Chapter 32

To forge iron, one must be strong oneself. In truth, Zhou Shixiang had no real confidence about whether they could defeat the Qing army at Deqing, but he could not show the slightest hesitation or self-doubt.

Instead, he spoke all the more boldly, using it to firm up Song Xianggong's resolve and keep him from wavering in the least.

As for whether his words and phrasing matched the identity of a xiucai, Zhou Shixiang was utterly oblivious — and even if he had known, he could not have bothered to cover it up at this point.

Ge Wu and the others were patrolling the city with the able-bodied young men, while Zhao Sihai had taken men to hunt down the Qing soldiers who had slipped through the net.

Zhou Shixiang could not gather them all together for the moment, so he set aside the matter of the silver for now and pulled Song Xianggong along to take inventory of the captured Qing weapons.

Along the way, Song Xianggong asked Zhou Shixiang what his courtesy name was.

Zhou Shixiang hemmed and hawed, and only then remembered that the ancients, in addition to their given names, usually had an alternate name chosen by their parents or teachers and related in meaning to their original name, called a courtesy name.

In early times, everyone had a courtesy name, but by now it had evolved into a privilege mostly reserved for scholars.

Ordinary peddlers, laborers, and poor folk had no such privilege of taking a courtesy name; at most they got a childhood nickname like "Iron Pillar," "Big Ox," or "Second Egg."

The original owner of this body was a scholar, so of course he had a courtesy name.

After Zhou Shixiang passed the xiucai examination, his father had asked the education official of Xinhui to choose a courtesy name for him: "Gongye," which paired rather fittingly with his given name Shixiang. But the present Zhou Shixiang no longer wished to use the name Gongye.

After searching his mind for a moment, he said to Song Xianggong, "I no longer use my former courtesy name. Now I bear the weight of my family's blood feud and my country's hatred.

From this day forward, my courtesy name shall be Mie Hu — Destroy the Tartars!"

"Destroy the Tartars?"

Song Xianggong was taken aback for a moment, then immediately linked Zhou Shixiang's choice of "Destroy the Tartars" as his courtesy name to Huo Qubing of the Han dynasty and his words, "The Xiongnu are not yet destroyed, so why should I have a home?"

Filled with admiration, he praised it without end.

Kong Guoliang's unit was part of the Qing army's Green Standard, which by nature was a coerced auxiliary force of the Manchu Qing, mostly reorganized from former Ming army units.

Therefore the Qing court did not provide them with weapons or equipment, only with pay and provisions — and sometimes they even had to procure their own provisions.

None of the four hundred-odd Jiangxi soldiers under Kong Guoliang were equipped with armor, and Kong Guoliang himself, a Battalion Commander, had none either.

From top to bottom, they wore mainly their uniform jackets, with a large character "Bing" — soldier — written inside the big circle on the chest and back, much like the Qing soldiers in later films and television dramas.

The only difference was that these Jiangxi soldiers had no long queues to coil around their necks; every one of them wore the money-rat-tail queue, no longer than a hand's span.

Zhou Shixiang had originally assumed these Jiangxi Green Standard soldiers would have some matchlocks, but the weapons found in the city were all cold weapons — sabers, long spears, hook blades, and the like — with no firearms at all.

After questioning the prisoners, he learned that the Qing court had long forbidden the Green Standard from being equipped with matchlocks.

In the entire Qing army, aside from the former "Three Obedient Kings" — that is, the present Prince of Pingnan Shang Kexi, Prince of Jingnan Geng Jimao, and the Prince of Dingnan Kong Youde (now deceased) — whose troops were equipped with firearms, no other forces were issued them.

The purpose of this measure was probably related to the Eight Banners' emphasis on mounted archery.

Since the Song dynasty, the Han, who made their living by farming, had never excelled at mounted archery, whereas the Manchu and Mongol nomads relied on it as a basic means of survival.

Therefore, out of consideration for maintaining military and demographic superiority over the Han, the Qing court had begun banning the Green Standard from carrying firearms starting in the sixth year of Shunzhi, so as to preserve the military advantage of the Manchu, Mongol, and Han Eight Banners over the Han Green Standard, forcing the Green Standard troops made up of Han soldiers to fight their battles north and south as cannon fodder.

The tally of sabers, swords, spears, and lances matched the number of Qing soldiers, and they had also captured over thirty shields, though there were no ranged weapons such as bows and arrows.

They had also taken seven horses; apart from Kong Guoliang's inferior Mongol horse, the other six were all draft horses used for pulling carts, of no great use.

There were also a dozen or so donkey carts and mule carts, though several donkeys had been burned to death in last night's fire and had long since been snatched up by the common folk to eat.

After ordering the able-bodied young men to deliver the weapons to the prefect's yamen, Zhou Shixiang accompanied Song Xianggong to inspect the resettlement of the disaster victims.

With the clerks of the prefect's yamen, the two original neighborhood heads of the east city, and several prominent households all working together, most of the disaster victims had been resettled.

Those with relatives in the city went to stay with them; those without relatives took temporary shelter at the resettlement point below the east wall, where several dozen tents had already been pitched, each able to house two or three families.

The rest were placed in empty houses in the city that had originally stood vacant. On the whole, it was handled reasonably well.

As for grain, Lu Changyuan and his men, mindful that the disaster victims were their own fellow villagers, did not skim or cheat.

They had successively raised some grain and fodder from the prominent households, though for the time being they could only supply two meals of thin gruel a day, barely enough to keep people alive. Eating one's fill, let alone eating well, was difficult.

Even so, this was already good enough — one had to remember that before the fire, most of the common folk in Luoding lived exactly this kind of life, and even at New Year they might not get a single meal with meat.

Relying solely on handouts from prominent households could only be a stopgap measure. Luoding had a population of just over three thousand — how many prominent households could there be?

If they truly sat idle and ate through their resources, no number of wealthy families could withstand it. To settle these disaster victims for good, they had to be given the means to support themselves; otherwise it would be a knot that could never be untied.

Simply ignoring them would of course be the easiest course, but Zhou Shixiang could not bring himself to do it. He was still counting on these three thousand-odd people to open up a new front in the resistance against the Qing.

If he abandoned them all, who would dare trust him in the future, and who would still be willing to follow him?

Unable to solve it for the moment, Zhou Shixiang set the matter aside. When evening came, he sent men to summon Ge Wu, Zhao Sihai, and the other core figures to the prefect's yamen.

"What?! Take out the silver to recruit soldiers?!"

The moment they heard Zhou Shixiang wanted to use the silver to recruit troops, Ge Wu and the others were unhappy. They clamored and argued, with no shortage of grumbling.

"That silver was bought with our brothers' heads! Why should we take it out!"

"Recruiting soldiers is a good thing, we're not against it, but you can't use our money to do it!"

"You said serving as officials would make us rich, and the brothers believed you.

All day we've been busting our humps helping keep order, just waiting for things to settle down so we could make a big fortune. But in the blink of an eye, you're going back on your word again.

If this keeps up, the brothers won't listen to you anymore."

"We all think this little bit of silver is too little as it is — that money absolutely cannot be taken out!"

"Does Brother Zhou really think a bunch like us can actually accomplish something great?"

"......"

Zhou Shixiang listened without a flicker of expression. Song Xianggong wore a worried look, and Boss Hu's brow was tightly furrowed. When Zhou Shixiang had told him beforehand about wanting to touch this silver, he had known there would be trouble — and sure enough, not one of his men agreed.

Once everyone had finished their clamoring, Zhou Shixiang walked over to Ge Wu, whose face was flushed red with anger, and asked him, "If we don't take out this silver to recruit soldiers, what does Brother Ge plan to do?"

"Split it up, of course. What else?" Ge Wu said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and Ge Liu nodded along incessantly.

"Splitting it up is a fine thing.

Everyone gets a real benefit, and the trip to Luoding won't have been for nothing. Over four thousand taels — hmm, each man would get a few dozen taels.

And if we squeeze the city a bit more on top of that, no matter how you figure it, it's a windfall." At this point, Zhou Shixiang's tone shifted.

"But we've broken Luoding, and we've made a big enough stir.

Do you think the Qing army will let us off?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Before, when we were making small trouble in the mountains, the Qing army naturally didn't take us seriously.

But now we're flying the banner of the Yongli court — that's a far cry from bandits who rob and plunder. In the eyes of the Qing army, we're no longer mere brigands; we're the Ming army!

Tell me, would the Qing army just sit and watch us sack Luoding, then swagger back to our stronghold and go on playing king of the mountain?"

"Well, that..."

Ge Wu's face changed drastically, and the others' expressions turned ugly as well. Right — they had been so focused on getting rich that they hadn't thought about the aftermath. They had broken Luoding; would the Tartars let them off?

Zhou Shixiang pressed the threat further: "If the Qing army truly sets its mind to exterminating us, I'm afraid when the time comes, not only will everyone lose the silver — you'll lose your lives too!"

"So according to you, not only can we not take this silver, we ought to just pack up and leave obediently?" Ge Wu, thinking of the consequences, was somewhat afraid, yet also somewhat unwilling.

Zhou Shixiang shook his head slightly. "I'm not saying we take it all out. What I mean is we take out only half. Once we've recruited soldiers and our numbers grow, we naturally won't fear the Qing army coming to attack. This is called..."

"The power to defend oneself," Song Xianggong chimed in at just the right moment.

"Right, the power to defend oneself!"

Zhou Shixiang said loudly.

"With the power to defend ourselves, not only will we have silver to split, we'll also have troops to protect us, so the Qing army won't dare attack us lightly.

And when our strength grows, it won't be a matter of fearing the Qing army coming to attack us — it'll be us going to attack the Qing army! If we can take Luoding, we can take Deqing, Zhaoqing, even Guangzhou.

And one day, marching on Beijing won't be impossible either!"

"Brother Zhou, aren't you bragging a bit too hard?"

The future Zhou Shixiang painted left Ge Wu and the others stunned — who could believe such a thing? Even Boss Hu listened with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Song Xianggong, however, had light in his eyes, bright and burning.

Zhou Shixiang swept his hand grandly. "Everything depends on human effort! As long as we all pull together, what in this world can't be done? When we first talked about taking Luoding, didn't everyone doubt it too? And how has it turned out?"

Ge Wu, whether cowed by Zhou Shixiang's grand talk or genuinely stirred, hesitated and said, "That's all well and good, but you're making it sound too far-fetched. Never mind Guangzhou — we couldn't even take Deqing."

Zhou Shixiang flung his raised hand downward in a long arc and said, "If you haven't tried, how do you know we can't take it?"

"I..." Ge Wu's mouth went dry, and he could not get out a single word.

"From now on, every place we break through, we'll take out some of the plundered wealth to recruit soldiers and buy horses, and split the rest among everyone.

The more troops we have, the stronger we are, the more places we can take — and the more territory we hold, the more wealth everyone gets to split!

By then it won't just be a matter of pulling one big score and making a windfall, but true glory, wealth, and rank, with titles for our wives and sons! This is called sustainable development!

So don't just stare at the silver in front of you — look further ahead. What you're getting now is little, but later it will only grow more and more!"

Everyone listened in stunned silence. After a long while, Zhao Sihai blurted out, "Scholar, so when exactly do we get real glory and wealth, and stop fearing the Tartars coming to attack?"

"When?" Zhou Shixiang's face was full of confidence. "When the Tartars under heaven have all been beaten into fearing us, then everyone can rest easy and sit back enjoying glory and wealth!"