Two days were permitted to pass by Jinki, so that news of Minho’s punishment could be disseminated among the populace of Silsa. Of course, the Prefect of Silsa, who had been a first-hand witness to the swift judgement of his former benefactor, was suitably terrorised by Jinki, and was quick to inform his clerks, friends, and dependents of how the Steward of Jupa had been summarily executed by the General of the Armies who exercised his power in a tyrannical manner. Soon, this was also made known to the other governmental employees: the tax-collectors, attendants, magistrates, couriers, and scribes; and through them the local gentries — the landowners, magnates of industry, and commerce tycoons — also came to know of how the Steward of Jupa had been murdered in cold blood and his body mutilated for his crimes against the state. 

Yet Jinki could not act against these families, for they were civilians and not subjected to the royal military law. To hold them accountable for their avarice, slothfulness, and licentiousness, Jinki had to act through the magistrates who dispensed the civil law; but the magistrates and judges had all been bought by the gentries, and it was the gentries who decided the law however they pleased. Throughout all Nanwian this had been happening for ages, and Silsa was not unique in its situation, for the same state of affairs was faced by Jinki in Wiwon, and in all of his other posts before. While he was a great noble and would benefit greatly from such an arrangement in his own domains and posts, he also had a duty to fulfill, and inside him there was no conflict between he as a noble, and he as an officer of the state; the latter always held paramount importance above all other responsibilities. 

Before he could formulate a plan against the gentries, however, the seizing of all of Minho’s ill-gotten gains was in the first order of business. In addition to goods seized through banditry and robbery, Minho’s stores also included much of the military supplies sent to Silsa by the court: hand-weapons, guns, powder, earth-working and carpentry tools, and most importantly grain rations. Initially Jinki thought his supply woes to be resolved by the opening of Minho’s stores and warehouses in Jupa and other small depots in Silsa, but upon inspecting the weapon caches, a great disquiet grew on his face. One arquebus, cracked and bent, was no cause for alarm, but Jinki threw himself into the cache and hurled out arquebus after arquebus, and to his horror found not a single one without a fatal defect of some sort. 

He threw a bundle of guns to the feet of the weapon inspectors, who prostrated themselves before him in fear. 

“Tell me if these firearms are good for battle!” he thundered. “Why did you not service them faithfully?”

“Heaven knows I have tried, your eminence!” replied the chief inspector meekly. “You may check my records; every week I have sent letters to Anju begging for funds and materials, yet not a single reply has ever returned.”

Jinki felt faint. He could blame lack of supplies and disorder in the realm on the nobles of the land, but for this he could blame none other than the court itself, for the maintenance of arms and tools of war, especially that of its own army, was its exclusive and untransferable responsibility. Against this he was powerless; only the King could reverse such inaction of the court, but the King was not yet powerful enough to do so. 

This was the same for all the other weapon caches: swords were chipped and rusty; spears were crooked and missing their points; cannons were cracked or melted down for steel; bows were rotting and arrows were missing. With these stores of garbage, Jinki could not hope to rearm his men for any kind of battle; even sticks and stones could serve as better weapons. 

With a storm brewing over his head, and accompanied by his officers, Jinki headed over to the grain stores, where allegedly food enough for ten thousand men for three months was stored; but in his mind he did not believe the reports anymore. He was already thinking of what punishment to enact on the grain officer, a small man who had to be called out by his servant and made Jinki wait at his door for several minutes. 

“Forgive my delay, your eminence,” greeted the grain officer sycophantically, “for I had to send my daughter to her room so that she would not be frightened by you and your fierce warriors.”

Jinki said nothing and strode briskly into the warehouse, looking quickly around at the linen sacks piled on each other, numbering perhaps in the hundreds — if none of them were falsely filled with dirt and sand. 

A full sack was brought to Jinki and opened, revealing its contents of bright yellow barley grains. Jinki reached deeply into the sack and grabbed a handful of grains, and withdrew his arm to smell them. Instantly, the expression on his face lightened, for the grains were earthy and slightly sour in their aroma, which signified that these grains were fresh and well-protected from moisture and decay. 

Yet he was not satisfied, and went over to the stores themselves. He pointed to the red lines drawn on each pillar of the warehouse and said to his officers, “This line is the bottom threshold of any army’s supply of food; the stores must never go below this line, for it is this threshold that determines the life and death of my entire army.”

“Yes, your eminence,” said the grain officer. “Here, let me show you how much there is.” He took out a knife and slid it into one of the grain sacks below the threshold, and immediately yellow grains came spilling out. Jinki picked up the grains and inspected them, giving nods of approval, for these were fresh grains as well. 

“It appears that you have expended no shortage of effort in maintaining the grain stores,” said Jinki, evidently pleased. “Finally, a man of duty and integrity!”

“Thank you, your eminence!” 

“Check the rest of the sacks!”

The grain officer’s glee suddenly turned to fright, as the officers drew their swords and went to other parts of the warehouse. Seungwan stabbed through a sack on the floor, and sand spurted out with the retreat of her blade. Heejin slashed open two sacks nearby, and out came dirt and rocks. Jiwoo and her uncle Kibum emptied out multiple sacks, revealing only dry soil and sand, and no grains at all. 

Jinki’s upper lip trembled, and murder rose in his eyes as he beheld the false supplies before him. The grain officer fell to his knees in resignation, saying, “I deserve death, your eminence! But the stores in Silsa have been depleted and wanting of resupply for years; knowing that you had arrived here I filled the sacks with earth and sand, hoping to pass a cursory inspection!”

“You indeed deserve death!” bellowed Jinki, and in a swift movement he had drawn his sword and slashed the grain officer across his chest, leaving him in a pool of blood. 

“Father!”

Seemingly struck by lightning, Jinki paused, and only looked up when the crying of a little girl was heard from the ceiling. For the grain officer’s daughter, who had been hiding in the upper floor of the warehouse, had witnessed the killing of her father in Jinki’s fit of rage. 

“Aish, she saw it…” whispered Heejin to herself, not sympathising for the child, but wondering if she would grow up to hold a grudge against the state, and become another rebel next time.  

Jinki flicked the blade off his sword, and left the warehouse briskly with the officers, just as the grain officer’s wife ran into the warehouse, crying over her husband’s body, “Oh, husband, why have they done this to you?”

Soldiers raided the warehouse and took all the sacks that were filled with grain, but these only numbered a hundred: not nearly enough to feed the army for a week. 

The military apparatuses had failed and rotted from within; Jinki now saw that his only method of salvation lay, regrettably, within the local gentries, for they hoarded in their vaults and treasuries more than enough materiel and supplies to finance the army of the Crown for years. Jinki knew that terror was an adequate instrument in forcing them to support him, but a reign of terror would render him no different from the dog-thieves of the Pure Realm, and besides he could not maintain such a reign for long with such a weak force.