Chapter 781: Basin

Hanzhong Prefecture.

The situation in Hanzhong Prefecture was nothing like the peaceful, tranquil scene of revival and reconstruction described in the *Hanzhong Prefecture Gazetteer* submitted by Jiang Yingchang.

In truth, this was a basin brimming with despair.

Flash floods brought by torrential rain destroyed villages, the surging Han River washed away bridges, and from Prefect Jiang Yingchang down to the Hanzhong garrison troops, over ten thousand men spent weeks and months without a moment's rest, rushing everywhere to rescue people.

Under scorching sun and floodwaters, clothes soaked and dried and soaked again, the soldiers' backs, bellies, and waists broke out in rashes and their skin festered; hundreds, including Jiang Yingchang and Luo Rucai, fell ill, and they also had to endure the misery of rotting provisions, rusting armor, dead warhorses, washed-out barracks, and missing soldiers in the flood.

Jiang Yingchang's compilation of the *Hanzhong Prefecture Gazetteer* was, in fact, the result of his long patrols along the riverbanks directing flood control and drainage, which caused the skin on his back to fester and ulcerate from sweat, until Luo Rucai finally tied him up and sent him to the Prince Rui's palace to force him to rest.

Luo Rucai's own condition was no better than Jiang Yingchang's, but being thick-skinned and concerned with face, after his promotion to Hanzhong Garrison Commander he often styled himself the chief official of Hanzhong and refused to be outdone.

Only when he could truly hold out no longer, and was frightened by Jiang Yingchang's do-or-die ferocity, did he — still unwilling to surrender — resort to a dirty trick, ordering his subordinates to forcibly bind his opponent and send him off to rest.

He himself led men on patrol along the dry bank for another two days, then picked up a few pretty young widows from outside the city, brought them back to the Prince Rui's palace, and on the pretext of looking after Jiang Yingchang, handed over disaster response duties to Zhang Shangxuan, the Vice Commander of the Hanzhong Garrison.

Luo Rucai then stayed in the Prince Rui's palace, tasked with feeding Jiang Yingchang soup and changing his dressings, and began to slack off.

It was not that Luo Rucai took the flooding disaster in Hanzhong lightly; in fact, thanks to their round-the-clock relief efforts, the flooding situation in Hanzhong had already been largely brought under control.

On the other hand, due to the Marshal's headquarters' militarily-focused power structure, the Hanzhong Garrison Commander was the highest-ranking official in Hanzhong Prefecture, and Hanzhong Prefect Jiang Yingchang was his subordinate.

An assistant official in charge of documents, granaries, corvée labor, and supervision within his jurisdiction.

In an era of war, a place might not need a civil official, but it absolutely had to have a garrison.

The Marshal's headquarters' official structure was the same: without a Grand Commander above him, a Garrison Commander was a minor marshal who could establish his own headquarters in his jurisdiction, commanding troops on horseback and governing the people on foot.

With his subordinate fallen ill, Luo Rucai naturally had to tend to him personally and show solicitous concern.

As for post-disaster work, Luo Rucai had always doubted its legitimacy.

In his view, squandering the elite troops and fine horses the Grand Marshal had entrusted to him like so much mud and sand on the dangerous work of rescuing disaster victims and the tedious tasks of dredging rivers and building fortifications was the greatest waste of an army.

As long as internal unity was forged, the army would be invincible; if the army had no problems, then nothing was a problem — no provisions, no armor, no money, no men, all could be plundered... they would always ride out the crisis safely.

But he also knew very well that Liu Chengzong was happy to do such things.

Even when Liu Chengzong was just a bandit chief, he liked to use force to champion justice and help unrelated weaklings — he, Luo Rucai, was likewise a weakling who had been aided by Liu Chengzong.

If he hadn't fled to Liu Chengzong back then clutching his buttocks pierced by Ai Mu's arrow, how could he enjoy the honored position of Garrison Commander today?

What the superior loves, the subordinates will surely emulate.

It was not that Luo Rucai was willing to save people; to him, this was merely politics to curry favor with the Grand Marshal by pandering to his preferences.

In reality, however, though Jiang Yingchang and Luo Rucai both suffered terribly during the disaster, the effectiveness of these two military and civil chiefs of Hanzhong Prefecture in combating the floods was actually inferior to that of Zhang Shangxuan after he recovered from his injuries and began slacking off.

Jiang Yingchang, well-versed in revitalizing culture and education, had spent his official career in drought-stricken regions; the water he had seen in his entire life was less than what fell in Hanzhong in two days of rain.

And Luo Rucai, who had overseen large-scale projects like the destruction of the Prince Han's palace and the looting of the Prince Rui's palace, and possessed rich experience in demolition, was, when it came to construction, utterly clueless — a complete loss.

What the hell did those two know about floods?

The two of them put together were far inferior to Zhang Shangxuan.

Though Zhang Shangxuan was a military officer, formerly a Vice General of Huguang from the Zhengan troops, his family lived in a mountainous region along the Yangtze River basin that frequently suffered flash floods and inundations.

Within days of taking over the post-disaster work, Zhang Shangxuan had erected pontoon bridges on the gradually receding Han River, begun repairing the bridges and roads on its various tributaries that had been washed out or destroyed, restored north-south traffic across the Han River, and then recruited and pacified refugees, set up shelters and distributed congee, putting post-disaster reconstruction in perfect order.

However, though Zhang Shangxuan did his work extremely well, he received no praise from his superiors.

Because the messenger sent by Grand Marshal Liu Chengzong had arrived — it was Wang Yongji, a Plumed Gentleman, the only son of former Gansu Vice Commander Wang Xingshan.

Wang Yongji had originally been stranded east of the Tangshui River, a tributary of the Han, worrying about how to fulfill his mission.

As soon as the pontoon bridge was built, he arrived bearing the order for Luo Rucai and Zu Chengyong to whip each other.

The letter was delivered all the way to the Hanzhong Prefect's yamen. When Jiang Yingchang heard this absurd method of punishment, it instantly triggered the Prefect's muscle memory, and in a daze he felt as if he were back on the day Liu Chengzong stormed Heshui County town.

It scared his hands and feet cold, and he desperately suppressed his instinct to flee Nanzheng City.

He knew very well what a domineering and unruly man Luo Rucai was, and knew even better that a punishment like making him be whipped by his subordinates could very easily provoke him into mutiny.

Just as expected.

The moment Luo Rucai received the letter, disgust and resentment flashed in his eyes, and he cursed and grumbled: "Damn it all, that bastard Zhang Shangxuan did his job so well, and now it only adds frost to the snow on my back!"

Jiang Yingchang didn't react for a moment; it took him a pause to realize that Luo Rucai was not cursing Liu Chengzong, but complaining that Zhang Shangxuan had repaired the bridge too quickly.

The disgust Luo Rucai felt for Zhang Shangxuan in his heart was worse than stepping on dog crap.

Wang Yongji, however, was completely unconcerned. Still grinning cheekily, he cupped his fists and said, "Garrison Commander Luo, the Grand Marshal also said that if you dare act rashly again and charge into his yamen with a blade, he'll knock your head into your belly and then kick you off to Taimeng Garrison to work."

Luo Rucai didn't take it seriously either. He winked and grinned at Wang Yongji: "Wouldn't dare charge in anymore, wouldn't dare. Tell the Grand Marshal that your humble subordinate knows he was wrong."

As he spoke, he untied his gauze robe woven from four-colored light silk, bared his back, and showed Wang Yongji: "Look, what with the soaking and the sunburn, once the whipping's done, there won't be half an inch of good skin left!"

After Wang Yongji had looked, Luo Rucai threw his clothes back on, clapped his hands, and breathed a sigh of relief: "Good thing it's not going to Xi'an Prefecture to get a personal beating from the Grand Marshal. Zu Chengyong is just south of the Han. I'll trouble the messenger to rest a couple of days; once he arrives, I'll whip him."

Compared to whipping each other in Hanzhong Prefecture, Luo Rucai was far more afraid of going to the parade ground during New Year's and being publicly beaten by Liu Chengzong, losing face in circles.

As for whipping each other a bit with Zu Chengyong, to him that was no big deal.

It was just some pain; he'd been slashed by blades and shot by arrows on the battlefield, he wasn't afraid of this.

Afterwards, Luo Rucai and Jiang Yingchang kept Wang Yongji to ask about the details of this eastern campaign, inquiring about the participation of familiar officers.

When he heard that Liu Chengzong had won a complete victory east of the mountains, Luo Rucai couldn't help but clap and laugh heartily: "Haha! I knew the Grand Marshal's campaigns are ever-victorious! We're basking in the glory of a great victory too, otherwise I'd definitely be getting a beating!"

"For these two days, you'll stay with Prefect Jiang first, listen to the situation in Hanzhong, so you can report back to the Grand Marshal. Hanzhong is a wretched place — the reservoirs and ponds have all been smashed. The two hundred or so that luckily remain, no one's looking after them..."

Hearing this, Jiang Yingchang couldn't help but cast a sidelong glance at him, thinking: You have the nerve to say that. Why is no one looking after them? Don't you know perfectly well in your own heart?

To put it plainly, the abundant rainfall in the Hanzhong Basin was a unique geographical phenomenon formed between the Qinling Mountains, the Ba Mountains, and the Han River.

Such terrain and precipitation made the agricultural environment extremely dependent on water conservancy facilities.

And the governmental negligence during the Wanli years, the warfare during the Tianqi years, and the displacement during the Chongzhen years had all inflicted enormous damage on Hanzhong Prefecture's water conservancy facilities.

Hanzhong Prefecture originally had over a thousand reservoirs, ponds, and matching irrigation channels; now, almost everything that could be destroyed had been destroyed.

The two hundred or so that remained — aside from some large-scale facilities that were not easily destroyed — had survived for only one reason: they were located on the lands of the Prince Rui's estate, maintained by estate tenants, and protected by the Hanzhong Guard.

After Luo Rucai arrived, the Prince Rui's estate was gone, and the Hanzhong Guard was gone too.

So of course, no one was left to look after the remaining water conservancy facilities.

Still, Jiang Yingchang couldn't say much else — Luo Rucai's words were genuinely meant to help him find a solution.

The biggest problem facing Hanzhong Prefecture right now was that its fragile agriculture and economy had practically been shattered by the war.

Hanzhong had no shortage of land, and it still had over a hundred thousand able-bodied men, but to restore production, the waterworks had to be rebuilt — and to rebuild the waterworks… Jiang Yingchang needed Liu Chengzong's support.

But Wang Yongji spread his hands at this and said, "The Grand Marshal told Prefect Jiang to figure out the waterworks problem himself, to make sure the floods don't drown the fields again. The Hanzhong Brigade is to give full cooperation."

Jiang Yingchang and Luo Rucai exchanged a glance, then both turned back to Wang Yongji: That's it?

They needed tangible support, not empty promises. Given Hanzhong Prefecture's current state, if not for that bit of surplus from sacking the Rui Prince's estate, relying solely on full taxation wouldn't even cover the supplies for Luo Rucai's single brigade. Reconstruction would require work-relief programs.

"The Grand Marshal's meaning is, if grain and fodder can't be supplied, then transfer two battalions to Xi'an Prefecture as rotational troops and have them eat there."

Wang Yongji had received Liu Chengzong's instructions before setting out, and he explained, "The road from Xi'an to Hanzhong is difficult to travel, and grain and fodder suffer heavy losses in transit — too many problems. The Marshal's headquarters can't do anything about grain, fodder, or livestock either. There should be a batch of silver transported over this year, but it won't be much."

Hearing this, Luo Rucai didn't feel much either way, but Jiang Yingchang now had a sense of where things stood.

A place as fine as Hanzhong Prefecture, with so much labor — it had enormous potential.

Coordinating resources, making rational deployments, and then using strengths to offset weaknesses to achieve development — these were the basic qualities of a local chief administrator.

The biggest problem facing Jiang Yingchang wasn't Hanzhong Prefecture itself, but the Hanzhong Brigade — those ten-thousand-odd men simply ate far too much.

Although the Hanzhong Brigade wasn't one of Liu Chengzong's ace units, its organization, troop strength, and even its livestock and equipment were all configured according to the war machine Liu Chengzong had meticulously crafted.

An army of twelve thousand men on the books, if relying solely on taxation, would normally require three hundred thousand civilians to support it.

And now, although Liu Chengzong hadn't provided Hanzhong Prefecture with anything concrete, he had given Jiang Yingchang the authority to transfer two battalions to Xi'an Prefecture for duty — which meant the prefecture's military expenditures would drop by nearly forty percent.

The grain and money freed up could then be channeled into the work of repairing the reservoirs.

At present, Hanzhong Prefecture had nearly eight hundred reservoirs in need of repair. And while carrying out this work, Jiang Yingchang also planned to study how previous generations had built river weirs and reservoirs, making rubbings of stone inscriptions, hoping to emulate the wisdom of the ancients for his own use and construct even more reservoirs and ponds for water storage, drainage, and irrigation.

As an official governing this land, he was determined to ensure Hanzhong would never again suffer the scourge of waterlogging.

It was, however, profoundly awkward.

Just as Jiang Yingchang had breathed a sigh of relief over Liu Chengzong permitting two battalions to be fed in Xi'an Prefecture, the increasing flow of communications from the localities — as the many tributaries of the Han River were mapped — brought news from all over that left him dumbfounded.

Luo Rucai's troops really couldn't be transferred to Xi'an Prefecture in the short term after all.

The Hanzhong Brigade's provisions were no longer the problem; the bigger problem now was the rampant tiger menace in the Qinling Mountains.

Tigers are solitary by habit and rarely form packs, let alone hunt in groups in broad daylight and treat humans as prey — this was absolutely aberrant behavior.

Yet in Hanzhong Prefecture at this time, this aberration, fueled by the raging flames of war, widespread flooding, and a populace driven from their homes, grew ever more severe, to the point of becoming the norm.

Reports suddenly flooded in from all over: tigers in packs, five or six traveling together, or in pairs, even scaling walls onto roofs, swimming across water to climb buildings, lying in ambush in the shadows along main roads to attack passersby.

Jiang Yingchang had no idea where all these tigers had even come from.

Hanzhong shouldn't have had this many tigers.

They were tigers that lived on the northern slopes of the Qinling Mountains. To flee Liu Chengzong, they had crossed ridge after ridge and come over, intending to enter Sichuan just like Gao Yingxiang.

As early as when he first took all of Shaanxi, Liu Chengzong had noticed the massive tiger problem in an environment where humans retreated and beasts advanced. He had issued orders to the chief officials of every prefecture, subprefecture, and county under his rule, commanding each locality to recruit tiger-hunters and tiger-killers and send them to Xi'an Prefecture, to be used later for training local tiger-hunting teams.

To eliminate the tiger scourge.

However, the Marshal's headquarters had controlled Shaanxi for only a short time. As of now, not to mention the counties, even prefecture-level tiger-hunting teams hadn't yet been formed. The recruited tiger-hunters were only active on the Guanzhong Plain, in the two prefectures of Xi'an and Fengxiang.

But these veteran hunters, sent as tribute from the various counties to Xi'an to receive their rewards, were indeed highly skilled and vastly experienced, bringing catastrophic doom upon the tigers that descended from the mountains into Guanzhong.

So much so that the young cubs lucky enough to escape from human hands banded together on the northern slopes, yet fled at the mere sight of people. Forced to find food, they had no choice but to cross the Qinling Mountains and come to Hanzhong to pick on softer targets.

The displaced common folk of Hanzhong Prefecture truly could do nothing about them and could only rely on the Marshal's Army under Luo Rucai's command.

Luo Rucai was naturally more than happy to see this happen.

For the Hanzhong Brigade, this was also a kind of outlet — splitting their forces to assist in local defense, with each county contributing some money and grain to support a portion of the troops.

Most importantly, Luo Cao Cao remembered clearly: the Grand Marshal lived a simple life, but he had a tiger-skin sitting rug given by Zhang Renquan'er. It had been placed in his tent for years, the tiger fur worn bald from sitting, yet he never parted with it.

A Hanzhong specialty — one more pleasant surprise.

But the bigger surprise actually came from next door.

Just a few days after Luo Rucai and Zu Chengyong had lashed each other with whips, while both men were still lying prone on their couches, Jiang Yingchang — who had taken over changing their dressings and feeding them medicine — came rushing recklessly into the Rui Prince's palace, clutching a letter.

"A call for help! A call for help from Jin Zhichun, the Subprefectural Magistrate of Xing'an Subprefecture to the east! The subprefecture seat is besieged by bandit clubs. He begs the Grand Marshal's subordinate Hanzhong Brigade to break the siege!"

Luo Rucai mulled over the place name and asked, puzzled, "Xing'an Subprefecture? He doesn't ask Zhao Zhirui, the defender of Wu Pass, for help — what's he asking me for?"

Deputy General Zhao Zhirui of the Guanzhong Brigade was clearly much closer than the Hanzhong Brigade in Nanzheng.

But to his surprise, Jiang Yingchang, his face alight with wild joy, hastily shook his head. "Xing'an Subprefecture hasn't yet submitted to the Grand Marshal. Jin Zhichun is an official of the imperial court!"

"Huh?"

The moment Luo Rucai heard this, he struggled to rise from the couch, grimacing in pain, and snatched the letter from Jiang Yingchang's hand. "How many people does Xing'an Subprefecture have?"

Jiang Yingchang didn't know either, but he said with certainty, "Quite a few people from Hanzhong have fled over there. A directly-administered subprefecture can't have too little land or too few people. Though it's a mountainous area, it's still enough to station the Hanzhong Brigade."

"A call for help. A call for help is excellent."

Without even bothering to read the letter, Luo Rucai slapped the bed and said to his attendant officer, "Quick, summon Deputy Commander-in-Chief Zhang, Mobile Corps Commander Zu, and Assistant Regional Commander Li to discuss this. Once we take Xing'an Subprefecture, the provisions for four battalions will be secured!"

Good evening!