The prefect's invitation cards arrived once again, and the various gentlemen — who had long since heard the harrowing accounts of the refugees breaking through the city walls — came trembling with fear.
Jinyuan opened her mouth wide as a lion's, claiming she knew the Wolf Soldiers and that it was she who had brought them to lift the siege.
The Wolf Soldiers wanted one hundred thousand taels of silver. Otherwise they would come back — and what they would do upon returning, needless to say, required no explanation.
Everyone in the city was scared out of their wits. These landed gentry and gentlemen dared not haggle, and the whole lot of them pooled together one hundred thousand taels on the spot.
Jinyuan was stunned. She had only meant to try her luck, never expecting it to work outright.
She had thought they might settle for a little less. Who could have imagined these people were so wealthy?
She had truly underestimated the depth of their fortunes!
Her eyes darted about, and she said with a discontented air, "I risked my life working so hard to go find the Wolf Soldiers — shouldn't there be some sort of finder's fee for me?"
"Otherwise, the next time danger comes, you can go find the Wolf Soldiers yourselves!"
"We'll see then whether you manage to bring them over, or end up with your heads taken off by them!"
The crowd, though grinding their teeth with resentment, conferred among themselves and scraped together another twenty thousand taels as a token of gratitude.
Jinyuan was overjoyed. She had figured that a few thousand taels in gratitude money would be decent enough — yet before she had even named a sum, these people had voluntarily pooled twenty thousand taels together.
It seemed that this time they had truly been frightened to the core by both the refugees and the Wolf Soldiers.
When Jinyuan returned, her little head was still spinning with a pleasant daze.
Those who heard her account were equally dazed.
"I thought I'd already squeezed every last bit of wool from these sheep," she muttered. "Who knew they still had so much left? It seems there will be more shearing to be done in the future."
Even those on her own side, hearing her mutter this, felt it was a bit much.
If the local gentry in the city ever heard it, they would likely spit blood on the spot.
The autumn harvest took considerable time, for the yield far exceeded what most people had anticipated.
Thirty thousand mu of land had truly produced over a hundred million jin of sweet potatoes!
This output left everyone in the prefectural city — except for the people of Taoyuan Town, who already understood the sweet potato's productivity — utterly stupefied.
Jinyuan made good on her promise. The five thousand households each received an average of five hundred jin of sweet potatoes.
Each household received according to its size: larger families got more, smaller families got less.
This was enough to keep them from starving for a year. They were then encouraged to go on planting ordinary autumn crops, and continued to receive both money and grain.
Living on sweet potatoes alone simply wouldn't do — eat too many and you pass wind all day. Though of course, when merely surviving is a struggle, one hardly worries about that.
Those who received the grain poured out their gratitude to the prefect.
Five thousand households — it amounted to no more than two and a half million jin of grain distributed, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the total harvest.
Taoyuan Town and Xinghuo Village together had planted roughly three thousand mu of sweet potatoes, yielding more than ten million jin of grain as well.
These quantities alone, if distributed equally, would be enough to keep the entire prefecture from starving.
Add in the grain grown by everyone else, and there would be enough for every single person to eat their fill.
What a pity that equal distribution has no place in this world.
Just as no one would ever divide their silver equally among all.
The sweet potato harvest was bountiful, and was sold at a relatively modest price.
Four copper coins per jin!
Selling off everything except a small reserve would bring in four hundred thousand taels of silver!
That, of course, would take time.
Lin Xuejin had originally promised the Emperor eighty to one hundred thousand taels of silver.
He was a man of his word.
The Emperor had fled south to Liujing, so Lin Xuejin arranged for eighty thousand taels to be delivered there.
Naturally, it was funded by Jinyuan's extortion — or rather, the Wolf Soldiers' hard-earned commission.
He would repay her once the grain was sold.
That money had been earned by her own ingenuity, and was of an entirely different nature from those sixty-eight thousand taels of the past.
The arrival of eighty thousand taels of silver could solve many problems — enough, for instance, to provision and pay a regiment of soldiers.
This was perhaps the only piece of good news the Emperor had received all year. One wondered whether it might move him to tears.
Before long, imperial commendations arrived.
Lin Xuejin was promoted to the fourth rank, yet retained his post governing Qingjiang Prefecture. The imperial edict was lavish with praise, very nearly proclaiming Lin Xuejin a pillar of the realm.
At the close, it expressed that the beloved minister should strive diligently, and that next year, hopefully, he might generate a bit more in tax revenue — the more the better.
Lin Xuejin knelt and listened to the edict in silence. He had imagined that receiving imperial recognition would fill him with excitement.
He found, instead, that it did not.
He saw off the eunuch who had come to proclaim the edict.
He picked up the scroll and read it over and over again, then with a casual flick of the wrist tossed it onto the table beside him.
The attendants at his side were frightened half to death.
This was an imperial edict — such disrespect was a capital offense!
"We still have a great deal to attend to," he said. "Come, let us go find Jinyuan and the others."
…
The Emperor had fled south. That so-called Prince Ming had seized the capital, and the two sides seemed to have tacitly agreed on a standoff — a game of "you don't move, I don't move; whoever moves first is the fool."
The Emperor driven from his capital: this seemed to be the portent of great chaos across the land.
Many scholars declared that the Emperor lacked virtue, and that this was why the realm had fallen into such a state.
The hour had come for one dynasty to give way to another.
Prince Ming already seemed to carry the bearing of a founding emperor.
Many regions openly raised the banner of welcoming Prince Ming, vowing to throw open their gates and respectfully receive his heavenly army the moment it arrived.
Even many of Lin Xuejin's fellow scholars and old friends had written to him, urging him to submit to Prince Ming.
Of course, another faction wrote urging him to stand firm in loyalty to the Emperor.
In any case, all manner of demons and monsters had crawled out of the woodwork.
Before long, a piece of news spread throughout the realm, and everyone realized: all crows under heaven are equally black.
Prince Ming had tortured officials in the capital for forced contributions — and extracted seventy million taels of silver!
The Emperor lacked virtue, and the realm had fallen into chaos.
Prince Ming tortured for silver — he too lacked virtue.
And as for those nobles, ministers, and grandees of the capital — they were scoundrels as well!
Was seventy million taels everything the capital held? Certainly not!
Never mind the whole sum — if even a tenth of those seventy million taels had been given to pay the soldiers, Prince Ming would have been crushed long ago.
And yet?
Ha. One scoundrel, two scoundrels — every last one of them a damn scoundrel.
This time, Lin Xuejin truly wept.
"So everything the teacher said was true. We scholars who speak of loyalty to the sovereign — what sovereign are we loyal to? We who speak of loving our country — what country do we love? Ha…"
Jinyuan wrung her small hands and said carefully, "Teacher, if it pains you too much, then perhaps set aside loyalty to the sovereign and love of country. You could always love us instead — love the master too — we will never let you down."
Lin Xuejin's eyes lit up. He thought of the laughter and liveliness of Taoyuan Town, of the joy of that year and more, of each moment shared with Jinyi and Jinyuan and all the others. His eyes grew brighter and brighter.
"Yes. Since that which I loved has betrayed me, then I shall give my love to those who will not."
"Jinyuan, thank you for awakening me."
Having openly faced the feelings long suppressed within his heart, he looked upon Taoyuan Town anew — and only then did he see that it was far stronger than he had ever imagined.
Stable, united, prosperous, powerful, with deep and abiding foundations — and more than anything, it was a place he cherished. A place he loved.