Chapter 401: Meeting on the Lake

Hearing his proposal rejected by Luo Shizhi yet again, Fang Yuegong was truly at a loss for words. Even his steps felt unsteady now, because he could not fathom what Xiong Dao was after, to pay such an enormous price.

On this matter, Xiong Dao would naturally not tell the natives the truth — the Transmigrators now regarded the "subjects" under their rule with the mentality of a shadow government.

Undertakings like building roads and bridges were fundamentally the basic responsibilities of a government; if not done now, they would have to be done in the future, and investing early brought early returns. Just like education, the greatest beneficiary of any public works project was always the government itself, not to mention that the Transmigrators were a two-in-one hybrid of government and super-capitalist.

After seeing Prefect Fang completely baffled, Luo Shizhi finally brought up the other reason Xiong Dao had told him, to set his mind at ease.

"Migrate people?" What Fang Yuegong finally heard was this request.

"Exactly, migrate people!" Luo Shizhi explained with a smile. "Building sea walls requires a large number of civilian laborers. When the time comes, Fourth Elder Brother might consider postponing the corvée levy and instead round up those refugees and beggars locally, using work as relief. This not only defuses the danger of peasant uprisings, but saving lives is also a form of merit."

At this point, Luo Shizhi finally showed his true colors: "As for after the sea wall is finished, keeping this lot around would only be a menace — those mud-legged folk are always stirring up trouble. Might as well hand them all over to Master Xiong and send them off to Yizhou to open up wasteland."

"Such audacity!" Fang Yuegong, with a great weight lifted from his heart, reflexively began haggling again. "To spirit away the subjects under this prefecture's governance to lands beyond civilization — what crime should this fellow Xiong be charged with?!"

"Well... this fellow Xiong, in his esteemed capacity as Governor, sent several hundred thousand famine victims to Yizhou last year, saving countless lives. I suppose that is a crime."

"Emmmmm," Fang Yuegong, hearing this blunt face-slapping remark delivered with feigned ignorance, found himself momentarily tongue-tied, unsure of what to say.

"Fourth Elder Brother, Master Xiong has poured out silver like seawater to help you build sea walls and leave your name in the history books. In aiding such a once-in-a-millennium good deed, he asks for nothing more than to relocate some refugees to strengthen the frontier. Even Xiong Wencan understands how to benefit both public and private interests, yet you, a sesame-seed-sized prefectural official, still insist on putting on airs?"

"Er..." Fang Yuegong was now somewhat embarrassed. The mouth that has eaten grows soft, the hand that has taken grows short. In truth, compared to the political price he had imagined, the cost of sending some refugees and bankrupt households to the frontier afterward was, to Fang Yuegong, utterly trivial.

In fact, every dynasty throughout history had the practice of "migrating people to strengthen the frontier." Criminals, refugees, and even live-in sons-in-law were all primary candidates for banishment to the borderlands.

Now that this fellow Cao had submitted to the imperial court and become a properly commissioned, fully invested regular military officer, the Yizhou he had personally pioneered could, to some extent, be considered part of the imperial frontier.

Based on this reasoning, sending some refugees who could not survive to the frontier military garrisons gave the operator, at least in terms of policy, a legal and doctrinal basis.

So after Luo Shizhi's reminder just now, Fang Yuegong immediately grasped the operational logic of this matter: "Migrate people to strengthen the frontier."

After mentally reviewing last year's official gazette reports on how Xiong Wencan had handled the drought and famine victims, Fang Yuegong had already formed a plan in his mind, and his tone softened considerably along with it. "Alas, as the parent-official of a region, one cannot bear to see one's subjects displaced and homeless, their flesh and blood torn apart."

"What a joke. Those who went to Yizhou are living well, far better than waiting here to die." Luo Shizhi's face was full of contempt. "There are already several hundred thousand people from Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong working and farming in Yizhou. If life were so hard, wouldn't those mud-legged folk have come running back long ago?"

"Perhaps they are detained and not allowed to leave."

"Fourth Elder Brother, you've got it backwards. Yizhou has never forbidden people from coming and going. It's just that after those people reached port, they then called their friends, brought their families in tow, and left without ever looking back. If Elder Brother doesn't believe it, when your own trusted man returns, the truth will be plain to see."

"In that case, this official will make this clear from the outset." Fang Yuegong's mind had now agreed, but his body was still resisting. "Consider that fifty thousand taels of silver as helping your Master Xiong support his people. Don't come looking for me afterward, and even if you do, I won't repay it."

"Fine. Recently the port has been collecting accounts, and there's honestly so much silver we have nowhere to put it." Luo Shizhi wore a strange smile, as if he had been prepared for this all along. "Is fifty thousand enough? If not, your younger brother will deliver another fifty thousand tomorrow!"

"Are you serious?!"

"Absolutely genuine gold."

"Why, though...?"

"Master Xiong said that if Fourth Elder Brother is willing, sending another fifty or eighty thousand taels of silver would be no problem at all. Once Elder Brother receives the silver, you can begin to set the 'strengthen the frontier' operation in motion. You only need to send twenty thousand people to Yizhou, and this silver will be considered settled — the remainder will all belong to Fourth Elder Brother."

"Preposterous! Wouldn't that make this official a human-trafficking prefect?"

"Better than being a mendicant prefect, surely? Seeing your miserable, poverty-stricken state yesterday — and with that you still thought of building sea walls?"

"Hold on, hold on. Allow this official to think it over further."

"What is there to think over? A good deal like this, you couldn't find it even with a lantern..."

Just as Xiong Dao's silver-bullet offensive was hammering down on Songjiang Prefecture, the Land Deed Alliance was also making adjustments in response to the situation.

Regarding the Songjiang Prefectural Office, the Land Deed Alliance had immediately rejected Fang Yuegong's exorbitant demands.

What a joke. It was merely a matter of sending official runners to slightly harass and keep watch on Xiong Dao for a few days, to keep him too busy to send men to burn the mulberry gardens. For such a trifling task, that scoundrel Fang Yuegong actually dared to propose the condition of levying an additional eight candareens of silver per mu as a "Sea Wall Levy" — the man had truly lost his mind!

After roundly cursing Fang Yuegong, that crafty, low-down, unworthy son of a Hubei nine-headed bird, the Land Deed Alliance unanimously decided to abandon the path through Songjiang Prefecture, relying on their own efforts to weather the crisis.

This so-called self-reliance was actually very simple: effective immediately, all tenant farmers on the estates must spontaneously organize themselves to guard their own mulberry gardens and fish ponds through the night, lest Xiong Dao send men to wreak havoc on them again.

This sort of patrol-like activity also required the expenditure of resources. With large numbers of tenant farmers keeping watch and patrolling day and night, whether it was fuel or grain, the costs would ultimately have to be subsidized by the landlords.

Of course, compared to that Hubei fellow's taxes and levies, these costs were nothing. After all, this high-intensity confrontation would not need to last very long; everyone could grit their teeth and endure it. Moreover, after the newly joined hawkish gentry member Master Huang declared that he had half a warehouse of old, spoiled rice he could contribute to support everyone, the alliance's morale immediately surged again.

While setting up their defenses, another envoy from the alliance also arrived at Three Mountains Island.

The eight-hundred-li Taihu, bordering Wuxi to the north and near Suzhou to the east, straddling Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, with its beautiful scenery, blending waters, mountains beyond mountains, and lakes within lakes, was truly a geomantic treasure-land for gathering bandits and concealing troops.

Three Mountains Island lies in Taihu southwest of Suzhou, a mountain island consisting of one large and two small isles.

There are altogether forty to fifty large islands in Taihu, and Three Mountains Island, situated at a strategic point on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, has historically been the throat of the Suzhou-Shanghai-Hangzhou waterway. Thus, bandits frequently used this place as a hub, coming and going in all directions.

Since it was such a strategic location, the inhabitants of Three Mountains Island were naturally inseparable from banditry. Throughout the Ming dynasty, Three Mountains Island had a permanent population of over 600 households and more than 3,000 people, and for these people, apart from fishing and growing oranges, joining a bandit gang to pull a job had become a routine pastime in their leisure hours.

Historically, within the interior of Three Mountains Island, there was a temple for every 0.18 square kilometers on average. On this not-so-large island, over ten temples, shrines, and nunneries of various kinds were crammed together, showing just how fierce the competition between faiths was in this wealthy region of the Three Wu areas.

Now, in an abandoned nunnery on the main island of Three Mountains, a general assembly was underway.

Several dozen men of the rivers and lakes, wearing short hemp jackets and with short blades tucked at their waists, were now standing in a circle around the Buddha altar in the main hall. Among these attendees were the three largest bandit chieftains currently operating on Taihu, the shopkeepers of three to five gangs, and their trusted underlings.

The conveners of this meeting, however, were two scholars dressed in blue robes and wearing Square Pacifying Caps.

The leader of these two was a licentiate named Mao Yi. Unlike the typical licentiate, this man was broad-waisted and round-bellied, with a face full of brutish flesh, and truly did not look like a scholar at all.

At this moment, Licentiate Mao had one foot planted on a clay statue of a bodhisattva lying on the ground, raising himself up as he spoke with fervor and assurance to the assembled bosses gathered around him. "In the cellars of that 'Port Affairs Office,' there are now no less than four hundred thousand taels of silver stored! The masters have said — this job, no cut taken, all of it is yours for the taking!"

Having said this, Licentiate Mao smugly swept his gaze around the circle. "The masters also said that after this job is done, for every shopkeeper who contributed, the price for 'moving goods' in the future will be raised by half a percent across the board! Heh heh, well? Generous enough, isn't it?"

Sure enough, as soon as Licentiate Mao's words fell, the faces of the men around the circle mostly broke into smiles mingling excitement and cruelty.

The next moment, a short, stocky, dark-faced man voiced what was on everyone's mind. "How are the defenses at that private port?"

This man was called Niu Jinluo, the boss of the Chaohu Gang, currently the most powerful of the three bands of lake bandits.

Chaohu was north of the Yangtze, so the men of the Chaohu Gang naturally also came from north of the river. These men were mostly canal boatmen and canal guards who had gone bankrupt and lost their jobs on the Grand Canal, along with refugees and bandits who had come from north of the river to scrape a living. The Chaohu Gang had long been one of the major powers in Taihu.

Hearing the Chaohu Gang boss's question, Mao Yi nodded, then drew a rolled-up map from his sleeve and spread it out on the dust-covered Buddha altar, giving the bandits a detailed introduction to the defenses of Shanghai Port. "At present, all the warehouses and inns are empty, and there are hardly any people left in the merchant inns at the outer port either. So when the time comes, you only need to strike straight for Huang Long."

"The Port Affairs Office is right beside the dock, a solitary two-story stone tower, very conspicuous, visible from far away. The outer perimeter of this large compound has only a single ring of low wall, less than five chi high — even a child could scramble over it."

"Xiong Dao has fifty household retainers, every one of them armed with a bird blunderbuss. On this point, each of you bosses must be careful. That bird blunderbuss can fire a shot within ten breaths, with a range of three to four hundred paces, and it is extremely deadly!"

"You must also be wary of the poison smoke firecrackers. No one knows what kind of herbs are mixed into them, but they are terribly potent. Anyone hit by them will have mucus streaming from nose and mouth, and their eyes will be unable to see. You must cover your faces with damp cloths to counter it."

"Apart from this, there are about fifty clerks and accountants, who rest at night in these low courtyard buildings off to the side."

"There are also about five hundred civilian laborers, who spend the night in the distant warehouses and inns. This lot can be ignored."

"There is only one point you all must firmly remember: Xiong Dao's life must absolutely not be harmed. This man keeps his hair in a topknot, unlike those Short Hairs under him, so he is very easy to recognize."

"Once you've caught him, respectfully invite him back to Taihu and wait for me to come discuss important matters with him."