Chapter 433: The Yinzhou Uprising

Autumn, the season of harvest, should have been filled with the joy and happiness of reaping.

But in Yinzhou, whether Han farming households working the land or Uyghurs roaming with their herds, everyone felt a weight pressing on their hearts.

Because after Yinzhou's Chief Administrator Chen Huiyao was stripped of his tax-collecting authority, the taxes in Yinzhou had grown heavier and heavier.

This is not to say Chen Huiyao was some great benefactor, but at least the Chen family were Yinzhou locals, and Chen Huiyao understood the principle of taking from a stream without draining it dry; they had kept the tax burden at a tolerable level.

But ever since the trade route opened and the Pugu clan's kinsmen from Gaochang set their sights on Yinzhou, everything had changed.

These kinsmen were not Yinzhou locals. Every single one who came to Yinzhou to collect taxes had, without exception, paid a large sum to buy a tax-farming quota.

They first had to fulfill the quota of the tax contract; only the surplus was their own.

Moreover, coming to Yinzhou meant snatching food from the mouths of local powers like the Chen family, so the bribes needed to grease the various high officials who held real power in the khaganate could not be skimped on either.

And to force the people of Yinzhou to pay up, they inevitably had to keep a number of tax enforcers and hired thugs.

By this point, anyone capable of paying large amounts of tax — whether the headman of a small local tribe or a traveling merchant — had armed force of their own. If you did not keep plenty of thugs, you could forget about collecting anything.

So before a single coin of tax was collected, the expenses had already piled up like an ocean. On top of that, every tax official served a fixed term, and whether the next term would still be yours was entirely unknown.

Therefore, every tax official who took office racked his brains to invent new levies and endless pretexts.

Especially in a harvest season like this, when everyone had a little something in hand, it was the prime time for tax officials to plunder frantically.

And so it was that a small tribal headman called Long Beard was driving his hundred-odd sheep toward Yinzhou city.

With the autumn harvest underway, it was also a good season for selling sheep, and the tax officials of Yinzhou city had spotted these "fat sheep" from far off.

But they were no fools; they had a clear sense of whom they could fleece ruthlessly and with whom they had to show a little restraint.

For a small headman like this, the tax had to be collected at a somewhat more reasonable rate.

First, there was no need to provoke public fury. Second, these headmen all carried knives at their waists; if one was angered and you happened to get stabbed, would that not be a wretched way to die?

So the tax official had originally planned to levy the tax at twenty wen per sheep.

In truth, that was already not a small sum.

At the current price of sheep, reckoning by a forty-jin animal, one sheep in the Eastern Capital cost about four strings of cash — that is, four thousand wen.

But that was in the Eastern Capital, where few people raised sheep.

By the time you reached Guanzhong, one was worth only about two thousand wen.

By the time you reached Liangzhou, the price dropped sharply, because the Liang kingdom's Hexi, Longyou, Lingwu, Ningbian, and Xiasui were all major sheep-producing regions, so one sheep cost only a little over four hundred wen.

In Gaochang it was cheaper still, because Gaochang lay far from Hexi, cut off by the Moheyan Desert, and its own population was small; the sheep could only be consumed internally.

One sheep was worth a mere two hundred and ten or twenty wen, so collecting twenty wen amounted to a tax of one-tenth.

By later standards that was not high, but in this age it was different.

Because sheep were not certain to sell; preserving them fresh was inconvenient, and you could not slaughter them and stockpile the meat. A long journey generally made sheep lose weight, and these tax collectors were not levying a tax on sheep sold — they were collecting a city-gate tax.

Whether you sold them or not, as soon as you went out and wanted to come back in — sorry, pay the tax again. Sometimes after one or two round trips, what was the damn point of selling sheep at all?

Long Beard had no ready cash. In fact, for people of this age, especially in Gaochang, it was normal for ordinary folk to have no money on hand; they generally used fine white cotton cloth and other high-value fabrics in place of money.

So Long Beard planned to sell a dozen or so sheep just outside the city gate, scrape together the tax money, and then enter the city.

But his "luck" was excellent. Chen Tingxiao, with several brothers of his clan, had been waiting for days in chain mail under their clothes, sharp blades hidden on them, and had finally found such a suitable tool of a man. How could they let him pay the tax?

So, right under the tax collectors' noses, Chen Tingxiao signaled several of his younger cousins to close in. In a few quick moves they settled on a price and bought all one hundred and thirty of Long Beard's sheep in a single transaction.

However, perhaps their voices were a little too loud; even the soldiers on the city wall could hear every word of their bargaining, let alone the tax collectors in the gate passage.

The tax collectors acting as enforcers surrounded them, extremely displeased. Selling one or two outside the city was no matter, but if all of them were sold, what would they collect tax on?

Long Beard was so delighted he could hardly tell north from south. In one stroke he had saved twenty-six hundred wen in taxes, and more importantly, the deal had gone so smoothly that he would not have to wait several days inside Yinzhou city.

But the next moment, the lead tax collector grabbed him by the arm.

Long Beard's face changed, but he quickly sized up the balance of force between the two sides: he had only three men, while the other side had six. It was only the price of ten sheep. Though it pained him, Long Beard was ready to swallow his anger and back down.

But just then, Chen Tingjie, a younger cousin of Chen Tingxiao's who was posing as a sheep buyer, spoke up with a puzzled look.

"How come this tax of yours has gone up again? A few days ago, when people from the White Sparrow tribe of Liugu Water came to sell sheep, you only charged five wen per sheep?"

Long Beard's face changed again. He lived right at Liugu Water, and the White Sparrow tribe was not far from them. The two sides were roughly equal in strength, both medium-sized tribes of a few hundred people.

Then why should the people of Liugu Water pay only five wen per sheep while he had to pay twenty? Did they look down on him?

At that thought, Long Beard glared at the lead tax collector and reached out to snatch back the white cotton cloth he had just handed over as tax payment.

That was two bolts of fine white cotton cloth, enough to make a set of clothes for his wife and daughter. Their clothes had long been worn and tattered, and they had always been reluctant to replace them.

As Long Beard reached out to grab it, the thugs beside the lead tax collector swarmed forward and shoved him away in a couple of moves.

The lead tax collector jabbed his finger at Chen Tingjie. This Chen Tingjie spent most of his time in the Hami Basin and rarely came to Yinzhou city, so the tax collector was not familiar with him.

"Where did this wild dog come from? Since when has Yinzhou city ever collected only five wen per sheep? One more word of nonsense and I'll beat you to death!"

Chen Tingjie had been afraid he would not make a move. Putting on the look of a hotheaded fool, he stuck out his neck, his face flushing red, and bellowed.

"It was five wen! I watched you collect it with my own eyes — five wen per sheep! Even if you beat me to death, it was still five wen!"

The thugs who had shoved Long Beard aside saw how tactless Chen Tingjie was being and surged forward to seize him.

Chen Tingjie shrank back into the crowd, but his mouth did not let up in the slightest, and his shouts of "five wen per sheep" rang out to the heavens.

There were quite a few people outside the city waiting to enter and sell sheep. When the crowd heard that the tax was only five wen, they all began clamoring.

Many of them actually knew Chen Tingjie was very likely mistaken, but why would they expose it?

If this could get the tax lowered to five wen, everyone would benefit!

Pushing and shoving, all of them had accumulated no small amount of rage at these tax collectors' bone-scraping extortion.

Now, seeing someone making a scene, and swept up by mob mentality, the crowd poured out all their usual grievances.

The tax collectors who had come from the gate passage numbered only six, and in an instant they were swallowed up in a sea of at least a hundred people, on the verge of being submerged.

By now, some of those in front who had already paid their taxes heard the noise and turned back, adding their voices to the uproar.

Seeing the crowd gradually descending into chaos, Long Beard relied on his long arms and legs, lunged forward in one stride, seized the white cotton cloth that the tax collectors had taken, and snatched it back into his hands.

The tax clerk was furious, but before he could make a move, someone dressed almost exactly like him suddenly appeared beside him, drew a short blade, and hacked at Long Beard's back, shouting loudly as he did.

"Daring to seize the Adjudication Officer's white cotton cloth! Take my blade!"

With a wet squelch, blood flashed across Long Beard's back. He let out a shriek and instinctively ran forward.

The surrounding crowd exploded with a roar. No one had imagined these tax clerks would dare use blades directly.

For a moment, the timid ones wanted to flee at once, while those who had long nursed grievances wanted to press forward.

The head tax clerk also sensed something was off, because ordinarily they would never use blades directly — they usually used clubs and staves.

And if they did use blades, it would be a thrust, not this sort of pointless slashing.

The biggest problem was: this man — he did not recognize him!

He was just about to order his men to seize him when, without warning, the fellow who had just slashed Long Beard suddenly accelerated and closed in on him.

Before the head tax clerk could react, the short blade stabbed into his waist. This time there was no chopping — it was a highly practiced thrust.

The head tax clerk screamed. The smell of blood began to spread, and the crowd's taut nerves were instantly stretched to the breaking point.

A few sharp-eyed men saw this maneuver, but nearly all pretended they had not.

The tax clerks and their hired thugs at the gate tunnel numbered a full twenty or thirty men. Hearing the head tax clerk's scream, they came running, blades and spears in hand.

Chen Tingjie, in the crowd, suddenly shouted, "The tax officers are going to kill people! The tax officers are coming to kill people!"

At that moment, on the city wall, a squad of fully armed soldiers suddenly appeared. The officer in command pointed his hengdao saber down at the people below, the keen edge flashing with dazzling sunlight.

"You insolent rabble, daring to resist taxation! We will slaughter every last one of you!"

The absurd side of it appeared: the Yizhou tax officers had said nothing about killing, yet the Yizhou garrison troops — whose tax-collecting authority the tax officers had seized — were the ones bellowing that they would kill their own fellow townsmen.

But the weeping, wailing crowd below had no time to sort that out. They turned and made to run.

Long Beard had also taken a cut, but it had merely split the skin. It looked terrifying, all bloody, but in truth the wound was not serious.

He too wanted to flee at once. The twenty-odd bolts of silk cloth from selling his sheep were all slung over his shoulders.

"Long Beard, run! Run! Otherwise these tax officers will surely call in the troops to kill your whole family."

A shout came from somewhere, so clear it reached Long Beard's ears, and Long Beard froze on the spot.

Run? Where could he run? In that instant, Long Beard seemed to see his clansmen slaughtered, his wife and daughters dragged away.

"Fuck your mother! I sell a sheep and you tax it. I buy a horse and you tax that too. Now I come into the city to see someone, and you still want to tax me. I'll fight you to the death!"

Just as Long Beard stood at a loss, a young man in the crowd suddenly erupted.

He drew a short blade from his waist and charged at the tax clerks, quickly stabbing one to the ground.

"Why not kill them all right now? Kill them, and who will know who you are?"

Another shout — this one directed at Long Beard. It was the very Tang man who had bought his sheep.

In an instant, Long Beard felt his whole body clear and open. Without a second thought, he drew the short blade at his waist, handed the silk cloth to a clansman to watch, and turned back to attack.

This Long Beard was originally a minor tribal headman, and many people around knew him.

Once they saw that even Long Beard had risen up, and that these tax clerks did not seem to be much of a fighting force, and with people in the crowd constantly shouting to kill the tax clerks, the several hundred commoners who had been about to flee immediately began to think differently.

For three or four years they had suffered endless oppression from the tax clerks. For a minor tribal headman like Long Beard, only a modest tax was collected, but for the ordinary common folk, it was practically carving the flesh from their bones.

Now, seeing someone take the lead, many turned around and charged back to attack.

The tax clerks at Yizhou's east gate numbered only about twenty. Though they had spears and staves ready, how could they be a match for several hundred furious commoners?

What was more, the Chen brothers in the crowd had concealed sharp blades, and several of the sturdier tax-clerk thugs were dealt with by them.

And the officer who had just been bellowing from the wall about slaughtering them all — when he saw the people rise in revolt, he and his men, to everyone's surprise, scattered in a flash. This only further inflamed the crowd's excitement.

Soon the tax clerks at the east gate were all hacked into pulp. Just as Long Beard and the others were laughing heartily, another voice rang out.

"When cutting weeds, remove the roots; when killing, finish them all. Better to kill every tax officer in the city, then invite Commander Chen to come out and take charge of the situation!"

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