Chapter 182: Fortune's Reward

"In this world, what those in power conceive in their minds and proclaim with their lips is always easy; actually pushing it down from the top and carrying it out on the ground is hard."

Although he had Wei Ao and Zhao watching Handan, Diwu Lun understood that, given his own weight and ability, taking Wu'an was already quite an achievement.

He had heard that over twenty years ago, during the reign of Emperor Ai of Han, because the annexation of farmland across the realm and the problem of commoners sinking into slavery had grown so severe that it could no longer be ignored, a "Land Limitation Edict" was pushed through, proclaiming that from Marquises down to officials and commoners, no one's named fields could exceed thirty qing, and the number of slaves owned would decrease by rank: vassal kings, two hundred slaves; Marquises and Princesses, one hundred; full Marquises within the Pass, officials, and commoners, thirty. Any excess, whether land or slaves, would be confiscated by the state.

When Emperor Ai of Han first took the throne, he was indeed ambitious and wanted to accomplish great things, believing that as Emperor his power was limitless and not so simple as just sleeping with Dong Xian. In the end, though the land-limitation edict had already been issued, it was shelved and never implemented due to opposition from high officials and the nobility.

Emperor Ai of Han's land reform died before it even left the court halls.

After Wang Mang took power, although he opposed whatever Emperor Ai of Han had supported, he too tried to solve the land and slave problem — and actually came up with public land ownership.

The Xin Dynasty proclaimed that all land under heaven was royal land, belonging to the state and not to be annexed, and also halted the buying and selling of slaves. It even planned to take from those who had too much to supplement those who had too little: restoring the ancient well-field system, whereby any household with fewer than eight adult males but more than nine hundred mu of land must distribute the excess to their clan and neighbors, while those originally without land would receive land according to the above system.

This system was promulgated in the first year of Shijianguo and repealed amid a chorus of opposition in the third year. Wang Mang's land reform did a little better than Emperor Ai of Han's — it at least made it out of the court halls — but it simply could not be implemented down to the commanderies and counties, and ended fruitlessly.

The Royal Land and Private Dependents Decree was Wang Mang's last act of stubbornness, but it existed in name only. In Guanzhong, annexation could still be suppressed, but the other provinces had long ignored the law and each went its own way.

Now, with the realm in chaos and the central authority lost, solving the land problem with a single administrative order, as Wang Mang had hoped, was a pipe dream. That being the case, Diwu Lun could only adopt a more unreasonable, more crude and brutal method.

"Solve the people who hold the land!"

But the difficulty of this matter far exceeded imagination. Just targeting the already-driven-off Li family, under the pretext of "granting land by merit and settling old followers," Diwu Lun had to exhaust every trick he had, mobilizing the entire commandery's civil officials and armed forces all at once, just to barely pull it off.

Most of the Li family's die-hard loyalists had fled with them into Zhao territory, but a great many retainers and dependents were captured. Diwu Lun had people identify and screen them: those on the periphery were released and sent home; the die-hards were clapped in irons and sent to the Wu'an iron mine to serve as convict laborers — the iron-office convicts had risen up and answered Diwu Lun's call, turning their lives around, but the bitter, heavy labor still had to be done by someone.

Although Diwu Lun proclaimed an amnesty, declaring that wealthy households and minor branches of the Li clan who had been deceived into following the rebels but surrendered and returned to the fold at the last moment would not be prosecuted for past crimes, and only the chief culprits and ringleaders would be seized, Huang Zhang and the subordinate clerks, eager to prove themselves, still went to great lengths to widen the dragnet and hunt for collaborators. In just a little over ten days, several hundred were thrown into jail, and more and more people were sent to work the iron mine.

Watching them, Feng Qin could hardly bear it and wanted to remonstrate several times, feeling this was making enemies for no reason, but Diwu Lun only told him to do his own job well.

As the Reporting Clerk, Feng Qin had been entrusted with heavy responsibility by Diwu Lun. Although he privately took strong issue with this matter, he was still fairly diligent in his work, consoling himself thus: "If Huang Zhang and the others were doing this, they would likely take measuring more land as a virtue, causing even more innocent people to lose their homes and fields. I must do this properly."

Throughout the entire eighth month, Feng Qin, leading several dozen subordinate clerks and under the armed protection of the highly enthusiastic Boar-Rush Braves, dispersed deep into every estate and village in Wu'an County. While expelling the remnants of the Li faction, they simultaneously surveyed and parceled out the Li family's landholdings, which over the past century the commandery clerks had never truly sorted out.

From the tax registers submitted by Wu'an County, the Li family paid rent and tax on only ten thousand mu. Diwu Lun estimated they were certainly hiding land, possibly as much as forty thousand mu.

After the final survey and reckoning, it turned out they had still underestimated the Li family. The land controlled by Li Neng and his brothers alone totaled over fifty-seven thousand mu.

This was more land than their own field slaves and retainers could possibly farm. The tenant farmers dependent on the Li family numbered over a thousand households!

In his early years, as a Section Clerk in the Arrayed Commandant's office, Diwu Lun had traveled through every county investigating local man-land relations and understanding the successes and failures of governance. He therefore knew that in Guanzhong, tenant farmers accounted for roughly forty to fifty percent of households.

And because the Royal Land Decree existed in name only in Ji Province and annexation went unchecked, the man-land conflict in Wei Cheng Commandery was far more severe than in Guanzhong. Land was even more concentrated in the hands of powerful families, and independent smallholders were exceedingly rare.

But precise data — Diwu Lun had been utterly unable, and dared not, investigate it in the commandery over the past year, lest the powerful families all jump up in fury. Only now, on the back of military force, could he carry out a thorough investigation of Wu'an County.

If you don't investigate, you don't know; once you do, it gives you a jolt.

"Wu'an County has over seven thousand registered commoner households. Among them, tenant farmers alone account for four thousand households!"

Qin He, a Corporal in the Boar-Rush Braves, walked along the field ridges of Wu'an County. He did not care how many tenant farmers there were in the county; he cared only that his own land had finally been allotted.

"One more li and we'll be there."

The subordinate patrolman guiding them could speak simple Guanzhong dialect and chatted idly with the soldiers. The men still carried their armor and weapons and advanced in formation. The Li clan was deeply entrenched; although the family head had fled, every patch of forest might harbor remnants, and even the local smallholders and tenant farmers watched them with considerable hostility in their eyes.

The army had orders: unless necessary, soldiers were forbidden to go down into the villages alone — partly out of fear they would harass the local populace, and partly out of fear they would be attacked and lose their lives. For many days running, several Boar-Rush Braves who had gone out had their throats cut in the village lanes, falling on the eve of receiving the fruits of victory.

"Right there!"

The subordinate patrolman pointed toward a vast stretch of farmland ahead.

This area backed onto a small hill, with a village called "Little River Hamlet" to the right. Nearby was a small river with simple irrigation ditches, and the fields stretched out in unbroken tracts. The millet and wheat had just been harvested, and the stalks were bundled and piled in the fields. The old farmers were preparing to cart them home, but at the sight of soldiers approaching, they all fled warily. A few bolder tenant farmers crouched on the field paths, pointing and commenting.

The subordinate patrolman consulted the field map that had taken over ten days to delineate clearly and pointed out each man's allotment one by one.

The land they were allotted was grouped together by unit. Ordinary soldiers got thirty mu; those with merit, forty. As a Corporal, Qin He received fifty mu. Even if farmed poorly, it was enough to support a family of three.

To get over a hundred mu, one had to be at the rank of Sergeant or Company Commander — for them, something to aspire to but beyond reach.

Over a thousand men of the Boar-Rush Braves divided up forty-seven thousand mu of land, leaving ten thousand mu undistributed and kept as public fields. In peacetime, the soldiers had to farm these public fields as military colonies, while their own land would be given to the tenant farmers who had once been dependent on the Li family to cultivate.

"We can't just drive them all away and turn them into refugees, can we?"

The men nodded, seeing the sense in this. Their main occupation was still soldiering; they didn't have much time to tend the fields.

What they did not know was that Diwu Lun also planned to reduce the rent for the tenant farmers, and even viewed these tenants, who made up the majority of the population, as a new source of recruits: those who thirsted for land were hardly limited to refugees.

The subordinate patrolman led the soldiers to the edge of the village and had the village clerk bring out the prepared wooden contracts, distributing them to each man by name.

The field contracts were made in triplicate: one copy for the Wei Cheng Commandery office, one for the Agricultural Colony Colonel Wan Xiu, and one for the soldier himself.

The men clutched the field contracts like treasures, turning them over and over. Most were illiterate and had to ask a Sergeant or the subordinate patrolman to read them aloud word by word, though the contents were largely the same.

Written on them were the boundaries and size of each man's land, along with a declaration that these lands were not permitted to be bought or sold. If a soldier died in battle and had no parents or children to inherit, the land would be reclaimed as public field.

The men understood. "So the most urgent thing is to quickly find a local woman and get married."

As he listened, a smile Qin He could not hide spread across his thick lips.

After receiving their contracts, they were in no hurry to leave. Instead, they walked together into the fields, helping each other find their own plots, stomping on them, or pacing step by step across the area that belonged to them — finishing the walk, then walking it again, just like old oxen plowing the land.

Qin He, meanwhile, sat down cross-legged and stared blankly at the sun and white clouds overhead, lost in thought.

Qin He suddenly thought of his father, who had been a tenant farmer his whole life, spending all his years tilling other families' land until his back was too bent to straighten.

He remembered his father saying that their family, a few generations back, had also owned land.

Sitting there, he eventually lay down full-length on the thick soil, breathing deeply and sniffing the earthy smell that city folk found foul but he found fragrant. His hands dug deep into the earth, and tears streamed from his eyes, sliding down into the soil.

In this moment, the living death in the conscript camp, the little finger frozen off at the frontier fortress, the calluses and blisters worn on the march to Wei, and the terror of facing cold steel in battle — all of it, all that sacrifice, seemed to have been worth it!

"Father, from this day on, our family has land again!"

The men had lingered too long in the fields, and the subordinate patrolman finally urged them up impatiently. Together with the village clerk, he introduced over fifty local farmers to them, letting the new landlords and the tenant farmers meet face to face. Their dealings would be limited to this; the clerks of the Agricultural Colony Colonel and the new county office Diwu Lun had set up in Wu'an would handle rent collection and other matters.

And so Qin He met the tenant farmer who would work his land: a dark-faced old farmer with a green headwrap.

Unlike some of his comrades who grew arrogant after becoming petty landlords, Qin He still remembered that his own family had known bitter days. He respectfully gave the old farmer a military salute.

"My name is Qin He."

It was Guanzhong dialect, and the dark-faced old farmer in Wei territory certainly did not understand it. He only kept a stiff face, looking scornfully at Qin He and his brother soldiers. In the end, unable to defy the clerks present, he merely cupped his hands casually and said, "A commoner of Wu'an."

Wu'an is a two-character surname, said to be the descendants of Li Mu, though some say they are the descendants of Bai Qi, Lord Wu'an of Qin.

Wu Anmin leaned toward the former. During his days as a tenant farmer for the Li clan, he was quite proud of this connection and used it as material to show off in conversation.

"Many generations ago, my family was also surnamed Li — we're kinsmen of Lord Li!"

Though he had now fallen to tenant farming, tilling the fields of a powerful family and paying half the harvest in rent, his life was hard, often wearing clothes fit for oxen and horses and eating the food of dogs and swine.

Yet Wu Anmin took this as perfectly natural and was even rather grateful to his landlord: "Without the kind patronage of Lord Li and his brother, we wouldn't even have these few dozen mu to farm. We'd be nothing but refugees, starving to death in the ditches!"

So he threw himself into the land, rising at cockcrow to labor — not to keep a bit more grain for himself, but to be worthy of his landlord. In later parlance, this was his blessed karmic reward!

And when resting from toil among the peasants, Wu Anmin would even gesture across the vast surrounding fields and proudly tell them: "From here to there, over ten thousand mu of land — all of it belongs to Lord Li's family!"

Though Li Neng and his brother had never once looked him in the eye, and probably had no idea such a person existed among their thousands of tenant farmers, that did not stop Wu Anmin from extolling his own bloodline and his landlord's benevolence at every turn, morning and night. At every festival, he would kowtow in the direction of the Li clan's fortified manor, his heart brimming with gratitude.

Until the Li clan came crashing down and was driven off by Diwu Lun.

Wu Anmin's world nearly collapsed as well. Had his son not stopped him, he — who had never received a single favor from the Li family — would have grabbed a pitchfork and gone off alone to follow the Li clan to Zhao. Only with great difficulty was he persuaded to stay.

"Yes, you're right. I must guard these fields for Lord Li and wait for his return!"

And toward the new landlords, Wu Anmin was utterly contemptuous.

"A man with only thirty or forty mu to his name — how dare he call himself a powerful magnate? How dare he collect rent?"

Looking at their rough faces, no different from his own; at their uncouth, simple-minded grins, just like old peasants; at the foolish way they sat or sprawled in the fields; and some of them even willing to pick up sickle and hoe and work the land themselves — Wu Anmin felt revulsion.

A powerful magnate landlord ought to be high and aloof, someone to yearn for and envy from afar, utterly unreachable — how could they be the same as tenant farmers!

Even when the circuit inspectors and village officials bore witness, and when the new rent contracts were drawn up for the Boar-Rush Braves and the tenant farmers, it was announced that whereas the Li clan had taken a one-in-five rent, from this day forward all tenants would pay only one-in-four, keeping sixty percent of the grain.

This brought open delight to many tenant farmers — it likely meant they could drown one fewer infant each year, and it counted as Diwu Lun currying favor with the tenants. But in private, Wu Anmin cursed and grumbled: "What government troops — they're nothing but a gang of outside bandits! They stormed into Lord Li's home, looted it, seized Lord Li's land, and now they think the land is theirs? Bah!"

"Paying an extra tenth of the harvest to Lord Li — that was our choice! Don't think you can buy me off with these paltry favors!"

And so Wu Anmin squatted on the ridge between fields, glaring balefully at Qin He and the Boar-Rush Braves as they departed the fields in formation, as though the land had been taken from him personally.

The tenant farmers had not been idle in private, either, discussing how to deal with these new "landlords." One quick-witted fellow proposed: "I've looked into it — most of them aren't married yet. If any of us have daughters of the right age, we can pair them up. Once we're one family, what's all this talk of magnates and tenants? Their land will be our family's land too!"

It was a brilliant idea, and everyone burst out laughing — except Wu Anmin and a few other tenants who cherished the memory of Lord Li's "benevolence"; they merely gave a disdainful snort.

Wu Anmin declared even more loftily: "In any case, my daughter is already betrothed to the childhood friend of the son of the nephew of the son-in-law of the house steward in Lord Li's fortified manor. He works in the kitchens and left together with Lord Li. My daughter is going to marry into the Li manor — she will never be cheaply given away to those bandit soldiers!"

Wu Anmin also pointed at the others and said: "Don't you all be too hasty."

"Lord Li's family has been in this place for dozens of generations. From my great-grandfather's great-grandfather onward, my family has been tenant farmers for Lord Li. What do you call that? That is the eternal order of things. And it should stay the same for dozens of generations more."

Wu Anmin declared with absolute conviction: "Just wait. Before long, Lord Li will surely fight his way back! And when he does, all these bandit soldiers will be slaughtered and used to fertilize the fields!"

When that time came, Wu Anmin would gladly pay an extra tenth — no, two extra tenths — in rent! And then he could once again proudly tell his fellow villagers about the blood ties between the Wu'an clan and the Li family, and at the end, gesturing across the boundless fine fields, he would sigh and exclaim:

"Look — all of this is Lord Li's land! And I — I farm Lord Li's land!"

…

While the land survey at Wu'an was barely completed, at the Ximen residence in Yecheng, Ximen Yanshou had also learned of what had happened there.

The commandery Labor Section Head Ximen Ping had returned from Liangqi. Although Li Neng had fled to Handan, Zhao Liu ultimately had no intention of sending troops.

"Father, what do we do?" Ximen Ping had sniffed something unusual in this affair. Unlike the mild and non-interventionist approach of the past year, Diwu Lun now seemed intent on doing things boldly — actions that made the powerful magnates deeply uneasy.

"We all misjudged the man. We failed to see Diwu Lun's surging ambition, and the moment to act has long since passed. The Li clan's cause is lost — what else can we do?"

Ximen Yanshou was still fishing by the banks of the Zhang River. Ximen Ping was taken aback: "Father, do you mean we should have aided the Li clan back then…"

"Foolish. Who is Diwu Lun? A man of such great talent that he conjured thousands of loyal soldiers out of thin air. Unless every prominent surname in the commandery had joined forces from the very start to expel or kill him, openly opposing him like the Li clan did would only get you exterminated as a warning to others."

Ximen Yanshou continued: "But perhaps it is precisely because we were too compliant that Diwu Lun now believes he can easily control Wei without needing the prominent surnames and powerful magnates."

He sighed: "Diwu Lun is a fine two-thousand-bushel official — capable, responsible. I think well of him; he can surely keep Wei safe. But this young man is too young; he does not yet understand the hardships of the world, the gains and losses, the stakes involved."

"Since Diwu Lun wants to keep his old followers in Wei Commandery, his ambition is plain for all to see — and this is something the Emperor will absolutely never permit."

"Then, while the imperial army is still in the east, let his ambition be made known to the court. Write a letter with whatever can be said and send it to Ximen Junhui, in the service of the General of the Guard, for his perusal."

Ximen Yanshou reeled in his fishing rod. The real struggle between powerful magnates and a two-thousand-bushel official was not what the Li clan imagined — clashing with spears and swords on the battlefield, fighting to the death without end.

"And another thing: Diwu Lun only struck the Li clan and divided their land. But once the ignorant common folk start spreading wild rumors, might it not turn into 'Lord Diwu wants to seize the lands of all the magnates and smallholders in the commandery and hand them out to refugees and the Red Eyebrows'?"

No — it was about tripping him in the dark, striking with hidden malice, so that he fell without ever knowing whose hand had pushed him, because anyone's hand could have done it. In the end, he would have to rely on you to help him up out of the mire, and only then would he begin to know gratitude, and begin to understand how a territorial official ought to conduct himself.

Ximen Yanshou's smile remained as kindly as ever: "Diwu Lun must suffer a few setbacks. Only then will he understand whom he must rely on to gain a foothold in Wei!"

…

(Silver-tier bonus chapter 9/11)

PS: Sleeping in a bit tomorrow, update will be in the afternoon. No separate notice.