As September began, while most of the world’s attention was fixed on the fighting already underway north of the Yangtze between Liu Guangshi and Zou Xu, and on the Fair Party’s heroes’ assembly in Jiangning, a complicated storm was also brewing quietly across the southwestern lands.

This was the second assembly. Compared to the grand spectacle of the first assembly held the previous year, when representatives had gathered from all directions and the whole world had taken notice, this year’s assembly seemed relatively ordinary in scale.

This was because the truly representative, ceremonially significant political frameworks had already been established with great fanfare at last year’s assembly. With only a year having passed, this year’s assembly looked, at first glance, more like a matter of tidying up loose ends from last year’s ongoing work — even refining the details of the various frameworks. Naturally, such a meeting didn’t generate much interest among most people looking for spectacle.

Last year, the first assembly had been held in early August; this year, for whatever reason, the timing had shifted to late August and early September, similar to the Fair Party’s assembly in Jiangnan. As a result, setting aside the tedious and hard-to-follow proposal content, the more interesting gossip circulating in the southwest marketplace instead became the shameless competition for attention between the Fair Party and the Huaxia Army.

On this front, we know that ever since He Wen had announced the Jiangning heroes’ assembly, complaints within the Huaxia Army in the southwest had been circulating — things like “He Wen, the ungrateful wretch,” “riding our coattails,” “borrowing our chicken to lay their egg,” “the Fair Party is truly shameless” — and by August, such complaints had only grown more pronounced.

Amid this atmosphere, as if sensing the value of this wave of attention, the major newspapers in Chengdu devoted a fair amount of coverage from July and August through September to introducing the Fair Party’s affairs some three thousand li away. This coverage was, of course, far from being detailed firsthand reporting — it mostly consisted of framework-style descriptions of theory, platform, and general methods. Some bolder newspapers even published articles comparing the similarities and differences between the Huaxia Army’s and the Fair Party’s approaches and theories. Although these seemed designed to illustrate the superiority of the Huaxia Army’s framework, given how many “dissenters” still existed within Chengdu, such conclusions naturally weren’t fully convincing to everyone.

This whole discourse seemed to proceed as a matter of course, like ordinary free discussion, and some less scrupulous tabloids, riding on the news about the Fair Party, even published gossip stories, some outright fabricated — for instance, tales of the five Fair Party Great Kings holding a “Mount Hua sword conference,” the Wheel King bullying men and women alike, Zhou Shang slaughtering people like flies, and so on.

This ordinary atmosphere of public discourse continued right up through the opening of the second assembly in late August and early September. As the assembly proceeded, seemingly calm on the surface, a few keen observers noticed that several sensitive topics had appeared on the assembly’s proposal list, and a strangely oppressive mood began to gather within the city of Chengdu.

Several proposals concerning “new land policy” were put forward by a number of delegates with merchant backgrounds, and these gradually became listed among the assembly’s key discussion topics. At the same time, some of Chengdu’s more authoritative newspapers, continuing the wave of discourse about the Fair Party’s methods, began focusing discussion on the “livelihood” theory within the Huaxia Army’s so-called “Four Peoples” framework.

This was the elephant in the room.

For those merely watching for spectacle, such discussions weren’t particularly interesting — nowhere near as dramatic as the bloody clash between the traitor Zou Xu and Liu Guangshi north of the Yangtze, nor as significant as the Jiangning assembly that would decide the future of all of Jiangnan. But in the southwest, the nerves of certain specific groups had suddenly gone taut.

By the third of September, the sixth day of the assembly, small, scattered incidents began occurring around the city. That morning, more than twenty village elders and headmen who had traveled in from various localities gathered in front of the assembly hall in Chengdu, kneeling and crying out grievances, accusing several demobilized Huaxia Army veterans who had been assigned to the countryside of throwing their weight around and bullying the local people. These accusations came with detailed witnesses and testimony.

That same evening, one of the delegates who had put forward the “new land policy” proposal was assassinated after the session ended, cut down by attackers along the tree-lined road by the welcoming avenue, blood spilling everywhere.

Large numbers of lobbyists and information-gatherers were already moving in secret.

After the fourth day’s proceedings concluded, Ning Yi held a small family dinner at his residence by Moheh Pool, entertaining a few close friends and relatives, including Su Wending and Su Wenyu. After dinner, he kept Wending and Wenyu, who were both attending as representatives, and the three of them sat by the lake for a while.

The autumn air in Chengdu was pleasant, with an evening breeze blowing in from across the pool. Ning Yi got straight to the point.

“…The Su family finally managed to produce a few capable people. If you needed just one who could actually speak for the family, sending one of you would’ve been enough. Now you’ve sent two — what, trying to stop the earth from spinning?”

Hearing him speak so bluntly, Su Wending and Su Wenyu, who each now had their own share of responsibilities to manage, exchanged a wry look. Su Wending finally spoke. “How would we dare, Brother-in-law. Originally Wenyu was the one drafted for this, but I happened to be nearby and got dragged along too. Honestly, everyone back home is nervous, so they sent the two of us together — so we could ask around and report back, and so we couldn’t lie to each other about what we found out.”

“Such a small, cautious family…” Ning Yi shook his head with a laugh.

Wenyu spoke up. “This matter sounds like a big deal, Brother-in-law. Whatever you want to do, we’ve got no objections, of course — but we’re curious to know whether you’re really going to go through with it, and to what extent.”

“What do you two think?” Ning Yi asked in return.

“Weren’t we caught completely unprepared?” Wenyu said with a wry smile. “You’d mentioned the land policy issue once or twice before, but this time, there wasn’t the slightest hint of warning beforehand. Look how caught off guard everyone outside is. Before the assembly, we thought this matter wouldn’t even come up formally, and then suddenly it was on the table, and the maneuvering behind the scenes couldn’t be contained at all — so nobody has a clear read on it. Right now there’s every kind of speculation going around the city, some saying it’s you, Brother-in-law, suddenly deciding to act, others saying it’s just people still unfamiliar with how this assembly works…”

“…Caught unprepared. I’d say their reaction speed was quite fast, actually,” Ning Yi said with a smile. “That second part of what you said is right, though — people still aren’t familiar enough with how the assembly works, so their alertness is lacking. But even so, someone reacted fast enough to organize over twenty people to file complaints yesterday, with all the evidence prepared in advance, and even carried out an assassination last night. I hadn’t expected them to move this fast myself… None of the uncles who came today were involved, were they?”

Wending shook his head. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“Killing a delegate — that’s a matter that will cost a group of people their lives, and whoever’s connected to it won’t escape… People outside really still aren’t familiar enough with how we operate, or perhaps, after two years of being on friendly terms with us, they’ve started to feel emboldened.”

Sitting in the pavilion by the lake, Ning Yi gazed out over the water, murmuring these words. Beside him, Wending and Wenyu felt a chill run through them and fell silent for a moment.

Wending spoke. “So… Brother-in-law, how should we cooperate on this? To what extent will this go? Are you just testing their reaction, or… have you already decided?”

Ning Yi looked at him. “…What do you two think?”

The two exchanged a glance. Su Wenyu considered carefully. “…’New land policy’ — just four characters, but in reality, it will determine the very foundation of everyone in the southwest. This matter is simply too enormous. For you to suddenly throw it out like this — the general view outside is that you’re testing everyone’s reaction, which is why there’s so much private inquiry and lobbying going on, trying to figure out how far you intend to go…”

He paused briefly. “Beyond that, the details of the new land policy are the real crux of the matter. The newspapers have already been laying the groundwork for two months now, introducing the Fair Party’s approach to confiscating land. But if it turns out to be like the Fair Party’s approach — killing people and seizing their property — the opposition will be fiercest of all. Beyond that, what people care about is whether there’ll be compensation, whether that compensation can be negotiated, whether it’s an outright unconditional seizure of land, or whether there’s room for maneuvering, loopholes to exploit…”

Ning Yi smiled. “I asked what you two think.”

Su Wenyu thought it over, then gritted his teeth. “Although the outside world says you’re suddenly floating a proposal to test the waters, with room to still turn back — I think you’ve already decided to go through with it. There’s a signal in this. In July you began a thorough investigation into problems within the military, then in August you had the Seventh Army swap garrison duty with the Second and Fifth Divisions of the Fifth Army. On the surface it looked like you were addressing the long-term corruption problems from the Seventh and Fifth Armies staying in one place too long — but in fact, the Seventh Army has never been stationed anywhere within the southwest before. Here, it’s an outsider through and through.”

“…On another note, each item under the Four Peoples framework looks grand and unwieldy — everyone thinks it would be extraordinarily difficult to actually implement. But you, Brother-in-law, aren’t someone who just talks for the sake of talking. Back in Little Cang River, in Liangshan, our territory was small, and we were essentially guests there, without the foundation for this kind of reform. After leaving Liangshan, we were preparing for the southwest war the whole time… but now that the southwest war has concluded, and we’ve spent over a year recovering, if we go further, the vested interests you’ve mentioned will start putting down roots in the southwest. Now might just be the last moment where things can still be broken open cleanly…”

“I think… you’re no longer willing to wait.”

When Su Wenyu finished speaking, Su Wending, who had claimed to be “drafted” alongside him, nodded. “Actually, I’d had a similar thought too — though I also had some doubts, which is why Wenyu came along, and I wanted to ask about them too.”

“What doubts?”

“You’ve talked before about the problem of capital,” Su Wending said solemnly. “You’ve said that the Huaxia Army’s development would follow a main line of natural science and capital, and that this development of capital might eventually cause most people to lose their land. On one hand you’ve said we should promote this, but on the other hand, if we’re really going to promote its development, then pushing a land policy now, giving tillers their own land, seems to run somewhat contrary to that — after all, if everyone gets their own plot of land, won’t fewer people be pushed off the land and into the workforce?”

He continued, “On the way over, Wenyu and I were discussing the August garrison rotation and two months of newspaper propaganda, and we came to think you’re planning to move forward on the livelihood component. But you’ve also said capital is a strong rule that we absolutely need to promote and make good use of — so isn’t the risk of a land policy at this particular moment… rather excessive?”

Back when Su Tan’er had formally taken charge of the family, and Ning Yi had made his plans to go to the capital to help Qin Siyuan, he’d begun bringing along and training the four members of the Su family’s second branch who were relatively close to him — Su Wenfang, Su Wending, Su Wenyu, and Su Yanping. In the early days there had been deep instruction and extensive conversation, but over the years, as each of the four took on their own responsibilities, such exchanges had become less frequent. Still, once Wending and Wenyu had finished speaking, Ning Yi nodded with a smile.

He considered for a moment.

“Capital and the landed gentry were always going to come to blows eventually,” Ning Yi said with a smile. “After the southwest war was won, large-scale development began around Chengdu, and by this year, every inch of land there is worth its weight in gold. Some merchants started looking to expand into the surrounding areas, and some landlords got involved — some cooperated nicely, others tried to hold out for higher prices… Before the assembly, I did some stirring of the pot, so some merchants have come to feel that the Huaxia Army government wants to strongly support building factories, but that a lot of stubborn landowners are blocking land approvals — so… they encouraged the delegates to go straight at the new land policy through the assembly’s agenda.”

“Of course, mainly they wanted to test the waters — ‘new land policy’ is too big a thing for them to carry alone, but it could serve as a bargaining chip to pressure a few landlords into compromise… But once the proposal was put forward, there was no way to suppress it anymore. I simply went along with the momentum, and so the matter surfaced on its own…”

Su Wenyu blinked. “So Brother-in-law had already made up his mind from the very start.”

“This is only just beginning. Shifting everyone’s attention elsewhere doesn’t mean much in the long run — sooner or later, blood will be spilled over this,” Ning Yi said with a smile. “A new land policy of this kind — throughout history, only a handful of founding dynasties have ever managed to push it through. Its effects aren’t necessarily all good either — just as Wending said, everyone’s already struggling to survive, and then suddenly everyone gets handed a plot of land — how am I supposed to staff my factories? But in the long run, if it succeeds, the effects will almost certainly be overwhelmingly positive, because the true essence of a new land policy isn’t actually about livelihood at all…”

He paused. “…It’s about seizing power.”

The night wind moaned, stirring ripples across the whole lake. Few people remained in the pavilion, and Ning Yi’s words came low and gentle, yet the hair on the back of Wending’s and Wenyu’s necks stood on end, as if fire were burning somewhere nearby.

“Since ancient times, central rule over local areas has operated on the principle that imperial authority doesn’t extend below the county level — officials only go so far down, and the largest sphere, the countryside, has depended on local gentry for stability. This is, in effect, handing over a huge portion of state power. Of course, given how limited political resources were throughout history, that approach made a lot of sense… But now that we’ve reached the stage of opening people’s minds, we can consider bringing about a new transformation.”

“Wenyu is exactly right — back in Little Cang River, in the Greater and Lesser Liangshan, we’d already shouted the slogans, but we didn’t have the foundation to actually carry them out. Once we began ruling the southwest, we spent the whole time preparing for the war and never got around to implementing these policies… In truth, no matter how beautifully you shout a policy, whether you’ve got the preconditions to actually execute it is what really matters…”

“After winning the southwest war, we demobilized several thousand soldiers and sent them out to the countryside in waves — sending teachers, doctors, circuit courts, and organizing militias in the villages below. The essence of all this was preparing to dismantle the power base of the local gentry. And now, this preparation… is somewhat rushed, but it can indeed be set in motion.”

“Continuing to maintain private land ownership and its free circulation does, in the short term, provide fertile ground for the growth of capital and factories — but that kind of growth will cost many lives… Whereas once we manage to break the gentry’s foundation of rule and grasp the power at the very bottom rung of society, everything we do going forward will go far more smoothly, we’ll have far more options — including the peasants who receive land, who will stand with us, and when we eventually march outward, more people will welcome us. We’ll be able to plan development uniformly across every region, without having to defer to the whims of private land ownership anymore…”

He smiled faintly. “The reason we didn’t carry out a sweeping redistribution of land after taking the southwest was mainly because in areas we couldn’t yet properly administer, a hasty land redistribution wouldn’t have meant much — this itself was part of training our forces and consolidating power. Some in the southwest, seeing my moderate attitude, and given the favorable treatment shown to some of the landlords who sided with us early on, thought there was room to negotiate. In truth, if it’s purely a matter of economic interest, compensation is possible — but for anyone who still wants to be, or might become, local gentry… there’s no way out.”

“As for what Wending said about capital being a strong rule.” Ning Yi paused here, seeming somewhat wistful. “Capital really is a strong rule — we haven’t yet seen its full power, but sooner or later, its efficiency will sweep away everything else, pushing things to the most extreme places. It’ll accumulate its own problems too, and eventually spiral out of control. But until we find a better rule to replace it, abandoning it isn’t an option. So what can we do…”

“Aside from every future generation having to keep patching it and inoculating against it, all we can do now is take one step back that isn’t really a retreat…”

“Take the land back — so that when some people can’t take it anymore, at least… they can go back to farming…”

Ning Yi had spent all these years promoting the growth of natural science and capital, and although he’d occasionally touched on future problems, he’d never gone into much depth. By the time he reached these last few remarks, Wending and Wenyu could no longer fully follow him — but they’d long since grown used to their brother-in-law occasionally saying strange things. The two exchanged a glance and said nothing more.

In the breeze blowing through the pavilion, Ning Yi took a sip of tea.

“…This matter is a big one. I’m not certain it’ll succeed, but as long as the Huaxia Army can still enforce its will on the Chengdu Plain, it must be done. If the land policy succeeds, it’ll prove our seizure of power has succeeded… Tell the uncles — whatever the final arrangement turns out to be, they should behave themselves and not do anything that would… delight our enemies and pain our own.”

He gave a slight wave of his hand.