The constables swarmed forward, and in an instant shoved Jiang Jiutong and Hu Zi’s father aside. One of them even carried a bundle of hemp rope on his shoulder, making as if to bind them.
Chao Qing said, “They are innocent. Why must they be bound?”
“Innocent?” Magistrate Yao laughed coldly. “Obstructing official business, stirring up trouble for no reason—doesn’t that count as a crime?”
He was too lazy to quibble with these common folk and reluctantly backed down a step. “Fine, Miss A Xiang and these four children need not be bound.”
The sky had already brightened. Su Jin watched these innocent townspeople being tied up and simply couldn’t bear it any longer.
She knew that this Yao person was going to great lengths to take people away—he definitely had no good intentions. If she didn’t stop him in time, who knew what would happen later.
“Has no one taken charge of this Sichuan region?” Su Jin’s voice was light, yet carried a chill. “Does even a seventh-rank county magistrate lord it over others?”
She stepped forward, looking into Magistrate Yao’s eyes. “Or has Magistrate Yao stopped considering himself a county magistrate? Deciding the law himself, arresting whoever he wants—occupying the mountain to be king, is he trying to be a local emperor?”
Yao Youcai felt a shiver in his heart from her chilling gaze. He repeatedly reassured himself that this Su person before him was merely a scholar, and straightened his back. “What, does Young Master Su intend to go to Jinzhou Prefecture to file a complaint against this official?”
He pointed his thumb at himself, looking very self-important. “I’m not afraid to tell you—the Prefect of Jinzhou Prefecture is this official’s fourth uncle. In Pingchuan County, this official has the final say!”
“What about the censors?” Su Jin said very calmly. “The Great Sui has thirteen circuits. The Imperial Censorate has nearly a hundred censors conducting inspections. In the Sichuan region, there are three resident supervising censors stationed permanently, with one to two touring censors. You say the Jinzhou Prefecture Prefect is your relative—could you also be connected by blood to the censors in Shu?”
Yao Youcai never expected Su Jin would bring up the censors.
Could this scholar actually dare to go to the capital to file an imperial complaint against him?
Magistrate Yao laughed coldly again. “Young Master Su intends to file a complaint in the capital? Never mind that Master Jiang and these townspeople are already guilty—even if you go to the capital, even if you beat the Complaint Drum, even if you find the censors at the Imperial Censorate, this official need not fear you. Truth be told, this official is more familiar with the capital than you are. The person above this official—just one stamp of his foot, never mind the capital, the entire realm would tremble. Do you know who it is?”
“Who?!” Su Jin demanded sternly.
A ministry head or a cabinet minister? Master of the Five Courts or Master of the Regional Military Commissions?
Anyone whose single stamp of the foot could make the entire realm tremble—she knew them all. She’d very much like to know exactly who it was.
Magistrate Yao snorted. “Saying it would scare you to death!” He called to the constables, “Hurry up, don’t dawdle here.”
Tan Zhaolin originally didn’t want to cause trouble. He had watched from the sidelines all night, but really couldn’t stand it any longer—a petty county magistrate daring to act so brazenly before his Lord Su?
Just over ten constables—could Old Tan not beat them?
He spat immediately and stepped forward, lifting a constable by the collar like picking up a chick. Just as he was about to toss him aside, Jiang Jiutong suddenly called out, “Young Master Su, Hero Tan, forget it!”
His face was ashen, his expression extremely anxious, as if he greatly feared offending Magistrate Yao.
“Don’t worry, this old man guarantees that after Magistrate Yao finishes questioning, this old man will… definitely ask Magistrate Yao to safely return the four children, Hu Zi’s father, and Miss A Xiang.”
When reporting to the authorities was mentioned last night, Su Jin had already detected something unusual about Jiang Jiutong. Seeing his expression now, it seemed as if some weakness was being held in Magistrate Yao’s hands?
Su Jin’s intuition told her this matter was not simple.
“Zhao Lin.” She called out, then shook her head.
Without Su Jin’s obstruction, though the other townspeople were anxious, how would they dare impede the county official’s business? In just a moment, Jiang Jiutong’s group along with the four children were taken away.
The constables circled past the mulberry fields and gradually disappeared from sight. Several townspeople along with the Jiang family guards and old steward immediately surrounded them, saying, “Master Chao, you’re well-read. This time you must think of a way to save Master Jiang!”
Actually, they had all noticed earlier that the Young Master Su beside Master Chao might be the one with more ideas.
However, this was ultimately Cuiwei Town’s affair—it wouldn’t be right to implicate outsiders.
Su Jin also asked, “Yunsheng, what exactly is going on?”
Magistrate Yao taking Jiang Jiutong away was definitely not because of the four missing children. That was just his pretext. Jiang Jiutong, or perhaps Cuiwei Town itself, must have had a grievance with this Magistrate Yao for some time.
“Let this old one speak.” At this moment, an elderly man with graying hair and a stooped back slowly emerged from the crowd.
He was the oldest person in Cuiwei Town. People called him Old Man Wu.
“This matter goes back twenty years. Twenty years ago, a very remarkable person lived in seclusion outside the Eastern Bamboo Grove on Cuiwei Mountain with his young granddaughter.”
Hearing these words, Su Jin’s entire body tensed.
“Later, somehow, this person seemed to have committed some offense and was hunted by the court. After he died, Cuiwei Mountain was sealed off by the court.”
“The people of our Cuiwei Town originally depended on the mountain for sustenance. Once driven down from the mountain, life became extremely harsh. For several years we dug up grass roots and ate tree bark—in any case, the government didn’t care.”
“Until later, Master Jiang returned from Jiangnan with his entire family. The Jiang family were all great benefactors. They had done silk business in Jiangnan for several years and earned some money. Originally they just said they’d come back to see their hometown, but who knew the hometown had become like this? So they didn’t leave, saying they would lead the townspeople to a better life together.”
“Master Jiang said farming fields was not as good as planting mulberries and raising silkworms. He bought mulberry seeds and silkworm babies and distributed them to each household, and together we cleared wasteland. Because few in Shu planted mulberries and raised silkworms, Master Jiang also bought looms. When the spring silkworms spun silk, we wove it into silk cloth and, along with extra mulberry leaves, took it to Pingchuan County or Jinzhou Prefecture to sell. The silver earned was divided among households—the Jiang family took thirty percent, we divided the remaining seventy percent. But even that seventy percent was enough to let the townspeople live well.”
“We lived such peaceful, smooth days for many years, right up until the second year of Yongji, when the court implemented some new policy—tun… tun-something? That’s when we met disaster.”
“The land allotment system,” Su Jin said.
This wasn’t actually a completely new policy—it existed in the Wei-Jin period and also during the Jingyuan years.
The so-called land allotment, simply put, was encouraging common people and soldiers to cultivate uncultivated wasteland, divided into military farms, civilian farms, and sometimes even merchant farms.
Military farms meant that border garrison soldiers, when there were no battles and they were simply defending, would allocate some people to farm, relieving pressure on the Ministry of Finance.
Civilian farms required the court to organize displaced persons, prisoners, or commoners to cultivate wasteland; or transfer people from densely populated areas with little land to sparsely populated areas with abundant land for cultivation.
This kind of land allocation and organization, or large-scale migration, required the court to expend much effort. The problems involved were countless, such as resettling new migrants, whether migration would cause declining productivity in the original areas, conflicts between officials and people, and so on.
Therefore, without determination and perseverance, it would instead create numerous drawbacks.
The land allotment during the Jingyuan years, due to coordination problems among the Six Ministries, inadequate local oversight, exploitation by local officials, and consecutive years of natural disasters in Lingnan and other places, balanced benefits and drawbacks—neither meritorious nor blameworthy.
But the land allotment during the Yongji years was different.
This new land allotment system was actually personally formulated jointly by Liu Chaoming and Shen Xi, and vigorously promoted by Zhu Yushen. It not only detailed the resettlement of new migrants but also maximized avoiding harm to originally prosperous areas and the interests of merchants and people. In the three years since its promulgation, the effects had been remarkable. Not only did it guarantee the supply of military provisions to border garrisons, it also increased tax grain revenue for the court by nearly double. In just three years, it solved the problem of empty national coffers.
Su Jin had worked with Liu Yun and Qingyue for many years. She was too clear about their attitude toward official duties—decisive, determined, persevering, not stopping until things were done well. Since the new land allotment system was drafted by the two of them, it was highly unlikely there would be major problems.
Thinking this, her belly filled with doubts.
“After the court issued the new policy, it seems like last year, Magistrate Yao suddenly came here with the court’s official document, insisting that the mulberry fields here belonged to the court, and that we must henceforth… give eighty percent of the silver we earned to the government.”
Su Jin was startled and looked at Chao Qing. “Is this true?”
But before Chao Qing could answer, she suddenly understood.
Under the land allotment system, the wasteland the court allocated to soldiers and civilians for cultivation belonged to the government, and the harvested grain was split fifty-fifty with the government. This was actually unobjectionable.
But Cuiwei Town’s situation was special. The mulberry fields they cultivated were originally an ownerless wasteland. They had felled trees to plant mulberries and raise silkworms. But in the end, who did this ownerless field belong to? Did it belong to the townspeople of Cuiwei Town, or to the government?
To make an imperfect analogy, this was like someone finding a little chick and raising it with great difficulty. After it grew up, it was very productive, laying ten eggs a day, making him quite wealthy. At this time, the court suddenly issued a policy ordering the government to give each poor household and new migrant a chicken. The chicken lays two eggs a day—one for the people, one for the court, both benefiting people’s livelihoods and increasing court revenue.
So the local government came to this person with this policy, saying since your chicken was found, it belongs to the court. You should follow the policy and give half the eggs to the court. Furthermore, because your chicken is exceptional and lays too many eggs, our government will take eight, and you can only keep two.
Put plainly, this was exploiting loopholes in the new policy.
Su Jin asked, “Since you planted the mulberry fields yourselves, have you ever shorted the court on taxes?”
“No, never,” Old Man Wu said.
“How many years have you paid? Has it exceeded fifteen years?”
Old Man Wu counted on his fingers. After a long while, he slapped his forehead. “Can’t quite remember. Master Jiang handled all this—we’d have to ask him.” He added, “Actually, Magistrate Yao has come looking several times before. Each time he was aggressive. We common folk don’t really understand court matters and don’t know if we’ve truly violated the new policy. Young Master Su, you don’t know—just after New Year’s, Magistrate Yao came once, saying that soon he and the Prefect would accompany an imperial envoy to the capital to pay respects to some Duke and Chief Minister. He told us to hurry and repay the silver we’d owed the government under the new policy for these three years before the third month. But even if we pooled everything together, how could we come up with three years’ worth of silver?”
Before the third month? But today was already the tenth day of the second month.
No wonder this Magistrate Yao insisted on taking Jiang Jiutong away no matter what—it turned out to be Xiang Zhuang dancing his sword with designs on Duke Pei.
Chao Qing looked at Su Jin, somewhat worried. “Su Xie, you want to handle this matter?”
He didn’t tell her that actually, when this matter erupted last summer, he had written a letter to the capital. Who knew it would sink like a stone into the sea.
Su Jin knew she shouldn’t interfere too much. But the townspeople of Cuiwei Town had ultimately suffered implications because of her grandfather and herself, being driven down from Cuiwei Mountain. After enduring years of hardship and finally getting ahead, they had actually encountered such heartless, wolfish officials.
She was someone who had served as a censor and as Minister of Justice—her eyes couldn’t tolerate such grains of sand.
Old Man Wu on the side also advised, “Young Master Su, we trust you, which is why we’re telling you this. We have no intention of asking you to help. Besides, you’re just a scholar—what help could you be? If you provoke Magistrate Yao and implicate yourself, that would be a sin. You don’t know—the person above Magistrate Yao is truly a high official in the capital. I heard that even when our Jinzhou Prefecture Prefect goes to the capital, he can only see him if he’s extremely lucky. Can’t be provoked.”
Tan Zhaolin asked, “Sir, what do you say?”
Su Jin looked at his expression of “should we beat people up here or go to the capital to beat them up,” and after pondering a while, sat down. “Let me think of a plan.”
Zhu Nanxian waited outside Shu Xiang and Yun Xi’s residence for an entire day without seeing anyone. It wasn’t until the sun was setting in the west that he saw Jiang Yue’er arrive with several Jiang family servants.
“Young Master Nan, why are you here?” Jiang Yue’er asked, then said, “Young Master Nan, something’s happened.”
Zhu Nanxian didn’t answer her first question, only asking, “What happened?”
Jiang Yue’er recounted this morning’s events in detail, then said, “Master Chao and that Young Master Su said they would help think of a solution, but this Magistrate Yao isn’t troubling Father for the first time. Yue’er is truly somewhat worried.”
She raised her head, looking at Zhu Nanxian with bright, brimming eyes. “Young Master Nan, could you take Yue’er to the county office to see Father?”