Chapter 461: Mohism, the Fubing System, and the Essentials of the Four Seasons

It had been nearly half a year since he had last had a proper, in-depth talk with Cao Shisi, Cao Yanming. Ever since this fellow had gone down the path of research, he had become more and more of a shut-in.

After exchanging only a few words, he would go off and do his own thing, completely ignoring everyone else, and sometimes he would even get quite irritable.

Still, in front of Zhang Zhao, Cao Yanming did not quite dare to put on the airs of a transcendent recluse.

Because in the past, whenever he had drifted off a few times, Zhang Zhao had always ended up reining him in until he was thoroughly obedient.

But even so, after saying only a few words to Zhang Zhao, Cao Yanming, seated in his chair, looked as though he were sitting on a cactus, his whole body radiating discomfort.

Zhang Zhao therefore had no choice but to ask this old friend to take him to see the Imperial Academy.

The state of Liang had one very peculiar feature: within the Imperial Academy, the Ministry of Works held a great deal of say.

Because apart from studying the classics and statecraft, the Imperial Academy also housed a Mohist School of Ingenuity, which included the study of mathematics.

Its main focus was on techniques in smelting and mining, and there was even dedicated research funding for how to produce good coke.

The Chancellor of the Imperial Academy, Liu Na — who was also Liu Tao's father — accompanied Zhang Zhao as well. He looked at Cao Yanming with unconcealed envy and said with a chuckle,

"Within the Imperial Academy nowadays, there is already a saying: 'the poor study letters, the rich study Mohism.' Every year, the scholarship for those few prodigies who master the classics is only thirty strings of cash, and people still fight tooth and nail over it.

But those in the engineering track who research coke-burning can get over a hundred strings in scholarship money every year, and the smelting track can even reach five hundred strings."

Zhang Zhao also chuckled. The whole point was to make you all envious and resentful.

Do we still need talent for studying the classics and researching Confucian learning and such?

Of course we do! Literature and philosophy absolutely rank among the most important disciplines in human productive activity.

But there is no need for all of society to send every clever person off to study literature and philosophy.

On the contrary, it is the engineering disciplines — which Zhang Zhao had wrapped in the skin of Mohist doctrine — that need large numbers of talented people.

"All learning under heaven, for all its variations, returns to one source. As long as one has a clever mind, one may study the classics today, and study Mohism tomorrow.

Now that the realm is not yet settled, the warriors of my Great Liang need more steel and gunpowder to pacify the land, so naturally we should give a bit more reward to the Mohists."

"The Heavenly King's instruction is correct! This minister teaches the students the same way in his daily work.

Whether Confucian, Legalist, or Mohist, all are the learning of scholars. If one has the intelligence for it, one can perfectly well study them all at once."

The Confucianism of this era did not actually reject the Legalists, Mohists, and the rest, but there was one precondition: those schools of thought all had to express themselves through the skin of Confucian learning.

At the same time, Liu Na was no pedantic old man; on the contrary, he was very good at reading Zhang Zhao's mind.

As a result, the overall atmosphere of the Imperial Academy was quite good, and it was basically moving forward in the direction Zhang Zhao wanted.

Chatting and laughing along the way, the group soon arrived at the School of Ingenuity within the Imperial Academy.

At present, the steel-smelting work led by Cao Yanming had still achieved no small breakthrough: high-carbon steel, low-carbon steel, and alloy steel had all been produced in some primitive versions.

If placed in a later age, it would certainly be a textbook example of waste and pollution, and the input and output would not be proportional.

But in this era, although the costs were also great, it was all worth it.

Because it was only after Zhang Zhao came to this era that he learned the greatest reason for the decline of the fubing system was not land annexation at all.

Because what were the fubing of the High Tang? They were men whose families, going back several generations, had all been fierce warriors cutting people down on the battlefield — living kings of hell born solely for killing.

Imagine this: you are a noble, and you want to annex a family's land, but this fellow is a fubing soldier, and his father was also an old fubing soldier.

Father and son, both built like oxen, put on armor and take up sharp blades, and ten or so ordinary men cannot get near them.

Their archery is excellent too; with one bow they can casually take out several of your men.

And they are not just a single household. Every one of these fubing soldiers has close superiors, comrades-in-arms, and sworn brothers. Friendships forged in blood and fire are especially firm.

Moreover, any fubing soldier has something of a wandering knight's temper. For the sake of loyalty, they truly dare to kill a man in the street. Offend one, and you have offended a whole group.

In this era there is no surveillance, and no facial recognition. Sending people to annex the land of such a household is utterly useless.

Because they dare to kill your men outright in the countryside, and ordinary officials and runners do not dare provoke them at all.

If truly angered, they even dare to cover their faces at night, charge into your house, and cut you down with a single stroke.

With so many better things to do, provoking a household like that is a complete and utter mismatch between investment and return.

Therefore, ordinary great clans would never annex such a thorn in their side. There were plenty of people to exploit, so why invite trouble?

So how, in the end, were the fubing still annexed?

That has to start with that spendthrift woman, Wu Zetian.

Because although the fubing sounded glorious, their foundation was that they were responsible for their own profits and losses.

This model had one precondition: they could not lose too many wars, nor lose too badly. Once defeats piled up, the fubing would go bankrupt from their losses.

Most fatally, after a fubing soldier died in battle, if the army was defeated, his armor basically could not be recovered.

For a fubing soldier, the importance of a suit of armor could not be overstated. Often it took father and son, through many bloody battles over two generations, to accumulate a single suit of armor.

Once it was lost, the blow was fatal. The father died in battle, the armor did not come back, and the son had no armor.

Without armor, what kind of damn fubing are you? How are you supposed to obtain a stable income?

So the son could only pawn the family's fields, hoping to outfit himself with a suit of armor and go risk his life on the battlefield.

Then, as soon as he reached the battlefield, he ran into another great defeat. Oh no! The son died in battle too, the armor was gone again, and that was it! Directly bankrupt.

Even if he did not die in battle, if the war was not won, there was no plunder and no reward. When the pawn deadline arrived, the land was gone too.

Disheartened fubing soldiers either became bandits, died in the next battle, or sank completely into becoming tenant farmers and refugees.

That is how the fubing of the Great Tang disappeared.

Wu Zetian excelled at political struggle and was weak in military affairs, and sometimes she liked to go mad.

In her hands, the once-mighty fubing suffered defeat after defeat, and within a few years squandered the accumulated wealth of several generations.

This caused the later fubing to become no different from peasants, and the fubing system could no longer be sustained.

Among Zhang Zhao's descendants, would there appear an emperor like Wu Zetian?

That was entirely possible. If worse came to worst, a descendant with Wu Zetian's abilities might even count as a fairly decent enlightened ruler.

Therefore Zhang Zhao kept his eyes fixed on the quality and output of steel. No matter how much money it cost, he had to get the stuff produced and drive the cost down.

Only in this way could the price of armor be brought down. If it could be lowered to the cost of the Ming dynasty, the fubing system — even if it could not be maintained forever — could at least be kept going for several more decades, perhaps even a century.

Do not underestimate that span of time. To keep it going that much longer is of tremendous importance to a dynasty, and even to the nation itself.

And is it actually difficult to smelt high-carbon steel and low-carbon steel? In truth, it is not difficult at all, because in scientific research, the most important thing is direction.

As long as the direction is not wrong, thousands or even tens of thousands of experiments and improvements will eventually find a way to solve the problem. This is precisely why Zhang Zhao has kept pouring money into it.

Because although he does not know the specific method, he does know the general direction.

And he is the only one willing to pour such vast wealth into this. Zhang Zhao's descendants will surely never have his resolve or his vision.

So Zhang Zhao has decided to complete this foundational work himself.

"This time, we may need to draw in large numbers of refugees from the Central Plains into our Great Liang. Fourteen, you must assist Old Liu in attracting more talent into the Imperial Academy, and especially guide them toward studying the ingenious crafts of the Mohists."

In wartime, after all, the greatest resources must be spent on the war itself.

The two men raised no objections. Liu Na even said he would send several of the sharpest minds in the Imperial Academy to study the ingenious crafts of the Mohists.

Leaving the Imperial Academy, Zhang Zhao returned to the palace and summoned his officials to deliberate.

The matter of accepting refugees had been settled, but drawing refugees to travel far to Hexi and Longyou was no simple affair.

A journey of several hundred to a thousand li, a migration of at least a hundred thousand people — supply points would have to be set up along the route in advance, officials in every locality would have to work in concert, and officials would also have to be sent along the road to manage the people, with soldiers to maintain order.

In addition, Zhang Zhao himself still had to relocate the Long family of Suzhou, the Yellow-Head Uyghurs of southern Ganzhou, and a portion of the Lingzhou Tangut — that was again a scale of nearly a hundred thousand people.

There was truly no small amount to be done; nearly every official in the realm would have to be set in motion. It seemed that marching on Guanzhong this year was probably no longer realistic.

Huazhou — the Huazhou District of Shaanxi in later times — was at this time a military prefecture with a Military Governor, administering three counties: Zheng County, Huayin, and Xiagui. The prefectural seat lay within Zheng County.

West of Zheng County ran a small river called the Yuxian River, flowing from south to north into the Wei River.

Beside the Yuxian River stood a small town, likewise named Yuxian Town.

As the eastern gate of Chang'an, Hua County in the High Tang had been a gathering place for the estates of high officials and nobles.

Yuxian Town was much the same. In the days when the Guanzhong soil was rich and fertile, Yuxian Town, with its thousand li of fertile fields, had been a place of the very first rank of prosperity.

Yuxian Town at present, though no longer so prosperous, still counted as decent enough in such chaotic times.

Most of the town's people bore the surname Han, and were descended from the Han clan of Changli — the descendants of Chancellor Han Xiu and his brothers from the Kaiyuan era.

For this place had once been the estate of Han Xiu.

But nearly two hundred years had passed since Han Xiu's time, and the renown of this Duke Wenzhong could naturally no longer shelter his descendants, who had sunk to the status of commoners.

At the end of last year, Yuxian Town first suffered a great flood in winter, and then a locust plague at the start of spring.

But a great clan like the Han, which survived by banding together, was better able to withstand disaster than ordinary commoners.

Under the direction of their clan head, the clansmen built up the river embankments and kept the Yuxian River from overflowing, then organized themselves and successfully held off the locust onslaught.

Thus, even in a year of great disaster, Yuxian Town still managed to secure seventy percent of its usual grain yield.

It was indeed somewhat low, but mixed with wild greens and even grass roots, it was enough to scrape through the great disaster.

In truth, that the Han clan and all of Yuxian Town could achieve such a state was owed to one man: the Han clan head, Han E.

Han E was fifty-eight this year. In these times, passing sixty was already considered long-lived.

But Han E was extremely skilled at nurturing his health. Nearly sixty, he looked younger than some forty-year-old farmers.

And though he was somewhat fond of divination, choosing auspicious days, and warding off calamities, he had read widely in agricultural texts, gathered miscellaneous knowledge, and excelled at drawing on the strengths of many schools — he was extraordinarily skilled in agronomy.

Ah — though in this age, knowing divination, choosing auspicious days, and warding off disasters was probably more respected than scholarship itself.

It was precisely through this respected prestige that Han E had been able to promote in Yuxian Town his techniques of fruit-tree grafting, and the interplanting of tea and hemp, broomcorn and millet, alfalfa and wheat.

Throughout Yuxian Town, per-mu grain yields were twenty to thirty percent higher than the surrounding area. That was the true capital that allowed them to withstand this great disaster.

Han E was at that moment brewing tea. Ever since Zhang Zhao had introduced the new craft of pan-roasting and processing tea, the old tea soup boiled with scallions, ginger, tangerine peel, and mutton fat had fallen out of fashion.

The literati favored plain tea; the military men favored salted or sweetened milk tea blended with butter.

Han E drank those too on occasion, but in his heart he still preferred the tea soup he had drunk for decades. He liked that complex blend of spices, animal fat, tangerine peel, and other fruity aromas.

Drawing a deep breath of that beloved fragrance, Han E weighed his words and began carefully writing on a sheet of yellow paper.

He was compiling a book — a work collecting and arranging his own insights into agronomy.

Since Jia Sixie, Grand Warden of Gaoyang in the Northern Wei, had completed the great agronomic work Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People, four hundred years had passed without another work of its kind appearing.

Han E faintly felt that the techniques he had summarized — planting, brewing, grafting, medicinal cultivation, mushroom cultivation, and extracting starch from lotus root, lotus, foxnut, water chestnut, and the like — ought to be of real use.

At that thought, Han E hurriedly changed to a fresh sheet of paper and began writing and sketching.

For he had recently discovered that wheat bran could be used to brew bran-fermented beans. Though not pleasant to eat, it was cheap and saved grain — in chaotic times, the best thing for filling the belly.

He had also discovered that when making sauce, if wheat and beans were combined into a dry sauce mash, and the liquid of salted fermented beans was fermented and boiled down, one could obtain, without using meat, a sauce closely resembling meat paste — extraordinarily savory.

If Zhang Zhao were here, he would know that this sauce Han E had worked out was none other than the common seasoning of later ages: soy sauce.

Though the sauce Han E had produced was turbid and often still contained large amounts of fermented-bean residue, it was indeed soy sauce.

Brewing soy sauce without meat was a matter of tremendous cost savings.

The more Han E wrote, the more excited he grew. He paced about the room, preparing to name his agricultural book Essentials of the Four Seasons.

Of course he was excited. For a Chinese, having a work passed down to posterity is a matter of supreme glory.

But Han E had not written much before noise and wailing arose from outside the house.

In such a year of great disaster, the highly vigilant Han E immediately dropped his brush and hurried out the door.

Though Yuxian Town was a small town, it had a wall. It could only be called an earthen wall, just over a meter high, but it still served to keep out wild beasts and even defend against bandits.

By the time Han E arrived, the able-bodied men of the Han clan and the other families of Yuxian Town had already mounted the earthen wall.

There were no iron spears, but each man had a carefully sharpened wooden spear. There were only a few true war bows, but no shortage of hunting bows.

Moreover, the war bows were in the hands of several skilled archers among the able-bodied men, which made them quite formidable.

The wailing came from a crowd of refugees who looked utterly ragged. They numbered in the hundreds, moving without any speed at all, many of them looking as though they might collapse at any moment.

Several hundred people, so deathly still, came toward Yuxian Town with the air of those nearing their end, as if they were not people at all, but merely masses of black cloud drifting this way.

The able-bodied men of Yuxian Town were not the least bit flustered, for they had already driven off three waves of refugees who had come begging for food before this.

"Fourth Brother, have someone prepare fifty flatbreads, and boil some hot water too. Fifth Brother, shout a couple of times and call out whoever's in charge inside." Han E handled things methodically, clearly experienced.

The refugees had their own way of surviving. They would generally pick a direction and keep moving, eating everything edible along the way—which, of course, included the grain stored in other people's homes.

Then the households whose grain had been eaten would themselves become new members of the refugee horde.

They would keep moving, like locusts, the crowd swelling ever larger as it went. When there was truly nothing left to eat, exchanging children to eat became the norm.

In the end, either everyone found a place with food and clothing and survived the famine,

or the authorities provided relief and they barely clung to life,

or, after the old and weak had been winnowed out, they turned into rebels and were then wiped out.

Generally speaking, the third possibility was the norm.

However, for a few hundred famine victims, a town like Yuxian, with over a hundred able-bodied men and earthen walls, would not be so easy to gnaw through.

Of course, the townsfolk also had no desire to fight them to the death. Giving them a little food would both give them the strength to move on to the next place and keep them from being full enough to have the energy to cause havoc everywhere.

And even in a refugee gang like this, there was still a leader.

The fifty flatbreads Han E offered—made from a little bean and millet flour mixed with a large amount of wild greens—were meant for the refugees.

But the leader among them could not be fobbed off with wild-greens flatbreads. He had to be given proper wheat flatbreads, and perhaps even some wine and meat.

"Which young lord below speaks for you all? The Han family of Yuxian Town sends its regards. Please come out and talk."

Han Wulang, displeased at heart, shouted at the top of his lungs. Wild-greens flatbreads they might be, but they were still flatbreads. Especially in this time of famine, he ached at the thought of even one being taken away.

But after he shouted a few times, the several hundred refugees remained deathly silent. Only a few occasionally raised their heads for a glance, and their forward steps did not stop.

Sensing something amiss, Han Silang quickly took the longbow from his back. He drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and loosed it like a shooting star.

The arrow was not aimed at anyone, but struck into the ground, its fletching still quivering faintly, like a cobra endlessly shaking its tail.

After loosing the arrow, Han Silang on the wall shouted loudly.

"Stop right there! Anyone who crosses this arrow—we won't be polite."

As he loosed the arrow, the able-bodied men of Yuxian Town on the earthen wall all took up their spears and bows, and the atmosphere turned grim and deadly.

Under normal circumstances, if the men on the wall shot an arrow as a warning, the remaining refugees would generally stop.

Because although they were more numerous, they had been starving the whole way, and if it truly came to a fight, they certainly could not fight.

They could only use the method of not sparing lives to coerce the people on the wall into handing over a little grain.

So Han E on the wall, seeing Han Silang loose the arrow, assumed the matter was settled, and he continued shouting loudly.

"Brothers from afar, Yuxian Town's land is barren, and we still have to feed several hundred able-bodied men. We truly have no surplus grain. At most, we can spare fifty flatbreads.

I ask whoever can speak to step forward, take the flatbreads, and go elsewhere to find food. But if you try to force your way in, the hundred-odd bows we have here don't have eyes!"

Only after Han E finished speaking did the refugees below the wall finally react.

But it was not the sensible taking of the goods and leaving that the people of Yuxian Town had imagined. Instead, from among the deathly silent refugees, a tall, burly man sneered coldly and suddenly stood up.

The instant he stood, a long-tipped bow suddenly appeared in the burly man's hands. He drew it with both arms and shot straight at Han E on the earthen wall.

And before the tall man shot, Han Silang, who was closest to them, immediately noticed something wrong.

Because around this man were all strong, powerful-looking men. They seemed barely able to lift their feet, staggering and stumbling, but in fact their faces showed no signs of hunger—they were clearly faking it.

These were not refugees! These were soldiers!

Han Silang, who had spent several years in the Jinchang Army in Chang'an, quickly made his judgment. Then he saw the tall man bend his bow and shoot at the clan elder and third uncle, Han E.

Han Silang let out a howl and, as if aided by the gods, hurled himself forward, knocking Han E to the ground with extreme peril just before the arrow struck.

"Mother-fucking thieves, and some of them are quick-handed too!" The tall, burly man snorted coldly, extremely displeased.

They had walked over ten li disguised as refugees, finally infiltrating to the outskirts of Yuxian Town, and had with difficulty identified the leader of the townsfolk—only to miss their shot.

It was only then that the people on Yuxian Town's earthen wall realized that around this archer, dozens of burly men had already gathered.

Beneath their tattered clothes, they were faintly and indistinctly wearing what looked like armor, and in their hands they held standard-issue hengdao sabers.

"Bandits! They're bandits from Yaozhou!" Han Silang shouted, his face filled with the terror of doomsday come.

In his heart, he knew that the so-called Yaozhou bandits were fake. They were yabing guards of the Huazhou Zhenguo Army, come specifically to rob the grain of wealthy estates.

As the local garrison troops, the Zhenguo Army soldiers could not openly come to rob, but pretending to be bandits was still possible.

Seeing both sides using bows and arrows, the genuine refugees let out wails and, with a sudden burst of their last strength, scattered and fled in all directions.

They had just been herded toward Yuxian Town to serve as cover for the armored soldiers behind them.

Below the earthen wall, the tall, burly man pulled out a large chunk of something black and had his men light it. It was wolf smoke.

Then, the "bandits" wearing ring-linked armor and oxhide armor raised their bows one after another and shot at the earthen wall.

The able-bodied men of Yuxian Town had no other choice but to resist desperately with wooden spears and hunting bows.

A bloody battle erupted with sudden violence.

And in the distance, another plume of wolf smoke was lit. Han E's face went deathly pale—this meant the bandits were not just the twenty or thirty men now appearing.

The few dozen who had come this time had intended to use the refugees as cover for a surprise attack. Now that the surprise attack had failed, they would storm the town directly.

"Fourth Brother! Mount a horse quickly, take a detour to Huazhou, and find Zhao Ying, Military Governor Zhao. Beg him to send a large force to rescue us."

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