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Chapter 51
“I’ll gather the eight lowborns of Joseon together and overthrow this country.”
I said it with bravado, but the truth was that my current position was pathetic. At best, I had a few bodyguards, a single casino, and a handful of Sword Faction under my control. With that handful of scraps, trying to topple the enormous state of Joseon felt—no matter how you looked at it—impossible.
‘If I wanted to cobble together a rag-tag revolution, I’d need at least five years of preparation.’
Still, it wasn’t as if nothing had come of my efforts. The upper echelons of Joseon were embroiled in a civil war between the Pungyang Cho Clan and the Andong Kim clan, leaving them little appetite or capacity to monitor the subterranean strata of Hanseong, where the lower classes lived. Meanwhile, the casino Tavern mistress and I run, branded with the archaic name Pyeong-un Casino, had begun cheerfully to extract money from every corner.
“I won! I won—! Waaaah—!”
The wives of noble households went wild, pouring money into gambling for the first time in ages.
“This is incredible. I can’t believe this much cash is being withdrawn right now…”
“Withdrawn, sir? Please don’t misunderstand. Isn’t this ‘money you’ve lucked into’, my lord?”
To the deep-pocketed patrons who brought in stacks of dirty cash, we provided “entertainment gambling” and returned hefty gaming profits—clean, laundered money—while pocketing a commission.
The place functioned as both an amusement den that bled clueless nobles dry and a tax-avoidance haven for high nobles. The revenue this structure produced was astronomical.
Ordinarily, such astronomical sums would come with astronomical taxes, but that, too, was not an issue for me.
“Is this really all there is? A gambling establishment and nothing else?” the inspector sent from the court asked, incredulous.
“Once again, most of Pyeong-un Casino’s profits are used for the relief of the poor and infrastructure projects for the lowest tiers.”
The inspector’s face fell when they mentioned the Andong Kim clan. “This project is being pushed by young master Kim Chang-woon. We also have the business plan here—if you have doubts, you can audit it directly. The inspector’s name is—”
“Oh—no! Not at all! You’re doing a good thing; I’ve taken too much of your time,” the inspector stammered and tried to back out. The moment we dropped the name Andong Kim, his expression went pale. Of course it did—no matter the project, if a powerful clan sat atop it, audits and probes were meaningless.
Half a year of running an unmonitored, tax-free paradise in the heart of Hanseong had one clear result: my bank account overflowed with sums too many to count.
“How much is this, exactly?”
“W-whoaah…”
The looks on my bodyguards’ faces when I showed them the account balance were still vivid in my memory. The cash was enough to buy whole factory complexes or mid-rise blocks of apartments outright. It was the sort of money that would let someone from the Hanseong upper tier live in idleness for the rest of their life. Yet I had no intention of retiring quietly with it.
If history were to play out as it did originally, a revolution would render this money worthless within ten years. So what on earth should I do with such an obscene fortune?
There was only one answer.
‘I’ll invest every single penny into the revolution.’
Starting from the casino as my business base, I began pouring my wealth—under my own name—into every corner of the Hanseong underground districts.
At first, I intended it to be simple charity: helping the poor, handing out food. Play the part of a benevolent noble in public, wipe a few tears when the poor suffer, and I’d become a messianic figure in the underground.
If I built that reputation, I thought, gathering the talent for the Lowborn Association wouldn’t take long.
But I’d overlooked one thing.
Spending money in the subterranean districts wasn’t just practical—it was far more fun than I’d imagined.
“Buy up every last piece of property in the lowest tiers! Start with housing complexes. Hire locals, pay wages on time—get them eating and living without worry!”
“If speculators try to come in, or thugs crawl in claiming to collect tolls or extortion money, the Sal Group will hunt them down and finish them. If they keep coming? Then we’ll take everything—parents, siblings, children, relatives—no one gets left with anything.”
“Next—water distribution! You think you can stop it? Pretend to clamp down, but actually let it flow and keep tabs on the operations. But anyone who traffics children will be smashed without exception. No coercion; only those who volunteer will do this.”
“Underground markets! Anyone who robs customers blind gets their teeth knocked out; the rest can fend for themselves. If hoarders try to manipulate prices, I’ll supply the goods myself and give them away for free—so if you don’t want your business ruined, behave.”
“And to the peddlers bringing goods from Japan: do you think it makes sense to sell figures for three times the local price? Every time I hand out presents at the orphanage, I feel the cost. Hey— that guy! That guy’s the one hoarding this season’s toy limited editions! Arrest him!”
I poured the casino’s enormous profits into the underground, day in and day out for a year—an amount large enough to swim in—until my bankbook was empty.
Endlessly emptying and endlessly filling a bankbook, I poured every last coin into the underground districts. I spent money and manpower until about a year had passed.
“Now this is what I call worth the trouble of cutting a window through.”
“Right? It used to be pitch black—couldn’t see a thing.”
At the Tavern mistress’s voice, murmuring with a face full of emotion, I muttered in stunned silence. The casino building had risen about three times higher, the orphanage beside it had grown nearly twelve times larger, and below them the subterranean tiers glittered like a breathless nightscape. Looking out at the transformed scene, I finally realized: I had gone too far.
“How did this… How did things end up like this?”
It had clearly started as a charity. A few coins, a few bowls of rice, free meals—that was supposed to be it. I’d only meant to have people fix the things that annoyed me, little by little. But when I looked up, everything had gone this far. The small charitable gestures I’d begun had mutated into a large-scale economic development plan that encompassed the entire underground.
The people living there—once penniless scavengers who lived one day to the next—had become the sweat-and-blood builders of an industrialized future.
Things had grown. Far more than I’d expected. And by the time I realized it, it was already too late. The Hanseong underground had begun operating as a self-contained economic zone, complete with its own ecology and rule of law. My business, Pyeong-un Casino, had become the center of that vast underground economy.
“How on earth did you do it? I mean, how could this area develop this much in just a year?”
“Because—well… young master invested every last bit of the casino’s profits into local infrastructure development. Not a single coin spared.”
When I asked, incredulous, the Tavern mistress shrugged and elaborated. “This was an area that had been practically abandoned for centuries, so land prices were almost nothing. Construction materials were produced locally. Any crooks who tried to skim money—Sal Group wiped them out… so it’s not impossible to make this happen.”
Right. That was it. No cost for land, no need to bribe the supervising officials, and no middlemen skimming construction materials or wages. The more money we poured in, the clearer the results; I got excited and dumped everything I had in. And that produced this spectacle.
“But young master, your expression doesn’t look happy. Everything’s going so well—shouldn’t that be good?” Min Jeong-hwan, who’d been piling up rice cakes in the office, asked. I answered with a faint sigh.
“It is good. Yes. It’s not a bad situation.”
In fact, thinking of our plans, it could be said to be a boon. The underground must become part of the revolution to come; whether sooner or later, it must possess the economic power and strength to match that role. Expanding influence while the nobles were distracted by their civil war was not a foolish move. Still—
“The problem is time.”
“Time?” Min Jeong-hwan asked again, and I nodded.
“We’ve grown our power too quickly. Even if we’d taken our time and moved slowly to avoid detection, it would have been safer. Right now they’re distracted by the Pungyang Cho Clan affair, so it’s okay… but—”
“If this finishes, the people up above in Hanseong won’t leave this alone,” the Tavern mistress, who had been staring out the window, said. She’d noticed how precarious things were. I continued with a shallow sigh.
“We haven’t properly organized the structure, and our info concealment is sloppy. In the space of an instant, our size has exploded… at this rate, the powerful clans at the top of the city will start intervening.”
“Strangers we’ve not seen around here have been increasing—it seems like someone’s already sniffed the trail. Given the current political climate, they’re not moving rashly yet…” the Tavern mistress added.
“It’s only a matter of time.” News of changes in the underground had already leaked out. It was almost certain that the enormous profits this casino produced had reached the ears of the nobles.
The “unfamiliar faces” the Tavern mistress mentioned were informants sent by the powerful clans who’d gotten wind of what was happening. It meant packs of jackals were hiding everywhere, licking their chops as they eyed my operations.
“All that effort to build the business, and now I’m supposed to worry it’ll be snatched away on some whim of a noble family… It’s getting more and more unfair. Who’d want to keep running a business if this is how it ends?”
The Tavern mistress shook her head as if to say there was nothing she could do with the influence she had.
“Exactly. The moment you start making money, they rush in like wolves to bite and steal… Who’d want to become a traitor over something like this?”
“Pfft.”
“Hehehe.”
The very word “traitor” slipped out, and both the Tavern mistress and Min Jeong-hwan twisted their mouths. On the surface, this was just a gambling den built for the nobles to play with their money. But in truth, it had become a den of rebels preparing a revolution with nobles money. Looking back, it was absurd how I’d set it all in motion. Maybe surviving death once had scrambled my head.
“Do you have any countermeasures, Young Master?” the Tavern mistress asked.
“I dunno. Maybe I should cling to some noble’s coat and refuse to let go?” I joked, but it wasn’t something I could dismiss lightly. Even if someone claimed to be from the Andong Kim clan, I was only a figurehead with no real authority. If an unknown noble or a middling merchant house moved in, perhaps I could handle them—but if a power house like the Bannam Park clan or the Haepyeong Yoon clan leaned in, we’d be helpless.
“The festival’s winding down and the accounts need settling, but I’ve neither the money nor the time…”
—when the office door banged open and two bodyguards strode in: Taewoong and Moo-yeong.
Had they been sparring just moments before? Steam still rose from Taewoong’s arms, and Moo-yeong exuded that peculiar black smoke about him.
“…Is this the time to use the ‘father’ card, whether I like it or not?” I muttered.
“Huh?” Moo-yeong blinked in confusion. I patted his shoulder, then approached Taewoong.
“You said the letter from Lord Kim Junghun arrived the day before yesterday, right?”
“Yes. It’s here.” Taewoong didn’t hesitate; he transmitted a document file as though he’d been ready for this. The file came through the Andong Kim clan’s secure module. When I decoded it, a court-sealed order appeared in a holographic interface before my eyes.
‘When the time comes, we will summon you; hasten and present yourself at court.’
That was the single line Kim Junghun had handed me when he’d suddenly come to the casino. Normally, I would have made every excuse to postpone or slunk away when the moment seemed right. But with this organization swollen to such a size—The Lowborn Association only beginning to take shape—if I wanted to keep it from being plucked away by other nobles, I needed powers equal to theirs.
Kim Junghun had offered just that: a position from the court—a government post conferred by the throne.
“Sometimes you have to risk your life and walk straight into a tiger’s jaws,” I said, and laid my hand on the floating interface. I drafted a reply to Kim Junghun: in obedience to the family head’s command, I would present myself at court as a member of the clan.
“Young Master…!” Taewoong cried out, startled.
“It’ll be fine,” I told him.
If this were the me of my past life, I’d never have accepted such a perilous choice. But what could I do? To overturn a nation, sooner or later, you had to collide head-on with power. If I were going to tremble at the sight of Kim Junghun now, I might as well not have pretended to plan a revolution at all.
“Let’s go pay a courtesy visit to the main family after a long while.”
If I were going to be cowed by Kim Junghun at this stage, then all my talk of revolution was meaningless. So I accepted the summons—and with that, I steeled myself to step into the palace on behalf of the family.
---The End Of The Chapter---
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