Chapter 199: Unbinding

Though Brother Ji had told Fang Chongyong that "being a little greedy is fine," he still very much appreciated this old friend's descendant firmly maintaining an "incorruptible" attitude, and casually rewarded him with a bit of charcoal.

At the time, Fang Chongyong had not paid much attention to the matter—after all, his goal was merely to set the stage for Old Zheng's subsequent actions, giving Brother Ji a general impression and a preconceived notion that Chang'an's charcoal shortage was already very severe.

If someone with Fang Chongyong's connections and status could not afford to burn charcoal without being corrupt, then what about the many grassroots officials throughout Chang'an—how would their lives be?

In truth, one only had to think about it to know: so many officials in Chang'an could not get through winter without being corrupt. This was truly a case of officials being unable to make a living!

He believed Brother Ji would also be moved by this.

Fang Chongyong had planned things well, but after leaving Xingqing Palace and going to the Censorate to clock in for work, he returned and awkwardly discovered: the "a little" he had imagined and the "a little" in Brother Ji's mind were completely different concepts!

Brother Ji dispatched palace eunuchs to deliver twenty cartloads of charcoal in one go. His small courtyard house simply did not have a storeroom large enough to hold it all!

What would not fit in the woodshed had to be piled in the courtyard, already taking up more than half the courtyard's area, making even taking a stroll inconvenient.

Fang Youde was stationed at the Longwu Army camp and did not come home, so he still did not know what had happened at the house. These past two days, when Fang Chongyong got off duty at the Censorate and returned home to see the courtyard full of charcoal with nowhere to put it, he just felt wave after wave of headache.

Was it that Brother Ji had given too much charcoal, or that his residence was too small for his status? Or was it that his personal mindset could not keep up with the "tier" of luxury that the nobility enjoyed?

At this moment, Fang Chongyong fell into deep confusion.

For Brother Ji, nothing mattered more than face. His rewards to officials were often given with a grand wave of the hand, with absolutely no concept of numbers in his mind.

How large was one cart, how many catties of charcoal it could hold, how long it could last—Brother Ji had no concept of these things at all, nor did he care about such trivialities. He rewarded officials based purely on his mood.

"This Sage in the Chang'an imperial palace is truly willful."

That day, just after returning home from duty, Fang Chongyong saw Wang Yunxiu, wearing a thick padded coat, staring at the charcoal filling the courtyard and sighing.

"Isn't that just willfulness? The Sage neither fells timber, nor farms the land, nor burns charcoal. In his eyes, these things are all very simple—it's as if you just toss seeds into the ground and crops grow on their own, the entire process requiring no human effort at all."

Fang Chongyong pulled Wang Yunxiu into his arms and sighed with emotion.

The bad habits of "meat-eaters" through every dynasty were displayed to the fullest on the Tang imperial clan and its royals.

The Prince of Qi hugging women to keep warm was called an "elegant affair," and there were even more excessive royals who kept large numbers of servants and in winter made them stand with their backs turned in a row to serve as "human windbreaks."

Classic biological heat dissipation plus automatic wind blocking, complete with conversation and chat functionality.

When Fang Chongyong heard Wang Yunxiu talk about this, he exclaimed "holy shit," and could only say that these pampered nobles truly knew how to play. When it came to enjoying life, Fang Chongyong did not even count as a younger brother!

Charcoal heating was too hot and uncomfortable; only body heat was the most suitable! In terms of keeping warm alone, Fang Chongyong was a dozen tiers below those people!

"The charcoal bestowed by the Sage cannot be sold or given away; we can only use it ourselves. There aren't many people in our household, and I reckon this charcoal is enough to last ten years."

Wang Yunxiu shook her head in disappointment and sighed.

The Sage bestowing such a reward of course showed that Fang Chongyong's imperial favor was at its height. But an emperor so heedless of the people's labor, rewarding without restraint—was that a good thing for the nation?

The answer was obvious.

"You two sleep first tonight. I have some matters to attend to in the study."

Fang Chongyong waved his hand and headed straight for the study.

Wang Yunxiu watched his back, frowned slightly, and finally gave a soft sigh without saying a word. When a man got busy, he truly could not touch the ground with his toes, not sleeping until the third watch every night.

Wasn't it said that investigating censors were very idle, and that their time in Chang'an was like being on vacation?

What on earth was he busy with?

……

"Coal—hard to deal with, eh!"

In the study, Fang Chongyong held a candlestick and marked locations on several maps hanging on the wall.

In Tongguan County of Yongzhou, north of Chang'an (northwest of modern Tongchuan City, Shaanxi), there was a "strange matter."

The mountain folk there did not chop firewood for winter heating. Instead, they burned the fine timber they had felled into charcoal right there in the mountains (not just any random rotten wood could be made into charcoal), then transported the charcoal to Chang'an to sell in exchange for daily necessities.

For example, iron farm tools such as sickles.

Then how did these mountain folk get through winter themselves?

The answer was that they went into the mountains to gather coal, then burned it for underfloor heating through the winter, living more comfortably than the common people within Chang'an.

The terrain of northern Shaanxi was dominated by plateaus and mountains, the kind of place where "you can see the mountain but riding a horse to it would kill it." Dwellings stretched layer by layer across the plateaus between the mountains, interspersed with terraced fields.

Some households simply dug caves into the sides of the plateaus and lived inside them—what Fang Chongyong in his previous life often heard called "cave dwellings."

Tongguan County in Yongzhou did have coal; the mountain folk used it themselves and had mature methods for doing so. The problem was not whether it could be found, but how to transport this stuff to Chang'an, and at a price that ordinary Chang'an residents could afford!

The mountain folk of Tongguan County refused to haul coal by oxcart to Chang'an because coal's density was much higher than charcoal's. Not only would one cartload of coal not fetch the price of one cartload of charcoal, it would also work the ox half to death.

At the same time, the Chang'an nobility also looked down on coal, believing that not only did the stuff have a strong smell, it was also heavy and hard to transport, and its effectiveness in use held no advantage over charcoal.

Even if the price could be much cheaper, so what? Was it money that the nobility lacked?

What they lacked was quality of life!

These people's pursuit of quality of life was boundless. Money was merely a tool needed in the process of pursuing quality of life, nothing more.

And given the purchasing power of ordinary Chang'an residents, they too could not afford to burn coal whose price was neither here nor there, and they also lacked mature methods for using it. Burning charcoal improperly could kill people; burning coal improperly could likewise kill people. There was no fundamental difference between the two, and each had its own proper method of use.

If coal was not mined on a large scale and transported in an organized system, then its price would not be very cheap either.

The mountain folk of Tongguan County gathered coal to use simply because it was convenient. As a substitute for charcoal, it burned much longer than firewood and produced far less odor than burning wood.

They could not bear to use the charcoal themselves, because it could be transported to Chang'an and exchanged for money.

And as the price of charcoal in Chang'an kept rising, Tongguan County, three hundred li from Chang'an, had also begun producing charcoal and transporting it to Chang'an for sale, forming a new supply chain.

The nearest charcoal supply point to Chang'an was Zhongnan Mountain, southwest of Chang'an.

However, a very large area of this place was a royal hunting preserve, where the Tang imperial clan frequently came to hunt, so the trees in that area were not permitted to be felled.

Therefore, the amount of charcoal that Zhongnan Mountain could supply to Chang'an was also limited. This one location alone could not fully supply the charcoal that Chang'an needed.

"The coal from Tongguan County in Yongzhou still cannot be transported to Chang'an. Not only is the freight too expensive, but one would also have to search for scattered mining spots."

Fang Chongyong shook his head and drew an X on the map with a charcoal pencil.

Was there then no other place that could provide Chang'an with a stable source of coal?

The answer was yes, there was.

Fang Chongyong's gaze turned to another map on the wall. This map was very new; it had been sent by Zheng Shuqing's people yesterday and had just been freshly copied.

The place marked on the map lies northwest of Chang'an, in the outskirts north of Binzhou on the banks of the Jing River.

In this era the Jing River is not merely an irrigation canal; it can carry grain transport, has ferry crossings, allows small boats, and flat‑bottomed boats can haul coal, which is not a big problem.

More importantly, the waterway ends at a ferry dock outside Chang'an, eliminating the need for long overland transport.

However, despite the convenient transport, the conditions for coal mining are poor; locals have hardly any villagers or mountain folk using coal, and there are no folk legends about coal.

But the good news is that although the populace has no information, the government does have records!

The coal here is buried underground; ordinary people cannot pick it up, and even now few know about this.

During Emperor Taizong's reign, officials of the Ministry of Works' Yu Department were ordered to survey the area and discovered a coal pit ten zhang deep.

Given the technology of the time, the mine could be expanded for sporadic extraction, but it held no mining value then.

Because the cost and effort would be high, the coal's price would certainly be steep—far exceeding charcoal—and it would be hard to find miners to work the mine.

Only by spending heavily to build shafts and using a combination of machinery and labor could the coal price be significantly reduced.

This requires the government to invest massive funds, with pure losses in the early stage.

If shafts aren't built and mining proceeds directly, miners who descend may be unable to return if the tunnel collapses.

Because it was the Zhenguan Era, Chang'an had only a few hundred thousand people; the shortage of charcoal wasn't as severe as today, and no one regarded the "lack of firewood" as a problem.

Moreover, during the Zhenguan Era the Great Tang was a typical "small government"; the number of officials was an order of magnitude fewer than in the Kaiyuan Era, and trivial matters were often ignored, so this issue was merely logged by the Ministry of Works and remained silent for over a hundred years!

Obviously, demand drives production; the populace and the powerful lacked such demand, so the court had no interest in fiddling around.

In the past hundred years, the Great Tang's mining technology has improved considerably. What couldn't be done then may now be possible, but it requires examination; it shouldn't be dismissed outright.

Fang Chongyong feels it is necessary to go there in person to observe and decide based on the results.

Zheng Shuqing almost acted as the "great sword" of the Censorate, hanging it over the necks of Ministry of Works personnel, to retrieve this "long‑lost" document. After so many years the paper is practically an artifact, nearly in fragments when found.

Old Zheng then commissioned a specialist to copy it before handing it to Fang Chongyong. This series of hassles can be called a winding mountain road; it's unclear how many people's backs were broken.

If it has come this far and still no on‑site visit, that would disgrace a time‑traveler's face.

"We can go check Binzhou; we set out tomorrow."

Fang Chongyong crossed his arms and studied for a while, then circled the coal pit's location on the map.

As for the transport conditions here, he specifically inquired about the Jing River's "odd temperament."

In winter the Jing River is both frozen and not frozen.

Much of its flow comes from mountain springs along its banks, and spring water is often a notch warmer than the river. Sometimes the surface looks iced over, but it's only a thin layer; a horse or rider stepping on it will fall into the water.

Only on the coldest few days each year does the ice harden enough for horses to run, while at other times a stick struck against it shatters it.

Folklore says that long ago Li Er fought enemies on both banks of the Jing River; Li Er begged the Dragon King for assistance, causing the river to freeze early, allowing the army to cross safely. Fang Chongyong does not know whether this is true.

Today, temples worshipping the Dragon King still stand on the Jing River banks; the origin of this story likely dates back to Emperor Taizong, forming part of his glorification.

"If the Binzhou coal line can be opened, perhaps the people of Chang'an could have a better life."

But distant water never quenches a near thirst; even this fastest method won't arrive until next year, and Old Zheng likely can't rely on the coal mine to get through winter.

Fang Chongyong glanced again at the Ministry of Works' Hedong coal distribution map, densely marked everywhere. According to a Ministry official, many coal sites there are open‑pit, supplying surrounding counties widely.

However, Shanxi's coal, in an era of poor transport, could not be shipped to Shaanxi on a large scale to meet urgent needs.

From a resource efficiency standpoint, establishing the capital at Chang'an ranks near the bottom of all options. Fang Chongyong feels helpless; even with countless bad ideas, he cannot make Chang'an as well‑connected as Luoyang.

Without transport convenience, economic development and livelihood solutions are impossible to discuss; one can't tell Brother Ji to move the capital now, can they?

"The Great Tang has already reaped all the benefits of fixing the capital at Chang'an; now it must start repaying debts."

Fang Chongyong muttered to himself, realizing that when he finally showed a rare kindness and tried to lift the Great Tang, he couldn't move it at all!

Being an old hard coin fighting for power and snatching food from others is quite easy.

But once you try to enlarge the cake, you find that those who should step up are all lying flat, leaving only you to strive.

After all, snatching things from the people is far easier than clearing new land yourself.

At this moment, he somewhat understands the helplessness Liu Bang, the founder of the Han, felt back then.

"Fine, the Great Tang isn't my family, it's none of my business. My idle heart already does the Great Tang a favor; I'm just a rider, not a Ministry of Works official."

Fang Chongyong casually tossed the charcoal pencil, not wanting to hassle any more.

"Better to honestly go play with my wife; we're heading to Binzhou for the coal mine tomorrow, and I haven't had any fun in ages."

Fang Chongyong pushed the door open and walked toward the bedroom.

The night in Chang'an was truly cold; he stood in the courtyard and couldn't help but pull his neck in.

……

Outside the main gate of the Ten King Residence, a dozen or so men in princely brocade robes stood silently, awaiting the newly appointed Ten King Residence Envoy Yu Chaoen to read the imperial edict sent by Li Longji.

Though they are princes, they must heed a eunuch's mood. At this moment, the sorrow in their hearts was indescribable, and they dared not voice it.

Because the Ten King Residence Envoy wields great power, there are many ways to give these people a hard time.

Moreover, Li Longji's current relationship with these princes—how to put it? Describing it as water and fire might be inaccurate, but it's almost as if they are strangers.

Even the mutual malice is greater! At least passersby have no murderous intent toward them, but Li Longji is another story.

"Prince Ying Li Jiao, Prince Di Li Yan, Prince Yong Li Lin, are to be dispatched from Chang'an. Depart immediately; within three days you must leave the Ten King Residence!

Prince Ying will go to Yunyang (north of Chang'an), Prince Di to Li Quan (west of Chang'an), Prince Yong to Lantian (south of Chang'an); each will establish a household, with no more than three hundred servants and retainers.

These three princes, without imperial decree, may not enter Chang'an. To appear before the emperor, they must first report to the Zongzheng Temple; only after the sovereign's approval may they set out.

Once in Chang'an, each may have no more than five attendants; movements must follow Zongzheng Temple's arrangements, and without a personal edict from the sovereign they may not enter the palace."

Yu Chaoen shouted in the distinctive high‑pitched voice of a eunuch; the princes hearing the edict's contents each showed astonishment, falling into a death‑like silence.

Good news: the princes can finally be dispatched outward!

Bad news: it's not a complete dispatch!

First, only three people are being dispatched, so the number isn't large.

Second, the destinations are all around Chang'an.

Thirdly, only the princes themselves are to be sent out—it does not include the princes' grandsons and granddaughters!

Finally, the edict says nothing about how the other princes are to be arranged, nor does it specify which princes may be sent out and which may not.

What the hell is this?

The expressions on everyone's faces were splendid—confused, startled, secretly pleased, calm, and everything in between. It's hard to say whether they were genuinely showing their feelings or deliberately putting on a performance for outsiders.

But no matter what, the confinement system of the Ten Princes' Residence was quietly opened a crack, without any warning and without the consent of the central officials.

Looking up the materials took a bit of time, so today there will be only one update.

(End of chapter)