"Brothers, good news from Mayor Song. He says our men have had it too rough, and he's looking to set up some benefits for everyone."
"He wants our brothers to go work at the construction site — three yuan a day, per man. Three yuan!"
The generals gathered in the tent were less than thrilled. Three yuan going to the common soldiers wasn't money in their own pockets — what was there to get excited about?
If this had been money flowing down from the imperial court, everyone would have been delighted; there would have been plenty of chances to skim along the way. But they all knew how Longcheng operated. If they dipped into funds meant for the soldiers, there'd be hell to pay.
Commander Wu took one look at the room's lukewarm response and knew exactly what everyone was thinking. He spoke up.
"The soldiers get three yuan a day — we don't touch that. But for every man we send out, there's a fifty-cent management fee. I take twenty cents, and the rest gets split among you brothers. Any objections?"
The room came alive instantly.
Fifty cents a soldier, twenty thousand men sent out of thirty thousand — that was ten thousand yuan!
The boss takes forty percent, leaving six thousand. And how many people were in this tent, anyway?
That meant even the lower-ranking officers could be pocketing a hundred or so a day.
"Commander, isn't forty percent a little... light for you?" someone ventured carefully.
"It's plenty. You boys followed me out here — when there's something good, we share it. What kind of man would I be if I ate the meat while my brothers got nothing but broth?"
"I, Old Wu, am not that greedy."
Right. Out of one yuan you take seventy cents, and the remaining thirty cents gets divided among dozens of men. Truly, sir, a paragon of integrity.
"The Commander is a generous man — I, Old Lin, can say I've followed the right person my whole life!"
With the flattery flowing freely, Commander Wu nodded with satisfaction. "You all work out the split among yourselves. I've been talking business all day and I'm worn out — I'll go rest."
Old Wu walked out of the tent, quietly calculating how much he stood to make each day.
The moment he left, the noise inside shot up several notches.
With everything laid out in the open like this, everyone had a rough sense of their share — nothing like the murky darkness of money trickling down layer by layer. So this wasn't arguing; it was excitement.
The deputy commanders, of course, were thrilled but also a little put out. They could have gotten more. If the total had been kept vague and passed down rung by rung, things could have gotten truly sinister — those few deputy commanders alone might have dared to swallow twenty of the remaining thirty cents for themselves.
When the news spread to the soldiers, they lit up too. You signed up to fight, you got a soldier's pay, the occasional bonus — and now there was a construction worker's wage on top of it all.
Life in the army had never been so good.
Three yuan a day — what did that work out to over a year?
A thousand yuan? Twice what the imperial court paid in military wages!
Of course it wouldn't reach quite that high. Commander Wu didn't dare send all thirty thousand men out to work — twenty thousand at most! A full ten thousand had to stay behind for patrols and the like. And if the court issued orders, they'd still have to go and fight.
But even so, this was a windfall. A few hundred extra yuan for every soldier — who could complain?
The next morning, twenty thousand troops showed up at the construction site.
They were all from the Central Plains, so there was no language barrier — no need to communicate with a whip. Things went smoothly. Under Longcheng's direction, the side work began in an orderly fashion, and construction speed jumped several times over.
Mayor Song was very pleased. Commander Wu was very pleased with the money.
The two men looked at each other and smiled, as though they had found a kindred spirit.
Mayor Song thought to himself: entry-level wages in Longcheng had already climbed to five yuan, and here he was getting capable construction workers for four. What a deal.
By Longcheng standards, local construction workers earned five yuan a day; sent overseas, that doubled to ten. It was grueling work, so there was always a meal subsidy — roughly one yuan a day. All told, one worker cost eleven yuan a day. Using a soldier cost just four. Nearly a third of the price!
Where else would you find labor this cheap? Even if you went out and captured people to bring back, you'd still owe them wages, plus the overhead of managing them.
He ran it by the bank director who had come along, and the director approved it on the spot. A windfall of pure profit!
Meanwhile, Commander Wu was doing his own quiet arithmetic. Twenty thousand men a day — fourteen thousand yuan a day for him — over a year, that was... holy hell. Five million yuan?
That was fifty thousand taels of silver in the old reckoning. Back in the day, that was what two entire prefectures paid in taxes for a year!
Far better than his old post, where he'd padded the rolls with ghost soldiers and pocketed their pay.
This was worth doing! Even if the imperial court stripped him of his commission, it was worth doing.
Work it for two years, walk away with ten million yuan, and live out his days in Longcheng like a lord — what wasn't to love?
With that kind of money, even his grandchildren could live like lords!
This magnificent enterprise had to continue!
Long live Longcheng!