Chapter 233: No Absolute Kindness
All animals in the world are the same.
In an environment with abundant food and peace and harmony, the reproduction speed will be very fast.
The women in Yun Clan Villa are a very good example. Many women, when they were slaves for others or living a life of starvation and displacement, found it very difficult to have children.
Ever since following Yun Ce to north of the Great Wall, as life gradually stabilized and food went from scarce to abundant, the women in the manor began to get pregnant one after another.
Clearly, there is a serious shortage of male heirs in the manor, but judging from the scale of women getting pregnant, the moral level of the people in Yun Clan Manor still needs improvement.
Feng An believes that it is all because of the main family’s policies of taking care of pregnant women and rewarding childbirth that have led to many children having unknown fathers.
Yun Ce believes that those who exploit policy loopholes are not cunning villains, but a group of smart people. Policies are made to be exploited; if someone can find a loophole, it means there is a problem with the government’s policy, not with the person exploiting it.
On Earth, it takes ten months of pregnancy for a child to be born, but not in Great Han. Here, the days are long and the nights are long too; a child is born after seven months.
Nowadays, the specialty product of Yun Clan Villa is pregnant women—pregnant women of various months with bellies of different sizes. Every morning, as long as the sun is out and it’s not raining, looking out from Yun Clan Manor, it’s all pregnant women.
This group of women, who originally had little sense of belonging, get themselves pregnant in order to do less work or no work at all and eat the finest food. After getting pregnant, they can happily avoid work, eat gourmet food, and slack off for several months. If they have enough milk, they can even stay in the nursery under the banner of being wet nurses and enjoy a couple more months of good life.
1 This period of time is enough for smart people to get pregnant again.
1 It was thought that this situation was just a passing fad, and that once the villa’s days got a bit better, this trend would gradually fade away.
1 But it didn’t. More women got pregnant, making the entire Yun Clan Villa very strange.
1 This made Cao Kun, who often visited Yun Clan, look at Yun Ce with very strange eyes.
1 “You don’t think all these children are mine, do you?” Yun Ce said helplessly.
1 “I just want to know why you allow so much labor to get pregnant?” Cao Kun wasn’t suspicious; he was just puzzled.
1 “Women giving birth is instinct; can it even be controlled?”
1 “Of course it can. Separate men and women, and add strict laws and harsh punishments, then labor will always remain labor and won’t stop being labor just because of pregnancy.
1 Also, there are too many women in your territory. If you let them continue, the children in your territory will keep increasing, and they will eat up all the output from your farm clean.
1 You’re from a noble background; surely you know that labor is just labor, right?”
2 Yun Ce shook his head and said, “My ancestors only said to have many children for many blessings.”
2 Cao Kun laughed loudly: “That means you can have many children, not that the labor in your home can have many children. You should know that labor can’t have too deep relationships with each other. Once they do, they easily form groups. Once people form groups, they easily encroach on your profits in places you can’t see.
2 Nowadays, in Chuyun Prefecture, there’s a woman from a slave background called Miss Hong who led a group of slaves to occupy Chuyun Prefecture outright.
2 Although Chuyun Prefecture is a wasteland prefecture, not long ago, she actually led a group of slaves to rout Ning Prefecture Inspector Peng Da Yong, abandoning armor and helmet, and wiped out three thousand Tiger Guards at Dragon Gate Post Station, completely cutting off Chuyun Prefecture from the outside world.”
2 Yun Ce smiled upon hearing this: “Is that why you haven’t entered Chuyun Prefecture seeking the dragon?”
2 Cao Kun pondered for a moment and said, “Ning Prefecture is in chaos, and my Qiu He Prefecture can’t reach with a whip.”
2 Yun Ce said, “Yeah, it’s too far away there.”
2 Cao Kun said softly, “My ambition is in Ning Prefecture Shehuo.”
2 Yun Ce shook his head: “For a long time, I won’t be traveling far. As you can see, the home is full of pregnant women; there’s no strength left to resist external enemies.
2 With me in charge, those women might still give birth safely.”
3 Cao Kun sighed deeply: “Brother Yun, being soft-hearted toward women is not the way for us men of Great Han.
3 Yun Ce continued shaking his head: “No rush. Yun Clan isn’t in such a hurry to expand. I’m very satisfied with the current situation. You should know that a large family can’t become a towering big tree without decades or centuries of building its foundation.”
3 Cao Kun said, “You want stability, but others may not let you have it.”
3 Yun Ce laughed loudly: “If they come, kill them. If it’s still not peaceful, kill again. Slaughter a hundred times, and the world will naturally be at peace.”
3 Hearing Yun Ce’s murderous words, Cao Kun didn’t take it seriously, but he also heard that Yun Ce was unwilling to work for Cao Clan anymore, and was very firm about it.
3 He stopped talking to Yun Ce about Ning Prefecture Shehuo and instead continued joking about the large number of big-bellied women in Yun Clan.
3 Yun Ce didn’t take the veiled threat in Cao Kun’s words to heart. Nowadays, Yun Clan is just an earthenware pot; Cao Clan’s jade bi doesn’t need to proactively crash into it.
3 After emphasizing again that Yun Ce must attend his grand wedding, Cao Kun flew away on an albatross. This time, he didn’t stay to eat the saizi noodles that Yun Ce strongly recommended.
3 Relationships between people always go through many ups and downs. Yun Ce believes that given Cao Clan’s current momentum of rapid advancement, it is very likely to become the first major power to be besieged by everyone.
3 When Dong Zhuo entered Chang’an back then, his arrogance was sky-high; when he died, the oil lamp lit on his navel illuminated the shattered sky of Great Han.
4 If Cao Clan still doesn’t know to hide its strength, with its control of three prefectures, it will eventually be feared by all the surrounding inspectors.
4 Yun Clan must maintain a certain independence. If it has nothing to do and follows Cao Kun around everywhere, and gets involved in Cao Clan’s private affairs, then even if it’s not with Cao Clan, others will see it as such.
4 Instead of running around aimlessly with Cao Kun, it’s better to stay home watching the crops growing vigorously in the fields, watching his wife’s belly gradually grow bigger, and watching the big-bellied women in the manor give birth to many, many new Great Han heirs.
4 Yun Ce didn’t take to heart a single word of Cao Kun’s set of housekeeping methods.
4 What is labor? It’s actually a variant of the three tools learned in politics class back then: tools that can talk, tools that moo, and tools that can’t talk.
4 In Cao Kun’s mouth, the pregnant women at home are tools that can talk.
4 Great Han is a place with clear class distinctions.
4 Slaves and refugees have never been treated well.
4 Perhaps for a very, very long time, no one has treated those unfortunate slaves and refugee women as people, so they feel very indifferent toward the children they give birth to, simply seeing the children as tools for their own good days.
4 As soon as a child is born, it is sent to the nursery. When a bit older, it’s said they are sent to the youth academy. After coming out of the youth academy, children are assigned to various places. If a child is found to have martial arts talent, the treatment is even better.
5 This is the reason why the women in Yun Clan Villa are willing to have children.
5 People with knowledge and insight will greatly despise the policies Yun Ce has issued, thinking he is raising these women like livestock.
5 But the women who have been slaves or refugees for many years don’t see it that way. Compared to endless hard labor and endless hunger and cold, the reward of a half-year of leisure during pregnancy, and a life of eating one’s fill all day without anything to do, is especially important to them.
5 Such measures are hard for Great Han people to understand. Even kind-hearted Feng An and Liang Kun think it’s inappropriate—being too good to them will only breed a group of lazy people.
5 Yun Ce doesn’t care about this. He insists that there are no lazy people in his farm.
5 A day in Great Han is too long. You can’t label someone who works in the farmland or manor for more than sixteen hours a day as lazy, and they work year-round without rest.
5 The reason these people are rushing to have children is simply because they were too exhausted before and have never truly enjoyed their own life.
5 That’s why the scene of pregnant women everywhere has appeared.
5 Doggy had long measured that the physique of people here is not much different from that of people in the ancestral land, and even inferior in resisting certain extreme climates and environments.
5 The set of management methods Yun Ce implements in Yun Clan Villa is actually the management method of a state-owned farm.
6 This set of management methods isn’t advanced, but for managing a group of unfortunate people, the effect is very obvious.
6 The emergence of the collective gave them a great sense of security, and the relatively fair distribution also reduced much of the resentment in their hearts.
6 E Ji, although her belly is flat, has long joined the pregnant women’s group sunbathing. As soon as she appears, countless pregnant women gather around her.
6 It’s said that pregnant women meeting pregnant women is not very auspicious, but clearly E Ji doesn’t care. Unlike Zhang Min, she never thinks the children in these women’s bellies will clash with her own child.
6 On the contrary, the children in these women’s bellies will all be helpers for her child in the future.
6 Now that they all have children, the dinner table at Yun Ce’s home has finally become harmonious. The relationship between Zhang Min and E Ji has quickly warmed from cold indifference to close sisters who talk about everything.
6 Yun Ce is the one no one pays attention to.
6 Even the red date horse doesn’t want to pay attention to Yun Ce. It’s very busy, really very busy, chased all day by a reddish Thunder Smoke Beast, and it already looks a bit exhausted.
6 A horse’s estrus period is very short. Three days later, the red date horse returned to its previous single state. To rekindle old flames with that Thunder Smoke Beast, it might have to wait until next year.
6 When Yun Ce went to see the female beast, he found her lying obediently on the ground, her big watery eyes no longer chasing the red date horse, but leisurely watching the white clouds on the horizon.
7 Yun Ce took out two beans and stuffed them into the female beast’s mouth. The female beast calmly chewed the beans, seemingly having already forgotten Shen Tingyu’s existence.
7 “What if this horse runs back?” Doggy suddenly asked.
7 “If it runs back, so be it.” Yun Ce said indifferently.
7 “Wouldn’t you be at a loss then?”
7 “Loss is loss. The child is born by it and belongs to it.”
7 “Among all fierce beasts, you seem to always treat Thunder Smoke Beasts differently. Don’t forget, there are still many fierce beasts chained up by you on the wasteland. Why aren’t you equally kind to them?”
7 Seeing the red date horse’s long face appear on the low wall, Yun Ce stood up, stroked it, and laughed: “Because of favoritism.”
7 It’s unclear if the red date horse understood Yun Ce’s words, but it also neighed twice as if laughing.
7 And more.
