While Ning Ji and his little scoundrel companion had already embarked on this new leg of their journey in southeastern Fujian, the southwestern homeland from which he’d set out was, at this very same moment, in the midst of a spring season brimming with life.
This particular spring did not refer merely to the seasonal change that arrived every year, but rather to the fact that, following the initial success of the hundred-village pilot program the previous year, the wheels of the new land policy were now rolling out toward far broader stretches of the Chengdu Plain. This unfamiliar, startling development was sweeping ceaselessly, with each passing moment, across every corner of the plain.
Village by village, the new land policy was being methodically rolled out. Some people were bewildered, uncertain; some refused to believe it and pushed back in resistance; onlookers first watched coldly, then were struck with shock, then fell into a sense of loss amid their disbelief—while others cheered with joy, composing poems to welcome the arrival of a new era.
This new era wasn’t simply a straightforward concept, some rousing outline to stir the blood. In Chengdu, amid the bright spring of the third month, countless ideas were being fleshed out into more concrete form by the “New Culturalists” and thrown out into public discourse, and the fierce clashes of opinion that followed had grown more turbulent than at any point before.
Only now did people realize that the results of over a decade of what had often seemed like mere “armchair theorizing” in cultural discourse, led by the core members of Ning Yi’s Huaxia Army—whether concerning equality, the four classes of society, or all manner of curious speculations about human nature—had all, at the very moment the new land policy was formally put into practice, had their blades sharpened and their chambers loaded. People, drawing on this immense real-world transformation, could now begin to trace out one grand vision of the future after another, and the once-callow “New Culturalists,” swept up in the fervor of it all, kept ceaselessly enriching and expanding their theoretical frameworks.
Any single, simplistic concept, any so-called grand vision, was in truth powerless when set against the fully developed system of Confucian theory, backed by thousands of years of practical precedent. People could see clearly all the reasons why such simplistic theories couldn’t possibly work, and indeed, over the course of the past several years of intense debate, quite a number of the Huaxia Army’s own theorists had gradually found themselves won over by the erudite Confucian scholars they’d encountered from outside. But now, at this moment, the theoretical frameworks that had been over a decade in the making, spanning multiple directions, were finally beginning to align with the pace of actual practice—system now confronting system, with once-idealistic theory and vision beginning to be shaped and tested by reality itself.
And so, an unfamiliar giant began to stretch its limbs upon this ancient land, soil and mountains pushed aside, a faint rumble of thunder rolling across the plains.
In the eyes of the many Confucian scholars and observers watching from the sidelines, Ning Yi—the regicide who, over these past several years, had otherwise conducted himself with relative benevolence—was finally beginning to reveal the full extent of his audacious vision and the overwhelming power that threatened to dominate the entire era.
If his reckless act of regicide upon the golden throne over a decade ago, followed by his outrageous declarations against Confucianism, and even his remarkable feat of crushing the Jurchen western army on the Chengdu Plain, had all still fallen within the bounds of what people could comprehend, then this latest rollout of the “new land policy” was something that truly exceeded the wildest imaginings of even the highest echelons of Confucian scholarship. Throughout history, there had certainly been men who attempted such things, but almost without exception, such attempts descended into orgies of destruction with nothing constructive to show for it. No person of sound judgment would undertake such a thing lightly, and no matter how it was carried out, it would inevitably collapse into ruin within a short span of time.
But this time, it hadn’t.
The Huaxia Army, with an unprecedented degree of organizational discipline, was pushing this transformation forward into every single village on its list. It cast aside any need for cooperation from local gentry, reshaping the appearance of every village along its path with the precision of a razor’s edge—not merely pushing past old resistance, but even, in the very process of driving this transformation forward, beginning to absorb new members and provide them with training and education in the ideology of the four classes. And this practical implementation, unfolding across countless centers of public discourse, was finally breathing genuine life into what had, for over a decade, remained little more than “fantasy.”
Small-scale conflicts and skirmishes were breaking out with increasing frequency. In Chengdu, countless people had begun petitioning the Huaxia Army’s deliberative assembly, and even Ning Yi himself directly, with some of the old Confucian scholars even going so far as to kneel and “petition at the palace gates” in the government square, pleading passionately about the various dangers and consequences of what lay ahead—having by now set aside their earlier vow of “irreconcilable hostility” toward the Huaxia Army.
But Ning Yi remained utterly unmoved, and the figure cast by his will and power now, at this moment, loomed over the entire canopy of sky above the southwest, driving stakes of authority deep into the earth below.
This new theoretical framework would not, by itself, destroy the old one outright—indeed, even now, with practical implementation only just beginning, it could hardly be said to have gained the upper hand. And relying on military force to methodically push forward the new land policy, absorbing new members along the way, was never going to be enough to truly dismantle the vast, deeply entrenched roots of gentry culture within the span of just a few years. But at the very least, at this moment, the concept and structure of the four classes had already been given a soul; flesh and skin now wrapped around its skeleton, its heart had begun to beat, and blood had begun to circulate through it. And beneath its feet, roots that were genuinely alive had already begun to push down into the earth, beginning the true contest for nourishment against the vast, entrenched power of the local gentry.
A transformation on this scale would inevitably touch every corner of society. In Chengdu, the conflict between the old Confucians and the new was, for now, still merely a ripple extending from the cultural sphere. But among the settlements of migrant laborers gathered from elsewhere, people who had lost their hometowns and signed themselves into indenture contracts had begun asking whether they might settle in the southwest, or join the Huaxia Army, in the hope of eventually gaining land of their own—and this hope, this eager anticipation, had already stirred up a genuine wave of enthusiasm. Correspondingly, the various gentry figures who had set up factories or invested around Chengdu found themselves, on one hand, growing anxious about how the situation might change, while on the other, already actively searching for whatever opportunities this transformation might bring.
Take, for instance, “Manager Lin,” Lin Qiu, who now held a senior position in the Commerce Ministry—these past several days, he too had been weathering wave after wave of this corrosive tide of change.
Lin Jingmei and the others had recently, under Li Shishi’s guidance, been attempting to draft a proposal for incorporating migrant laborers as a core pillar of support for the new land policy. Meanwhile, just two days after her joyous New Year’s wedding, her husband, Peng Yueyun, had long since been dispatched by Ning Yi to some unknown location on assignment, and she hadn’t seen him in over two months now.
At his residence near Moheh Pool, Ning Yi was so busy these days he no longer even had time to write articles for the newspaper railing against his critics.
The landowners crying foul over their damaged interests, and the old Confucian scholars petitioning out of fear—none of them could get anywhere near him now, and he had no time to spare for any of these individual, scattered voices in any case. Countless streams of data poured into the central government every single day. Ning Yi spent most of his time wearing an expressionless mask, projecting the image of a man calmly, confidently in control—but he found himself growing distracted more often than before, and occasionally losing his temper.
The new land policy, which he directly oversaw, had already expanded from its original hundred pilot villages to a far broader scope. With nearly ten thousand core personnel serving as its backbone, organized into a thousand work teams, the plan called for completing the transformation of tens of thousands of villages across the southwest within the span of two years. On the military support side, there was little risk of serious trouble arising. But these thousand work teams had already begun to slip gradually beyond his direct line of sight—and while some degree of overcorrection was inevitable, bound to produce all manner of deviations and problems along the way, any single problem arising within any one of these work teams could potentially become the seed of a future rot that would prove impossible to excise.
It had taken over a decade to painstakingly build up even the barest theoretical framework, and to establish a genuine practical cycle at the grassroots level. That the policy had finally been put into practice was, of course, cause for celebration—but over the years ahead, should any major problem emerge at the practical level, the entire framework of reform could still collapse like a sandcastle on the beach. Though it might be said that the seeds of this new ideology had already been sown, before those seeds could mature into something real and lasting, every twist and setback along the way would still come at the cost of untold suffering—potentially millions, even tens of millions of lives, or the fate of an entire era.
At moments like this, he did, in truth, feel a measure of fear and unease within himself. Of course, on the surface, such emotions were no longer something he could afford to show anyone.
News from the outside world would occasionally reach him—Jin Territory’s western campaign; the various maneuverings of Dai Mengwei and Zou Xu; the shifting developments within the Fair Party’s advance; the turbulence within the little southeastern court, or the movements of the Jurchen. In the past, he might have treated such things as mere entertainment, but these days, he did little more than glance over them briefly before handing them off to the relevant departments below, letting them handle matters in their own methodical way.
Only occasionally, lost in thought and staring off into space, would he find himself reflecting again, with a certain weary resignation, on why he’d ever bothered with any of it.
In this third month on the Chengdu Plain, alongside the steadily expanding progress of the new land policy, and amid alternating sunshine and rain, the more immediate and practical work of spring planting was also underway. Across this now-peaceful land, far removed from the ravages of war, people’s lives had settled into a fair degree of stability. And further southwest, in Wenpu County, Tang Minjie, having now spent more than half a year exiled to this posting, was living through what was perhaps the calmest, most fulfilling stretch of his entire life.
It felt almost like a dream.
Having now put in more than half a year of work here, he counted, by this point, as something of a veteran at the No. 223 Agricultural Research Institute. His daily routine remained simple: collecting night soil outside Wenpu county town before dawn, giving basic literacy lessons to a handful of local children or a few of the less-educated night-soil women, then returning to the institute near Little Ye Village to compost the collected waste, before making his way back to the Wenpu night-soil station as close to nightfall as possible.
During this period, perhaps due to Peng Yueyun’s several visits and conversations with him, or perhaps because of the growing—if still modest—impact of the literacy class he’d started at the night-soil station, Director Chen Cirang had spoken with him several times, attempting to transfer him to a cleaner posting, and had even considered publicizing his literacy class in some fashion. But Tang Minjie had, each time, gently but firmly declined.
After settling in for a while, through a friend introduced by Peng Yueyun, Tang Minjie was able to obtain some of the newspapers from Chengdu even here in Wenpu. He spent most of his modest—and largely otherwise useless—wages on this. Through these newspapers, he was able to clearly follow the sweeping changes taking place in the outside world, and each morning, after having read through the previous day’s news, he would read and explain various current events to the children in his literacy class.
“Understanding the world will help you become more capable people in the future.”
Because of all this, word occasionally spread privately among the locals: that young fellow collecting night soil at the station might well be some important figure out in the wider world.
Of course, even when people came around trying to get closer to him, Tang Minjie, outside of his teaching, never showed the slightest hint of being any sort of “important figure” in his manner or conversation. Though he’d tidy himself up somewhat when reading aloud and explaining the newspapers to the children, most of the time he moved with a slight stoop, his body weary, occasionally reaching down absently to scratch at his bare feet caked in mud and filth. Given his prolonged exposure to night soil, he carried a faint lingering odor about him, and few ordinary people were inclined to spend much time in his company or converse with him at length.
He Qing, the night-soil woman who had first proposed the idea of him teaching, had for a time shown clear signs of interest in him, occasionally hinting, in roundabout ways, that she’d like to wash and mend his clothes. She’d once given him a pair of hand-stitched cloth shoes along with a few insoles she’d made herself. But after Tang Minjie made clear his intention to decline, the relationship between them settled back to a certain measured distance. He Qing didn’t fully understand where his reluctance came from, but then, it was always difficult for people to understand each other quite that deeply—and given that he wasn’t, after all, someone of any particularly good standing, she wasn’t the type to make herself appear shameless about it either.
Spring planting in the southwest had already begun in February, and every household was busily occupied with it. The new land policy, meanwhile, had become the most commonly discussed topic among everyone during this period, with many landowners consumed by anxious dread—by mid-February, there had even been several unfortunate incidents of violence and bloodshed that had caused quite a stir. But these events still felt distant from Tang Minjie and those around him.
By the end of February, a small work team had split off from the original hundred pilot villages and arrived at a small village to the east of Wenpu county town, reportedly beginning the process of implementing the land reform there. A number of the night-soil women had gone to secretly observe, and came back to tell Tang Minjie that the wife of some landowner’s household had hanged herself and had barely been saved in time—apparently this particular family had actually had a fairly decent reputation among the locals, and so on and so forth.
Amid this steady trickle of scattered news, mixed together with whatever stories the daily papers brought, Tang Minjie found himself, even in the midst of this tranquility, occasionally stirred by a certain surge of emotion—the turbulence of the age was slowly warming his broken heart. He would sometimes think of those Han slaves far away in the north, hearing again in his mind their anguished wailing, and would think of Chen Wenjun, wondering to himself: Madam Chen, could you know what’s happening here? Could you feel the warmth of it? But the only answer that ever came back to him was the howling, bitter wind of the north echoing in his mind.
In early March, the progress of the new land policy in the villages around Wenpu seemed to grow somewhat more turbulent. Huaxia Army soldiers made a trip or two into Wenpu county town, which of course wasn’t unusual in itself—not every landowner in this world was a bad person, and in fact, in many places, small landowners with poor reputations often found it impossible to survive at all. These sorts of issues were structural injustices; once they developed to a sufficiently deep degree, the only way forward was to break them down entirely, so that a new cycle could take their place. The Huaxia Army hadn’t approached this round of land reform with blunt, indiscriminate force, having instead arranged for some measure of buyout and negotiation. But for some who felt keenly how hard they’d worked to accumulate their land, there were, naturally, cases of outright refusal no matter what terms were offered—and if no agreement could be reached within a set timeframe, such people were quite likely to simply be crushed underfoot.
Tang Minjie didn’t feel much of anything, particular, about any of this.
And so it went, until the evening of the thirteenth day of the third month, when, driving his cart back toward Wenpu county town, he sensed something different in the air. In the distance, some kind of disturbance seemed to be brewing—law enforcement teams from the county were conducting a search of the surrounding area, and men wearing armbands were stationed along the road out of Wenpu, watching travelers leaving the county town with wary eyes, questioning some of them briefly.
Passing by, he happened to overhear some of the conversation.
“What happened…”
“…Squire Qiu, over in Erqing Village, took up a blade and wounded someone—word is he killed a member of the work team…”
“Killed someone?” Hearing this exchange, Tang Minjie frowned, and for the first time went over to ask about it directly, though he didn’t get a definitive answer. All he could confirm was that some kind of dispute had once again broken out in Erqing Village, resulting in a bloody act of violence.
By the time the sun had set, Tang Minjie drove his cart back to the collection station, unhitched the mule, and did his usual bit of cleaning. As darkness fell, a group carrying torches came searching along the road again, and someone knocked on his door. The leader was a Huaxia Army soldier whom Tang Minjie could tell at a glance had seen battle, accompanied by a local ward officer. After confirming Tang Minjie’s identity, they asked whether he’d noticed anything unusual that evening. Perhaps because both sides were, in some sense, part of the same Huaxia Army apparatus, when the accompanying men went inside to conduct a general search, they even saluted Tang Minjie and asked whether he’d once served on the front lines.
Tang Minjie, stooped as usual, shook his head and said no.
The group searched for a while, then left.
By now night had fallen almost completely dark. Tang Minjie bolted his door, then took up a blade, dragged over a chair, and sat down on the raised platform beside the cart, the spot normally used for convenient waste disposal. Every movement he made after closing the door was utterly silent. He sat there gazing up at the stars and moon overhead, still as a ghost. After some time had passed like this, a sound stirred from within one of the waste buckets. A figure quietly pushed open the lid, poking its head out—only to find, sitting close by in the chair, the figure of Tang Minjie, and the blade resting across his lap, pointed toward the ground.
“Come on out.”
His weary voice broke the silence.
“Tell me why you shouldn’t die.”
This was the small episode that unfolded some six months after Tang Minjie’s return to the southwest…
Before long, it would stir up no small commotion.
Like a tiny, insignificant ripple, within the vastness of a great age…