Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Shawshank Escape

How do I escape this pirate den?

Option 1.

Escape by land.

This is suicide.

In case you forgot like that jar head, let me say it in advance: I am currently a British kid in China.

- I didn’t forget? Why are you suddenly framing me? Are you a Red Guard? Huh?

No matter how active the smuggling or whatever is, the vast majority of Chinese people live and die without ever seeing a Western face. Conversely, those who have seen a Western face are mostly martial artists who have set foot in the illegal realm.

And I’m going to run by land? That’s crazy talk.

Then option 2.

Escape by ship to the nearest place where Westerners are.

- This seems right.

Yeah, impossible.

There are only two places where Westerners are.

Macau where Portugal planted its flag, and Whampoa, China’s only open port, that is, Guangzhou.

First, a small boat that even a kid under ten can handle can’t get out of here, and even if the Dragon King’s power has a whale or giant squid pull the boat, I’ll obviously wither and die miserably on the way there.

So, thinking rationally.

These pirate bastards have to put me on a smuggling ship going far out.

Once I board the ship, go out to the open ocean, and arrive near the destination, then I can catch a Dragon King ride and attempt a desperate escape.

- But?

These friends will absolutely never show me to Westerners.

Look at how they’re not taking me along on the various smugglings happening nearby right now. Using me, a high-level talent, as an interpreter would be the most efficient, yet they’re absolutely not assigning me that job.

But this Park In-ho Arthur Lee.

Trading company man of the second life.

Pushed into a crisis of chastity, he devised a perfect escape plan with the IQ of 130 from the previous life plus the current life’s intelligence totaling 260.

- Good. Hurry and lay out that great plan of yours.

First, the jar ghost diligently stockpiles mana for a while. Until he can ride something bigger than a sea turtle, like a whale or whatever.

I’ve grown a lot in this one year, so a turtle probably can’t handle it anymore.

- In the end I’m doing everything...?

You’re my guarantor. You have to help with at least this much.

And.

Immediately immediately.

Board a smuggling ship bound for Joseon.

This is the perfect, no, the only method.

The mysterious hermit country at the edge of the East, Joseon.

But even this small, modest, and closed-off country could not escape the clutches of the global value chain.

Joseon at this point is a penniless poor country undergoing sedo politics, but even so, it doesn’t have nothing to sell to the world.

Because it has the glorious <​Goryeo red ginseng>.

Surprisingly, smuggling in Joseon was no different from advanced 21st century smuggling.

When Chinese smuggling ships advance to the waters off Hwanghae Province, Joseon smugglers also bring red ginseng and dock with them. After secretly conducting the transaction at sea and saying bye-bye to each other, neither Qing nor Joseon nor the daughter-in-law knows.

Ride this smuggling ship out to the middle of the Yellow Sea.

Then in the middle of the night with not a single point of moonlight, call the specialty of Ulsan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, the whale call taxi, via Kakao Dragon King and quickly run to the Korean peninsula coast.

Originally, smuggling is of course done timing it to pitch-dark conditions where you can’t see an inch ahead. The environment where these smugglers are hard to catch means, in other words, the most perfect time for me to bolt as well.

“I absolutely must board that ship.”

“So what ship for a kid not even ten yet.”

“Other kids ride and work just fine?”

“Still-”

“The Dragon King is angry! I have to go myself!”

When the kid who had just been decorating as a totem wielded religious authority like this, the boss didn’t hide his displeased expression at all.

But the subordinates, especially the low-ranking ones, were different.

“We, uh, can’t we take him along?”

“Ha... absolutely don’t leave him alone even on the ship.”

“Understood!”

The favorability slowly built up until now shone. The simple and crude pirate bastards were surprisingly easily swayed with just very minor sales lines or consultation dialogue skills.

Thus my grand escape plan that began by boarding the smuggling ship bound for Joseon.

Underwent a slight change.

“S-storm!”

“Hold on tight!!”

Rumble rumble.

After all sorts of persuasion, I who had barely boarded the smuggling ship bound for Joseon.

Encountered a storm for the second time in my life.

And was shipwrecked for the second time.

-...Ride, you bastard.

This time, perhaps because I had prepared in advance, I could ride on the back of a whale much larger and more comfortable than a turtle and head east.

It was summer.

***

1839.

Qing Dynasty Daoguang 19th year.

By Joseon standards, Heonjong 5th year.

In Hwanghae Province there is a cape called Jangsan Cape.

The way to find it is easy. Open a map of the Korean peninsula, and stamp the place in Hwanghae Province that sticks out the most toward China, and that is Jangsan Cape. By 21st century standards, it is also a place where the northern pig places missile launchers and shoots them when bored.

Unlike the name, it has no relation to the Jangsan tiger, but there is a slight similarity in the point that many people die.

Due to the characteristic of sticking out the most in Hwanghae Province, it was a strategic point where not only Joseon domestic shipping such as grain transport but also trade (smuggling) toward China flourished, and its currents were so fierce that its notoriety was famous throughout the Joseon period. In the process of the story <​Simcheongjeon>, originally set in China, being upgraded to a Joseon background, the Indangsu that Simcheong jumps into was adapted to this Jangsan Cape, so can you not guess its notoriety.

People living in such a harsh place are generally enterprising and challenging. You can tell just from how British people who grew up looking at the North Sea, always full of clouds, drizzling, and with a momentum to tear all ships apart, became 140% enterprising.

Hwanghae Province is not as fucked up in natural environment as the British Isles, but instead there was the suffering gifted by the Joseon dynasty, so they grew up sufficiently enterprising and excellent capitalism men.

These Hwanghae people were so globalized that coastal people roughly had no great aversion to encountering Chinese people.

Western barbarians were a bit of an exception.

“Magistrate! Magistrate sir!”

“What’s all this fuss about.”

“They say one barbarian was washed up at Jangsan Cape.”

“Heo. That place has rough currents originally... according to precedent, just tidy it up appropriately and hold a funeral, isn’t that enough.”

“He’s alive, and they say he’s not Chinese.”

“Is that so?”

Not long after learning the whole story, the magistrate realized it was not something that could be resolved at his level.

He quickly submitted a report.

[Your servant, Jangyeon County Magistrate Won Yeongjeong, reports. One child was washed up at Jangsan Cape, and strangely, one whale carried the child on its back and escorted him to land.

... The hair is black but the eyes are deep blue and the features are different from us and even from Chinese, the difference was clear, and when brought to the government office and made to recuperate for a few days, communication was possible in clumsy Chinese.

... The child’s name is Lee Aseul or Lee Arthur, and he is said to be a British person, and while heading to China following his family he suffered a disaster, the whole family died and he alone survived. And after being captured by pirates and suffering hardship...]

Although Joseon is a poor country with internal political situations that are a mess of a ruined country, at least in the part of dealing with Western drifters, a process established in its own way was operating.

1. Bring to Hanyang.

2. Investigate if there is any useful technology or knowledge.

3. Contact the envoys going to Qing saying ‘we are protecting this kind of person’.

4. A reply comes from Qing ‘ah those guys are XX country people, if you send them this way we’ll put them on their trading ship when it comes and repatriate them’.

5. Entrust to interpreters in the next Qing delegation and send to Qing.

Currently as drifters are gradually increasing, 1 and 2 are often omitted, but anyway this level is a very advanced and humane process even across the whole world.

Just the point that village people don’t roughly kill them because it’s troublesome or use them as spring formula shows that the character of Joseon people was above the era average. Or the control power of county magistrates was quite high.

However, now it was a bit different.

In 1839, a big event was being held in Joseon.

“Those who believe in heretical learning (Catholicism) are running rampant again. Once they fall into heretical learning they abandon even parents and the king and only revere ghosts, and humans should properly wish to live but they step forward saying they will risk death for ghosts, so it is truly a vicious teaching.”

“Those words are truly right. This time we must pull out the roots.”

Gihae Persecution.

Catholic suppression once again opened its curtain.

The unlucky point for Arthur was that this persecution had quite a few connections to get entangled with him, knowingly or unknowingly.

“Didn’t we burn all those evil books in the year of Sin-yu (1801)? How are those books still remaining in this land?”

“They say when British people drifted here previously, they distributed those books to the people.”

“As expected, Western barbarians are all vicious.”

British people who visited Joseon several times entering the 19th century all gave Bibles as gifts, and to Joseon people who couldn’t see the difference between Catholicism and the Anglican Church, it was the same greens the same rice.

Moreover, the Right State Councillor Lee Jiyeon who was commanding this persecution had set his mind very viciously.

“Previously we showed mercy and did not kill the old, weak, or children. Look at that. Those guys bred offspring and gathered strength again. Once soaked in heretical religion, no matter how young a child, mind and body become confused, and if sent into exile they scatter heretical religion in the exile place, so there is no way to handle it.”

The number of dead was fewer than the Sin-yu Persecution, but even children were mercilessly tortured and killed.

Of course the Joseon court was not so bloodthirsty as to say ‘British child? Kill him!’, but the order transmitted to Hwanghae Province being the somewhat sharp reaction of ‘even if a child, he might proselytize heretical religion so quickly escort him to Hanyang’ was unavoidable.

It was truly the worst timing to visit Joseon.

However.

“Hello. I am, Arthur Lee.”

“No, how do you know how to speak Joseon language?”

“Everyone treats me warmly. They give clothes, thank you. They carefully look after me, how could I hesitate to learn the language and writing of this place?”

“Heo. Truly admirable.”

“I studied and learned diligently, and finally I can communicate with everyone. I was truly happy.”

“...Have you read the Analects?”

“What is the Analects?”

To the second-life warrior starved for sales and performance, this level of difficulty was nothing.

(Commentary)

Learning and practicing it from time to time, is it not a pleasure: the first sentence of the <​Analects>.

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Author's note

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