Chapter 61: Seditious Poem

After Tie Yi was brought over, before Zhou Shixiang could question him, he instead boldly spoke up first and asked, "Are you the one in charge?"

"Yes, I'm the one in charge."

Zhou Shixiang accepted the title of "the one in charge" with a slight smile, looking the miner-born young man up and down, not at all disgusted by the rank stench coming off his body.

Tie Yi showed no timidity or guilt, but met Zhou Shixiang's gaze and said, "You people kill Tartars?"

"Our Taiping Camp was founded precisely to kill Tartars." Zhou Shixiang deliberately raised his voice so that more of the prisoners farther away could hear clearly.

Tie Yi nodded, then asked again, "Our lives were traded for by you from the Tartars?"

"To be precise, it was an exchange made between our Taiping Camp and the Deqing Green Standard. They handed you over to us, and we returned their men to them." At this, Zhou Shixiang paused. "Of course, from now on, your lives do indeed belong to my Taiping Camp."

After hearing this, Tie Yi did not find anything wrong with the arrangement, and simply asked, "Then if we work for you, do you guarantee we eat our fill?"

Zhou Shixiang smiled and said with great certainty, "Guaranteed!"

"Then fine, I'll work for you!"

Without another word, Tie Yi knelt and kowtowed to Zhou Shixiang, then said, "I still have many brothers at the mine, all iron-hard good men. They've long wanted to fight the Tartars, but didn't know who to follow.

If I go bring them to join your Taiping Camp, General, could you also bring over their wives, children, and elderly, and feed them too?"

Zhou Shixiang had not expected Tie Yi to take the initiative in recruiting those miners for the Taiping Camp, and was overjoyed.

"The purpose of our Taiping Camp is to let everyone have food to eat, clothes to wear, and meat to eat.

No matter who it is, as long as they're willing to join our Taiping Camp, we treat everyone the same. Not only do we provide food and lodging, we also take care of them in birth, old age, sickness, and death!"

"Really?"

Tie Yi murmured, repeating Zhou Shixiang's words, somewhat disbelieving. He suddenly raised his head and stared at Zhou Shixiang. "You're not lying?"

Zhou Shixiang said with a solemn face, "I'm not lying."

Tie Yi stared at Zhou Shixiang for a long while, then gritted his teeth and said, "Fine then, I trust you. Send troops with me to the mine, and I'll get my brothers there to work for your Taiping Camp!" With that, he got up, eager to return to the mine at once.

Tie Yi was impatient, but Zhou Shixiang could not afford to be. He first needed to find out the full details of the copper mine. If the mine was garrisoned by a strong Green Standard force, then troops could only be sent after careful planning; otherwise it would be too risky.

According to Tie Yi, his master Zheng Laoquan had said while alive that the Old Phoenix Manor copper mine was newly opened during the Wanli reign of the Great Ming.

At that time there had even been a resident mining eunuch, and all the copper produced was shipped directly back to Beijing. Later, during the Chongzhen reign, for some reason the mining supervisor was withdrawn by the court, and the government sealed the copper mine as well.

Two years after that, a group of merchants came from Guangzhou and reopened the mine, and from then on, the Old Phoenix Manor copper mine had little to do with the government anymore.

After the Qing army fought its way into Guangdong, the copper mine stopped production for a time. It was not until five years ago, when the Qing army occupied Zhaoqing and military funds ran tight, that the mine was reopened.

However, in the past few years the Ming and Qing sides had been fighting constantly, so production at the mine was often interrupted, and many miners had run off.

Those who remained were the ones truly without any other way to survive, who knew nothing but going down into the mine — around four hundred or so. The families of these miners lived in Old Phoenix Manor beside the mine, roughly a thousand people in all.

Although Old Phoenix Manor, where the copper mine was located, lay within Deqing's borders, all affairs at the mine were not managed by Deqing, but by men sent directly from Zhaoqing Prefecture.

Deqing only sent some overseers there to share in the profits, while the bulk went to Guangzhou. There were over forty overseers at the mine, all sent by Zhaoqing Prefecture and Deqing — runners, local thugs, a real mix of dragons and snakes.

But they had one thing in common: they all rode on the miners' heads and threw their weight around.

After hearing what Tie Yi said, Zhou Shixiang immediately decided that Baldy would take a squad of men and go with Tie Yi to the copper mine. No matter the method, they absolutely had to bring back all four hundred-plus miners along with their wives, children, and elderly.

As for those few dozen overseers and hired thugs, he did not take them to heart at all. He told Baldy to slaughter every one of those overseers and thugs — first, to vent the miners' grievances on their behalf, and second, to leave these miners with no road back.

On reflection he felt uneasy, but he truly had too few men to send, so in the end he had Shao Jiugong send ten of his Jiangxi soldiers along as well.

After Baldy received his orders and set out with Tie Yi, Shao Jiugong brought over the second man he considered useful — the burly Chen Mo, who had botched a kidnapping and ended up killing the hostage. A ninety-nine percent certainty for execution after autumn assizes!

Shao Jiugong's assessment of this man was — a complete fool, bold, and a thorough desperado.

The use of such a fool was as a death warrior. When they encountered a hard battle they could not crack, they would send such men as a suicide squad, which often produced miraculous results.

Although Shao Jiugong had only recently joined the Taiping Camp, he had fought for over a dozen years, and he could see that what the Taiping Camp lacked now was soldiers who could fight — especially soldiers who did not fear death.

Given the current situation, they would probably have to fight several more battles with the Qing army before they could forge a batch of elite troops. Those battles would also have to be smooth and favorable ones, with not the slightest risk allowed.

Otherwise, never mind forging elite troops — the Taiping Camp's meager assets would be squandered and finished long before. To keep the Taiping Camp going, they had to rope in a group of men who did not fear death.

Once that group was used up, their own elite troops would naturally emerge.

The miners at the Old Phoenix Manor copper mine were certainly a fine batch of soldiers, but the prisoners in the Deqing jail were no less so. Though some were innocent prisoners, there were also desperadoes guilty of all manner of crimes.

Put to use, they would absolutely make a batch of death warriors.

These men's lives had been picked up for free anyway. Give them good food and drink, promise them promotion and wealth after a few missions — how could they not serve the Taiping Camp with utter devotion?

The stronger the Taiping Camp became, the more secure his own life would be. Therefore Shao Jiugong very actively proposed to Zhou Shixiang that the condemned and serious offenders be gathered together and used as death warriors, with Chen Mo as their leader.

In the future, soldiers in the army who committed crimes could also be made death warriors. Give these men doomed to die a chance at life, and they would fight for it no matter what.

This would reduce the Taiping Camp's unnecessary casualties and also win victories.

This method rather smacked of treating human life as grass, but Zhou Shixiang adopted the suggestion without the slightest hesitation. He had the fool Chen Mo brought over, wanting to see just how foolish this man was, and whether he could be used.

The death-warrior leader Zhou Shixiang needed had to be a complete and utter fool, without the slightest bit of cunning. Otherwise, it would be handing a sharp weapon to another and harming himself.

The burly Chen Mo, whom Shao Jiugong had called a complete fool, began shouting the moment he arrived.

"I'm a rough man and don't know how to talk pretty, but I'll remember this life-saving kindness.

Whatever you need me for, just give the order — through mountains of blades and seas of fire, I won't so much as frown!"

Zhou Shixiang glanced at him, not minding his crudeness, and asked, "What can you do?"

"Kill people!"

As he said these two words, Chen Mo wore a look of pride, as if speaking of the greatest thing in the world.

Zhou Shixiang thought to himself that this truly was a fool. Without showing any reaction, he asked him, "Apart from killing people, what else can you do?"

"What else can I do?"

Chen Mo stood there stunned. The question was somewhat hard for him to answer.

He racked his brains for a long while, then cried out excitedly, "Apart from killing people, I can also do kidnapping and extortion, robbery and arson, and the like. In short, any trade that lives by the blade, I can do it — and I guarantee I won't botch it!"

"If you don't botch it, how did you end up in jail?" Zhou Shixiang could not help mocking the fool.

"Well..."

Chen Mo's face immediately reddened, quite embarrassed. "Walk by the river often enough and you're bound to lose your shoes. Heh heh, getting caught once in a while is nothing. Next time — next time I definitely won't slip up!"

"It's not a matter of slipping up or not!"

Zhou Shixiang's face turned stern, and he said in a deep voice, "Our Taiping Camp is the royal army of the Great Ming. What you just described, we absolutely will not do.

By rights, you've committed capital crimes and beheading you would not be excessive. But seeing that you're a real man, I'll give you a chance to live.

Are you willing to stay and serve in my army?"

Hearing this, Chen Mo reflexively blurted out, "Is there any benefit?"

Benefit?

Zhou Shixiang gave a cold smile and signaled Shao Jiugong to have a proper talk with this fool about benefits.

The third person was a secretary named Liao Ruixiang, a native of Shaoxing in Zhejiang, a xiucai from the Chongzhen reign.

He had served as secretary to several county magistrates and prefects under both Ming and Qing, and his most recent — and final — employer was Lu Gongming, the County Magistrate of Deqing.

The reason Shao Jiugong considered him useful was that this man was a scholar. Though advanced in years, he was still a xiucai and had served as a secretary, capable of writing essays — exactly the kind of person the Taiping Camp urgently needed.

Shao Jiugong knew about how Zhou Shixiang and Song Xianggong had relied on those petty clerks of the subprefectural yamen in Luoding. Likewise, he did not trust those petty clerks either.

So when he learned of Old Liao's background as a secretary, he very enthusiastically introduced him to Zhou Shixiang.

The moment he heard this was a man thrown into jail for writing a seditious poem, Zhou Shixiang's interest was piqued. He wondered what kind of seditious poem this old man could have written at his age.

Seditious poems, after all, had existed since ancient times. Zhou Shixiang did not remember many, but he did know a few famous ones, such as "The Blue Heaven is dead, the Yellow Heaven shall rise.

The year is jiazi, and all under heaven shall be blessed." Then there was "If in another year I become the Green Emperor, I shall bid the peach blossoms bloom together!"

Or "If one day I fulfill my soaring ambition, I dare laugh at Huang Chao for not being a true man!" And even "The dragon lurks at the sea's edge, fearing to startle heaven; for now it steals leisure and leaps within the abyss.

Awaiting the gathering of wind and cloud, it shall soar across the six directions and settle heaven and earth."

Most who wrote seditious poems were great figures, and the poems they wrote made later readers feel matchless dominance. He wondered what level this Old Liao was at — could his poem stir the soul and rend the heart?

Under Zhou Shixiang's eager gaze, Secretary Liao tremblingly recited his seditious poem, which turned out to be a single line: "The bright moon has feeling and still looks back at me; the clear wind has no intent and does not detain the passerby."

What the hell kind of seditious poem was this?

Zhou Shixiang stood there stunned, and only after a long while did he realize that the man standing before him was a living, breathing victim of a literary inquisition.

"Bright moon has feeling, clear wind has no intent" — if that wasn't longing for the Ming dynasty, what was it!

A seditious poem — a genuine seditious poem!

In the end, this Secretary Liao who had written the seditious poem was kept by Zhou Shixiang's side. The operation was growing larger, so naturally he needed staff officers — he couldn't handle every trivial matter personally.

Update note: February is the Spring Festival period, and I'm busy with many matters. Bones can only manage not to miss updates, but won't be posting extra either — one chapter a day, returning to normal updates on March 1st, with a minimum of 6,000 characters per day.

Spring Festival is the greatest holiday of us Han people, a fine festival for family reunion. During this time there aren't too many readers willing to read books, so please bear with me.

After all, I'm human too and need to celebrate the holiday — I can't just leave my wife and children aside, ignore all my relatives and friends, and sit in front of the computer typing every day, right?