hidden weapons, however, were all made by hand.
Naturally, the Dang Family possessed the finest blacksmiths in the world.
And with craftsmen of that caliber, they naturally maintained their own iron production furnaces.
When Hwiyeom visited the family forge, which proudly claimed to be the best in the Central Plains, he was horrified.
Not by the craftsmen’s incredible skills—
—but by their primitive steelmaking process.
“I should’ve guessed after seeing there wasn’t any gunpowder…”
“Back on Earth, the steel infusion process had already been developed during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. By the Northern Song Dynasty, it was already in widespread use.”
“Yet this world, which roughly corresponds to the Ming Dynasty, is still using such a primitive steelmaking method?”
“What kind of civilization develops completely out of order?”
By now, Hwiyeom had already concluded that this was not Earth’s past.
Martial artists splitting rocks and flying through the air had already made that obvious.
Even the level of technological development was completely different.
“It’s the same reason as gunpowder.”
“The driving force behind stronger metals has always been agriculture and warfare.”
“But in this world…”
Even soft metal was enough if internal energy allowed people to plow fields effortlessly.
And in war…
Martial arts changed everything.
“Fine by me.”
“If they’re still using this primitive process, then steel produced from my crucible furnace will completely outclass theirs in quality.”
“Steel is the rice of industry.”
“It can be used everywhere.”
Steel had countless uses.
The firearms Hwiyeom intended to create.
The hidden weapons the Dang Family desperately wanted to restore.
Even something as ordinary as kitchen knives.
Steel itself could be sold for enormous profits.
It was also essential for developing better hidden weapons.
Most importantly…
It was indispensable for producing gun barrels capable of withstanding gunpowder explosions.
The problem was that quality steel required much higher furnace temperatures.
At present, the Dang Family refined iron using charcoal produced from burned wood.
But charcoal had its limits.
They needed coal.
More specifically, coke made from coking coal.
The Dang Family’s headquarters stood in Chengdu.
Sichuan Province, including Chengdu, was surrounded by mountains rich in mineral deposits.
As one of Sichuan’s great families, the Dang Family owned numerous mountains.
The iron ore used to manufacture their hidden weapons was mined from those family-owned mines.
And according to Hwiyeom’s memories, Sichuan had been one of China’s greatest mineral-producing regions.
Naturally, he assumed there must also be coal deposits.
So, when he was six years old, he had persuaded Dang Unsang to begin searching for them.
The miners remembered an abandoned mine.
Instead of producing the rock salt, iron ore, gold, or silver they had expected…
It had yielded nothing but strange black stones.
After reading the report, Hwiyeom ordered samples brought to him.
They turned out to be coal.
And coking coal.
It truly felt as though heaven itself was helping him.
Better yet…
No one in the Central Plains understood the value of coal yet.
“If it were up to me, I’d buy every coal mine in Sichuan and monopolize them…”
“But everyone would think I’d gone crazy.”
Reluctantly giving up on that idea, Hwiyeom decided it would be enough to demonstrate coal’s usefulness using the mines already owned by the Dang Family.
That led to the next stage of his long-delayed steelmaking project.
The construction of a crucible furnace.
Now the proposal was complete.
As soon as dinner ended, he hurried to request a private meeting with his father, Dang Family Patriarch Dang Unsang, and presented the proposal.
Dang Unsang accepted it with a strange expression and sighed.
“The heir of the family comes to his own father only to assign him more work.”
After joking for a moment, he became serious and carefully read the proposal.
Then he frowned.
“We already have furnaces.”
“Will changing the design and using different fuel really improve the quality of the steel that much?”
Seeing his father’s skepticism, Hwiyeom smiled confidently.
“Once this furnace is introduced…”
“…over eighty percent of the steel it produces will already be finished as Baekryeon Jeonggang without requiring further refinement by the blacksmiths.”
“And its quality will not be inferior to the Baekryeon Jeonggang currently produced by the Dang Family.”
“What?”
“Baekryeon Jeonggang?”
“Do you even know what that means before making such outrageous claims?”
Dang Unsang looked as though he had just heard complete nonsense.
But Hwiyeom simply smiled with absolute confidence.
“Know it?”
“I know it better than anyone.”
