Chapter 930: Sparks Everywhere

"The loose ends over in Ningyang County have been cleaned up. Meng Xianhan hanged himself in his cell. Not a single person connected to it was left alive. We've also had a word with the local authorities in Ningyang. In a few more days, we'll report it up the chain as a mob of rioters gathering, who then scattered after killing and wounding officials." Xie Mingxian spoke to Xu Hongru in a low voice.

Xu Hongru had already moved from within the walls of Yuncheng County to the Zeng Family Manor. The place was now bustling and clamorous, with a full several thousand people gathered there.

After the first earthquake and the second, the refugees and disaster victims of Shandong acted as they always had, believing they would find organization in Yuncheng County, that the True Man Xu here would be merciful and compassionate. But after arriving, the able-bodied men were kept, while the young women and adolescent boys and girls were seized and sold off. The rest received only a meager amount of grain and were then told that someone was providing relief in the area of Jining Prefecture. Having no other road to take, they could only go there.

During this time, the common folk within Yuncheng County were also under the false impression that True Man Xu had once again begun to relieve the people and aid the refugees. Only after rushing over did they discover it was not so. The people gathered at the Zeng Family Manor were no refugees or disaster victims at all, but groups upon groups of strapping, able-bodied men. They could even see hundreds, nearly a thousand horses, and no small number of sturdy oxen and donkeys.

In a famine like this, in such dire straits, livestock had long since been slaughtered for their meat. Without fodder, the animals couldn't have survived either. How could there be so many here? So many people, so many large animals—where did all that grain come from? Where did all that fodder come from? Inside Yuncheng County, people were already on the verge of starving to death. How could they still be feeding livestock here?

But no one paid any heed to their questions, nor did anyone care about their questions. There was no need to worry about these questions spreading, either. The common folk within Yuncheng County could not even walk very far before they would starve to death on the road.

"The prefectural city has already named its price. To sit on the case files and documents for ten days is three thousand taels. For twenty days, it's eight thousand taels. For thirty days, it's fourteen thousand taels." Having finished one matter, Xie Mingxian moved on to the second.

Xu Hongru was silent for a moment, then spoke slowly: "No matter how much silver, we can afford it. Can they simply not report it?"

"Difficult. This silver is being taken jointly by the two private secretaries beside the Prefect, the two clerks from the Punishment Office and the Military Office, as well as the men at the postal station. Everyone above and below must be greased. But a major case like this, one that touches on rebellion, cannot go unreported. No matter how they stall, within a month and a half it must be delivered to the provincial capital and a reply must return. They can only hold it until then." Xie Mingxian answered in a deep voice.

Before taking up local official posts, the literati only knew how to study the classics by rote, which contained not a shred of practical governance. Local administration all relied on private secretaries and the subordinate clerks to handle. Once the silver was spent, these men had enormous room to maneuver, and they could pull off the most unimaginably outrageous schemes.

Still, having done this for so many years, everyone knew there were a few lines that could not be crossed. Things could be delayed, things could be dragged out, but they could not be left undone. This, too, everyone understood clearly.

"A month and a half..." Xu Hongru murmured pensively.

"Honored Cult Leader, to be absolutely safe, we should still treat it as twenty days. Those men dare to take silver now, but if the matter truly comes to light, not only will they fail to handle it, they will sell us out completely." Xie Mingxian spoke with the utmost earnestness.

He spoke earnestly, but Xie Mingxian knew that Xu Hongru had long since made his decision. Otherwise, at such a critical and urgent moment, how could it be that Xu Hongju, Xia Zhongjin, and Hou Wu—the trusted confidants who controlled the armed forces—were nowhere to be seen? That would be absurd.

Even with the depth of Xu Hongru, the Cult Leader of the Smelling Incense Sect, he could not conceal the shifting expressions on his face at this juncture. Xie Mingxian stood respectfully to one side, waiting.

Not long after, Xu Hongru slapped the tea table before him and spoke in a muffled voice: "Do it. At the grand assembly, we said August. The news Meng Xianhan leaked was also August. If there are still any damnable spies and traitors, what they've told the outside is also August. If we mobilize and strike now, all sides will surely be caught off guard!"

"The Honored Cult Leader's insight is profound! This period between the fifth and sixth months is precisely the critical moment when the old grain is exhausted and the new harvest is not yet in. Both the official granaries and the common folk are strained. If we strike now, they will be unable to resist!" Xie Mingxian chimed in agreement.

Xu Hongru rose from his seat and declared: "Send word to all parties right now. Move according to the plan we discussed!"

Xie Mingxian bowed to receive the order, then turned and strode quickly outside. He knew that the messages sent to all parties would not go out solely from his end. Shen Zhi and Zhang Jianbai each had many contacts of their own.

In this earthquake, Juye County in Yanzhou Prefecture, Shandong, was extremely hard hit. The collapse of houses within the city was a minor matter; even two sides of the city wall had crumbled, burying the moat beneath them.

This place was already driven to destitution by harsh taxes, levies, and the Liao Impost. With two more earthquakes on top of that, it was pushed to the brink of annihilation. Even the small and mid-level landlords could not hold on and banded together with the commoners to riot. When the rioting first began, everyone had a plan. The official granaries and the great households might be empty, but the manors of the Prince of Lu's Estate and the Duke Yansheng's Estate were full of grain. If they could break into those two places, they could at least hold out until the autumn harvest.

Who could have imagined that seven days after the earthquake, just as the refugees were beginning to gather and had not yet prepared to do anything, the manors of the Prince of Lu's Estate and the Duke Yansheng's Estate would suddenly catch fire? No one went to fight the fires; everyone scattered and fled in all directions. Even the tenant farmers of those two estates became refugees and displaced people themselves. The grain was even more hopelessly out of reach.

Two Buddhist temples, one Daoist abbey, and even a nunnery were broken into. The meager grain stores inside were a mere drop in the bucket, not enough to share around. But with roads cut off in all directions, there was nowhere to flee to escape the famine. Some of the older folk already sensed the worst, thinking to themselves, could it really come to the point of cannibalism and starving to death? Many even took their own families' lives in advance.

At this time, the only ones who still had some grain to give as relief were the followers of the incense-burning sect. As long as you joined the sect and burned incense, you'd get a little something to eat every day. Don't think about eating your fill; barely avoiding starvation was the absolute limit. But this was at least a path to survival. The number of devout believers suddenly multiplied.

Every day they went to listen to the sermons and burn incense, listening to the scripture-preaching masters speak of the Dharma-Ending Age, speak of the coming Great Calamity. It wasn't just the original incense-offering believers who listened as if drunk with enchantment; the newcomers were utterly convinced as well. These days were indeed nearing their end, nearing a dead end. What was this talk of a Great Calamity approaching? Weren't these recurring droughts and locust plagues a Great Calamity? Weren't these two earthquakes a Great Calamity? Wasn't the passage of those refugees a Great Calamity? This was the very scene of the world's end!

Thinking of the endless harsh taxes and levies, thinking of the fields with no irrigation and no harvest, thinking of this heaven-rending, earth-shattering earthquake, and then thinking of the family members who had starved or sickened to death beside them, many people suddenly realized: from the moment they were born until now, it seemed they had never lived through any comfortable or peaceful days. Every year, every month, every day was torment, always thinking of how to survive. That great drought a few years back—how many died, how many became refugees? Those who went south never returned. Occasionally a few would run back, but they would quickly vanish without a trace again. After the great drought, they wanted to catch their breath, thinking that if the harvests were suitable, honestly tilling the land would eventually let them live their days. Who could have imagined there would come the Liao Impost, flaying them of skin and tearing out their sinews? The calamity of this Liao Impost even surpassed the drought and locusts. It didn't just starve people to death; it made them sell their children, their daughters, their land, and take on high-interest debts that couldn't be cleared in several lifetimes...

A world like this—if this wasn't the end of days, what was it? If this wasn't the Great Calamity, what was it? The more they listened, the more right it seemed. The more they listened, the more devoutly they believed!

In such bewilderment, utterly unable to see a single sliver of hope or survival, suddenly someone tells you: if you just burn incense with devout faith, worship the Maitreya Buddha and the Eternal Venerable Mother, and revere the living True Man Xu Hongru, you can be saved. After death, you can enter the Blissful Homeland. In the next life, you can be a person of wealth and rank, no longer tormented by such suffering. There is even the possibility of being saved in this present life, of ascending in this life to the Western Heaven's Divine Kingdom. With a chance at survival, with hope, they all immediately sank into blind faith.

Desperate people are like those drowning on the verge of death. At such a moment, even if a single straw were tossed to them, they would grasp at it. What's more, this Smelling Incense Sect truly had grain to give as relief. The officials hadn't offered a single grain. At a time like this, who else could they believe in but them?

The literati and scholars keep the spirits and gods at a respectful distance. It's not that they deny them, but they emphasize respect and not discussing them. Yet openly and in secret, burning incense and worshipping Buddha, making offerings to spirits and seeking immortality—everyone has done such things. And they are men of knowledge and insight. As for those common folk, busy every day just scraping a living, what ability do they have to discern? Once someone preaches and persuades them, once the people around them stir them up, they immediately believe. In such times of bitter despair, they need even more to find something to cling to—or they believe they have found a way out.

Every day at dawn, the commoners would swarm to the place where incense was burned and scriptures were preached. Originally it had been a threshing ground. After the earthquake, it had become a rare stretch of open space. After listening to the sermons and performing the obeisances, everyone would receive a tiny bit of grain according to headcount.

At first, people came to listen to the sermons only for that grain. But slowly, they came to listen just to hear someone recount the sufferings of this life, to speak of that place of true emptiness and ultimate bliss, to speak of the enjoyments within the Western Heaven's Immortal Realm. In the atmosphere of the crowd chanting scriptures and reciting prayers, they could temporarily forget their despair and torment.

Before the sky was even light, this place was already packed with people. Eating so little each day, even if they went to sleep early, they would be woken by hunger very early. No one had any covering to speak of, so they might as well come early. Huddling together, they could at least share some warmth.

Moreover, the scripture-preaching Incense Master had said that there was no grain left in the storehouse now. Tomorrow he would have people sweep and scrape together whatever they could, adding more bran and dried grass into it, so that everyone could at least eat a little something. Since there wasn't much, those who came early might just get a share. Clinging to this hope, everyone came even earlier this time.

No family's grain supply was inexhaustible. The grain this scripture-preaching Incense Head distributed grew less and less by the day. Everyone grew hungrier by the day. Some vaguely thought of the day when it would all be gone, and their despair deepened further.

As the first light of dawn began to glimmer, at the hour when the preacher would normally appear with the grain, someone suddenly realized something. When the disasters first began, who had the mind to listen to any scripture preaching? They would have directly resorted to snatching it by force. But that scripture-preaching incense-spreader had over a dozen stout, martial-arts-trained men at his side. On the very first day, they had even brought out iron weapons. They weren't afraid of killing anyone. Back then, everyone still believed the officials would provide relief and were unwilling to risk their lives fighting for it. Now, in these times when a single mouthful of grain was a single life, they no longer had the strength to fight.

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