Chapter 53: Peace On One Side, Evil Arises On The Other
If using the operation of a steam engine to metaphor a nation, group, or society regarding the fervor produced for war and trade, it is: the boiled steam possesses enormous power, but to utilize this power well, it requires exquisite structural design.
In Wu Fei’s design: exiting closed-door cultivation is an outward piston thrust of the “fervor,” while returning inward to stabilize the economy is an inward piston thrust. The Southern Border military-commercial group advanced forward like a train, “chugga chugga.”
In early 29, north of Yongji Pass, that is, within a hundred li inside the pass, a new round of military reclamation began. And this wave of military reclamation was no longer just some valleys, but also some mountain slopes. Farmers laboring with conical hats were tilling under the slopes.
At this time on the slopes, new tea trees were planted in patches. Then on the gentler slopes, crops similar to peanuts were planted. Since the precipitation amount was not yet determined, at the very bottom of the mountain feet, there were only a few small terraced fields for experimentation, because the labor input required for terraced fields was four or five times that of flat land.
According to the historical knowledge Xuan Chong obtained from the system: the earliest terraced field records were in the Southern Song period, at least Shu Han still did not have this production capacity.
Not developing the flat lands in the Central Plains, but instead going into the mountains to spend four or five times the labor to open terraced fields—is that the brain on Watt? —It can only be said that warfare caused the surplus labor and advanced production techniques from the Central Plains to go into the mountains to reclaim the corners.
29 years later, Wu Fei personally ran through those densely packed mountain tops inside Yongji Pass, experiencing what rugged iron lumps are. He sighed why the local Ministers of Finance and Ministers of Works of Da Yao could not establish a household registration archive system here, because it was too far from Tianchi City, and the local officials over there could not come either.
While Wu Fei rode on Guiche flying over one mountain top after another, at his feet were batches of slaves prying mountain rocks, transforming the mountain tops into terraces. The slaves labored under the urging of leather whips, while Wu Family Army soldiers carrying knives swept wild boars and black bears around the mountains. These mountain creatures were encountering so many people entering this desolate place for the first time, startled by the human presence.
And the mountain spirit also fluctuated accordingly; while the slaves labored, it occasionally shook, and huge falling rocks rolled down. However, as the Wu Family Army recruited artisans and erected “foundation steles” on the mountain tops, the mountains stabilized.
These foundation steles listed the roster of mountain guardians, proclaiming to the local mountains and rivers that this entry into the mountains was to settle permanently, not just to mess around and leave. In the future, the mountain guardians and their clans would live, age, fall ill, and die in the mountains; every year, they would sacrifice to heaven above and worship the land below. After hearing such promises, the mountains quieted down and acquiesced to the current actions.
Mountains are alive; for them, the beasts and monsters in the mountains are pets they raise. When outsiders enter and plunder chaotically, the mountains are naturally unhappy, but if people enter the mountains and are willing to become sons! Born here, buried here, the mountains will be very happy. Because human presence helps prosperity.
In the past, there were no people inside the mountains not because the mountains did not want it, but because people were unwilling to stay. Ancient human emperors once came to the mountains for alchemy, but they only left footprints and then departed.
As for why the human realm did not penetrate this mountains and rivers in the past, Wu Fei calculated and gave an answer: the cost of opening terraced fields was too high. Of course, cost is one problem; after opening the terraced fields, there is another problem: how to collect taxes!
Governing a country is not like the governance games from his previous life; after taking a piece of land, it does not provide 100% “resources” and “population” to those who invested resources. Reality is like doing business with Southern Border barbarians: investing goodwill and sincerity, and in the end, it might be that others do not acknowledge the account.
If a group wants to issue some decisions benefiting certain individuals and wants this decision to last long, it must consider the interests that the policy end can feedback to the group. Otherwise, issuing the decision is doomed not to last.
Therefore, when Xuan Chong set up these slope terraced fields, he also began road construction at the same time. Ox carts transported pebbles from the river to pave the widened muddy roads in the mountains, forming roads that could be used by vehicles with cattle, donkeys, and other livestock. And these are the foundation for the economic viability of the small mountain tops, as well as the foundation for future tax collection.
All the slope terraced fields were opened in plantation mode, using large amounts of slave manpower to clear the beasts and jackals in the mountains, then built brick by brick. The overseers of the plantations were all Wu Family Army veteran soldiers of merit who had guarded Yongji Pass for decades and were now retiring.
These plantation overseers also had multiple sons and grandsons in the ranks, so they truly had connections above and support below.
However, it can be foreseen that decades later, this mountain village small society will inevitably become more and more closed off; from the mountain lords to ordinary mountain folk, they will all hold guard against the outside world. If tax officials from outside the mountains whom they do not know or are unfamiliar with come to collect taxes from them, or to carry out system adjustments, they will most likely strip naked to show their scars, start with “fuck xx,” and act tough.
Xuan Chong, who created all this, knew he could not collect head taxes. If he did head taxes, although the plantation owners on these mountain tops would give him face in the first few years, after a few years they would start to cheat and dodge.
Xuan Chong also had to erect steles for each mountain, fixing their obligations for mutual interactions with the General’s Mansion outside the mountains in the form of a covenant.
…Historical materials being reviewed…
In the endless historical records, the “Great Ming military households” were basically a failed policy; by the later period, the decay of all military garrison bases in Jiangnan and the North was basically acknowledged. However! This system operated quite stably in one place. That was in the Southwest.
The military household system in the Southwest could be said to have no illustrious merits for its good fighters. Until a few hundred years later, decades before Xuan Chong’s birth, when the national power was in a dormant phase and there were traitors jumping around in various border areas, only here the cousins stood like a divine needle stabilizing the sea amid more complex ethnic relations outside and the chaos of external forces.
Because the Great Ming military households in this place had a small improvement. The military garrison bases began to evolve towards the local tusi system. When the Ming and Qing courts appointed tusis to manage in this direction, it was not prefecture and county system. Instead, they dispatched a military-economic specialist official bureaucrat, who controlled economic resources like tea and salt to maintain conciliation over these places.
The border officials of Ming and Qing in previous life managed the local tusis with such conciliatory laxity; for the national military reclamation units migrating here, it could only be said to be even more conciliatory, raising them in a state of enfeoffed knight lords scatter-feeding the military households.
In contrast, the decay of military households in Jiangnan and the North was essentially due to native interest groups infiltrating and destroying the governance system. On one hand, native landlords encroached on military reclamation lands, and on the other, they paid head taxes to the increasingly landlord-like garrison officers. The garrisons had evolved towards the landlord model and could no longer guarantee military strength.
After finishing reviewing the materials, Xuan Chong roughly understood how to set up the management.
Direct jurisdiction, military administration, economically directly docking with the designated General’s Mansion official merchants.
…System reviewing…
In the mountain gullies, Wu Fei led a group of veteran soldiers to follow the map introducing the boundaries divided for each mountain, and announced at some road entrances that this was the tax checkpoint.
And Wu Fei explained to the veteran soldiers: the checkpoint guards on these checkpoints are decided by vote from these farmstead chiefs, then the General’s Mansion comes to draw lots and assign them to various checkpoints. The guards’ salaries are distributed annually by the special commissioner sent by the General’s Mansion.
These veteran soldiers nodded vigorously to the system introduction without any feeling: The General is wise.
Wu Fei sighed inwardly: “Not everyone has the awareness to participate in governance.” —After confirming no one interjected to participate in discussion, Wu Fei gave up the idea of selecting talents from them who could collaborate in governance.
However, when Wu Fei subsequently appointed farmstead chiefs based on these veteran soldiers’ merits, they all looked at Wu Fei eagerly. After all, some mountain tops could reclaim more terraced fields during development, some less. And the now finalized farmstead villages were the family property for their future sons and grandsons to live on.
Because according to the General’s Mansion stipulations, these farmstead chiefs had great power. As long as they did not violate the ritual system in weddings, funerals, and marriages, they were the earth kings of this mountain top.
As for paying taxes? All mountain goods trade from each mountain top is handled by special commissioners. The commissioners are responsible for the checkpoint personnel on these roads. The few roads into the mountains are the only ones; blocking these entrances is equivalent to blocking the veins connecting the mountains to the outside world.
What, bypass the customs duties checkpoint, not take the official roads, want to carry mountain goods out by shoulder pole? Tsk tsk, the load on the shoulders is not ordinarily heavy.
As for secretly opening another road inside? Not to mention the best road-opening spots have already been designated by Wu Fei; even if some road-openable spots remain, they are not something these tusi-ized farmstead chiefs of individual mountain tops can accomplish. Mobilizing manpower, capital for equipment, and coordinating the road paths through various mountain feet are not things individual mountain tops can manage.
…Mountain roads blistered the feet…
Currently, Wu Fei’s establishment of this tusi-like system on various mountain tops is a pilot attempt. If the system is effective, the foreseeable two core goals are: 1. Through tea, salt, cloth, exchange “grain” and mountain goods for fiscal revenue; 2. Each mountain top supplies the regional highest governor with sufficient “population” to form military strength to maintain regional order.
Wu Fei: If this system is feasible, it will be promoted to the entire Southern Border in the future.
Wu Fei is very realistic. Under current productivity conditions, with Southern Border’s various small mountain valley planting areas isolated by mountains and waters. Don’t even think about implementing the prefecture and county system like in the North Da Yao alluvial plains; there are no such conditions!
River alluvial plains can be measured with ropes and rods, flat as a horse’s back; any settlement can be easily found by officials along the roads. But mountains are rugged and uneven; some small valleys even locals cannot find. Land cannot be precisely measured, population cannot be precisely counted, so how to implement imperial way governance?
Wu Fei: Unless backed by billions of tons of steel, tens of billions of tons of cement to blast mountains and build roads, with satellites precisely mapping from the sky, can prefecture and county system truly be implemented.
…Strengthen conciliation…
After spring plowing ended in Shu Tian Calendar 29, Wu Fei returned to the General’s Mansion and hurried nonstop to San Gu’s feng shui pavilion to learn about San Gu’s latest calculations.
Regarding the northern mountain range area, San Gu’s calculation result was: the “human realm” had already very smoothly entered those mountainous areas inside the pass; on the feng shui map, it was like spring rain nourishing the earth; the human realm’s compatibility process with the local mountains and rivers was quite peaceful.
San Gu: “Look at your south.”
Wu Fei looked at the south of the feng shui map, where a black miasma seemed to be spreading.
…Perspective shifts to the south…
In spring of 29, between the Ling River north and south in Southern Border, the gaps between various tribes had widened compared to the previous year.
Across the river, some Horned People villages in the northern tribes still had enough salt, even giving it to cattle and horses to chew; of course, more salt was still stockpiled to exchange for good things in a few months, while the southern villages had run out of salt.
In the past, these Horned People tribes in the south relied on going together to the mountains to dig sheep-lick stones, which could make do. But now? The Horned People in these southern villages visited relatives in northern villages and suddenly discovered that northern kin had surplus salt to feed livestock! After entering the northern kin villages, resentment brewed in their hearts.
In the Horned People tribe where Kam was, inside thatched huts, mats were laid on the dirt floor, and the tribe’s elders were receiving southern kin.
Soft-hearted elders, facing the southern kin’s request once again, said helplessly: “Last year we already gave you three shi of salt; you should have enough.” —According to the tribe’s young people, these southern kin should exchange with women or gold sand.
The elder, for the sake of face, felt it should not be that way; if able to help, just help as much as possible. However, after the southern kin accepted the help, they showed no gratitude, which also displeased this elder.
And at this time, these southern kin were also very depressed: three shi of salt is not enough! The men in the tribe needed to marry women from other tribes, and it was mostly used up for exchanges. These northern relatives are too stingy! They clearly still have salt, why not take it out?
As the bickering between both sides intensified, the atmosphere finally turned bad.
The host elder finally lost all hope in these southern relatives: these southern relatives wanted salt but were unwilling to give anything.
While the southern guests were even more furious: we are all relatives; you have surplus to feed livestock, why make us exchange with our lifelines.
One of the southern Horned People looked at this northern relative tribe seeming carelessly unguarded; suddenly a red light flashed in his pupils, and he persuaded himself: “Heh heh heh, since not relatives, then not relatives.”
…Ties completely severed…
On this side, Kam from the village was very happy; he carried the elder to the south once, sold his stockpiled salt there, exchanging one shi of salt for three cattle or ten sheep, returning fully loaded, even the rhinoceros pulling the cart hummed happily.
At dusk, he and the tribe brothers drove the cattle and sheep back to the village, receiving praise from the brothers in the village; upon returning home, the woman hugged the exchanged sheep joyfully and said: “Kam, you are the smart one.”
…From love to hate…
However, on the other side, the tribal leader who came begging for salt during the day returned to his own camp, looking at his people helplessly using the expensively bought salt; a sense of his own incompetence surged in his heart.
But upon closer look, the baskets of the expensively bought salt goods were the same as the grass baskets used by the northern relative tribe during the day to hold cattle fodder. His face turned ashen!
Bamboo grass woven baskets were indistinguishable to outsiders, but in the tribe, it was clear, even recognizable as which woman’s handiwork.
These southern tribe people cursed: begging at your door doesn’t work, you secretly sell us at high prices, truly detestable.
Thus, this southern Horned People leader picked up a knife and found his brothers who had gone north with him before.
His pupils were completely covered in blood red; he roared at those brothers: “This time, I don’t want to return empty-handed!”
With his anger bursting forth, and explaining the source of the expensively bought salt goods, the blood red appeared in the pupils of those who came with him.
Thus, the next bloodshed occurred.
