In this realistic war game, only I understand the course of the battle.

In the nineteenth year of the Yongle reign, in Ji'an, Jiangxi, Shen Du stood at the ferry crossing on the Gan River, facing the vast expanse of water. In March, Jiangxi was flooded—the fields were full of water, the ditches were full of water, and even the air seemed to be dripping wet. Across the river, the city of Ji'an was shrouded in a hazy rain and mist. The banners on the city walls were soaked and stuck to their flagpoles, and the soldiers behind the battlements huddled under awnings; the rust on their armor was visible across the river. He had traveled for twenty days from Guangxi to Jiangxi. When he received his orders at Zhennanguan, he wasn't entirely clear about the situation in Jiangxi—he had only heard that displaced people in the Huguang and Jiangxi areas had risen up in rebellion, capturing several county towns. The court had sent several waves of troops to quell the uprising, but it had only lasted a short time before resurgence, never truly ending it. Upon arriving in Ji'an, he learned that the situation was far more complex than the military reports described.

"They're not bandits, they're refugees." Shen Du sat in the prefectural government office of Ji'an, a newly drawn map of central Jiangxi spread out before him. He had marked several red circles on the map—Le'an, Yongfeng, and Longquan, all counties that had been captured by refugees in the past year. Old maps, soaked and moldy from the rain, hung on the walls of the government office. The rain outside the window pattered like drums, and water gushed down from the eaves. The governor of Jiangxi sat opposite him, his hair mostly white, his eyes dark-rimmed, clearly having not slept well for a long time.

"The drought in Huguang has been severe, resulting in a complete crop failure, yet the government continues to demand taxes. With no harvest in the fields, how can they pay taxes? At first, it was just a few households fleeing the famine, but later entire villages and hamlets followed suit. Refugees from seven or eight counties converged on central Jiangxi. When they could no longer survive, they robbed the granaries of wealthy households, and after robbing the granaries, they robbed the government granaries. I initially sent troops to suppress them, but the number of refugees was several times greater than the garrison troops. They scattered and gathered again, gathered and scattered again. Today they are in Le'an, tomorrow they are in Yongfeng, and the day after tomorrow they are in Longquan. It's not about suppressing bandits, it's about chasing the wind."

Shen Du remained silent. He looked down at the three red circles on the map, recalling the night of the retreat from Qimei Mountain—starving soldiers lying on supply wagons, feverish and delirious; Gu Zhang placing the last half-bag of dry rations beside a sick soldier's pillow; Zhao Laoliu, on night watch at the pass, chewing grass roots from hunger. Without food, morale crumbled. But the soldiers, at least, had military discipline to sustain them; the refugees had nothing. No food, no land, no home, only a wretched life, to live wherever they could find refuge. He put down his charcoal pencil, stood up, and walked to the window. Outside were the streets of Ji'an City. The rain obscured the figures, but he could hear faint weeping in the distance—not just one person crying, but a group, their suppressed, continuous sobs mingling with the rain like a thin mist. The wealthy families of Ji'an City had long since closed their doors, hiding their grain in cellars, preferring to let it rot rather than risk it being stolen by the refugees. Meanwhile, refugees outside the city starved to death by the roadside, and every day their bodies were washed into the ditches by the rain.

Old Zhao squatted on the stone steps outside the government office, a lit pipe dangling from his mouth. He hadn't said much on the journey from Zhennanguan to Ji'an. In Guangxi, he had fortified the city walls to be impregnable, perfecting the formula for the shell-patterned mortar even more refined than in Liaodong, firing kiln after kiln of bricks, and installing iron hoops at every crenellation of the city walls. He was adept at those tasks, finding increasing enthusiasm with each step. Building walls was for defense, a matter of course. But looking down from the top of Ji'an's city walls, all he saw outside were emaciated, sallow-faced people. His pipe crunched loudly in his mouth, the tobacco leaves damp from the rain, and he couldn't light it several times. "Uncle Li," Zhao Laoliu pulled the pipe out of his mouth, looked up at Shen Du, his eyes a little red, whether from staying up late or something else, it was hard to tell, "My father worked for a landlord when he was young and was forced to flee famine, starving to death on the way. I was only seven years old that year. My mother took me and remarried in Datong, and only then did I get to eat military rations." Shen Du didn't speak, but simply patted Zhao Laoliu heavily on the shoulder.

When Su Wanqing arrived from Beijing, the rain hadn't stopped. She had received an urgent report from Shen Du in Ji'an at the Ministry of Revenue, and without even packing her luggage, she set off south with two clerks. The journey from Beijing to Jiangxi took nearly a month, the carts sinking into mud pits several times in the heavy rain. The clerks were covered in mud while pushing the cart, and Su Wanqing herself got off and waded through the mud to cross the most difficult stretch. Upon arriving in Ji'an, she didn't stop at the post station but went straight to the city wall. She stood atop the wall, looking down for a long time. Outside the city were makeshift shacks for refugees—built with bamboo poles and rags, rainwater seeping through every crack, the ground outside the shacks turned into knee-deep mud. Several children squatted barefoot beside the shacks, drinking rainwater from broken bowls. Without a word, she turned and walked down the city wall, heading directly to the government office.

"Appease them. Only appease them, not suppress them." Su Wanqing placed a newly written resettlement plan for displaced people in front of Shen Du and the governor of Jiangxi. Her tone was more serious and steady than when she was in Jiaozhi. "The displaced people are not rebels. What they want is food, land, and a way to survive. Give them seeds and farming tools, let them cultivate the land, and they will not risk the siege of government troops to continue to plunder granaries. I have calculated with the Ministry of Revenue that there are at least 200,000 mu of abandoned farmland in four prefectures and twenty-three counties in Jiangxi. Distribute this wasteland to the displaced people, give each household one shi of seeds, one set of farming tools, and rations until the first harvest, and exempt them from taxes for three years. They can survive, the court can collect taxes, and wasteland can be turned into fertile land." She took out her abacus and showed the governor the calculations one by one—how many seeds, farming tools, and rations are needed to appease 10,000 households of displaced people, and how much silver that would cost; if they did not appease them and continued to suppress them, how much food and supplies would each wave of government troops consume, how many soldiers would be lost, and how much silver that would cost. After a long silence, the governor stood up and bowed deeply to Su Wanqing.

Shen Du stood silently before the map, but he was making other calculations in his mind. Appeasement was the fundamental solution, but without a buffer, the refugees and government troops had been fighting for almost two years, with casualties on both sides. Some refugee leaders were wanted by the court and dared not surrender easily. If the sincerity of appeasement didn't reach the refugee camps, even the best resettlement plan would remain mere empty talk. He took the charcoal pencil off his ear and drew several lines along the Gan River on the map.

"This area along the river is public wasteland, unclaimed and not belonging to any wealthy family or estate. This land can be designated as a resettlement area, with the government allocating plots to willing refugees who are willing to accept the offer of amnesty. They will be given land, seeds, and farming tools so that they can see that some people have actually received land and planted crops. If one person believes, a hundred will believe. While the resettlement area is under construction, I will be in charge of repairing the irrigation canals and dikes along the Gan River. Dike repair requires a lot of labor, and the government will pay and provide food to hire refugees to do it, paying them daily. With food to eat, they won't starve to death; with work to do, they won't be afraid of causing trouble. Refugees gathered together are easily incited to loot, but if they are dispersed in batches to work on different sections of the project, their emotions will be much more stable. When there are fewer people, it's easier to talk to them. When there are fewer people, we can have the old farmers and the successfully recruited refugees go over and tell the remaining people that farming is more secure than looting food, and that the government is not here to kill them."

In the twentieth year of the Yongle reign, outside Ji'an City, the first batch of simple houses at the resettlement site had been erected. They weren't brick houses, but rather sheds made of a mixture of bamboo and wood, with roofs covered in bark and thatch, and the four corners reinforced with bamboo stakes. Zhao Laoliu's team of craftsmen had cut bamboo from nearby mountains, woven rattan into the walls, and plastered them with mud. Once dry, they were much sturdier than ordinary tents, able to withstand the torrential rains of Jiangxi's summers and the strong winds of autumn. The dike repair project was also progressing simultaneously. The dredging of the canals along the Gan River had been completed, and the reinforcement of the dikes was underway. Most of the workers on the construction site were refugees who had already accepted resettlement. Standing by the river, Zhao Laoliu used a long bamboo pole to probe the depth of the canals, then turned to the refugees who were moving stones and shouted, "Finish this section of the dike today, and tomorrow we'll start digging the foundation for the sluice gate! The deeper the foundation, the better it will hold up against both drought and flood!"

Su Wanqing stayed at the household registration office in Ji'an City for two months. She distributed the seeds she brought from Beijing—early rice, buckwheat, and bean seeds—to each household. Each household was registered when they received the seeds, and they could only receive their rations after signing their names. Every stroke she wrote in the register was a neat, small regular script, and even when her wrist ached so much she could barely lift it, not a single character was sloppy. Several elderly farmers knelt at the door and kowtowed to her after receiving their seeds. She quickly helped them up and brushed the mud off their knees. Back at her desk, she wrote in a letter to Shen Du: "There were many people receiving seeds today; some waited at the door all night. I asked someone to cook several extra pots of porridge."

Shen Du squatted on a pile of stones at the embankment construction site, folding the letter and putting it in his pocket. A river breeze blew, causing the smoke from the cooking fires at the site to drift crookedly. Several large pots were simmering with coarse rice porridge and wild vegetables. A few children of refugees sat around the pots, holding rough earthenware bowls, waiting for their meal. Their faces were sallow, but their eyes already held a spark of life. Looking at these children, he suddenly remembered the old soldiers trampled into the mud by cavalry hooves, the young archers with crossbow bolts piercing their throats, and his brothers who had fallen, numbed by poisoned arrows, and dragged into the pine forest. Those were people too. He had never known how many of them had simply been forced into their positions simply to fill their stomachs. Now he knew. He stood up, put away the blueprints, and walked back onto the embankment. Most of the stones on the embankment had already been moved, revealing the compacted new soil beneath. The irrigation canal, stretching from the riverbank to the wasteland, extended forward section by section.

In the spring of the twenty-first year of the Yongle reign, Jiangxi experienced less rainfall than usual. The newly constructed dikes and irrigation canals along the Gan River were filled with spring water, maintaining a stable level to handle both drought and flood. The bamboo and wooden huts at the resettlement sites had expanded into several villages. The earliest settlers had already harvested their first crop of early rice and buckwheat, and the granaries were stocked with grain. The beans intercropped in the fields had also formed pods. Su Wanqing stood at the edge of the field, watching the rice paddies sway in the wind, and carefully recorded the harvests, grain reserves, and new residents at each resettlement site in her notebook. At the end of the notebook, she added a neat line: "Newly reclaimed farmland in Ji'an Prefecture can now be included in the official tax register; the resettlement of displaced people can be subsequently transferred to household registration management and grain tax collection." Shen Du stood beside her, marking the coordinates of the same section of the irrigation canal on the last line of the survey map with charcoal.

After the resettlement site was fully operational, Shen Du was ordered to go north to Beijing to report on his duties. He carried with him the Southern Army command flag, torn from Baojiaying and covered with the marks of every battle, the last one bearing the name of Zhennanguan in Guangxi. He folded the flag and tucked it into his robes, then mounted his horse. Zhao Laoliu followed behind, pipe in mouth, his donkey carrying surveying records from the past few years and local Jiangxi produce that Shen Du had brought for his old comrades. Su Wanqing didn't go with him—she would stay in Jiangxi for a few more months to ensure the tax collection and household registration transfer at the resettlement site were completed. Before leaving, she placed a newly prepared packet of ointment into Shen Du's baggage, said nothing more, just stood beside his horse for a while, patting its mane. Shen Du glanced back at her; she nodded, and he turned his horse north. From Beijing to the Western Regions, from the Western Regions to Jiaozhi, from Jiaozhi to Jiangxi, the road he had traveled was longer than any route anyone had ever drawn for him. But he knew the journey wasn't over yet.