Chapter 279: Storm Surge at Leting, Stars Shine Across Northern Zhili, Winds and Clouds Gather Across the Realm — Happy Birthday, Yon

Liu Boyuan was gradually growing weary.

He had told Lu Zhenfei the survey would be finished in a month, but privately he was ambitious enough to think he could accomplish it all in fifteen days.

Yet once the work actually began to move forward, he realized that everything he had done before, compared to this land survey, was truly not worth mentioning. The world he had seen in the past was no more than a single drop in the vast ocean of this world.

As soon as the matter at Zhanggezhuang was settled, he led his men without pause toward the remaining twenty-six wards.

Throughout this process, no major problems arose, but minor troubles came one after another.

Huanggua Crossing.

The two government students assigned here were arguing themselves red in the face over a publicly nominated candidate for the survey.

One said the man was his own paternal uncle and absolutely trustworthy.

The other insisted the man had clearly used underhanded tricks during the public nomination and demanded a new selection.

The two stood in the cold wind, dragging the argument from the teachings of the sages to the bonds of school fellowship, and from school fellowship to the grand righteousness of this New Policy, their spittle nearly freezing into chips of ice.

They argued for a full two-hour period, and the common folk watching the spectacle watched for a full two-hour period as well.

Liu Boyuan tried to mediate for a moment, but seeing that both men had already lost their heads, he simply stopped trying and told them both to get lost, ordering them back to the county yamen to be replaced by two others.

Shangjia Weir.

The situation here was even more chaotic.

The villagers had just pooled their money this year to repair the local irrigation works, but as soon as they heard that this New Policy from the authorities included "river-work quotas" and would even pay out wages, they immediately exploded.

"How is it that we put up the money, and we still end up getting the short end of the stick?"

"Where under heaven is there any principle that the righteous people suffer while the unrighteous sit back and reap the benefits!"

Several squad leaders, leading a gang of men, had surrounded the two government students. After talking for ages, they simply wanted to seize all five hundred labor quotas outright. Liu Boyuan wasted no words; on the spot, he told them to elect representatives, saying he would take them to the county yamen to state their case.

The crowd fell silent in an instant.

Tangjiahe.

This place was near the sea, with much saline-alkali land and plenty of unclaimed wasteland.

The common folk usually seized every opportunity, scattering vegetable seeds on these unclaimed plots. The growth was sparse, but at least it was something to eat.

But once the land survey began, the matter changed entirely — after all, once land was registered, taxes and levies had to be paid.

Land this wretched was simply not worth the people shouldering the tax grain.

Yes, the registration could classify this land as the lowest of the low grade, and the actual tax paid might be no more than a few wen.

But what about a few years from now? They had seen far too many cases in their lives of the lowest grade being reclassified as middling land.

And so, even though the fields were still growing overwintering vegetables — a sparse patch — when asked around, absolutely no one was willing to claim them.

The government student assigned here happened to be a stubbornly earnest one. He dithered for ages, growing so anxious he was drenched in sweat, yet still could not settle the matter.

Liu Boyuan rode over, saw at a glance that this matter was truly unnecessary, and simply ordered the land classified as wasteland, excluded from the tax register, and done with it.

Beyond these three incidents, there were even more dog-shit trifles that he could never have imagined even if he had cracked his skull thinking.

There was a wealthy household that had long fenced off the back hill as their private garden. Now that the land was to be measured and assessed, they refused to acknowledge the hill land as their own, yet still kept the fence sealed, forbidding the common folk from entering the mountain to cut firewood. In the end, when the people broke through the fence and entered, the household instead raised a ruckus, demanding they be arrested and taken before the magistrate.

Someone, hoping to get a few extra plots of land, went out in the night to move a neighbor's boundary stone, only to be caught on the spot. The two families rolled into a tangled heap in the mud, beating each other black and blue, and then insisted on dragging the survey team over to pass judgment.

There were even monks from two temples who, over a few mu of temple property, stopped chanting Amitabha. The abbots personally took the field, each accusing the other of concealing land, turning the pure ground of the Buddha into a marketplace.

Liu Boyuan walked on, passed judgment as he went, his eyes opened wider at every step — yet he also grew more and more taciturn.

That original spirited vigor of pointing out the realm's affairs was worn utterly clean by these one-by-one, piece-by-piece, utterly trivial vexations.

In the end, a journey originally scheduled for two days was forcibly dragged out to four days before it was finished.

If the local land survey was this tedious and exhausting, then the county yamen, as the eye of the storm, was even more like a pot of porridge at a rolling boil.

Especially the Punishments Office.

The government students of the New Policy supervision team stationed in the Punishments Office had also begun full of heroic ambition.

They borrowed extra hands and swept through with thunderous efficiency, cleaning out those slick, old-hand petty clerks, thinking that from then on it would be clear skies and bright order. But the moment they let out that sigh of relief, the workload exploded.

Self-policing, rewards and punishments, land adjudication!

Every single item was a workload bomb detonated by the New Policy.

Take self-policing first.

To ensure the land survey went smoothly, and also because the able-bodied conscripts running messages through the countryside were indeed far more exhausted than originally planned,

the county yamen specially raised the conscripts' pay. For these two months, each man received an extra six mace of labor-provision silver per month, and they were also promised preferential recruitment afterward based on merit.

But conscripts were still men, still born from these poor and remote parts.

Not every man could withstand temptation.

Barely ten days after the survey began, instances of conscripts freeloading, taking, and demanding kickbacks began to surface.

The timid ones only dared to ask for some eggs, grain, or beans, making the excuse that it was for horse feed.

The bold ones, when they got to the villages, relying on their uniform jackets, dared to reach out to ward heads and wealthy households demanding things like "notification silver" or "door-opening silver." In the past, this was no matter at all — at worst, a petty graft of a few mace of silver.

But under the watchful eye of the New Policy, this was called "subverting the law."

Most people simply endured it, not even taking it seriously.

But there were also some bold ones, men with clean eyes who could not stomach it, and they submitted plaints to the yamen.

Lu Zhenfei immediately held court.

The case was simple and clear; the witnesses and material evidence were all present.

"Corrupting the New Policy, preying upon and harming the people! Twenty strokes of the heavy rod! Tied to a horse and paraded through the streets!"

Lu Zhenfei slammed the court gavel, and that conscript was dragged down, beaten until he howled like a ghost, then tied like a dead pig onto a horse and paraded around the county seat.

With this round of beatings, self-policing and reporting instantly became a major matter for the Punishments Office to handle.

Besides catching internal moles, they also had to pursue external debts. Although the survey regulations were strict, there were always those who harbored wishful thinking, or who were simply missing a screw, insisting on testing whether the county magistrate's blade was sharp. Those who concealed land, those who helped cover it up — these people were arrested where arrest was due, fined where fines were due.

If they encountered cases where the concealed amount was huge and the fine could not be paid, and the offender simply ruined his household and fled, men still had to be dispatched to pursue and arrest them.

Every single one of these cases — trying them, passing judgment, tracking down and recovering money and grain — all of it required manpower, and all of it generated work.

But neither of the two problems above was the deadliest.

The deadliest was adjudicating the fields!

The fire of cadastral surveying had burned up every last buried account, decades old, lying hidden beneath the soil.

Those muddled accounts that no one had untangled in decades, those ownerless fields that everyone had tacitly accepted as theirs to farm — now they all became flashpoints of contention.

Outside the county court's great hall, commoners crowded in every day to file lawsuits.

They cursed in the coarsest local brogue, mercilessly greeting each other's ancestors eighteen generations back, and sometimes even started brawling right outside the yamen gates. The government students in the Punishment Office worked day and night without rest, their eyes bloodshot from exhaustion, their voices shouted raw — yet the case files for field adjudication still piled mountain-high. They struggled on for a few more days, and then simply could not bear it any longer.

In the end, with no other choice, they had to bring back a batch of the old petty clerks — the ones with lighter offenses and skilled hands, whom they had earlier purged — and set them to work as assistants. Only then did they barely manage to hold the situation together.

The Punishment Office was a slaughterhouse; the Revenue Office was hell itself.

On the fifth day after the cadastral survey began, good news came in from Cao Family Crossing and Liu Family Creek — their surveys were complete.

The speed was astonishing.

The reason was simple: the foremost great house in Liu Family Creek was the Liu clan itself, and Cao Family Crossing was the territory of juren Cao Simu.

These two local bosses had staked real blood-and-treasure capital on supporting the new policy. Not only did they cooperate of their own accord, they also had their clansmen participate in the entire process. Anyone who dared make trouble was dealt with directly under clan law.

And so, even though the government students assigned to those two places were the "green sprouts" Liu Boyuan had picked over and rejected, their progress turned out to be the fastest.

But as the survey data from every district came rolling in and were compiled, the Revenue Office's workload exploded in an instant.

Liu Boyuan led a gang of government students just pulled back from the front lines and plunged headlong into the account books.

Fish-scale registers, actual survey data, first-verification results, second-verification results…

The original plan had been that once the survey was done, ten of the government students would stay in the Revenue Office to compile the registers, while all the rest would be sent out to other villages to speed up the work.

But now that number had gone from ten to fifteen, and then to twenty, just to barely keep the whole operation from collapsing.

"Xiucai Liu! Xiucai Liu!"

A militia runner, clutching a stack of documents, burst into the Revenue Office.

"The cross second-verification between Zhao Family Creek and Gao Family Village is concluded!"

Liu Boyuan was bent over an enormous desk, piled high with account books half a man's height.

Hearing the voice, he slowly raised his head.

His complexion, once fair with a healthy flush, was now sallow and waxen; dark rings circled his eyes, which were shot through with blood.

Too drained to waste a single word, he reached out, took the documents, and flipped straight to the back to read the summary.

Zhang Family Village second verification: actual surveyed fields 48,127-odd mu; disputed fields 273 mu.

Gao Family Village second verification: actual surveyed fields 28,371-odd mu; disputed fields 273 mu.

Below was attached a joint note from four government students:

"The land lying between the two villages: because the river changed its course, the boundary markers are indistinct. Each side holds to its own claim and neither will yield."

Liu Boyuan rubbed his throbbing temples, walked over to a large screen to one side, and stared at the "Survey Progress Chart for Each Village" for a long moment before it came back to him.

Oh. Right — that was the enemy-combination team I deliberately set up back then… Hell, I'd almost forgotten.

Liu Boyuan delivered this deadpan self-mockery inwardly, but his face could not be bothered to show the slightest expression. He turned, pulled over a sheet of letter paper, lifted his brush, and wrote swiftly.

When he finished, he sealed it and handed it to the militia runner.

"Deliver this at once."

"Have the Zhang Family Village survey team go to Li Family Bend and assist."

"Have the Gao Family Village people go to Ma Family Bend and assist."

"As for the disputed fields between those two villages — have each side send their village head and tithing chief, bringing their title deeds and documents. Tomorrow at the hour of si, they are to come to the county yamen's Punishment Office, queue up, and have their fields adjudicated!"

The militia runner acknowledged the order, snatched up the envelope, turned, and ran.

Liu Boyuan did not pause. He summoned another militia runner: "His Honor the County Magistrate should now be at Ge'er Cliff conducting the local third verification. Go and report: Gao Family Village and Zhang Family Village are also ready for third verification."

That runner, too, hurriedly took his orders and left.

Having given these instructions, Liu Boyuan walked back to the screen, picked up a vermilion brush, made a few strokes upon it, and updated the progress.

When all this was done, he let out a long breath of stale air.

He glanced out the window at the gray, overcast sky, then sat back down at his desk and picked up the next account book.

No noble fervor, no impassioned zeal — only the deep, seething resentment of more than ten days of overtime.

Yet he had no idea where to pour out this resentment.

Because this war-chariot of the New Policy had gone hurtling forward precisely under his own instigation and encouragement.

Just as he had foreseen, once the cadastral survey began, as more and more government students finished their surveys, the snowball effect would only grow greater. Only — caught in the middle of it now, he no longer possessed any of that earlier arrogance of a man who fancied himself directing the world.

To gallop at full speed — that is, of course, the swift satisfaction of grudges, the thrill of racing like the wind.

But to keep this hurtling chariot from flying apart, a whip alone is not enough.

You also need a pair of hands — worn raw and bleeding, yet gripping the reins with a death grip that will never let go.

He, Liu Boyuan, had thought himself the chess player.

Now it seemed he was only those hands…

Under the mad lash of an ambitious man, the carriage of Laoting hurtled forward, nearly out of control.

Then what of the other places in Northern Zhili?

Were the other county magistrates all like Laoting — the county lord rallying the call, the government students driven to frenzy?

Of course not! Under heaven, you cannot find two identical leaves, and by the same token, you cannot find two identical county yamens.

Every man has his own nature and endowment; every place has its own chronic maladies and current ills.

On the chessboard of Northern Zhili, the pieces set down were the same, but the style of play varied everywhere.

Baodi.

The newly appointed County Magistrate, Qu Shisi, looked at the case desk piled mountain-high with the estate registers of the noble houses and smiled coldly.

He did not go harassing the common folk who lived hand to mouth, but instead laid his blade directly on the fattest piece of meat.

On his third day in office, a proclamation was posted throughout the city:

"All estate managers of noble houses within this county's borders are hereby ordered to report the true acreage of their lands within five days. Within this month, they shall proceed to the yamen to process tax deeds. After the coming year, this county will recognize only land deeds, not estate holdings. Lands without deeds shall all revert to public ownership!"

When word reached the Wuqing Marquis's estate in Baodi, the estate manager Li Daya was lounging with his feet up, drinking tea.

After hearing his servant's report, Li Daya let out a contemptuous laugh and sprayed a mouthful of tea onto the floor.

"Where did this clueless fool come from? Doesn't he know to ask around whose name this land in Baodi bears — Zhu or Li!"

The five-day deadline arrived.

The yamen runners Qu Shisi dispatched had barely set foot inside the estate when Li Daya led his household retainers to beat them out with staves.

"Go back and tell that fellow Qu — if he wants to investigate the Wuqing Marquis Estate's land, let him come himself!"

After delivering this tough talk, Li Daya turned around and went back to his drinking.

Yet the next morning, while he was still sleeping off his hangover, an earth-shattering pounding on the gate jolted him awake.

Qu Shisi had really come.

But he had not come alone.

He had summoned the lijia heads from every surrounding village, along with the county yamen's three shifts and six offices — a full several hundred people, a dark mass of them blocking the estate gate.

No wasted words, no formal announcement.

"Charge in! Anyone who obstructs shall be dealt with as resisting the law and fomenting rebellion!"

At Qu Shisi's command, the surging tide of people crashed straight through the estate gate.

The household retainers who usually strutted about with such arrogance, faced with wolf-fierce runners and lijia heads who had long been nursing a bellyful of rage, instantly scattered like birds and beasts. Li Daya was dragged out of his bedclothes while still bare-bottomed.

Half a shichen later, he was trussed up, stuffed into a prisoner's cart, and dispatched directly to the capital.

The most ruthless touch was that Qu Shisi had a great banner erected on the prisoner's cart, inscribed with a line of ink-dripping characters:

"Baodi clears its fields — we dare ask the Wuqing Marquis: will you clear them or not!"

This prisoner's cart paraded ostentatiously through the streets all the way into the capital, stopping before the main gate of the Wuqing Marquis's residence.

The sixty-year-old Wuqing Marquis, Li Mingcheng, saw those glaring characters on his own estate manager's back and trembled all over in terror. On the spot he ordered the estate manager caned fifty strokes, then scrambled to write a memorial begging to be punished for his offenses.

In the palace, Zhu Youjian soothed him with gentle words and kept the memorial shelved without issuing it.

But turning around, the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot received an edict and moved directly into the residence of the Imperial Father-in-Law, household retainers Bo Zhou Kui, saying they were to "assist" the Imperial Father-in-Law in measuring his fields.

In His Majesty's own words: "My esteemed father-in-law's lofty virtue will surely not cause me to lose faith before all under Heaven."

With this, the signal the capital's noble houses had been waiting for was at last presented with unmistakable clarity.

By the time Qu Shisi returned to the county yamen, his desk was already piled high with land account books that the various noble houses had voluntarily sent over — even more detailed by three parts than what he had demanded. Xiong County.

The County Magistrate, Zhang Kentang, took a different path.

The first thing he did upon taking office was not measuring fields, but clearing the jails.

The Xiong County prison had over a hundred backlogged prisoners; some had been locked up for three or five years without any resolution, and the resentment soared to the heavens.

Zhang Kentang held court by day and reviewed case files by night.

Within ten days, over a hundred backlogged cases were judged and resolved on the spot.

The wronged were released, the guilty were punished — not a single error or omission. The entire county's populace was full of admiration and called him "Zhang the Blue Sky."

Riding this towering prestige he had just established, Zhang Kentang then pushed forward the land survey and labor-service equalization.

With one call, a hundred responded; all resistance melted away.

Jing County.

Gao Jie was an old county magistrate well seasoned in suppressing bandits.

After taking office, he showed no outward sign, changed into plain clothes, and spent his days mingling in the streets and alleys, calling the local ruffians, idlers, and all sorts of lowlifes his brothers. Once he had thoroughly grasped the lay of the land, on a night when the moon was dark and the wind was high —

Gao Jie suddenly beat the drum to ascend the bench, rousing the still-sleeping yamen runners.

"Groups of five, mutually guaranteeing one another — bring your bows and staves, and follow me!"

The party raced ten li under cover of night, heading straight for an estate outside the city.

The White Lotus sect members gathered there in debauchery did not even have time to pull up their trousers before they were pinned down beneath their own cult icons.

After they were sent under guard to the capital overnight, Gao Jie did not stop there.

Using the pretext of interrogating the White Lotus remnants, he followed the vine to the melon and swept up several local powerful gentry families with ties to the sect in one stroke. For a time, the powerful houses of Jing County all felt endangered, terrified of being branded "collaborators with demonic cultists" — who would dare utter half a word of refusal to the land survey then? Ren County.

The County Magistrate, Xu Zhiyuan, took the path of the gentle spring breeze bringing timely rain.

He first visited the orphaned and the bereft, then dealt with the unfilial.

Whichever household had unfilial children, he had them directly seized and brought to the yamen for a beating; whichever household had elderly widows and orphans with no support, the government provided grain and provisions.

In no time at all, everyone praised his benevolent rule, and the new policies sailed forward as smoothly as a boat pushed by the current.

Ningjin County.

The County Magistrate, Lu Zhaolong, was a man from Guangzhou. Seeing the county's vast expanses of lakes and marshes, he exclaimed at the criminal waste of nature's bounty.

He simply convened the major households and launched a grand project of "enclosing the lakes to create farmland and switching to rice cultivation."

"The sale price of each mu of reclaimed land shall be split evenly between the government and the people! Once the fields are completed, they shall be granted as perpetual holdings!"

The major households did their calculations on the abacus — there was profit to be made — and eagerly contributed funds and labor. The land survey became, by comparison, a matter of secondary urgency. Julu County.

Whether this place had inherited some legacy of the Great Peace, no one knew, but its incense-offering temples and shrines were truly flourishing.

Yet beyond the Buddhist and Daoist establishments, beneath them there were still many minor and wild deities receiving private sacrifices.

The County Magistrate, Lu Zhuchu, began by clearing out these illicit cults — smashing local earth gods, arresting debauched monks, and eradicating superstition.

In the midst of this, he encountered an old witch who declared that to disrespect the gods would surely bring down divine retribution.

Lu Zhuchu simply took up a hoe himself and hacked down the cult statue, then had it dragged before the county yamen to be exposed to the sun. Afterward, he opened the yamen and held court for ten days, yet remained perfectly safe and sound. The local people instantly regarded him as a deity descended to earth and obeyed his every word.

Gu'an County.

County Magistrate Zhang Guowei consulted the county gazetteer, sought out village elders, and set the keynote: "Water control comes first."

He invited the local gentry and elders, surveyed the river course, summoned every ward, and apportioned silver and corvée labor.

In the bitter cold of this winter day, Gu'an's land survey had not yet begun, but the river embankments already rang with work chants, a scene of furious energy.

Yongnian County.

Here crafty clerks had entrenched themselves; the place was known as hard to govern.

County Magistrate Han Xiang had been at his post for over ten days, spending each day merely drinking tea and reading books, showing no sharp edge.

Just when everyone took him for a soft persimmon, he suddenly took the bench one morning.

"Clerk So-and-so abused his power; Clerk So-and-so tampered with documents; Clerk So-and-so took bribes…"

Every case, every detail, recited as if counting family treasures.

He judged them by the law, with severe penalties and strict justice.

Inside and outside the yamen, all fell into reverent order; the common people clapped and cheered, their hearts rallying to him in an instant.

This spectacle of the Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing their divine powers, was certainly splendid.

Yet they were, after all, only a handful of the brightest stars.

The greater number of county magistrates were merely mediocre followers.

Some copied wholesale, some trod with utmost caution, some inquired in every direction.

There were even fools still hesitating over whether to collect this year's customary silver or not, meaning to watch which way the wind blew in the capital first. And there were worse cases — the County Magistrate of Changyuan, for example.

Changyuan belonged to Daming Prefecture, lying far off at the southernmost tip of Northern Zhili, twelve hundred li from the capital.

This unlucky magistrate had set out from the capital at the start of the twelfth month, pressing on through wind and snow the whole way. By mid-month he had just barely crossed into Daming Prefecture's borders; he still did not even know which way the county yamen's gate faced, let alone how to get anything done.

But whether fast or slow, whatever the methods employed, the ripples of all this would not be confined to Northern Zhili alone.

The whole world is dynamically connected.

The storm of the "Northern Zhili New Policies" had already blown outward.

County magistrates in Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan were hearing the news one after another.

Some even had hand-copied editions of the Northern Zhili New Policies training booklet laid out on their desks, studying them intently.

Some sneered, some stood by and watched, and some were already secretly rolling up their sleeves.

The first year of Yongchang was about to arrive — what choices would they make?

And the gentry of Southern Zhili, those who dominated literary circles and were ever ready to form cliques — as they watched this new policy momentum surge up from the north, what were they thinking? Did they sneer that these were nothing but reckless decrees, or did they feel a bone-deep chill?

Further south.

Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Guangxi, Sichuan, and even Yunnan and Guizhou, still mired in war…

What changes would all these places undergo in the first year of Yongchang?

All this, I fear, is beyond anyone's power to predict.

Yet however turbulent Northern Zhili might be, whatever thoughts filled hearts across the realm —

When the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month in the seventh year of Tianqi arrived —

When the winter sun, struggling to tear through the clouds, rose from the eastern horizon above the sea —

Its golden light spilled over the glazed tiles of the Forbidden City, and spilled too over the northern frontier's windblown snow, Jiangnan's misty rain, and Lingnan's lush green.

The Great Ming stretched ten thousand li.

From Shuntian Prefecture to Yingtian Prefecture, from the Nine Border Garrisons to the ends of the earth.

One by one, the great doors of government offices were slowly pushed open.

Drums sounded; the hundred officials answered the roll.

Whether in Leting, surging ahead with breakneck speed, or in Baodi, which had just purged its ennobled houses.

Whether in Longping, where they were diking lakes to make fields, or in Changyuan, which had waited nearly a month and at last welcomed its county magistrate.

And across the realm's more than thirteen hundred county yamens, five hundred guard stations, and dozen-odd Provincial Administration Commissions.

At this very moment.

Countless civil officials and military officers in their official robes — whether honest or corrupt at this moment, radical or conservative, loyal or merely watching — all straightened their caps and robes, faced north, and knelt.

In this moment.

Across this ancient and boundless land, countless voices rose, each from its own place, resounding to the heavens:

"Yingtian Prefecture, Southern Zhili. Minister of the Ministry of Rites, Wang Yongguang…"

"Governor-General of Ji-Liao, Minister of the Ministry of War, Left Chief Censor, Sun Chengzong…"

"Sichuan Provincial Administration Commission, Pacification Commissioner of Shizhu, Qin Liangyu…"

"Leting County, Yongping Prefecture, Northern Zhili. County Magistrate, Lu Zhen…"

"………Your subjects, laden with the state's profound grace, unworthily enjoy rank and emolument!"

"All thanks to Heaven's gift of our sovereign, who protects the people and brings about good governance!"

"On this sacred festival, may Your Majesty's sage longevity increase!"

"Your subjects' humble sentiments know no bounds; we leap and dance with grateful reverence!"

"With reverence we wish His Majesty —"

"Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years! Ten thousand times ten thousand years!!!"