Chapter 135
Han Gi tilted his head after hearing what I said, then asked in return.
“I am truly grateful that you think so highly of my inadequate son. However, even though he is twelve years old, he is so poor at his studies that he has not even memorized the Classic of Filial Piety in its entirety. How can you say he is exceptionally intelligent?”
Those who passed the civil service examination had generally finished the Classic of Filial Piety before turning eleven.
And by seventeen, they had memorized the Four Books and Three Classics in their entirety.
Among them, those called geniuses were said to memorize the Four Books and Three Classics completely by the age of twelve.
After that, they steadily devoted themselves to preparing for the civil service examination while memorizing important passages from books such as Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian.
“Some exceptionally intelligent people memorize all the Four Books and Three Classics before they even turn twelve. But can one really determine a person’s intelligence solely by how quickly or slowly they memorize the words of the sages?”
“That is true, but even I, who passed the examination in the third division, had memorized all the Four Books and Three Classics by the time I was sixteen. I memorized the Analects and the Classic of Filial Piety at ten. Surely you, my lord, who passed first, did so even earlier?”
“After serving in office myself, I found that who memorized the Four Books and Three Classics first was not all that important. After someone has spent about ten years in office, is it not common for an ordinary person who passed in the first division to be passed over for promotion by someone who passed in the third division but possesses outstanding administrative ability?”
Though it could hardly be called boasting, I had possessed the intellectual capacity of a sage from birth, so I had mastered the Thousand Character Classic at the age of two.
When I was around thirteen, my teacher told me, “You will pass whenever you take the civil service examination.” But I kept making one excuse after another about my inadequate learning and ended up taking the examination at eighteen.
At the time, I had deliberately tried to enter around the third-division cutoff, so why on earth had I ended up passing first...?
It was all because of His Majesty, the meat-loving, people-loving Great Demon King.
“My father-in-law began as a junior ninth-rank official, and it has not even been two years, yet he is now a senior eighth-rank official. I hear he will be promoted to junior seventh rank next month. That is the same rate of promotion as those who passed the civil examination in the second division. At this rate, I expect he will join the ranks of cham-sang-gwan—officials of senior sixth rank or higher—in another three or four years.”
“Do you mean that even if my son is somewhat lacking in scholarship, you believe he possesses some outstanding quality more than capable of making up for it?”
“My disciple Ram said so. He told me that his friend Myeong-hoe may be short and frail, but has an exceptional ability to see through things and predict what will happen.”
Strictly speaking, among the yangban, calling one another by their given names is considered a grave insult only when the person being addressed is an adult.
If someone is not an adult and has neither a title nor a courtesy name, then there is no problem with simply calling him by his given name.
There was no other way to address him, after all.
That said, an ordinary commoner or slave who casually called someone by name would be rolled up in a straw mat and beaten.
“Let us call him in and put him to the test. And if I discover that the boy has exceptional insight, I shall become his teacher.”
“That would be an opportunity beyond anything I could dare imagine, but I am not sure whether my son is qualified to learn from you, my lord.”
“We shall see.”
Before long, Han Myeong-hoe entered the room.
A seven-month premature baby.
Because he had spent only seven months in his mother’s womb, he was considerably smaller in build than other children his age.
Perhaps because of that, he seemed extremely withdrawn, as though he had been frequently ostracized at school.
Perhaps the boy only studied halfheartedly out of resentment toward those around him.
“So, are you Myeong-hoe?”
“Yes, but who are you, sir?”
“My name is Kim Daebung, and I serve as a Sain in the State Council. You may simply call me Lord Sain.”
“Yes, Lord Sain.”
“I intend to take you on as my disciple, but before that, I would like to ask you a few questions. You may answer however you wish, so long as you do not suggest starting a rebellion.”
Children this young find the words ‘You may do as you please’ more burdensome, if anything.
‘Anything you wish’ is a confusing range even for adults, so how could a twelve-year-old find a range that even adults struggle to grasp?
That is why child-rearing experts say children should be given freedom within a defined range; if you literally tell them to do whatever they want, they become flustered and cannot do anything.
Since I had drawn this boundary for him, he would answer within it.
“Recently, a man who ran the largest rice shop in Hanyang bought up all the rice entering Hanyang. What do you think happened as a result?”
After hearing my question, Han Gi tilted his head and began to think.
This was something that even adults—or rather, even officials—in Joseon had failed to notice...
It must have seemed strange to ask a child about it and test him.
It was an entirely natural suspicion.
However, in every era and place, geniuses who leave their names in history generally begin to distinguish themselves around the age of ten.
Han Myeong-hoe had used nothing but his ‘clever little schemes’ to persuade Grand Prince Suyang, over and over, until he brought about a coup.
And this was a man who had gone on to become Chief State Councillor and the father-in-law of two kings despite never even passing the civil service examination.
He had clearly been a different kind of person from the start.
Even if he could not answer properly here, I was planning to take him with me anyway, using one excuse or another.
After pondering for quite some time, Han Myeong-hoe opened his mouth.
“When there is a poor harvest, rice prices rise, and when there is a good harvest, rice prices fall. This is because rice is scarce in a poor harvest and plentiful in a good one. But if a merchant acts with malicious intent and corners the rice market, it seems he could arbitrarily adjust the amount of rice he sells and charge prices as high as those in a year of poor harvest even in a year of plenty.”
Hearing him, I could do nothing but laugh.
The people of Joseon actually had a vague understanding of the concept of supply and demand.
They knew, as Han Myeong-hoe had said, that rice prices rose in poor harvests and fell in good ones.
That was, after all, the basic theory of supply and demand.
But predicting what harm would arise from cornering the rice market went beyond simply understanding poor and good harvests; that was an entirely different matter.
“You are correct. That is why the unscrupulous merchant who monopolized the rice in Incheon sold it in Hanyang for three times what he had paid and made an enormous profit. You saw through it exactly.”
“Thank you for the praise.”
“Your father said that you were slow to learn, but you have such a talent for seeing through the workings of the world. If you pass the civil service examination someday, you will surely rise to the ranks of the state councilors.”
Han Gi’s wife had already passed away from complications following childbirth.
Han Gi himself would also die of an illness before long.
So how worried must he be about his child as a father?
I had not yet held a child of my own in my arms, but as someone who would soon become a father, I could understand how he felt.
Though I could not control life and death, I could at least ease Han Gi’s worries...
I had to show him his child’s objective abilities and how I would nurture and develop them.
That would be the duty a teacher entrusted with another person’s precious child ought to uphold.
Whether he had understood my intentions or not, Han Gi gazed at his son with a proud, pleased smile.
“Good. Then let me ask you one more question. His Majesty declared that monopolizing rice in this manner was tantamount to treason and strictly prohibited it. Would that alone be sufficient? Speak freely and tell me what you think.”
Han Myeong-hoe pondered briefly, then answered this time with great confidence.
Perhaps excited at having been praised, he continued speaking rather fluently, his eyes sparkling.
“The government has only prohibited certain merchants from buying up all the rice and monopolizing it. If I were a merchant with enough money, I think I would evade the regulation by signing a contract to purchase all the rice in a single county.”
“Promise to buy all the rice in a county?”
“Whether this year’s harvest is poor or plentiful, how could the government crack down on a promise to buy all the rice harvested from the fields of a county for one hundred bolts of cotton cloth?”
They could, if they wished to crack down on it.
They would only need to make advance-purchase contracts for staple grains, including rice, illegal in themselves.
There were also various other ways to prevent this in advance.
“You are right. You have pinpointed a loophole that even the Ministry of Taxation failed to consider.”
I could not stop smiling.
“Inspector Han, this child came up in an instant with something even the Ministry of Taxation had failed to consider. And yet you were worried that he was a little slow to learn. Well, how is that any different from worrying that one’s son might fall a little short of Zhuge Liang or Zhang Zifang?”
“My lord.”
“Please allow me to take this child on as my disciple. I will care for him as if he were my own child.”
“Are you truly willing to do so?”
“Just as a disciple should serve his teacher as a parent, should a teacher not rightly care for his disciple as his own child?”
Even now, Han Myeong-hoe was being ostracized by the other students he studied with, and after Han Gi died, his family’s financial situation would become even worse.
Anyone raised in such an environment could easily grow twisted.
I would have to teach him with love and attention so that he would not turn out that way.
Even if that failed to straighten out the boy’s warped disposition...
In any case, he was exceptionally good at doing bad things, so if I turned him loose in China or Japan, would that not count as an act of patriotism?
“I will teach your precious son well and make him a cornerstone of the state in the years to come.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Rest now. You are not in good health, so you must not overexert yourself. I will send a skilled physician, so take your medicine and get plenty of rest. You must get well.”