Chapter 113: Seizing Power (3)

Chapter 113: Seizing Power (3)

A group of gentry left the county office and headed straight to Sihai Tower, where they ate lamb hotpot behind closed doors and cursed Le Wuya up one side and down the other.

After several rounds of wine, they started scheming on how to stir up trouble.

Finally, over fine wine and lamb, they reached a consensus.

— Just drag it out.

After all, the commoners' taxes still had to pass through their hands.

They'd take their sweet time collecting, and once gathered, refuse to hand them over—delaying until the last possible moment before handing over only sixty percent of the taxes, and padding the grain with forty to fifty percent chaff.

When it came down to it, they figured the Little Master would be climbing the walls.

Even if he wanted to come down on them, by then it'd be too late.

So he wants to throw his weight around? Fine—let him use the emperor's own sword to chop them all down one by one. Who'd be left to collect grain and taxes for him?

If the taxes didn't come in, he'd have that official robe ripped right off his back.

As for them? Worst case, they'd eat the fine and step down as Village Elders. They'd go home, plop down in their fancy armchairs, and still be the same high-and-mighty patriarchs as always.

Besides, they could easily rig the books—picking out a few illiterate households with sharp-tongued wives and hot-headed husbands, and marking down half of what they'd already paid in taxes and grain, claiming they hadn't paid up. When the magistrate came back to collect, wouldn't he get a face full of spit?

By then, Nanting would have a real show on its hands.

They talked and laughed, all buddy-buddy, as if they could already picture the Little Master's humiliated face.

Outside the private room, a small figure holding an empty plate stood listening for a bit, then slunk down the stairs like a cat, sticking to the shadows.

...

Le Wuya was curled up in his warm, clean bed, hugging a hot water bottle, reading the letter Xiaoliu had brought. The more he read, the more pleased he got.

In the letter, this guy talked chess, flutes, stars, and the moon—but never anything important.

Of course, Le Wuya knew that important matters weren't suitable for discussion in letters.

But knowing this guy looked all laid-back on the surface while secretly scheming to take the throne—he couldn't help but chuckle.

He liked interesting things.

And this was plenty interesting.

Le Wuya finished one letter and moved on to the next.

Lately, the two brothers' letters always came in together.

Xiaoliu's letter was as straightforward as ever, but Xiaoqi's was shyer than usual.

He actually asked, all prim and proper, whether he had enough clothes.

Le Wuya pictured the look on that kid's face when he wrote that, slapped the letter over his own face, flopped back onto the bed, and snorted with laughter.

Too good. Too damn happy.

He'd known joy in his past life, and he'd known satisfaction, but never at the same time.

When he had power, he wasn't happy. And when he was happy, he was just a kid.

Qin Xingyue sat on the footstool by the bed, roasting chestnuts over a brazier. His eyes were on the chestnuts, but his side-eye was on the magistrate, thinking the guy seemed a little unhinged.

But that was fine.

He dropped his gaze, poking at the charcoal, thinking back to his meeting with Jiang He the day before.

Qin Xingyue hadn't expected Jiang He to show up, and Jiang He hadn't known Qin Xingyue was in Nanting.

The magistrate had just said he wanted to take him to meet someone, and led him right to Jiang He.

Ever since Qin Xingyue broke his leg, he'd stopped writing back to Jiang He.

He'd imagined what he might say when he saw his old friend again—or maybe say nothing at all, just hug, cry a little, laugh a little. That would've been fine too.

But when he actually saw him, the overwhelming emotions just weren't there.

All those past memories piled up into a thousand words, then settled into just two: peace of mind.

Jiang He hadn't changed one bit—he still did things his own way.

After locking eyes with him for a moment, Jiang He didn't ask why he'd gone silent or how he was doing. Instead, he came right out and asked: "You're working for Magistrate Wenren now?"

Qin Xingyue smiled: "Aren't you?"

They were back to their early days at Tianlang Camp—a couple of fearless young pups who'd strutted up to stand beside the same man, taking his orders and liking it.

Qin Xingyue didn't think of himself as all that smart.

He couldn't figure out if this Magistrate Wenren was really the man he'd been dying to see.

But his gut told him that just being able to stay by his side was enough.

Qin Xingyue snapped out of it, picked out a few chestnuts that had cracked open to show their golden insides, and quietly handed them over.

Le Wuya crawled over on all fours and reached out to take them, like they'd done this a thousand times before.

He lay by the edge of the bed, peeling chestnuts as he asked Qin Xingyue: "Are your soldiers any good?"

Having spent a good deal of time with Magistrate Wenren, Qin Xingyue knew the man's mind jumped all over the place.

Like just now—one second he's cackling over letters, the next he's all serious about official business.

Being around him was always a fresh thrill.

Qin Xingyue thought it over, then said: "I think they're solid."

"Not so sure." Le Wuya shrugged. "They're all locals, under the thumb of those gentry. Can they really be trusted to do their jobs? Besides, the gentry have deep pockets."

"No problem. Nanting hasn't seen war in ages—it's always been peaceful. Deputy Magistrate Sun never gave our military office much thought anyway. And since he gets along well with the gentry, there's nothing for us to do. So with all my free time, I've been drilling those soldiers like they were Tianlang Camp recruits. — I can guarantee they'll do what they're told."

After rattling all that off in one breath, Qin Xingyue felt a little sheepish and hung his head.

With no tiger in the mountains, it fell to him—the monkey—to be king of the hill.

But before his self-pity could take root, a hand pressed down on his head and gave it a gentle rub: "That's very good."

Qin Xingyue quietly took the little plate of chestnuts back and peeled them one by one for Le Wuya.

He'd never liked waiting on people.

But for Magistrate Wenren, he found himself oddly willing to put him on a pedestal.

He'd even carry him on his head if asked—he'd do it gladly.

...

The gentry had their scheme all worked out. Toward the tenant farmers and merchants who came asking about taxes, they all stuck to the same dodge, with one stock answer: wait till they'd gone over the Magistrate's books.

Who'd have thought—the next day, before the gentry had even slept off their wine, two soldiers from the county's military office showed up at each household, each trailing five local soldiers behind them.

The doormen, spotting soldiers, couldn't help flashing back to the Chen family's place getting torn apart earlier this year. Feeling for their fellow man, they opened the gates and quavered, asking what the soldiers wanted.

The men from the military office were all smiles and courtesy. The Magistrate, they said, had listened to the gentry's words yesterday, gone back to his room, thought it over, and had a lightbulb moment: if the gentry were scared of rabble-rousers, the county could send soldiers over to keep the peace.

As for the local soldiers, they were flat-out rude—wearing faces like grim reapers, they went door to door knocking on tenant farmers' and merchants' homes, barking at folks to pay up.

The law-abiding folks, the minute they got wind of it, couldn't wait to pay this year's taxes—they were scared the Magistrate might flip-flop, so they figured pay early, get it over with.

The slick troublemakers, spooked by these stone-faced soldiers, lost all their nerve.

Truth be told, this year's taxes were a whole lot lighter than before. If they bit the hand that fed them, the Magistrate wouldn't go easy on them.

After all, the Magistrate had just flayed Master Chen alive this year!

Sure, Master Chen was hauled off to the Ministry of Justice to die, not on Nanting soil, and not by the Magistrate's own hand—but to these troublemakers, the Magistrate was a brutal, terrifying figure.

So at the threshing ground temporarily set up as the tax collection point, villagers poured in, scrambling to hand over grain and coin per head.

The gentry never saw it coming that the Little Master would just call out the army to collect taxes.

What's more, the military office folks were buttering up the gentry, while snarling at the common folk to line up straight and pay up fast. The gentry couldn't find a single thing to gripe about, so they just stood there gawking.

Luckily, the gentry still had a few tricks up their sleeves.

Most tenant farmers were honest and simple, but it takes all kinds—some were the gentry's loyal lapdogs, and others had their whole families' deeds pawned to the gentry.

These folks had no choice but to do what the gentry said, parroting to the officers on duty: "We're fresh out of grain at home right now. Mind if we hold off a few days?"

And then came surprise number two.

The soldiers didn't crack down on the folks trying to stall. They were real soft-spoken about it, but they still wrote down everyone's name and when they figured they could pay.

...

Five hectic days later, the gentry got hit with more bad news.

...One of their own had turned traitor.

Manager Zhu showed up hauling three big carts, all grins, and paid every last cent of his district's taxes.

When folks came to chew him out for not playing ball, he beamed, rubbing his pudgy hands together, and said with a fake sigh of regret: "What can I do? I'm mostly working that plot up on Nanting Mountain these days. The Magistrate knows that land and its harvest better than I do. Even if I wanted to cook the books, I couldn't."

That excuse was airtight, no holes to pick.

Besides, Manager Zhu had only gotten rich off Magistrate Wenren's favor and the late Master Chen.

So him playing the Magistrate's lapdog wasn't just forgivable—it was only right, a way of repaying a debt.

Once one of the gentry caved and paid up, the rest followed suit under the soldiers' watchful eyes.

But even in the ranks that should've been the gentry's most loyal, somebody flipped.

This whole thing kicked off with the mediation group.

A newlywed tenant couple got into a fight so bad they were talking divorce.

The aunties, of course, couldn't just sit back—they went over to mediate. Once they dug into it, they found it was all about the taxes.

The wife was from out of town, married in just a year back, and had a real sharp tongue. She was all for paying up right away, but her husband, mule-stubborn and tight-lipped, wouldn't budge. The two of them ended up throwing punches.

After all these grueling days, Yuan Zijin had finally found a way to amuse himself in the middle of his grind: busting Le Wuya's chops.

Every time he spotted something unfair in Nanting, he'd run to Le Wuya and gripe nonstop, hinting that Le Wuya ran a sloppy county.

The maddening part was that Le Wuya just humored him like a snot-nosed kid, smiling and brushing him off.

After chewing over his failures, Yuan Zijin figured out that everything he'd complained about was small potatoes.

But taxes were different—this was big, the kind of thing that could fill the imperial coffers!

When one household suddenly balked at paying, Yuan Zijin smelled something fishy. He perked right up and started digging, dying to know if they had a beef with Le Wuya.

With Yuan Zijin grilling them nonstop and swearing up and down he'd get them justice, the husband finally cracked and spilled the beans:

The gentry's thugs had come by and threatened him—pay on time and they'd make his life hell.

Hearing that, the wife made up with her husband on the spot.

The two hugged and sobbed, a real tear-jerker of a scene.

The two aunties who'd come to mediate shot each other a look.

They didn't know squat about taxes, but they knew everything about domestic squabbles.

Sure, couples fight in bed and make up by the bedpost, but not that fast.

...This couple had put on a show, using it to slip a complaint to them on the sly.

The gentry never treated these common folk like people, so they'd missed that the folks had stopped being so scared of them.

Because they'd figured out they could pass their gripes to the Magistrate on the quiet, through the mediation aunties.

The aunties had a hunch what they were being used for, but they were shrewd—they didn't want to run their mouths, offend somebody, and get burned.

Luckily, they had a bunch of old sisters in the mediation group to chew things over with, so they could talk it out freely.

Yuan Zijin, of course, wasn't one of their sisterhood.

So he stayed clueless and flew off the handle in righteous fury.

He'd been a bully since he was a kid, so he couldn't stand anyone bullying harder than him.

Right then, Yuan Zijin had one job: sorting out the common folks' family messes.

Even though he griped that these folks were dumb and broke, with a new stupid fight every day, after all that time around them, Yuan Zijin had, without realizing it, started thinking of the common folk as "his people."

And now somebody had the nerve to mess with Yuan Zijin's people!

This is getting out of hand!

But Yuan Zijin didn't make any rash moves.

As the saying goes, you can't learn from being told, but you learn fast from experience.

Over the past six months, after two beatings and countless disdainful looks, Yuan Zijin had learned a bit of wisdom—keep his mouth shut and don't speak recklessly.

He retreated for three days of seclusion, drawing on everything he knew, and filed a bitter formal complaint with the yamen, accusing local gentry of threatening tenant farmers to stop them from paying rent.

He wanted to see if Le Wuya would protect these damn gentry!

Le Wuya accepted his complaint with a smile in open court, and in a casual, offhand way, said he'd immediately send clerks from the Household Office to inspect those households that hadn't paid their taxes yet, to check if Yuan's accusations held up.

Seeing how completely careless he was, Yuan Zijin demanded, annoyed and blunt, "What if they've been bribed?"

Le Wuya rested his chin on his hand and chuckled, "Then how about Master Yuan goes along with them to check?"

Yuan Zijin's sudden entry into the fray threw the gentry's carefully laid plans into total chaos.

They hated Yuan Zijin's guts and wanted to teach him a lesson, but when they looked into his background, they backed off.

Yuan Zijin claimed to be a "distant cousin of Pei Mingqi" and came from the capital.

In short, he was someone they couldn't afford to cross.

Some gentry, seeing the writing on the wall, didn't dare pull any more stunts. They slunk off in defeat, quickly rounded up the taxes, and turned them in before the deadline.

But some gentry, heaving deep sighs, just couldn't accept their fate.

One day, three of the gentry threw a banquet at one of their homes, inviting Li Asi over.

Li Asi agreed without hesitation and showed up on time.

This surprised the hosts, since he was famously hard to get to come.

As the wine flowed and tongues loosened, Hou Peng, who'd made his money in herbal medicine, let out a long sigh: "The Little Master really leaves us no way to survive."

"Just tough it out," said the host, Shi Liangyuan. "The Little Master's from the capital and has been honored. Sooner or later, he'll leave Nanting. Let's hope he gets a promotion soon."

Li Asi said quietly, "Not necessarily."

The moment he spoke, all three pairs of eyes turned to him.

Li Asi had a swollen eye lately, so it made sense he wasn't looking anyone straight in the eye.

He said, "Do you think the Little Master is the type to kowtow to his superiors?"

Everyone looked at each other.

Indeed.

The fact that he used Chen Yuanwei's confiscated goods to cover the two-tenths tax shortfall for the common folk shows he's a master at currying fame and reputation.

Li Asi said with confidence: "In this official world, I've never seen anyone rise on merit alone without sucking up to the higher-ups. Look at Shao Hongzhen—he's sitting on a pile of shady money, yet he still has to bow and scrape to Prefect Lyu. And look at Old Qi in Jinyuan County—capable as hell, but he's been county magistrate for twenty years and never left Jinyuan!"

"Besides, with the Little Master's background, moving up..." He clicked his tongue, making an unusually loud sound. "Tough!"

Someone joked, "But he's easy on the eyes."

Everyone at the table burst out laughing.

"Yeah, I can see he's charming, but what good does being pretty do?" Li Asi said. "If I were a big shot who liked that sort of thing, I'd come to this backwater now and then, get a taste of his fresh meat, and then leave without a second thought. Have you ever seen anyone keep a boy toy as an official by their side? That'd be an instant impeachment. Who but the emperor would dare?"

Li Asi spoke with absolute certainty, while the others listened with worried faces.

Shi Liangyuan looked grim: "So by your logic, we're screwed? We'll be under this kid's thumb forever?"

Hou Peng said anxiously, "Shopkeeper Li, you're resourceful and full of tricks. Give us a plan!"

"I don't have a plan." Li Asi was busy eating and drinking, but still managed to talk clearly between bites. "Let me be straight with you—the Little Master has dirt on me. You all know about the Tianjin Pawnshop thing, right? That day, the Master kept me behind alone, made snide remarks, and used that dead man Chen Yuanwei to lean on me. I've got to pay my taxes honestly too!"

The three exchanged glances without a word.

They all knew Li Asi had been kept behind that day.

Among the three, the fur merchant Zhong Junxiong had specially asked the yamen's secretary to feel out the Master's stance on taxes, but that secretary was useless in a uniquely refreshing way—the only useful thing he got was that Li Asi had been chewed out by the Master.

The three had invited Li Asi because they knew he was bold and had some shady tricks up his sleeve. They wanted him to step up and cause trouble for the Little Master.

Little did they expect that Li Asi, a man of guts, would be brought to heel by a mere twenty-something kid!

"Is there really no way?" Zhong Junxiong slammed the table, fired up from the drink. "We can't drive him off, can't shoo him away, and hoping he gets promoted won't work either! Damn it! How can there be something so disgusting in this world?"

The other two joined in with curses, getting filthier and more worked up.

But all three kept glancing at Li Asi out of the corners of their eyes.

Li Asi and the Little Master had bad blood.

First the Lucky Gambling House, then the Tianjin Pawnshop—the Little Master had taken a pound of flesh from him more than once.

And he was known all over Nanting as someone who played both sides.

At least on the surface, weren't they all toeing the line for the Little Master?

What if... what if something happened to the Master—who'd be the first suspect?

...

Li Asi held his cup, pretending not to notice their scheming looks.

He stared at the shimmering amber glow in his cup, squinted his swollen eye, and flashed a cold, sinister smile.

What exactly did Master Chen die from?

In the end, it was because he had improper thoughts when dealing with Scholar Ming, who threatened his interests.

What does Magistrate Wenren want most at the moment?

Money, and even more money.

So what's the fastest way to get money?

Seizing property.

Master Chen made a mistake, his whole family got seized, and it brought in a full two-tenths of Nanting County's tax revenue.

When the Master hinted that his "businesses span all of Nanting," he was telling Li Asi loud and clear that he had too many weak spots—if Wen Ren wanted to grab him, he could catch him red-handed anytime.

Li Asi had always lived by one rule: throw someone else under the bus before himself.

Not about to hand over his whole fortune to the magistrate, he naturally went looking for a fall guy.

The magistrate was so blatantly muscling in on the gentry's turf that he gave them only two choices: back down on their own or stew in resentment.

Resentment breeds bad ideas.

Bad ideas lead to dirty deeds.

Once those deeds came to light, getting their property seized was the natural next step.

That way, the Nan Ting county coffers would fill back up, ready to handle next year's tax hikes, and the people could catch a break—wealth kept in their hands.

And with the magistrate taking down the gentry one after another, he'd have this bunch fully cowed.

Li Asi thought to himself, Magistrate, I've gone and flushed out the bad intentions of these folks for you.

Whether they live or die, and whether you get what you want, that's on you.

With that thought, Li Asi took a sip of wine from his cup, trying to settle the storm in his chest.

Yet, in the end, he couldn't stop himself from cussing under his breath:

Son of a bitch.

The man's a total lunatic.