The previous time she had arrived in the night and had not been able to see clearly; but when the head farmers all came to pay their respects to Minglan behind the screen that morning, Minglan immediately sensed something was off. Every movement of the head manager Wu Guang, every glance — and behind him the assembled managers dropped to their knees in unison to kowtow and announce themselves to Minglan; when there was quiet, no one dared interject; when answering Minglan’s questions, most were orderly and coherent.
There were only two explanations for this sort of behavior. Either — like the briefings Yao Yiyi’s work unit used to rehearse for visiting leadership inspections or hygiene checks — everyone at Ancient Rock Manor had been drilled in advance; or…
What was more, when she had proposed measuring the land just moments ago, Wu Guang had responded with unflinching composure, even producing the corresponding land charts and tenant registers in advance, while the head farmers below immediately busied themselves to assist.
Minglan lowered her eyes.
There are no walls without cracks. Her open and unapologetic actions at Black Mountain Manor — any servant or tenant farmer could have spoken of it. The same tactic cannot be used twice. It could catch Black Mountain Manor off guard, but Ancient Rock Manor was another matter. Besides, she had never intended to be on guard here in the first place.
Unlike Black Mountain Manor, Ancient Rock Manor had been the property of a convicted official confiscated many years ago. It had been administered as an imperial estate for over ten years, managed by an imperially appointed estate supervisor-eunuch. With the imperial designation, there was rarely anyone to take matters to account, whatever occurred on the estate.
Minglan rather wanted to see how deep the waters of Ancient Rock Manor ran — and how well the surface could be dressed up. The Cui brothers went out in the same fashion to measure the land; Gongsun Meng was tasked with visiting every tenant farmer; and Minglan herself drew out the head manager Wu Guang to talk.
“…So Manager Wu is a kinsman of Supervisor Wu of the Estate Administration Office. What an honor, what an honor.” Minglan smiled — warm and gentle as a spring breeze.
“This humble servant would not dare claim such distinction. It’s a distant relation twisted through nine turns — I only mention the name to manage a bite to eat.” Wu Guang bowed respectfully. “After His Majesty granted this estate, the supervisor originally wanted me to serve in the office. But I’ve been at this manor for so many years now — we’ve grown attached, inside and out. So I thought — if Madam and the Commander find this servant serviceable, I would be willing to stay on and render my best efforts.”
“But how could we accept this? Master Wu is after all the supervisor’s kinsman. If it were to get out, it might cause talk — it wouldn’t do to have people gossiping.” Minglan let a trace of hesitation show.
Wu Guang’s gaze flickered; his words were smooth and carefully measured: “How could this humble one be called a ‘master’? However… my elderly uncle has excellent relations with all the distinguished gentlemen of the inner palace. Word has it that the Commander is by nature open and magnanimous, unconstrained by small things. All the gentlemen are happy to associate with him. I would imagine there would be no difficulties.”
The remarks had layers upon layers, and were delivered with considerable skill. Minglan gave a slight smile and lifted her teacup. “Manager Wu makes a fair point. As a woman, I really must discuss this with my husband.”
By the end of the day, the Cui brothers and Gongsun Meng reported back with detailed findings, supplemented by intelligence gathered quietly by informants the Tuo brothers had planted throughout the manor. Having heard it all, Minglan’s brow knotted tightly. She issued only a brief order to summon Wu Guang.
After a few pleasantries, Minglan said pleasantly: “I have thought this through carefully from every angle. Our household has no precedent for having people from outside manage an estate — that is its own rule. And if you go around the entire capital, how many households would dare employ managers from a former imperial estate? When all is said and done, it simply doesn’t conform to proper principle.”
Wu Guang’s angular, pale face darkened abruptly.
“…If I truly kept Manager Wu on, it’s not only what outsiders would say about the Gu household having no standards — even the senior members of the Gu family would come directly to reproach us.” Minglan smiled pleasantly as she spoke, watching his expression carefully through the fine gauze of the screen. She was betting he would not be willing to sign a servant’s contract.
Wu Guang’s face fell, then quickly recovered. He sighed. “What Madam says is not without reason. But those five or six hundred tenant farming households currently owe the manor rent and debt money. With the old accounts not yet settled, this humble servant would have difficulty answering to those above.”
Minglan was inwardly startled — she had not expected this man’s nerve to be quite so well developed. At that moment there was a faint sound of movement from behind the side-panel screen in the main hall. She glanced that way, then said: “How much in total?”
Wu Guang had come prepared and named the figure without hesitation: “The accumulated rent the tenant farmers owe from past years amounts to roughly twenty thousand taels. And people eat grain and fall ill — when a tenant farmer’s household runs short, they borrow money. That adds up to about fifteen thousand taels.”
Minglan was genuinely startled: “That much?!”
“Alas…” Wu Guang heaved an exaggerated sigh. “The rent is one thing, but those loans are another matter. Where would this humble servant find that kind of money? Most of it belongs to noble personages from above. And what’s more — if one calculates carefully, this manor was only granted to you at the start of the year, so those accumulated rent arrears technically belonged to the imperial household!”
Minglan gripped her fingers so tightly her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. She collected herself, and said in a tone of deliberate helplessness: “This puts me in a most difficult position. I wonder if Manager Wu might help me think of a way out…”
Wu Guang’s heart eased. As he had anticipated — a young woman of limited experience, easily frightened. These past few days he had observed that Gu Tingye largely left household affairs unattended and generally deferred to this young wife of his in most things. With this reassurance in mind, he promptly said with eager servility: “Madam need not worry. As long as this humble servant is here for one day, all these tangled matters will be managed tidily for Madam!”
Minglan smiled and dismissed him. Then she opened her palm — and found it scored with fingernail marks.
After this, she made no further open moves. She continued to have people audit the manor’s affairs. Even when Tuo Hu and Gongsun Meng grew furious and wanted to go make trouble for Wu Guang and the other estate managers, she reined them back.
Two more days passed. That afternoon, Gu Tingye returned unexpectedly. He changed out of his heavy official robes and armor, bathed, and sat at ease on the kang in his everyday clothing, cradling a tea bowl. “…Weapons inventoried, military drills orderly — not quite comparable to old Marshal Bo’s legendary discipline, but presentable enough. Today I have a half-day’s rest; tomorrow His Majesty comes to inspect.”
Minglan brought over some fruit that had been chilled in well water and said with a light laugh: “Isn’t that just putting on a performance? If His Majesty truly thinks all is going smoothly in the army and actually calls them into service, won’t that be a disaster?”
Gu Tingye smiled wryly: “With only these few days, we can hardly work miracles. His Majesty knows the real situation well enough.” But for the new Emperor’s first military inspection, making a presentable showing was also important.
“So the Master can breathe more easily now?” Minglan smiled as she peeled loquats for him.
Gu Tingye ate the sweet fruit and watched Minglan’s pale, soft fingers — white as coconut milk — moving nimbly among the golden, fragrant loquats, until the fingers themselves seemed to smell sweet and delectable. He watched her quietly for a moment.
“What happened at the manor?”
Minglan looked up at Gu Tingye and said, cheeks puffed slightly with guilt: “I had originally meant to wait until you finished your work to tell you.”
“Tell me.” The man pinched her cheek gently. “Whatever impressive matter it is — let me hear it.”
Minglan bit her lip, and finally recounted everything she had seen and heard over these past several days — the whole story from start to finish. As Gu Tingye listened, his expression darkened steadily, until his fury could no longer be contained. He brought his fist crashing down on the low table beside the kang — and every loquat on it jumped.
Minglan quickly spread her arms to catch the round fruits before they could roll off, and glanced toward the door. Fortunately Xie Ang had stationed the personal guards in a ring around the few rooms nearby. Otherwise, in a place like this, she would have worried about ears beyond the walls.
“…In truth I hadn’t made up my mind yet, not until Meng and the others kept bringing back report after report — then I was genuinely furious.” Minglan picked the loquats up one by one and returned them to the small woven white-jade bamboo basket. “Not only is the rent two-tenths higher than at other imperial manors — that Wu fellow routinely conscripted tenant farmers to work for him privately, demanded money from people at New Year and festivals, piled on extra rent at any excuse, while his head farmers and managers lorded it over people and insulted their wives and daughters without restraint. Completely beneath the behavior of any decent human being. A mere estate manager, with no regard for heaven’s principles — squeezing people to this extent. I — cannot tolerate it.”
“Some of what they described made even my skin crawl.” Minglan tossed the last fruit back into the basket, her face bearing an expression she could not conceal. “In the deep of winter, a family with no firewood, enduring the cold in a few thin garments — there were children who fell ill from the cold and died. Because the rent was so heavy, elders who starved themselves rather than eat, until they died. And even so, the able-bodied men and women still had to go down to the fields without a single day’s rest—”
Coughing blood but still working. Feet rotted with frostbite but still working. Children in the house crying themselves hoarse from cold and hunger — and still working… The tenant farmers had not been without the will to fight back, but above them the local garrison office had been brought into complicity, and below them the managers and head farmers were as cruel as wolves and tigers. The tenant farmers had been watched and controlled at every turn, with no idea how to seek out a censorate official or speak to an inspector. The few uprisings that had broken out had been suppressed — and the aftermath had left them even more ruthlessly oppressed.
Minglan’s eyes grew wet. She could not bring herself to imagine such circumstances. Anger rose up in her of its own accord. In all her years in the ancient world, she had never despised or hated anyone this much. The women of the inner chambers who played their petty schemes — one could at least say they were driven by survival, by the constraints of society and the system. But someone like Wu Guang, rotten to the core? Minglan wished she could shoot them all — one by one.
Gu Tingye’s face was a storm about to break, dark with barely suppressed fury. He said to Minglan: “I had heard rumors of this, but I didn’t know the full extent of it. I hadn’t had a free hand to deal with these animals. I left you people precisely so you could deal with them! Just have them bound and sent to the relevant authorities.”
He vented his rage, then drew several deep breaths to compose himself. A cold smile crossed his face: “They even dared to threaten their mistress. These insolent wretches — are they tired of living? They’ve grown too comfortable for too long! What official commission and imperial inner palace — where in this world do so many noble personages come from! They’re nothing but people inflated by the late Emperor’s generosity, each one swaggering and throwing their weight around. A manor with an annual yield of five thousand taels — in just about ten years — has produced not only tenant farmers who cannot survive but also twenty thousand taels of rent arrears?! Was there a famine here during these years? How is it I never heard of it? Let’s see who dares come and argue the case!”
Minglan kept her head down and did not speak for a long while, then sighed softly. “If I could have made that move so decisively, I would have done it long ago.”
“What are you worried about?”
“It’s not worry, it’s just…” Minglan gave a quiet sigh. “Years ago, Father had a classmate by the surname Qiu. Uncle Qiu was convinced that one of the princes would ascend the throne — and he had the foresight. Yet what did his foresight amount to? Before the prince was even named Crown Prince, Uncle Qiu had already been impeached and imprisoned, and died in military exile. That prince never became Emperor. Uncle Qiu died for nothing — and to this day, no one has come to clear the Qiu family’s name.”
Gu Tingye’s anger gradually subsided. The decade-long struggle for succession had overturned half the capital and brought down countless civil and military officials. Even those who had backed the right side had not necessarily come out well.
He felt the weight of this, and listened in silence.
Minglan lowered her voice further: “Better to offend a ruler than to offend a petty person. The late Emperor may have passed on, but those consorts and eunuchs haven’t necessarily lost all influence. They may not be able to fight back now — but if you don’t kill a snake outright, over the years, if they nurse a grudge and wait for their chance, and one day strike at you from behind — that would be very hard to guard against. After all, there is a world of difference between making open enemies and simply having little to do with someone.”
In the Sheng household, it had been the old madam who usually offered Sheng Hong such counsel. Unfortunately, Gu Tingye had no elder to lean on.
Gu Tingye closed his eyes for a moment. Outside the window, the cicadas in the great scholar tree sang in long and short pulses — like Minglan’s heartbeat, uneasy and uncertain. After a very long silence, Gu Tingye let out a difficult breath.
“—Your concerns are valid. What do you want to do now?”
“I don’t know.” Minglan’s face became uncertain. “Those vile, contemptible people — I would love nothing more than to take off their heads. But we’re hemmed in on every side, and we can’t move against them so easily. I’m not sure what to do. But I think — at the very absolute minimum — we must drive them away before this manor can truly be ours. Otherwise, keeping that rabble around, living in fear every day of being made to carry their crimes on our backs — I can’t even sleep. So…”
“Yes?”
Minglan steeled herself and said it all in one breath: “Could we pay off the debt for the tenant farmers — settle it all in one go, and send those people away?”
Having said it, Minglan quickly looked at his face. He seemed first surprised, then settled into thought. Minglan’s heart was in her throat. She knew perfectly well what an extravagant suggestion it was. A proper great household of distinguished rank might spend only five or six thousand taels in an entire year. And here she was asking Gu Tingye to produce forty thousand taels in one stroke.
Not for buying an office. Not for greasing palms. Not even for their own pleasure. The standard of virtue this required was truly rather high.
Gu Tingye said nothing more. He slowly reached into the basket for a particularly plump loquat, and with his well-defined fingers, began peeling it unhurriedly. In a moment, a pitted, irregular lump of loquat flesh was pinched between the man’s long fingers.
Minglan blinked — and found a loquat popped into her mouth. Gu Tingye laughed and reached out to poke her bulging cheeks.
“This idea is good.” He smiled, his expression open and clear. “This money — I will provide.”
Before Minglan could recover from her astonishment, he had already turned and called out loudly for someone to come. Minglan went to the inner room to listen.
“Hao Dacheng.”
“This servant is here.” A man of medium build stepped forward, bowing.
Gu Tingye sat with one hand resting on the low table, his bearing as steady as a mountain: “You take a team with you, and keep Wu Guang and the rest of that group of eight under watch. Feed them well, treat them courteously, but do not allow them to leave their rooms or have any contact with others. Meng — you go too. If anyone dares try to force their way through, show them what you’re made of. Keep them under a tight watch.”
Hao Dacheng clasped his hands and gave a clear acknowledgment. Gongsun Meng followed with great enthusiasm.
Gu Tingye nodded, then turned to Tuo Long: “You return to the main house and ask Master Gongsun to write a card of invitation. Request that Deputy Prefect Lv of the Shuntian Prefecture send two county magistrate deputies and clerks. Also request that Little Eunuch Xia dispatch two of his colleagues to take the men into custody. And invite the local garrison inspector from this district to serve as official witness. Can it be done in a day?”
Tuo Long was always steady and reliable. He clasped his hands in reply at once.
“And me, Master? What about me?” Tuo Hu had long since been impatient.
“Tiger — take the men and keep the whole manor under watch. If anyone dares cause trouble…” Gu Tingye picked up a plain silk handkerchief from the low table and unhurriedly wiped his fingers. “I, Gu, have never employed hired ruffians or bullies. Don’t let it end in any deaths.”
The man’s white handkerchief, once clean, now carried a faint gold tinge — and the delicate fragrance of fresh fruit.