Chapter 1400: Wives Will Come, and So Will War!

Zhu Hehao and Zheng Xi were riding together in a locally made four-wheeled grand carriage as they left the White King's mansion. The moment they passed through the gate, both men were stunned by the size of the crowd gathered outside — at least one or two thousand people were packed into the street in front of the White King's mansion, nearly blocking Wei Zhongcheng and Zheng Xi from getting out at all. In the end, Feng Xifan, captain of the White King's guard, had to bring a squad of Old Guard soldiers to clear a passage so their carriage could leave.

The White King's mansion was not in any busy district. Although the mansion's main avenue was straight and broad, both sides of the street were lined with large stretches of woodland, with only a scattering of houses tucked among the trees. Before the tycoon king had descended upon Huafu, hardly anyone ever came or went along this avenue. Even after Zhu Hehao moved into the White King's mansion, the avenue remained quiet — until a few days ago, when the whimsical tycoon king replaced the Old Guard with his "sister-in-law squad" to stand sentry at the mansion gate, which drew some of Huafu's bachelors over for a look.

But it should have been no more than a look — was it really worth such a commotion? Those were all the tycoon king's women! Although the King of the United States held little real power, he was still a king, with two thousand Old Guard soldiers and five hundred Japanese retainers around him. However weak he might be, surely he could still protect his own women — did these gold-digging, sable-hunting upstarts really think they could lure them away?

But when the carriages of the Chief State Councillor and the Chief Grand Secretary reached the crossroads where the mansion avenue met Chang'an Avenue, the two men who had run the United States for years saw the kind of human tide that appeared only when gold was discovered somewhere — the broad Chang'an Avenue was actually filling with a crowd! A dark, dense mass was surging toward them from the direction of the bay.

What was going on? Had gold been discovered in the woods outside the White King's mansion? They had heard nothing of it... And all the land around the White King's mansion belonged to the tycoon king — even if gold had been found, it belonged to him. These people could not just dig it up as they pleased; people would die!

"Stop the carriage! Stop!" Wei Zhongcheng shouted, slapping the wooden panel behind him with his right hand. His coachman felt the commotion beneath his seat and, amid the din, heard his master's shout, so he gently tugged the reins and slowly drew the carriage to the side of the road.

Wei Zhongcheng and Zheng Xi each had a mounted escort riding before, behind, and on either side of the carriage, and they too came to a halt. Both escort captains dismounted and came to the carriage; one of them opened the door, while the other asked, "My lords, what are your orders?"

"Go find out what on earth is happening," Wei Zhongcheng said. "Why are so many people heading to the White King's mansion?"

Zheng Xi added, "Better yet, bring back a couple of people for us to question."

The two escort captains took their orders, turned, and left. Before long they returned with two clean, neat men who looked like small merchants, both twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. From their appearance one could tell at once they were not gold prospectors — most likely they were stock refugees who had come over with King Jiaqing seven or eight years earlier.

Before becoming stock refugees, these people from the prosperous lands of Jiangnan had mostly been small merchants or had managed land. They were not much for fighting and killing, so they could not earn the quick money of fur-hunting or gold-panning. The United States of Xinzhou had only a few hundred thousand people, yet occupied a vast territory of nearly one million square kilometers. Because the population density was so low, the areas the government could effectively control were very limited. Once you left the populated towns, you entered a lawless "Wild West." No one who could pan for gold or hunt sable out there could possibly be a decent sort.

Most of those stock refugees from Jiangnan could neither fight nor kill, so they either started farms or set up some small business in the cities of the United States.

The pair brought before Wei Zhongcheng and Zheng Xi were just such a pair of gentle brothers who could neither fight nor kill. The elder was called Wang Shanyou and the younger Wang Liangyou, originally from Suzhou Prefecture. They came from a scholarly family; the household owned shops in Suzhou city and land in the Suzhou countryside, and life had been very comfortable. The two brothers had received a half-old, half-new education and had done well for themselves — before their father burned himself in stock speculation, both had already gained admission to Donglin University. Had it not been for the harm of stocks, the two of them would most likely be officials of the Great Ming by now.

But there was no regret medicine to be bought in this world. Their father had lost the entire family fortune and then piled up a mountain of debt, so he had no choice but to flee with his two sons to the New World to escape his creditors. They had left in such a hurry that they had not even thought to bring along the family's two little maidservants; they had simply packed up some valuables, grabbed two shares of United States stock, and slipped away in the night.

After arriving in the New World, the three Wang men still dreamed of making a comeback, paying off all their debts, and returning home in glory. So instead of settling the two sons' marriages while Japanese girls were still in plentiful supply, they threw themselves wholeheartedly into business. First they started a farm, then opened a restaurant, and finally dabbled in furs. After seven or eight years of hard work, they had managed, by their own efforts, to lose cleanly every bit of the valuables they had brought from home and the land they had traded the two stock shares for... Fortunately, the Wang brothers were dropouts from Donglin University, which made them major intellectuals in the United States of Xinzhou, and after losing everything, they were still able to find work as teachers at the Huafu Academy.

Teachers at the Huafu Academy were not badly paid — they earned more than professors at the Imperial Academy back in the Great Ming — and they counted as respectable men.

But when the two brothers and their father had dabbled in furs, they had run up new debts, owing several thousand taels, principal and interest, with no end to the repayment in sight. How could they have anything left over to find wives for the two brothers? Given the family's finances, never mind returning home to marry a refined, educated beauty — even "marrying" one from the Chrysanthemum House or the Xu-Liu-Liang Firm in Huafu, which specialized in cross-border marriages, would be hard to manage, as they could hardly scrape together enough "bride price"... In recent years, as the male population of the United States of Xinzhou had surged and the number of women imported from Japan had declined, supply and demand had grown ever tighter, and prices had risen accordingly!

Without several dozen taels of gold, there was simply no hope of marrying a young and beautiful one... Even the older ones, whose looks one dared not compliment, were not much cheaper.

As for girls who had come to the New World with their families, they were precious to an unimaginable degree, and the Wang brothers dared not even dream of them — in this day and age, ordinary folk rarely brought daughters across the sea; only aristocrats from the Old World did such a thing.

Marrying a girl like that was no longer a matter of money... If anyone had told the Wang brothers that they could win a flower-like beauty from the Ming homeland by taking an examination, that would basically be a daydream!

So when the Wang brothers told Wei Zhongcheng and Zheng Xi that one could now marry His Highness the King's sister-in-law by passing an examination, the two men immediately thought of the words "daydream."

Wei Zhongcheng frowned and grumbled at his escort captain, "Why did you find two daydreamers? What nonsense are they talking? How could such a thing be possible?"

Zheng Xi waved a hand. "Right! Go find two more who aren't out of their minds and ask them!"

Neither Wei Zhongcheng's nor Zheng Xi's escort captain moved, because they had already asked quite a few people... and all of them were daydreaming!

"My lord, who knows what day it is today — the whole street is full of daydreamers! Everyone is saying the same thing, so it must be true."

"Yes, my lord. This humble one asked many people, and they all said one could win a wife by examination... They also said officials from the White King's Chief Steward's Office were posting notices all over the busy parts of the city, announcing that examinations would be held to select husbands for the dry sisters of the King's consorts! Starting today and for the next month, applications would be accepted in the chief county of every state of the United States."

The more Wei Zhongcheng and Zheng Xi heard, the more confused they grew. Was today really a day for daydreaming? Or did the tycoon king truly intend to marry off all six hundred of his sisters-in-law? Why would he do such a thing? Was five hundred thousand taels of gold-flower silver too little to cover his expenses?