Planting Chaos in the Ming Dynasty (4)

Dissatisfaction clouded Maeng Sa-seong's face as he looked at me.

On the way to Beijing, I took Maeng Sa-seong aside and told him I would lower myself a little to do 'bad things' to the Ming, asking him to pretend he hadn't seen anything...

Maeng Sa-seong had said I could do as I pleased, provided I brought back good results.

But permission was permission, and seeing a Joseon official bowing and adopting such a servile posture before some minor Ming eunuch must have been extremely unpleasant for him.

It wasn't as if I enjoyed bowing my head to a low-ranking eunuch, either.

"Even if the basics of military strategy begin with deception... seeing Kim Jeongrang be the one to bow first to a Ming eunuch was still deeply unpleasant."

"I'm sorry, My lord."

"Kim Jeongrang hasn't done a thing wrong; I'm the one who gave you permission. My blood may be boiling right now... but can it compare with the humiliation Kim Jeongrang must feel after bowing to a eunuch?"

The Annals of the Joseon Dynasty assessed Maeng Sa-seong as follows.

'He was not as strong in his convictions as Hwang Hui or Heo Jo, and as a chief state councilor, he was indecisive to a fault.'

'Yet because he never leaned toward one side or the other, his character was well suited to the role of mediator.'

He was good at understanding other people's feelings, so he was probably more concerned about how much it hurt me to bow my head for the sake of my greater purpose.

"I am prepared to endure any humiliation if it is for the sake of serving the ancestral shrine and the altars of state and benefiting all the people."

To me, tearing the Ming apart has something in common with traveling.

If I say I'm going on a trip to Japan, the fun begins the moment I start planning where to go and what to eat once I get there.

It's fun to search for good restaurants and agonize over which ramen to eat.

When I visit tourist attractions, I enjoy reading reviews written by other travelers and planning my itinerary around what to see.

In the same way, as someone with Korean blood flowing through my veins, I enjoyed even the stage of thinking about how to tear the Ming apart.

Now that I've come to the Ming and begun the preparations, this is fun too.

According to history, once the Tumu Crisis broke out and the Ming was thoroughly ravaged right up to the gates of its capital, neither the Northern Yuan nor the Ming had enough strength left to mobilize more troops.

I already know that, so I'll seize that opening and move Joseon's forces, with plenty of hwachas and cannons in tow, to reclaim Manchuria, the ancestral homeland of the Korean people.

Just imagining that march already makes my heart pound.

No, wait. If I want the Ming to suffer an even greater blow in the Tumu Crisis, I mustn't forget to 'drop' the 'Japanese bastards' into the Ming's southern regions as well.

This is going to be a lot of fun.

With barbarians attacking from above and wokou from below, how miserable and agonizing will things be for the Ming?

Just thinking about it makes me feel positively delighted.

"And I succeeded in bringing back some extremely useful information."

"For you to say that, it must be quite promising, Kim Jeongrang. So what exactly did you learn?"

"There is a eunuch in the Forbidden City who is very well versed in writing. His name is Wang Zhen, I hear."

"...... A eunuch in the Forbidden City who can read characters (Classical Chinese). That certainly is unusual. But what does it matter? Joseon teaches eunuchs characters too, and even teaches them the Four Books, such as the Great Learning, doesn't it?"

Modern people think all it takes to qualify as a eunuch is being a castrated man.

But that only means one has to be castrated to become a eunuch; to become a proper eunuch, one has to undergo all kinds of training.

Harsh physical conditioning and ideological education, and, as Maeng Sa-seong said, a great deal of studying as well.

Even after being appointed as a eunuch, one has to keep studying diligently to get promoted.

So in Joseon, the idea of eunuchs studying is perfectly ordinary.

The problem, however, is that this is the ‘Ming.’

Until quite recently, this was a place where a eunuch's mere knowledge of characters was a capital offense.

The fact that a place like this acknowledges and permits the existence of a 'eunuch who can read' leads to one important conclusion.

'The Ming's political course is changing.'

"It seems His Majesty intends to concentrate power in the eunuchs in order to strengthen imperial authority."

In Joseon, eunuchs wield power comparable to that of yangban officials.

The reason is extremely simple.

In Joseon, eunuchs were given no authority to command even a single soldier or propose and enact a single policy.

But because the eunuchs are the king's slaves, they always remain right by his side.

That is their source of power.

"Even before this, it was customary for a taegam (the highest-ranking eunuch) to serve as chief envoy on Ming missions from time to time, so they couldn't be ignored. Now the eunuchs' influence will grow even stronger."

Outstanding emperors like the Yongle Emperor and the Xuande Emperor have a sickness that makes them want to handle everything themselves.

That is why they sometimes sent eunuchs as military inspectors, to watch whether frontier generals were up to anything strange.

Well, since the eunuchs during the Yongle Emperor's reign couldn't read a single character, they couldn't look over documents.

They probably did nothing more than gauge the atmosphere to see whether the generals were planning a rebellion.

Furthermore, they served to teach the generals that even a castrated bastard had to bow his head before a man bearing the emperor's authority.

But beginning in the Xuande Emperor's reign, they created an institution called the Naeseodang and began educating eunuchs.

Unlike before, educated eunuch inspectors would transform from mere tools for instilling military discipline into figures of authority who genuinely inspected the army.

'So they'll end up like the Ten Attendants.'

"Among them, a man named Wang Zhen will come to stand at the center of the eunuchs."

"True, Ming officials hold eunuchs in such contempt that they will be reluctant even to teach them characters. Wang Zhen will end up teaching all the eunuchs to read himself. Then, just as Kim Jeongrang said, Wang Zhen will stand at the center of the eunuchs."

In Confucian cultures, great reverence is shown to the king, the teacher, and the father.

They revere teachers so much that they consider them almost the same as their own fathers and even support them as they would their real parents.

All the more so eunuchs, who cannot have children—how tightly must they band together among themselves?

And naturally, Wang Zhen will end up at the center of that group.

“Then it would probably be best to become close to this Wang Zhen... Do you have any good ideas?”

Had I not known what kind of person Wang Zhen was, honestly, finding an effective method would have been nearly impossible.

But while studying history, I learned exactly what kind of man he was.

This fellow is a petty-minded man and a corrupt official, utterly consumed by his desire to be recognized.

After failing the civil service examination, he caused a commotion and, when he was on the verge of being exiled, volunteered to castrate himself and become a eunuch—a madman, through and through.

The way to get close to a man like that is surprisingly simple.

"According to a rumor I heard, Wang Zhen greatly enjoys being recognized by others. So if, while he was still insignificant, someone of high repute in Joseon were to recognize him, praise him, and hold him in high regard, we could win his immense goodwill without spending much money."

Maeng Sa-seong furrowed his brow.

The most renowned person among those who had come from Joseon was unquestionably Maeng Sa-seong.

So he seemed to take it as meaning that he himself had to go to Wang Zhen, the lowest of low-ranking eunuchs, bow his head, and flatter him.

If that was how he understood it, even the mild-mannered Maeng Sa-seong might try to kill me.

When a Ming taegam came to Joseon and threw his weight around, merely enduring it and bowing one's head before him was already a serious blow to one's pride.

But if a ‘senior second-rank Minister of Personnel’ had to bow to someone who was currently a mere low-ranking eunuch but whom he believed would become a great man in the future, how much greater a humiliation would that be?

What would other people think of Maeng Sa-seong when he returned to Joseon?

They would mock him as a madman who had put aside all sense of shame in his eagerness to curry favor with the Ming.

But if I bowed my head to some low-ranking Ming eunuch here, it would have an entirely different meaning.

“And I will take on that role, My lord.”

“...... Kim Jeongrang, even for you, that is out of the question. Isn't this something no one would want to do? Then why should you have to do it? You don't have to. Absolutely not. No matter that it is for Joseon's sake, how could I order you to endure such a great humiliation?”

Joseon is a country of face and honor.

Therefore, no one hesitates to die for the honor of their family.

For someone like me, living in Joseon, to bow my head before a Ming eunuch—especially a low-ranking eunuch—and enter his presence to praise and elevate him greatly would be tantamount to declaring that I was willing to give up an honor more precious than life itself.

The emperor of Ming would naturally learn of this as well.

Even so, if I, who had placed first in the civil service examination in Joseon and left behind all kinds of famous anecdotes, bowed my head...?

Naturally, he would think this:

‘Joseon is really good at bowing and scraping before the Ming!’

Then his favorable impression of and trust in Joseon would rise sharply.

As a result, the amount of tribute imposed on Joseon would drop dramatically as well.

In fact, one of the major turning points that most improved relations between Joseon and the Ming was the Jungjong Coup.

That was because the Ming court judged that Joseon's royal authority had fallen to the ground, leaving the country too weak to resist China.

"I, your servant, have already received immeasurable grace from His Highness the Grand King and His Majesty the King, grace I could never dare repay. I have spent my whole life wondering how I might repay it, and if enduring the humiliation of crawling beneath someone's legs here could repay even one ten-thousandth of it, I would be more than satisfied."

Maeng Sa-seong was left speechless by my words and sat there silently.

"I still cannot forget the time when I was magistrate of Jinhae and the people joyfully presented me with all kinds of delicacies from land and sea. But when I think of those people being bent double by the tribute they have to pay the Ming, it feels as though my heart is being torn apart. I believe His Highness the Grand King and His Majesty the King feel the same way. So as a subject, how could I not be delighted to cast aside my small personal pride if it can lessen Their Majesties' worries?"

...... And if I could pull the wool over the eyes of that bastard Wang Zhen, the power behind the Ming eunuchs—no, the man who would seize control of the entire Ming.

Joseon would eventually extend its reach to Manchuria, Southeast Asia, India, and the world beyond.

For the greater cause and for revenge against the Ming, this was a burden that I, who knew the future, rather than anyone else, was duty-bound to shoulder.

Maeng Sa-seong gripped my hand tightly, his eyes brimming with tears, and said,

“...... Kim Jeongrang, you are a loyal subject through the ages.”

Thus, having completely won over Maeng Sa-seong's heart as well, I went to meet Wang Zhen.

The moment we met, I said to him:

"I hear you have exceptional handwriting. Would you write a few characters for me to take with me?"

...... If I'm going to suck up to him anyway, I might as well do it properly.