Chapter 8: Mine Laborers and Salt Slaves

After struggling for a moment, Li You still steeled himself, turned, and raised his hands in a salute, saying, "Since you, my lord, already harbor the ambition to establish your own cause, you should be recruiting heroes from across the land. It would be better to spare them, set an example, and use this to attract men of talent!"

Li You’s sudden outburst caused the digging of the dirt pit over there to cease; everyone was preparing to watch a show, and suddenly, here came a spoiler.

"Oh? Spare them? Stop spouting nonsense!"

Wu Zhuge’s eyebrows immediately knitted together, and he laughed, "Damn it, they took advantage of my absence to come and raid my nest! If it weren't for the Second Brother guarding it tightly, I would have been cleaned out! If I spare them, how can I continue to stand firm here in Hanzhong Prefecture?"

To the side, Zhang Zhuanggen, huddled in his chair with furrowed brows, spoke up mockingly: "Mr. Li, do you mean to say that they still count as heroes? Aren't you trying to join us? But whose side are you actually on?"

A layer of hot sweat seeped out on Li You’s back, and he gritted his teeth and said loudly, "They came to raid the stronghold, so they are certainly no heroes. However, this student believes that if the Great Leader can set aside such a monstrous grudge, are you afraid that no heroes will come to join our stronghold?

A person’s name is like the shadow of a tree; the reason Zhu Hongwu was able to keep making comebacks and defeat Chen Laosan and Zhang Jiusi was precisely because he held the great banner of treating subordinates with courtesy, which is why he had advisors like rain and generals like clouds under his command, right?"

"Hmm... Zhu Hongwu..." Although Wu Zhuge knew full well that Li You was flattering him, every time he was mentioned in the same breath as Zhu Hongwu, he still felt a bit carried away.

He paused and said, "I don't have that kind of ability yet... but what you say makes some sense... sparing them would be letting them off too easily. How about this: the Second Brother can throw you in there to serve as a beast of burden; you can just work yourselves to death sooner."

"Then I’ll have to keep a close eye on them; these few are quite thorny!"

Cao Er said with a grin, effectively agreeing to it, as he was severely short of manpower there.

Li Qin, Gao Conglong, and the others had eyes full of the joy of surviving a disaster, all looking eagerly at Li You.

Li You just relaxed his tension and let out a breath; he knew the six were looking at him, so he deliberately did not look back at them, merely standing respectfully below the earthen platform.

Tian Si, however, glared at Li You with a look of extreme displeasure; having taken off his pants only to be unable to enter the alley, he naturally felt uncomfortable to the point of agony.

He was itching to crack the skulls of these six soldiers one by one to satisfy his urge, but he had been blocked by this damned scholar’s glib tongue, which had saved their lives. He glanced at the remaining people, all young men brought in from Nanshan last night, and realized there was nothing left to play with, so he could only glare viciously at Li You.

Wu Zhuge felt a sudden urge to urinate and could no longer sit still, so he pulled Dayu’er up and left.

Zhang Zhuanggen swept a glance at Li You and also rose to leave. The group on the right followed closely behind, numbering about forty people, and the whole crowd headed toward the earthen ridge slightly to the west, where there was a row of cave dwellings.

Shi Dayong had long been snoring like thunder in his chair, and Niu Jinku took three or five men to carry him into the room on the right.

The remaining young men who had been abducted, along with Li Qin and the other five, were all ushered down the river ravine and headed south under Cao Er’s direction.

Cao Er looked to be only about forty, but he was quite corpulent, so he had been riding in a sedan chair the whole time. Li You followed behind, and when they were about to reach the foothills, they finally arrived at the so-called Nanshan; it turned out to be a mining area and salt field.

The Nanshan mining area was situated in a mountain hollow among the hills, running east to west. On the north side, there was a row of semi-circular dwellings, with a small courtyard built of rammed earth in the center.

Inside the courtyard, there were side chambers on both sides, while the rest were dilapidated thatched huts, wooden sheds, and some stone caves.

Wisps of blue smoke rose from near the thatched huts and wooden sheds, and from time to time, the sound of clanging and banging could be heard.

In front of the dwellings was mostly a rocky beach; this had originally been a mountain stream, but due to several years of severe drought, the small river had long since neared drying up, and one could only tell it had once been a riverbed by the smooth, round stones on the beach.

On the other side of the beach was the hill near the north side. A large gap had been torn into the soil slope of the hill, revealing plate-like and scale-like pure black, weight-shaped lumps of stone. They looked like stones, but they crumbled at a touch, more like soil.

These were iron ore deposits on the surface, existing in several shapes, such as weight-shaped and crushed sand.

At this moment, there were many busy figures on the hills, and even more, sixteen or seventeen guards patrolling with leather whips.

On the riverbank rocks to the north of another wooden shed, there was a tall well rig. Four men, in pairs, stood on the upper and lower levels of the rig, drawing up brine with ropes and pouring it into bamboo tubes, which flowed into the pots and stoves not far away.

There were nearly ten large iron basins, with steam rising from the pots; this was salt boiling.

Li You roughly estimated that there were about thirty or forty miners and salt workers in total. They were all in rags, and several had only tattered clothes on their lower bodies, with their upper bodies almost completely bare.

Their faces were sallow, some even tinged with blue, and their bodies were swollen. Between their feet, an iron chain was tied. This type of foot shackle was looser than the one Li You had worn on the execution ground; it didn't hinder walking while carrying things, but if one tried to run, it would trip them up.

As soon as Cao Er walked into the hollow, a group of people from the dwellings quickly came to greet him.

The many young men who had come with Li You saw this scene and how could they not understand?

One by one, they sighed, their faces wrinkled up as if they had eaten bitter gourds.

Gao Conglong, Guan Hongxin, and the others were unfazed, as if they had known all along.

"Jiuen, add this group of young men in. This month, we must step up iron smelting and salt boiling; we cannot afford any delays!"

Cao Er said to a sharp-mouthed man who had just walked over, "When it's time to eat later, call everyone over and say a few words."

"Got it! Master Cao, with these laborers added, there will absolutely be no delays!"

The thin, dark man with a handlebar mustache, named Shi Jiuen, eyed the dozen or so young men abducted from Lueyang the night before. His gaze fell on Li You, who was dressed like a scholar, and he was slightly taken aback, but he didn't ask any further questions.

He signaled to the brothers behind him to drag the twenty-one people toward the dwellings. He seemed to recognize Gao Conglong and the others, and on the way, he exchanged some cursing and mocking words with Gao Conglong before pulling them away as well.

Li You followed Cao Er the whole time, and Cao Er, sitting in his sedan chair, never spoke to him.

At the entrance of the small courtyard was a leveled piece of ground. Cao Er got off the sedan chair, and someone had already brought a chair. Cao Er nodded slightly at Shi Jiuen, and Shi Jiuen picked up an iron rod and began to strike a broken piece of a bell on the side, "Clang, clang"...

The crowd of walking-dead miners at the north and south foothills suddenly gained vitality, surging over like a tide and stopping on the flat ground in front of the small courtyard.

Each one was like a long-necked chicken; seeing the seated Cao Er, their necks first shrank, but then they continued to look around, as if searching for something.

Only then did Li You discover that there were actually children among these miners, and quite a few of them, all disheveled and gaunt, looking more like little monkeys.

"Eat, eat, eat! All you bastards know is how to eat!"

Cao Er cursed and said to the person beside him, "Go and bring the food over."

Soon, a youth with yellow hair and a short, stocky man carried over two wooden buckets as thick as water basins. Inside were purple-colored soups containing wild vegetables, wild roots, and some tree bark and fibrous materials. As for millet, there was some, but overall it was pitifully little.

Li You took one look and knew that this food was definitely not enough.

Among the newcomers alone, there were thirty-nine adult men and nine children; these two buckets of food could never be enough.

But seeing the miners all swallowing their saliva and gulping, one knew this was already the norm.

"Eat, eat..."

A five or six-year-old girl’s voice was crisp and clear, like a cuckoo bird after the rain in the mountain forest, pleasant to the ear...

Her eyes were as big as a full moon, her mouth as small as a star, and her nose as high as a mountain peak; the grime on her face could not hide the overflowing childish cuteness.