Chapter 81: Standing Still

Clang, clang, clang — a burst of copper gong rang out. An actor dressed in a general's costume stood with an air of great importance by the main road, his outlandish attire drawing the eyes of passersby.

"Free sugar water to drink!"

Pang Ding called out from behind a tea stall. The farmers who heard him flocked over one after another, equally skeptical, especially since Pang Ding was wearing the uniform of a yamen runner. These farmers had all been cheated by bailiffs more or less, and they wondered what trick this bowl of water might hide.

But sugar was a very precious commodity at this time; an ordinary household might not get to taste it once in an entire year, so it still held considerable allure.

A group of five or six farmers carrying shoulder poles approached. The one at the front asked Pang Ding, "Is this water really free?"

"Really free. Magistrate Yang said the common folk work hard delivering grain, so the yamen is paying out of its own funds to provide everyone with sugar water. Whether you come to the recruitment or not, you can have sugar water."

"And no copper coins either?"

Pang Ding shot the man a glare. "No money of any kind. If you're not drinking, step aside. Next to us is the Zhuang Squad recruitment station approved by County Magistrate Yang — don't block the people who want to sign up."

Those farmers each took a bowl of sugar water, drinking as they listened to the recruitment pitch nearby.

"By order of the County Magistrate, recruiting for the Zhuang Squad! Once the spots are filled, recruitment stops!"

At the words "Constable," several farmers' heads immediately swiveled around.

Jiang Fan waited until they had taken their bowls. These farmers were generally reluctant to finish in just a few gulps; they savored that hint of sweetness. Since they couldn't take the bowls with them, they had no choice but to stand at the recruitment station, and that window of time was Jiang Fan's advertising slot.

He shouted loudly, "By order of the County Magistrate, recruiting the heroes of Tongcheng to join the Zhuang Squad! The Zhuang Squad Leader is none other than Pang Squad Leader, who single-handedly wiped out Yunji Temple — a truly extraordinary hero whose name has even reached the Emperor! Follow Pang Squad Leader to protect the region and keep the people safe, earn the reverence of the common folk, and receive a monthly salary of one tael of silver! One tael a month — that's twelve taels a year! No deductions, no shortfalls! And if you earn merit in arrests or suppressing unrest, there are additional rewards!"

"Twelve taels?" Several farmers crowded around Jiang Fan. "Sir, you're saying we'd be Constables?"

"Exactly. As long as you pass the selection, you too can become a Constable, with twelve taels of silver a year in salary. Think about it yourself — toiling in the dirt for a hard year, you might not even dig out twelve taels of silver. Want to go give the selection a try? If you get chosen, you'll be a sir of the public gate."

The few farmers had only been mildly stirred by the twelve taels of silver, but upon hearing they could become sirs of the public gate, their eyes instantly lit up. They all tossed aside their bowls and made to go over, but Jiang Fan hurriedly blocked them. "One at a time."

The farmers conferred briefly and sent one to go first, while the others crowded around Jiang Fan to keep asking questions. This was exactly the effect Jiang Fan wanted — the recruitment station needed to be lively and maintain a crowd, which would draw other farmers over.

Sure enough, before long, the recruitment station was surrounded by several layers of people. Some farmers hadn't even sold their grain yet and were already lining up outside to wait for selection.

In Jiang Fan's initial estimate, not many would come to sign up at first, because farmers were skeptical of yamen runners. He hadn't expected so many farmers to be willing to become Constables.

The crowd grew larger and larger. Some latecomers who couldn't get any sugar water started making a racket outside, while those in front stood haphazardly in the street, clogging the broad South Gate Street until it was completely impassable.

Jiang Fan had no choice but to call over two Runners beside him and go along the main street shouting curses, forcing those waiting to clear a path.

The clamor outside drifted back to the interview station at the rear. Pang Yu sat upright behind the desk, utterly unaffected by the disturbance outside.

"Where are you from?"

"Replying to the sir, the Suburban Area, Zilai Street."

Pang Yu raised his head. A familiar feeling — an oily, ingratiating smile. If this were recruitment for the Fast Squad, he might consider it.

"Leave your name and address. If we decide to recruit you, someone will naturally come to inform you."

The man was about to put in some patient, ingratiating effort, but Pang Yu gave him no chance. He directly waved to the back and said, "Tell the next one to get ready."

Seeing Pang Yu's resolute attitude, the man left his name and address with the recording clerk, then tactfully bowed and departed. Pang Yu said to the recording clerk, "Mark this one just now — suitable for the Fast Squad to handle marketplace disputes."

Without even waiting for the clerk to finish the annotation, he called for the next person to come in.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm a porter from South Gate, originally from Kongcheng Town."

This time it was a brawny porter, but in front of Pang Yu he showed only ingratiation, no fear — clearly he had been making a living as a porter in the city for quite some time.

Pang Yu rubbed his chin and asked, "You've come to sign up because you want to be a Constable?"

"Exactly. This humble one also wanted to ask the Duke, if I become a Constable in this Zhuang Squad, can I also go down to the villages for the Tax Grain Comparison, and go into the streets to handle the He Mai business? This humble one delivers goods to many shops in the city — I know what every one of them sells better than the Green-Skins do. I can definitely help the Duke get things done properly."

"Mm. Leave your name and address, and go home to wait for word."

The porter was somewhat dumbfounded — he hadn't even said much yet. But Pang Yu was as resolute as ever, so the porter had no choice but to leave his name and address and go.

"Annotate this one — still in the marketplace category. Specially note that he's physically strong, so it'll be easy to sort later."

Pang Yu rubbed his forehead. He didn't want every recruitment drive to only yield specific types of people; he wanted each effort to build up something cumulative. After this recruitment session, he could at least establish a simple human resources database.

Another applicant came before him.

"Where are you from?"

"East Township, Willow Tree Village."

Pang Yu looked up and glanced at him — a somewhat timid farmer, stripped to the waist, his whole body sun-baked dark. Though it was already autumn, he was covered in beads of sweat, and his gaze flickered evasively when he looked at Pang Yu.

Pang Yu was fairly familiar with the location of this Willow Tree Village, because during this autumn tax collection, Tang Weimin had still kept two tax benches for him, one of which was Willow Tree Village, about seven or eight li from the county seat.

Pang Yu scrutinized him carefully. This was the target demographic for this recruitment.

"Where's your shoulder pole?"

The farmer cautiously pointed to the side. Pang Yu looked over — about a bit over a hundred catties of grain. Lately the grain shops were buying it with the husk on, so it could be stored longer. But for this kind of unhulled rice, a hundred-plus catties wouldn't sell for much silver. The grain shops also checked whether it had been sun-dried when purchasing; if the moisture content was high, the price was even lower. This farmer's trip would absolutely not bring in more than five mace of silver.

Ruan Jin, seated in the middle, nodded to Pang Yu, confirming that the farmer had carried the load here himself.

Carrying a load of over a hundred catties and walking more than five li — that was the qualification standard Pang Yu had set, though he himself couldn't do it. From his observations over the previous period, there were still plenty of people in the countryside who met this condition. Sometimes Pang Yu truly couldn't figure out why he himself struggled to carry a hundred catties for ten meters, while these people could walk over ten li, when clearly they were all the same kind of human beings.

"Name, age, where exactly you live in East Township."

"Zhuang Chaozheng, twenty-one years old, live in Compound Village in East Township, local name Zhucao Dam. If you go there and ask, everyone knows it. First take the Official Road..."

"If this squad leader didn't ask, you don't need to say it. Answer only what's asked. The names of your Village Chief, Tax Register Clerk, and Silver Head."

"Village Chief Zhang Lu..."

Pang Yu rubbed his sore shoulders. There weren't many people left queuing outside, so he beckoned to Ruan Jin.

Once Ruan Jin came before him, Pang Yu yielded his seat. "Ruan Jin, you come sit here."

Ruan Jin pointed at himself in surprise. "Me? But I don't know how to select people. Should we let Jiang Fan do the selection?"

Pang Yu hesitated briefly, then said to Ruan Jin with certainty, "If I tell you to select, you select. Jiang Fan has his own matters to attend to."

"Then Squad Leader, you..."

"I still have to go to He Xianya at Dongzuo Gate. Someone just came and said there are quite a few people waiting for selection over there."

Pang Yu finished speaking and flipped through the roster. "South Gate only picked twenty-three people. This is just the mass selection. If they pass the secondary selection, you all have to visit their homes to investigate — they must be from Liangjiazi families."

"Then should we have the Village Chiefs provide guarantees?"

"Go to the Village Chiefs and ask whether they have any record of misconduct, but don't require them to guarantee anyone. Otherwise those Village Chiefs will pluck a feather from every passing goose — they'll demand some benefit before they'll issue one."

Seeing that Pang Yu was about to leave at once, Ruan Jin quickly asked again, "Then should we still come to recruit tomorrow? And is the Squad Leader waiting until all one hundred ninety-two men are gathered before starting drill?"

Pang Yu shook his head. "Unless I say stop, you keep recruiting. As soon as the first batch reaches fifty men, I'm starting drill. Those who come after will just be replacements to weed out the weak. The recruitment point needs to be fixed from now on — accept applicants all year round. Whenever there's someone better, eliminate the inferior ones. We will always need men."

Once Pang Yu had walked far off, the clerk beside him leaned in and asked Ruan Jin, "How exactly is our Squad Leader going to drill those Zhuang Squad bumpkins?"

Ruan Jin scratched his head. "The Squad Leader will definitely hold a goose-feather fan, give it one wave, and the bumpkins will charge and attack — Kill! Kill! Kill!"

……

Ye Can's old residence at the South Gate — its main buildings had been destroyed by fire during the Civil Unrest, but the layout of a great household's compound was fairly spread out, and some of the side rooms and servants' quarters had not burned down.

Tongcheng's brand-new Zhuang Squad was now quartered inside this compound. Pang Yu had spent five days at it, and only fifty peasants who passed muster and reported to the county seat had been reached. Many peasants had been stirred up in the moment, but after going home and thinking it over, a good number did not come. Pang Yu naturally accepted this situation. Although this was the Zhuang Squad, it was not a press-gang; Dingkou who were just making up numbers meant nothing to him.

The Zhuang Squad was newly founded and lacked everything. Pang Yu did not have enough drill grounds, bedding and clothing, barracks, or weapons and armor. The only support from the county yamen was that Tang Weimin had first allocated half a year's wages and rations — that is, two hundred fifty taels. Two hundred-odd taels was of course far from enough; he could only first order some bedding and tents. As for this Ye Family compound, it was Ruan Dacheng who had stepped in and asked for it.

He and Ye Can were poetry friends. Ye Can greatly admired this fellow townsman's talent, and later even wrote a preface for Ruan Dacheng's poetry collection, the Yonghuaitang Ji.

Because the two were on close terms, Ruan Dacheng sent someone with a letter to Anqing, asking Ye Can for this old residence for Pang Yu. Only then did the Zhuang Squad resolve its barracks problem.

At this moment, inside the Ye Family West Garden, the fifty newly arrived Zhuang Squad members were scattered here and there. Ruan Jin and Jiang Fan were at the front, using lime to draw vertical rows. Today was the Zhuang Squad's first day assembling. Pang Yu had set up a wooden platform at the north end of the West Garden, and was now standing on it, holding the Zhuang Squad register.

Among these men were forty-three farmers, three porters, one Groom, two masons, and one pig-slaughtering apprentice.

A burst of noise rose from the garden. Pang Yu looked up and saw two peasants laughing and roughhousing; they seemed to be from the same village. The others were cheerfully standing by, egging them on and enjoying the show.

"Squad Leader, do you want your subordinate to go discipline them?"

Pang Yu shook his head at Ruan Jin, then lowered his head and looked through the register again. There were only two groups from the same village, five men in all. The rest were all from different villages. Although quite a few were from the same li, here in Tongcheng proper, that same-li connection did not count as close.

"Have them fall in! Five rows, ten columns." Pang Yu put away the register and placed it on a small folding square table on the platform.

Ruan Jin, gripping his Waist Saber, bellowed into the courtyard, "All of you, get over here and form up along the white lines."

Some who heard him shuffled over this way; others went on chatting among themselves, and still others kept watching the two men roughhouse.

Ruan Jin's temper flared. He strode over with his Waist Saber and used the scabbard to smack them indiscriminately. Only then did those men drift toward the front of the platform. The ones farther away still dawdled.

There were ten white lines in front of the platform, but those men had no idea how to form ranks. Ruan Jin, Jiang Fan, He Xianya, and the others had no choice but to pull them into position one by one. The men behind, seeing that Ruan Jin was not hurrying them, stopped where they were, some squatting, some sitting. Pang Yu watched from the platform the entire time and offered no opinion.

With great difficulty, most of the men were placed in position. The ones at the back, seeing they could no longer stall, reluctantly made their way toward the white lines.

The very last to walk over was a farmer, around thirty-some years old. He walked unhurriedly, looking completely unflustered, and was just about to step into the last white-line position.

"Seize that man." Pang Yu pointed at him.

Ruan Jin immediately charged into the crowd with Xu Lengzi, dragged the man out. The man still had no idea what he had done wrong and was shouting loudly from his mouth.

Pang Yu said calmly, "Perfunctorily obeying an officer's order. Tie him up and give him thirty strokes of the staff!"

The Fast Squad was thoroughly practiced in this line of work. A few men quickly stripped off the man's trousers. Xu Lengzi took up a Whistle Staff and began beating him indiscriminately. The West Garden was at once filled with the man's miserable screams.

The undisciplined crowd was instantly gripped by panic. Most of these men did not know one another. Now, suddenly terrified in an unfamiliar environment, they had no idea what to do.

The thirty strokes were quickly finished. That farmer's buttocks were a bloody mess of torn flesh. Before the crowd could recover from the shock, two Runners carried in a chest of something and, with a crash, dumped it onto the wooden platform — indeed a pile of gleaming white silver. Right after that, two more men carried in a huge pot of braised meat.

Silver in their eyes, the rich smell of meat filling their noses, and having just been terrorized, the forty-some civilian Guards were already somewhat dazed.

"The Tongcheng Zhuang Squad has silver and meat to eat, but not just anyone can get in. If you want to earn silver, you follow the Zhuang Squad's rules. Today I teach you the first rule — discipline!" Pang Yu looked down at the platform and said coldly, "From this moment on, everyone stand in place. Until I say dismiss, whoever dares move a single bit gets fifty military strokes."

The moment the words left his mouth, the civilian Guards below all drew in hissing breaths. But they did not even dare turn their heads; at most they could shift their eyeballs to glance at the others beside them. The earlier disorder had vanished without a trace.

Pang Yu said nothing more, standing silently on the platform. Seeing him do this, the Fast Squad men did not dare move either, because Pang Yu had not said it applied only to the Zhuang Squad — what if it included the Fast Squad as well? Wouldn't that be handing themselves over for the Squad Leader to beat?

Ruan Jin, for his part, did not mind too much. By his reckoning, the Squad Leader wanted to put on a show of force, and they would probably have to stand for about a quarter-hour.

Time slowly passed. A full quarter-hour went by, and Pang Yu still stood in place. The West Garden was utterly silent; everyone stood like wooden carvings. No one dared be the first to move, and no one dared speak. Because fifty strokes of the staff could very well cost a man his life.

Soon half a shichen had passed. Ruan Jin's body was growing stiff, and quite a few men in the field were already swaying. Ruan Jin began to grumble inwardly — the Squad Leader's method of drill was far too different from the goose-feather fan.

Pang Yu remained standing motionless in place, his eyes keenly surveying the crowd below the platform.

Another quarter-hour later, Pang Yu still showed no sign of stopping. In the unbearable silence, fine beads of sweat began to appear on Ruan Jin's forehead.