In a world torn by chaos, people scattered to wherever fate led them.
After leaving Bazhong, the caravan moving forward had unloaded most of its cargo, and lost several dozen of the people traveling with it as well.
Two of the five scholars parted ways with Ning Ji and the others here. What remained was “great things ahead” Lu Wenke, “revere the divine” Fan Heng, and the occasionally opinionated Chen Junsheng — the three of them had agreed to travel the long road together, passing through Bazhong and into Dai Mengwei’s territory before continuing east along the Han River. Ning Ji happened to be heading the same way, so he stuck with them.
Heading north out of Bazhong, the caravan sold off all its remaining goods at the next county town. In theory, this should have marked the end of this particular leg of the journey — Ning Ji and Lu Wenke and the others would either need to find another caravan to travel with, or set off on their own from here. But by that evening, the caravan’s leader came looking for them at the inn, saying he’d just taken on a good new job that would once again take them into Dai Mengwei’s territory, and that they could travel together a bit further still.
Having spent over a month growing familiar with one another, Lu Wenke and the others happily accepted, and Ning Ji had no particular preference either way. And so, on the fifth day of the sixth month, this caravan — now consisting of several dozen horses and over ninety people, carrying some cargo and picking up a few fellow travelers along the way to round out their numbers to about a hundred — set off eastward along the winding mountain road.
Among the newly joined travelers were two more scholars, who before long had grown familiar with Lu Wenke and the rest, bringing the little “circle of pedantic scholars” back up to five, chattering away around Ning Ji every single day. As for the monkey-performing father-and-daughter pair, Wang Jiang and Wang Xiuniang, they too continued to travel along with the group, and everyone grew even more familiar with one another. By day they walked the mountain roads, and by night, gathered around a campfire, even the plain-looking but agile Wang Xiuniang could exchange a bit of playful banter with Lu Wenke and the others.
The area around Bazhong remained mountainous, and heading north would eventually bring them to the banks of the Han River and into Huaxia Army-controlled Hanzhong. Traveling east along the rugged mountain roads wasn’t easy, but once past the Micang Mountains, they would enter the heartland of Dai Mengwei’s territory.
Given the unusual circumstances of the times, the number of merchants traveling this east-west mountain road had multiplied several times over compared to previous years, but aside from a small handful of locals, most of them were profit-seeking merchants pursuing their own particular goals and needs. Scholars like Lu Wenke, Fan Heng, and Chen Junsheng, who believed in “reading ten thousand scrolls and walking ten thousand li” and had set out to see the territory behind Dai Mengwei’s lines with their own eyes, were a minority even among the minority.
In truth, before crossing the Han River, passing through Jianmen Pass, and arriving in the southwest, even Lu Wenke, Fan Heng, and the others hadn’t had much inclination to go wandering about. It was only after spending several months soaking in the bustling, chaotic atmosphere of Chengdu that this small handful of scholars had decided they wanted to see the fuller picture of the realm under harsher conditions as well.
Of course, as for the goings-on in between, Ning Ji himself remained far less aware of any of it — his current strategy was still simply to grit his teeth and endure life under the name Long Aotian. It was only over these past few days that he’d begun to sense, faintly, a subtle shift in tone whenever the scholars talked among themselves.
While within Huaxia Army territory, these scholars had spoken of great matters of state mostly with an air of spirited confidence and arrogance, frequently pointing out this or that flaw in the Huaxia Army’s domain. But after entering Bazhong, that kind of grand, sweeping pronouncement had gradually grown less frequent. More and more often, when comparing what they saw out here against what they’d witnessed in the southwest, they found themselves reluctantly conceding that the Huaxia Army really did have something impressive going for it — though inevitably followed by a few “however”s, those “however”s had grown noticeably quieter than they’d been back at Jianmen Pass.
The Wu dynasty’s realm hadn’t always been without its moments of peace and grandeur, but that dreamlike scene now belonged to more than a decade in the past. The Jurchens’ arrival had shattered the illusions of the Central Plains, and though there had been a few years of precarious prosperity in Jiangnan afterward, that brief flourishing had never truly been able to mask the humiliation of the Central Plains’ fall, nor the terror everyone still felt toward the Jurchens. A mere ten years since the founding of the new reign hadn’t been enough to cultivate the kind of settled complacency that comes from truly believing a temporary refuge could pass for home.
The Jurchens’ fourth southern invasion had, sure enough, brought about the great catastrophe that shattered the entire Wu dynasty — but in the later stages of that catastrophe, the long-marginal Huaxia Army force had risen out of nowhere and crushed the Jurchens’ most formidable western route army, delivering a shock to the realm far too great to easily absorb.
These scholars had summoned up the courage to travel to the southwest, and there they had seen the development and prosperity of Chengdu. But that prosperity, in truth, hadn’t been what truly shook them the most — what had genuinely left them at a loss was the fact that, underlying all that prosperity, there was a body of theory and reasoning they simply couldn’t grasp, utterly at odds with the golden ages of the past. These ideas left them feeling adrift and unsettled, and to fight off that unease, all they could do was talk loudly among themselves, straining to prove their own worth.
And yet, once they had truly left that stretch of southwestern land behind, what they now had to face was, in the end, a broken and shattered realm.
What good was there in continuing to talk so loudly?
For Ning Ji, these were things he would only truly come to understand years later, looking back.
…
“…But as I see it, the Huaxia Army’s greatest weakness still lies in its inability to win over the scholar class.”
As the caravan crossed the mountains and made camp for the evening on a hillside along the road, Fan Heng and the others continued this line of discussion. Perhaps sensing they’d now truly left the southwest behind, they seemed to feel it was time to draw some conclusions from everything they’d seen and heard while the memories were still fresh, and over these past couple of days their discussions had grown noticeably more probing on points they’d previously only touched on lightly.
“…Several months in the southwest, and it was all a dazzling blur — the markets overflowing with wealth, the newspapers full of things that opened one’s eyes wide. But what concerns all of you most, when it comes down to it, isn’t it this whole business of the southwest’s method for selecting officials? That so-called civil service examination — I went and sat for it myself once. Have any of you been?”
The middle-aged Confucian scholar Fan Heng, bringing up the subject, looked around at the others. Chen Junsheng offered a cold, enigmatic smile; Lu Wenke shook his head; of the remaining two scholars, one said, “I placed in the second tier,” and the other said, “Not bad, I suppose.” Fan Heng smiled as well.
“The day I went to sit for it, not long after entering the examination hall, two candidates tore up their papers and cursed loudly, saying the questions were utter nonsense. They’d spent their whole lives studying the classics and had never seen such a crude system for selecting officials — they were promptly escorted out by the examination staff. To be honest, I’d braced myself beforehand, but I still never expected that Master Ning would go quite this far… Five subjects on the exam — language, mathematics, science, natural studies, and essay writing — completely overturning everything we scholars had ever studied. No wonder everyone made such an uproar about it in the newspapers afterward…”
As Fan Heng spoke, he shook his head with a sigh. Lu Wenke said, “The language and essay-writing sections, at least, still have some connection to what we’ve studied.”
“Brother Lu is mistaken there,” said another scholar beside them, shaking his head as well. “We’ve spent decades studying and cultivating our learning — from the moment we first learned our characters, all the way through the Four Books and Five Classics — our whole lives devoted to unraveling the subtle profundities of the sages. And yet the language section on that southwest exam was nothing more than the basic foundation you’d learn while first learning your characters as a child. Take a look at the so-called language questions — the first half of the paper was simply the opening chapter of the Analects, ‘On Learning,’ translated into vernacular, and you were asked to punctuate it correctly. ‘On Learning’ is nothing but the opening chapter of the Analects — every one of us had it memorized cold as children. What possible meaning could such a question have?”
The man spread his hands. “As for the second half of the paper — some incident happens somewhere, and you’re asked to write a letter summarizing it… Gentlemen, on the language paper alone, everything we spent twenty years studying was cut in half — all they tested was the basic foundation from our early schooling. What that Master Ning wants, evidently, is nothing more than people who can write, and write in coherent sentences. The paper’s worth a hundred points, and they say we have the advantage — but so long as you can read and write, who couldn’t score above eighty? I later heard, through the grapevine, that neat and elegant handwriting might earn you at most five extra points… Five points.”
He spoke of those five points with visible indignation, and the others nodded along in agreement.
“That’s exactly where we have the advantage,” the man went on bitterly. “And alongside the language section, that mathematics paper — also worth a hundred points — what kind of person does that select for? Nothing but bookkeepers and accountants! Of course, Master Ning has his high-minded excuses — mathematics being one of the classical six arts of the gentleman, so if we can’t compete with those bean-counters, we’ve only ourselves to blame. The basics of physics, well, that’s his own private doctrine, but by now I’ll admit it’s not entirely without merit — after all, anyone coming to the southwest has surely read that Master Ning’s Introduction to Physics. But that so-called ‘natural-studies mindset’ — what on earth is that supposed to be? Half the test paper was nothing but pick out which of five shapes is different from the other four — why is it different? Afterward there was no end of arguments over it. Master Ning talks endlessly about physics and natural studies, but what does a question like that have to do with either?”
“Of the five subjects for selecting officials, only language bears any real connection to our classical training, while mathematics, physics, and natural studies are all his own private doctrine. As for the last section Brother Lu mentioned earlier, the essay — while you’re free to hold forth broadly on the state of the realm, the moment you touch on the southwest, don’t you inevitably have to talk about his natural studies too? How else could you discuss the southwest, with its rifles, its hot air balloons, its rockets, its factories and workshops covering every hillside? And the moment you touch on those things, if you don’t understand the underlying principles, how could you possibly discuss their development? So in the end, everything in that exam is that Master Ning’s own private doctrine. That’s exactly why, these past months, so few of the scholars who’ve gone to the southwest haven’t come away furious. What Brother Fan calls ‘failing to win over the scholar class’ — that hits the nail right on the head.”
At this, the others all nodded. Off to the side, the cold-faced Chen Junsheng tossed a stick of firewood into the fire.
“None of this is surprising, really. Years ago there were already rumors that this devil’s lifelong ambition was to destroy Confucianism. But afterward, the southwest never actually banned the Confucian classics — in fact, the annotated edition of the Four Books by the former Left Chancellor Qin Siyuan, which speaks of channeling human desire toward heavenly principle, is a text the southwest actively sells and promotes far and wide. The rest of the realm even took this as a sign that he’d backed down out of caution. Little did anyone know — this civil service exam is where the blade finally comes out from under the map. He says nothing of it aloud, but underneath, he shows no mercy whatsoever. The language paper tests nothing but basic literacy, first denying all of us the value of our decades of hard study, and then the remaining papers are all calculation and cunning tricks. If the Black Banner ever truly took the realm, I fear those who rise to the top in the future would end up looking like nothing more than shopkeepers and accountants.”
This Chen Junsheng had spoken little throughout the journey, but whenever he did speak, it was almost always to the point. The others, well aware of his learning and insight, couldn’t help asking, “Brother Chen — don’t tell me you didn’t pass either?”
Chen Junsheng answered proudly, “My heart was never set on the southwest to begin with. Having seen it for myself, I mean to go back home in the end regardless.”
The others were deeply impressed. Sitting off to the side, Long Aotian shrank his head down a little, feeling, for once, that this scholar’s overpowering presence made him feel a bit small by comparison — he might be a formidable martial artist, destined to become the greatest under heaven someday, but he had no love for books and no talent for scholarship, and so he always felt a vague, unspoken awe toward people of deep learning. Of course, right now, this Chen Junsheng was the only person who’d ever managed to make him feel quite that way.
“My heart was never set on the southwest to begin with. Having seen it for myself, I mean to go back home in the end regardless… Remember that, remember that…” he thought to himself. Next time he ran into someone new, he could say something just like that himself.
By now the sun had set, starlight and darkness rising over the mountains, and Wang Jiang, Wang Xiuniang, and the two page-boys brought over food from the side. The group ate while continuing their conversation.
“That’s exactly it. In the past, people weren’t really aware of this talk about the southwest destroying Confucianism, but by the first half of this year, everyone’s become quite clear on it. I have a few good friends who set out together for exactly this reason, planning to go join Lord Dai’s ranks, all agreeing that the southwest’s ways are so contrary to proper order that something serious is bound to come of it eventually — and we scholars, who study and pursue learning, won’t be able to stay out of it forever either. The southwest may have relied on this shopkeeper-and-accountant approach to win against the Jurchens for now, but could Confucianism’s thousand-year legacy really be worth less than this profit-chasing lesser path?”
“Empty talk of morality and literature accomplishes nothing — that much I won’t dispute. But abandoning morality and literature altogether — could that really last for long? I think Lord Dai has it right — he who loses the Way finds little help, and sooner or later things will go wrong for him. Only, the wrongness of it might well plunge the realm into decades more chaos…”
“In my view, the essence of the southwest lies in natural studies — the principles of physics really are vast and profound — but what it lacks is moral cultivation. Governing the realm through natural studies can bring material abundance and sufficiency, but Confucian learning is what tends to the human heart. Between the two, what’s needed is simply a matter of striking the right balance of what to keep and what to discard.”
“In truth, this time in the southwest, while plenty of people were caught off guard by those five exam papers — language, mathematics, physics, natural studies, and essay writing — the sharpest minds in this realm are still to be found among us scholars. Give it a bit more time, and those shopkeepers and accountants won’t hold much of an advantage at all. Once we scholars have truly mastered natural studies ourselves, we’ll surely put it to far better use than the vulgar sorts in the southwest. That so-called devil calls himself a menace, yet all he’s recruited are common, vulgar types — that will surely prove the greatest mistake of his life.”
“As I see it, sharpness of mind has nothing to do with what one studies. It’s simply that in the past, ours was a Confucian world, and the brightest children were always selected through that system, while those who weren’t cut out for scholarship ended up as shopkeepers, accountants, or craftsmen instead. That the world in the past didn’t recognize the value of natural studies was a tremendous oversight — but even to correct that oversight now, what’s needed is still to have the sharpest minds among the people take it up. I don’t think Master Ning is wrong to promote natural studies in the southwest — his mistake lies in moving too rashly. Since the realm’s elite have always studied Confucianism, then today too, it’s only through Confucian methods that the true elite can be properly selected — and only by relying on those elite, gradually reforming things from there, can real progress be made. As it stands, these shopkeepers, accountants, and craftsmen were relegated to their lowly trades precisely because of their middling talent to begin with — how could selecting out exactly these middling minds and trying to build reform on their backs ever succeed?”
“Well said, elder brother.”
“Quite right, quite right…”
After this round of discussion, the group moved on to talk about the paths various scholars in the southwest had chosen for their futures. One of the two newly joined scholars asked, “Have any of you given thought to Lord Dai?”
Fan Heng, Lu Wenke, and Chen Junsheng exchanged glances. Fan Heng frowned. “We’ve discussed it among ourselves along the way, and yes, we have considered it — though we still have a number of doubts on our minds. To be honest, since last year up through this year, the situation Lord Dai has faced has genuinely been far from easy, and by all accounts, his response to it has been admirable indeed…”
The group went on discussing the state of affairs under Dai Mengwei, and everyone nodded along with what Fan Heng had said.
After the great battle in the southwest ended last year, Dai Mengwei, despite being a mere surrendered subject, had saved several million people from the hands of Zonghan and Xiyin, and in the blink of an eye had risen to become the helmsman of one of the largest powers in the realm — openly standing against the Huaxia Army and even forcing them into a temporary retreat. Aside from the Huaxia Army itself in the southwest, he was without question the most striking figure the realm had seen in recent memory.
In a certain sense, this dazzling reversal of fortune, this masterful play of hand, actually fit the Confucian scholars’ romantic image of a heroic figure of the age even better than the Huaxia Army’s own displays of martial prowess. It was much like the era when the Jin state was rising and the Liao had not yet fallen, when Wu dynasty scholars of every stripe had devised endless schemes of alliance and counter-alliance — only for the sheer savagery of the Jurchens to ultimately doom every one of those clever plans to failure.
But Dai Mengwei’s success this time had unmistakably shown the realm that it was, after all, still possible for a Confucian scholar, armed with vast strategic vision, to seize the moment decisively and hold the fate of the realm in the palm of his hand.
Of course, despite this inspiring example, over the following year, everyone had also come to learn, to varying degrees, that Dai Mengwei’s own situation was far from easy either.
Earlier, the Jurchen western route army had cut a swath of destruction from Jing-Xiang through Hanzhong and all the way into Jianmen Pass, and along that thousand-li stretch, nearly every city large and small had been burned, looted, and pillaged. Beyond that, large numbers of laborers conscripted to transport grain had been pushed further and further inland by the Jurchen army along the Han River.
After the western route army withdrew in disarray, these people and supplies were left behind, impossible to take along. Millions of people, cities reduced to ruins, what little remained of the supplies, along with several sizable but weak Han Chinese army units… all of it had been dumped, all at once, into Dai Mengwei’s lap. Though the Huaxia Army had temporarily pulled back, what was left to Dai Mengwei was still, in every sense, an unmanageable mess.
To most observers at the time, if Dai Mengwei had truly been nothing more than a pedantic scholar versed only in moral philosophy, this hastily assembled regime of his, cobbled together out of the peculiar circumstances of the times, might well have fallen apart from sheer objective pressure sometime in the latter half of last year.
And yet, events hadn’t unfolded that way.
In the latter half of last year, while the founding congress of the Huaxia People’s Regime had drawn the attention of the entire realm, Dai Mengwei had also, over on the banks of the Han River, quietly completed the organization of his own government. Facing shortages of both clothing and food, he had, on one hand, sought outside assistance — mainly from Liu Guangshi — while on the other hand, internally, he selected men of high standing and moral character from among the local gentry and elders, and in coordination with the state of his military forces, gradually divided up land and settlements level by level. Dai Mengwei himself led by example, practicing strict frugality, and called on all the common people under his rule to endure the hardship of the times together and work to restore production — even personally wading into the Han River to fish alongside his people, setting an example with his own hands.
Over the course of most of last year, the territory under Dai Mengwei’s control endured a brutal famine, followed by Cao Silong’s rebellion, which split off a narrow strip of land bordering the Huaxia Army as a neutral zone. But across most of the territory still under Dai Mengwei’s control, the layered system of responsibility — running from the army down through mid-level officials and on to the local gentry and elders — managed, for a certain stretch of time, to hold things together effectively.
Though some people did starve to death within his territory, aside from Cao Silong’s forces, whose rebellion had erupted with suspiciously “convenient” timing, the rest of Dai Mengwei’s territory showed remarkably little sign of unrest. In fact, by this year, the various irregular generals and their troops that the Jurchens had left scattered throughout the region had come to pledge their loyalty to Dai Mengwei with what seemed like genuine, heartfelt conviction. Every faction across the realm had their own theories as to the precise reasons behind this, but on one point, opinion was largely unanimous: admiration for Dai Mengwei’s methods.
This old man, who had risen to such a lofty position through what seemed like a series of unconventional gambits, evidently carried within him more than just clever schemes — when it came to the solid, straightforward work of actual governance, he genuinely possessed a real and substantial set of skills of his own.
By this point in the first half of this year, the scholars who had traveled to the southwest and finally seen through Master Ning’s true intentions had, in reaction, turned to praising Dai Mengwei with even greater enthusiasm than before. Not a few of them felt this Dai Mengwei carried himself with the bearing of “a sage of ancient times” — utterly incomparable to figures like Tie Yan and Wu Qimei in Lin’an, who likewise opposed the Huaxia Army but on an entirely different level altogether.
“…While I was in the southwest, I even heard a bit of gossip going around privately, that Master Ning himself, when speaking of Lord Dai, couldn’t help but offer up a ten-character assessment of him — something to the effect of ‘nurturing the righteous energy of heaven and earth, modeling himself on the perfected men of past and present’… It seems that even though that devil and Lord Dai stand as adversaries, he still holds a certain begrudging respect for the man’s ability, one that he can’t quite help but admire…”
By the light of the campfire, Fan Heng recounted this bit of gossip he’d picked up in the southwest, swaying his head as he spoke, and the others listened with great interest. When he finished, he paused for a moment.
“That said, the reason none of us have gone over to Lord Dai’s side comes down to roughly three things… The first, of course, is that each of us already has our own path laid out. The second is a certain lingering concern — however outstanding Lord Dai’s character and however skillful his methods, the territory he holds still lies along the very first stretch of road the Huaxia Army would have to pass through, should they ever truly decide to act. Whether the realm could withstand them is one question, but whoever stands directly in their path would almost certainly have no chance at all. Lord Dai’s resolve in opposing the Huaxia Army is unmatched anywhere in the realm, with no room left for compromise — and in the end, he’ll likely be utterly destroyed alongside them when the time comes. His position is simply too close to danger…”
“As for the third concern — it’s something we’ve heard rumored along the road recently, about certain human trafficking supposedly happening under Lord Dai’s own command. If this rumor turns out to be true, it would badly damage his reputation. There’s a good chance it’s simply malicious slander spread deliberately by the Huaxia Army, but until it’s confirmed one way or the other, it’s hard not to feel uneasy about it…”
At this point he lowered his voice slightly, glancing meaningfully toward the others gathered around the camp.
“This caravan’s original route was supposed to stop north of Bazhong. But once we got there, that caravan leader, Master Lu, came to us saying he’d taken on some new business, and so we ended up continuing east together instead. I made some quiet inquiries of my own, and it seems that coming out this way, they mean to transport a batch of people to Jianmen Pass… Lord Dai’s territory is short on food and clothing, and this year there’s little hope of real relief — with so many people on the verge of starving, they’ve had no choice but to sell themselves and their families together. The contracts they sign run twenty, thirty years, with next to no pay at all — the caravan simply prepares some food, and off they take the people. Herded like livestock all the way to Jianmen Pass, and so long as they survive the trip, they connect there with the black-market traders from the southwest just outside the pass, and someone stands to make a fortune off the whole affair.”
In the flickering firelight, the faces around the campfire shifted between light and shadow. They thought back on the journey through those rugged mountain roads, and recalled that they had indeed passed two caravans along the way that seemed suspiciously like human traffickers — though since these people all appeared to have been sold “voluntarily,” none of them had been visibly restrained, making it hard to say for certain either way. But thinking back on it now, it did seem seventy or eighty percent credible.
“…Lord Dai’s side is genuinely short on grain — if he’s already done everything he can, and some people choose to sell themselves off to the southwest, that… doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing, does it?”
Lu Wenke thought it over for a moment, then said, somewhat haltingly.
Fan Heng shook his head, lowering his voice further still. “If it were simply a matter of people voluntarily selling themselves, there’d be nothing more to say about it. But what if Lord Dai’s own troops and local gentry are directly involved in all this? On one hand, casually selling off the very people under his rule that he can’t feed, and on the other, colluding with black-market traders from the southwest, with the local gentry and military pocketing the lion’s share of the profit… If that’s really how it is, what would you all make of it?”
His low voice mingled with the sound of the wind, and everyone around the campfire leaned in to listen more closely — even Ning Ji, cradling his empty rice bowl, found himself straining to catch every word. Only Chen Junsheng beside him picked up a stick and poked at the fire in front of him, sending up a shower of sparks with a crackling sound, and gave a cold little laugh.
“If that’s really how it is, then all it proves is just how shrewd and formidable Lord Dai truly is… Think it through carefully — given the state of the times, he doesn’t have enough money or grain to feed all these people, so he sells off the ones at the very bottom he can’t support anyway, sending them to the southwest to work. In exchange, he gets money and grain, which he then uses to keep his own troops, local elders, and gentry across his territory content and loyal. With the army, the elders, and the gentry all kept in line, even amid famine, the territory doesn’t descend into chaos — and because the upper and middle tiers all benefit, what was once a disorganized rabble left behind by the Jurchens has, within the span of a single year, genuinely been brought together, submitting wholeheartedly to Lord Dai as their ruler. In the southwest’s own terms, you might say Lord Dai has ‘united them.'”
He poked at the flames with the stick in his hand. “In an age as chaotic as this, if not for a man capable of such measures, how could anyone possibly stand toe to toe with the Jurchens in the north and the Black Banner in the southwest, contesting strength with either of them? If Lord Dai lacked this kind of ability, how could he ever have earned that grudging ten-character praise of ‘a perfected man of past and present’ from that Master Ning himself? I said back in Bazhong already — with this many people, where could they possibly have come from? At the time, some of us already suspected as much. If it’s true, then I only admire Lord Dai all the more — remember, when he first took over that territory from the Jurchens, what he inherited was nothing but a disorganized rabble. Within a single year, he’s managed to look after the interests of every level, from top to bottom, running everything in perfect order. I find that genuinely admirable — and I imagine it’s precisely after seeing all this that Master Ning in the southwest truly came to regard him as a worthy rival.”
“That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.” Fan Heng sighed. “But those people who were sold off…”
“Having lived through an age of chaos like this, they’re still alive, at least — what right do they have to complain?” Chen Junsheng said. “And besides, wherever they end up living out their lives, it’ll be in the southwest regardless. Think about it — they’ve signed contracts binding them for twenty or thirty years, working themselves to the bone for those black-market traders with no pay to show for it. Ten years, eight years down the line, once their resentment finally boils over, it’ll almost certainly be directed squarely at the Huaxia Army instead. Lord Dai, meanwhile, can play the part of the benevolent ruler when the time comes, and might even turn the whole affair to his advantage. If you ask me, the southwest claims to respect contracts, but in the end they’ve left such an enormous loophole in the system that that Master Ning, for all his cleverness, clearly hasn’t thought of everything. Sooner or later, this is exactly the kind of thing that’s going to come back and bite him hard.”
Everyone’s thoughts turned complicated at this, and they each nodded along in turn. Beside them, Ning Ji, cradling his empty bowl, licked at it absently, his face drawn tight, and found himself nodding along as well despite himself. According to this “cold-faced scoundrel’s” reasoning, that old dog Dai was truly a wicked man — just like everyone back at General Staff headquarters, all of them cunning schemers skilled at digging pits for others to fall into…
And now that he himself had overheard such a significant secret, he wasn’t sure whether he ought to write home and warn his father about it. Running away from home was already a big enough matter on its own, but this business with old dog Dai was clearly a serious matter too — for a moment he couldn’t decide what to do, and, still conflicted, went back to licking at his empty rice bowl.