Chapter 1125: An Outsider's View

Strange as it was, the disaster-stricken common folk had no other choice. That the Zhao Character Camp could provide relief at all was already a great mercy; they could only obediently comply.

The punishment for the villages that stole earth was also extremely severe. The executions were carried out right there on the muddy ground where the waters had just receded. Every man, woman, and child in the earth-stealing village, except for children under fourteen, had to draw lots to decide life or death — one in every five was killed.

The villagers had just survived the dike breach and the flooding, and now they faced this. Yet despite such misery, no one was willing to sympathize with them. Many survivors from the other affected villages rushed over, and had the Zhao Character Camp's household troops not maintained order, the survivors of this village would likely have been exterminated.

The severed heads were treated with lime, placed in wooden boxes, and displayed all along the river embankment. Whenever they passed a nearby village that had not been affected by this flood, every man, woman, and child in the entire village was called out. Whether they dared to look or not, they had to file past and see each one, and then the order was pronounced: if anyone was ever discovered stealing earth or stone from the river embankment again, not a single chicken or dog would be left alive in their entire village.

Besides this touring display of severed heads, the people from the disaster-stricken villages also made a tour. They did not need to say much; the sight of them driven from their homes was misery enough.

People all fear death and poverty. Seeing the severed heads and the wretched state of their fellow countrymen was already enough to terrify many. Who would dare steal earth again? Besides, Lord Jin had already issued the death order: "Not a chicken or dog left alive."

Those two villages were not the only ones stealing earth and stone from the river embankment. There were six other such places in Xuzhou. Four of them had long since refilled the earth and stone, and their taxes for the following year were increased by ten percent. Two more were actually on the river section near the He Family Estate, which truly enraged Zhao Jin and the core members of the Zhao Character Camp — such a thing had been done right under their noses.

"... We all thought the common people would be awed into submission, but we never imagined they would always try these petty tricks, thinking they could take advantage and gain benefits. Only harsh laws and cruel punishments can frighten them..."

The discovered breaches had all been promptly filled. At the same time, household troops, militia, patrolmen, and local braves were dispatched with bamboo poles and wooden staves to probe along the river embankment, checking for any remaining hollowed-out cavities or other hidden dangers. They also had to consider that the riverside villages might have been so terrified by the severe punishment that they now harbored a desperate hope of getting away with it.

But there was also a discovery this time: the hollow cavity in the embankment at the He Family Estate section had, surprisingly, not led to any dangerous situation. According to the river workers knowledgeable about flood conditions, the current at the He Family Estate section was relatively swifter than at Xuzhou. Whether this was the reason, no one knew.

The disaster had struck suddenly, but the Zhao Character Camp's response was also very swift. The disaster victims were quickly given relief and resettlement, garbage was collected and buried, corpses were promptly burned, and the destroyed embankments were repaired and filled in a timely manner.

Five days later, the wreckage at the original dike breach had vanished. Not even much rubble remained of the destroyed villages; everything was clean and tidy.

The water inside Xuzhou city also receded rapidly. As the city's residents put it, this flood seemed to have washed the city clean, leaving it considerably tidier inside.

Rumor had it that the Prefect, the Vice Prefect, and the Judge of Xuzhou all went up onto the city wall together to observe. After seeing the disaster relief efforts outside the city, they were all speechless. Each descended the wall in gloomy silence and returned home in a poor mood. Everyone could guess the reason why: they simply felt that if the Great Ming's own government had handled this relief, it certainly would not have been so swift and effective.

Over the next few days, a light rain kept falling over Kaifeng Prefecture and Guide Prefecture in Henan, and the rain in Xuzhou also came in intermittent waves. However, the Yellow River's water level stabilized, and not long after the skies cleared, it began to drop.

This let everyone breathe a sigh of relief. Once August arrived, the rainfall would rapidly diminish in both Henan and Xuzhou, and there would be no more need to worry about the scourge of floods.

But just as Xuzhou was breathing easier, two dikes breached in Pizhou. One breach was twenty li from Pizhou city, affecting four villages, one of which was a farmstead belonging to the Zhao Character Camp. On the river section southeast of Suining County seat, the river embankment collapsed. Water entered Suining County seat, reaching a depth of over six chi, while the surrounding villages were all washed away, with countless dead and injured.

Suining County falls under Huai'an Prefecture. It is not particularly important in terms of either farmland or transportation, and the Zhao Character Camp had not stationed much strength there, so the losses this time were not too great.

However, this flooding in Pizhou and Suining County filled everyone in Xuzhou, from top to bottom, with lingering fear. They shuddered to imagine the destruction and damage had such a situation occurred in Xuzhou.

The Zhao Character Camp's handling of the Suining County flood was not as effective as in Xuzhou. The managers and clerks of Cloud Mountain Trading waited with silver and grain in safe areas untouched by the floodwaters. Once the waters receded, they would enter and buy up everything worth buying, from people to farmland. They had even already selected a place to resettle the Suining refugees: the part of Fengyang Prefecture adjacent to Xuzhou and Huai'an Prefecture, where the terrain was higher and safe from flooding.

Besides the people from Cloud Mountain Trading, the proprietors who had opened workshops and manufactories in Xuzhou and Pizhou also rushed over. Able-bodied laborers were cheapest after a disaster — they would work diligently just for a mouthful of food. This was a prime opportunity to profit from that cheapness. Moreover, after being soaked by floodwaters, crops would hardly grow again; the fields would likely be full of weeds. Some were even pondering whether to bring cattle and sheep here to graze; the wool could be made into cashmere, which was also a business.

Although the degree of disaster varied, for the clerks and functionaries of the government, this was more than enough to manipulate. And it was manipulation that could win the Zhao Character Camp's favor while lining their own pockets. Before long, reports of a great disaster in the three areas of Xuzhou, Pizhou, and Suining were sent to the Grand Coordinator's office in Taizhou, and then urgently reported to the capital. The standard response was quickly issued: the three disaster-stricken areas were exempted from taxes and grain levies for two years. In other words, two years of harvests would all belong to the Zhao Character Camp, and the clerks would also get their share of the benefits.

These three places had indeed suffered disasters and incurred losses, but for Xuzhou and Pizhou, those losses were utterly negligible — a mere drop in the bucket — and recovery was swift. But to an outsider's eyes, it looked completely different. Xuzhou and Pizhou were tightly sealed off, and the merchants doing business here all had a tacit understanding, so relevant news was very hard to leak out. Many people could only judge based on the disaster reports and scraps of hearsay.

Some believed Xuzhou had been severely stricken; even if it wasn't a crippling blow, it had still wounded muscle and bone. And the reason there was so little news, they thought, was that the Zhao Character Camp was covering something up, afraid of letting others see how badly they'd been hurt this time. Under such speculation, the rumors grew even more absurd. Some even said that members of Zhao Jin's own family had died in this flood...

The Yellow River's flood season was terrifying at its critical moments, but once that season passed, the water level quickly dropped to a reassuring level. All of Xuzhou relaxed and breathed easy. However, Zhao Jin and his comrades could not relax. The section of the Yellow River in Huai'an Prefecture merged with the Grand Canal and connected to Luoma Lake, and Luoma Lake in turn connected to the various rivers and channels in the northern district of Huai'an.

During this flood season, just when Suining County was being ravaged by the deluge, Luoma Lake swelled and overflowed accordingly. Yutou Town was not submerged, but the entire town was flooded. Many of the villages in Huai'an's northern district were also inundated, and numerous mud-built shacks were washed away. Although the casualties numbered only a dozen or so, it was still a tangible loss, and it made people even more uneasy.

The reason there was no major disaster, in the final analysis, was that the water conservancy facilities, regularly constructed and maintained in peacetime, had played a huge role. The channels were unobstructed, so drainage was highly efficient. The village granaries and other structures had been built on higher ground from the start, meticulously following regulations, and they benefited considerably this time as well.

But after this incident, the First Regiment of the Second Brigade was to relocate toward Haizhou. One reason was to protect the port at Haizhou; the other was to move as far as possible from areas that might be affected by flooding.

Plans cannot keep pace with change. After the first two batches of Liaodong refugees had landed in Shandong one after another, the third batch received an urgent dispatch from the Zhao Character Camp, instructing them to disembark at the port in Haizhou. This was because a large population was needed there, and the need to settle this large population was actually a request from the local authorities in Haizhou, which the Zhao Character Camp was happy to oblige.

As for the local officials and gentry of Haizhou, along with the salt administration's bureaucrats and wealthy merchants, they had originally been lying asleep on the colossal profits of the Huai salt monopoly, enjoying mountains of gold and seas of silver, living in drunken oblivion and caring about nothing else. It could be called a stagnant pool of wealth. But the Zhao Character Camp's series of actions in Haizhou had thrown several stones into that stagnant water.

This port trade and throughput could actually yield such enormous profits, no less than the salt monopoly. The better the port was built, the more maritime merchants came, and the greater the trade in goods. It turned out that salt wasn't only profitable through official sales and private smuggling; shipping it south by boat could bring even higher windfalls. Everyone had originally been collecting money sitting right where they were, but that silver was dead, with fixed quotas every day, every month, every year. But now, by investing that silver into business, they immediately received large returns.

The officials and wealthy merchants of Haizhou began to turn their eyes toward Xuzhou, toward Qingjiangpu. It turned out these two places held so many business opportunities. It turned out the money in their own hands was so useful, able to be invested anywhere to reap thick profits.

They indeed did not lack silver; what they lacked was action, the sense of achievement and the rewards of doing things. Now they felt it all. They had originally thought the Haizhou salt industry was a mountain of gold and a sea of silver, enough to last a lifetime if guarded well. Yet in their hearts there was also anxiety — such a place required taking turns in the seat of power. They might have raked in enough for one lifetime, even several lifetimes, of spending, but there would always be a day it ran out. But doing business and trade, seizing opportunities everywhere — that was a treasure bowl that could be passed down from generation to generation.

Everyone in Haizhou, from top to bottom, was stirred by this, even growing fanatical. They saw the two shipyards under construction and wanted to buy ships to trade overseas. They saw the great logs piled up there and wanted to participate in the Liaodong trade. They wanted to try every opportunity, to invest silver in every venture, because Zhao Jin would not swallow it up, and there were already rich returns.

The wealthy magnates who wanted to spring into action possessed tremendous power. They wanted a larger port, and only the Zhao Character Camp could provide the manpower to build it. They wanted more salt fields to increase production, and only the Zhao Character Camp could provide the manpower to boil and sun-dry the salt. They wanted all kinds of labor, and only the Zhao Character Camp could provide it.

Wishing everyone a happy Dragon Boat Festival

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