Chapter 51: At Ease Away from Home

Before he knew it, since Hei Fu had returned from his county military service, he had first gained a noble rank and reward money, supplementing the household income; next he was about to assume the post of village chief, which would greatly elevate the family's standing, and also allow him to send Jing to the study hall, securing a better future for him as well.

Even on ordinary days Hei Fu never idled — now building a treadle-hammer, now pounding New Year cakes. Had his heart not truly held his family, he would never have gone to all this trouble…

Now, Hei Fu had plainly become the pillar of the entire household; even Zhong, the eldest brother, felt that listening to him was always right.

That night, Zhong said many things, but in the end they all converged into one heartfelt sentence.

"Second Brother, from now on, set your mind at ease and busy yourself out in the world. Mother and Jing here at home — your elder brother will look after them well!"

With these words from his eldest brother, Hei Fu's mind was at rest.

After the winter solstice, the days grew shorter and shorter. Fortunately, this era lay within a warm climatic period: the banks of the Yellow River held a thousand mu of bamboo groves, rhinoceroses could even be seen in the Shanglin Park south of the Wei River, and once across the Yangtze, elephants roamed… Nan Commandery could also be counted as subtropical, generally without snow, though morning and evening still brought some frost and dew.

But regardless of the weather, Hei Fu would rise at first light, kick Jing awake across the way, pick out some common characters, and teach them to him for Jing to memorize.

He himself, while treading the treadle-hammer to pound the family's daily grain, would hold his copied bamboo slips and recite aloud by the dim dawn light…

Pounding and reciting, Hei Fu suddenly burst out laughing.

"If someday I make it big, and this story gets out, I wonder if it could rank alongside Su Qin's 'head suspended from a beam, awl pricking the thigh' and become an inspirational classic that middle school students everywhere use in their essays… How about calling it 'Reciting the Statutes at the Treadle-Hammer'?"

At this thought, Hei Fu could not suppress a grin and recited with even greater gusto, only the clear sound of his reading was entirely buried in the pounding of the grain. That he was preparing for the village chief examination — even the neighbors had no idea.

…

And so, by late in the eleventh month, Hei Fu had memorized all eight sections of the statutes and ordinances so thoroughly he could recite them from any point. He even had his eldest brother Zhong check against the original text, picking any passage at random, and he could promptly recite what followed.

The next day, Hei Fu went again to Yan Zheng's residence in Bian Hamlet. When he recited the entire "Statute on Theft" from memory in front of Yan Zheng, Yan Zheng was utterly stunned…

"Young man, you used barely ten days and you can already recite all eight sections of the statutes from memory!?"

Yan Zheng found it somewhat inconceivable. He had taught in a study hall before and had seen similarly clever disciples who could recite fluently after only a few days of study. But those disciples came from generations of civil clerks and had been steeped in the statutes and ordinances since childhood. Hei Fu was different — his ancestors were farmers, and when he first came to the Yan residence seeking instruction, he had been completely ignorant of the statutes.

Hei Fu wanted to tell Yan Zheng that if he too had endured the maddening "recite the full text" of high school Chinese class, these simple legal provisions really were nothing much. Besides, the police academy also had judicial courses; compared to the complex and lengthy clauses of later legal codes, Qin law was already quite concise and to the point — after all, this was the pioneering age of law…

In the end, Yan Zheng could only attribute it to Hei Fu's intelligence, and felt all the more that he was a talent worth cultivating.

During these days, Yan Zheng had also had his disciples who served as clerks in the county make inquiries. That Hei Fu had been summoned to serve as village chief was indeed true. Reportedly, besides the County Right Lieutenant, even the Prison Clerk Xi held this man in high regard. Yan Zheng at once felt that accepting Hei Fu's tuition gift, taking him as a disciple, and teaching him the statutes had been the right decision.

So in the days that followed, Yan Zheng had Hei Fu come to Bian Hamlet every day. The old man specially set aside a half-day to instruct Hei Fu on how to handle the Chief Clerk's examination.

"The Chief Clerk will not have you recite the statutes on the spot."

Yan Zheng spoke while chewing the New Year cake Hei Fu had presented as a gift. The food, once dried and pan-fried in lard, was very crisp, not at all as tooth-sticking as when freshly made. And despite being sixty years old, Yan Zheng's health was remarkably good — it was said that just the year before last he had taken a young concubine, barely older than his own little granddaughter. Truly impressive…

"Then how will he test me?" Hei Fu humbly asked.

"When the time comes, it will be him asking and you answering. The questions will mostly concern the provisions within these eight sections of statutes, only applied to actual cases, requiring you to make judgments and decisions."

Yan Zheng had the bondmaid pass him a cloth, wiped his mouth, and said: "For example, the Chief Clerk might ask you: 'A falsely accuses B of stealing an ox. B did not steal it. How should A be sentenced?'"

"A should be sentenced under the principle of false accusation recoiling on the accuser, and punished for the crime of ox theft!"

Hei Fu blurted out the answer instinctively — false accusation recoiling on the accuser. This was not only in the "Statute on Theft," it was also a case he had personally experienced.

"I ask you further: someone steals another's mulberry leaves, the value of the stolen goods being less than one coin. How should he be sentenced?"

Hei Fu thought for a moment and said: "Mulberry is the foundation of agriculture. Those who steal mulberry leaves shall be severely punished — sentenced to thirty days of corvée labor!"

"Correct."

Yan Zheng praised him: "Not only have you memorized the statutes thoroughly, you have also grasped them well. Wait until I identify the points in the statutes where errors are easily made and let you familiarize yourself with them. On the first day of the twelfth month, the Chief Clerk's questions should not trouble you."

…

From that day on, Hei Fu began visiting Old Yan in Bian Hamlet every day. To the fellow hamlet residents he met on the road, he merely smiled and said he was visiting a friend, revealing nothing to anyone. His family also heeded his words and kept the matter strictly secret, so the hamlet folk knew nothing of it.

When Hei Fu had first returned, the hamlet folk had still been somewhat wary of him — after all, his reputation for single-handedly capturing three bandits was well known. But gradually, they found that Hei Fu greeted everyone politely, and that slight sense of unfamiliarity slowly faded. They came to see him once more as the neighbor boy they had watched grow up.

Instead, it was the women of the hamlet who began to spread rumors, saying that Hei Fu had probably taken a fancy to some family's daughter in Bian Hamlet, which was why he went there every day…

Yet the hamlet gatekeeper who watched the hamlet gate seemed to have glimpsed something. Whenever Hei Fu returned, the old hamlet gatekeeper named Pu would give Hei Fu a deeply meaningful smile and often draw him into idle chat.

As they talked, the conversation turned to the old days when Hei Fu's late father was still alive and had gone to the battlefield on military service together with the hamlet gatekeeper.

"Your father and I were comrades-in-arms, you know. We held our spears and shed blood together. This leg of mine — it was right before his eyes that an enemy soldier pierced it through with a sword. It was a good thing your father killed that soldier then, or this old life of mine would have been buried in Wei territory…"

After the old hamlet gatekeeper finished his lament, he limped off to ladle some hot broth for Hei Fu, adding that he had watched all three of the Hei brothers grow up.

"If you don't mind, you could call me Second Father, ha ha ha…"

Hei Fu smiled but said nothing. What the hamlet gatekeeper said might be true, but after his late father died, during those years when their family had fallen on hard times, why had this hamlet gatekeeper — "closer than a real Second Father" — never been seen lending a hand?

Offering charcoal in the snow is hard; adding flowers to brocade is easy. Hei Fu was perfectly clear on that.

The hamlet gatekeeper's sudden warmth toward him was nothing more than seeing that their household now had two men of the First Grade, and that Hei Fu had also gained a reputation in the county. There might be places where the hamlet gatekeeper could make use of him in the future.

Hei Fu knew that although this Sunset Hamlet had only a few dozen households, the "political struggles" within it were quite complex. As far back as the Chu kingdom period, this area had only three minor gentry families; the rest were all commoners. After Anlu came under Qin rule, those three gentry families had transformed themselves overnight into the hamlet gatekeeper, the hamlet chief, and the field clerk — these three posts had been passed down from father to son for two or three generations.

Among the three families, the hamlet chief and the field clerk were closer and held greater authority, while the hamlet gatekeeper's family was somewhat sidelined. Yet the hamlet gatekeeper had earned merit on the battlefield, and his noble rank was the third grade, "Ornamented Sash" — the highest in the hamlet. This gave the crippled old man ideas of not being content beneath others, feeling that perhaps he could supplant them and contend for the post of hamlet chief…

The appointment and dismissal of these three minor clerks in the hamlet depended on two things: first, whether one had connections in the township; second, whether one had sufficient wealth and prestige within the hamlet. If the ranked men of the hamlet all went to the township to recommend someone as hamlet chief, then a change of personnel was not impossible. Thus, the Hei Fu household, which possessed two First Grade men and bore a grudge against the hamlet chief, was naturally one the hamlet gatekeeper would strive his utmost to win over.

"A tiny, piss-ant little place, and it can still stage a Romance of the Three Kingdoms?"

After discerning the hamlet gatekeeper's thoughts, Hei Fu found it somewhat amusing. Yet, recalling the several village committee elections he had witnessed firsthand in his previous life, the smile faded.

Many villages in the new century were likewise palm-sized places, a hundred-some households, yet a tiny village committee election could conjure up the grand spectacle of a U. S. presidential election. Each faction vied in novelty and splendor — truly a sight to behold, and it had genuinely broadened his horizons…

On this matter, Hei Fu could only offer one snide remark…

"A small temple breeds a mighty demon wind; a shallow pond teems with many turtles!"

But right now, Hei Fu had absolutely no desire to bother with these petty affairs. He had his own proper business to worry about.

…

Day after day, the eleventh month was about to pass, and the first day of the twelfth month drew nearer and nearer. Hei Fu's legal question-and-answer training at Yan Zheng's home also grew deeper and deeper.

By this time, he had also begun to feel grateful for his respectful attitude toward Yan Zheng, for within these statutory provisions there were indeed quite a few little traps. Merely memorizing the original text without anyone to guide him, he might very well have fallen right into them.

For example, the Statute on Theft, when addressing the crime of picking locks and prying doors, simply wrote one line: "Prying the lock-bolt (yuè) shall be punishable by redemption of tattooing." Yet in actual application, there were many different ways to judge it:

If the purpose of prying the door lock was theft, and one left before managing to pry it open, or was captured before prying it open, it was still counted as a crime, and in all cases punishable by redemption of tattooing.

If the purpose of prying the door bolt was not theft, only successfully opening it counted as prying; failing to open it was punishable by a fine of two suits of armor…

For completed offenses, there was nothing more to say. If it was an attempt, then whether the offender possessed the subjective intent — the "desire" — would become the standard for sentencing.

Although Heifu never did figure it out — what exactly is someone after when they pick another person's lock, if not to steal? Could it be they're just dropping in to read your water meter?

In any case, as the question-and-answer drills went on, Heifu gradually grew familiar with these statutes, no longer limited to merely reciting the original text. His understanding of Qin laws and ordinances also ceased to be confined to the two words "harsh and severe."

Yan Zheng, as a veteran clerk, had his own interpretation of this.

He said: in a king's governance, nothing is more urgent than dealing with bandits and villains. What are bandits and villains? Stealing goods is called banditry; harming the good is called villainy.

The Qin Code treats bandits and villains with extreme gravity, and its punishments are exceedingly cruel. It is true that harsh laws must be applied in chaotic times, but the effect is undeniable.

In the inner commanderies and counties, murder and robbery have gradually diminished, even vanished. Every night in every village within a hundred li is as tranquil as familiar sleep; even the barking of dogs sounds so heavenly and languid. If such a life could spread across all the Nine Provinces under heaven, that would be the greatest king's governance of all.

Heifu nodded in agreement. In this day and age, the common folk's understanding of a peaceful era was just that simple — no need for grandeur, nor much luxury.

Of course, if Qin's land taxes were a little lighter, and its corvée labor a little less, that would be even better.

But Heifu knew that was impossible. Their king was a man of immense desire; even after the realm was unified, many great projects and distant expeditions would still be launched one after another. The land taxes could not be light; the corvée labor would only grow heavier and heavier — until that one roar at Daze Village shattered this realm to pieces…

But those things were still far away from Heifu. In success, one benefits the whole world; in hardship, one cultivates oneself alone. For now, he was still at the stage of merely cultivating his own household.

At last, by the end of the month, Heifu had also reached the standard to graduate. Yan Zheng said that with his current proficiency in the laws and ordinances, he was more than qualified to serve as a civil clerk in the county.

"Master, I, Heifu, will never forget your kindness."

Inside the study of the Yan residence, Heifu once again bowed his head low in a deep salute, appearing overwhelmed with gratitude toward Yan Zheng.

Though Yan Zheng was a bit snobbish, he was actually not a bad person. These days, he had taught with sincere dedication. As for the matter of his initial arrogance and later deference on the first day, Heifu would simply pretend it had never happened.

At the same time, he also asked about something he had kept buried in his heart for a long time but had never voiced.

"Dare I ask, Master: if someone were to present to the authorities a certain implement that could make rice-pounding twice as effective with half the effort, would it count as a meritorious deed, and would there be a reward?"

(End of chapter)