Cao Gan had an important mission to fulfill and no inclination to remain at Welcoming Spring Pavilion drinking wine and listening to music. He left quite soon.
A slender figure still sat in the neighboring elegant chamber. Hearing the sounds of Cao Gan’s departure, he finally spoke up to ask Feng Liao:
“If we truly establish the commercial trade matters between our two kingdoms via the Qianjiang according to this list in these peace negotiations, won’t Xuzhou suffer tremendous losses?”
“Without suffering losses, one cannot gain advantages,” Feng Liao said. “The Great Chu Directorate of Imperial Workshops’ armor and weapons casting has already recovered to considerable scale. The shipyards at Yueyang, Jinling, and Jiangzhou have all been activated after the new year. Even though under Marquis Liyang Yang En’s direction, the warships, armor, and weapons they produce are still slightly inferior to Xuzhou’s, they’ve broken free from dependence on Xuzhou—from now on, only Yuzhou will purchase large quantities of these iron products from Xuzhou. Currently, this is the only way to preserve this market first.”
In this era, commoners had relatively low quality requirements for iron products but were quite sensitive to prices.
Additionally, since iron smelting and casting techniques had been disseminated among the common people since the previous dynasty, Xuzhou’s civilian iron products, in this era with relatively backward means of distribution, required long-term operation and groundwork to open up markets.
However, the channels for selling armor and weapons—which had high requirements for iron implements and could command high prices—were limited and fixed.
Even if Emperor Yanyou and the court ministers harbored no suspicion toward Xuzhou, armor and weapons were national strategic assets. From a traditional perspective, the court ministers would all hope to have official institutions directly control their smelting and casting, rather than relying on vassal states.
Currently, Feng Liao had rushed to Jinling to persuade Cao Gan to include low-price requisitioning of Xuzhou’s armor, weapons, and other iron products in the two kingdoms’ peace agreement—this was to first preserve a market that could sustain continuous shipments and maintain production.
Only with continuous production could one speak of constantly innovating techniques through practice, and only then could one maintain the scale of craftsmen engaged in this production.
Though Yuzhou’s low-price requisitioning appeared unprofitable compared to contemporary casting techniques, how could the smelting and casting level of Xuzhou be matched by other places in this era?
For Qianyang cloth, ship canvas, and so forth—all materials Xuzhou could produce on a large scale—costs were actually continuously declining.
Following the list’s execution seemed like Xuzhou suffered great losses, but in reality it only facilitated Xuzhou’s low-price dumping. Marquis Changxiang in Yuzhou merely played the role of broker or comprador.
Precisely because of this, Xuzhou wasn’t particularly concerned about the Salt Commissioner’s new purchasing regulations. As long as the market was large enough, Xuzhou actually preferred low-price dumping.
In Han Qian’s conception, expanding production and improving productivity levels were far more important than purely pursuing extraordinarily high profits.
As for requiring Cao Gan to represent Shu in substantially raising prices for well salt exported south via the Qianjiang, the reasoning was even simpler.
Contemporary technology for extracting well salt was backward—typically only shallow underground saline water from dissolved salt deposits could be extracted for sun-drying or boiling. But in reality, once underground salt deposits were discovered and large-scale extraction conducted, theoretically one salt mine’s production capacity could satisfy the consumption of several million or even tens of millions of people and livestock.
The difficulty in this era was the lack of effective methods for surveying underground salt deposits.
With contemporary technological standards, the cost of drilling small, deep wells was too high. One couldn’t randomly pick a location and drill a deep well to explore whether underground salt deposits existed.
However, once a saline spring confirmed underground salt deposits existed, after certain technical modifications, increasing output was relatively easy.
Therefore, even if no new salt springs or saline springs were discovered in Wuchuan, just relying on the two existing salt wells to increase production tenfold or twentyfold—in Han Qian’s view—didn’t present any substantial obstacles that couldn’t be overcome at this stage.
The simplest method was injecting large quantities of stream and river water into existing salt wells to accelerate dissolution of underground salt deposits, which could also substantially increase production capacity.
From beginning to end, Han Qian never intended to profit from transporting salt from Yuzhou. His plan was to use the Salt and Iron Bureau Supervisor position in Wuchuan County currently under Xuzhou’s direct control—this assignment allowed dispatching people to Wuchuan River Valley to directly organize salt production, mixing it with Sichuan salt, then having salt merchants transport and sell it to the various tributary states in Qianzhong for profit…
Feng Liao briefly explained the foundation of Xuzhou’s confidence in these matters. After listening, the slender figure still sighed: “Truly allowing Marquis Changxiang to gain every advantage.”
“Though Shu ruler Wang Jian is happy to weaken Crown Prince Wang Hongyi’s power, he hasn’t entertained thoughts of changing the heir apparent. Marquis Changxiang’s foundation is still somewhat weak—he must be allowed to gain some advantages,” Feng Liao said.
Having said this, Feng Liao asked about another matter: “How far has the assassination case investigation progressed? There shouldn’t be much turmoil stirring in Guangde Prefecture now, right?”
The slender figure said: “After Chen Jingzhou took office as Guangde Prefecture Administrator, he quickly adopted some pacification measures, allowing Guangde Prefecture to stabilize slightly. However, the clerks, bailiffs, and military officers previously retired from Guangde Army and employed in prefectural and county offices or prefectural and county defense forces were expelled one step earlier. Among these, nearly two hundred people were innocently implicated in the assassination case, over twenty died under torture in prison, and forty-some were disabled…”
Hearing the detailed circumstances of the aristocratic families’ vicious counterattack on Guangde Prefecture this time, Feng Liao couldn’t help sighing deeply.
The slender figure continued: “…Han Donghu, Su Lie and others should have already fled deep into Fuyu Mountain and haven’t been captured by government troops. A portion of former Guangde Army retired military officers, unwilling to suffer persecution by aristocratic families, also fled into the mountains with their families—they should have united with Han Donghu, Su Lie and the others as well. If Xuzhou wants to deploy more informants in Jinling to gather and transmit intelligence, dispatching people to contact them and using these people might be more appropriate.”
“It’s still inadvisable to alert the enemy too early,” Feng Liao said. “This time I’ve come, I still must first find a way to expose matters like Shang Zhongjie’s massacre of refugees and Shang Wensheng’s destruction of corpses to eliminate evidence…”
Before coming to Jinling, Feng Liao had already discussed these issues with Han Qian.
Reactivating the intelligence network in Jinling was far from as simple as having seven or eight people infiltrate.
First, ordinary common people and even merchants were of humble status and had no sources of information regarding events occurring within the imperial palace, events at court, or events within the Imperial Guards and Palace Guards.
Even lower-level clerks and soldiers had quite restricted information access.
Beyond gathering intelligence, timely and effective transmission of information was also an important organizational component of establishing an intelligence network.
Starting from Guangde Prefecture, taking the Yishan post road through Raozhou and passing through Hongzhou and Yuanzhou into Hunan, then taking the Xuefeng Mountain post road into Xuzhou—over two thousand li of overland routes could theoretically be completed in seven or eight days at fastest.
However, the five-hundred-li emergency courier speed relied on achieving that record only after being guaranteed by a complete system of post roads, post stations, and so forth.
In other words, Xuzhou would need to establish at least twenty or thirty transfer points with horses along the route to maintain rapid information transmission between Xuzhou and Guangde—while simultaneously evading the eyes and ears of the Bureau of Judicial Investigation and local prefectural and county authorities.
Water routes seemed no slower, but as Xuzhou merchant vessels traveled along the way, they had to undergo multiple checkpoint inspections. More critically, a large merchant vessel couldn’t just depart at will, could it?
To ensure rapid message transmission, the manpower and material resources to be deployed weren’t a small number, and personnel selection was also a major problem.
When in Xuzhou, Han Qian had instructed them to select suitable personnel. Feng Liao naturally also considered recruiting Han Donghu and his group for service.
Previously, though Xuzhou had no direct contact with Jinling, from the courier bulletins publicly available to local officials and gentry scholar groups, they could still learn about some situations occurring in Guangde Prefecture.
With Han Qian’s prestige, recruiting these former Guangde Army retired military officers who had fled into the mountains under persecution and might have joined Han Donghu and Su Lie could not only enable their infiltration of Guangde Prefecture and the Imperial Guards and Palace Guards to directly reach a quite high level, but also provide a group of experienced personnel to establish this information transmission network.
However, the problem was that in this era, no one truly willingly became someone else’s pawn.
They could dispatch people to contact Han Donghu and these Shang family escaped slaves like Su Lie, but after contact, if they couldn’t provide sufficient support while still requiring these people to obey Xuzhou’s commands in all matters—did they really think these people were fools?
What support could Xuzhou give them?
What kind of support did they want to obtain?
These were the questions Feng Liao and Han Qian discussed most during those final days in Xuzhou.
But the problem was, these people were rebel parties that the court and local prefectural and county authorities wanted eliminated as quickly as possible. Their families could be suppressed and slaughtered by government troops at any time. How could Han Qian make them serve Xuzhou with peace of mind?
Currently, numerous passes had strengthened inspections of those entering and leaving Xuzhou. So many women, children, and families would find it very difficult to quietly emerge from deep mountain forests and relocate to Xuzhou.
When Han Qian recruited refugees to Xuzhou early on, frankly speaking, it was because Tanzhou deliberately allowed its own forces mixed among refugees to infiltrate Xuzhou that passage was granted.
Otherwise, with checkpoints sealed on all sides, how could ordinary civilians without rigorous training avoid government ears and eyes to cross numerous mountain ranges into Xuzhou? Not to mention physically frail women, children, and the elderly.
Han Donghu, Su Lie and their group were implicated in the assassination case and had provoked public outrage. To cancel local government troops’ suppression of them in the name of pacification, they first had to overturn the case, exposing the truth about matters like Shang Zhongjie’s massacre of refugees and Shang Wensheng’s destruction of corpses to eliminate evidence.
However, at this stage, finding suitable people to overturn this case was extremely difficult.
Among all the civil and military officials at court, who would be willing to risk offending aristocratic families and clans, disregarding being suspected of secretly colluding with Xuzhou, to step forward and overturn this case?
This could potentially require staking one’s entire family fortune and life.
“Would Prime Minister Shen overturn this case?” the slender figure asked.
“Probably impossible. Shen Yang isn’t that politically tactless…” Feng Liao shook his head and said.
Holding the position of chief minister, Shen Yang’s concerns and calculations involved the overall security of Great Chu’s state and ancestral temples. He wouldn’t involve himself in such trouble over momentary righteous indignation.
“What about Xue Ruogu?” The slender figure thought of a suitable candidate and asked.
“My lord considered him, but it can’t be Xuzhou’s people who contact Xue Ruogu. Xue Ruogu is upright, that’s true, but he also won’t easily let Xuzhou lead him by the nose—furthermore, for Xue Ruogu to dare take such great risks and step forward, relying merely on some rumors and rhetoric is still far from enough,” Feng Liao said.
“Ask the old master to intervene, facilitating Xue Ruogu’s demotion to serve as County Magistrate of Lishui—Wei Zhen did far too many things in this case. As long as Xue Ruogu replaces Wei Zhen to govern Lishui, he should be able to find some clues,” the slender figure said.
“My lord doesn’t want to implicate the old master,” Feng Liao said.
“Having come to Jinling, you should assess the situation and decide some matters yourself,” the slender figure suggested that Feng Liao make his own decision on this matter.