Chapter 294: Prologue

ps: Monthly tickets wanted! Monthly tickets wanted!

A No. 2 Fujian junk slowly docked at the inner harbor pier. Chen Xin strolled down the gangplank and stretched his limbs slightly on the pier. Nearby, a team of civilian laborers was preparing to head to Lushun — this batch were disaster victims who had come from Jinan the previous year, and most of them did not recognize Chen Xin. They were loading grain and fodder on the pier, casting curious glances at the guard unit disembarking from this ship.

The pier near Zhenyang Gate was transporting horses, intended for the mounted infantry unit. For now, they needed to secure the grain and fodder for Lushun, and it was estimated that the transport wouldn't be finished until May. Before that, the mounted infantry company commander's unit could only rotate the use of horses.

Chen Xin took the opportunity to first visit Lu Zhi, discussing with him the matter of monopolizing the Liao Sea trade. Lu Zhi listened with great interest — this way they could both control the flow of military supplies into Liaodong and let everyone make a fortune. He also knew that Wang Tingshi would certainly have a share, but he would not go asking about it. This matter relied on Chen Xin acting as the middleman, linking together the main figures of the Dengzhou official circles, and then everyone would split the money. Lu Zhi would absolutely never mention it face-to-face with Wang Tingshi.

Lu Zhi was an old partner; the two dealt with each other directly and quickly settled on the intent. The specific details would have to wait until Chen Xin visited Wang Tingshi.

After leaving, Chen Xin headed straight for the Provincial Governor's government office, but Wang Tingshi was not there. He had no choice but to ride leisurely back to the East Parade Ground.

By now, the people in the Wendeng system had already learned of his return. A large crowd was waiting in the Vice Regional Commander's residence. The moment Huang Side spotted Chen Xin appear at the camp gate, he immediately rushed over at a jog and quietly briefed Chen Xin on the land dispute.

Chen Xin listened as he walked, nodding slightly from time to time. After Huang Side finished summarizing the general course of events, he added, "My lord, Mr. Liu was present that day. He did his utmost, but his methods were slightly inappropriate. We lost eleven of our settlement households, and over a hundred were injured. When the combat troops arrived that day, Mr. Liu only had them drive away those civilian households. The punishment was far too light. This is extremely detrimental to our grand plan for military farmland. Now, it's not just Anxiangbao — all around Dengzhou, people are stirring restlessly. Even in front of the five settlement forts we've already established, people dare to come and shout abuse."

Chen Xin's expression remained normal. He gently waved a hand to cut him off. "We'll discuss it in the meeting."

The two walked up to the spirit screen. Chen Xin immediately spotted Liu Minyou, whose face was ashen and dejected. He couldn't help but laugh heartily, clapping him on the shoulder and saying loudly, "Minyou truly lives up to being our Wendeng Camp's Mr. Liu — daring to take a spear and seize people, and saving one of our settlement households. You've greatly boosted the prestige of our Wendeng Camp."

Liu Minyou slightly cupped his hands in salute but said nothing. Chen Xin chuckled, "This official knows Minyou had a comprehensive plan all along, he just didn't speak of it." He instructed the people around him, "All of you, follow Wang Mafu to the meeting room and wait. I'll first hear Mr. Liu's strategy."

Wang Mafu, the adjutant, immediately and efficiently had the guards arrange the venue. The other chattering military officers and civil affairs officials all quieted down, feeling that with Chen Xin's return, they now had a calming reassurance. They followed Wang Mafu to the meeting room.

Chen Xin led the listless Liu Minyou back to his own room, with only Hai Gouzi following. Only after closing the door did he say to Liu Minyou, "I told you there would be disputes over the land. You didn't believe me."

Liu Minyou sighed listlessly. "Now it's come to blows, and over ten are dead. Who would have thought those tenant farmers could fight so desperately."

Chen Xin drew a basin of water from the water vat himself and began washing his face with a cloth. As he did, he said, "Those people thought we were going to cut off their livelihood — it'd be strange if they didn't fight you desperately. Tenant farmers may have it hard, but they still have the hope of staying alive. Our seizure of the land is secondary; the main thing is that we transferred people from Wendeng. The tenant farmers are bound to be suspicious."

"This matter was also my failure to consider thoroughly. I should have first sent those constables to explain things to the tenant farmers."

"It's useless. In the countryside, the clan elders are far more effective than the government. We encountered this in Wendeng too, but they weren't this bold there, so it never drew our serious attention. Those constables are only a few men — how many people could they go and talk to?"

Liu Minyou looked up at Chen Xin and replied, "Then what do you suggest?"

"This matter is simple. First find the local... first arrest those gentry ringleaders, then arrest the tenant farmers who killed people, and hand them over to County Magistrate Tang to lock up. Then divide the other civilian households. Otherwise, our land reform can't proceed. Land reform, indeed — this is our land."

"This farmland of ours..." Liu Minyou started to speak but stopped. In the past, he could have questioned Chen Xin about this, but now that he himself had killed a tenant farmer, he suddenly felt he had no standing to question Chen Xin.

Liu Minyou remained silent for a moment, then finally said, "First arrest the Licentiates and clan elders. Among the remaining people, give the tenant farmers a way to live — treat them as ordinary settlement households — and thereby divide those civilian households."

Chen Xin chuckled, "Minyou has indeed changed quite a bit. In the past, you definitely wouldn't have said to arrest people first."

"Don't kill them. These past two nights I haven't been able to sleep. The man I killed had a wife and children. Whenever I think of it..."

Chen Xin finished wiping his face and tossed the cloth into the basin. "This is a civil affairs matter. Since you've said so, then we won't kill them. Let County Magistrate Tang try them slowly — drag the lawsuit out for a year or so. Have our dead and injured settlement households take turns filing charges. We must make them wail in misery."...

By the time the two arrived at the meeting room, it was already full of people. There were settlement chiefs dressed in commoners' clothes, and civil staff wearing blue robes. Civil affairs were headed by Mo Huaiwen and Xu Yuanhua, while the military side included Huang Side, Wang Zhangfu, and Fan Shouye. Zhou Shifa generally did not attend such meetings; he was busy relocating the Intelligence Bureau headquarters to Dengzhou. Hearing today that Chen Xin had returned, he had also rushed over for an audience, and Chen Xin allowed him to sit in.

In the center of their meeting room was a long table. The two sat at the middle of the side facing the main door, seated to the left and right. Once seated, Chen Xin offered no opening remarks and said directly, "On the civil affairs side, who will report on the recent progress of establishing new settlement forts?"

Liu Minyou was about to speak, but Chen Xin stopped him and said quietly, "Let your subordinates speak first."

Liu Minyou reflected that in the future, as operations expanded, he might not be proficient in every single matter. He then called out a name, "The settlement forts are managed by Xu Yuanhua. You go first and report to General Chen."

Xu Yuanhua was precisely in charge of this matter. He had come to Wendeng in the seventh year of Tianqi and was very familiar with both Chen and Liu. He stood up calmly and said, "This seizure of arable land has been led throughout by civil affairs. Mr. Liu set the strategy beforehand. The land in Dengzhou and Qixia is relatively barren, so we prioritized establishing settlement forts in Pingdu. In Penglai, Laiyang, and Qixia, we have temporarily only placed forts near the official roads. First, this facilitates the transport of supplies and farming tools. Second, it benefits commercial development. Third, it controls the flow of traffic, which will be advantageous for future troop movements. Limited by insufficient supplies and roads, each fort initially houses two to three Company Commander to set up the framework, and will be gradually filled to capacity later."

Chen Xin nodded. "Mr. Liu's arrangement is very appropriate."

Encouraged, Xu Yuanhua continued, "Currently in Pingdu Department, we have occupied a total of 150,000 mu of abandoned and cultivated land, establishing thirty settlement forts. At present, each fort has two Company Commander, totaling six Battalion Commander with a population of 23,000. In Dengzhou, five settlement forts have been established; in Laiyang, seven; in Qixia, two. Each fort has roughly two Company Commander. The three locations together total over 3,200 households, with 10,030 settlement residents. In Pingdu Department, plow oxen and seeds have already been distributed, but this batch of settlement households must all be supported by us for now. Pingdu Department's city is ruined. Merchants from Jinan, Qingzhou, Linqing, and other places have been arriving one after another, but they are still too few. Moreover, many of the routed soldiers from Kong Youde's defeated force have fled into Qingzhou Prefecture and frequently come out to rob. Therefore, the trade route from Qingzhou is not unobstructed. We have no choice but to transport large quantities of grain daily from Wendeng, and in the short term, we can no longer increase the population."

After listening, Chen Xin smiled. "To resettle over thirty thousand people in such a short time — Xu Yuanhua has done well. Does Minyou have anything to add?"

Liu Minyou flipped through the booklet in his hand and said flatly, "There's no need to worry about the grain supply either. Now that the sea and rivers have thawed, we can purchase grain from Tianjin and transport it via water routes from Changyi to Pingdu Department. There's no need to haul grain overland from Wendeng. I've already arranged for people to go to the mouth of the Jiao River and build a port there. Ordinary sand barges can be towed upstream along the Jiao River, then enter the tributaries of the Bai and Xian rivers, basically reaching every settlement fort. From there, the overland journey is also much shorter."

Chen Xin nodded to Xu Yuanhua. "What other difficulties have you encountered?"

Xu Yuanhua glanced at Liu Minyou, then answered, "In both Pingdu and Dengzhou, conflicts with the native residents have occurred one after another. The mass brawl at Anxiangbao resulted in the most casualties. We lost eleven men, and the natives lost seventeen. The native populace near Anxiangbao is seething with anger. We had no choice but to ask Commander Wang to dispatch a company to guard that settlement fort..."

Wang Zhangfu slammed the table with a bang and roared, "Seething my ass! When Kong Youde came, he plundered the countryside far and wide, stealing grain and destroying houses. I didn't see them seething then — they fled in a puff of smoke toward Fushan. Our Wendeng Camp combat troops could handle Kong Youde — are we supposed to be afraid of them? If you ask me, let's not be polite with them anymore. Issue blades and spears to the civilian households, and together with the combat troops, wipe out Anxiangbao. Round up all the able-bodied men, behead every single one who killed someone, and let's see who the hell dares to seethe again."

Xu Yuanhua stopped speaking. In truth, he heartily agreed. He had been managing the settlement forts all along, and from the Weihai days onward, conflicts with the native residents had been incessant. After arriving in Wendeng, there were even more. The Wendeng settlement forts had water channels and windmill-powered water lifts, and incidents of civilian households stealing water at night were too numerous to count. There were also disputes over firewood gathering, grazing, land, and so on — village brawls were commonplace. It wasn't until the Wendeng Camp's fearsome reputation spread far and wide, and after troops were dispatched to participate in two mass brawls, resulting in crushing defeats for the local civilian households, that things gradually calmed down. Now, with the number of settlement forts expanding greatly and the occupied land interlocking with that of civilian households and gentry like a dog's teeth, the opportunities for conflict were even greater. If they did not employ thunderous measures, these matters would give him splitting headaches in the future.

Huang Side also interjected, "What Commander Wang says is correct. You can't be too reasonable with these people. When Li Jiucheng and the others came, why didn't these people go and fight then? They always figured Li Jiucheng and his lot were fierce and they couldn't beat them. This time, they even put Mr. Liu in grave danger. If we tolerate them further now, they'll be coming to make trouble at the gates of our military camp next."

With someone taking the lead, several other meeting participants also voiced their agreement, loudly echoing Wang Zhangfu's opinion. Liu Minyou furrowed his brow. He hadn't expected so many people to approve of using force. Although he also intended to arrest people, he hadn't planned on directly using military force to purge Anxiangbao. Moreover, the civil affairs personnel were the most enthusiastic in their stance, and he was very worried they would develop a mindset of solving problems through violence.

Seeing that Mo Huaiwen had not spoken, Liu Minyou recalled that Mo Huaiwen was usually calm, steady, and mild-mannered, ordinarily reluctant to punish people — an attitude more in line with Liu Minyou's own. He raised a hand to quiet the others and said to Mo Huaiwen, "Huaiwen, what are your thoughts?"

Mo Huaiwen stood up, cupped his hands in salute toward Chen Xin and Liu Minyou, and both nodded slightly at him. Mo Huaiwen cleared his throat and said, "I agree with Commander Wang's words."

Liu Minyou was stunned. He hadn't expected Mo Huaiwen to open with that line. He only heard Mo Huaiwen continue, "My lords, for your discernment: in South Zhili, field bone is called field bottom, and field skin is called field surface. In Zhejiang, field skin is called field foot. This shows they are all private contracts; for the most part, there are no official red-seal deeds, and the imperial court has no fixed regulations. Now that land is divided into bone and skin, which can be bought and sold separately, the situation of farmland has become even more complex."

Chen Xin listened attentively. In fact, field bone was ownership rights, and field skin was usage rights. This phenomenon only emerged during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and both could be bought and sold separately. Someone who owned the field bone held the rent ledger and could collect rent, but could not decide who cultivated the land. It was like a property-rights commercial shop: you owned the property and could collect rent, but the operating rights belonged to the shopping center, which decided who to rent to and who not to rent to.

This method made land ownership and transactions increasingly complex. Later, the price of field skin gradually surpassed that of field bone, and many new problems arose regarding tax payments and corvée labor obligations. There were even landlords who, for many years, did not know where their own fields were located, while tenant farmers secretly changed the local names and swallowed the land as their own.

Mo Huaiwen continued, "Our Wendeng settlement fort system essentially takes the field bone. The settlement households cultivate using the field skin. Besides paying rent, the settlement households must also undertake military service as farmer-soldiers, maintain nearby roads, repair water channels, and perform other labor services. The reason they are willing to do these things is that the civil affairs department holds the power to reclaim the land, thereby compelling the settlement households to submit to the Wendeng Camp's jurisdiction and bear military service and grain taxes. If the field skin of these Dengzhou lands remains in other people's hands, then even if we absorb those tenant farmers into the settlement forts, we cannot force them to bear obligations beyond rent. The original Wendeng settlement households would then follow their example, and the settlement household system would lose all authority whatsoever."

Chen Xin nodded repeatedly. Both he and Liu Minyou opened their booklets and began taking notes earnestly. It seemed that he and Liu Minyou had been thinking too simplistically earlier, assuming that absorbing those tenant farmers into the settlement forts would solve everything. Mo Huaiwen had gone a step further, pointing out the enormous negative impact this method would have on management.

Seeing that both Chen Xin and Liu Minyou were also taking notes, Mo Huaiwen grew even more confident. "Therefore, I believe that field skin absolutely cannot be recognized. One must understand that field skin can also be bought and sold — today this person, tomorrow that person, one moment wanting you to farm, the next wanting him to farm. There will never be an end to it. The farmland should revert to the original unified system of bone and skin. Only then will our settlement forts have a firm footing."

As Chen Xin took notes, he asked, "Mo Huaiwen, regarding this Anxiangbao incident, what countermeasures do you propose?"

Fan Shouye preemptively shouted, "I am willing to lead..."

Chen Xin looked up and fixed him with a cold stare. Fan Shouye promptly shut his mouth. Chen Xin turned to Mo Huaiwen and said, "Mo Huaiwen, you speak."

"First, those who incited the tenant farmers to make trouble must be arrested, depriving those civilian households of their backbone. Second, the farmland where bone and skin are separated accounts for only twenty percent of the total. The vast majority is land originally cultivated by tenant farmers. These people can be absorbed into the settlement forts and given the same treatment as our Wendeng settlement households, treated equally without discrimination. This will divide the largest segment of the native residents. Third, provide compensation for the deceased on both sides, give their families a way to live, and ease the current sharp contradictions."

Chen Xin felt that most of these points hit the mark, but he was still slightly dissatisfied. He pressed further, "Mo Huaiwen, do you believe that following what you've just outlined would achieve the effect of intimidating the entire region?"

Mo Huaiwen respectfully addressed Chen Xin, "I have not finished. Before these four items, there is one thing that must be done: seize the native residents who killed our settlement households that day, and publicly behead them without going through the government office!"

Liu Minyou looked up at Mo Huaiwen in surprise. He saw a face full of composure tinged with slight excitement, utterly unlike his usual cautious and timid self. He spoke of killing people as blandly as slaughtering chickens and ducks.

He only heard him continue, "To these native residents, if we give them benefits now, they will think that after the brawl that day, our Wendeng Camp became afraid of them. They will instead believe it is what they deserve, and may even push for more. We must first beat them into submission. Only then will they think that my lord is granting them a favor, and turn to feel grateful to my lord. Therefore, I said I agree with Commander Wang's words. Issue blades and spears to the settlement households, make Anxiangbao an example for all of Denglai, dispatch troops to search and arrest the rioters of that day, confiscate all field skin, and execute without exception anyone who resists."

Even Zhou Shifa, that cold-blooded creature, turned his head to look at Mo Huaiwen, seemingly regarding him with new respect. He couldn't help but ask Mo Huaiwen, "Mr. Mo, we just go in like that? Wouldn't that be no different from mutinous soldiers? Our combat troops don't do this kind of thing."

Mo Huaiwen turned to Zhou Shifa and said with refined courtesy, "At that time, many of Kong Youde's rebel troops scattered and fled, roaming the countryside in all directions, repeatedly rising up violently to harm people. Recently, at Anxiangbao, they colluded with remnants of the Wenxiang Sect, repeatedly gathering mobs to cause chaos, killing dozens of righteous civilians. The righteous civilians gathered at the prefectural city, and County Magistrate Tang thereupon sought help from Vice Regional Commander General Chen of Dengzhou Garrison..."

Chen Xin's eyes narrowed slightly. Beside him, Liu Minyou seemed stunned, his brush hanging in midair for a long time without writing a single word. (To be continued.)