Chapter 8: Mining Slaves and Salt Bondsmen

After several struggles, Li You still forced himself to turn his head, clasped his hands high, and said, "Since my lord already intends to establish himself, he ought to recruit heroes from across the land. Why not spare them, set an example, and thereby attract worthy men?"

Li You's sudden opening made the men digging the earth pit stop; everyone prepared to watch a show, as this troublemaker had suddenly appeared.

"Oh? Spare them? Do not speak such nonsense!"

Wu Zhuge immediately knitted his eyebrows together and laughed, "Damn it, they took advantage of my absence to sneak into my old nest! If not for Second Brother holding them tight, I would have had my family raided! If I spare them, how can I stand my ground in Hanzhong Prefecture?"

Zhang Zhuanggen, huddled in his chair, knitted his eyebrows and opened his mouth to mock, "Li Xianggong, did you just imply they are heroes? Were you not about to join them? So which side do you actually stand on?"

A layer of hot sweat soaked Li You's back; he gritted his teeth and shouted loudly, "They came to steal the stronghold; they are certainly no heroes. Yet this humble scholar believes that if the Great Master can set aside such an overwhelming grudge, who would fear heroes not coming to our Shanzhai to join us?"

"A person's name casts a shadow, just as a tree casts shade. Why was Zhu Hongwu able to rise again and again, and defeat Chen Laosan and Zhang Jiujiu? Was it not because he had a magnificent archway of honoring the worthy, so his strategists were like rain and his generals like clouds?"

"Hmm... Zhu Hongwu..." Although Wu Zhuge knew full well Li You was flattering him, whenever he was compared to Zhu Hongwu, his heart still felt a bit fluttery.

He paused, then said, "I do not yet possess such great ability... but what you say has some merit... sparing them would be too easy on them. Very well, let Second Brother be thrown to you as living cattle and horses; let him tire himself to death sooner."

"Then I must keep a close watch; these few are very prickly!"

Cao Er said with a smile, effectively agreeing, for his place was desperately short of people.

Li Qinxiang, Gao Conglong, and others had eyes filled with the joy of surviving disaster, all staring intently at Li You.

Li You had just relaxed his tension and exhaled; knowing the six were watching him, he deliberately did not turn to look at them, standing respectfully below the earth platform.

Tian Si glared at Li You with a displeased face; his pants were down but he could not enter the alley, stuck halfway, naturally feeling terribly uncomfortable.

He wished nothing more than to crack open the skulls of these six soldiers one by one to satisfy his itch for violence, yet that damn big-turbaned talker had just knocked him back, saving their heads. He glanced at the remaining people, all young men brought in last night for Nanshan; now there was nothing left to play with, so he could only glare fiercely at Li You.

Wu Zhuge felt a strong urge to urinate, so he could not sit; he pulled Da Yu'er up and left.

Zhang Zhuanggen glanced at Li You, also rose and left; a group on the right followed closely behind, about forty people in all, heading down to the loess plateau slightly to the west, where a row of cave dwellings stood.

Shi Dayong had long been snoring like thunder in his chair; Niu Jinku, with three or five men, simply carried him into the room on the right.

The remaining captured young men, along with Li Qinxiang and the other six, were all, under Cao Er's orders, escorted down the river ravine heading south.

Cao Er looked to be around forty years old, but his body was extremely fat, so he always rode in a sedan chair; Li You followed behind. When they were nearly approaching the foothills, they finally reached the so-called Nanshan; it turned out this place was a mining area and salt field.

The Nanshan mining area lay within a mountain hollow and hills, running east-west. To the north here stood a row of houses arranged in a semicircle, with a small courtyard of rammed-earth construction in the center.

On both sides of the courtyard were side rooms; the rest were dilapidated thatched cottages and wooden sheds, plus some stone caves.

Wisps of blue smoke rose from near the thatched cottages and wooden sheds, and occasionally came the sound of clanging and banging.

In front of the houses were mostly rocky beaches; this was originally a mountain stream, but in recent years the weather had been extremely dry for several years, the small river long since nearly dried up. One could only judge from the round stones on the beach that this had once been a riverbed.

On the other side of the beach lay the hills near the north; the earth slope of the front hill had been dug open into a large gap, exposing plate-like, scale-like lumps of pure black hammer-stone. They looked like stones, but actually crumbled when pinched, resembling dirt more.

This was surface iron ore in the form of earth ingots, appearing in several shapes such as hammer-shaped and crushed-sand-shaped.

At this moment, many busy figures moved up and down the hills, plus sixteen or seventeen guards patrolling with leather whips.

On the riverbank rocks north of another wooden shed, a tall well frame stood over a well; four people, in pairs, stood on the upper and lower frames, pulling ropes to draw brine, pouring it onto bamboo troughs, which flowed into a stove not far away.

Nearly ten large salt-boiling cauldrons stood there, steam rising from the pots; this was boiling salt.

Li You roughly estimated that the total number of mining slaves and salt workers working was about thirty or forty; they were all in tattered clothes, several wearing only ragged lower garments, their upper bodies nearly bare.

Their faces were extremely sallow, some tinged with green, their bodies swollen. Between their feet ran an iron chain; this ankle shackle was somewhat looser than the one Li You had worn at the execution ground, allowing free movement for carrying on shoulders or walking, but if they tried to run loose, it would trip them.

As soon as Cao Er entered the mountain hollow, a group from the houses rushed forward to meet him.

Seeing this scene, the many young men who had come with Li You understood immediately.

One by one they sighed, looking as if they had eaten bitter melon, their entire faces wrinkled together.

Gao Conglong, Guan Hongxin, and others were used to it, as if they had known all along.

"Right, this batch of young men must be put in; this month we must intensify iron smelting and salt boiling; we cannot let matters slip!"

Cao Er spoke to a sharp-nosed man who had just arrived, "When it is time to eat, call everyone together and say a few words."

"Alright! Master Cao, with these laborers added in, absolutely nothing will be delayed!"

The thin, black man with a handlebar mustache, named Shi Jiuen, glanced at the dozen or so young men captured the night before from Lueyang; his gaze fell on the scholar-dressed Li You, paused slightly, but asked no further questions.

He signaled his brothers behind him to drag these twenty-one people toward the houses; regarding Gao Conglong and others, he seemed to know them, exchanging some cursing and mockery with Gao Conglong along the way before dragging them away too.

Li You followed Cao Er the whole time; Cao Er, sitting in his sedan chair, had not spoken a word to him.

The entrance to the small courtyard was a flattened patch of earth; Cao Er stepped down from the sedan chair, and someone had already brought a chair. Cao Er nodded slightly to Shi Jiuen, who picked up an iron rod and struck a broken bell piece nearby, "clang, clang," ringing it...

The walking dead mining slaves along the north and south foothills suddenly gained vitality, surging forward like a tide, stopping on the flat ground before the courtyard gate.

Each one, like a long-necked chicken, upon seeing Cao Er seated, first shrank his neck, then still looked east and west, as if searching for something.

Li You then discovered that among these mining slaves there were children, and quite a few; each was disheveled and dirty, emaciated, looking more like little monkeys.

"Eat, eat, eat! All they know is eating!"

Cao Er cursed, then said to those beside him, "Go bring the food."

Soon, a youth with yellow hair and a stocky man carried over two wooden buckets the size of water basins; inside was purple soup containing wild vegetables, wild roots, some tree bark and woolen fabric bits, plus a little millet, but overall pitifully little.

Li You glanced and knew immediately this food was certainly insufficient.

Among those arriving, there were alone thirty-nine adult young men and nine children; with just these two buckets of food, it was impossible to be enough.

But seeing the mining slaves' expressions, each swallowing saliva and gulping, one knew this was the norm.

"Eat, eat..."

The voice of a five- or six-year-old girl was crisp and clear, like a cuckoo in the forest after rain, filling the ears with delight...

Her eyes were as big as round moons, her mouth as small as a star, her nose as high as a mountain peak; on her dark, messy face, the overflowing childish cuteness could not be hidden.