#34: Chapter 34 — If You Can't Create a Conscientious British Empire, You Will Die!

[※ Caution: This work is an alternative history novel set in 19th-century Britain. The descriptions of the manufacturing processes are reconstructed based on historical facts from that era, but they must not be replicated or consumed.]

I glared at the teacup resting before me.

Earl Grey, enveloped in a fragrant bergamot aroma.

The blue cornflower petals were rotating slowly upon the surface of the water, gleaming with a transparent amber hue as though holding sunlight within them.

Yet inside my head, the words Sir Clark had forced past his pale lips kept repeating.

Graphite, copper, and… sheep excrement, he said.

-Ugh.

It felt as though my stomach was turning inside out all over again.

To think that two worlds could coexist beneath the identical name of tea.

One was light and the other darkness, one was creation and the other destruction.

And those two worlds were linked by a bridge named the craze I had created.

If people learn of this truth, they won’t simply stand by.

The best approach would be to produce and air a TV program like “Food Z-File” or “Consumer Report” just like in the 21st century, but unfortunately, this was 19th-century London, not 21st-century Seoul.

An era where smartphones, television, and radio had yet to be invented. An era where tools to propagate the truth consisted of nothing more than printing presses, paper, ink, and human hands.

Yet throwing my hands up in defeat is out of the question.

However, were I to publish a verbose newspaper article, who would carefully read a tedious, pedantic column of this era armed with Latin quotations and rhetorical flourishes? Even if they read it, would those words genuinely turn the reader’s stomach?

In the end, it’s about imagery.

People are more vulnerable to imagery than text.

A single shocking illustration is more effective than a hundred words.

And I had the people capable of drawing that imagery.

“Baroness Lehzen, please summon Monsieur Daguerre and Monsieur Isidore.”

A day later, when Louis Daguerre and Isidore stood neatly attired before me, I noticed that their impressions had altered slightly.

Daguerre still sported his magnificently groomed mustache, yet an unprecedented confidence lingered at the tips of those whiskers.

Ever since capturing the opium dens of Guangzhou on camera, he had transformed from a mere technician into a chronicler, and Isidore’s eyes burned with the sharp keenness of an observer.

“Monsieur Daguerre, Monsieur Isidore.”

“Your Majesty, thank you for summoning us once again.”

“Thank you for what? You’ve been quite busy since the Westminster exhibition last time, haven’t you?”

“Thanks to You, Your Majesty. Indeed, ever since then, I’ve been out photographing every single day.”

“I heard tales of it. Thanks to the two of you, London’s painters are reportedly avoiding the fate of unemployment.”

At that, Daguerre waved a hand with a cheerful laugh characteristic of a Frenchman.

“An exaggerated rumor, Your Majesty. Those who seek oil paintings costing dozens of guineas apiece and those who seek photographs costing a single guinea are entirely different folk, after all.”

“Is that so? Ah, the reason I called for the two of you is nothing other than that I have a commission.”

The moment the word commission left my lips, both men tensed up considerably. It was a bodily reaction recalling how the previous commission had stretched all the way to Guangzhou.

“Are we to travel to Qing China once more?”

“No, nothing like that, but it is a very covert, and somewhat dirty business.”

At my words, Daguerre’s eyes sparkled.

“A dirty business, you say? Even more so than the opium den in Guangzhou we witnessed previously?”

“Worse, perhaps.”

I pointed toward the fake tea sample resting upon the table.

“Do you know what this is?”

“…It appears to be tea?”

“Indeed it is. However, the raw materials…”

“The raw materials of tea are none other than tea…”

“It’s a counterfeit crafted from sheep excrement.”

“…Pardon?”

The French expression pardon serves both as a plea for forgiveness and a request to repeat oneself.

At this very moment, both meanings operated simultaneously, sounding much like:

“Repeat yourself, because if what I just heard is true, we live in a world requiring forgiveness.”

I recounted the events of the previous night to the two men.

Sir Clark’s analysis results, the dough of graphite, copper, and excrement, and the tale of the family who perished after consuming it.

The expressions of the two men shifted gradually, much like a photograph undergoing development.

Suspicion into surprise, surprise into revulsion, revulsion into fury.

Daguerre grabbed the back of his neck, while Isidore stared long and hard at the black powder within the burlap sack.

“Could you seek out the manufacturing site of this fake tea and uncover the truth in its entirety?”

“Oh! If so, utilizing the daguerreotype camera once more to etch that vivid scene onto a silver plate with light…!”

Daguerre spoke with excitement, lifting his camera bag.

To him, the camera was not merely equipment, but a weapon denouncing a dark world and a sacred relic etching truth onto silver plates with light, but I shook my head.

“Regrettably, a camera will not do.”

“Pardon?”

“In Guangzhou last time, the opium addicts sat still, so we could photograph them, but in a place swirling with activity, can you possibly turn to criminals for twenty minutes and say, ‘Now, stay still because I’m going to take your picture’? Furthermore, if you walked into a slum factory carrying that massive wooden box, do you suppose you’d escape with your bones intact?”

At that, Daguerre smacked his lips in disappointment.

Though he had made a resounding contribution back in Guangzhou, the daguerreotype camera was not an item capable of capturing snapshots within seconds.

It was equipment demanding a heavy tripod, a colossal main body, and tedious waiting—making it poison for undercover work.

“It is not… strictly necessary to use a camera, Your Majesty.”

It was Isidore’s voice. I turned my head.

“I can sketch the overall silhouette in thirty seconds through croquis.”

A strange competitive fire burned within his eyes like a flame. If cameras required light, pencils could move even within the darkness, and where machines halted, human hands could work their magic.

“I shall place my trust in you.”

A few days later. London’s East End.

Through the narrow alleys of the East End drifted a stench brewed by gathering together the labor, poverty, and despair swallowed by the city.

Sunlight attempted to wedge itself between the gaps of the buildings, but mostly gave up and turned back.

For this was a place where light ceased arriving.

A shabby warehouse. Inside that space, swirling with thick smoke and an acrid odor, a young man clad in rags sat huddled.

Isidore, his face smeared liberally with soot, was disguised so thoroughly that he was entirely indistinguishable from the other laborers in the factory.

Hidden inside his garments were pieces of charcoal and a notebook, and while his gaze was directed toward the floor, he was in truth recording everything within the room.

…This surpasses imagination.

The spectacle unfolding before his eyes was quite literally the site of an alchemy unfolding.

The interior of the warehouse was filled with sweltering heat, and men were sweating profusely as they roasted something.

The smells of hay, dirt, and something that refused to be named drifted over sluggishly.

“Hey! You there, Frenchy! Stop standing around blankly and bring that over!”

“Ah, yes! Brother!”

Isidore agilely hoisted a sack onto his shoulder.

It was heavy.

Through the gaps in the sack spilled round, grayish-black granules, looking scarcely different from roasted coffee beans or wads of tea leaves.

The work foreman stood nearby with a face gleaming with grease, explaining the process to his partner. His voice carried the passion of an inventor—the fact that this passion was directed toward destruction rather than creation ached in Isidore’s chest.

“Why, you ask, did I choose sheep excrement instead of readily available horse or cow dung?”

The foreman continued his explanation with arrogance mingled with a touch of kindness, much like an expert transmitting secret techniques to a novice.

“Simple. Cow dung is too watery, and horse dung has too coarse fibers. But what about that of sheep or goats?”

“…They come in little round granules, brother.”

“You bastard… You could go to university! Anyway, do you know what happens when you dry those thoroughly and roast them? They look identical to orange pekoe, the tightly rolled top-grade black tea leaves, or Chinese gunpowder green tea!”

At that moment, Isidore’s jaw dropped. The work foreman was not a fool.

He possessed the ability to grasp the physical characteristics of materials, find optimal combinations, and calculate consumer expectations.

It was merely that the direction of his intelligence was tilted toward making the world worse instead of better.

“Second is the scent. The granules we use emit a hay-like aroma once dried thoroughly and roasted. Mix that with the earthy smell of cheap tea leaves, and it’s practically indistinguishable. Ha-ha-hat!”

With that, the foreman dumped the granules into a massive tub and mixed in a grayish powder of unknown origin.

“Now, watch closely. This is what you call technique. If you just throw in the granules, they dissolve in water and float to the top, right? Then you get caught immediately.”

Pouring in a viscous liquid, the foreman demonstrated the kneading process. The muscle memory essentially identical to that of a baker kneading dough was carved into his hands.

“You’ve got to mix in clay and starch paste here. That way, even when it goes into boiling water, the granules don’t dissolve and keep their shape. And it needs to feel heavy when lifted so customers get fooled and think, ‘Oh, these tea leaves are nice and plump.’ That’s why we toss in a bit of iron filings, too.”

Iron filings, clay, and those granules.

Isidore barely suppressed a rising urge to vomit as he etched the process into his mind.
Then, seizing a moment, he rapidly drew lines in the notebook hidden inside his pocket.
The kneading hands, the mixing ingredients, and even the greedy expression of the foreman.

Yet the truly horrifying part of the process came next.

“Doesn’t the color look a bit drab?”

“No matter how I look at it, it’s just the color of withered grass, brother.”

When the foreman opened a wooden barrel nearby, black powders fluttered into the air.
Graphite.

A substance existing to write letters was being used here to write falsehoods.
Sprinkled and rubbed onto the kneaded lump, the drab mass began to exhibit a slick, glossy sheen.

“Look at that. This is the dignity of ‘black tea’.”

“Brother, the order over there was for ‘green tea’?”

“Ah, green tea. Green tea is good.”

The foreman picked up a different wooden barrel.

This time, it was a piercing blue powder.

It was Prussian Blue dye and copper carbonate (verdigris) powder, which was practically poison.

As the two men tossed that bluish powder into the dough, it transformed instantly into top-tier green tea tinged with a refreshing emerald hue.

You madmen… Alchemists tried to extract gold, at least. This is… isn’t this murder?

The completed fake tea was mixed with genuine tea leaf sweepings and packed into burlap sacks.

When Isidore stepped close and took a sniff, contrary to his expectations, it surprisingly smelled of savory earth and grass.

They said that because sheep are herbivores, their excrement smells similar to grass—to think that was actually true!

Blended with the acrid, metallic odor of graphite and copper powder, it was indistinguishable from the astringent aroma characteristic of cheap tea.

Odor was the oldest sense by which humans judged the world.

That foul things smell rotten and good things smell fragrant was the first morality taught to humans by their sense of smell.

Yet this fake tea was betraying even that morality. Poison was masquerading in harmless scents. Every human sense was being deceived.

“Right, work’s done, everyone have a cup!”

When the foreman brought over a kettle, laborers resting in a corner of the work area thrust forward grime-covered cups.

What emerged from the kettle was black tea they had just crafted, but that black tea could hardly be called true black tea.

“Hey, newbie. You take a cup, too.”

“Ah, I’m… feeling a bit unwell…”

“You bastard, turning down something precious? This is a direct fix for fatigue. Drink it and your tongue gets all tingly—wakes you right up.”

As the foreman forcefully thrust the cup into his hands, Isidore merely pretended to bring it to his lips while examining the contents.

A tingly tongue isn’t the taste of tea, but the taste of copper and lead, no doubt.

Ironically, having never tasted genuine tea in their lives, they mistook the metallic taste for the depth of tea. And other people living here in the East End were likely no different.

Isidore clenched his fists tightly.

Prehending to set the cup down, he secretly poured it out onto the floor, then slipped back into the shadows to complete his final sketch.

From the piles of accumulated granules to the process of mixing poisons and the sickly, diseased faces of the laborers drinking it.

Every time charcoal grazed paper, darkness was being translated into light.

The next morning, Buckingham Palace.

I was left speechless as I looked over the sketchbook Isidore had laid open before me.

A magnificent drawing draws the viewer directly into it.

Isidore’s sketches wielded that power almost violently.

The harsh lines of charcoal conveyed the acrid air of the factory precisely, and from amidst those lines, the scents of smoke, sweat, and greed seemed to drift.

Mountains of sheep… granules.

People kneading them with bare hands.

A workplace where poisonous powders drifted like snow.

And the completed, plausible fake tea.

Fakes are sometimes more beautiful than the real thing.

Fakes concentrate all their energy solely on what is visible.

While the real article expends its energy on the essence, fakes expend theirs on the surface—hence a fake’s surface sometimes glitters brighter than reality.

“…Flawless.”

I muttered. Isidore added with a tired expression.

“Your Majesty, the reality on site was far more horrifying than imagined. To prevent the granules from dissolving in water, they mixed in clay, and to increase the weight, they even added iron filings. Graphite and copper go without saying.”

Daguerre, standing beside him, chimed in.

“As a result of my tracing, the goods originating from this factory were being dispatched not only to retail shops within central London, but also to railway stations heading out to the provinces. In essence, the entirety of Britain is consuming this fake tea.”

My fingertips grew icy, yet a fierce blaze surged deep within my chest.

“I wish to distribute this to London’s major newspapers. The Times, The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Post… every single one of them.”

“It will become the most shocking yet filthiest scoop in British history.”

Daguerre wore a devastated expression.

I turned the pages of the sketchbook one by one, refining my plan.

Prohibiting it purely by law was weak.

To those who believed laws existed to be broken, laws were merely obstacles, not barriers.

Yet what if they confirmed through drawings and with their own eyes that the tea they drank every day was not elegant black tea, but poison crafted by coating sheep excrement in graphite and mixing in copper?

When demand vanishes, supply vanishes as well.

Consumer revulsion proved far more powerful than a royal decree.

“Isidore, Daguerre. The two of you accomplished a monumental task today. These sketches shall remain in history.”

“As investigative journalism for the press, you mean?”

At Daguerre’s words, I flashed a smile.

“Precisely that. Guardians of human conscience.”

Whereupon Daguerre hesitated for a moment before opening his mouth.

“In that case… there is something I wish to tell you, Your Majesty.”

“Speak.”

Daguerre hesitated and produced something.

“While Isidore was working at the factory, a similar thing was occurring at the neighboring factory.”

A bright red candy.