Chapter 358: Port Opening (25)

As Xiong Dao expected, the probe regarding that estate of the Xu family was rebuffed at the first moment: the land broker sent to Huating County to negotiate didn't even get to meet the master of the house; after a bout of cold mockery from the steward, he was driven out.

Xiong Dao was fully mentally prepared for this outcome.

Xu Ji may have been the Senior Grand Secretary of the Jiajing court and has been dead for forty years now, but the Xu family has produced generations of officials in cap and hairpin, with a multitude of members serving in office — they are a true top-tier gentry clan. It's already generous that they don't forcibly buy your land; you still want to snatch meat from a tiger's jaws... so it's perfectly normal for certain people to hit a brick wall.

Xu Ji's younger brother Xu Zhi rose in his time to Nanjing Ministry of Justice Vice Minister; his eldest son, Xu Fan, rose to Court of Imperial Sacrifices Minister; and two other sons both rose to Seal Office Minister.

... Without such an illustrious family background, the Xu family would never have dared to indulge its sons and servants in running rampant through the countryside and purchasing land on a massive scale. At that time, the Xu family's holdings reached as much as 240,000 mu; the sons, servants, and household slaves committed all manner of evil, causing the plaints against him to pile up like mountains, which ultimately drew out Hai Rui.

Although all of the above happened decades ago and the Xu family reined themselves in somewhat afterward, because every generation has had members serving in office, the Xu family remains a super-elite threshold.

Xu Ji's eldest grandson, Xu Yuanchun, was a Wanli second-year jinshi and rose to Court of Imperial Sacrifices Minister.

And now, in the present, Xu Ji's great-grandson Xu Bengao has risen to prominence in turn.

As early as the Tianqi era, this Xu Bengao was merely an Embroidered Uniform Guard Battalion Commander. Yet this gentleman exercised the profound fundamentals of reading the political winds that are the hallmark of a hereditary official clan: at a time when the majority of officials, including the likes of Yuan Chonghuan, were vying to build living shrines for Wei Zhongxian, Xu Bengao was stripped of his post precisely because he refused to build a shrine.

Then, not long after, Brother Chongzhen took the stage, Eunuch Wei fell from power, and overnight Xu Bengao was reinstated; cast in the image of an anti-Wei crusader, he caught the Emperor's eye and was promoted again and again, ultimately rising to Left Commander-in-Chief of the Left Army Chief Military Commission...

And so, facing such an illustrious, top-tier aristocratic lineage, Xiong Dao now finds himself like a rat trying to gnaw on a turtle — no place to sink his teeth in.

First of all, the "drive the tiger to swallow the wolf" stratagem Xiong Dao had been using all along is completely useless when it comes to the Xu family.

Neither the gentry he knows, nor the magistrate of the County Yamen, nor the clerical staffer Yu Bende — none of them are of any use now. Because the Xu family is nothing like those country bumpkin landlords; this clan can at any moment make the gentry turn coat, the county magistrate lose his post, and the clerk lose his life.

So if Xiong Dao truly means to stir up trouble with the Xu family, the civil-official factions he previously relied on will not only refuse to help him, but are very likely to turn around and deal with him instead: on one side, the deeply rooted gentry class, all part of the same network of connections; on the other side, a commoner spokesman for a bandit chief granted recruitment and amnesty...

Should these two factions, which already despise each other, come into conflict, the County Magistrate would rather die than risk offending the entire gentry class and being branded a "gentry thief" just to collude with Xiong Dao — no amount of benefit could make it possible. In fact, any normal Ming-dynasty bureaucrat would never be so foolish in such a matter; Xiong Dao would be burning high incense just to secure a stance of neutrality from both sides.

In this way, more than half the methods Xiong Dao had used before are now useless, including leveraging Clerk Yu's official skin to get things done — that is now absolutely impossible. The county magistrate would dismiss Clerk Yu at the first moment, and with the Xu family backing it, the Yu clan wouldn't dare let out so much as a fart.

Among Xiong Dao's remaining methods, the previously razor-sharp economic tactics are also useless now. Because on the Xu family estate there are no middle-property holders like landlords or rich peasants; all the farming households are tenant farmers of the Xu family, and every deed is held in the Xu family's hands... that earlier method of luring the other side into internal strife with high prices can't be deployed either.

As for buying land from the Xu family at a high price... for a top-tier gentry clan like the Xu, land is not merely a source of wealth, it also represents political power.

It's the same principle as a nouveau riche insisting on buying the house Ma Yun lives in — what price is enough? Even if you bring a mountain of money, would Ma Ali necessarily sell? Even if they did agree to sell, what cost would Xiong Dao's side have to pay? Double? Triple? Quintuple?

If the price truly got that high, from then on Xiong Dao could forget about ever buying land from the surrounding area again, because everyone would jack up their prices: since they've met a fat pigeon, not plucking it would be a waste.

After discovering that none of the overt methods would work, Xiong Dao could only consider rolling up his sleeves and doing it himself, or else leveraging the power of Jiangnan Station to apply some "methods" to the Xu family.

Yet after thinking it through carefully, he found it still wouldn't do: no matter the method, it would ultimately lead to an uncontrollable outcome.

The Xu family's main-force figures are in Beijing; here in Huating, the home seat is garrisoned by a pile of jinshi and provincial graduates of the main line. The estate currently blocking the Pier District is merely one of countless parcels the Xu family has spread throughout the surrounding area.

In other words, even if Xiong Dao sent men to assassinate a couple of them, then burned the estate, or drove off and killed all the tenant farmers, he still wouldn't get his hands on the land — the Xu family could perfectly well leave the plot idle and absolutely refuse to sell.

Another thing to consider is that the Xu family is no soft persimmon. The moment the other side detects that someone is making moves, Xiong Dao would very likely face a calamity of imprisonment — yes, that legendary, most plain and unadorned of essential gentry methods: "Take my visiting card to the County Yamen and deal with that fellow Xiong."

The simplest, the most common — is also the most effective.

This drama of taking the master's visiting card to the yamen to accuse someone, extract someone, or send someone in has been playing out every day for thousands of years. Yet behind that simple sheet of paper stands the entire feudal system; to disrupt this operational pattern — Britain had to fight two bitter Opium Wars and burn the Old Summer Palace before it could be done.

And what about Xiong Dao now? He has neither a fleet nor an army at hand to burn Brother Chongzhen's garden. So however sweeping and forceful he may appear, in truth his footing is quite weak: because in legal terms, he is still just a commoner at present.

To deal with a commoner, one sheet of the master's visiting card is enough. So as long as the Xu family mobilizes the prefectural and county yamens, simply dispatching a few bailiffs to summon Xiong Dao to the Public Hall will cause the situation to spiral out of control in an instant.

Xiong Dao would certainly not risk going to the Public Hall; that is the other side's territory, and the example of Deng Hu serves as a caution not far in the past. At that point, it becomes difficult: slaughter those few bailiffs? Or evade them?

Evasion is ineffective, because the men who come can carry out mass arrests of others at the Construction Site and the residence, so in the end blood will still be shed... violent resistance to the law. Yet that would be tantamount to killing an official to become a rebel, and the next time, what comes would be the garrison troops.

Most importantly, what would be the point of doing so? He, Xiong Dao, came here to open a port, not to practice his marksmanship and then escape.

Xiong Dao stood on the river shore with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing out at the surging, rolling river current, while what reached his ears was the sound of work chants from the Construction Site behind him. The sound was very loud; the civilian laborers were full of vigor, and even the clamorous waves could not drown it out.

Turning around to look at the seething, bustling Construction Site, then twisting his head to look west at that patch of farmland where people could still faintly be seen tilling, Xiong Dao could not help but sigh: since no amount of deduction yields a good result, he might as well honestly admit defeat. With his own strength at the Bronze level, he shouldn't try to play the hero and go head-to-head with a King-tier opponent. If it ended up dragging down the entire port-opening enterprise, his own losses, both public and private, would be enormous.

Having thought this through, Xiong Dao stopped being sentimental and immediately began a series of adjustments.

First, he sought out Feng Guanjie and told him plainly: the operation to acquire the western parcel would be suspended, so Feng Guanjie had best start revising the planning now and arrange the dock positions on their own land.

Next, Xiong Dao returned to the residence.

In the secret chamber in the Backyard, he paced slowly; beside him, the telegraph operator held his breath and waited for him to produce the message text.

"In view of our unit's strength and influence both falling short of the required conditions..."

"Temporarily abandon contact with the Xu clan and other gentry..."

"Request headquarters provide strategic support and dispatch capable personnel familiar with gentry affairs to our location for assignment..."

After dictating this lengthy telegram, Xiong Dao still shook his head helplessly: although objectively the reason was simply that the enemy was too strong, no matter what, words admitting that one's own side couldn't handle it and needed massive rear-area support were not so easy to speak aloud.

After this telegram was sent, that fellow Xiong, who had spent these past months stirring up wind and rain in Jiading County, seemed to fall silent overnight — all land requisition projects came to a halt, the port zone no longer attempted to expand, and large numbers of construction workers began concentrating on digesting the existing territory.

In short, halftime had arrived.

Zuo Baoliu crouched beside the river quay outside the village, fiercely dragging on the bamboo tobacco pipe in his hand while staring with reddened eyes at the wooden boat gradually receding into the distance, as if that boat were carrying away his sweetheart.

Yet for Zuo Baoliu, who had spent half his life working in the Sangyuan, what that boat was carrying truly was his sweetheart: it was the last batch of mulberry trees being bundled up and shipped away.

Not until the hull was completely out of sight did Zuo Baoliu slowly stand up; his face utterly overcast, he took a final two sucks on the pipe, then knocked the bowl against a tree trunk beside him. After putting his things away, he hunched his back, clasped his hands behind him, and trudged slowly toward the Rent Depot.

Over this past month and more, Zuo Baoliu and the remaining few workers, under duress, had worked from dawn to dusk, and today they had finally loaded every last mulberry tree from the Sangyuan onto the boats.

Just as they were digging up the mulberry trees, the villagers who had stayed behind had also been constantly hauling soil over using an ingenious kind of pushcart.

This soil had all been collected when the village was leveling fields and digging irrigation channels — far too many field-ridge paths had been scraped flat. The Zuo Family Village of today was everywhere covered in vast, neatly planned fields the likes of which Zuo Baoliu had never seen before.

All the soil carted over was dumped into the mulberry tree pits. Zuo Baoliu knew that before long, this mulberry-less Sangyuan would also be turned over, flooded with water, and then planted with those strange crops...

There were several kinds of these crops the new owner had brought in by boat; the only one Zuo Baoliu recognized was the sweet potato. The others, called potato and corn, he had never seen before.

Yet none of this was the focus of Zuo Baoliu's attention: his mind was fixed entirely on the Sangyuan. But no one cared what he thought, and in the end, the Sangyuan would merge with the rest of the land, leaving not a trace of what had been there before.

This left Zuo Baoliu utterly heartbroken.