Chapter 6: What Decides the Head

"Using oxen to plow and iron tools sure is satisfying."

Just days ago, the farmers had been paired up in front of Diwu Lun, straining to drag ropes and crawling across the field like snails. Today, they were thoroughly delighted.

Oxen are far stronger than men. In a two-oxen yoked team, they strode forward with ease, and behind them the great iron plowshare bit deep into the earth. The moldboard ruthlessly turned over the dry, compacted soil, loosening it to make it fit for the wheat seed.

No wonder both the Former Han and the Xin Dynasty had statutes strictly forbidding the slaughter of plow oxen. The common folk treated these great beasts with such reverence they practically worshiped them as divine oxen. Still, things like drinking ox urine or bathing in ox dung — those they could not bring themselves to do.

Because the borrowing order was decided by drawing lots, those placed later had no grounds to complain. When using the oxen, the hamlet folk were exceedingly careful; they dared not swing the whip hard, terrified of injuring the animals or wearing them thin.

It happened that Diwu Ba was passing by. Watching everyone's feather-light motions, he grew extremely irritated, stopped, and bellowed: "Didn't you eat your fill? Put some strength into it! My family's oxen may be sturdy, but they won't plow the field to ruin!"

Only then did the crowd loosen up a little. If someone accidentally struck a stone and chipped the plow blade, they would nervously carry it back to return it. Though Diwu Ge, who managed the farm tools, glared fiercely at them, he did not actually make them pay for the damage.

At this, the hamlet folk set their minds at ease. They all marveled that the family head, who normally paid little heed to whether they lived or died, had undergone such a change of heart this year. When they learned it was the young master's idea, they all secretly raised their thumbs toward Diwu Lun, who was crouched by the field's edge doing his accounts.

What Diwu Lun was calculating was this: how much time could lending out oxen and plows save the entire hamlet? One man and two oxen could finish plowing ten small mu in a few short double-hours — a rate several times faster than paired plowing with wooden and stone tools. Once the autumn plowing was done and before the She Day festival arrived, the farmers would have seven or eight days of free time. When the time came to summon them for work, they probably wouldn't resist.

During a break, Diwu Lun announced the plan to use the farming off-season to rebuild the hamlet's She altar. The farmers fell silent for a moment, then all showed great enthusiasm: "The autumn She hasn't been properly held for several years — this truly is an important matter! Only by entertaining the gods can we ensure favorable weather next year."

"Once the sowing is done in a few days, we'll come help right away!"

"I'll go up the mountain to fell trees."

"I'll go dig earth by the canal."

"I'll go fire tiles at the kiln!"

Idle time is idle time, after all. Though there was no wage, the Diwu clan would provide meals. Many hands make light work, and having just received the great favor of borrowing the oxen, anyone who shirked and stayed away would earn the whole hamlet's scorn.

wωω ●тTk ān ●co

Even a half-grown boy with a scabby scalp clamored to help pass bricks. In the child's memory, the autumn She was the most fun time of the whole year. Dancing and waving to delight the gods while enjoying oneself — wasn't that just fine?

With this, Diwu Lun felt reassured. Meanwhile, the "new contraption" he had commissioned from the blacksmith Qiu Gaonu a few days earlier had also completed its first real test in the field.

……

"Clan Grandfather, you sent for me?"

The man summoned was none other than the middle-aged farmer who had fallen from the pear tree that day and whom Diwu Lun had sent home by horse — his name was Diwu Pingdan.

Diwu Lun had misremembered; the man's generational rank was not his nephew, but his grandson. It couldn't be helped — Diwu Lun had at least a dozen grandsons in the hamlet, and even great-grandsons older than himself.

A man in his forties calling a seventeen-year-old Diwu Lun "Clan Grandfather" at every turn was awkward at first, but with habit it became ordinary.

"Has your foot healed?"

Diwu Lun glanced at the injured foot. The man was lucky — the wound had not become infected. Once it turned gangrenous, the mortality rate was very high.

"It's healed, all thanks to the medicine you sent, Clan Grandfather. This grandson doesn't know how to repay such kindness."

To prove it, Diwu Pingdan stamped his foot on the ground.

Diwu Lun hastily stopped him: "Take it easy. When you go out to the fields from now on, remember to wear shoes — don't go barefoot anymore."

These words made Diwu Pingdan rather embarrassed, though he was too shy to say it aloud: his wife had died the year before last, and with no one at home to weave shoes, he could only make do with straw sandals. He was clumsy with his hands, and they came out loose and flimsy, falling apart after a few days. The one good pair of shoes in the house had to be worn in turns by his two sons when they went out.

Having heard that Diwu Pingdan was one of the best crop hands in the hamlet, Diwu Lun had sought him out specially and ordered him to test the new plow.

In recent days, while observing the hamlet folk plow, Diwu Lun had noticed that the plows they used were quite different from the ones he had seen in later times while living in the south. Although the plow handle, plow bed, plow beam, and plow arrow were all present, the biggest difference was that the beam was long and straight, making it hard to turn. It required a two-oxen yoke to operate properly.

In later times, however, the beam was curved, and the plow was somewhat shorter and smaller — a single ox could pull it.

Following his memory, Diwu Lun had a blacksmith forge one. He wasn't sure if it had lost its proper shape, but after having Diwu Pingdan handle it and give it a try, the feedback was quite good.

"Not only is it smaller, lighter, and much handier, but it's easy to turn and change direction — perfect for small, fragmented plots of land."

Indeed, the cumbersome straight-beam plow seemed more designed for the Diwu family's own contiguous expanse of over fifty qing of flat land. The plots worked by independent farmers had long since shrunk to under a hundred mu per household, and due to inheritance divisions, they were scattered here a patch and there a patch. A large plow was hard to use, but a small curved-beam plow was just right.

Delighted, Diwu Lun brought the new plow to his grandfather, who was sitting on the field ridge sunning himself, to report the success. He hoped to have over ten curved-beam plows made before the spring plowing for the hamlet folk to use.

Diwu Ba had long since ceased to be surprised by his grandson's endless stream of new ideas. He had been glancing over at the plow test in the field the whole time, but he showed no great delight. After examining it from top to bottom, he said unhurriedly: "It's a good tool, and it does save manpower — suitable for small-scale farming. However…"

He asked his grandson a question.

"Lun, my boy, tell me: which is more expensive — manpower, or iron?"

"Of course… iron is more expensive."

Diwu Lun was struck speechless; he realized he had been a bit hasty.

The powerful clans hated two policies of the Xin Dynasty most of all. One was the Decree on Royal Fields and Private Dependents, which curbed their appetite for acquiring more land and slaves.

The second was the Five Equalizations and Six Monopolies. These harmed not only small independent farmers but also landlords and powerful families. Setting aside salt and liquor, the monopoly on iron alone controlled the source of all production tools.

From mining to smelting to casting and sale, iron was entirely managed by the government. Naturally, the pricing was also entirely decided by the officials — outrageously expensive. This was effectively a scissors gap in handicrafts, a hidden heavy tax. The Xin Dynasty did achieve "sufficient state revenue without increasing levies," enough to support foreign wars, but the powerful families gnashed their teeth in hatred.

No wonder that during the Han dynasty, the realm's worthies and scholars petitioned time and again to abolish the salt and iron monopolies. This truly was a hope shared by landlords and commoners alike — though for the lower classes, it was merely the difference between being fleeced by the officials or being fleeced by the powerful families.

If one were a Liu loyalist or a Wang loyalist in spirit, one could denounce this as the greed and shortsightedness of the landlord class, disregarding the state's interests. But he, as the foolish grandson of a landlord family…

Diwu Lun rubbed his own backside, then patted his own head, and chuckled.

"That saying really is true."

Powerful magnates east of the Pass, far from the Emperor's reach, could still ignore the laws, but the Diwu clan, living within the Pass, dared not openly defy them. Prospect for ore and smelt it themselves? Setting aside the fact that a small household like his simply lacked the financial means, the moment they built an iron furnace, the authorities would likely round them up in one sweep, and the whole family, young and old, would be condemned as convict laborers and sent off to develop the frontier together.

For now, if they wanted to make new plows, freshly smelted iron ingots were certainly out of the question. They could only buy finished iron implements from the county iron office, then melt and recast them at home. With all the back and forth, the cost naturally became even higher.

The matter had to be set aside for the time being. Fortunately, Diwu Ba was by no means stubbornly conservative; he merely wanted his grandson to better understand the hardships of the world and not act on every passing whim.

He agreed with Diwu Lun: first, have the craftsmen and slaves make some curved beams out of hardwood. If the family's straight-beam plows broke, they would not repair them but instead melt down the iron to make plow blades fitted onto the curved beams, gradually replacing the old with the new. They shouldn't expect to get fat in a single bite.

Diwu Lun nodded, but another layer of worry arose.

"If iron is this hard to come by, what will we do later when we need to make and stockpile weapons?"

……

By mid-August, the autumn plowing in Diwu Hamlet was completely finished, and the sowing stage began.

As a southerner raised on rice, Diwu Lun truly did not know much about wheat, let alone how to leaven dough or bake flatbread.

Moreover, the county lay in the heartland of the Guanzhong region. As early as the Former Han, it had undergone two waves of agricultural revolution led by Zhao Guo and Fan Shengzhi, and its intensive farming techniques were already highly advanced. Methods like the alternating field system and the pit field system were deployed in turn; composting and manure fermentation were all in practice. There was little room for Diwu Lun to interject.

He even saw Diwu Ba wave his hand grandly and order men to carry the "seed drill" out of the storehouse for use on the family's fifty qing of land. This device was called a "three-legged seed drill," an invention of the agricultural official Zhao Guo from the time of Emperor Wu of Han. It still required an ox to pull it from the front, while a man walked behind, steadying the drill and dropping wheat seeds into the seed hopper. It could sow one qing of land in a single day, distributing the seeds very evenly without waste.

Diwu Lun only suggested "intercropping wheat and beans" — common knowledge for anyone who had studied middle-school biology. It was one of the "increase income" methods he had thought of, which might slightly boost the per-mu yield the following year.

"Too slow, still too slow." Diwu Lun knew that whether it was the curved-shaft plow or intercropping beans and wheat, the yield increases wouldn't show overnight — they were far less effective than simply and brutally hiking the rent to squeeze out an extra three to five hundred dan.

And crops follow their own rhythms; he'd have to wait until the next year to harvest. How many more next years did he have to prepare?

Thinking this, Diwu Lun instead found it amusing. He seemed to have figured out the fastest way to raise grain and iron.

"The methods that yield a hundredfold return on a single outlay are all written in the penal code!"

In his previous life, of course he had to be a law-abiding good citizen, but in the Xin Dynasty, these damned legal restrictions drove Diwu Lun to the verge of breaking the law.

It wasn't until sowing was done and they began channeling water that Diwu Lun found another chance to put his skills to use.

Diwu Hamlet lay right beside the Chengguo Canal. Branch ditches drew water from the sluice gate and divided it among the crisscrossing fields. He saw that the farmers mostly used well sweeps and windlasses to lift water — painfully slow. Even the fifty-qing main field of the Diwu clan itself used something like a dragon-bone waterwheel, which still had to be treaded by manpower.

It was too late this year. Perhaps before the spring plowing next year, he could make some water-lifting devices like the noria, but that would require fetching a fairly skilled carpenter from the county seat. Diwu Lun had plenty of ideas, but his hands-on ability was quite poor.

That day, as Diwu Lun was leading men along the canal, searching for a suitable spot to set up a waterwheel, his attendant Diwu Fu came running over, panting heavily.

"Young master, trouble, trouble!"

"What is it?"

"Fighting… fighting over water!"

The farmers drawing water bristled the moment they heard this. They flung down their wooden buckets, gripped their carrying poles, and demanded: "Who? Who dares fight Diwu Hamlet over water! Let us at them — we'll beat them to death!"

They weren't boasting. Under the leadership of that old soldier Diwu Ba, when it came to brawling, no one in this district was a match for the Diwu clan.

"No."

Diwu Fu hastily waved his hands and pointed west. "It's the Sixth and Seventh clans fighting over water — they've come to blows!"

…

"You should have said so earlier. Other people fighting over water — what does that have to do with us? Our hamlet doesn't even share a branch canal with those two families."

Hearing this, the farmers of Diwu Hamlet hoisted their carrying poles back onto their shoulders and walked off, chatting and laughing.

Diwu Lun, however, grew thoughtful. He summoned a few retainers and clan levies and went with him westward to take a look.

The Chengguo Canal was built in the time of Emperor Wu of Han. If the Zhengguo and Bai Canals nourished Shivei Commandery east of the Jing River, then the Chengguo Canal benefited the three commanderies of Fuwei, Jingwei, and Liewei.

The authorities took the canals seriously and specially appointed Water Officials to manage them, dividing canal sections among the commanderies and counties and forbidding upstream dams that stored water and left the downstream with none — that would cost lives.

But for the smaller branch canals below the county and district level, the Water Officials didn't have the energy to manage so closely. He didn't know about other places, but in Linqu District of Changping County, every two hamlets jointly opened one small canal, then split the water according to a ratio both sides found satisfactory, based on population and the amount of arable land.

This year, however, the upper reaches suffered drought, and the flow in the Chengguo Canal was somewhat low. Water resources instantly grew tight.

After walking several li, they saw sparse wild trees dotting the fields, with a stream and a small plateau in the distance, where two hamlets sat side by side. Clusters of villagers surged out from their respective hamlets, clutching dung forks, clubs, hoes, even sickles, and rushed toward the canal with murderous momentum.

Diwu Lun sent someone to ask. The men of Sixth Hamlet insisted through gritted teeth: "The Seventh clan tore up the old agreement — they want to divert more water to their fields! They struck first!"

When they drew closer to the branch canal, they heard a clamorous uproar. The farmers of the Sixth clan, who had arrived first, were being forced steadily backward by a group of men in close-fitting attire, armed with swords and blades.

The Sixth clan, who always kept their heads buried in the soil, were clearly no match for the Seventh clan, famed throughout the county for their gallant bravos. Facing this gang of brawling, vicious youths wielding real weapons, how could mere farm tools hold them off? Soon sickles snapped and dung forks were hacked apart; the Sixth clan fled in disarray, utterly routed.

Watching this scene, Diwu Lun gripped the ring-pommel saber at his waist, hesitating.

A few days earlier, he had offered pears and yielded his school seat, resolving the enmity between the Diwu and Eighth clans and already earning a bit of a name in the county. According to plan, the next step was to establish authority.

"If I can quell the dispute between these two families today, that would indeed establish authority."

But those who try to mediate often get beaten themselves. If he mishandled it, he'd offend both families at once. He had to think clearly — was it worth intervening? And how should he go about mediating?

Diwu Lun only remembered that his grandfather had been on fairly good terms with the Sixth clan, while relations with the Seventh clan were merely so-so. The two brothers who ran the Seventh clan had always been overbearing and unreasonable; they wouldn't necessarily give face to a mere stripling like him.

As he was still thinking, another call came from behind. It was Diwu Fu again, galloping over on a donkey and shouting: "Young master! Magistrate Xianyu has sent someone to summon you — says you're to go to the county office at once, says it's urgent."

The County Magistrate was looking for him? Why did it have to be right at this moment?

Diwu Lun furrowed his brow and looked again toward the two distant-kin clans brawling over water. The din was growing louder. The Sixth clan was already fleeing with their heads in their hands, many bleeding from gashed scalps, yet the Seventh clan showed no sign of stopping. If no one intervened, people would die. But if he got entangled, who knew when he'd be done dealing with it. Damn it — which side should he attend to?

"Lun'er, you go to the county seat first. Leave this to me."

A sudden loud shout — it was Diwu Ba, who had galloped over on horseback upon hearing the news.

The old man, sword at his side, rode his horse across the canal. Though his hair was white, his heroic bearing was undiminished from years past.

"Diwu Ba is here! Let this old man see who still dares bare a blade!"

Watching his back and that old chestnut horse, Diwu Lun seemed to see his grandfather in those years when he followed Colonel Chen Tang on distant campaigns to the Western Regions, galloping across the great desert — one Han warrior against five barbarians, full of heroic ardor!

…

PS: Begging for recommendation tickets.