Once they were out the restaurant’s front door, Yu Jiuling suddenly remembered that they had arrived in the Yuzhou medicine merchants’ carriage — were they really going to walk back?
So he looked toward Li Chi, and Li Chi immediately understood what Yu Jiuling meant.
It was as though there were a little figure inside Yu Jiuling’s eyes doing the talking — those big, blinking eyes blinked out nothing but scheming mischief.
So Li Chi gave Yu Jiuling an affirming look, and Yu Jiuling promptly broke into a grin.
He turned to the driver and asked: “Are you from Yuzhou, or from Jizhou?”
The driver had no idea what had just happened, so he politely replied: “I’m from Anyang, in Yuzhou.”
Yu Jiuling asked: “In that case, would you sell the carriage?”
The driver was a bit baffled. He shook his head. “I’m a driver from a transport company — neither the carriage nor the horse is mine.”
Yu Jiuling nodded. “That’s fair. Selling off your employer’s property would indeed be a bit much.”
The driver thought to himself: isn’t that obvious? I’m just a hired hand — sell the boss’s carriage? If I could sell it, I’d have done it ages ago.
Yu Jiuling said: “Let me ask you something, then. Horse and carriage together — roughly how much would they go for?”
The carriage was old, and the horse was a draft horse.
The driver thought it over and replied: “All together, fifty taels of silver would cover it.”
In truth, he was already inflating the price considerably. Draft horses aren’t worth very much — far below the value of warhorses. Horses come in three grades: the first is a warhorse, the second a farm horse, the third a draft horse. In a time of upheaval like this, the price of buying a young girl as a maidservant would fall far short of what a fine horse cost.
A horse of this inferior grade would normally fetch around twenty taels, while in times of peace and prosperity it would go for perhaps ten. Even so, in this era, even a horse of this poor quality was worth more than the price of a maidservant’s indenture.
At fair market value, a carriage like this would run forty taels in the current conditions of Dachu.
Yu Jiuling heard the driver say fifty taels and didn’t particularly mind — Li Chi’s group ran their own transport business, after all. Could someone really pull a fast one on them?
Yu Jiuling smiled and asked: “Your transport company must have rules — if you lose a horse and carriage, you’d be expected to make up the loss. How much would you have to compensate them?”
The driver sighed at that. People like them really had it rough.
From Anyang all the way to Jizhou — such a long journey, and the round trip alone took two months. Factor in the time spent waiting to collect goods, and it could stretch to three. His wages for a single trip were five taels. By comparison, Dachu’s border soldiers received a monthly pay of one and a half taels — a figure that had gone unchanged for more years than anyone could count.
Not just unchanged — in fact, the court hadn’t paid the border troops their wages in many years at all.
His income for those three months actually exceeded what a border soldier made. What’s more, the transport company paid him in real silver, not Dachu’s copper coin. By the official rate, one tael of silver was worth a thousand copper coins; nowadays, two thousand coins wouldn’t buy you a single tael.
The driver let out a sigh and said: “People like us who work for others — they say how much, and we pay how much. What choice do we have? Lose a horse and carriage, and you have to compensate double. If you can’t pay the silver, you put up the house…”
Another long sigh.
Yu Jiuling glanced at Li Chi. Li Chi smiled and nodded.
With that reassurance, Yu Jiuling turned back to the driver and said: “I’ll give you one hundred taels of silver. You sell me the horse and carriage, go back and pay the transport company a hundred taels, and you still pocket a clean twenty.”
In truth, what the transport company had told the drivers was that the horse and carriage were worth a total of forty taels — so if Yu Jiuling gave a hundred and twenty, the driver could net forty.
Forty taels of silver was two full years of wages — and that assumed he had steady work both years.
So in that moment, the driver’s eyes lit up.
But he still didn’t dare. After a long silence, he shook his head. “I… forget it. Why bother?”
Yu Jiuling said: “One hundred and fifty taels.”
The driver’s eyes went even wider.
Li Chi walked over to the driver and smiled. “He’s being a little stingy. Let me make you a proper offer — what do you say?”
The driver replied: “Young master, I’m just a rough sort of fellow — an errand runner. What kind of business could you possibly have with the likes of me?”
Li Chi asked: “The carriages that came along with your group — how many belong to the same transport company as yours?”
The driver answered: “Forty-some carriages. There are also several dozen from other transport companies, and the clients who brought their own carriages number about the same. I found the procession so impressive when we arrived that I actually counted — all together, we had a hundred and seventy-some carriages.”
Li Chi nodded. “Go back and quietly discuss this with your fellow workers from the same company. I’ll buy your carriage for two hundred taels — and theirs for a hundred and eighty apiece.”
When he heard the figure two hundred taels, the driver’s eyes went round as eggs.
Li Chi continued: “Not only that — for every one person you persuade to sell me their carriage, I’ll give you an extra two taels as a finder’s fee. If all your friends sell their carriages to me, then on top of what I’ve already promised, I’ll give you a bonus of fifty taels. And if you can also bring in drivers from the other transport companies to sell me theirs, I’ll add another hundred taels on top of that.”
He smiled and said: “If you help me put this whole thing together, you stand to pocket at least five hundred taels. When you all head back together, just say the carriages were seized by Jizhou rebels — if everyone tells the same story, your transport company’s owner won’t suspect a thing.”
The driver’s expression grew visibly animated — five hundred taels of silver was a sum of serious weight.
He could take those five hundred taels and simply go home, then disappear to some small, out-of-the-way place and start over. Five hundred taels was enough for a whole family to live without worry for at least thirty years.
Seeing the driver still hesitate, Li Chi raised his offer again: “Sell me your carriage right now, and I’ll give you two hundred and forty taels. Each of your friends’ carriages — two hundred a piece.”
“Deal!”
The driver finally couldn’t hold out anymore.
For an ordinary person, a temptation like this was utterly impossible to resist.
“The carriage is yours right now, sir!” the driver declared.
But Li Chi shook his head. “I don’t need it this moment. Jiuling — give him ten taels of silver as a deposit. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be at that inn for three days and we won’t be leaving. If you’ve made up your minds, any time within those three days counts.”
He clapped the driver on the shoulder. “After three days we’ll be gone. If you come looking to sell after that, I won’t be buying anymore.”
With that, Li Chi turned and walked away.
Yu Jiuling thought to himself: after all this back and forth, we still have to walk back?
—
Early the next morning, Yu Jiuling was already seated in the inn’s front hall. He had brewed a pot of tea, set out dried fruits and pastries on the table, and was waiting in perfectly comfortable fashion.
He didn’t have to wait long before carriages began arriving one by one — so many that they choked the road completely.
In a single day, Yu Jiuling had taken in more than forty large wagons.
The next day, when workers from the other transport companies saw that the money was real and truly flowing, even more people came to sell their horses and carriages. A good number of them owned their vehicles outright through partnership arrangements with the transport company — when it was their own property, they had no qualms at all about selling.
In two days, Li Chi’s group had purchased nearly a hundred large wagons.
—
That night, in another inn.
Yue Heng’s face had gone a shade of ugliness beyond all extremes. He slammed his hand on the table with a crack. “The people from Shen Medical Hall are doing this deliberately to humiliate us!”
Du Qingteng said: “What else did you expect?”
He took a sip of tea. “They’re spending silver just to make sure we don’t take a single tael’s worth of medicinal herbs back with us.”
Wang Fangyuan said: “Those drivers are out of their minds — they sold off their carriages. Aren’t they afraid of being called to account when they get home?”
Yue Heng said: “The transport company owners would be overjoyed — one carriage and they earn double the value. Far more profitable than actually running the route.”
Du Qingteng said: “I pledged a military oath to the general before I came… if I return empty-handed, how do I explain it to him?”
The general he spoke of was Meng Kedi, the garrison commander of Anyang City.
Meng Kedi had originally served under Liu Li, the Yuzhou military governor. When Liu Li had led his army northward, Prince Wu had struck at his rear. At the time, Prince Wu had tasked Meng Kedi with persuading Liu Li to turn back, and Meng Kedi had gone to great lengths over it, writing Liu Li several letters.
But Liu Li had not dared to go back, so he had encamped in Jizhou. Later, Liu Li died — yet Meng Kedi was not much affected by this. Prince Wu recognized him as a capable commander and kept him stationed at Anyang City.
This same Meng Kedi had once come within a hair’s breadth of killing Prince Yu.
He was a man of both valor and cunning — a rare commander indeed. Though Prince Wu had reprimanded him, he had not stripped him of his military authority, and later consoled him warmly, so Meng Kedi felt a deep and particular sense of guilt toward Prince Wu.
Before Prince Wu led his army southward this time, he had personally visited Anyang City to see Meng Kedi, instructing him repeatedly that the safety of Yuzhou was entirely in his hands.
Meng Kedi was fierce in battle — and by nature, he craved it. He was a born warrior, and a man like that, made to garrison a single city without fighting for the rest of his life, might well not be able to bear it.
Truly speaking of military talent, even the former Yuzhou governor Liu Li was far beneath him.
Capable men tend toward arrogance, and Meng Kedi was no exception.
This time, the large-scale venture of Yuzhou medicine merchants coming to Jizhou to buy up medicinal herbs — that was all his doing.
Because he wanted to attack Jizhou.
Unlike the Yuzhou garrison forces, he didn’t need to lead his army across the treacherous Nanping River to strike Jizhou. Anyang City was already on the north bank — far easier to launch an attack from than moving Yuzhou forces northward.
In ordering the Yuzhou merchants to come and buy up medicinal herbs this time, Meng Kedi had devised what could be called a scheme that killed two birds with one stone.
Buying out Jizhou’s medicinal herbs — the first purpose was to stockpile supplies for the northern campaign ahead, and one could never have too much on hand.
The second purpose was to deny Jizhou’s army their medicines. Once fighting broke out, medicinal herbs would become even more scarce; strip Jizhou bare now, and when Jizhou needed them, there would be nothing left.
What’s more, Meng Kedi’s objective wasn’t necessarily to capture Jizhou City itself. His goal was the same as Li Chi had deduced: grain and enemy casualties.
If he pushed north to seize Jizhou’s grain stores, the Jizhou garrison would have no choice but to come out of the city. If they came out, Meng Kedi would fight that battle and destroy the main Jizhou force in the open field. If Jizhou dared not come out, he would simply sweep away their summer grain, and by winter a Jizhou without provisions would hardly need to be fought at all.
He already knew that Jizhou’s grain stores had been cleaned out by Luo Jing, so he had every confidence. When the lean season came the following year — the gap between old grain and new — he could march on Jizhou again, and perhaps take the city without a single soldier lost.
Most crucially: Anyang had money.
The people around Anyang City made their living mainly from silk and mulberry cultivation, and the merchants in that trade were as numerous as the hairs on an ox. The garrison troops levied heavy taxes on these merchants, and Meng Kedi had more than enough silver at his disposal.
Heavy taxation was only the beginning — he had soldiers disguised as river pirates doing outright plundering, and that brought in far more.
So the prices he offered the medicine merchants exceeded the market rate by thirty percent. That was why Du Qingteng had been willing to add thirty percent on top of the asking price for Master Ye — even if the entire expense of the journey back ate into his margin, Du Qingteng could not afford to return empty-handed.
Du Qingteng sighed. “You all know how General Meng operates. Getting played by the people from Shen Medical Hall — well, that’s really just a matter of wounded pride. But going back empty-handed, and the general will have someone’s head.”
He looked at Yue Heng. “The way things stand, since the people from Shen Medical Hall are cutting off our options, the only way out is to risk our lives buying one.”
Yue Heng immediately understood. He rose to his feet. “I’ll go find General Ding right now.”
—
At the same time, back at the inn.
Yu Jiuling said with pained regret: “We’ve really spent a lot of silver… What if it doesn’t lure anyone out? What do we do then?”
Li Chi smiled. “The Yuzhou army wants to attack Jizhou. It would be strange if they didn’t take advantage of the medicine merchants’ buying trip to gather intelligence. Those merchants themselves — I have no interest in them whatsoever. But the people the Yuzhou army sent — how could I let them slip away?”
—