Chapter 1010

Ye Xianggao has a certain air of decline about him, lacking the vigor of youth; he always considers things thoroughly, and after staying long in the court, one becomes like this—this is also why Li Chengliang constantly clashes with the regional inspectors.

Scholarly officials who are metaphysical, impractical, and morally lofty can never understand Li Chengliang's logic in handling affairs.

Li Chengliang has killed again, Li Chengliang is again stirring up trouble from within and without, inciting internal strife among the barbarian tribes, causing unrest so that neither man nor beast can find peace; Li Chengliang is again killing the innocent to claim merit, merely because he refuses to let his hair grow, he kills people—this is excessively cruel.

Li Chengliang also cannot understand the thoughts of these scholars; it's as if he's missing a string.

These damned barbarians have killed Li Chengliang's officers and soldiers under his command, yet Li Chengliang cannot retaliate, and the regional inspector even orders Li Chengliang to send envoys again to negotiate? This isn't madness—what is it?

Not growing one's hair means refusing sinicization, refusing submission, harboring ulterior motives, and being a rebel!

Local officials and court-appointed officials sent from the capital always have major conflicts regarding morality, policy implementation, stance, and so on.

When conversation fails to connect even slightly, over time contradictions intensify; the conflict between Li Chengliang and the regional inspector will soon escalate to the emperor's presence.

In the eyes of the court, the conflict between Li Chengliang and the regional inspector is easily interpreted as Li Chengliang holding military power to dominate and seeking independence; to avoid blame, Li Chengliang inevitably resorts to holding military power to dominate and nurturing bandits to dominate, ultimately forming a vicious cycle.

In the early Wanli era, Li Chengliang's crisis of holding military power to dominate arose precisely in this way.

Hou Yuzhao's solution was actually quite foolish: he simply opened wasteland, increased grain production, turning Liaodong agriculture from deficit to slight surplus, then used the surplus to continue opening wasteland.

By continuously expanding territory, farmland, and output from mountains and forests, he used incremental gains to mask the fatal central-local contradiction, resolving problems through development.

The court saw Liaodong's continuous development, affirmed Li Chengliang's contributions, and his holding military power to dominate was for expansion, giving him a plausible reason to persuade the scholar-officials in court.

Ultimately, under the broader development strategy, the court and Liaodong sought common ground while reserving differences; the court granted Li Chengliang a hereditary marquisate in exchange for his withdrawal from Liaodong to prevent Liaodong from truly sliding into a warlord fiefdom; Li Chengliang enjoyed the fruits of expansion without excessive fear of being discarded after use.

"Order all counties to prepare for scorched-earth burning." Ye Xianggao again issued a command to his secretary.

"Prefect Ye, is this scorched-earth burning really open for discussion? This…" The secretary was startled, never expecting the usually refined and amiable Ye Xianggao to issue such a harsh order.

"Too slow. When the bandits attack, we just clear them out; some superficially surrendered settled barbarians actually collude with these wild barbarians inside and out—only a thousand days of banditry, where is there a thousand days of defense? Defense is futile; pass the order." Ye Xianggao thought carefully and still insisted on the command.

This new official's three blazing fires upon taking office: first, relocating the prefectural seat; second, burning toward the strictly enforced and highly controversial hair-growing order; third, truly setting fire.

"I know what scorched-earth burning is; no need to remind me. When the court holds me accountable, I will bear it alone—issue the order." Ye Xianggao saw the secretary still had something to say and explained in one sentence.

Autumn wind rustles, border grass turns yellow; every autumn, the Great Ming border troops begin to go beyond the frontier to burn scorched earth, creating a isolation zone to prevent grassland peoples from moving south; after prolonged burning, grassland desertification intensifies—this policy has been implemented for nearly two hundred years.

Scorched-earth burning is not merely a tactical measure, not just a single fire, but a whole set of policies including scorched earth, poisoning water sources, logging and clearing forests, burning mountains, closing markets, driving out and exterminating barbarians, and so on.

After the peace agreement in the fourth year of Longqing, the Great Ming fulfilled its treaty with Altan Khan, abolishing this method.

Just like the horse-driving and nest-disturbing, copper-coin practices of Wang Chonggu and his fellow Shanxi people, rarely seen in historical records, only a few scattered phrases allow speculation; regarding the cruelty of scorched-earth burning, most accounts merely skim over it.

Especially after the Longqing peace, the Great Ming's renewed campaign against Altan Khan, and the pacification and sinicization of the Guizhou Prince, scorched-earth burning gradually vanished from the spring-and-annals style of historiography.

People are like this—poor memory; after twenty or thirty years, everyone gradually forgets; scorched-earth burning has already become a memory from long ago.

Now, Ye Xianggao has brought it out again, merely to accelerate the development speed of Jilin and other regions, coordinating with the court's migration policy, to fully occupy this Liaodong land that, under heavenly changes, will become a land of dragon's rise, preventing any upheaval.

"Yes." The secretary obeyed the order.

Once this scorched-earth burning decree is issued, Ye Xianggao's reputation will likely be as infamous as that of Ling Yunyi, sitting at the same table.

The reason Ye Xianggao issued this order is actually quite simple: if the Jilin situation continues like this 'you and me' back-and-forth, who knows how many children will, like him initially, be born in a latrine.

Since there is a ready-made method to accelerate the Great Ming's sinicization of Liaodong, and since someone must inevitably play the role of the sinner, why couldn't it be me?

Ye Xianggao flipped through documents from various regions; in Jilin Prefecture, he understood a sentence more deeply: never underestimate the destructive willingness of meat-eaters.

The previous Jilin prefect fled in disarray back to the interior; the Jilin prefect had once ordered the extermination of yellow weasels.

The saying "yellow weasels pay New Year's visits to chickens—no good intentions" is widely known; the Jilin prefect thought, the people's chickens, hard-raised, were all snatched away by yellow weasels—truly absurd—so he ordered the extermination of yellow weasels.

Soon, an unexpected event occurred: rats flooded and became a disaster.

The Academy of Investigating Things dispatched three agricultural scholars, who finally completed the explanation: yellow weasels in Liaodong are called Huang Daxian, Family-Protecting Immortal, but why this is so, few can clearly explain; the agricultural scholars clarified the origin of this folk belief.

Yellow weasels are omnivorous, with a very fierce temperament, eating almost anything, but their main food is mice and wild rabbits; the agricultural scholars dissected hundreds of yellow weasels, confirming one fact: one yellow weasel can eat three thousand mice and field mice in a year, while these three thousand mice consume nearly two thousand catties of grain annually.

Wherever yellow weasels are numerous, mice are few, and people lose less grain; over time, although people don't know why, they still regard yellow weasels as family-protecting immortals and Huang Daxian.

Upon taking office, Ye Xianggao immediately canceled the order to hunt yellow weasels.

This kind of wishful thinking by meat-eaters is extremely destructive.

The previous official served four years in total; herders, farmers, and hunters together killed tens of thousands of yellow weasels, causing the entire Jilin region to face the hidden danger of rat plagues; helplessly, Liaoning captured three thousand yellow weasels and released them into the Jilin area.

The reason for not releasing wildcats is that cats are unsuitable for Liaodong, where winters are truly too cold, and wildcats would freeze to death in winter.

The previous official also made an erroneous decision: dissolving the military-agricultural colonies.

Jilin Prefecture's wasteland reclamation used the military-agricultural colony system: all fields were collectively owned by the colonies, all reclamation quotas were assigned to colonies, not individuals.

Three-tenths of the colonies' harvest went to the Liaodong garrison, seven-tenths remained with the colonies; due to lack of accounting offices, distribution was simple and crude—no measurement of plot size, just equal division by headcount.

Hou Yuzhao and Li Chengliang naturally knew this system was flawed: since plot size wasn't considered, children could do little work, infants in swaddling couldn't work, women worked less than men, and cunning farmers wouldn't they want to have more children to gain more grain? Even baby girls would need to be fed?

This was actually Hou Yuzhao and Li Chengliang's goal: to make people have more children to populate Liaodong, as Han people there were still too few; though four million Han civilians sound numerous, on this vast Liaodong land, they are truly too few, too few.

This system had been in place for a full eighteen years; due to lack of accounting offices, it soon developed flaws: each colony had a few clever individuals.

These clever people thought simply: I don't work, yet I still get the same meal—why should I work hard?

As soon as a lazybones appears in a colony, soon the colony will have a crowd of lazybones, and these lazybones will gang up to bully the honest farming fellows.

The previous prefect thought this wouldn't do, so he directly ordered that reclamation quotas be issued straight to individuals.

Over a decade passed, barbarians were no longer a threat, farmland basically stabilized; from any angle, this order seemed problem-free—after all, the Great Ming heartland had operated this way for many years—but once implemented, problems arose.

Barbarians were indeed no longer a threat, yet wolves, wild boars, tigers, and bears still roamed in packs; these wild beasts harassed villages; previously, the military-agricultural colony militia, who farmed and stood ready, handled the hunting.

With the dissolution of the colonies, colony farmland was no longer collectively owned; each family managed its own field; the militia either became farmers or joined the army directly; lacking the militia's hunting, these wild beasts became the colonies' number one enemy, coming and going as if through uninhabited land.

Thus, reclamation quotas were again issued to the colonies collectively, not individuals; of course, the lazybones in the colonies also found outlets—some were forcibly conscripted, others directly packed and shipped from the Jilin shipyard to sail south to the Nanyang.

In every county of Jilin, there is a children's rhyme: pat your head, you have it; pat the table, it's settled; pat your chest, it's done; pat your thigh, it's bad; pat your buttocks, you're gone.

This children's rhyme refers to the previous Jilin prefect, who indeed patted his buttocks and left, leaving behind a mess for Ye Xianggao to clean up.

Sometimes the court issues orders that are also the wishful thinking of meat-eaters; when these somewhat muddled commands reach Jilin, the Jilin prefect, who ought to argue on principle, chooses to obey the order.

For example, in the seventeenth year of Wanli, the court issued an edict to Liaoning and Jilin, demanding these two places build the Liaoning University Hall and Normal Hall; this was originally a fine thing under the Dinghai education system, but this policy suited Liaoning, not Jilin.

Liaoning was originally the Liaoyang Regional Military Commissioner, subordinate to the Shandong Provincial Administration Commission; since the Hongwu era, after two hundred years of sinicization, the Northeast had four million Han people, three million of whom were in Liaoning; Liaoning could build the University Hall, Normal Hall, and three-level halls, having that foundation, while Jilin lacked it.

Even if the halls were built, wasting money and grain aside, where would scholar-officers come to teach in this godforsaken place where birds don't even defecate?

The biggest problem with this order is that it is based in Jilin County, not Changchun County; Jilin County has a grand total of only thirty thousand registered people, while Changchun has one hundred thousand — Jilin County lacks sufficient population to support so many academies.

Yet the previous Prefect of Jilin executed it just like that, building the Normal Academy in Jilin County rather than Changchun.

It is a bit like Prefect Liu Shunzhi of Xuzhou, who chose to protect the people's livelihood rather than the grain transport; Liu Shunzhi told His Majesty that previously almost all problems in Xuzhou Prefecture were caused by protecting the grain transport — the chaos resulting from rigidly, completely executing superior orders.

Therefore, the Jilin locality needs Ye Xianggao and the court to game each other, but in this process one must also be careful not to be exploited by local officials.

If one asks Ye Xianggao whether serving as an official in the court is easier or serving as an official in the locality is easier — speaking for Ye Xianggao personally, the locality is still easier, because no matter how badly he performs, in the end he just pats his butt and leaves.

He is a Jinshi graduate, a Hanlin Academy Shujishi, and he is also of the Emperor's faction, a disciple of the Son of Heaven; he is precisely the "man from heaven" spoken of by Yan Shixuan — as long as he does not hand Jilin over to the barbarians on a silver platter, at worst he will be laterally transferred to the interior to continue padding his resume.

One month later, His Majesty the Emperor's decree arrived at Jilin Prefecture, permitting Jilin Prefecture to relocate the prefectural seat to Changchun County, and also granting two hundred thousand taels of silver for the relocation expenses, with the instruction not to excessively disturb the locality.

The Emperor giving this two hundred thousand taels of silver shows that the court also hopes Liaodong can continue to develop, continue to reclaim wasteland, accommodate more population, and provide more agricultural surplus.

From this point on, Ye Xianggao's position in Jilin Prefecture could no longer be shaken by anyone.

Xiong Tingbi and Ye Xianggao are different; most of the predicaments Ye Xianggao created were due to his own insufficient experience, whereas the predicament Xiong Tingbi faces was mainly caused by the utterly wretched situation of the Wa state.

The Iwami Silver Mine, from mountain top to mountain foot, is divided into three parts.

The mountain top is Yamabuki Castle where the silver mine is located, mainly for excavating silver ore and smelting silver via the cupellation method; the entire area is approximately five li;

The residential area on the mountainside, headed by Eizenji Temple, has dozens of lanes that can only accommodate a single carriage; both sides of the mountain path are entirely wooden houses; this area houses about twelve thousand Wa slaves, exclusively engaged in mining silver;

At the mountain foot is the Iwami Silver Mine Delegated Administration Office, also called Iwami Castle; this Delegated Administration Office is the product of Oda Nobunaga and Mori Terumoto fighting back and forth — in the name of the Wa imperial court it manages the Iwami Silver Mine, manages silver distribution, and is likewise a barracks where court officials reside.

When Qi Jiguang originally captured the Iwami Silver Mine, he captured these three parts of the mountain castle.

The Iwami Silver Mine garrison numbers only one thousand; further west of the Delegated Administration Office lies Ninman Castle, with only seventy-two thousand mu of fields; Ninman Castle is very, very small, its walls not enclosing more than ten li, and its registered population is not large either — the entire Iwami Silver Mine jurisdiction has only fifty thousand registered people.

Ninman Castle is already by the sea; the seaside has only four berths, a tiny wharf, mainly for shipping silver back to the Great Ming.

Xiong Tingbi is inside the Iwami Castle tenshu; he manages all Great Ming actual-control zones along the coast from Izumo Castle to Nagato Castle.

Within the actual-control zones, the Equal Fields Law is implemented; samurai and named landholders were all hanged and then sunk into the sea, and all land was given to the Wa people who surrendered.

The reason Xiong Tingbi implemented the Equal Fields Law is that the Wa state has many people and little land; without equal fields there would not be enough agricultural surplus to satisfy the Iwami Silver Mine's so many miners mining and smelting silver.

Xiong Tingbi also once conceived of using the Taixi red-haired barbarians' method — people? Where are there people! They are clearly all slaves; dead is dead, just throw them into mass graves of ten thousand.

The price of doing so is continuous, unending barbarian harassment — which just happens to allow continued capture of slaves during the harassment, no need to search everywhere.

The reason Xiong Tingbi used equal fields rather than slavery is neither moral loftiness nor sympathy for the Wa people; he simply calculated precisely: every single Great Ming garrison soldier is a precious treasure — however they were brought to the Wa state, they must be brought back; that is the fundamental reason Xiong Tingbi did this.

Within the Great Ming actual-control zones, public order is far better than the chaotic Wa state; here all private fighting is prohibited, and anyone bearing arms is summarily executed.

It is no wonder the rebelling Wa people regard this place as a holy land — it really is too peaceful here.

The prohibition of private fighting is a legacy left behind from Xiong Tingbi's earlier detours.

When Xiong Tingbi first arrived at Iwami Castle, there was no order to speak of, let alone any bureaucratic system; it was a mess — Xiong Tingbi's word was law; he slapped his forehead and devised a set of systems regulating even which foot the Wa people must step through the door with first, to constrain the Wa people.

Xiong Tingbi called this method the Directive Method.

Whatever he says goes — what to plant where, how much grain each person eats daily, where to reclaim wasteland today, where to build mountain castles tomorrow; as Mr. Zhang's closed-door disciple, the "Xiong Da" in His Majesty the Emperor's mouth, the Great Ming army would not violate his will, and the Wa people have no qualification to violate it.

But this Directive Method soon became unworkable; he is very talented — according to his planning and directives, the Great Ming actual-control zone quickly gained order, but his computational capacity soon fell short.

It is not that he could not figure the accounts or produce clear directives and plans; this narrow Great Ming actual-control zone, aside from agricultural production, has only silver mining as a manufacturing production — a very simple economic model.

He could figure the accounts, but he could not figure the human heart.

For example, two hundred catties of grain and fifty catties of meat distributed to one hundred people — each person should have two catties of grain and half a catty of meat daily.

But the actual situation is not so; he issued an equal-distribution directive, but people do not completely act according to his directives.

The Great Ming elite soldiers take eight catties of grain and two catties of meat daily — this is very reasonable; after all, the Great Ming elite soldiers are the ruling class, this is a place where they must take more, because Xiong Tingbi needs them to maintain stability;

On the other hand, the Wa people who distribute these rations — these Wa stewards each take four catties of grain and one catty of meat; this is also very reasonable — stewards who control ration distribution, if they don't take more and occupy more, are simply not human;

Then there are the kiln workers who mine — they also must eat more and take more; without meat they cannot do heavy labor; whether mining silver or smelting silver, both require strength; each of them takes three catties of grain and half a catty of meat — if they cannot mine the quota of silver, they all await the Great Ming Emperor's wrath;

And the Wa people who make up the majority and do farm work — they often can only get grain after the people above have taken theirs, and by then only forty catties of grain remain before them — at this time, open and fair, first come first served, distribution may begin.

The Great Ming elite soldiers, Wa stewards, and mining kiln workers — among these one hundred people they account for about eleven people, yet these eleven people often take away one hundred sixty catties of grain and fifty catties of meat, leaving only forty catties of grain to distribute to the Wa people who farm.

Even so, these remaining eighty-nine Wa people who farm must be further divided into three-six-nine grades.

At once, a simple model of two catties of grain and half a catty of meat per person could not be carried out.

Xiong Tingbi's Directive Method collapsed — not merely because of unfair distribution; after the Great Ming took down this area, these seven cities totaled less than thirty thousand people combined; with gradual pacification, the registered population from Izumo Castle to Nagato Castle rapidly increased to four hundred forty thousand.

With so many people, Xiong Tingbi has only two secretaries, and one of them must exclusively manage the silver mine — directives became very hard to issue.

Could not calculate clearly, could not figure it out — Xiong Tingbi stopped calculating and directly switched methods: the Equal Fields Law.

As long as enough silver is handed over each year, Xiong Tingbi can do as he pleases; he changes orders morning and evening, and everyone must obey.

Xiong Tingbi's Equal Fields Law achieved great success, and his taxation is also very low — three parts to the government, seven to the people; that is, three-tenths of the harvest goes to the Delegated Administration Office, the remaining seven-tenths the people keep for themselves.

Because the previous samurai and named landholders were all sunk into the sea, the Equal Fields Law and taxation could largely proceed according to his planning; Wa stewards naturally invent pretexts, but it is still far better than most places in the Wa state — after all, the Wa state's tax rate is eight parts to the government, two to the people.

Xiong Tingbi faces several vexations.

The first is the spread of the Gokuraku-kyo; even though Xiong Tingbi severely cracks down on it, this Gokuraku-kyo still inevitably spreads in — because these seven cities all have large numbers of pleasure quarters, which are Wa brothels; courtesans are one of the main channels for Gokuraku-kyo proselytizing;

The second is the barren material conditions; within the actual-control zone there is not much that can be produced — cotton cloth, brushes ink paper inkstones books, silk, woolens, spices, salt, etc., all must rely on Great Ming supply; most of the Iwami Silver Mine's silver is exchanged for these things;

Xiong Tingbi also tried local production, but the cost was higher than the price of Great Ming goods delivered to port, and in the end all came to nothing.

Once the Iwami Silver Mine's silver ore is mined out, the total economic collapse of the actual-control zone becomes an inevitability.

The third is excessive vagrants; ever since the actual-control zone adopted the Equal Fields Law, because of the Wa state's unstable situation and frequent wars, countless vagrants want to surrender to the Great Ming.

But the actual-control zone's carrying capacity is limited; although they are all cheap labor, cheap labor also needs to eat — clearly the actual-control zone cannot support that many people; Xiong Tingbi had no choice but to order a ban on vagrants entering.

At this time, the Mori clan samurai had a brainwave and started the Wa slave trade — they simply seized all these Wa state vagrants and sent them to Nagasaki.

No matter who the vagrants are, as long as they are delivered to Nagasaki by headcount, they can serve as payment to exchange for Great Ming goods.

The actual-control zone implementing the Equal Fields Law indeed became a holy-land-like existence in the Wa state, and indeed has the qualifications to be called a holy land — here is peaceful, beautiful, sunshine shines everywhere, everything one could want, full of hope.

But likewise, the holy land is also a giant trap; any Wa state vagrants who come seeking refuge all become Wa slaves.

Xiong Tingbi is unmoved by this; he came to the Wa state not to save the Wa people — his purpose was clear from the very beginning: silver, Wa slaves, a cage.

His duty is to pin the Wa state firmly within copper walls and iron walls, to drive a nail into the Wa state, to guarantee that Japanese pirates will not harass the Great Ming again, to guarantee that no large-scale Japanese pirates will run rampant, and to safeguard the Great Ming's maritime trade environment.

The fate of the Japanese has nothing to do with me, Xiong Tingbi.

"The equal-field system is indeed Japan's solution; it just depends on whether the Japanese can seize it themselves." After Xiong Tingbi finished handling the documents in his hand, he looked at the Japanese passing by outside the prefectural office, seeing how prosperous this place appeared, with carriages coming and going day and night, houses connected to houses, shops connected to shops.

All beauty is but a fleeting dream; once the silver mines of Iwami are exhausted, everything will come to an abrupt halt, and that too in the not-so-distant future.

The output of the silver mine has been gradually declining, from the initial 1.5 million taels down to the current 1.43 million taels, and it will continue to decline year after year; this is not a management issue, but rather due to the over 600 interconnected shafts and tunnels, some of which have already been exhausted of silver.

When His Majesty first gave Toyotomi Hideyoshi two prescriptions: closed-country isolation and the equal-field system.

In practice, these two measures could bring order to Japan from chaos, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi truly cannot achieve this; if Toyotomi Hideyoshi could unite with the peasant uprisings in common purpose, there might still be a chance, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi clearly does not care much for these commoners either.

"Your Majesty's edict has arrived." The clerk handed Xiong Tingbi a sealed confidential box containing the imperial edict.

Xiong Tingbi inspected the wax seal and the relay station seals along the route; this confidential box had been sent from the capital to Tianjin Prefecture, then departed from Tanggugang by sea, transferred at Jeju Island to Tsushima Island, arrived at Nagato Castle, and was then delivered to Iwami Castle.

He opened the confidential box and saw the emperor's edict.

His Majesty informed Xiong Tingbi of the important events that occurred in the Great Ming this year, especially the development and expansion of Zhang Juzheng's high-pressure purges and the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which pertains to the long-term stability of the Great Ming bureaucracy.

His Majesty also inquired whether the silver mines could still deliver their full quota to the Great Ming this year; secondly, he asked how much military equipment and supplies were needed in the directly controlled areas, to be shipped together in April next year; finally, he sought Xiong Tingbi's opinion, asking whether he would be willing to lead the elite troops selected by the Great Ming to Edo.

"Is my duty to flee?" Xiong Tingbi scratched his head.

The emperor's instruction to him was that, if unable to cope, he should lead these three thousand elite troops to escape from Edo City back to the Great Ming; these soldiers were also outstanding performers in dispersal drills, capable of scattering without disbanding.

This is a Great Ming attempt at deeper intervention in Japan, driving the nail deeper, so that the Japanese shogunate feels like a bone stuck in the throat.

The encroachment has never ceased.

Xiong Tingbi's current position is acting magistrate, a fifth-rank official, but also a non-regular dispatch, a dedicated post—like a melon-seed hole; if reassigned, he would become the Edo Regional Commander, Deputy Censor-in-Chief, and Governor of Edo, and at twenty-four years of age, become the youngest fourth-rank regular official in the Great Ming.

He did not hesitate, clearly answering His Majesty that he was willing to go to Edo to become the Edo Regional Commander and Governor of Edo.

As for the Iwami Silver Mine side, implementing the equal-field system here is sufficient; going further, this place does not support his advancing further, planning more; but upon reaching Edo, he could instead have greater development.

Regarding escape, he does not believe Toyotomi Hideyoshi or Tokugawa Ieyasu have the capability to force the Great Ming capital garrison into fleeing, even if the Great Ming elite troops number only three thousand.

The Great Ming capital garrison is a new-style army fully equipped with firearms and employing linear tactics; the Great Ming's development of such new-style armies remains insufficient, but when facing the Japanese forces still in the cold-weapon era, it displays a generational leap ahead.