Minsoo Kang
Kings, lords, generals, and ministers are not made from a special blood.
—The Grand Historian
The true power behind the absolutist reign of the sixth emperor of the Serene Dynasty lay with two men of humble origins. The ruler’s chief advisor, the High Chancellor of the Six Ministries and the Thirteen Extraordinary Offices, was the great intellect on the left side of the Eternal Dragon Throne. And his top military commander, the Invincible General of the Six Armies and Eighteen Commanderies, was the strong arm on the right. They originated from the same eastern village and were sons, respectively, of an estate clerk and a tanner. The histories that make much of their low backgrounds represent them as exemplary cases of “new men” who rose spectacularly to prominence in the mid-dynasty period. In the single surviving copy of the initial version of the Grand Historian’s Veritable Records of the Serene Dynasty, one finds a rather curious story of the first collaboration between the two men who would go on to help each other rise to the pinnacle of power. It is unclear why the Censorate suppressed this episode when it authorized the publication of the official edition of the Veritable Records since its political implication is obscure at best.
Long before the two men became the High Chancellor and the Invincible General at the imperial court, they were once a young legal advocate fresh out of the Hall of Great Learning at the North Capital and an officer who received his first commission after meritorious action in the War of Thirty Leagues of Bloody Bandits. They stood before the low mound of a commoner’s grave, the sky above them reddening in the autumn dusk. The advocate wore the night blue robe of a licensed graduate while the officer was in his West Front Army uniform of blackened leather vest and cap, the short sword of a third leader at his side. They remained in solemn silence for a while.
“Ah,” the officer suddenly said, a pained smile breaking out over his scarred face. “I was too hard on him. I did not show proper respect to him as a son. Not since the time I got the whipping at the estate. Do you remember that?”
The advocate nodded. “When the heir to the estate and his friends tried to trap you and your brothers.”
“Twelve of them against the three of us. Once they cornered us at the ruin of the old administration building, we were supposed to submit to a beating.”
“But you fought back. You broke the heir’s nose, made him run home crying. We all heard about that.”
The officer laughed. “Then the steward of the estate and his thugs came to our house. My father went down on his knees and begged for forgiveness. He grovelled all the way to the estate as they took me to be whipped. I had to be punished publicly as an example, for daring to hurt the heir. No one mentioned the fact that I was defending myself and my brothers against an unprovoked attack. And Father, he was so sorry about his son’s insolence. So very sorry. Ever since then, I didn’t regard him as a man, never mind a father. After I recovered from the whipping, I went back to doing my chores and obeying his orders. But he could tell that I had nothing but contempt for him. And he knew that when I was old enough to leave, I would go and never return.”
“Yet here you are,” the advocate pointed out.
The officer shrugged. “Why did it never occur to me before now that there wasn’t anything he could have done? If he had defended me, tried to protect me, they would have just whipped him too. All these years, I blamed him for something he had no control over.”
“You had to blame somebody,” the advocate said, “for a sense of meaning in a life without justice.”
Another long silence passed.
“So,” the officer said, “the lady of the estate wants to build a flower garden here.”
The advocate nodded. “This land would complete the great circle she has in mind for it. Unfortunately, your father did not keep the paperwork updated at the administration centre. Not for many years.”
“Too cheap to hire a scribe.”
“The lady of the estate could very well annex it. She would have to take the matter to court, but the imperial magistrates these days are sticklers about paperwork. Her advocates could overwhelm them with documents, while the only thing you have is an outdated deed that was never recertified in the new reign.”
“So the situation is hopeless?”
“Let’s say highly difficult.”
The officer thought for a moment. “Do you think she would make me an offer to avoid going to court at all?”
“A pittance, perhaps. But you have the right to fight for your land. Your status as a meritorious war veteran will help with the magistrates. Not even the lady of the estate can cut you off from the source of your ancestral fortune.”
“The source of ancestral fortune,” the office repeated emptily, looking up at the sky with a contemplative look. “I have no faith in that.”
“No?”
“The war has taught me that I do not live in a magical world. In battle, I saw countless prayers to the gods go unanswered, spells fail, and men die clutching talismans that were supposed to protect them. Source of my ancestral fortune. Never did my father any good. Not his father either. I mean to make my fortune far away from here. So fuck the source of my ancestral fortune. Go and ask that old bitch what she will give me to go away. Let her dig up my father’s cowardly bones and throw them away somewhere so she can plant her pretty flowers. She can smell them while her whore’s body starts stinking with old age. Fuck her, fuck this land, fuck this whole village.”
The advocate, though not surprised by the officer’s bitter words, pondered them for a time.
“How much would you be willing to take?” the advocate asked.
“I don’t know. Five silver standards? Is that a realistic amount?”
“That’s about how much she’s likely to offer.”
“Well, at least I’ll have a feast with good meat and fine wine before I return to base. Celebrating my final departure from this shit-stinking place!”
The advocate arrived at the grand estate at dawn, as he was instructed to do, but he waited at the central courtyard of the master’s mansion for most of the morning before he was finally summoned to the outer chamber of the lady of the estate. The wide, high-ceilinged space was filled with luxurious furniture, precious vases and plates, and colourful paintings of idyllic scenes of nature, all recently acquired by the lady in a spending spree at the North Capital following the death of her miserly husband. The widow was a former courtesan who had become a concubine to the late master of the estate and then his official wife after the first wife had been ousted from the household. It was rumoured that she had engineered the first wife’s fall by spreading the slander that she had engaged in an affair with the master’s cousin, a government inspector who had stayed at the mansion for some time. The disgraced woman protested her innocence, and ultimately drowned herself in a lake.
Still beautiful in a sharply graceful way in her late middle age, the lady of the estate sat on a grand throne-like chair with thick cushions covered in radiant worm fabric of green and blue. She wore a flowing robe of white, the colour of death, as she was still in her mourning period. But the dress was also made of the finest radiant fabric with ethereal streaks of pink dancing across its shimmering surface. Proper mourning attire was supposed to be made of coarse material, but the estate had no one left with the authority to lecture her on propriety.
Her immaculately painted face bore an expression of weary indifference as the advocate approached her with his head bowed down in a respectful manner, prostrated himself on all fours to touch his head to the floor, and got up to extend his formal greetings.
“You are the son of our former clerk?” she said in a condescending tone that made the question a contemptuous accusation.
“Yes, great lady,” the advocate answered. “My father had the honour of serving the grand estate in that capacity.”
“But he sent you to study at the Hall of Great Learning.”
“Yes, great lady.”
“How wonderful today’s world must be for the likes of you. The son of a clerk goes off to the capital to become a legal advocate. In my day, people knew their places. They had ambitions befitting their stations in life and let those of good blood take on the higher responsibilities of society. But it seems that we now live in a time of upstarts. An age of insolence, as they say.”
Ever since she became the lady of the estate, she put a great deal of effort into erasing her own lowly background as a concubine who had also harboured ambitions beyond her station. She had bribed the local officials to manufacture documents to show that she was from a respectable family. And to further solidify her social position, she had taken on the air of the most aloof and arrogant of aristocrats.
“Only in such an age,” she went on, “would I have to suffer this outrage of the son of a tanner sending the son of a clerk to argue with me about some paltry piece of land.”
“Great lady, he is a meritorious veteran of the War of Thirty Leagues of Bloody Bandits and an honoured officer of the imperial army,” the advocate said while bowing his head down even lower to soften the challenge of his words.
“I suppose, in this age of insolence, that gives him the right to insult his betters at will,” she shot back.
“Not at all, great lady,” the advocate said, maintaining his submissive position.
The lady of the estate sat in silence, deliberately extending the tense moment. The advocate recognized her intimidation.
“Very well,” she finally said. “In consideration of his service to the empire, I am willing to grant him an award of ten silver standards. He will receive it after signing a document prepared by my own advocate. This will prevent him from making further mischief over that piece of dirt.”
“I will inform him of your great generosity, great lady.”
“And I will bear no more insolence from you, son of a clerk.”
“You need not trouble yourself, great lady. I have returned here only to settle my affairs before moving permanently to the North Capital. Once this matter of my friend’s property has been settled, I have no cause to offend you with my lowly presence in your lofty home.”
After leaving the lady of the estate, the advocate walked down the mansion’s central corridor and passed by the open doorway to the office of the estate’s clerk. As his father had worked there for most of his life, curiosity made him stop and peek discreetly from the side of the doorway. Behind a wide desk covered with neat stacks of paper sat the thin, ruddy-faced figure of the current clerk, a humourless and discontented man whom the advocate’s father had groomed to be his assistant and eventual replacement. The advocate considered how he would have ended up working all his life in that office if history had not intervened to send him on an utterly different course.
During the reign of the previous Serene Ruler, the emperor, through his vast wisdom and endless benevolence, allowed qualified commoners to take the entrance examination to the Hall of Great Learning. The advocate’s father saw it as a great opportunity for his intellectually gifted son, so he stopped teaching him the duties of the estate clerk and hired tutors to prepare him for the examination. And he took on a new apprentice, the son of a spice merchant. When the merchant could not provide for all six of his sons, he sent his youngest away to be trained as a clerk. Although the young man had proved to be capable and diligent enough for the work, his perennially sour expression and curt manner showed his resentment at being a disinherited son.
As the advocate considered the clerk, who was dressed in a modest robe of dark grey, he realized that there were other people in the office. Three elderly men in peasant attire knelt on the floor, speaking to the clerk in a quiet and plaintive manner. The advocate could not make out every word they were saying, but it was apparent that the visitors were pleading for intervention in some matter. When it came to minor financial issues, the clerk acted as an intermediary between the masters and the peasants. Those making a request or seeking some relief from the manor had to go through him, which gave him significant power over the lowliest dependents of the estate.
As the advocate continued to watch, the elderly peasants finished making their case. One of them produced some copper standard coins, strung up with a string through the square holes in the middle. He offered them to the clerk with his arms raised high and his head bowed down low. The clerk took the coins and weighed them in his hand, but he did not utter a word. After a long moment, the peasants looked at one another, whispered, and produced another string of coins that they handed over in the same submissive manner. The clerk took it also and weighed it as well. Silence. The peasants handed over a third string of coins. The clerk finally nodded, much to the relief of the peasants.
The scene confirmed what the advocate had heard since his return to the village ten days ago. On more than a few occasions, peasants had told him how they missed his father who had always been fair and honest in his dealings with them. After the new clerk had taken over the post, following the sudden death of the advocate’s father, he had revealed himself to be a greedy and venal man, taking every opportunity to squeeze the people for money. He had apparently decided to allay his discontent as a disinherited son by accumulating his own wealth through his position at the estate. The advocate realized that because he had been able to advance himself in the wider world, the peasants of the village had fallen into clutches of a thoroughly corrupt man.
“When do you have to return to your base?” the advocate asked the officer as they sat drinking cheap but sweet wine at their favourite inn, a modest establishment just outside the village.
“They gave me leave for the full mourning period,” the officer said, finishing off the liquor in his cup. “I think I will go to the North Capital first, enjoy myself a little before I go back. Why do you ask?”
“I have an idea,” the advocate, pouring his friend a new drink.
“What idea?”
“Well, let me ask you this. How much money do you have? You must still have some of the reward for your meritorious action.”
“I spent a lot of it celebrating with the comrades of my unit, as I was expected to. But I still have enough to put to good use. I was thinking of buying a small house. Somewhere I can go home to when I’m demobilized.”
“I have something better for you to spend it on. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it might turn out to be worthwhile in the end.”
“How much of a gamble?”
“It’s hard to know right now. But I wouldn’t expect you to risk it alone. I’ll put all my money in it as well.”
“Truly? Then you must be certain of its outcome.”
“I am not certain at all.”
“Then why do it?”
The advocate finished his drink and waited for the officer to fill his cup for him. He took a small sip before answering him. “When you go into battle, even if you know that your men are strong and disciplined, your strategy is sound, and your enemy is in disarray, is it not still a gamble?”
“In war, always.”
“That’s it then,” the advocate said. “I propose we go to war.”
The estate clerk hated the advocate, resenting him for having attended the Hall of Great Learning at the North Capital and earning his legal license. He would have wanted to pursue that ambition if he had not been born the last son of an unsuccessful merchant. So the advocate’s unexpected appearance at his home in the middle of the night vexed him greatly. As the visitor greeted him with utmost politeness, the clerk could not think of a way to get rid of him without being rude. He had to invite him in, but he was determined to be curt and not offer him any refreshments until the advocate got the hint and left.
After they sat down in his outer chamber, the advocate produced a black lacquered box and set it at the side of his sitting mat. When he opened it up, the clerk was astonished to see an enormous golden toad with precious black stones for its eyes. Before he could ask him about it, the advocate spoke.
“Master clerk, since I have committed the unforgiveable impertinence of coming to your home without advance notice and interrupting your rest so late in the night, I will reveal quickly the purpose of my visit. As you may have heard, I have returned here to settle my affairs. After that, I will move to the North Capital. In the course of going through my family’s papers, I found a few documents missing. None of great importance, but some involving matters of personal nature. I know my father was scrupulous about making copies of every document, however trivial, and keeping them at the grand estate’s household archive. So I have come to beg you the favour of allowing me into the archive for a few hours to look for the papers. I would be most grateful if you would indulge me in the matter.”
He then gently pushed the golden toad forward a little.
“Well, I can’t let anyone into the household archive for a frivolous reason,” the clerk said, his lustful eyes fixed on the shining toad.
“Of course not, master clerk,” the advocate said. “For it is one of your highest duties to safeguard the papers there. It is my hope that you will not consider my reason frivolous.” He pushed the frog forward a little further. “Just a few hours, to look for documents pertaining only to my family’s affairs.”
“I can give you one hour,” the clerk said, barely restraining himself from reaching for the toad. “After the work day is over. I won’t have people thinking that I casually allow outsiders into the archive.”
“That would be wise, master clerk. I will come tomorrow at the time of the evening meal, when no one will be around. I thank you most sincerely for this great favour you are granting me.”
And he pushed the golden toad all the way to the clerk, into his greedy, grasping hands.
The lady of the estate became furious when her offer for the officer’s land was rejected and the advocate requested an official hearing with the imperial magistrates. She ordered her advocate to flood the court with documents, many of them fabricated by expert hands, to make what paltry papers the advocate would present seem inconsequential. As she had all the advantage in the matter, she was certain that the magistrates would decide in her favour. She would then take over that troublesome bit of land, have everything standing on it eradicated, and the remains in the officer’s family gravesite dug up and dumped somewhere. With the great circle of the garden complete, she would then build the grand retreat of myriad white and pink flowers that she had seen in a springtime dream, a place where she could while away her winter years in peace. And those impertinent sons of a tanner and a clerk would not see a single copper standard for it.
In the first days of the hearing at the Hall of Judgment, everything proceeded as she had expected. Her advocates presented one bundle of documents after another to the massively obese magistrates sitting behind their long table, their enormous bodies wrapped in layers of bright red radiant fabric. Upon the vast expanses of their shimmering robes, countless embroidered cranes of gold flew gracefully about. Behind them, the great dragon insignia of His Imperial Majesty, the Serene Ruler, was hung up in all its magnificent grandeur.
The great estate’s advocates argued that the officer’s family may have owned the land at one time, although even that was open to question, but their neglect of the property and failure to properly update their claim at the administration centre caused it to fall into abandoned status. Consequently, the estate, as the central tax-enumerating entity in the district, not only had the right but indeed the responsibility to take over the land and do something useful with it.
The lady of the estate was gratified to see the magistrates nod their great dome-like heads in apparent agreement, the bulbous flesh under their chins jiggling. She was only a little disconcerted by the calm expression on the face of the advocate as he sat listening without making a single protest. He did not even bring the officer with him to the court, as if his presence was unnecessary to the case. But she chose to interpret his equanimity as resignation in the face of impending defeat. She speculated that he was carefully masking his regret at not having taken the ten silver standards that she had so generously offered.
After two full days of testimony on behalf of the grand estate finally came to an end, the magistrates dismissed the court for the day, informing the advocate that he may present his argument the following morning. The next day, the advocate came with a modest bundle of his own documents.
“Your Imperial Excellencies,” he began, “my advocacy for the true owner of the land in question is based on a single contention, that the current master of the grand estate has no standing in this court.”
“No standing?” the chief magistrate, the fattest of the three, asked. “Upon what basis do you make the claim?”
“Upon the basis of treason, Your Imperial Excellency. A traitor to the empire has no right of advocacy in a court presided over by imperial magistrates.”
“Treason?” one of the assistant magistrates asked, giving voice to the general astonishment in the court. “What treason? What act of treason was committed here?”
“If I may, Your Imperial Excellencies,” the advocate said and quickly organized his papers into three stacks. He then handed each over to a magistrate.
“What you see there, Your Imperial Excellencies,” the advocate said, “is the original and copies I have made of a poem entitled ‘The Follies of the Three Lofty Hogs, One Who Snores, One Who Slobbers, and One Who Farts.’ Also, copies I have made of some correspondences among several people who comment on the work.”
The lady of the estate let out a gasp.
“As you will see, the three lofty hogs are clear references to Your Imperial Excellencies. Please note the physical descriptions of the animals, their attire, and the words they utter during court hearings. They have obviously been taken from actual cases that were recently argued before you. The poem was manifestly composed to ridicule Your Imperial Excellencies personally as well as to question your wisdom in the judgments you have rendered. It all amounts to an attack on your authority. Imperial law stipulates that any denigration of your position is a denigration of the Serene Ruler himself, since your authority emanates from His Imperial Majesty. The composition as well as the possession of this poem, therefore, is nothing less than an act of treason.”
“Where did these papers come from?” the chief magistrate asked, his face turning crimson with rage.
“In the household archive of the grand estate, Your Imperial Excellencies.”
“No! That is a lie.” the lady of the estate screamed out.
“It is unclear, Your Imperial Excellencies,” the advocate pressed on, “who composed the treasonous poem in the first place, but what the correspondences reveal is the indisputable fact that the lady of the estate made copies of it and sent it to various acquaintances. Subsequently, they made much merry in ridiculing Your Imperial Excellencies. It is the long-standing practice of the grand estate to make copies of all received and sent letters for the household archive. The estate clerk takes care of that. If Your Imperial Excellencies would expeditiously send your agents there, they are certain to find them. And I suppose that right now the lady of the estate is giving instructions to her advocates to go to the archive and destroy the incriminating papers.”
The magistrates looked up and saw her talking frantically with her advocates.
“Marshall of the Court!” the chief magistrate called out.
“Yes, Your Imperial Excellency.” An armoured officer in the imperial uniform of red and gold came forward and bowed his head.
“Arrest the lady and her advocates and send men to secure the household archive of the grand estate. Do it immediately, before anyone has the chance to tamper with the papers.”
“I obey, Your Imperial Excellency.”
The lady of the estate yelled out in despair as soldiers came for her.
“Unfortunately, Your Imperial Excellencies,” the advocate went on, “the matter of treason extends even further.”
“Proceed,” the chief magistrate said.
“I am a recent graduate of the Hall of Great Learning at the North Capital. During my time there, I have heard disturbing rumours about the heir to the estate, a current student there.”
“No!” the lady of the estate said.
“What rumours?” an assistant magistrate asked.
“That the heir to the estate belongs to a group of literary students known to compose subversive poems. They call themselves the Serene Donkeys, obviously to ridicule the imperial reign. Given the style of their writings, which they post on the walls of the Hall of Great Learning in the middle of the night, ‘The Follies of the Three Hogs’ probably originated from them.”
“You think the heir to the estate wrote this treasonous filth?” the chief magistrate asked.
“I cannot know for certain, Your Imperial Excellency, but I think it likely that the lady of the estate made fun of you and complained about some of your judgments in her letters to her son. He, in turn, either composed the poem himself or had one of his Serene Donkey friends do so, after which he sent it to his mother for her amusement.”
“No, none of that is true, Your Imperial Excellencies!” the lady of the estate yelled.
“Be quiet, you,” the chief magistrate said, “or I will have you taken out and whipped for insolence. It is true what they say, this is an age of insolence.”
“And from a former courtesan as well,” an assistant magistrate said.
When the lady of the estate heard those words, she looked aghast before fainting into the arms of a soldier who restrained her.
The advocate went on. “The connection to the heir to the estate and to the Serene Donkeys is merely a suspicion on my part, but is it not a matter worth investigating?”
“It certainly is,” the chief magistrate said. “And we had better send someone to the North Capital quickly, before those subversives at the Hall of Great Learning have an opportunity to destroy evidence of their treason.”
The assistant magistrates nodded in agreement, their chins jiggling in affronted assent.
“How did you know you would find something incriminating in the household archive?” the officer asked the advocate as they sat drinking at their favourite inn. They had ordered the best wine in the establishment, and a dozen small plates of sweet and spicy delicacies covered their table.
“I didn’t,” the advocate answered as he munched on a piece of marinated squid tentacle. “But I thought I would find something. These rural aristocrats, they think that they are above the law as long as they are on friendly terms with the imperial magistrates. They are not scrutinized like the nobles in the cities and are left to their own devices as long as they pay their taxes and take care of local matters. The agents of the Censorate don’t go through their correspondences, so they write freely among themselves without worrying about getting into trouble. They resent the authority of the officials sent from the capital, so they amuse themselves by making fun of them. And their idiot sons go to the Hall of Great Learning and do stupid things, like forming a secret literary society like the Serene Donkeys and writing satirical poems about the powerful. So I wasn’t surprised when I came across ‘The Follies of the Three Hogs,’ which was perfect for our purpose.”
“The Serene Donkeys,” the officer said with a snort. “They won’t be writing any more poems, now that they have all been rounded up.”
“The masters of the Hall of Great Learning protect even the most wayward of their students, turning a blind eye to their antics. But once the Office for the Deliberation of Forbidden Affairs becomes involved, there is nothing they can do.”
They drank their wine and poured for each other.
“But what would you have done if you had found nothing of use in the archive?” the officer asked.
“I prepared a document that I would have planted there. It turned out to be unnecessary.”
“And no one asked how you got hold of those letters?”
“I suppose the magistrates are too busy dismantling the grand estate and punishing its former masters to wonder about that. If they question me, I had a legitimate reason to be at the archive, looking for my family papers. I came across the treasonous letters by accident, and I had the duty to report them. They’ll never find out that I gained access to the place by bribing the estate clerk. When the clerk found out that he was going to be investigated, he hung himself.”
The officer nodded in wonder before he finished his drink.
“There will be reward money for exposing the treason,” the advocate said. “It will be substantial. We can live comfortably for a while, or use the money to advance our careers. You can buy a house like you wanted, a big one in the North Capital.”
“Ha! When you told me you were going to spend all our money on a golden toad, I didn’t think I would see any of it back. But you know something, even if I had lost it all, it would have been worth it just to send the heir to the estate to the torture hall at the Office for the Deliberation of Forbidden Affairs. I hope that goat prick really suffers before they break him.”
“He is not the heir to the estate anymore. He’s not a student at the Hall of Great Learning. He is nothing.”
“No one to do his whipping for him,” the officer said. “That rotten fucker.”
The advocate looked up and was surprised to see that his friend was on the verge of enraged tears. The officer shook his head to regain his composure.
They drank in silence for a while, as the early winter wind blew gently around them.
“So,” the officer spoke again, “the lady of the estate offered ten silver standards for my land.”
“Yes.”
“That’s more than what I expected.”
The advocate nodded.
“What made you do it?” the officer asked. “Why didn’t you take the deal for me? Why did you decide to bring her down, and her family and the whole estate with her?”
The advocate gazed out at the darkening sky and thought for a long moment. The officer examined his face and saw that his cheeks had turned bright red from inebriation.
“She was rude to me,” the advocate told his friend. “I approached her in the most respectful manner. My father used to be the estate clerk, and my family name is a common one. But I am a graduate of the Hall of Great Learning and a holder of the imperial license of legal advocacy. That earned me the right to sit in her presence. She should have shown me the courtesy of offering to sit with her. But she didn’t. She left me standing there with my head bowed like a household servant. She was rude to me, so I decided I would destroy her.”
The advocate finished the drink in his cup, and when the officer refilled it, he drank all of it down.
“That is what I will do from now on,” the advocate said in a tone of such solemnity that it unnerved his friend. “I will destroy all those who are rude to me. I swear to Heaven that I will. I will show mercy to even my worst enemies if they show me the respect that I deserve. But those who do not, I will destroy so utterly that it will be as if they never existed in the first place. And that is how I will change all things under Heaven and make my name radiant in the chronicles of the historians.”
Outside the inn, frigid rain began to pour in a sudden and violent torrent.