[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-a-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army":3,"chapter-a-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army-a-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army-chapter-360":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","A Little Soldier of the Late Ming Border Army",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1205649,1561,"Chapter 360: Peach Blossom Spring, Departure (Part 1)","a-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army-chapter-360",360,"\u003Cp>\"...Ah, drought and locust plagues, one after another. General, our Civil Affairs Department has discussed this. Fighting drought is manageable — build more waterwheels, dig more wells. We can slowly muster manpower and resources, then restore the irrigation works in each city. But when it comes to controlling locusts, that is not something that can yield results overnight.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Civil Affairs Commissioner Zhang Gui looked somewhat haggard; clearly, the civil affairs of this period had left him utterly exhausted.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Indeed, locust control is not a matter of days. In truth, after thousands of years of development, ancient China already possessed a set of proven and effective methods. They boil down to building irrigation works, large-scale land reclamation and cultivation, afforestation, improving farming techniques, and controlling locust eggs, among others.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of the points above, improving farming techniques and controlling locust eggs are relatively manageable; the remaining points all require long-term management. Moreover, Wang Dou only controls the Eastern Circuit. No matter how well-governed his territory is, locusts can still fly in from outside the border, so he must prepare for a protracted struggle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for farming, to be honest, in terms of practical operation, Wang Dou was inferior to any grain officer of this era. Though he had long-term vision, such vision had to conform to the current practical situation. Regarding the drought and locust countermeasures, the Civil Affairs Department submitted several plans, and Wang Dou approved every one.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Refugees entering the Eastern Circuit shall be immediately placed in shelters, monitored by medical officers to prevent any...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>...plague from being introduced.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Since last year, tens of thousands of refugees have already entered the Eastern Circuit. The Civil Affairs Department's plan is to eventually send these refugees to the Mantaor area to open farmland and graze livestock, thereby settling them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"However, as the refugees increase, settling the people strains our funds and grain supplies.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Facing Zhang Gui's complaints, Wang Dou rubbed his forehead. The grain problem constantly plagued him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With the Great Ming currently suffering one natural disaster after another, even if Wang Dou had large sums of silver on hand, buying grain from outside was becoming increasingly difficult. In recent years, grain prices in the Great Ming had soared terrifyingly. Several taels, even over ten taels of silver per shi of grain was now normal, and often there was a price but no market — no one was willing to sell. The large sums of silver in Wang Dou's hands risked becoming worthless stone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From last winter to this year, the over two hundred thousand commoners Wang Dou rescued were finally all settled, with several dozen large agricultural colonies established. The farmland in the Eastern Circuit was certainly insufficient to settle all these people; once all the wasteland within the territory was fully reclaimed, Wang Dou cast his gaze toward the remaining circuits of Xuanfu Garrison.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Through communication with several neighboring Defense Assistant Regional Commanders, and coordination by Ji Shiwei, tens of thousands of commoners were settled in areas like the Southern Defense Circuit and the Northern Patrol Circuit of the garrison. Matters such as the military household registration of these people and how future harvests would be distributed involved considerable haggling.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Settling these commoners consumed a vast amount of Wang Dou's silver. Silver aside, Wang Dou did not begrudge the expense, but as buying grain from outside grew harder, he had to use his stockpiled grain. His warehouses originally held four hundred thousand shi of grain; by this year, less than half remained.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So far, the only farmland yielding income was in the Bao'an Prefecture area. From the ninth year of the Chongzhen reign to now, the entire prefecture had about four hundred thousand mu of military farmland. Annually, it could yield sixty to seventy thousand shi of grain tax, and every year the Civil Affairs Department also purchased some surplus grain from them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Compared to the total expenditure of the Eastern Circuit, this income was a mere drop in the bucket.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Those newly settled military households, from last year to this year, reclaimed over one million mu of farmland in areas like Bao'an Guard City, Huailai Guard, Yanqing, and Yongning. However, compared to Wang Dou's future plan of distributing land to each household — fifty mu per household — the amount of land still fell short by nearly a million mu.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Still, finally settling these new military households allowed Wang Dou and his men to breathe a sigh of relief.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now tens of thousands more refugees had come... The Eastern Circuit's reputation as a place where not a single person starved to death had become a legendary Peach Blossom Spring in the hearts of commoners everywhere, and an endless stream of refugees still scrambled to pour in...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Heaven and earth bear witness, settling the original two hundred thousand-plus commoners had already cost Wang Dou herculean effort.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So far, those new military households could not yet bring him benefits. Due to the impact of drought and locusts, the newly reclaimed land yielded only a few dou per mu this year, barely allowing each colony to be self-sufficient. Although this gave Wang Dou some comfort — he had finally shed a huge burden — the crop yields in his territory still left him deeply dissatisfied.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Including Bao'an Prefecture, the general harvest everywhere was only a few dou to one shi per mu, meaning a level of one hundred jin to one hundred eighty jin. If the yield could be raised to one shi five dou or two shi per mu, they could feed many more people.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In Wang Dou's view, this goal was still achievable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A few months ago, the Civil Affairs Department had already collected numerous agricultural manuals, including Xu Guangqi's Complete Treatise on Agricultural Administration, to instruct each colony on farming methods. Coupled with the stability of the Eastern Circuit, large-scale government construction of irrigation works and infrastructure, and finally the distribution of land to each military household with technical guidance, doubling the per-mu yield was no empty talk.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even so, a yield of two to three hundred jin per mu was still worlds apart from the yields of later eras, which easily reached over a thousand jin.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The difficulty of feeding the soldiers and civilians under his rule made Wang Dou yearn deeply for those high-yield crops of later ages. Of course, this was mere fantasy. Without improved seeds suited to the climate, the yields of crops like maize, sweet potatoes, and potatoes at this time were not even as good as wheat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A very clear example: in the early Republic period, the maximum yield of maize in the Northeast was no more than seventy kilograms per mu, and an early frost meant a total loss. Hong Chengchou once forcibly promoted sweet potatoes in Shaanxi and other places, only to trigger a popular uprising. Historically, it was not until the Qianlong reign a hundred years later that sweet potatoes were bred into suitable varieties and achieved large-scale promotion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Civil Affairs Department had in fact collected some seeds for sweet potatoes, maize, and the like, but looking at their half-dead...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>...appearance, for at least ten years, even several decades, Wang Dou could not count on these \"high-yield crops\" to solve his difficulties.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Raising per-mu yields was not an overnight task, and the Eastern Circuit already had no more land to reclaim. To settle the newly arrived refugees, Wang Dou had no choice but to cast his gaze toward places like Mantaor beyond the frontier. The areas along the Tanghe and Chaohe rivers there actually had plenty of land suitable for cultivation, as well as pastures for grazing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, that place was the territory of the Mongol tribes beyond the frontier, and he himself would soon have to go out on campaign again...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wang Dou's ultimate plan was to lead his army on campaign while simultaneously opening up land beyond the frontier, carving out living space for these refugees flooding into the Eastern Circuit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, Wang Dou was now merely a Defense Assistant Regional Commander, so the scale of this operation could not be too large. First, he would occupy the Mantaor area. Those eight thousand-plus square kilometers of land could also settle many commoners, so the choice of who to leave in charge of the Eastern Circuit had to be made with great care...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the second day of the ninth month, in a river valley plain over ten li northwest of Yongning City.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After Wang Dou came to Yongning City as Defense Assistant Regional Commander, many of the Shunxiang Army's military workshops had continuously moved to Yongning, or set up branch factories here. By now, dense clusters of workshops lined this area — large and small, probably numbering in the dozens or even hundreds — with thousands upon thousands of focused craftsmen working diligently.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At this moment, Wang Dou was observing the production at the gunpowder factory. Over the past several years, the various gunpowder factories under Chief Saltpeter Officer Li Daji had developed greatly. Saltpeter collection sites had been established in many places across the Eastern Circuit, and the high-quality saltpeter collected could be formulated into several tons of black gunpowder annually!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was an astonishing achievement, for gunpowder at this time was very expensive. According to the saltpeter purification methods in Ming texts like the Shenqi Pu, Wubei Zhi, and Tiangong Kaiwu, in many parts of the Ming, the dug-up saltpeter soil required the addition of large amounts of ash water, gelatin, egg whites, radishes, and other substances to absorb and remove the impurities within.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The cost of the egg whites alone destined gunpowder at this time to be expensive, which was also why many military commanders were unwilling to use firearms — quality issues aside, they simply could not afford to use them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For Wang Dou, however, the relatively pure and excellent natural saltpeter collected from various gathering sites greatly reduced the difficulty of purification and rapidly increased output — something unique in the entire Great Ming.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not only that, Li Zhifen's gunpowder factory had also established numerous excellent grinding and sieving workshops, forming an integrated process of milling, dissolving, filtering, and drying, greatly improving the craftsmanship. The formulas for various arquebus powders and artillery powders were also nearing perfection.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A few months ago, Li Zhifen consulted Ming military texts like the Wubei Zhi and Jixiao Xinshu, and based on the formulas within, after final refinement, settled on the formula for arquebus powder: saltpeter 7X%, sulfur 1X%, charcoal 1X%. Its maximum range reached the level of British army musket propellant during the Opium War period, which was two hundred fifty paces.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li Zhifen's achievements gratified Wang Dou greatly. The fixed paper cartridge powder produced according to this formula could pierce heavy armor at a hundred paces, twenty paces more lethal than the arquebus the Shunxiang Army originally used. Of course, the results stopped at this step. This era could not possibly produce any smokeless powder, and even if it could, the resulting chamber pressure would be something arquebus barrels could not withstand.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>...If Ming troops elsewhere strictly followed the gunpowder manufacturing processes in military texts like the Jixiao Xinshu, they could probably also reach the Shunxiang Army's level of piercing armor at a hundred paces. Back then, the arquebus propellant formula of the Qi Family Army was saltpeter 75%, sulfur 1X%, charcoal 1X%, and experiments have shown its range was similar to that of British army muskets during the Opium War period.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But obviously, the various military commanders in the late Ming could not possibly spend the massive amounts of manpower and resources that Wang Dou did to experiment and perfect. So the range and power of the Shunxiang Army's arquebuses were now firmly ranked first in the current Great Ming.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Looking at Li Zhifen, that round, plump ball of a man stood to the side grinning. Over the years, he seemed to have grown even more prosperous-looking. He had poured his heart and soul into the gunpowder factory, and it was said that in recent months he had also been working with Zhao Xuan and others to compile firing tables for the cannons — a contribution of immense merit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wang Dou remembered that before Li Zhifen came to Shunxiang Fort, his entire family had perished in a bandit attack. Several years had passed, and he had not remarried.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"...Manager Li, living alone must bring many inconveniences. After all these years, you should start a family.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At these words from Wang Dou, everyone around looked at Li Zhifen and snickered. Li Zhifen's round face still wore a smile, but a shadow of sorrow flickered in his eyes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He bowed deeply to Wang Dou and said, \"I will not hide it from you, General. Since childhood, I and my late wife were childhood sweethearts, intimate and understanding of each other. After she died, this humble one swore before her grave that I would not marry again in this life. I have failed your expectations, General. This is my great offense...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wang Dou nodded silently, as if something in his own heart had been touched. As Li Zhifen took his leave and departed, his eyes were somewhat reddened, and his steps faltered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As Wang Dou led his group away from the gunpowder factory, a trembling folk song drifted out from within:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"...The mountain flower blooms and forms a knot, that dear knot is my beloved one. Half a bowl of beans and half a bowl of rice, lifting the bowl...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>... \"When the mountain egg blossoms and bears a knot, that knot's dearest is my beloved.\" Half a bowl of beans, half a bowl of rice, I lift it up...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The song was desolate, tinged with sobs — it was Li Zhifen singing loudly. Judging by the tune, it seemed to be a local folk song from Shanxi.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The voice, though off-key and reedy, carried boundless emotion. Wang Dou shook his head: \"I never expected that big meatball to be such a devoted lover...\" (To be continued, if you wish to know what happens next!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The folk songs of the land.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That voice, though off-key and shrill, carried boundless emotion. Wang Dou shook his head: \"I never imagined that big meatball was also a lovelorn fool…\" (To be continued, if you wish to know what happens next!\u003C\u002Fp>",2382,"2026-06-03T14:05:36.780Z",1,"Novelzhen Translator","3bd8701910573bcb9cccf3cb02df5480c5f6415c4976c7c9f52e41e76a62d67a","a-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army-chapter-361","a-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army-chapter-359",896,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fa-little-soldier-of-the-late-ming-border-army-cover.jpg"]