Wang Jun stayed at Han Qian’s side for several days, departing directly from Tangyi city east back to Yangzhou on the sixth day of the eighth month.
Wang Jun had just returned to Jian Garden with maidservant Xiangyun when Madam Xu hurried over anxiously, asking incessantly:
“Did the Marquis of Qianyang agree to the marriage? Goodness, throughout history, where has there ever been a young lady running to propose marriage herself? Even if the Marquis of Qianyang agrees to cooperate with Huaidong for temporary benefit, after you marry over, how will you receive any regard? Besides, three or four years ago the Marquis of Qianyang took a concubine before marrying a wife. This concubine even bore him a son. Knowing this, won’t she bully you to death!”
“What if the Marquis of Qianyang didn’t agree?” Wang Jun asked her stepmother with great interest.
“Ah?” Madam Xu froze for a moment, but seeing laughter brimming in Wang Jun’s eyes and brows, she couldn’t help reaching out to pat her, saying, “What use is tricking me about this? I’m just worried you’ll be bullied after marrying over!”
“Where is Father?” Not seeing her father’s figure, Wang Jun asked curiously.
“Haven’t seen him. Perhaps he doesn’t know you’re returning from Tangyi today. He’s still at the prefecture offices attending to official duties,” Madam Xu said.
Wang Jun knew her father must know she’d returned to Jian Garden. He was probably still feeling ashamed about using her as a bargaining chip and didn’t want to appear too eager, right?
Wang Jun naturally wouldn’t reveal too many details to her stepmother. She first returned to her room to wash and change back into women’s clothing. Only toward evening did she see her father returning to Jian Garden at a leisurely pace on horseback.
Prefecture Vice Commissioner Yin Peng also rode over. Wang Jun knew they were still concerned about what she’d experienced during these days in Tangyi. Otherwise, as prefecture vice commissioner, Yin Peng wouldn’t be so idle as to constantly act as her father’s attendant.
“Going out to relax for a few days, yet you’ve grown somewhat thinner. When you return, eat some good food to nourish your body,” Wang Wenqian said in the study after Wang Jun came with concubine Madam Xu to pay respects, casually gesturing for maidservants and guards to step outside to the corridor.
“If Father has no other instructions, then daughter will go eat some good food to nourish her body,” Wang Jun said.
“Ahem!” Wang Wenqian cleared his throat, asking somewhat awkwardly, “During these days touring in Tangyi, did you have any other gains?”
Since Wang Jun had returned without crying, making scenes, or hanging herself, Wang Wenqian naturally knew the marriage had no problems. But the question was, besides this marriage that had experienced too many complications, under what conditions and in what form Han Qian would join hands with Huaidong was the key issue.
He believed that after Jun’er saw Han Qian, even without directly involving these questions, she would observe and consider them. What he needed to clarify was these matters.
“Does Father in his heart wish for Jun’er to marry to Xuzhou?” Wang Jun stared at her father Wang Wenqian, asking quietly.
Wang Wenqian asked with slight bitterness, “After you marry to Xuzhou, I must resign my position as Yangzhou Prefect. Jun’er, you tell me—is your father willing or unwilling?”
“Ah, why must you resign the prefect position?” Madam Xu asked in shock.
Though Madam Xu had followed Wang Wenqian these years with broader horizons and knowledge than ordinary women, her understanding of human nature hadn’t deepened to the point of knowing the subtle and recognizing the minute.
Where would she have imagined that the basis for Huaidong seeking cooperation with Han Qian was Prince Xin Yang Yuanyan and Ruan Yan and others believing Han Qian had ambition, and believing that for private gain Han Qian would choose to cooperate with Huaidong rather than wholeheartedly serving the court with the possibility of helping the court pressure Huaidong for vassal dissolution?
However, everything had two sides.
Huaidong believed Han Qian’s ambition was currently beneficial to them, but in the future, as long as strength permitted, it was hard to guarantee Han Qian wouldn’t turn and devour Huaidong.
Wang Wenqian resigning his Yangzhou Prefect position was to avoid suspicion for future matters.
Of course, the meaning in Wang Wenqian’s words to Wang Jun was also clear—if he coveted power and position, he wouldn’t allow this marriage to force him into an extremely awkward position where he might ultimately please neither side.
These principles—Wang Jun wasn’t unable to think them through in her heart. But sometimes one needed to ask directly, demanding a more explicit, more definite answer. Opening her eyes, she saw her father’s temples had already turned frosty white.
In the study, there was momentary silence. No one answered Madam Xu’s question. Madam Xu stood somewhat awkwardly to the side, her hand habitually lightly pounding Wang Wenqian’s shoulder.
“Does Father think His Highness has secretly sent people to petition Prince Shou for aid?” Wang Jun asked.
“These two years, Ruan Yan has been at His Highness’s side. I can hardly get to His Highness’s side to speak even once every three to five months. This matter is truly hard to say,” Wang Wenqian said.
The subtlety of closeness and distance in this world was just so. Even if Prince Xin currently trusted him greatly, he still might not tell him every matter in detail without having his own judgment. Besides, he was a subject while Prince Xin was sovereign. A sovereign must always maintain the way of balancing subordinates. If completely wearing the same pants as one subject, how could he win over other subjects?
Of course, Wang Wenqian didn’t want to wander too far on the topic of mutual suspicion between sovereign and subject. What he cared more about was Han Qian’s exact attitude in this entire matter.
Wang Jun didn’t say too much, only telling her father Wang Wenqian about Han Qian’s intention to sell Tangyi fields and residences in Yangzhou.
Tangyi offering over one hundred thousand mu of already-reclaimed new fields for sale, also including houses, farm tools, seeds, grain rations until next summer harvest, and some necessary living supplies—this was basically no different from giving them away.
Even when recruiting refugees for land reclamation without requiring refugees to pay a penny, refugees still had to personally reclaim land and construct dwellings. Without sufficient tools, this process would be extraordinarily arduous—don’t expect to settle down in less than two or three years.
Of course, Tangyi’s recruitment of people this time was limited in scale, only ten to twenty thousand people. The money and grain obtained from selling fields and residences would all be loaned in full to Huaidong. This could also be considered mutually beneficial.
More crucially, this laid groundwork for subsequent deeper cooperation, allowing both sides to gradually approach each other without worrying someone would suddenly change course and backstab the other.
Wang Wenqian immediately drafted correspondence to be sent overnight to Chuzhou for Prince Xin Yang Yuanyan to decide on this matter.
Meanwhile, that the Han family was currently supporting Tangyi’s construction with full clan resources was already an open secret.
As a Jiangdong powerful clan standing alongside the Feng clan, what depths of resources the Han family concealed, outsiders couldn’t fathom clearly. Just like who could have anticipated that after the Imperial Mausoleum Case, Emperor Tianyou could confiscate five to six million strings of cash in clan property from the Feng clan alone?
Therefore, that Han Qian had spare capacity to reclaim and renovate surplus fields and residences in Tangyi for sale—Wang Wenqian and Huaidong’s people didn’t think much of it, attributing it more to the Han family’s wholehearted assistance.
…
…
Prince Xin Yang Yuanyan quickly responded, authorizing Yangzhou to handle this matter with full discretion. Subsequently, Han Qian had Feng Yi lead over ten people to Yangzhou specifically to manage selling fields and residences and loaning funds.
This matter wasn’t deliberately kept secret from the court. Han Qian even directly memorialized the court requesting to implement this method in Xuanzhou, Runzhou and other places to raise military funds.
However, the problem was that Han Qian refused to allow powerful clans to invest in hoarding land in Tangyi, then send slaves over to cultivate. As for ordinary property-owning households in Jiangnan prefectures and counties, without facing the desperate situation of family destruction, who would be willing to risk their lives, bringing their whole families to settle in Jiangbei where they could be drawn into brutal warfare at any time?
Even though considerable numbers of landless poor and refugees displaced from their homes existed in Jiangnan prefectures and counties, they were targets local powerful clans competed to purchase and sell as slaves. How would local powers be willing to hand over the fat meat from their mouths to Tangyi?
Of course, the court didn’t want to strongly support Tangyi’s large-scale recruitment of landless poor and refugees in Jiangnan prefectures and counties, but it also wouldn’t prohibit Tangyi from attracting war refugees from Huaidong.
Truly prohibiting this—wouldn’t this force Han Qian to throw down his burden?
The matter’s progress matched Han Qian’s initial expectations.
Yangzhou, Taizhou and other places were less affected by war. The vast majority of disaster victims were unwilling to migrate to Tangyi, all waiting for floodwaters to recede so they could return home.
However, Chuzhou, particularly the region directly along the Huai River, had been the area梁army focused on attacking and devastating at year’s beginning. It was also destined to be the area梁army would focus on raiding going forward. Refugees from there who had fled to Yangzhou and Taizhou had mostly had their homes destroyed. Even if they endured several more months waiting for floodwaters to recede before returning home, the situation they would face wouldn’t be better than going to Tangyi.
However, people always were reluctant to leave their homeland. Among these people, those willing to migrate to Tangyi were still few.
Without repeated setbacks, the vast majority would maintain optimistic or fortunate attitudes toward the future.
However, refugees who had fled south from Haizhou and Sizhou north of the Huai River at war’s beginning, unable to return home, stranded in the Yangzhou-Taizhou region—not wanting to starve to death and not wanting to sell themselves into slavery—could only abandon the small amounts of money and goods they carried to try their luck in Tangyi.
When Yangzhou Prefect offices and Tangyi field headquarters posted official proclamations inside and outside Yangzhou city, respondents gathered in crowds.
Even at one-tenth Jiangnan’s land prices, selling Tangyi fields while including houses, grain rations, farm tools and seeds still presented a certain threshold for southern refugees. But in just over ten days, the quota of three thousand households and twenty thousand people agreed upon between Tangyi and Yangzhou was completely claimed.
Whether in cash, gold and silver, or cloth and silk, a total equivalent to two hundred thousand strings of cash in money and goods was collected, all loaned by Tangyi field headquarters to Yangzhou Prefect offices for purchasing grain to resolve Huaidong army’s increasingly dire food crisis.
By the end of the eighth month, the military and civilian population of Tangyi’s seven counties finally grew slowly to one hundred fifty thousand. The thirty thousand people newly added since the third month brought Tangyi an increase of over thirteen thousand able-bodied men and robust women, somewhat alleviating Tangyi’s severe labor shortage.
Beyond this, according to principle, corvée laborers conscripted from Guangde Prefecture and Jiangzhou should be released back to their native places after the three-month corvée period ended, with a new batch of laborers coming to replace them.
Theoretically, even if Zhou Dan and Chen Jingzhou withstood pressure from local powers and cooperated fully, the corvée labor Tangyi could conscript from Guangde Prefecture and Jiangzhou was fixed.
However, with Tangyi paying sufficient cloth as wages, quite a number of laborers with little or no land were willing to remain, no longer restricted by the three-month corvée period.
By the end of the eighth month, corvée laborers from Guangde Prefecture and Jiangzhou working on embankment, settlement, road, and wharf and harbor construction in Tangyi increased to twelve thousand.
Adding the over eight thousand craftsmen Han Qian recruited and employed from Xuzhou, the various construction projects in Tangyi’s counties could barely be maintained without serious disruptions…