Chapter 243: Give As Much As You Can
Whenever familialism prevails in the world, and the people generally place great importance on family relations, it foreshadows the incompetence of the country.
This indicates that the country cannot provide strong support to the people, or even ensure that the people are not unlawfully harmed by others, so forming groups based on blood relation becomes the only reliable means people feel they have to protect themselves.
The history of clans protecting the people dates back a long time; in ancient times, people formed groups in this way to confront natural disasters, man-made calamities, and wild beasts, and at the same time, the family was also a prototype for national governance.
Every time a great unified dynasty rises, the first target to strike is the great families, because if these families continue to prosper, they will have the ability to subvert the country.
When the Yun Clan Villa began to form, it was loose, of course, and also disunited, and thus very easy to manage; now, people’s blood relatives are coming, so the Yun Clan Villa has evolved from a group composed of natural persons to the simplest group composed of family units.
If E Ji and Feng An do nothing, the Yun Clan Villa will, within a decade, become a group composed of many small clans; in another fifty years, the Yun Clan Villa will become a large group centered on the Yun Clan, with a number of powerful medium-sized families as the main body.
A century later, the Yun Clan will be no different from Cao Kun’s family; in the end, it will inevitably challenge the highest power—either victorious and eventually dying without a burial place, or defeated, bowing its head and suffering a harvest, leaving a little fire seed in hopes of a comeback.
Therefore, Yun Ce hopes that E Ji and Feng An can mediate, or adjudicate, with the goal of splitting families and increasing the number of natural persons.
With two men vying for one woman, naturally bias toward the latter, letting the woman pair with a natural person rather than returning to her original family to bolster their strength.
If both men are natural persons, when dividing, naturally favor the weak; in any case, do not let the strong become stronger—this is actually the underlying meaning of many legal principles in the ancestral land.
1 I thought E Ji and Feng An would grasp this layer of thought, but no.
1 Yun Ce overturned the plan they had racked their brains to come up with, directly providing guiding principles and forcing them to divide the population according to the guiding principles he supplied.
1 The result of doing this was creating many cases that seemed unreasonable; fortunately, those men had already lost their women once, so losing them again was not so painful.
1 As for the spies who sneaked in, Yun Ce does not care; the autumn harvest is about to begin, there is plenty of work in the fields for them to do, and after the autumn harvest is finished, the Yun Clan Villa will immediately start constructing even more arduous defensive works; with so much work, Yun Ce does not think they can scout out anything.
1 After all, what the Yun Clan truly needs to keep secret is Jin Suo Pass; apart from this place, the Yun Clan Villa, Jingkou Pass, and even Xiangcheng are all pieces placed openly on the board, not afraid of being known.
1 The autumn harvest has not yet begun, but the money Wu Tong sent for purchasing military rations has already arrived; this time, no need for Yun Ce to personally escort it—the person coming to the Yun Clan Villa to transport the military rations is Zhou Chengming.
1 Thinking that Zhou Chengming once robbed the tribute from Chuyun Prefecture to the Great Han Emperor, Yun Ce feels that sending this guy to escort provisions might lead to some mishap.
1 Wu Tong sent a lot of money, but half of it is not smelted gold ingots, but various gold jewelry; many pieces of jewelry still have gems on them, and some jewelry still has dried bloodstains.
1 E Ji picked out many uniquely styled pieces of jewelry from them and handed them to Liang Kun to sell in Xiangcheng; Yun Ce also selected a few very exquisite pieces of jewelry to give to E Ji and Zhang Min, but the two women refused them and had Liang Kun sell those things too.
1 Instead, in his idle time, Yun Ce found some fine bamboo of good color, baked it into bracelet shapes, then polished it bit by bit with fine cloth to give it a shine and an aged look; the two of them treated these bracelets like treasures, each wearing one and delighted beyond measure.
2 Money is actually something that cannot be kept in the Yun Clan Villa; caravans frequently come to Jingkou Pass, and although they are only the tail-end caravans of large caravans from Pingcheng, the materials they bring to the Yun Clan are still abundant.
2 Since the caravans confirmed that Jingkou Pass has enough gold to pay for goods and dislikes barter trade, the quality of goods they bring to Jingkou Pass has been getting higher and higher.
2 To the point that Huo Liao no longer complains about wanting to work but lacking sufficient materials.
2 After this caravan arrived at Jingkou Pass, Huo Liao personally went to select the materials he needed; unexpectedly, he saw two huge pieces of meteorite iron in the caravan.
2 This is a good thing; after striking it with a hammer, Huo Liao felt his luck was heaven-defying; the metal needed for the interlocking mechanisms to open the two iron gates at Jin Suo Pass was easily obtained by him.
2 Two gates, forty tons heavy; interlocking mechanisms made of ordinary metal need replacement after not too long, and ordinary metal will be deformed by the heavy iron gates’ pull; the high-carbon steel made with the new method, though not bending, will snap!
2 This kind of heavenly meteorite iron, combining rigidity and flexibility, is most suitable for making the interlocking mechanisms for the gates.
2 Yun Ce very much wants to use this metal to make a set of meteor hammers suited for him; ordinary wrought iron meteor hammers will have spikes chip off against hard-headed foes and get smashed flat, affecting future use.
2 Huo Liao scoffed at Yun Ce’s request and originally had no intention of bothering; later, at Feng An’s persuasion, he specially smelted a furnace of something called No. 45 steel and forged two meteor hammers for him.
2 After trying them out, Yun Ce praised them endlessly; the weight, hardness, and toughness of the iron chains of these two meteor hammers are the best among all the meteor hammers Yun Ce has used.
3 “Boom”
3 Yun Ce smashed a full-force hammer strike onto the huge iron gate, only shaking off some dust; the gate gained a dent, and Doggy calculated that Yun Ce would need at least eight thousand six hundred hammer strikes to smash a hole in the gate.
3 The gate is hollow, filled inside with sand; it is this thing that dissipates the force Yun Ce strikes onto the gate and ensures that when the force reaches the second layer iron plate, little is left.
3 After closing the gate, Yun Ce said to E Ji, “That Shen Tingyu won’t be able to break through this gate to harm you either.”
3 E Ji smiled and said, “We have two such gates.”
3 Huo Liao, who had been standing woodenly to the side without speaking, immediately corrected upon hearing E Ji’s mistake: “We actually have six such gates.”
3 Yun Ce, upon hearing this, immediately beamed with joy; to be honest, ever since he told Shen Tingyu that sleeping with his sister would take over twenty large fish maws, he had felt uneasy inside.
3 Especially after hearing Shen Tingyu say sleeping with his wife would take thirty large fish maws, that uneasy feeling grew even stronger; others might just be talking nonsense like him.
3 But Shen Tingyu is not; this guy might very well treat it as real and act on it; if it really happens, Yun Ce does not care much, since it is a disaster brought by his own big mouth—he just fears E Ji cannot bear it.
3 Now it’s good; with six such iron gates guarding E Ji, Yun Ce does not believe Shen Tingyu can succeed.
4 However, after seeing the six gates Huo Liao mentioned, Yun Ce was completely reassured; two giant iron gates, and the ingenuity of the four gates behind them is not for outsiders to know.
4 In the future, as soon as Doggy senses Shen Tingyu within thirty li, Yun Ce will immediately send E Ji to hide in Jin Suo Pass; as for Zhang Min, she is safe—Shen Tingyu is a man of his word.
4 Construction of the underground works at Jin Suo Pass continues; at some key points, Yun Ce even allows Huo Liao to use blasting techniques to accelerate progress.
4 Until Huo Liao used a new toy to blast open an underground river; Yun Ce threw many colorful floats into the underground river, then sent people to guard nearby rivers, finally pinpointing the outlet of the underground dark river near Dragon Mouth Mountain; the underground dark river emerges at the foot of Dragon Mouth Mountain and eventually flows majestically into the Qingshui River.
4 Because the underground dark river is not very large, Huo Liao plans to cut it off here, dig a canal to redirect it north of the Great Wall; thus, a water system will appear in front of Jin Suo Pass, and if carefully utilized, Jin Suo Pass will gain a moat.
4 “In this cave, with dark rivers and voids, won’t it collapse?”
4 Huo Liao set down the Advanced Mathematics in his hand and said, “No large cavities have been dug; besides, the mountain body here is mostly high-strength sticky limestone—even an ordinary earth dragon turning over would not cause problems.”
4 Although Huo Liao still cannot understand Advanced Mathematics, these professional words coming from the mouth of someone holding Advanced Mathematics are utterly convincing.
4 Everything is stable at Jin Suo Pass, with many surprises; Yun Ce thus confidently brought E Ji back to the Yun Clan Villa to prepare for the annual autumn harvest.
4 Zhou Chengming arrived early at the Yun Clan Villa with three thousand cavalrymen and a long convoy.
5 Arriving early is not a good omen; it means provisions supply at Iron Enclosure Pass has already become problematic. This guy bringing three thousand men might well have the idea of freeloading at the Yun Clan Villa.
5 This time, Yun Ce did not invite these people into the manor to soak in the hot spring, so naturally no maidservants helped them bathe; merely, for the sake of Zhou Chengming once having taken care of Zhang Min, he treated them to a meal of oil-splashed noodles.
5 After eating, Zhou Chengming followed Yun Ce to a small courtyard; this is the lodging arranged for Old Zhou.
5 “Give as much grain to Iron Enclosure Pass as possible; I’m afraid later you won’t even have the chance if you want to.”
5 Just as Yun Ce was about to leave, he suddenly heard Zhou Chengming’s words.
5 Yun Ce turned back, only to see Zhou Chengming had already taken off his shoes and gotten into bed, as if those words were not his.
5 Chapter 3 delivered; tomorrow no sleeping in, continue begging for votes—end of the month, if not to Jue2, then who? Monthly tickets!
