Chapter 349: Opening the Port (16)

Zuo Baoliu stood at the front of the crowd, leaning on his hoe. While pointing at the official runners across the way and cursing furiously, he was inwardly calculating the payoff from this "performance."

Originally, he hadn't wanted to come.

Zuo Baoliu was a tenant farmer at the Sangyuan on the west side of the village. He and his wife were not only skilled at tending mulberry trees, but also raised silkworms themselves when the season came. Life with three children was exhausting, but still passable.

Unfortunately, last year's harvest was poor, the cold unseasonably vicious—a sleet storm even hit in the third month. Because of this, the mulberry trees in the garden developed poorly during the budding stage, and by leaf-picking season, the yield was far worse than in previous years.

To compound the misfortune, last year's silkworm cocoon harvest was also bad; some of the cocoon stock caught a disease, piling disaster upon disaster. What Zuo Baoliu didn't know was that temperature, air humidity, and such all had an effect on silkworm egg development.

The price of reduced output was dangerous. Having failed to meet the expected contract, Zuo Baoliu's family was immediately saddled with heavy debt. Over the course of last year, he not only owed rent to the mulberry garden owner, but also owed silver to the Left Family clan.

Crushed under the weight of this heavy burden and gasping for breath, Zuo Baoliu had no other choice but to silently pray to every bodhisattva for protection, hoping this year's harvest would be a little better.

Yet reality soon made him anxious: after the new year, from the start of spring until now, not a single drop of rain had fallen. The same abnormal weather as last year... this terrifying omen filled Zuo Baoliu, who had farmed all his life, with dread and unease.

Then came even more explosive news: the master family had sold the mulberry garden and the village's farmland acres, along with tenant farmers like Zuo Baoliu and their debts, all in one batch to the Rent Depot.

Upon learning he had a new master, Zuo Baoliu naturally could not remain calm. But when he rushed to the Land Requisition Office, his first impression was unexpectedly rather good.

These outsiders not only had the backing of official runners, but were also quite generous. When a Shopkeeper at the Rent Depot learned that Zuo Baoliu was a tenant farmer of the Sangyuan, he casually tossed over a few bits of reward silver, then told him: go back and farm in peace.

The originally anxious Zuo Baoliu just barely managed to set his heart back in his stomach—he was already on the brink of bankruptcy, and his fragile family could not withstand any more upheaval. Fortunately, this new master didn't seem bad, probably a wealthy household with no shortage of silver... perhaps last year's accumulated debts could be reduced a bit this year?

Zuo Baoliu returned full of hope to continue his toil. There was too much work in the fields at the start of spring; he didn't have that kind of free time to hang around the Land Requisition Office.

During the days he buried himself in work, news from outside still flowed ceaselessly into his ears: Zuo Shiqi sold out... Zuo Shiqi was expelled from the clan... the Rent Depot had taken over so-and-so's land again... the official runners were going to clear up years of accumulated debts...

"What? They want to clear the accumulated debts!?"

Just as both sides clashed and the Left Family clan decided to resist with full force, within half an hour, the news that the official runners were going to clear accumulated debts spread from the Council of Elders meeting throughout the entire clan.

At this, everyone, including Zuo Baoliu, could no longer stay calm.

Throughout the Ming Dynasty, accumulated tax arrears had become a norm.

Grain households and landlords everywhere owed local governments, and local governments owed the imperial court. The court was basically helpless against these old, rotten accounts; the only response was to find a pretext after a period of time to forgive all the accumulated arrears. For example, when the Tianqi Emperor ascended the throne, he issued an edict forgiving quite a lot of accumulated tax silver across various regions.

So when the news spread, panic among the Left Family clansmen was inevitable: if they were to clear the accumulated debts, although the large landlords owed the bulk of it, the amounts apportioned to each clan member were still astronomical figures. One had to realize, these accumulated debts had been built up over many years—how could they be repaid all at once? Besides, everyone was waiting for the imperial court to show mercy and forgive them; what the hell was this clearance about?

Exploiting the conflict over those hidden fields, the large landlords slightly twisted the facts just a little, and very easily stirred up the clansmen.

Zuo Baoliu was no exception in this matter: if even a little bit of accumulated debt landed on him, he was finished. So he very conscientiously went to the Zuo Family Great House, queued up, and sought an audience with the man in charge of his branch of the family: the old scholar, Zuo Ping.

After once again confirming in practiced tones that the official runners were going to press for accumulated debts, confiscate all hidden fields, and clear out tenant farmers, Zuo Ping, his face full of fury, told Zuo Baoliu: this time, making a scene was unavoidable. If they let the official runners and the Rent Depot behind them run amok, then everyone in the Left Family was doomed.

Zuo Baoliu, a medieval farmer with absolutely no ability to gather or discern outside information, had no choice at this point but to believe the judgment of the clan's educated men. After all, for thousands of years, it was the scholars who handled the strategic level—what insight could a mud-legged peasant like him possibly have?

Of course, to make a man risk his life, intimidation alone wouldn't do. The old scholar Zuo then amiably told Zuo Baoliu: once everyone united and drove out the official runners and those Rent Depot people, half of the silver he owed this branch from last year could be forgiven. If he put in double the effort in this matter, it wasn't impossible that all his debts would be wiped clean.

Furthermore, once the Left Family gained the upper hand in the future, and the Rent Depot found they couldn't collect rent from the Sangyuan, they might sell the garden back to the clan. When that time came, the old scholar Zuo immediately promised: all of Zuo Baoliu's previous debts to the garden owner would be wiped out in one stroke.

Zuo Baoliu, who had originally been cowering and had absolutely no desire to wade into these murky waters, emerged from the Zuo Family Great House instantly transformed into a man of towering spirit and valor... Wasn't it just armed brawling? Country folk had seen plenty of that; in his younger days, he had been a tough guy too.

And so, after completely tearing off all pretense, both sides of the conflict quickly made their preparations.

Three days later, Zuo Baoliu stood at the very front of the crowd, hoe in hand, cursing furiously.

Country folk couldn't produce anything particularly sophisticated in the way of insults, just some filthy language. These words traveled through the air to the village entrance two hundred meters away.

Beneath the large willow tree at the village entrance, over a hundred enforcers from the Land Requisition Office stood on the dirt slope, confronting the thousand-strong Left Family clansmen opposite them.

Among these hundred-plus people, the grain runners under Yu Bende made up one-third. This gang of thugs and ruffians were, to a man, pale-faced and trembling at the knees; they seemed barely able to hold onto their iron rulers and clubs, looking ready to bolt at any moment.

In fact, if not for the road out of the village right behind them, allowing a quick withdrawal at any time, these guys would probably have fled long ago. And standing in front of the grain runners, truly facing the villagers, were naturally the Action Team members under Xiong Dao.

Standing at the very front was also a man from the government office: Yu Bende. Dressed in a black runner's uniform, Clerical Staff Yu, though his heart was pounding, truly had no other choice. The way this matter had developed, he was already thoroughly trapped in it, and had staked his family's entire fortune on it, so he couldn't back out even if he wanted to.

After glancing left and right at the enforcers beside him, dressed in motley short robes and looking utterly unruffled, even quietly laughing, Yu Bende grew increasingly agitated.

In rural clan brawls and tax resistance, it was common for a few official runners to be beaten to death or crippled. And based on his own recent conduct in Zuo Family Village, if their side lost today, he would simply have to be clubbed to death by these rebels with their hoes.

Unable to suppress his panic any longer, Yu Bende couldn't help but turn his head and ask with an ingratiating smile to a dark, lean man beside him: "Master Gu, the opponents are too many; can the brothers handle it?"

"Master Yu, please don't ask again. This rabble is no match. Just relax and enjoy the show."

The middle-aged man named Gu Le, having once again reassured Clerical Staff Yu, raised the Leica high-definition mini monocular in his hand and looked toward the opposite side.

By now, the villager contingent had already begun its final mobilization: in the lens, the leading figures of each family branch, with their elite fighters carrying blades and spears, stood among the crowd loudly agitating. Before long, when the villagers' emotions had been worked up to a fever pitch, they slowly raised their pitchforks and hoes, looking ready to step forward.

Just as the villagers took their first step, Gu Le lowered his arm, turned his head to a sturdy, unremarkable-looking man beside him, and said: "We can begin now, Squad Leader Wu."

The man called Squad Leader Wu nodded, turned around, and swung his hand. After the crowd on the dirt slope parted, ten men wearing gray cloth short jackets stepped up to the very front.

Quickly, these ten men squatted down, pairing up into five teams of two. Then they planted the shiny black iron tubes in their hands diagonally into the ground, the muzzles aimed at the crowd two hundred meters away.

As the Crossing Faction's understanding of the Great Ming deepened day by day, both the Army and the intelligence departments had noticed a problem in routine operations that could not be ignored: villagers gathering in crowds.

In this medieval era rife with bandits and a weak, ineffectual government, gathering in crowds was arguably the most common daily occurrence for commoners. Without it, they could not withstand various natural and man-made disasters; of course, brawling with neighbors over water and land rights was also a major purpose of gathering.

This incident at Zuo Family Village was a typical case of crowd-gathering. Obviously, countless similar scenes would have to be dealt with in the future. Yet in such situations, the Transmigrators absolutely could not carry out a massacre of a thousand tenant farmers.

This kind of situation was a huge headache—they couldn't keep expending imported shock shells every time, could they? So at the General Assembly at the end of last year, the only "domestically produced" high-tech project jointly proposed by the Army and the Intelligence Bureau received Cabinet approval: homemade tear gas shells.

Speaking of tear gas shells, making them wasn't actually that difficult. Setting aside later-generation chemical tear gas agents like chloroacetophenone, pepper spray and tear gas using capsaicin and piperine as the main ingredients were also widely used.

For the Kiln District Chemical Plant, obtaining a simple chemical extract like capsaicin wasn't actually hard; the difficulty lay in getting approval to invest resources, not in the production process itself.

The Transmigrators had no shortage of chili peppers and pepper on hand. And the process of extracting capsaicin using alcohol or other organic solvents wasn't complicated either—just some common methods like distillation and vacuum reduction. Lab-scale production was sufficient; the demand for this stuff wasn't that large.

Once they had the capsaicin, adding a bit of magnesium powder for combustion and a nitrate salt, such as barium nitrate, completed the full set of materials for making tear gas shells.

With the irritant agent ready, the next step was naturally delivery.

For villagers whose main weapons were dung forks and hoes, the most economical and cheap delivery weapon was none other than the loser-slaying peasant mortar. This crude little thing with a range of only two hundred meters was what Japan used in World War II specifically to bully Chinese forces that lacked machine guns and cannons.

Then, after encountering the American military on the Pacific islands, Japan instantly understood the true meaning of being a loser—pounded at will by summoned naval and land artillery, Japan never got to use their two-hundred-meter-range peasant mortars again.