Xuzhou still operated under the previous dynasty’s laws and ordinances. After Great Chu’s founding, there had been no major changes. In a “major settlement” like Qianyang with a Market Administration, slaves and servants whose status was equivalent to livestock and lower than private menial households like household troops and retainers could be openly led to the street markets to be called out for buying and selling.
Native-registered tribal households were subject to hereditary rule by the great clans and were to a certain extent tacitly acknowledged as the private property of the great clans. Therefore, after Feng Changyu exterminated the Xi clan, he brazenly sold Xi clan offspring. Even after Great Chu nominally obtained governing authority over Xuzhou, there was no way to pursue accountability.
Moreover, because the Xi clan remnants had all been sold off along the Yuan River, the farthest reaching even into the heartland of the former Qianzhong Commandery, they could only be secretly redeemed and gathered back one by one. Even though the old, weak, sick, and disabled were not very valuable, the asking price for able-bodied young men and women in Qianyang City’s slave market was around ten thousand coins each.
In fact, even if Han Qian could produce over a thousand gold cakes for Feng Xuan to secretly search for Xi clan people, the Four Surnames would not notice the initial redemption of one to two hundred Xi clan people. But once the redeemed Xi clan people numbered three to five hundred, how dull would Feng Changyu and his son Feng Jin have to be to continue being kept in the dark?
Would they then be qualified to openly break with the Four Surnames?
Too many links were inevitably destined to require this wolf of Tanzhou to directly pounce into Xuzhou, stirring Xuzhou’s stagnant waters into greater turbidity and turbulence, before they would have space to maneuver and operate.
There was an even more important point that Han Qian currently had no way to explain even to his father.
The mountain Yue peoples in Xuzhou seemed insufficiently powerful, but western Hunan, the former Qianzhong Commandery, and even further south the former Guilin and Nanhai Commanderies were all lands of the hundred Yue peoples.
The provincial and county administrations in these places only nominally submitted to Great Chu. Provincial and county officials were all hereditary native officials who merely sent small amounts of tribute to Jinling annually. Military and administrative affairs were completely free from Jinling’s interference.
These places currently appeared quite peaceful, seemingly having experienced no major disturbances for the two to three hundred years since the previous dynasty. But when Emperor Tianyou died and great chaos erupted in Jinling, Tanzhou would not truly be able to effectively control Chen, Xu, Shao, and Heng prefectures. The barbarian Yue peoples of Qianzhong would seize the opportunity to rise, advancing west along the Yuan River to completely occupy the prefectures and counties of western and southern Hunan.
Han Qian currently understood very little about the forces upstream on the Yuan River, but if he only regarded Feng Xi, Yang, the Four Surnames, and Tanzhou as threats to his father’s foothold in Xuzhou, that would be a grave mistake.
However, the former Qianzhong Commandery was currently behaving very peacefully. Since he also did not know much about the former Qianzhong Commandery, he had no way to discuss advance preventive measures with his father. But drawing Tanzhou forces into intervening in Xuzhou also had a defensive intent.
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The five hundred gold cakes sent by Tanzhou through Qianjiang Inn meant that the main obstacles to the arrangements he and his father were making in Xuzhou no longer existed. How far Xuzhou’s situation would develop next would still depend on subsequent power struggles. Han Qian could finally rest assured about leaving Xuzhou and began preparing for the return journey.
After Mid-Autumn Festival, in late eighth month, as rainfall decreased in the upstream mountains, the Yuan River’s water势 gradually receded, and Five Peaks Mountain in the river center became even more exposed.
Although called Five Peaks Mountain, it was actually five low hills that rose only three to four zhang above the river surface when the river swelled.
Even the portions of Five Peaks Mountain completely exposed above the river surface during the autumn and winter dry season had only one to two hundred paces of depth, yet it was an excellent location for rebuilding Yang Tan Water Stronghold, the shipyard, and even the boat guild’s base in Xuzhou.
To persuade his father to lift land prohibitions and allow others to reclaim silted land, Han Qian had to lead by example in violating laws and prohibitions—otherwise others might not believe him. So he brazenly and directly ordered Yang Qin and Ji Xiyao to encircle Five Peaks Mountain. In the eyes of those who only knew the Prefectural Governor was lifting land prohibitions to collect wealth, this was entirely normal.
In reality, apart from the gold sent by Tanzhou, the wealth collected from lifting land prohibitions was extremely limited.
After all, those tempted in the early stage did not dare place too many expectations on the lifting of land prohibitions. At the same time, the strength of these interested parties was dispersed, without thoughts of large-scale dike building and silt reclamation. They only thought of encircling a hundred-some acres or three to five hundred acres to expand their fields and estates. In total they had only scraped together over a million coins as bribes, which Han Qian had gradually consumed entirely.
Five Peaks Mountain was only six to seven li from Qianyang City. Besides providing mutual support with Qianyang City, once the river dikes connecting both banks were built, the river surface of the Yuan River’s western section flowing to Qianyang City would narrow to within three hundred zhang. At that time, Five Peaks Mountain would also become a strategic choke point controlling the Yuan River.
Utilizing Five Peaks Mountain’s relatively advantageous terrain, Han Qian planned to preserve an interior lake on the eastern side, then leave a waterway between two low hills connecting to the Yuan River’s main channel. Whether the boat guild’s mooring base or the shipyard, both would be established within the interior lake.
This was a plan requiring at least two to three years to complete. In early eighth month, while Yang Qin led people in practicing on the river, with the limited wealth Han Qian had collected in the early stage, he could only first hire a small number of craftsmen to take boats up to Five Peaks Mountain and begin constructing residences.
With the gold cakes Tanzhou delivered to their door, whether Yang Tan Water Stronghold, the shipyard, or warehouses and docks, they could truly expand operations. At minimum, Han Qian left them sufficient money and provisions needed before year’s end.
The fleet promised by the Four Surnames also assembled in late eighth month, scraping together a total of eight thousand-stone ships.
The conditions Feng Xuan raised with Feng Changyu, Xi Zhen, and others were also largely satisfied. But to occupy a relatively dominant position in the fleet, the Four Surnames’ final personnel arrangement was for Feng Xuan to contribute twenty of his men, the Four Surnames collectively contribute sixty people, and additionally sell on credit forty stockade slaves to Feng Xuan, assembling a total crew of one hundred twenty people including boatmen, sailors, trackers, and a small number of guards.
Much as Han Qian had anticipated, among the twenty men dispatched by Jingyun Stockade, the leaders were Gao Bao and a nephew of Feng Changyu named Feng Zhang.
Gao Bao had traveled north and south, could speak the official language and multiple Jiang-E dialects, and was familiar with Feng Xuan and his stockade. They had dealt with each other many times before. Feng Changyu thought using Gao Bao to cooperate with Feng Zhang in monitoring and winning over Feng Xuan was exactly appropriate.
With all these preparations complete, the more critical matter was scraping together sufficient local products to transport to Jinling.
Eight thousand-stone ships plus one two-thousand-stone sailboat under the boat guild’s banner totaled ten thousand stones of transport capacity. They could not run empty, so they needed to gather ten thousand stones worth of products.
The boat guild still had two warship-sailboats, but their cargo capacity was too small. The boat guild simultaneously needed two true warships capable of rapid maneuvering and engaging enemies on rivers. So these two warship-sailboats would not carry cargo.
The eight thousand-stone ships assembled at Qianyang City underwent simple modifications—adding splash guards to the side rails and replacing reed sails with widened cloth sails—which proceeded quite smoothly.
Although Han Qian wanted to directly expand Xuzhou’s local trade scale, as this would truly stimulate Xuzhou’s economic and military potential to rise rapidly, the inventory the Four Surnames could hastily take to Jinling for trading was extremely limited.
On the other hand, the Four Surnames were relatively conservative. The first batch of goods leaving Xuzhou, they only planned to gather about three million coins worth, even primarily grain.
Of the three million coins worth of goods, the five thousand stones of polished rice and wheat the Four Surnames contributed accounted for two-thirds. After all, grain prices between Xuzhou and Jinling differed by a factor of two. Han Qian promised that after the ships reached Jinling, the Left Division warehouse would purchase at minimum a thirty percent markup. All accounts could also be calculated very clearly with nothing to confuse.
Moreover, grain could fully utilize cargo hold space and was convenient to transport.
Of course, the goods contributed by the Four Surnames could not fully utilize the transport capacity, so Han Qian needed to additionally stockpile in Qianyang City products sold by guest-registered people and stockades from upstream on the Yuan River for transport to Jinling.
The vast majority of traveling merchants and even goods that could leave the mountains from Xuzhou and even further upstream on the Yuan River had to transfer through outside Qianyang City. After Han Qian obtained this gold from Tanzhou, he stockpiled at Five Peaks Mountain medicinal materials, gold and silver vessels, copper and iron implements, tea, cinnabar, preserved poultry, local cloth, tung oil, pig bristles, furs, ivory, rhinoceros horn, and so on. In early ninth month, they officially set out, heading downstream along the Yuan River toward Jinling.
Departing from Xuzhou, the Yuan River’s current remained swift. Even traveling by day and resting at night, they averaged two hundred li daily.
The contemporary Dongting Lake differed greatly from the later-era Dongting Lake with water and sky merging into one expanse. Mainly because the Jianghan Plain on the northern shore had not yet formed, the impact of water from upstream on the Yangtze River on the northern shore’s beach silt was obvious. Between the Yangtze River and Dongting Lake on the southern shore, no shoreland had yet formed due to sediment deposition, causing Dongting Lake and the Yangtze River’s main channel to intermix.
This simultaneously caused the entire lake region to have numerous sand islands and reclaimed lands. It was actually composed of large and small lake marshes, with relatively complex water conditions.
Therefore, within Dongting Lake, apart from clear nights with stars and moon filling the sky, under normal circumstances the fleet also traveled by day and rested at night.
Entering Dongting Lake, the modified sails with horizontal sections doubled in width unfurled. With splash guards reducing the hull’s lateral drift, speed increased extremely noticeably. From Langzhou to Yuezhou took only three days.
Passing Yuezhou, they entered the Yangtze River’s main channel. At this time with clear autumn skies, the weather was also fine.
On the Yangtze River’s main channel, with mainly crosswinds, traveling day and night without rest, the fleet’s eastward speed even reached the high velocity of three hundred forty to fifty li per day. Seven days later, they entered the Qiupu River mouth.
From the Yuan River to Dongting Lake, they formed a tacit understanding with Tanzhou. After entering the Yangtze River’s main channel, the fleet advanced east extremely quickly. Even if small bands of river bandits glimpsed the fleet’s whereabouts, not knowing the true situation, they did not dare rashly act. The fleet smoothly arrived at Jinling all along the way.
At this time, exactly four months had passed since Han Daoxun and his son departed Jinling in mid-fifth month.
Li Zhigao received advance notice. On the very day the fleet arrived in Jinling, he rode early with Feng Yi, Kong Xirong, and others to the Qiupu River mouth to welcome Han Qian and them.