Chapter 146: These Scholars Are the Greatest Obstacle to a Good Life

"Tai Cang Shi Chengzhi."

"Seized good farmland by force, monopolized grain taxes, ran rampant in the countryside."

"Now sentenced to immediate beheading!"

"Wu Jiangning Dechang."

"Monopolized lawsuits, colluded with clerks to frame the innocent, conspired with jailers to treat human life as grass."

"Now sentenced to immediate beheading!"

"Changshu Wen Chong."

"Gathered thugs, bullied merchants and dominated the market, injured people, forcibly extorted protection fees."

"Now sentenced to immediate beheading!"

"Suzhou Jin Yishan."

"Incited a mob, gathered scholars to attack the military camp, used vulgar language to insult the Commander-in-Chief."

"Now sentenced to immediate beheading!"

"Lingyuan Temple Zhi Ru."

"Issued private banknotes, ordered thugs to beat and kill commoners, seized people's fields, bullied the people into slavery."

"Now sentenced to immediate beheading!"

Soldiers with loud voices stood on the wooden platform, holding trumpets and loudly proclaiming the many crimes.

After each proclamation finished, soldiers would drag the prisoner up, verifying their identity on the spot.

After signing and affixing fingerprints, they immediately dragged the prisoner aside, two men pinning the shoulders, one grabbing the hair to force them to kneel.

The executioner dressed in red took a mouthful of wine and sprayed it onto the Thick-Backed Blade.

Waving the blade, he swayed left and right shouting, "Grievances have their source, debts have their creditor; if you return for revenge, don't come looking for me."

Then he raised the Thick-Backed Blade high and brought it down heavily.

Every execution, the surrounding crowds would erupt in earth-shaking cheers.

Those victims who had suffered hardship wept bitterly below the platform, their wails of grief unceasing.

Some even wore white cloth and held spirit tablets, performing rites on the spot.

If not for the soldiers blocking them, there truly would have been people trying to snatch the corpses for rites.

At a window seat on the third floor of a wineshop on the neighboring street, Lin Dao sat on a stool, watching the distant scene with some sighing emotion.

"Once the common people fall into a state of madness, they are indeed terrifying."

"They were forced into this!"

In the late Ming Dynasty, local gentry lined up to be shot one by one; not a single one was innocent.

The only difference lay in whether their sins were heinous or slightly lighter.

In the past they had all kinds of protection; the oppressed commoners could only watch helplessly as they did every evil deed, yet still enjoyed glory and wealth.

Now someone finally stood up for them, and the commoners erupted in a fury that inspired dread.

They shouted and roared incessantly; even separated by a distance, the sound reached the upper floor like crashing thunder.

Bian Sai, dressed in men's clothing, had a pale pretty face, her expression fearful and uneasy.

They had never imagined that the commoners who used to honestly face the yellow earth and turn their backs to the sky.

The commoners who, when bullied by powerful slaves, only dared to meekly comply.

The commoners who couldn't even lift their heads before the masters.

When they truly became enraged, they were actually this terrifying, inspiring fear.

Only Lin Dao's expression was like this, leisurely sipping tea.

He was someone who had truly broadened his horizons and seen the world; things even more terrifying than this, he had seen plenty.

Not to mention anything else, when he went to Yanzhou City before, the horrific scene of the Tartars massacring the city with everyone dead — how terrifying.

Only the military units with the strongest Yang Qi can be fearless.

Having long resided in the military, Lin Dao's will had also been gradually tempered.

"Great King."

Bian Sai lifted the teapot to refill Lin Dao's tea. "These masters are all learned scholars."

"Heads full of classical learning, just chopped off like that — isn't it a bit of a pity?"

"You don't know shit!"

Lin Dao sneered at this line of argument. "You haven't seen what real education is."

"This bunch of big-turbaned scholars monopolized knowledge for a thousand years, relying on that monopoly to suppress and exploit the people; the people lived lives worse than death, while they themselves ate until their brains were full and intestines fat."

"Thousands of years passed; those who plow still plow, those who fight still fight — have you ever seen a technological explosion, a soaring standard of living?"

"Scholars like this, learning like this — what the hell use is it!"

Not giving Bian Sai any face at all, Lin Dao picked up the tea bowl. "Real education only needs a few decades to make the world anew!"

"Keeping these people alive is the greatest obstacle to the commoners' pursuit of a good life!"

If Lin Dao promoted universal education, these scholars would inevitably believe their interests were harmed.

After all, if everyone goes to school and learns knowledge, that breaks the scholars' monopoly on knowledge.

No one would accept it willingly.

Chaos would inevitably break out then.

"They monopolized knowledge for a thousand years, yet contributed nothing to production or life, only wasting grain."

"Keeping them alive is a crime against the common people."

Lin Dao didn't hide anything either, speaking straight: "I know what you're thinking."

"Everyone assumes I moved against them to plunder their wealth."

"I don't deny that point, but this wealth is the people's fat and marrow."

"I plundered it back to use for the people; I haven't used a bit of it on myself."

The two sisters who have always served at his side are perfectly clear on this.

Lin Dao's food, clothing, and daily expenses show no extravagance.

Although he never eats with the soldiers (doesn't eat canned feed), his daily fare is still ordinary dishes, nothing like mountain delicacies or sea treasures.

He lives in a military tent; only after entering Suzhou did he stay a few days in a garden estate to enjoy himself.

He never rides in a sedan chair, not even a horse cart; on campaign he always rides a horse.

Clothing is even less worth mentioning — silk brocades are worn only as inner lining when donning armor.

He amassed wealth like mountains and seas, yet never enjoyed any of it himself.

The Marshal is either truly frugal, or he harbors grand ambition, putting wealth where it belongs.

"Gentry and commoners paying grain tax together sounds fine, but in practice it's also a compromise."

"As long as they can pay the tax, they still keep their status and continue monopolizing knowledge."

Lin Dao fiddled with the bowl lid: "If I wanted to compromise and use them like all the previous dynasties, I'd have swept the world long ago."

"But that would just be another few-hundred-year cycle of reincarnation."

Speaking here, Lin Dao gave a self-mocking smile: "Why tell you all this? You're not my roommates."

The Bian Sai sisters are only suited to discussing wind, flowers, snow, and moon — zither, chess, calligraphy, painting.

Play drinking games, pluck a little tune, eat and drink, then go admire pink butterflies.

Discussing family, state, and the world with them — they wouldn't understand anyway~

"That many people — how long will it take?"

Lin Dao instructed his personal guards: "Go notify them, speed up the pace."

Before long, the execution ground before the prefectural yamen visibly sped up.

No longer one by one, but batch by batch.

After the gentry came the prefectural and county yamen lords, secretaries, clerks, scribes, constables, and jailers.

Local yamen in the Chongzhen period were basically all the same.

Poor people who dared file a lawsuit usually found the prison their only destination.

As for miscellaneous taxes doubled and apportioned, treating lives like grass — all had long become routine.

Top to bottom, not a single good person.

The weeping and cursing from the commoners grew louder, like a raging tsunami.

Compared to the gentry and monks, these people obviously stirred far greater public outrage.

Someone in the crowd lit firecrackers, burned paper ingots and incense under white cloth, to comfort those who died wretchedly.

Finally someone is willing to speak for them, to avenge them.

After that came even larger numbers of household slaves and retainers.

These enforcers for the great households, usually dressed in finery and riding tall horses, rampant and unchecked, had carried out countless evil deeds for their masters.

Now it is their turn to receive due punishment.

The servant uprising in Jiangnan was large in scale.

But these rebel servants were almost all the lowest stratum, scarcely different from slaves.

Above them, those chief stewards, enforcers, retainers, close attendants, and deputy young mistresses actually lived very well.

Through identification by victims from various places, and mutual denunciation and confession under cross-examination.

Anyone who had committed crimes — all of them onto the execution platform.

Since the broom has been raised, might as well sweep clean in one go.

It continued until sunset before finally concluding.

Although he quite liked Suzhou's gardens, work still had to continue.

After resting two days, Lin Dao continued eastward, arriving at Songjiang Prefecture.

The process was the same as before, nothing more to say.

Lin Dao headed straight for Huating County to seek out the Xu Family.

Legend has it that former Grand Secretary Xu Jie left his clan a full four hundred thousand mu of land.

Lin Dao came to the Xu Family to ask — is it true?

If true, then ask them by what right they have four hundred thousand mu!

Unfortunately the Xu Family had no one home; the whole clan had already fled.

According to the old servant left behind, most of the family went to the Southern Land, some took boats to the Capital and elsewhere.

With all the commotion Lin Dao made along the way, any gentry or official with a brain who could run had run.

Here in Songjiang Prefecture, the ones temporarily in charge turned out to be local gangs and guard posts.

The army suppressed bandits, confiscated land, re-registered households, rebuilt prefectural and county yamen, recruited personnel and drilled the Songjiang Camp.

Busy for a spell, then continued southward.

Passed through Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo, finally reaching Jinhua Prefecture.

Under Jinhua Prefecture there is a county named Yiwu.

"This is Yiwu."

Lin Dao looked around, a touch of emotion stirring in his heart.

A few hundred years later, this place will be the world-famous small-commodity center.

At that time, how many people still remembered that this place was once the Qijia Army's main recruiting ground?

The Qijia Army was probably the Ming Dynasty's most capable fighting force.

When they were around, the Great Ming was steady as a mountain.

Both inside and out, all held them in awe.

Yet such a strong army did not fall under enemy blades, but was eliminated by civil officials because they pursued their arrears.

"Pay distribution at the drill ground, no arms or armor allowed."

In the thousand-year long river of history, this is an extremely rare joke.

This nation's civil officials killed their own country's main war faction army.

And they slaughtered them twice.

The Emperor may not have known, but for the Emperor, not knowing is the greatest crime!

"If the Great Ming does not perish, Heaven's reason will not allow it."

"At least the Yiwu people should be hoping for the Great Ming's extinction, right?"

The Yiwu Mountains are dense, hills everywhere, fields scarce.

The population consists mainly of mountain folk and miners.

Mountain folk and miners have excellent physical quality, and with the local customs fierce and prone to hot-blooded courage, group brawls are commonplace.

If restrained by military discipline and strictly trained, they would be an extremely fine source of soldiers.

Not only Yiwu, but Chu, Tai, Wen and other places are similar; the local populations are all very suitable for conscription.

"Organize and train a new army."

Gazing at the many mountain ranges before him, Lin Dao calmed his breath.

"The men here have no land to farm."

"Rather than huddling in valleys fighting feuds, better to follow me and go fight Tartars!"

"To avenge your forebears!"

End of Chapter