Chapter 541: They Call Him the Zhao Heavenly King

It was a bitter fight, true, but if Wang Dagang really wanted to charge out, it wouldn't have been that hard. The independent carters knew they were dead men, so every last one of them fought with desperate, suicidal resistance. Wang Dagang had wanted to go lend a hand, but everyone was shouting, "Brother Wang, go first! Avenge us!" The kind of men who dared come here to fight already had reckless, fierce blood in their veins. Pushed to this point, every man's temper was up. Little Wu's shout, however, pointed out a path: since none of them could escape, let one man go first to avenge the rest.

Using his comrades as a shield and relying on his own martial skill, Wang Dagang struck down one enemy after another before him, endured the pain in his ribs, and sprinted away.

The core and strongest members of the Cart Guild were all tied up dealing with Wang Dagang and those independent carters fighting to the death. Once he bolted, they simply couldn't catch up. When they tried to pursue, the independent carters blocked them with their lives, stalling them completely.

"Kill that brat, and your lord will richly reward you!" Shi Biao bellowed, but in the chaos, hardly anyone heard him.

Wang Dagang had run only a few steps when he suddenly spun around. His staff swept high then smashed down, directly laying out two pursuers. Only then did he stride off into the distance. He could see a dozen or so bailiffs in square caps and black uniforms off to the side, and before them lay a corpse...

On the fifth day of the twelfth month of the forty-fifth year of the Wanli reign, Wang Dagang of Xuzhou led a mob of over a hundred in an attempted insurrection. County bailiffs arrived in time and, together with local militia, dealt a crushing blow to the Wang bandit gang. Only the bandit chief, a certain Wang, escaped alone...

Qingjiangpu had a population of nearly six hundred thousand, while Shanyang County, which served as the seat of Huai'an Prefecture, held less than sixty thousand. They simply couldn't govern it all. For incidents like this, whatever the underlings reported was taken as fact. With no victim filing a complaint, the case was closed directly.

The shacks where the independent carters lived were also set ablaze. The fire was lit at night, and many of the old and weak failed to escape, burned alive inside.

The Shandong faction of the Cart Guild gained nearly a hundred carts and draft animals for nothing, making a tidy profit for all involved. This incident also firmly established the Shandong faction's authority. Several merchant houses and freight depots that had been looking for cheap cart transport now voluntarily handed their goods over to the Shandong faction for hauling. Even the Henan faction voluntarily yielded a ten percent share of the Zhongyuan Firm. For a time, Zhang Yunxian of Shandong's prestige thundered far and wide. The canal transport powers of Qingjiangpu and the heroes of the rivers and lakes all proactively came to establish ties. With such strength and such ruthless methods, in a treasure land like Qingjiangpu where gold and silver paved the streets, anything they did would make them rich.

The authorities paid no attention to the aftermath of Wang Dagang's case. But the Shandong and Henan factions jointly posted a bounty: three hundred taels alive, two hundred taels dead, and fifty taels for information, payable in silver.

This sum couldn't be called a fortune, but it was by no means a small amount. Whoever got it would have a comfortable New Year. For a time, every lowlife and underworld informant in Qingjiangpu and the southern part of Huai'an Prefecture was hunting for Wang Dagang's whereabouts. Yet Wang Dagang had vanished. Many were saying that this Wang fellow had most likely died already.

With the twelfth month came the approach of the New Year. Everyone was busy with preparations or heading home. Except for the most top-tier pleasure houses, the low-class brothels and discreet courtesans all closed up shop; they, too, needed to prepare for the holiday.

Sister Xue's place on North Market Street in Qingjiangpu had also been closed for quite a few days. But Sister Xue was nearly thirty, no match for those fresh young girls and young wives. Business had long since gone cold. With no capable backer behind her, she was often bullied by ruffians. In the ninth month, a few scoundrels had cornered her at home in broad daylight. Not a single neighbor was willing to help. Had a passing man not intervened to save her, she might well have been ruined to death.

What few knew was that the man who saved her was Wang Dagang. Even fewer knew that Wang Dagang was now hiding in Sister Xue's home, recovering from his wounds.

That day, Wang Dagang had run an entire night before shaking off his pursuers. The wound in his ribs hadn't been deep at first, but it kept splitting open and bleeding as he ran. By the time he escaped with his life, he was utterly debilitated.

The Cart Guild's methods against the independent carters were vicious to the extreme. While they attacked here, they sent men there to torch the houses. After learning of the tragedy from afar, Wang Dagang forced himself to Sister Xue's home. The one stroke of luck was that she had no clients. Once inside, he collapsed unconscious on the floor.

Seeing him covered in blood, Sister Xue didn't raise an alarm. She secretly went out to buy a few doses of medicine, bandaged his wounds, and kept him in her room, taking no clients during this time.

Wang Dagang recuperated here in peace. Sister Xue brought him food and drink and also went out to gather news. Inside this home, Wang Dagang grew more and more silent, but his fury burned ever higher. The Cart Guild's methods were ruthless to the extreme, truly exterminating root and branch. And Qingjiangpu, from top to bottom, was simply too black-hearted. So many lives lost, and yet not even a ripple stirred.

As for having this man recuperate in her home, Sister Xue was quite happy. She secretly prayed to the bodhisattva several times, thinking how wonderful it would be if he didn't leave and they could live together. But she also knew this man was certain to go.

The wound was light; his collapse was more from physical exhaustion. After five days, there was no major issue. On the seventeenth day of the twelfth month, Wang Dagang packed a few belongings, borrowed two taels of silver from Sister Xue, and prepared to leave.

"If you don't mind me... I'll go with you?" Sister Xue mustered all her courage to say this.

"Mind or not mind? I'm coming back to Qingjiangpu. When I return, I'll marry you!" Wang Dagang spoke with crisp decisiveness, making the world-weary Sister Xue blush deeply.

But Sister Xue was no young girl. Immediately worried, she said, "Everyone in Qingjiangpu is looking for you. If you can leave, don't come back."

"My brothers, my fellow townsmen, and their families all died here. If I don't avenge this, I have no face left to live. I'm leaving now precisely to come back and take revenge!" Wang Dagang said, his words resolute and final.

Sister Xue didn't quite understand. Wang Dagang didn't keep her guessing, continuing, "I've been away a long time, and I've heard that a true hero has emerged from our Xuzhou: Garrison Chief Zhao, the Zhao Heavenly King. They call him Invincible North of the River, and say his righteousness soars to the clouds. Because of him, we Xuzhou people can hold our heads high."

"I've heard of him too, from..." It was rare that Sister Xue had heard of someone, but she stopped mid-sentence. Better not to say from whose mouth she'd heard it.

Wang Dagang went on, speaking his mind: "In the past, I thought I'd finally made it out, that I'd put down roots in Qingjiangpu and live well. Now I know—others won't let us live well. There's not even a shred of justice. Officials and private interests are equally black-hearted. Since there's no justice here, I'll go beg the Zhao Heavenly King to give me justice!"

Sister Xue listened, half-understanding. In the end, she asked worriedly, "What if the Zhao Heavenly King refuses?"

"If he refuses, I'll come back and fight them to the death!" Wang Dagang said in a muffled voice.

For a moment, Sister Xue didn't know what to say. Coming back to die was bad, but if this man left and never returned, that was also bad...

Since the Song dynasty, Songjiang had been a place of prosperity. Its flourishing continued undiminished under the Mongol Yuan, and only in the Ming did it truly boom.

Songjiang Prefecture produced grain. As the saying went, "The two prefectures of Su and Song pay half the empire's grain tax." Huguang Province levied over three million shi of grain a year, yet couldn't match Suzhou Prefecture alone. Fujian Province levied over a million shi a year, yet couldn't compare to Songjiang Prefecture.

Across the empire's two capitals and thirteen provinces, the tax grain paid by Songjiang Prefecture in the Southern Metropolitan Region was higher than that of the Northern Metropolitan Region, Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and Yunnan.

And on closer calculation, Suzhou Prefecture governed one department and seven counties, while Songjiang Prefecture had only three counties. Spread out, the tax burden of a single county in Songjiang was roughly one and a half times that of a county in Suzhou, or even slightly more.

Songjiang Prefecture's annual tribute grain quota was two hundred thirty-three thousand shi, with an added surcharge of one hundred fifty-four thousand shi, totaling three hundred eighty-seven thousand shi. But this was only the figure in the official accounts. In reality, with all the various surcharges added, the total tribute grain came to over eight hundred forty thousand shi. Reckoned that way, four shi counted as one. The extra nearly six hundred thousand shi was profit for all parties involved. This was the case everywhere under heaven, and it was also why a place like Qingjiangpu could produce a million shi of off-the-books grain at any time.

Elsewhere, an entire province bore the burden, but Songjiang was a single prefecture bearing it. The burden on the common people was naturally crushing. Faced with such a heavy burden, the people had their own strategies. The first was delay and concealment. Since the founding of the Ming dynasty, Songjiang had produced a great many high officials and powerful ministers, the most famous being, of course, the "True Prime Minister" of the late Jiajing era, Xu Jie. Such powerful ministers naturally had all sorts of regulations and methods to avoid taxes. The taxes that couldn't be collected from them were then shifted onto the common folk who had no standing to avoid them.

Ordinary civilians, even small and mid-level landlords, couldn't bear such heavy taxes and commended their lands to high-ranking houses like the Xu family, hoping to pay less. But the outcomes were rarely good. These great houses could turn hostile on a whim and swallow all that land whole. Even someone like Xu Jie, widely praised as an "honest and generous elder," did this. How much better could the others be?

Apart from these powerful houses that only knew how to swallow and exploit, there was another group pondering a different approach. They thought: since the tribute grain route runs thousands of li from south to north, with tribute boats, tribute crews, local officials, and all manner of fees and exploitation along the way, why not bypass the canal and try sea transport?

During the Mongol Yuan, because righteous armies swarmed the Central Plains, they had no choice but to ship tribute grain by sea. The point of departure at that time was Songjiang Prefecture.

In the early Yongle years, after dredging the Huangpu and Wusong Rivers, the harbor was no longer clogged by silt. Wusong Estuary became an excellent port, and Songjiang Prefecture's maritime trade boomed. Setting sail from Wusong Estuary, ships traveled north and south along the coastline and islands with extraordinary ease. By this time, Songjiang's flat-bottomed sand ships were already thriving, giving sea transport an added boost.

A single sand ship could carry at least three thousand shi, and the large ones could load six thousand. As for time, if the season was right, the journey from Songjiang to Tianjin took just over ten days. At worst, it usually took no more than a month. Some said the seas were rife with Japanese pirates, but by now, connections had been smoothed in every direction. The sand ships didn't go to Japan or the Southern Seas; only the routes to Fujian and Guangdong posed a slightly greater risk. The routes to the north were perfectly safe.

As for the tribute boats, the largest of them could carry no more than eight hundred shi of grain. Going from south to north, crossing the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the section south of Qingjiangpu was still manageable under their own power. Past Qingjiangpu, it wasn't so easy, requiring trackers to haul them. A three-month journey was considered normal, and longer delays were not unusual. Some even departed one year and returned the next—something everyone had long since grown accustomed to.

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