After this show of firm resolve mixed with direct intimidation, the two brothers-in-law left with their answer.

Ning Yi sat in the pavilion for a while longer.

The ancient trees around the pavilion stood dense and quiet, the waters of Moheh Pool calm and untroubled. As the center of the southwest, the city of Chengdu now radiated a peaceful, prosperous glow in the night.

Having crushed Wanyan Zonghan and Xiyin’s Jin western army, the Huaxia regime had governed with benevolence, resting and recuperating in this land for over a year now. Although the Huaxia Army’s core ideology sounded radical — including its stance toward Confucianism, which had earned the resentment of most of the realm, with constant predictions that its rigidity would lead to its own collapse — over this past year, the Huaxia regime’s pace, in everyone’s eyes, had been remarkably steady.

Large numbers of work teams had gone into the grassroots level, stabilizing public sentiment, supporting agriculture, building irrigation, and opening its doors to trade with every corner of the realm, aggressively drawing in vast amounts of silver and goods, enriching the marketplace. Sichuan was, after all, a land of natural abundance, and amid this steady period of recovery, the Huaxia Army had built up the framework of a functioning state, drawing the attention of the entire realm with its bold moves — even executing large numbers of Jurchen war criminals, leaving all manner of detractors with nothing left to say…

Meanwhile, during this same period, every other power in the realm found itself in disarray.

Dai Mengwei was straining every nerve just to keep her territory stable, relying even on selling people into slavery just to keep food on the table and maintain a basic appearance of dignity;

Zou Xu, having betrayed the southwest, found himself at the center of a storm, scrambling desperately in every direction to build up his own strength, hoping to survive the coming upheaval;

Liu Guangshi was spending everything he had to curry favor with the southwest, hoping to reclaim Bianliang and take Zou Xu’s head to turn his fortunes around in one stroke;

Wu Qimei and Tie Yan, having only been attacked by one or two branches of the Fair Party, were already at their wits’ end, besieged on all sides;

The new dynasty in the southeast had pushed through aggressive political and economic reforms that had alienated nearly its entire base of support, now stuck in the awkward position of being doomed whether it advanced or retreated, with no way out in sight;

And even the most impressive-looking power of all, the Fair Party, despite sweeping across Jiangnan in two years, was in reality bloated and hollow inside, riddled with countless hidden dangers — which was exactly why He Wen had rushed to hold an assembly in Jiangning. But compared to the calm, unhurried southwest assembly of the previous year, his hastily-imitated Jiangning assembly was, frankly, far more directionless — lively on the surface, but with an uncertain path ahead.

In any case, aside from the far-flung region of Jin, the southwestern regime was, in every respect, unmistakably the foremost power in the realm — its military, economy, livelihood, and stability all displaying an impressive vitality that commanded admiration. Even those most eager to talk down the southwest could find little at present to attack.

Because it truly was that steady.

Ning Yi sat in the pavilion, watching this tranquil scene.

The discussion around the concept of the new land policy had, ever since the “Four Peoples” framework had first been introduced, remained embedded within it, without ever standing out as particularly weighty compared to the ongoing radical debates within the Huaxia Army over concepts like “abolishing Confucianism,” “enlightenment,” “natural science,” “capital,” and “human rights.”

This was because in its early days, when the Huaxia Army’s holdings were small, Ning Yi had been able to maintain a relatively clean egalitarianism through sheer force of will. Once they reached Liangshan, the Huaxia Army had been guests on borrowed land, unable to promote any kind of new land policy among the surrounding Yi tribespeople. And after unifying the southwest, the Huaxia regime’s promotion of natural science ideology and its push for capital had occupied the bulk of its focus.

As large amounts of goods flowed into Chengdu, and countless work teams went out to the countryside, they also brought material benefits with them to the people. In propaganda, the most that was expressed was the prospect of material abundance following the development of natural science — once goods became abundant, people struggling in the countryside could naturally move into the workshops and factories of the big cities to earn money and rise above their station. At this stage, this prospect was actually quite credible.

The concentrated industrial development around major cities like Chengdu and Zizhou had, for the time being, delayed the land-related conflicts that would otherwise have arisen in other, non-core regions. Although some people had harbored worries when the Huaxia Army first emerged from Liangshan, even fleeing in large numbers, the favorable treatment shown by the Huaxia Army toward the relatively cooperative landlords and local gentry after the southwest war ended had dispelled most people’s doubts.

It was only after land prices skyrocketed near major cities like Chengdu that a few small-scale frictions had arisen between merchants and the surrounding landlords — but even this hadn’t yet reached an unmanageable point.

Yet, looking back, quite a few people were also aware that most discussions within the Huaxia Army about a new land policy were tied to concepts like “equalizing land rights” and “land to the tiller.” In academic discussions, even strategies like the “Single Whip Law” or “converting labor service into a poll tax” were considered relatively minor measures by comparison.

The sudden emergence of this issue at the current assembly had left many people baffled.

If this were happening in a modern society of a later age, most people hearing the concept of a new land policy would probably feel, on one hand, that it sounded grand and glorious, and on the other, that it seemed rather unremarkable — people would assume that simply putting forward such a self-evidently righteous concept would naturally win over the majority of the population. Yet this was precisely the one barrier that thousands of years of feudal society had never truly managed to overcome.

Even in the tumultuous modern history of that other world, the pioneer Mr. Sun had first proposed the platform of equalizing land rights, and it had won the support of countless successors — yet during the decades when the leader who “walked through the forest and used northern kicks” led his party’s rule over the mainland, this self-evidently righteous, universally agreed-upon concept had almost never achieved any decisive progress.

Because the founding members that made up that party were themselves the local gentry and elites entrenched across every region, holding the vast bulk of the realm’s grassroots power.

Meanwhile, another party that ran on red blood, having reached an understanding with that party in a certain year, believed that once cooperation had begun, the correct course could be pushed through without hesitation, and so undertook sweeping land reform, beginning to implement Mr. Sun’s “livelihood” theory — only to be met, a few years later, with massacres in the spring and summer. The great revolution failed.

Land was far more than just land.

It was the single most crucial productive resource located at the very tip of society’s vast web of power, and the clearest indicator symbolizing to whom that enormous power ultimately belonged. For a new land policy to succeed required a meticulous grasp over this entire vast power structure as a precondition — and once one had gained control over such power, what one could accomplish went far beyond simply redistributing acquired land to the people.

What this matter touched on was already a web as vast as the one woven by Confucianism itself.

Ever since the Huaxia Army had leapt out of Liangshan, no one in the entire Chengdu Plain or the whole of Sichuan could stand against it; and after the Huaxia Army crushed the Jurchen western army, the remaining landlords and local gentry left in the southwest didn’t dare defy it either. Compared to the Jurchen army that had swept across the realm, those so-called Confucian scholars, landlords, and local gentry all looked weak — as visible enemies, they were, for the Huaxia Army, the easiest problems of all to handle.

But land was something tied to the very way every single person in the realm lived and survived. To change this way of living, this way of governing, would provoke resistance rooted in everyone’s shared “consensus” and “subconscious” alike — the corroding web would strike back in the opposite direction, causing an insufficiently resolute governing structure to lose efficiency from within, stirring up popular resentment, until, once the entire structure began to fail, people might not even realize it was the land policy that had caused it.

Was he himself sufficiently prepared? Were the grassroots officials and demobilized soldiers stationed everywhere sufficiently trained? They might be able to defeat visible enemies, but once land turned into cold, hard, calculable interest, could they resist being corrupted by it? Had enough rectification campaigns already been carried out — could they possibly be made any stricter?

Stepping back further — was there even any necessity to push through a new land policy right now?

As Su Wending had said, capital’s strong rule would forge its own path forward on its own. The privatization and free circulation of land could provide fertile, bloody ground for its growth. Following this path, and then applying a certain degree of manipulation to it, promoting popular awakening and the emergence of civil rights, was already a relatively sound framework for development — capital’s profit-seeking nature would topple feudal relations of production on every front, because a web woven around interest as its core would be far stronger than that other web, woven as it was by the laws of nature rather than by mere human effort.

Was there really any need to go and disturb that web of local gentry before then? Was there truly a hundred-percent necessity for it?

Ning Yi himself had these very same doubts.

Reasons abounded on both sides.

On the positive side, the benefits of a new land policy were, of course, considerable. Once successful, the Huaxia Army’s grasp over the lower rungs of society would leap forward to an entirely new level — compared to every other power out there, the Huaxia Army would seem to have entered a whole new dimensional threshold. And this battle, whose core enemy would ultimately be the distortions that might arise from within its own system, could become, if successfully weathered, a reliable training ground for the future confrontation with the Confucian web…

But on the negative side, any great power’s advance required carefully distinguishing primary from secondary contradictions. Should this land policy give rise to unforeseen problems — say, an intensification of left-right factional tensions, internal conflict, reforms halted midway leaving lasting scars — the Huaxia Army’s future strength might no longer be able to contain the runaway sprouting of capital. A failed new land policy might not directly cause the Huaxia Army’s downfall, but should failure come later, such a move would surely become the final straw that broke the camel’s back…

At present, with the Huaxia Army controlling only the southwest, its forces held an overwhelming grip over the whole of Sichuan, and visible enemies couldn’t stir up much trouble — pushing through the land policy forcefully in the short term was entirely feasible. The real concerns lay in the long run and in internal organizational shifts. But once the Huaxia Army broke out of the southwest and swallowed up the realm, if the land policy still hadn’t been carried out, it might never be possible to formally raise the matter again — that was the urgency on its positive side…

And yet, each era had its own native considerations. In the great era he himself had once lived through, that suffering nation had lost its early advantage in capital and natural science, and mobilizing the masses through a new land policy had been a crucial tool for reclaiming that lost ground. But in this era, if one already possessed the first-mover advantage in natural science and capital, was a new land policy still such an urgent and necessary step? Was his own action, to some degree, being driven by dogmatism and a purely sentimental homage to the past, rather than by clear-eyed calculation?

These considerations, one after another, had already been circling in his mind for a very long time.

He himself couldn’t arrive at a definitive, clear-cut conclusion.

In such a complicated matter, the few members of the Su family were, in truth, among the most inconsequential details involved.

For a long time now, both Ning Yi and Su Tan’er had kept a tight rein on their family members. Although it hadn’t reached the point of perfect purity, skirting the edges to profit from land within the southwest had only really become a thing in the past year or two. If Ning Yi asked directly, they wouldn’t even dare hold any openly visible interests in their own names — at most, some landlords and local gentry might slip them a bit of money on the side, in exchange for tipping them off or letting them in on certain information at key moments.

And even the two brothers-in-law, who now held a certain degree of standing, wouldn’t carry much weight as supporting players in what was to come. The reason Ning Yi had taken the time to have this long conversation with them was partly a matter of grooming those close to him, and partly because, in his own mind, he too was constantly running through this very calculation, over and over.

This hesitation and doubt might well continue for a very long time yet — even once the dust had settled, he might find himself asking these same questions again and again in the future. But while thinking could be cautious, while he could deliberate, review, and reflect, when the moment of choice actually arrived, that choice had to be resolute.

For now, he had already made his choice.

As he always did, Ning Yi had chosen the harder path.

Before the assembly concluded, and even for a month or two afterward, there might still be room to reconsider. But he knew the odds of calling it off now were already vanishingly small.

The deep autumn waters of Moheh Pool rippled with light. He stood there, lost in thought for a while.

The peaceful days were about to come to an end.

Occasionally, glancing up, he’d look at the stars scattered across the night sky, and his thoughts would drift to all the other lively goings-on across this land — the fighting, the heroes’ assembly, the clash between Liu Guangshi and Zou Xu that was probably rather entertaining, He Wen in Jiangning surely facing all sorts of complicated troubles…

News like this reached him often, and to him, it had become an extremely, extremely light form of entertainment…

He really did wish he could trade places.

With anyone, really — it would feel like starting over from scratch, building up from nothing…

Now wouldn’t that be interesting…

If only he’d never met Qin Siyuan…

…

And then his thoughts drifted to little Ning Ji’s travels through the martial world…

Wandering about somewhere, having a grand old time, no doubt…

Ah well, ah well. He himself had had a moment of madness, and ended up saddled with this for life…

Let the kid have his fun for a few more days…

In the future, he wouldn’t scold him for it anymore…

…

The middle-aged man named Ning Yi let out a sigh.

This chapter turned out very complicated and rather strange — I mulled it over for a long time, but decided to post it anyway. I’m sure some will say it’s filler, and that’s fine — I’ll post a big chapter tomorrow to make up for it.