[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-unorthodox-sword-of-ming":3,"chapter-the-unorthodox-sword-of-ming-the-unorthodox-sword-of-ming-chapter-991":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Unorthodox Sword of Ming",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2338196,4570,"Chapter 991","the-unorthodox-sword-of-ming-chapter-991",991,"\u003Cp>China’s coastline is long; no matter how powerful the Ming navy, it cannot guard every inlet. With determination, going to sea isn’t hard—it’s surviving the vast ocean and returning that’s difficult.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The landlord is clearly a shrewd character.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before he arrived, Pan Yun had already dug up his family’s lineage for three generations.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When the landlord and his younger brother brought up the grilled fish, everyone subtly changed the subject.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But what’s there to talk about in Chaozhou City?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun and Xue Shao steered the conversation, and everyone spilled out everything they’d seen, heard, or even guessed—gossip about this family, that household.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The people living in this courtyard worked as porters for shops, carried goods for officials and gentry, or took short-term jobs for landlords…\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One even had a mother who worked as a wet nurse in the Vice Prefect’s household; after finishing the farm work, he came to the city hoping she’d arrange a long-term job for him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the Vice Prefect’s family was modest and didn’t want another long-term servant, so he rented a room here and joined everyone else searching for short-term work in the city.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I’ll work until the twelfth month, then go home. My mother says these days, being a long-term servant is worse than farming at home—tend your land well, and it’s better than risking your life under a master’s whim. I think she’s right, but I need to marry and raise children, so I must earn more while I’m young.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun picked off a piece of fish belly meat and asked with a smile, “Besides marrying and raising children, haven’t you thought of anything else?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What else is there to think about besides marrying and raising children?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun: “After your children grow up? Do you have no other goals?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Save money for them so they can marry and have children.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun paused her chopsticks and pressed, “And when your son has children?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His dark face brightened with a cheerful grin. “If I’m still alive then, I’ll hand the farming over to my son and come back to the city to do short-term work, saving money so my grandson can marry and have children.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun looked at his beaming face, her eyes stinging. She suppressed her sorrow, nodded slightly, and placed the piece of fish she’d set aside into his bowl. “Eat. Have more.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He happily ate: “Miss Pan, who were you just asking about?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The Feng family. You know them?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Of course. Who in this city doesn’t? Half the land in Chaozhou belongs to the Feng family.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The landlord, who’d just returned from delivering the last of the grilled fish, snorted: “What’s theirs? It’s the Emperor’s—just borrowed by the Fengs.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The short-term workers stared, bewildered. “What? The Emperor’s? But the Emperor doesn’t care? He just lets old Master Feng take it?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Old Master Feng and the Emperor must be close friends…”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Close? Pfft,” said the landlord. “Does the Emperor even know who the Fengs are? He probably never heard the name.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The workers grew anxious: “If the Emperor doesn’t know him, then it’s theft! All that land—and the Emperor does nothing?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The landlord: “The Emperor’s estate is vast. To us common folk, that land seems huge—but to him, it’s a single hair on a nine-headed ox. Not worth mentioning.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The workers sighed: “That’s wasteful. Is the Emperor going senile?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun couldn’t help saying: “The Emperor isn’t old—he hasn’t even reached adulthood.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The workers: “Another child emperor? Will he, like the last one, have eunuchs around him?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The landlord waved dismissively: “All emperors have eunuchs. This one’s the younger brother of the last—definitely even younger.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Didn’t the last one rule for ages? Ten or more years ago they called him a child emperor—he’s been ruling this long, surely he’s old now?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only the common folk near the capital had a rough sense of the Emperor’s age. Elsewhere, especially in the south and mountainous regions, the people were illiterate, barely remembered the reign titles, let alone knew the Emperor’s age.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the authorities didn’t send village heads and patrol leaders to ring bells and announce each new Emperor’s ascension—ordering households to replace red decorations with white hemp—they wouldn’t even know the Emperor had changed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Many didn’t even know the previous Emperor had died on the battlefield.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only ordinary folk in the north, central plains, and Jiangnan knew—because they lived in the heart of things, or because their regions were economically advanced, with fast-moving information.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Beyond Fujian—no, after Quanzhou—southward, the common people’s information grew increasingly cut off. Without official announcements, they were nearly isolated, knowing nothing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Official information reached scholars and gentry, and people like the landlord who knew travelers from north and south—but the short-term workers? They knew nothing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Beyond them, many farmers lived in mountain villages, some never leaving their homes in their entire lives. In their memories, the Emperor was still the mighty Hongwu Emperor who had rescued the Han people from suffering.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They didn’t know the throne had changed hands again and again—that the current ruler was Hongwu’s great-great-grandson.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Tonight’s grilled fish feast became an informal exchange of information.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun and Xue Shao learned that Feng Ban Cheng’s land consisted of half military farmland and half acquired, seized, or encroached farmland, official land, and military plots.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They also learned that nearly all soldiers of Chaozhou’s Battalion Command were now Feng Ban Cheng’s private troops.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One short-term worker clucked: “My village is at Xianlong Bay. My father said, before, all the land east of the bay belonged to our village—then Feng Ban Cheng marched in, fenced it off, claiming the Battalion Command needed it for drills. He put up fences, strung ropes, and suddenly over a hundred mu became the Feng family’s.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“That’s a huge stretch of land—no village, just visited for planting and harvest. The workers there are thin. Whole families labor for Feng Ban Cheng. I asked—those households are military households. I know his son—he’s called Da Chun. He says he wants to marry a fertile woman, have many sons, so only one will join the army, the rest sent off for other work. Otherwise, like his father, who only had one son, he’d be stuck waiting to inherit the draft, forced to farm for Feng Ban Cheng his whole life. He’s worse off than me.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Xue Shao: “When Feng Ban Cheng seized your village’s good land, didn’t your village protest?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“We did. So the county office compensated us with land north of Xianlong Bay. But that land’s much worse. If we kept protesting, we’d get nothing. My father and the others gave up.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Xue Shao narrowed his eyes, instantly understanding: “That northern land was official land, wasn’t it?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Yes. How did you know?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pan Yun clucked: “So now, is Feng’s crime encroaching on common land—or official land? In the end, it’s all a muddy mess.”\u003C\u002Fp>",1142,"2026-06-20T22:04:01.137Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","ecfa361ec089514ed5ebb712e4629848becd0a37e19614393066986a52b0695d","the-unorthodox-sword-of-ming-chapter-992","the-unorthodox-sword-of-ming-chapter-990",1000,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-unorthodox-sword-of-ming-cover.jpg"]