“Why has Father rushed back from the government office at this hour?”

Seeing his father had something to say, Han Qian went to sit in the main hall of the eastern courtyard to talk. He had Zhao Ting’er arrange for Madam Xi to come serve tea—the life of a spoiled young master must be properly enjoyed.

“Why did you publicly execute Ji Kun?” Han Daoxun had wanted to ask Han Qian this question last night, but after Han Qian returned yesterday, he had fallen asleep like an infant, and he couldn’t bear to wake him.

Han Qian looked up at Fan Xicheng, thinking that most likely after learning of this matter, he had run to his father to gossip.

Han Qian didn’t know how to explain to his father. That person in Anning Palace was by no means merciful or soft-hearted. After Emperor Tianyou’s death, the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the claws Anning Palace would bare would shock everyone.

If they now left room for the people of Anning Palace out of hope for future mercy, it would be utterly foolish behavior.

When Han Qian had the opportunity to kill Ji Kun, he absolutely wouldn’t show mercy, nor would he expect any good outcome if he later fell into Anning Palace’s hands. But as for why he had to publicly execute Ji Kun, he had his reasons. Taking a long breath, he said:

“I killed him for the Four Clans to see, so they would know that if Father suffers any mishap in Xuzhou, I will stop at nothing, without any scruples, to make corpses pile up throughout Xuzhou and rivers of blood flow.”

Xi Ren, dragging heavy iron shackles, brought over the tea. Hearing Han Qian speak in such an utterly indifferent tone made her heart palpitate, and her hands trembled—the teacup nearly rolled out of the tray.

Han Qian glanced up at Madam Xi but said nothing, taking the teacup from her.

Fan Xicheng’s heart also jumped in alarm.

Though there was no concrete evidence, based on the dangerous situations they had experienced in their few days in Xuzhou, as well as the Four Clans’ unbridled and ruthless actions, he couldn’t help but lean more toward believing that there were likely problems with Wang Yu’s “death from illness.”

Open spears are easy to dodge, hidden arrows hard to defend against. Fan Xicheng had also been troubled about how the household should guard against the underhanded methods the Four Clans might employ in secret, but he hadn’t expected that the young master’s insistence on publicly executing Ji Kun was meant for precisely this purpose.

Even if Fan Xicheng didn’t like Han Qian’s bloodthirstiness, he had to admit that such ruthless methods had the most obvious deterrent effect. Unless the Four Clans truly became desperate and took that final step, they should restrain themselves somewhat, shouldn’t they?

“Alas.”

Han Daoxun knew that Han Qian still insisted that someone from the Four Clans had tampered with Wang Yu’s death from illness. He sighed deeply and directly changed the subject, asking:

“Just how much wealth did you extort these past few days? Now the prefectural government wants to establish shipyards and workshops, but the prefectural treasury has little money or grain. How much do you plan to share with me?”

“Ah?” Seeing his father’s sudden shift in topic, Han Qian found it rather difficult to adjust, and asked: “Aren’t you going to lecture me more before discussing other matters?”

“What would I lecture you for?” Han Daoxun pressed: “Just how much wealth did you extort these past few days?”

In addition to taxes submitted to the court, prefectures and counties had certain financial sources to establish small treasuries—whether collecting port taxes, allowing prisoners to redeem themselves with copper coins, or managing official farmland.

However, the problem was that before Han Daoxun took office, the Four Clans had already emptied all the money and grain from the prefectural treasury’s small reserve, then burned the account books to ashes in a fire. Han Daoxun had no way to investigate even if he wanted to.

What Han Daoxun currently controlled was only the portion of collected taxes retained at a certain rate, but this amount was extremely limited—nowhere near enough to maintain the entire prefectural government’s operations.

After the prison riot was suppressed and the Four Clans withdrew their core disciples from the prefectural garrison, Han Daoxun wasn’t without opportunity to take control of the garrison. But he didn’t do so—not only to lower the Four Clans’ guard and leave sufficient buffer room, but also for another main reason: if Xuzhou fell into serious confrontation, he simply couldn’t raise enough money and grain to maintain the prefectural garrison.

Local provincial troops differed from the court’s directly controlled Forbidden Army and Imperial Guard systems—the soldiers mainly came from recruitment.

The military pay Xuzhou needed to allocate to the prefectural garrison was calculated at two sheng of polished rice and ten copper coins per soldier per day. With four hundred soldiers in the garrison, daily pay was eight shi of polished rice and four thousand coins—annually, three thousand shi of polished rice and one million five hundred thousand coins in military stipends.

This didn’t even include funds for repairing barracks and weapons.

Income from operating official farmland was mainly used to pay officials’ salaries, and consisted of fixed rent and taxes collected from tenant farmers based on field acreage. This matter was originally under Registrar Xue Ruogu’s jurisdiction and didn’t allow for many tricks. But whether it was rent and taxes from official farmland or the port and prison rights now in hand, generating income required time. Yet Han Daoxun wanted to further stabilize the situation now and begin work that could be done, which required raising additional funds.

Leaving aside everything else, the jailers, household troops at Furong Garden, and their families totaled one hundred people—basic monthly expenses exceeded one hundred thousand coins. Even if Han Daoxun put in his entire official salary, there was still a large shortfall.

“The prefectural government lacks money, but Father, you can’t treat me like a money bag to squeeze dry—besides, when we father and son talk about money, it hurts our feelings!” Han Qian said with a bitter smile.

This time he hadn’t directly extorted money from the Four Clans’ coffers. The bribes received through Medical Scholar Zhao Zhixian organizing banquets amounted to only about two million coins—not even equivalent to two hundred gold ingots. It truly wasn’t enough.

“You always have ways to figure things out,” Han Daoxun said.

“Of course there are methods. How about while the Four Clans have relaxed their guard, Father, you allow me to lead troops to take down a stockade?” Han Qian asked with a grin.

Han Daoxun glared at Han Qian, then retreated: “Fine, fine. You hand over half of whatever you extorted, that should work, right?”

“All right, I can barely scrape together five hundred thousand coins for you,” Han Qian said reluctantly.

“Ting’er, is what Han Qian received really only this much?” Han Daoxun asked Zhao Ting’er.

“Ting’er dares not say. If Ting’er tells the truth, the young master will punish Ting’er,” Zhao Ting’er said.

“…” Han Qian picked up his teacup, making as if to splash it at Zhao Ting’er. All that kindness to her was wasted.

“Don’t make things difficult for Ting’er, and I won’t make things difficult for you. First take out one million coins for me. From now on, the Left Bureau trading post will contribute three million coins annually to Xuzhou,” Han Daoxun said.

“We father and son should be conspiring to extort more from Xuzhou together. How can there be any logic in spitting back out money and grain already swallowed into our bellies?” Han Qian cried out in distress.

“Father, you know it’s not a matter of shipping goods worth ten million coins from Xuzhou to sell in Jinling for twenty million and netting a clean profit of ten million. To truly open the trade route from Xuzhou to Jinling, who knows how many elite troops and how much money I’ll have to invest—there simply won’t be much surplus in the early stages. Besides, unless something unexpected happens, the Ministry of Personnel conducts evaluations every three years for county and prefectural magistrates. If you’re transferred away from Xuzhou by then, Father, we won’t even recover our invested capital! You also know Xuzhou is a place where birds don’t even shit—there really aren’t many products to ship out. If you were appointed Governor of Runzhou, Yangzhou, or Yuezhou, I could return double the money to you—those places are truly dripping with fat!”

“What conditions do you want to propose?” Han Daoxun asked.

Watching Han Daoxun and Han Qian, father and son, sit there haggling, Fan Xicheng also found it both funny and exasperating.

“All right, I want to use Yang Qin to establish a shipping guild in Xuzhou, with the guild responsible for transporting Xuzhou’s tributary payments,” Han Qian said.

Money, grain, and other material tribute items that prefectures and counties transported to Jinling were all organized by the prefectures and counties themselves for convoy transport, with military officers and soldiers drawn from prefectural garrisons to provide escort.

However, because Xu, Chen, and other prefectures were located in remote areas with quite sparse populations, the taxes they directly remitted to Jinling after deductions were extremely limited—sometimes only two or three percent of what Run and Yang prefectures paid. In the end, everything was converted to monetary amounts and transported to Jinling.

This actually represented a change from taxation in kind to monetary taxation.

This way, localities didn’t need to worry about convoy transport matters.

The Four Clans fulfilling their promise to organize ship fleets to transport goods for trade with the Left Bureau trading post was one thing. But Han Qian suggested complicating simplicity, hoping his father would change Xuzhou’s tax payments to Jinling from monetary taxation back to taxation in kind—grain, silk cloth, and local specialty products. Though this seemed more complicated, his fundamental purpose was that he planned for the shipping guild established with Yang Qin at its head to undertake Xuzhou’s convoy transport, thereby gaining semi-official status.

This way, the shipping guild established primarily with Yang Qin could legally possess weapons and armor, legally become an armed fleet traveling the Yuan River and Yangtze, and “incidentally” provide protection for other commercial shipping fleets.

And if attacked by bandits en route, Yang Qin could openly and legitimately organize counterattacks, even proactively strike upon hearing intelligence.

Otherwise, the Bureau of Secrets’ Left Bureau wasn’t officially recognized by the court as a proper department. If Yang Qin, Tian Cheng, Gao Shao, and the others operated armed fleets outside and their activities were exposed, being suppressed by local prefectures and counties as river pirates and water bandits—who would he cry to then?

“What else?” Han Daoxun asked.

He knew that without military escort or elite scouts dispatched to monitor the routes, the maternal relatives the Xu clan and Anning Palace could at any time contact river bandits and water brigands to specifically target merchant ships traveling from Xuzhou to Jinling, cutting off the flow of materials between Xuzhou and Jinling.

If that truly happened, even if the Four Clans promised too much now, as long as the fleets suffered heavy losses once or twice traveling between Jiang and E regions, no matter how much pressure he applied afterward, the Four Clans absolutely couldn’t cooperate with them.

Of course, ensuring the safety of merchant ships from Xuzhou to Jinling was also something Han Daoxun was extremely concerned about. He didn’t believe Han Qian had only this one condition.

“There’s also the matter that if foreign migrants might flood into Xuzhou in the near future, Father should grant them legal status and not drive them away as vagrants,” Han Qian said.

“How would Xuzhou suddenly have large numbers of vagrants flooding in? What scheme are you plotting now?” Han Daoxun’s brows shot up as he asked in confusion.

Although Xuzhou had four to five thousand households of non-native residents, accounting for forty percent of the total population, they were mainly vagrants who had fled south from Jing, Xiang, and other regions to escape war and famine. This had formed over quite a long period—it wasn’t accomplished overnight.

And by now, the situation in Yue, Tan, and other areas was calm, with the area around Dongting Lake more suitable for people to settle and reproduce. At this point, if ten to twenty households of non-native residents migrated in annually, it would already be quite considerable. If only that many foreign residents migrated in each year, why would Han Daoxun, stuffed full and idle, treat them as vagrants and prevent their entry?

However, seeing Han Qian speak of this matter so seriously, he must believe that large numbers of foreign people might flood into Xuzhou in a short time. Han Daoxun didn’t know why Han Qian would make such a judgment, or perhaps Han Qian had already made other arrangements for this?

“I’m not plotting any scheme,” Han Qian said with a smile. “I’ve merely had the Left Bureau infiltrate various places to spread rumors—things like discovering large amounts of gold sand in the riverbeds upstream of Jingyun Creek and Tiepi Creek, with many people becoming rich overnight!”

Hearing Han Qian say this, even Han Daoxun couldn’t help slapping his forehead, saying: “You spread false rumors without considering how severe the consequences might be. Don’t you know Xuzhou simply cannot accommodate too many vagrants in a short time?”

He knew that besides being located in a desolate area, another reason Xuzhou wasn’t valued was its sparse population—only a total of some twelve thousand households. One should know that in Chi Prefecture and Chao Prefecture, an ordinary county would have over ten thousand households.

And for any region to possess sufficient economic and military potential, the most directly related factor was population.

However, the problem was that for Xuzhou to support more population required a gradual process. If thousands upon ten thousand people suddenly swarmed in, it would cause enormous impact to Xuzhou’s traditional social structure. Many contradictions would be catalyzed, intensified, even spiral out of control.

This also meant bringing famine, armed conflicts, and even uncontrolled deaths and injuries!

Moreover, among those who would believe this and come, how many would be desperate and vicious criminals?