“Big Brother! Wake up! Something terrible’s happened!”
I woke to Chilbok’s urgent scream.
The sun had not yet risen, and bluish dawn light still hung in the air.
“What is it? Did something catch fire?”
I rubbed my eyes and sat up.
Manseok, who had been snoring beside me, blearily opened his eyes as well.
“Not a fire... people happened!”
“People?”
“Go outside and look! It’s chaos!”
Yawning, I opened the hut door.
Then I stopped cold.
“...Huh.”
People packed the path from the yard in front of our hut all the way to the entrance of the marsh.
There had been around twenty yesterday. Today, there had to be at least a hundred.
Like a scene from a zombie film, men with hollow eyes surrounded our hut.
Murmur, murmur.
“There it is! That’s the house that gives out meat!”
“Sir! Please hire me!”
“I walked all night from the next village!”
Cries erupted from all directions.
The workers from yesterday must have spread the word everywhere.
Go to Choi San’s place, and you could eat white rice and beef soup until your stomach burst.
To the starving people of Goryeo, that news was no different from salvation.
“All this... because of meat?”
Manseok muttered blankly.
“Yeah. This is how terrifying the power of food is.”
I clicked my tongue.
If I had simply said I would pay a lot, they would have been suspicious. They would have assumed it was a scam or dangerous work.
But rumors about being fed stirred something primal. Appetite always came before suspicion.
“Big Brother, what do we do? If we feed all those people our rice and meat, we’ll go broke in one day!”
Chilbok fidgeted anxiously.
He was not wrong. We could not hire and feed a hundred people with our current wealth. Even if we did, managing them efficiently would be impossible.
“We screen them.”
I straightened my clothes and stepped outside.
“Manseok.”
“Yes!”
“Intimidate them a little.”
“Understood!”
Manseok swaggered forward with his enormous body.
He grabbed two sacks of rice nearby, eighty kilograms each, and lifted one in each hand.
A total of 160 kilograms.
“Quiet!”
Manseok unleashed a lion’s roar.
The booming shout instantly silenced the crowd of over a hundred people.
The sight of that monstrously strong man guarding the place made them fear that they would not even have bones left if they caused trouble.
I climbed onto a boulder.
“Did you all come here for food?”
“Yes!”
“Give us work!”
Answers erupted from everywhere.
“Sorry, but I’m not running a charity. I don’t need anyone who cannot earn their meal.”
I swept a cold gaze across the crowd.
Among them were old men too frail to lift a shovel, people with limps, and even women carrying nursing babies on their backs.
It pained me, but I had to be cold right now. This was a construction site.
“I’ll choose exactly thirty people.”
“Thirty?!”
“That’s far too few!”
Complaints burst out, but I ignored them.
“The conditions are simple. Strength and skill.”
I pointed at the sack of rice next to Manseok.
“Anyone who can carry that rice sack on their shoulder, circle the hut once, and put it back in place. The limit is ten seconds.”
A simple, brute-force test of physical strength.
But there was no more reliable standard for farm labor or civil engineering work.
“And skilled workers. Carpenters, plasterers, and stonemasons. I’ll evaluate you separately.”
I called over Mr. Gong, whom I had hired yesterday.
“Master Carpenter Gong.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Mr. Gong came out holding a saw. His complexion had already improved after just one day.
“Please determine whether anyone claiming to be a skilled worker is the real thing or a fraud. You can tell just by watching them handle their tools, right?”
“Of course. I can tell just by looking at the calluses on their hands.”
The screening began.
“Hyah!”
The first applicant tried to lift the rice sack, then staggered.
Eighty kilograms was never a light weight. It might have been manageable for a well-fed young man, but not for someone starving.
“Rejected. Next.”
“Uurgh...”
The second and third applicants failed as well.
Despair spread across people’s faces.
Then a bearded man stepped forward. His eyes were sharp.
Without even shouting, he swung the sack of rice onto his shoulder.
Then he strode around the hut once. He was not even breathing hard.
“Accepted.”
The bearded man grinned and joined the line of successful applicants.
That was how I selected twenty strong young men.
The skilled-worker test, meanwhile, was even harsher.
“You call that planing? You’ll ruin the grain of the wood! Rejected!”
Mr. Gong was strict. He mercilessly filtered out people trying to earn a skilled worker’s wage with mediocre ability.
Among them, he found five truly capable workers.
Two stonemasons skilled with stone, one tile-maker skilled at roofing, and two plasterers.
“Twenty-seven in total. That’s enough for today.”
“Sir! Please, give me one chance!”
“Are we supposed to starve to death?”
The rejected people cried out.
I sighed. If I simply sent them away, they might riot or destroy our fields.
And more than anything... I did not want to be that cruel to fellow human beings.
“Chilbok.”
“Yes, Big Brother.”
“We still have rice balls left, right?”
“I made some with yesterday’s leftover rice.”
“Give those out with salt, and make soybean paste soup. Feed each rejected person one bowl before sending them away.”
“What? Even the rejected people?”
“Yeah. They came all this way. It’d be too harsh to send them away empty-handed. Let them eat, regain their strength, and find other work.”
It was not beef soup, but even soybean paste soup and a rice ball were better than nothing.
The rejected people dropped to the ground and bowed when they heard that.
“Thank you! May you be blessed!”
“Long live Sir Choi San!”
They did not get jobs, but they went home with full stomachs.
In the long run, this would return to me as an asset called goodwill.
Not making enemies. That was the secret to staying wealthy for a long time.
By the time the crowd was sorted out, the sun was already high in the sky.
But the real work began now.
“Alright, gather around.”
I called the elite workers, Mr. Gong, and Manseok together.
“From now on, we’re not doing manual labor. We’re building.”
I took a scroll from my clothes.
It was a blueprint I had drawn with charcoal all night.
“What... is this?”
Mr. Gong narrowed his eyes as he studied it.
The drawing used a style he had never seen before: a floor plan seen from above and a cross-section viewed from the side.
“It’s a house. The house we’ll build.”
“The structure is unusual. Why are the rooms so compact? And what’s laid beneath the floor?”
“Heating stones. Though they’re a little different.”
Goryeo also had heated-floor systems. But most used partial heating, warming only one side of a room.
I was introducing the full-floor heated-floor system that would not be perfected until the late Joseon era.
On top of that, I added the modern concept of insulation.
“Master Carpenter Gong, winters are freezing when those fierce winds blow through, right?”
“That cannot be helped when earthen walls are thin.”
“So we’ll build two walls. Then we’ll fill the space between them with straw and charcoal.”
“Double walls... That would take twice the labor.”
“But it’ll cut firewood use in half. One fire, and it’ll stay warm until morning.”
Mr. Gong let out an exclamation.
A house that increased fuel efficiency during the winter, when firewood was hard to obtain. It was revolutionary.
“And one more thing. We’ll use modular construction.”
“Mo... what?”
“Put simply, we’ll make the parts in advance and assemble them.”
I began issuing orders.
“We’ll split into teams. Team One will be led by Manseok. Keep digging drainage canals and drying the marshland. Team Two will follow Master Carpenter Gong into the mountains to cut timber. He’ll determine the dimensions. Team Three will work with Chilbok to mix clay and mold bricks.”
Division of labor.
It would be centuries before Adam Smith said it, but efficiency was a universal truth.
“Now get to work! You know what lunch is, right? Beef soup!”
“Waaaah!”
With a thunderous cheer, the great construction project of the Great Peace Domain began.
The site moved like clockwork.
“Heave! Heave!”
Manseok and the strong young workers opened waterways through the marsh.
There were more workers than yesterday, and everyone had learned the knack of it. The work rapidly picked up speed. The once soggy ground slowly drained and began to firm up.
“Hey! Saw straight! The measurements are off!”
Mr. Gong’s furious voice rang out from the mountain side.
He had the workers cut lumber according to the dimensions written on my blueprint.
Pillars, rafters, door frames.
Pre-standardized materials steadily piled up.
Beside the hut, a brick factory began operation.
We mixed clay-rich marsh soil with chopped straw, then pressed it into rectangular molds.
Once dried beneath the sun, they became hard earthen bricks.
Stacking them to make walls would be easy and sturdy.
“Big Brother, look at that.”
At lunchtime, Chilbok, who was serving food, gestured with his chin.
The workers were whispering as they stared at something while eating.
“What is that? Is that really a house?”
“Why are they assembling the pillars instead of planting them in the ground?”
They were looking at Mr. Gong assembling a sample frame of pillars and beams.
The traditional method involved setting the pillars upright, then fitting the pieces together high above the ground, which took considerable time. We were trying a method of building the frames on the ground and raising them all at once.
“Just wait. They’ll faint when that thing goes up.”
I smiled in satisfaction and drank my beef soup.
The broth was rich.
Three days later.
The first building rose on the site where the foundation work had been completed.
It was not our main house, but a large warehouse to store materials and grain.
“One, two, three! Heave!”
Manseok and ten young workers joined forces to raise the enormous roof frame.
Thud!
The roof fitted perfectly onto the pillars.
Like assembling building blocks, every piece slid into place without a gap.
“Wow...!”
The workers cried out in amazement.
A roof-raising job that normally took several days had been completed in half a day.
“Sir, this is incredible. I’ve worked as a carpenter for thirty years, but I’ve never seen a technique like this.”
Mr. Gong wiped away sweat and marveled.
He no longer saw me merely as a wealthy employer. He now regarded me as a master of construction.
“Now we only need to stack the bricks and plaster the walls.”
As soon as the warehouse was finished, we moved our rice and supplies inside.
Now, even rain was nothing to worry about.
That evening, I called Chilbok over.
“Bring the ledger.”
Chilbok handed me a crumpled sheet of paper.
Thirty workers, each paid one-tenth of a tael per day, for three days.
Nine taels in total.
Adding the cost of rice and meat for meals, our expenses were substantial.
“Big Brother, the money’s disappearing fast. If we keep this up for a month, half of what we earned will be gone.”
Chilbok’s concern was justified.
Construction was a money-devouring beast.
“It’s fine. A second stream of income will arrive soon.”
“A second stream of income? The liquor still has a long time left before it’s ready.”
“Not liquor.”
I pointed to the sacks piled in the corner of the warehouse.
The soybeans left over after paying the potter, along with various items we had received through barter.
“And land.”
“Land?”
“Tomorrow, we’ll meet the landowners with the village chief.”
“Ah, the owners of the marshland?”
“Yeah. The warehouse looks solid now, right? People will see it and think, ‘Oh? Something might actually happen there.’ Then they’ll try to raise the land price.”
That was human nature. People ignored worthless land, but the moment someone developed it into something promising, they grew jealous and raised the price.
Before that happened, before someone tried to stake their claim, I needed to buy it.
“Tomorrow, I’ll have to do some acting.”
“Acting? I’m an expert at that. What kind?”
“Act like we’ve failed.”
“What?”
“Like we’re about to flee in the night because we ran out of money building the house. We need to whine that the water won’t drain from the marshland and our farming failed.”
That way, the landowners would think this was their chance and sell the land cheaply.
“Manseok, you too. Don’t show off your strength tomorrow. Look weak, like you haven’t eaten.”
“Huh? But I ate a lot. How am I supposed to look weak?”
“Just let your shoulders droop. Got it?”
“Yes...”
Manseok let his shoulders slump dejectedly. A true acting genius.
The next day.
The village chief led us to meet the landowners surrounding the marshland.
Most were nearby nobles or people who had inherited the land from their ancestors but left it abandoned because it was useless.
“Young Master Choi, you want to buy that land?”
Scholar Park, the landowner, asked in confusion.
“Yes... I boldly decided to try farming, but... as you can see, there’s too much water...”
I sighed deeply.
“The pillars kept sinking while I was building the house. I don’t have any more money to hire workers, either. So I thought I’d at least put it in my name cheaply and pass it down to my descendants someday.”
Chilbok sniffled beside me.
“What will become of our Young Master... Sob. He poured every last bit of money he had into this place...”
Manseok rubbed his stomach beside us and muttered, “I’m hungry...”
That might not have been acting.
Scholar Park rejoiced inwardly.
‘That fool. He poured money into the marshland and went bankrupt. This is perfect. I’ll get rid of that troublesome land and make some money.’
“Hoho, what a pity for such a young man. I’ll sell it to you cheaply. How about one tael per 330 square meters?”
One tael per 330 square meters.
It was practically free. Compared to ordinary farmland, which cost one-tenth to two-tenths of a tael per 3.3 square meters, it was one-tenth the price.
“Thank you... I’ll never forget your kindness, Scholar Park.”
I pretended to be moved as I pulled out the money.
Not only Scholar Park, but other landowners eagerly sold their land as well.
They laughed, believing they had sold garbage at a high price.
But as I walked out holding the deeds, a smile tugged at my lips.
‘Idiots.’
The land they had sold was not garbage.
It was land covered in leaf mold thousands of years old, land that would become fertile soil by next spring thanks to the drainage canals I had dug.
It was worth not one tael per 3.3 square meters, but ten. No, a hundred.
I tightly gripped the land deeds in my hand.
Now, the entire 9,900 square meters of marshland belonged to me.
The legal ownership of the Great Peace Domain, where no one could interfere, had been secured.
“Big Brother, I acted well, right?”
Once we left the village, Chilbok grinned.
“You did. You deserve an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.”
“What’s an Oscar?”
“It’s something like that.”
We walked back with light steps.
In the distance, I could see the warehouse and the house site with its foundation laid.
And before them, the workers were still laboring diligently.
“Now I have land, and the house is going up.”
I looked at the house being built.
“Once this winter passes, this place will be the richest village in Goryeo.”
“Big Brother, will we get to eat meat in winter, too?”
Manseok asked.
“Of course. Not just meat. I’ll even let you eat strawberries in winter.”
“Stra... strawberries? Wild raspberries from the mountain? In winter?”
Chilbok’s eyes widened.
It was absurd by Goryeo standards.
But I had already prepared.
Oil paper and bamboo ribs piled in the warehouse corner.
The prototype of a greenhouse.
The first winter in the Great Peace Domain would never be cold.