Chapter 69: Development

Hong Chengchou, who was suppressing bandits in northern Shaanxi, had no reports of victory to send, but he frequently submitted memorials stating that under his strategy of advancing step by step, bandit chiefs such as Li Zicheng of the roving bandits had been forced to move northward. Because of the complex terrain in the northern Shaanxi region, although he could not yet completely eradicate the roving bandits there, he had cut off their routes for fleeing toward the Central Plains, which greatly relieved the pressure on Lu Xiangsheng, who was suppressing bandits in the heartland of the Great Ming.

Chongzhen expressed appreciation for Hong Chengchou's maturity and prudence, because Li Zicheng was not yet a force to be reckoned with — neither his strength nor his reputation was great — and he was firmly pinned down in the northern Shaanxi region by Hong Chengchou, which greatly limited the growth of his power. In history, Li Zicheng had only grown and developed after breaking through the official army's defenses and fleeing into the Central Plains; if he remained holed up in northern Shaanxi, where the population was rapidly declining and the fields had produced nothing for several consecutive years, his strength would be greatly weakened.

The most urgent task at present was to eradicate Gao Yingxiang and strike down this banner of the roving bandits within the Great Ming's borders. Then, after Sun Chuanting's Shaanxi army was formed, they would march north to join Hong Chengchou and eliminate the bandits in northern Shaanxi. As for Tuo Yangkun, Zhang Xianzhong, the Five Camps of Ge and Zuo, Cao Cao, and others — either they were numerous but not truly powerful, or they were content with small gains and focused on plundering and pleasure. They did not pose a great threat to the Great Ming, and once the official army grew increasingly formidable, eliminating them would not be difficult.

In less than a year since he had traveled through time to the Great Ming, by changing the originally rash and impetuous strategic plans, strengthening the official army's logistical support, selecting the worthy and employing the capable, and adhering to the policy of trusting those he employed without suspicion, he had gradually reversed the deteriorating situation. As long as he continued along the current general direction and no major variables arose in between, saving the Han people's last dynasty would not be much of a problem. The hardest part was how to change this corrupt system — that would touch the interests of the vast majority of those in power. If handled poorly, the outcome would be utterly tragic; the fate of Emperor Yang of Sui was the best example.

The top priority at present remained military affairs and finance. The civil official faction had long been corrupt, and fundamentally correcting it from the roots required a long-term plan. The most important thing was to have sufficient strength in hand. Only when the Great Ming was completely stabilized and he held a sharp blade that obeyed his every command would he possess the ability to challenge the interest groups. With internal troubles and external threats at present, moving against the civil official faction would be asking to die sooner. An emperor who died less than a year after traveling through time would become the shame of all time travelers.

Moreover, the current court could still barely hold together, and the civil officials were not a monolithic bloc. The Chu Faction, the Zhe Faction, and the Donglin Faction were all checking one another, and there was also the eunuch faction, which, though weakened, had not given up — they were constantly sending signals through small maneuvers, trying to return to the circle of power.

Chongzhen had never replaced Chief Grand Secretary Wen Tiren because he was a solitary minister. Although mediocre in ability and jealous of the worthy, he never went against Chongzhen's words in the slightest. He was very clear about his current situation — he had already become the main target of attack by all factions in the court. Only by clinging tightly to the emperor's thigh could he avoid ending up disgraced and ruined.

Chongzhen, having come from a later era, harbored extreme hostility toward the Donglin Faction. Everyone who understood Ming history regarded the Donglin Faction as the chief culprit in the fall of the Ming dynasty, believing that it was precisely because of the Donglin Faction's insatiable greed, selfish incompetence, and utter lack of scholarly integrity that the situation — which had once held hope of pacifying the bandits and destroying the barbarians — deteriorated completely.

Chongzhen himself basically agreed with these views, but held a different opinion on the conclusion. The Donglin Faction's sphere of influence was mainly the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region. What their spokesmen in the court secured for the entire Donglin Faction was basically the interests of this group in Jiangnan. Their beguiling Chongzhen into eliminating the eunuch faction and recalling the tax and mining supervisors stationed in Jiangnan was one example. But this only reduced Chongzhen's tax revenue; it did not deal a devastating blow to the Great Ming. Natural disasters, man-made calamities, and increasingly severe famine; the official army lacking pay and provisions; the absence of strategic planning and deployment for the entire war situation; treating the head when the head hurts and the feet when the feet hurt; then Lu Xiangsheng dying in battle; Chongzhen, heeding slander, throwing Sun Chuanting into the Imperial Prison for several years; then forcing Hong Chengchou to rush into battle, where he was disastrously defeated by the Jianzhou barbarians at Songshan, burying the Great Ming's last hundred-plus thousand troops capable of fighting — these were all causes of the Great Ming's downfall.

Gong Fanwu, who was drying salt in Qingzhou, also sent good news. After months of painstaking experimentation and waiting, salt drying had finally succeeded. Over the past half year and more, the technique had gradually matured, and salt production had risen steadily — from an initial yield of over a hundred jin per mu to nearly two hundred jin per mu now. The salt fields had also expanded from the original ten mu to over a hundred mu. Calculated at the current production rate, daily output of edible salt could reach about twenty thousand jin, and as the technique continued to improve, production would increase considerably. Apart from manpower, the cost was almost negligible.

Although the years of drought had devastated the fields and crops, they provided an excellent opportunity for salt drying. Ample sunlight and sustained high temperatures were the primary conditions for salt drying. With such good conditions, it was only natural to expand the salt-drying area as quickly as possible and rapidly increase production.

Gong Fanwu was recruiting large numbers of workers from the local area, leveling wasteland, building enclosing walls and laborers' quarters, including a camp for a small squad of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and perfecting supporting facilities to make life more convenient for everyone.

For the sake of secrecy, following Chongzhen's wishes, Gong Fanwu recruited people by family unit. All members of recruited families were not permitted to leave for three years, nor to have contact with strangers outside the salt works, to prevent the technique from leaking. After all, salt drying was not an industry requiring high technological content — once someone came in for a stroll, the entire process would be laid bare. Before Chongzhen's sea salt had monopolized the market, this would cause enormous losses.

At present, the salt works housed twenty families totaling eighty-three people — fifty-one able-bodied adults and thirty-two women, children, elderly, and infirm. All had been investigated by the Embroidered Uniform Guard and found to be of clean background and destitute. Attracted by the salt works' generous conditions — two full meals a day for able-bodied adults, eight hundred copper coins per month, plus two sheng of rice per family per day — they had moved their entire households into the salt works. With such good conditions, merely requiring that they not leave for three years — this employer must be a reincarnated bodhisattva! Never mind three years without leaving; even ten years would be fine. In their daily lives, they had only ever moved within their two mu three fen of village land, and apart from peddlers selling needles and thread, they wouldn't see a few strangers in a lifetime.

The enclosing wall extended about five li inland from the salt works by the sea, also to leave sufficient space for various buildings once the salt works expanded in the future. In Chongzhen's conception, the salt produced here would be sold directly to parts of Shandong, Henan, and Huguang. In the future, he would also establish salt-drying works in Yancheng County within South Zhili, with the salt produced there radiating to the entire South Zhili and Huguang regions. The Changlu salt works in the Tianjin Guard area, due to neglect in management — with the Salt Transport Commissioner's Office and the Salt Distribution Office that managed it being severely corrupt from top to bottom, causing large numbers of salt households to flee and production to plummet — was also included in Chongzhen's rebuilding plans. He had already arranged for the Embroidered Uniform Guard's seated agents in the Ministry of Revenue to secretly investigate the personal circumstances of officials of all ranks in the ministry. Once they discovered talented people of both virtue and ability, he would purge the Changlu salt works' offices, arrest and punish corrupt officials both great and small, and then have those he favored take over, producing salt by the Qingzhou salt works method for sale to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the two provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi. If this plan were implemented, the treasury's fiscal shortfall would be greatly alleviated, and the privy purse would be enormously replenished.

Of course, even with salt, there still needed to be a market. Taking the market from those salt merchants who had amassed fortunes would be a complex and tortuous process, and bloodshed and violence would be unavoidable. The salt merchants and those behind them would never willingly hand over their money trees. One should not think of seizing the entire Great Ming's edible salt market in one stroke — it had to be done step by step and according to plan. As long as his ruling position was not threatened from outside, he could then eliminate all obstacles with thunderous measures and implement an official salt monopoly throughout the Great Ming. For now, he could only make money quietly; the methods could not be too drastic, lest uncontrollable variables arise.