Chapter 331: The Mountain God Princess

Back in the north, Liu Chengzong's bedside reading had changed to new books. He had finished the *Zizhi Tongjian*, and the *Illustrated Record of Marvelous Machines from the Far West* had grown dog-eared from use. The set now in his hands, the *Precious Instructions of the Great Ancestor*, was a collection from the Prince of Han's library.

It was, in truth, just a book of Zhu Yuanzhang's quotations.

When reading the *Zizhi Tongjian*, Liu Chengzong could observe and learn from the lofty vantage of a later man, without much personal empathy. Yet leafing through the *Precious Instructions of the Great Ancestor*, he found himself stirred with emotion at every turn.

The first snow soon arrived at Ju'er Bay. This year was still cold, but the snowfall was not as heavy, nor the temperature so bitterly bone-chilling.

Liu Chengzong felt this had to do with the many new traces of human life at Ju'er Bay. The Marshal's Manor had planned three vertical and three horizontal streets, sixteen wards and markets, and four gruel stations outside the new city to settle the tens of thousands of commoners relocated from the coast.

What frustrated Liu Chengzong was that their training system always seemed to lag behind. The academy at Ju'er Bay had with great difficulty taught over four hundred students proficient in both Han and Tibetan languages, when suddenly the Mongolian language became the Marshal's Manor's greatest gap in linguistic talent.

Plans can never keep pace with change.

Fortunately, Mongolian was hardly a lost art within the Marshal's Manor's army. Many serving officers knew at least a little, especially in his guard unit — aside from Fan Sanlang, everyone had some grasp of the skill.

For Liu Chengzong, this was not entirely a good thing. The guards were all junior officers awaiting promotion, transferred into the guard unit only because they had yet to establish a proper wartime advancement system.

That all these men knew Mongolian meant that even now, promotions in the army still favored the frontier forces. Commanders and soldiers of peasant-army origin found it hard to gain an edge in the competition for military merit.

It was even quite likely that a man had been a peasant soldier when he joined Liu Chengzong, but had been a frontier soldier before becoming a peasant soldier.

It was like survivor bias. The officers and soldiers who distinguished themselves from the peasant army were often exceedingly eager to learn, and because of that eagerness, they were assigned to work beyond purely military duties.

Take Heaven-Scraping Monkey, for instance. Liu Jiusi, the Heaven-Scraping Monkey, was not now serving as a troop commander. Instead, because he had learned the Tibetan language and understood military affairs, his father Liu Xiangyu had dispatched him to Sun-Moon Mountain to assist the tribal chief Gongbu Duoji in governing the seven tribes, making him the Marshal's Manor's troop-training officer stationed at Sun-Moon Mountain.

But this did not mean that the earliest ally, Heaven-Scraping Monkey, had been sidelined. Quite the opposite — Sun-Moon Mountain was of vital importance to the Marshal's Manor, for it was the only developed iron and coal mountain within Xining Prefecture that lay under their control.

Xining Prefecture's iron ore came primarily from three sources.

The first was the output of the Northern Mountain Ironworks in Xining Garrison. Originally under the imperial court and later turned to civilian operation, it had two blast furnaces. There were over seventy craftsmen, including furnace officials, iron masters, apprentices, ore sorters, blacksmiths, stonemasons, carpenters, iron transporters, woodcutters, charcoal burners, and bellows operators. Iron was produced four times a month, with smelting carried out five months a year, yielding thirty thousand catties of raw and wrought iron annually.

The second source was merchants purchasing furs, who transported iron from Lintao, Gongchang, Hanzhong, and other places. The quantity per shipment varied; last year they brought over twenty thousand catties, though this year that route had already been cut off.

The third was the newly built mine at Sun-Moon Mountain. However, no blast furnace had yet been erected there. Since Liu Jiusi, the Heaven-Scraping Monkey, had taken up his post, they had been hiring laborers to dig and transporting the ore to Xining for smelting. Moreover, the number of hired laborers was very small, yielding only a little over ten thousand catties of ore per year.

Hearing this, Liu Chengzong could not help but do a mental calculation. From the Sun-Moon Mountain ironworks to Ju'er Bay was only a little over thirty li, but to mine the ore there, transport it to the Northern Mountain Ironworks, and then haul it back meant a round trip of three hundred li.

Even putting aside the fact that the Northern Mountain Ironworks' own production capacity was nearly saturated, even if it were not, the laborers' cartage fees alone would add five mace of silver to the cost of every hundred catties of wrought iron.

"Is this not sheer folly? Buying a hundred catties of wrought iron costs only two taels of silver. The laborers' wages and food alone add an extra five mace. Add in the costs and wastage of mining and smelting, and producing a thousand catties ourselves costs as much as buying two thousand."

In the front hall of the Marshal's Manor, Liu Chengzong sat in the seat of honor, clapped his hands, and asked, "What is going on?"

Producing iron on-site at the source was not some stroke of brilliance unique to Liu Chengzong; anyone understood this principle. All of the imperial court's ironworks were built directly beside the iron mountains. How had their Marshal's Manor lost this bit of wisdom?

"Couldn't afford to build it, and had no one to do it."

Liu Jiusi shook his head. "The tribal people would not take hire as miners. Building a smelting blast furnace and a cupola furnace requires a matching set of craftsmen's workshops. I discussed this matter with the Old Master. The cost was high and the output low. It would be better to wait for your return, fully seize Hehuang, and pour the expenditure into expanding the Northern Mountain Ironworks."

Liu Chengzong shook his head. "Ju'er Bay is more suitable than anywhere else. It is not merely Xining's iron that we will use — this place is also convenient for the iron and copper from the lake region. We have copper mountains to the north, and even more copper and iron mountains in the Qilian Mountains north of the sea. This is the right place. How much money and manpower would it take? Do you have an estimate?"

To put it plainly, Liu Chengzong favored this place not merely for smelting and mining. The deeper reason was his unwillingness to abandon the opportunity for outward expansion.

If the Marshal's Manor's largest arsenal were here, troops would be garrisoned around it, a large market town would form, and they would gain full control over Qinghai Lake, creating the possibility of westward expansion.

If it were not here, they would come and go, and the irrigation works and reclaimed fields, waxing and waning in turn, would gradually be abandoned with time.

In a place where Han, Tibetan, and Mongol peoples lived intermingled, the army was a necessary condition to encourage commoners to settle and reclaim land. And the relatively ample water and irrigation conditions throughout the Hehuang Valley could also, in the extreme circumstances of a heaven-sent drought, preserve for them a sliver of a chance at survival.

Just a sliver.

Even here, thinking of the cracked earth of northern Shaanxi, Liu Chengzong remained in constant fear.

Hearing Liu Chengzong's support, Liu Jiusi let out a long breath and said, "I asked Master Craftsman Shi. It requires one kiln, three cupola furnaces, one coking furnace, and one large refining furnace. At most, six hundred civilian laborers, four hundred military laborers, one hundred and fifty households of craftsmen, and seven hundred rotating apprentices. To build the ironworks would require eight thousand nine hundred and twenty-four taels of silver. Thereafter, depending on the number of craftsmen and apprentices, it would require at most eighteen thousand dan of grain for wages and provisions each year."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly. The scale exceeded his expectations, but the cost was within his predictions. He asked, "How much iron can it produce?"

Heaven-Scraping Monkey shook his head. "The figure cannot yet be set. We only know the mountain holds vast iron deposits. Iron ore is buried for over thirty li around the outcrop. If craftsmen are sufficient, we can conduct more surveys next year to learn the figure."

Having said this, he added lightly, "If calculated by furnace alone, it can produce forty-five thousand catties of raw iron and eighty thousand catties of wrought iron annually. If that is not enough, we can build more large furnaces."

Liu Chengzong shook his head. "We can start building the ironworks on this scale, but if it's not enough, I fear we won't be able to build new furnaces either."

Cost was a very important issue. Moreover, when it came to mining, cost was far from the only consideration.

Throughout the entire Ming dynasty, all manner of uprisings emerged one after another, and miners were a primary force among them.

It was not that common folk who dug mines were fond of rebellion, but that in this era, commoners who mined privately were, in all likelihood, breaking the law.

And mining offered the convenience of weapons, making it easy for such activities to evolve into mass rebellion.

Across successive dynasties, minerals such as salt, iron, gold, silver, and copper were, for the majority of the time, prohibited by the imperial court, with private mining by commoners forbidden. Those who mined privately were called "mineral outlaws," just as there was official salt and those who trafficked in private salt were called "salt outlaws."

Liu Chengzong had recently been reading Zhu Yuanzhang's quotations, which mentioned Zhu Yuanzhang's views on opening silver mines.

As early as the twentieth year of the Hongwu reign, an old officer of the Capital Guard Front, Ding Cheng, told Zhu Yuanzhang that there were silver mines in Shanzhou, Henan. They had often been mined in the Yuan dynasty and now lay abandoned, and could be mined to support the state's finances.

Zhu Yuanzhang replied that the noble man loves righteousness, while the petty man loves profit. He who loves righteousness takes benefiting the people as his heart's concern; he who loves profit makes harming the people his business.

He knew of how, in former times, when Fengcheng in Jiangxi opened mines during the Yuan dynasty, the authorities set a fixed quota for extraction, which later brought deep suffering upon the commoners of the entire prefecture.

Because the land's yield was finite. The upper layers of ore were easy to extract, but the amount of tax the commoners had to pay each year was fixed. Once the easily mined ore was exhausted, local officials, greedy for recognition, would not petition the throne on the people's behalf. This tax shortfall then had to be made up from other sources, to the point of bleeding the people dry. Even if the court had the heart to show compassion, it had no way of knowing.

Therefore, one must take this as a warning: all those who speak of profit are but thieves who harm the people.

With this guiding ideology, from the time of the Great Ancestor Emperor onward, the Ming dynasty's subsequent emperors were all extremely cautious about mining. They believed it brought little benefit to the government but caused great harm to the common people, and therefore it could not be permitted.

Yet there were always dissenters at court. Every generation had officials who advocated for mining, and private mining persisted everywhere. Typically, garrison officers controlled convicts and barbarians to work the mines, which gradually evolved into rebel armies.

This situation continued until the Wanli reign, when mining taxes and mining eunuch supervisors were instituted. From the twenty-fourth to the thirty-second year of Wanli, over eight years, at a cost of over a hundred thousand taels, they collected a hundred and ten thousand taels for the inner treasury and threw the entire realm into chaos.

Liu Chengzong took mining very seriously. In essence, it was a story of "the men of Yuan had no time to mourn themselves, and Zhu Yuanzhang mourned them; Zhu Yuanzhang mourned them, and later men did not take heed — which also makes Liu Chengzong mourn Zhu Yuanzhang's later men in turn."

Mining seemed like a business that was a hundred percent profitable, but in truth, it was not so.

Even in the era he remembered, where roads, transport, and extraction were highly developed, mining could still lose money. All the more so in his era, where production technology was relatively primitive. Even a simple look at Liu Jiusi's estimate showed that this Sun-Moon Mountain ironworks was a solidly money-losing venture.

One hundred and twenty thousand catties of raw and wrought iron had a market price of only around two thousand to four thousand taels, yet the required cost far exceeded that figure.

But the cost of mining could not be calculated so simply, especially when military affairs were involved. If an arsenal were built at Ju'er Bay, forming a supporting industry, the value of the raw materials would greatly increase.

Not to mention selling jingal muskets and heavy cannons — though of course, if he were willing, selling a cast-iron cannon for as many taels as it weighed in catties, the Mongol taijis of the Oirats would surely be very eager to come and purchase.

Even if it were merely made into large iron woks, they could still be sold at sky-high prices.

However, when it came to further expanding production, Liu Chengzong was indeed considering the issue of cost.

He asked, "Can the people of the seven tribes at Sun-Moon Mountain be recruited as civilian laborers and apprentices?"

Sky Monkey shook his head like a rattle-drum: "Impossible. They believe in the mountain god and especially oppose mining. Let alone making them dig, even if our own people go to dig, they've been attacked. Gongbu Duoji can't control them either. This isn't something grain and silver can solve."

Liu Chengzong frowned. "They dare attack my soldiers?"

Liu Jiusi saw his temper rising and quickly shook his head. "Not a mob attack, and not at Gongbu Duoji's instigation. Just individual commoners who feel the mountain can't be mined, sneaking arrows from the mountain forests. One craftsman and four Southern Barbarian captives have died, one after another."

Having said this, Liu Jiusi explained: "Every time something happens, Gongbu Duoji searches the seven tribes, and the killer always goes on his own to Xining yamen to face death… The Old Master didn't want to make things too ugly. He only had Gongbu Duoji restrain the tribes, expelled the monks, and set the rule that we mine and the seven tribes don't cause trouble."

"What do you mean, make things too ugly? People are dead — isn't that ugly enough?" When Liu Chengzong heard his father had expelled the monks, his tight brow finally loosened. He said, "They don't mine. If they didn't mine before, how did the barbarian tribes help the court fight the sea bandits? Where did their weapons come from? If you tell me there were no monks behind this stirring things up, I wouldn't believe it. I've seen plenty of this kind of thing in the south."

He waved his hand. "Monks and shamans tell the commoners to revere the mountain god, forbid anyone from mining — then they seal off the mountain with slaves and little monks and dig for gold themselves."

This was the fusion of upper-class interests and lower-class beliefs.

Liu Jiusi had not experienced the southern campaign and didn't understand these twists and turns. A look of confusion on his face, he waved his hand and explained: "Commander, I don't know how things are in the south, but here it really isn't like that. The iron they used to have, they picked up from iron caps. We're digging the mountain open along the iron caps — it really is different."

Iron caps are the parts of an iron mountain that protrude above the ground — the simplest method of prospecting.

As early as the Warring States period, Guanzi had already summarized the pattern: where the mountain has ochre, below it lies iron; where the mountain has lead, below it lies silver; where the mountain has cinnabar, below it lies pillar gold; where the mountain has lodestone, below it lies copper and gold.

"I don't care about any of that. They've been registered into households and made common subjects, yet things like this still happen. If this had happened in the south, their heads would be fertilizing the fields. But Gongbu Duoji was the first chieftain to submit to me — I can let it go without pursuing."

Liu Chengzong had barely finished speaking, before the smile on Liu Jiusi's face could even half-emerge, when he heard him continue: "Since they were driven onto Sun Moon Mountain by the sea bandits, and now Lhazang has left and the sea bandits are eliminated — let them go home."

Liu Chengzong rose and ordered his guards to fetch a map. He found a place on it and said to Liu Jiusi: "Tell Gongbu Duoji to lead his tribesmen down the mountain and return to the Daotang River where their ancestors lived for generations. From now on they'll be under Haixi County's jurisdiction. I'll give them the grasslands at the southern foot of Daotang River's bank. The water and grass are lush there — enough for them to live on."

"This… Commander." The smile on Liu Jiusi's face froze. He reminded him: "They've reclaimed over twenty thousand mu of mountain-brain fields on Sun Moon Mountain. Just have them go down the mountain like that?"

"Over twenty thousand mu? Wasn't it fourteen thousand mu?"

Liu Chengzong remembered this matter. "Their ancestors lived at Daotang River for generations. What mountain god are they going to Sun Moon Mountain to worship? They're lucky I'm not taking my anger over this out on the tribesmen. Let them go south to herd horses and graze sheep. There's land reclaimed by Mongols there too — no less than the mountain fields."

In any case, it wasn't yet time for next year's sowing. Liu Chengzong waved his hand and said: "When you go back, calculate the grain yield from these twenty thousand mu, figure out how many laborers to recruit for reclamation in the busy farming season and for hired work in the slack season, and bring me a new ironworks budget. Also… recruit craftsmen to carve a giant stone statue for me on the mountain."

Having said this, Liu Chengzong gave a scornful laugh. "That's Granny's mountain. Qinghai Lake itself is the sun-moon precious mirror that Princess Wencheng threw down. If there is a mountain god, it's Princess Wencheng. How would Great Tang's Princess Granny forbid me from mining!"