"Bodhisattva! Heavens! Main God! ... A giant spruce tree forty paces long and two or three paces in diameter, used as a ship's keel? ... Is... is that true? My lord, did you misspeak? Or did this lowly one hear wrong? A giant tree like that is unheard of—one that's hard to find even once in decades! ..."
"Five years ago, when the Great Emperor Chenghua of Kamikuni passed away and the Great Emperor Hongzhi ascended the throne... the tribute gifts the Yangban lords loaded onto the Zheyang Ships in Gyeongsangnam-do and sent to Kamikuni amounted to no more than two seagoing ships' worth of cargo: one hundred taels of gold, one thousand taels of silver, four hundred bolts each of fine silk and cotton cloth, six hundred sable, deer, otter, and leopard pelts in all, sixty dragon-patterned mats and flower mats, twenty boxes of old ginseng... And besides those, the most expensive tribute item was a piece of eight-hundred-year-old Goryeo Wood (Oak), thirty paces tall and one or two paces across, to serve as the main roof beam for the Great Emperor's newly built palace! ..."
"The Main God has manifested! A Damu thirty paces tall was already fit to be top-grade tribute for the Great Emperor of Kamikuni! ... As for a Divine Tree forty paces tall and two or three paces across, even if you searched all of Kamikuni's Great Ming, it would be hard to find for ten thousand gold! Even when the Great Emperor of Kamikuni built his palace, he simply could not afford to use such a thing! ..."
Hearing Scholar Miki's promise, Shipwright Kim swallowed, his whole body trembling slightly. He knew measurements well, and could imagine exactly what a giant tree more than fifty meters tall and three meters in diameter would