Chapter 565: - Hardship

Old He closed his shop and returned to the courtyard his family rented.

He found a stool, sat down, and began waving a palm fan.

He waved.

And waved.

Then Old He could not help lifting the fan in front of his face.

What month was it already?

Why had the weather still not cooled down?

And how long had it been since the last rain?

The emperor looked down upon the realm every day.

The common people below, however, spent most of their time looking up at the sky.

Because most common people lived by Heaven’s favor.

Old He had spent more than half his life running a pork business.

But at the root of it, one of his legs had never fully left the soil.

“If this drought keeps going, this year’s harvest...”

Old He began to worry.

The people living beneath the feet of the Son of Heaven had one particular habit.

Even the dock laborers, once they had a little free time, could sit down and chat with you about the winds and storms of court.

Whenever business at Old He’s pork shop was slow, several shopkeepers nearby liked grabbing handfuls of sunflower seeds and gathering together to talk.

Through their mouths, Old He had “seen” one great court drama after another.

Naturally, very little of it could be called accurate.

Some of it missed the truth by thousands of li.

But at least he could usually distinguish red from green.

For example, his son-in-law was the imperial prince in charge of the Ministry of Revenue.

So

Old He had every reason to worry about the drought.

He had no real concept of being an imperial in-law.

Nor had he ever thought about a father rising in status through his daughter.

Everything he thought and everything he did still followed the habits and understanding he had developed from all those years clawing his way through life in Nan’an County.

Those years of experience and understanding had carried the He family this far.

So he saw nothing wrong with them.

If the drought continued, the harvest would simply disappear.

Old He knew what the Ministry of Revenue did.

Didn’t it manage the realm’s money and grain?

Money and grain.

A shortage of money was still manageable.

But if there was no grain, people genuinely died!

As a father-in-law, he worried that if his son-in-law failed at his work, then his daughter’s life would become harder.

Then his grandson’s life would become harder too.

Aiyo...

The households living nearby probably would never have imagined that the old man next door, sitting there with a palm fan in hand, was presently expressing the purest possible concern for state and people.

He Chu pushed a handcart through the gate.

“Delivered it?”

“Delivered it.”

“They didn’t keep you for a meal?”

“No. Nobody said anything, so I came back.”

“Bastards!”

Old He cursed.

A few days earlier, he had hired a matchmaker to arrange a marriage for this son of his.

The family lived in an alley to the west.

They were not some household of officials.

The man of the family worked as a minor supervisor at the docks.

The proposed bride was their daughter, surnamed Xiao.

The Xiao family had accepted the matchmaker’s approach.

Their meaning was clear.

This matter could be discussed.

Tomorrow was the birthday of the Xiao family’s elderly mother.

The family had asked the matchmaker to come to the He family pork shop to buy meat.

Matchmaking, in truth, was not so different from negotiating business.

Why did people need a matchmaker?

Because if the match succeeded, two young people would join and become one family.

Families talking directly about money harmed affection.

Yet money still had to be discussed.

So a matchmaker stood in the middle and carried the words back and forth.

Now the other family had an occasion and needed meat.

They came to buy it from you.

This was their way of looking at your attitude.

Did you truly want them as in-laws?

Did you actually value their daughter?

Fine.

Then first show them your attitude.

People could say plainly that they did not care about money or bride price.

What mattered was attitude.

But Old He knew perfectly well that without money, you had no way to display much attitude.

Old He was a man who understood proper measure.

One only had to look at the dowry he had prepared for He Sisi back then.

Across eight hundred years of Great Yan, there had probably been only one family bold enough to compete with the emperor over the bride’s dowry.

But the two families had not formally settled the marriage yet, which meant no official betrothal gifts could be sent.

So the pork could not simply be given away.

That would have been disrespectful.

At least, that was how Old He saw it.

So he accepted payment.

But he charged less than half the market price, and the meat he had He Chu deliver was the freshest available.

Yet after taking the pork, the Xiao family had not even kept his son for one meal.

That was a little too much.

Keep him for a meal.

Then tomorrow, when your family held the birthday gathering, ask Chu’er to come help carry things and do some work.

If you genuinely intended to build this relationship, that was the attitude the Xiao family ought to show.

He Chu himself did not care.

He had a broad heart.

Old He, however, was already angry.

“This daughter of the Xiao family is too lofty for us. They think we aren’t Yanjing people. They’re afraid we’ll embarrass them.”

He Chu scratched his head and smiled.

“Smile, smile, smile. All you know is smiling! They look down on you and you’re still smiling?”

He Chu continued smiling.

Old He’s expression darkened.

He cursed:

“You think you’re some nobleman now? You think it’s funny because the Xiao family failed to climb up to you?”

He Chu froze.

“An elder brother gives his little sister a roof to stand beneath. That is only his duty. Any elder brother who thinks about feeding off his sister’s good fortune is a fucking useless bastard!”

He Chu lowered his head.

“Go render the lard. Tomorrow, send it to the Prince’s Residence. If your sister keeps you to talk and asks about your marriage, you are not allowed to mention the Xiao family.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Aiyo, I could hear Father scolding Eldest Brother from all the way down the alley.”

The courtyard gate opened.

Old Sixth Ji walked in.

Behind him came He Sisi, dressed in ordinary clothes.

Eunuch Zhang and Little Eunuch Zhang remained outside the gate.

At the same time, a group of experts had already spread through the surrounding area to keep watch.

Ever since that madwoman of a Commandery Princess had frightened him into a cold sweat on his wedding night, Old Sixth Ji had become just as cautious as that brother of his surnamed Zheng.

Every few months, Old Sixth Ji brought his wife back to visit the He father and son.

The child, however, could not conveniently leave the Prince’s Residence.

He was the eldest grandson of this generation of the Ji Clan.

Whether he could be taken outside the residence was not something Old Sixth Ji alone could decide.

“Oh. Son-in-law is here.”

Every time Old He saw his son-in-law, he felt a little awkward.

Other men serving as fathers-in-law could still put on a little Mount Tai dignity.

He, however, simply could not.

Old Sixth Ji had long since stopped trying to play at being “ordinary folk” in front of the He father and son.

Everyone simply remained a little polite.

That made him comfortable.

It made them comfortable.

That was good enough.

“I’ll cook.”

He Sisi rose and went inside to take over from her elder brother.

She had brought ingredients with her, so there was no need to go out and buy anything.

Fortunately, the He family no longer found anything strange about He Sisi cooking.

Ever since Sisi had grown old enough, the father and son had eaten her cooking almost every day.

Princess Consort or no Princess Consort, they did not really feel anything about it.

At the end of the day, she was their own daughter and their own little sister.

What was wrong with eating one meal she cooked?

As for this son-in-law... well.

Old Sixth Ji sat on the long bench.

Old He and He Chu sat on small stools.

Among men, rules still had to be observed.

“Father, how has business been lately?” Old Sixth Ji asked.

If you wanted to know whether the people were living well, official memorials from local administrators would never show the truth clearly enough.

The men with the greatest right to speak about livelihood were actually the pork sellers.

When people lived well, pork naturally sold well.

When people lived poorly, pork naturally sold poorly.

Old He sighed and shook his head.

“Business gets worse every day. And this is Yanjing.”

Old Sixth Ji heard that and nodded.

It was what he had expected.

Another war between states had forced Great Yan, which already needed years of rest and recovery, to start moving again.

Every yamen from top to bottom was operating continuously for the war.

Countless civilian laborers were on the road.

Supplies were being collected and sent to the front.

Every measure combined had gouged a vast hole straight through Great Yan’s already desperately weak production and livelihood.

The machine could still move.

But the blood was starting to become impossible to stop.

“It hasn’t rained in a long time,” Old He said quietly.

Old Sixth Ji sighed.

Yes.

Memorials reporting drought conditions had already begun arriving from all over.

Old Sixth Ji had spent these days worrying precisely about that.

Great Yan’s finances had long since reached the point of eating next year’s grain this year.

Taxes and production from next year, the year after, even the year after that, had already been written into plans in advance, waiting to be collected and used to fill holes.

An overloaded war chariot feared one thing most: some component suddenly snapping.

The drought beginning to reveal itself this year might very well crush the whole of Great Yan.

Because no one knew how long the drought would last.

This year was not even the hardest year.

The hardest would be next year.

Ask the people to tighten their belts and support a war, and the old Yan folk could do it.

That tradition had been carved into the bones of Yan people for generations.

But when households no longer held grain, when people began starving to death, when they began trading children with other families so they could eat them, then if the court still insisted on continuing the war, even the most understanding common people would find it difficult to accept.

Resentment would rise naturally.

But the Emperor of Yan had already set the basic policy.

And the commander of the army campaigning against Chu was Prince of Jingnan Tian Wujing.

So from the court to the countryside, not even Old Sixth Ji dared submit a memorial advising that the war be stopped.

The war could not stop.

They had already poured so much manpower and material into it.

If they failed to produce a result, everything spent beforehand would become wasted effort.

Yet if the war continued dragging on, Great Yan genuinely would be unable to endure.

Flooding in the Jin lands had also become frequent.

If the breach of the Wang River dike contained human factors, then the torrential rains, mountain floods, and broad inundation did not affect only the people living along the Wang River.

In fact, precisely because disasters had become so frequent, the breach of the Wang River had not even required the court to conceal anything.

It simply no longer looked conspicuous.

Great Yan’s territory was vast now.

Its population was large too.

But the burden was just as enormous.

“Enough of that.”

Old Sixth Ji had brought his wife back to her maiden home to relax.

He turned toward his elder brother-in-law.

“How is the marriage going?”

“Going well,” He Chu answered with a smile.

His father-in-law had insisted on personally arranging He Chu’s marriage.

Old Sixth Ji had no way to interfere.

And with the mountain of affairs weighing on him lately, he had truly been unable to spare enough attention for the He family.

Hearing the answer, he nodded.

“Has the wedding date been set?”

“No, not yet,” Old He cut in. “How could it be that fast? These things have to be discussed properly.”

“They do.”

The fragrance of food had already begun drifting from inside.

He Sisi might now be a Princess Consort, but her cooking had not declined in the slightest.

Inside the Prince’s Residence, she still personally handled most of Old Sixth Ji’s meals.

Old Sixth Ji liked eating what she cooked.

Perhaps precisely because his own family had been so lacking, Old Sixth Ji loved the atmosphere of the He household.

This feeling that a family really was a family.

Many times, Old Sixth Ji could not help wondering.

What if Father had been a kindly father?

Perhaps he would merely have had rather more women.

That would have been normal enough.

What wealthy household did not have row after row of concubines?

He and his brothers could ride horses together.

Play together.

Laugh.

And the laughter could actually be sincere.

Unlike now, when even Little Seventh had already learned how to pretend to be sweet and obedient.

But every time, those thoughts vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

Old Sixth Ji knew he still had to live in reality.

Because now he had a son.

At the same time, Father’s body was already failing.

Life finally held something to look forward to.

Every morning when he woke, he could look forward to discovering exactly how much longer his own father had before he finally died.

“I heard the Qian in the south have started getting restless?” He Chu asked carefully.

Chu was too far away.

The Jin lands stood between them.

Qian was close.

It shared a border directly with Great Yan.

Marching south to attack Qian had been a game played by most Yan children at some point in their childhood.

Old Sixth Ji smiled.

“The Qian are not a serious concern. They are only making a few small movements. They originally had a fairly capable commander, but he died of illness not long ago.”

After Zhong Wendao died, the Qian court concealed his death and refused to announce mourning for a very long time.

The decree arranging his funeral and the decree appointing the new Governor-General of the Three Frontiers were finally issued together.

After a long series of negotiations at court, Qian appointed Zhong Wendao’s younger brother, Zhong Wenmian, as the new Governor-General of the Three Frontiers.

The former “Young Chancellor Zhong” had now been promoted into “Old Chancellor Zhong.”

But on the second day after the new Governor-General took office, the Western Army inside Mianzhou City erupted into internal conflict.

Blades were reportedly drawn.

The scale of the disturbance was large enough that even Great Yan’s Secret Intelligence Department detected it.

The immediate cause of the conflict remained unclear.

It had already been brought under control.

But there was no question that it was connected to Zhong Wendao’s death.

The Western Army had been brought to the Three Frontiers by Zhong Wendao to defend against Yan.

Three years had already passed.

A fourth year was now approaching.

The Western Army missed home intensely.

Its war-weariness had grown even stronger.

As a guest army, it possessed no particular passion for defending this land.

So, based on the intelligence available to him, Old Sixth Ji guessed that while Old Chancellor Zhong remained alive, he had still been able to suppress that sentiment inside the Western Army and keep the soldiers obediently guarding Great Qian’s frontier.

After news of Old Chancellor Zhong’s death spread, the newly appointed Zhong Wenmian had probably hinted that preparations should begin for a northern expedition.

That became the spark for the internal conflict.

Once years of accumulated resentment erupted, how could trouble not follow?

So

Zhong Tianlang, driven even more insane by his father’s death, had begun repeatedly leading Qian’s precious cavalry to raid Great Yan’s border in Yinlang Commandery.

But under First Prince Ji Wujiang’s direction, the Qian had never managed to gain any real advantage.

As for a larger northern expedition afterward, the Qian simply could not launch one.

Supplies, weapons, grain and fodder could all be transported north.

But in the end, the men going out to fight the war were still people.

The Western Army was publicly recognized as the strongest force among all the Qian armies stationed around the Three Frontiers.

Whoever became the new commander and wanted to launch a northern expedition would have to use the Western Army as the core of his central force.

Now the army he needed to rely upon had itself kicked backward.

What were all the other formations supposed to think?

Old Sixth Ji remembered how that brother of his surnamed Zheng had once mocked the Qian ruler to his face for knowing nothing about soldiers.

The facts really were exactly that.

The Qian ruler had thrown Literary Saint Yao Zizhan into the post of Governor-General of the Three Frontiers, making him, in practice, the leader of the civil officials across the frontier system.

To a certain extent, that had changed the old embarrassment of civil officials dominating the frontier while laymen ordered experts around.

Yao Zizhan had indeed spent his time there drawing together and mediating between the various armies of the Three Frontiers.

He had made the whole atmosphere pleasant and harmonious.

But fuck.

An army existed to fight wars and kill people.

Why the hell were you making everyone harmonious?

Once everyone became harmonious, how were they supposed to fight?

A northern expedition?

Better not.

Was it not more comfortable for everyone to keep curling up inside their own cities?

The Qian court wanted a northern expedition.

That much could be seen very clearly from official gazettes acquired by the Secret Intelligence Department inside Qian.

However stupid the Qian might be, they still understood that standing aside and watching their Chu brother get beaten bloody by Yan was wrong.

But once the court’s will reached the Three Frontiers, it was actually pushed back.

After that, the court had no choice but to consider the situation reported from the frontier.

In the end, the court that had originally been brimming with confidence and determination to march north began doubting itself.

Most likely, those chancellors and the Qian ruler himself had started feeling a little nervous.

If they forcibly ordered the armies of the Three Frontiers north in this condition, could they actually win?

There was another problem.

As the main strength of the Western Army kept being transferred north, the southwest had begun showing signs of instability again.

When news of Old Chancellor Zhong’s death reached the southwest, several local chieftains immediately raised banners and rebelled.

Under these circumstances, the possibility of a Qian northern expedition fell even lower.

Old Sixth Ji knew why He Chu had asked.

He wanted to be drafted into the army too.

“There won’t be a real fight in the south. Once the war against Chu in the east is finished, we can finally rest. The common people have suffered too much.”

Truthfully, from Old Sixth Ji’s present perspective, whether the common people were suffering or not was almost beside the point.

Old Sixth Ji himself was genuinely close to dying from exhaustion.

Every day he wracked his brains trying to patch one hole after another in Great Yan’s finances.

Yet every sign suggested the hole was only growing larger.

“Oh.”

He Chu sounded disappointed.

Old He glared at him.

“Time to eat.”

He Sisi came out carrying dishes and gestured for the men to push the benches and stools together into a makeshift table.

Ordinarily, inside the Prince’s Residence, she lived amid brocade clothing and fine food.

But He Sisi still felt that only when she returned home and the family gathered around one table to eat together did life truly taste like life.

Just then, Eunuch Zhang entered.

Old Sixth Ji knew perfectly well that unless something genuine had happened, Eunuch Zhang would never be so blind as to disturb this rare moment of peace.

He stood.

Left the table.

And walked to the doorway.

Eunuch Zhang hurriedly handed him a memorial.

His voice was urgent.

“Master, this memorial has just arrived from Huwei Commandery. Highest emergency.”

Old Sixth Ji accepted the memorial and opened it.

Then his mouth opened.

His teeth bit down hard on his lower lip, nearly drawing blood.

After a prolonged drought, the most terrifying consequence of all had already appeared.

The memorial bore the personal emergency seal of the Governor of Huwei Commandery.

It reported that the same disaster had suddenly appeared in many parts of the commandery.

It was growing worse by the day and already showed signs of spreading toward the capital region, Tiancheng Commandery.

Locusts.

A locust plague!

“Hehehe... hahahahaha...”

Old Sixth Ji clutched the memorial in one hand.

Then he squatted down.

His eyes reddened.

And he began to laugh.

Laughing, he said:

“There’s no living like this anymore.”

[End of Chapter 565]